we're all subconsciously racist?

So we recently are learning about how most people in America "prefer" white people over black. That white people are considered "pure" and if any trace of another race is in their blood, they're "tainted" in a way, or even "bad". When it comes to the terms of good and bad, growing up, i guess i was subconsciously taught that dark things are bad and light things are good. For example, heaven; we all see the typical image of light and white clouds and overall bright. Hell we imagine as dark and scary. Can this unwritten lesson be considered racist?

I remember when i started taking piano lessons and my teacher asked me what was the difference between the keys on the right side of the piano and the left. I played the notes on the left and then i played the ones on the right. I said that the lower notes on the left were darker sounding while the higher notes on the right were light. I had associated the low notes with darkness and bad and the high notes with light and good. Is this a subconscious way of being racist? I don't think that its something that anyonce can ever figure out so though i do agree that society emphasis that light = good, i don't know if it is particularly racist thing.

Tax, Bills, Rent, Fees

I have played monopoly tons of times in my life but never have I ever actually learned something about actual life from it. In the game all players start off with the same amount of money. From there luck is what you play on. You use the money you have to buy property or train stations and hope that others will land on it to get the money you used back. You roll high numbers to get around the board quck and pass GO to collect $200.

I started off the game with a decent amount of money. As the game started i would land on property that already belonged to the rich. Therefore i couldn't buy the property but in fact had to pay a fee. I tried my best to catch up money wise to the richer player by buying decent properties around the board. Ones with good fees if people landed on them but didn't cost me too much to buy. But my plan didn't work out the way I hoped. Not many landed on my properties. I didn't have enough to buy the whole set or any houses either. By the end of the game my risk taking led me to be even more poor than i was when i had started.

In actuality, it is such a risk to earn such profits. It takes so much money and chance to go for your goal and all you can do is hope that in the end it'll pay off. My dad used to own a restaurant, which for a while did very well but eventually it closed down. More recently, like in the past 4 or so years, my mom has been wanting to open another restaurant. The idea of one is great and has a lot of potential in success and money, the problem is the money to actually start it. Its too much of a risk to get loans and such to open a place because there is no gauruntee that this place will be a hit or not. So our family income doesn't change because its too risky and its not a risk we're willing to take at this point.

Only You Can Change Yourself

In the movie that we're watching, we learned about a family who literally lives in a trailor in a rural area. This family lives several miles away from any public place and are in the middle of no where. The mother of this family says that her oldest son tries to dress "preppy" and acts "like he's better" than his family. She and her son constantly fight about cleaning up their act and fixing their place. I was a bit bothered by the mother's words about her son. No doubt no one wants to live the way they do and I don't think it is her fault that they are in the financial status that they are. It is obvious that she works hard to keep a nice living for her family. But as a mother, I found it terrible for her to talk down to her son the way she did. He wants to work for a better future for himself and dresses the way he wants to dress. He puts himself in the right mindset to get him where he wants to go in life. Its wrong for any mother to discourage their child of that kind of ambition. I do realize that what he says to her may be harsh for her and rub her the wrong way, but how can he be expected to stay hopeful when his own family is putting him down. Life is what you make it and he's trying to make it the best he can.

Once Poor, Always Poor.

What I learned from the penny game we played is that once you've failed to make something of yourself, you never will. Sadly, I lost the first round of the game, and for the rest of the class period i sat around talking to my friends. I did nothing productive when i should've or could've been winning some pennies. This idea goes with the idea that the incarcerated stay in prison because they can't change themselves. It gives me the mentality that once you're down, you're always down. Of course, with the exception of a good handful.

In Sal's blog about this topic, he noted that hispanics are more over the poverty line than whites, which brought me to the point that it is so unfortunate that foreigners have such a harder time earning money. It really sucks to have the disadvantage of a job because you aren't from this country. My parents are immigrants and my siblings and I are the first generation in my family ever to be born in America. My parents have worked so hard to keep up with supporting three kids, owning a house, currently owning three cars, and on top of that owning lots of pets(my sister and I are suckers for animals). None of that ever adds up to cheap. And both of my parents have struggled with jobs due to their accents. They've been limited because of it. So if America's "ways" tend to be that once you've reached the top, you stay at the top, how will immigrants every reach the top? (again, with the exception of a good amount still)

Prisoner for Life

After beginning to read the story/article "Courtroom 302", I've begun to realize that its no wonder why most of the people that go to jail end up going back and are never able to turn their lives around. What do we think mostly leads people to commit crimes? Drugs are a way out, a sense of relief, a temporary solution that gets the user caught up in bigger and deeper messes. If not drugs, common things are rape, murder, and theft. Do happy people commit these acts? Sometimes yes, but many of the times, no. Its the people that feel low of themselves. They're angry with something and are driven to commit such felonies, leaving them in a deeper mess and possibly, hopefully, thinking to themselves "what have i done?" and realize they regret their mistake. But what's done is done, and they've landed themself in jail. As if life wasn't low enough at that point, the guards in jails and prisons don't exactly give a positive contributions. They yell and treat the prisoners like the shit they believe they are, if not worse. So after being thoroughly convinced that their lives are meaningless and feeling terrible about themselves, these guards confirm it and with that, what insentive would any person have to change their lives? I think they believe "hey my life sucks, F*** it." and go on living the rebellious way they've always been.

Teen Potential or Teen Crash?

I remember being younger and being so excited to be a teen. I watched those movies of teens living the high life, having fun and being happy, and those personas did exactly to me what we discussed in class- i wanted to be just like that "pretty and popular girl" in the movie.

But then I also have follow the generalization that teens are trouble and though I am a teen, i also carry a negative look upon them as a whole.

Its a shame that teens are so often looked down upon as troublesome or immature or what not. For me its a disadvantage because i feel that i hold a lot of responsibility. I keep myself engaged in a lot of activites in and out of school and i take care of a lot of things for myself. It just doesn't seem fair to me when adults treat me like i'm some delinquent (spelling?) when i know that i'm very responsible and independent. Teens party, but so do adults, Many adults are a lot less responsible than given credit for and many teens are a lot more responsible than given credit for. So maybe in a nation of democracy and majority rules, majority rules isn't so great.

Barack Obama

This election was my first election that i was able to vote. I admit that i didn't pay as much attention to it as a should've, but i knew from the start who i wanted to vote for. Now that we're older, I was surprised to hear how many people my age that were so into the election. It also surprised me finding out the political views of a lot of my friends. I naturally have pretty much the same views that fall under the democratic party and so do many of my friends. I base it on the society we've grown up in and so it shocks me to hear when people would say that they're all for mccain. I find it hard to believe that people can believe things differently than me. Not in an arrogant way, its just something so weird to me that people can think so differently. For example the large issues of gay rights or abortion. The only idea i can settle on is that though this is a great country, we'll always have confrontation.

rich, pretty, smart, and masculine

after reading the "Mask You Linity" blog on Sal's page, I was led to the point that we all in some way, not only gender wise, feel pressure to live up to some sort of "self fulfillment". For males its the masculinity concept, and for girls its the looks and clothes. Some girls also feel the pressure to seem tough and some guys also feel the need to dress fashionably. So many of us are consumed with being or looking richest, the smartest, etc. It makes me wonder if our own personal goals are ours, or if we've been so completely molded by our environment and society that our goals are what they are because we think thats what we have to fulfill. And as people, a society, and a nation i feel that we're so far deep into this epidemic of lack of actual self fulfillment that we've weaved ourselves into a huge mess of a web. (this isn't meant to be depressing!)

Fear and Guns

Mr. Salituro:
My response to your comment from last week:

Its not so much as being weak by relying on others emotionally but that many people have a fear of attachment in resulting of getting hurt. Personally I'm very cautios of who I trust and let into my life because I don't want to have to bother being betrayed or let down by someone. But as a human, even as a living being, I know that it would be a sad life to live without others around me to help me enjoy happy moments and cope with sad ones.

My point of the last blog was to show that desire of depending on other's is part of life but that has nothing to do with our independence in America as a whole.
Guns:
I do believe that in America there is plenty to fear. Until this movie, I had figured that that kind of fear is everywhere. Its a terrible thing to think, but growing up I feel that we have been taught to fear all of whom we don't know. Take precautions and keep your property locked up and away from others so that it won't be taken and don't talk to strangers because you never know if they could be a rapist or a murderer. Though majority of the time we meet very nice people, there are also a lot of sick people out there. People that will show no mercy on you, your life, or your possessions. I find it apalling how some people have the nerve to do what they do to each other- rape, attack, murder, mug, etc. I feel that society, at least for me, when growing up has taught us to always be cautious of these things. The scenes about Canada and how they don't lock their doors, allowing anyone to just walk in whenever they please, shocked me a lot. People react differently in every situation, and this fear that we've been taught all our lives have different reactions to it. Some don't take it into too much consideration, some fear it in an excessive extent. Therefore, some feel it is necessary to have a gun for personal protection. But, by having that gun, how does that effect their children and who they'll become when they are older? Will they also have these anal excessiveness of fear, will they grow up to think that guns aren't as big of a deal and believe it is natural to carry a gun on hand, will they become more violent than others? These reactions also vary extensively. The way I see it is that allowing practical citizens to own guns is a terrible and idiotic idea. How many accidents have occured because of random people owning guns? How many deaths have there been due to "joking around" with them? How many murders have been easily planned because of it? Allowing people to own guns, especially now more than ever because people seem to becoming more violent and mental/psychological diseases seem to becoming more common, is just a flat out stupid idea.

America- land of the dependent?

When it comes to personal dependency, its not only Americans that don't want to live alone. We depend on friends for support and parents for food and shelter. Its a natural instinct of nurture that just about every person is born with. We've been brought up to believe that mentally, these aspects in life are necessary to live happy and healthy. We have also been warned about these attachments to others and how easily we can be betrayed or abused by the ones we hold close to us. People have become fearful of getting hurt whether by a friend, family member, or a loved one. I think a natural tendency for a good handful of people is to build this wall around them and fend for themselves- trust no one and you don't get hurt. Personally, I go with the building up a wall system myself, with different reasoning for being cautious of friends and being careful of finding a loved one. But thats a whole different topic.

The fact that as humans we are naturally drawn to others for nurture, I think, has nothing to do with living in a free world as Americans. The independence we have built for ourselves as a country is purely to live in a well contained lifestyle. The system of majority rules is probably the most harmonic way we can live. Its as a whole that we are independent from a ruler and are able to live the way we believe is just.

There isn't really a relation between human dependency and living in the independence of America because they are on completely different fields.

Shallow and Hard Working

We had talked in class that Americans work hard just to end up using that money to buy useless brand names or materials. But, is it only the American culture that is so consumed in showing off what we having and looking good? For example, when I was in Europe, fashion and cars was a huge deal also. In England, the cars were all a big deal. My own aunt and uncle owned a BMW and a Mercedes. One they didn't even drive, they left it in their garage. The other one rarely ever left their driveway. The streets were full of brand name cars like that and that was when I first saw a smart car (which, I guess, are pretty popular in the US now too). A friend of mine from London also showed me the different technology in England. Her cell phone has the ability to talk to someone on a portable camera so you see the person live while you talk to them. Like a webcam on our computers. Apparantly England's cell phones are full of extra advances like these and we haven't caught on yet.
In Paris, all the best designer clothes were found all along Champ Elysees and Paris is also known as the fashion capital of the world. So when it comes to showing off pricy names and "cool stuff", I wouldn't limit it just to America. The pressure to look the best and look the richest is everywhere.

I know I sound like i'm just trying to argue with everything, but that is not my intention of this blog.

I also disagree that people work just to get money to make themselves happy. I know that I work hard between school, a job, and extra curriculars. Though i do benefit in some way from all of these things, that is not my intention of doing it. Yes, I go to school because it is a norm/ expectation that will lead me, hopefully, to a successful career. Yes, I work because that's how I earn the money that I need, Yes, I do a lot of community service and leadership clubs because that will look good on college apps and get me some scholarships. But to be completely honest, I like going to school and I love being in the clubs that I'm in. Without school, I just feel like after a while my brain is starting to lose its ability to work as hard as it could. Laziness will set in and then my standards of work at my best will lower and lower. People may think I'm crazy, but I think that learning should be a never ending process. I love being in classboard and BOSS because it keeps me busy. I actually enjoy keeping busy, for some inexplicable reason. And if I got to choose, I would rather spend more of my week at classboard or BOSS than going to work and I only work to pay for personal spending and my cell phone. My benefits from my clubs is not the same as from work, obviously, you get money at a job and at clubs you don't really get anything. Still, I enjoy being busy at my clubs rather than being busy at work. Not many of my peers(that i know of) would rather work for nothing than work for money. So I guess I'd like to think that I defy the generalization that people only work to get money to be happy.

Strange Places

When I was in England I would always look the wrong way when crossing the road. Because the roads are opposite of how they are here, I always looked the wrong way (even though our motto is "look both ways"). It was also weird because we walked everywhere instead of drove. It was either that or take the "underground". We also walked everywhere in Spain and Paris, but I guess it would be about the same in the city.

One thing that I couldn't get over when I went to Europe was their water power. In America I don't think we realize how strong our water power is, for example how hard the shower head sprays or how fast the toilet flushes. The showers in England felt like the water just trickled out of the shower head and the toilets took forever to flush. Its a weird thing to notice but I couldn't help how much it bothered me.

A Bronx Tale- Social Construction of Reality

The city Collogero lives in seems to be a small area where everyone knows everyone. The way to keep at the top of the chain in that area is to be the most intimidating. Within the white part of the neighborhood Sonny seemed to be at the top of the food chain because everyone feared him, and then he had his "crew", then the common people(like Collogero's father), and then their kids.

The obvious norm of the area was the separation of blacks and whites. The obvious split between the two places showed just how non-accepting they were of each other. Blacks weren't allowed to travel freely within the white area of the city and whites weren't welcomed in the blacks' area either. The unfair part of it is that blacks had to attend school in the white people's part of the city, which left them at a disadvantage. Its funny to see how helpless each victim is within the other's end of town. Like the black kids riding their bikes when Collogero's friends beat them up. They were portrayed as helpless as they were being attacked, but when Collogero walks Jane home and is suddenly crossing territories, the blacks there are tough and he has become helpless.

In the social hierarchy, everyone seems to thrive on being the meanest and baddest just to be at the top.

Groups

I wasn't in class for this discussion so I'm going to try to go along with it and hopefully I'll make sense?

Obviously everything i do represents who I am- but specifically each "group" i'm in has its own characteristic. My job shows responsibility, my clubs show hard work, my friends represents fun, my school/grades represents my ambition and work ethics(I guess?). My job, clubs, and school represent the same common idea but without all of these factors in my life, things would be so completely different and I'm glad that i have all of these things in my life.

(except my job...that i could live without- but hey its money!)

Community Service

Over the past few years, I've done a lot of community service. Before high school I volunteered at the Vernon Area Public library for a few summers to work at the summer reading progrom for younger kids. My first year as a volunteer I worked the 2nd most hours out of all the volunteers and became a senior volunteer my 3rd year. I've been a captain for the past 4 years for the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life. I have also volunteered at the Buffalo Grove Park District and was a frequent participant of G.I.V.E. freshman and sophomore year. Freshman year I also went with the school's hip hop club to dance at SedgeBrook. Class Board and BOSS also have many community service projects.

I am looking forward to doing another community service project, outside of what I have already done. If it weren't for this class I probably would never get around to doing any of the community service that I've been wanting to do.

aMErica

sorry salituro, i kind of copied one of your titles!

Colleen's(I hope thats the right name) presentation of her trip to Tenzania, really opened my eyes to how lucky our country is. Its not that before her presentation I thought our country was terrible or anything, but, we aren't exactly grateful for what we have here. Or at least that's what I think. We all have our problems; many are worse than other's, within each household, town, state, etc but as a whole I think we forget how lucky we are and how well we live compared to other countries. We individually get so caught up in our own problems that we forget about all the lucky things we actually do have compared to others. And the sad part is, we're all guilty of it. I know I am very guilty of it. Maybe its just me, but I feel like so many people are so busy thinking that their life sucks so much and they get so caught up in contemplating how bad everything is, that they forget about the good things that are happening to them. In other words, they're so consumed with the bad that they take for granted the good. I find it a large issue today, and maybe thats why more and more people are diagnosed with depression as the years go by. But now I'm drifting from my main point, which is that we're all so busy just thinking " me, me, me."

my first blog!

So this is my first ever blog! Before I start, i want to say hi to Doris and Michelle. And of course, hi to Mr. Salituro!
About me:
My name is Anita. I've always been really involved with school, as nerdy as that sounds. I'm the treasurer of the class of 2009- in another words I'm one of the 5 officers of senior class board. The 5 official positions in class board require a full election, which includes putting up campaign posters around the school, making a speech to the members of the board, and obtaining the most elected votes. But, I ran unopposed so its not as accomplishing as it sounds. Being an officer not only means running all general meetings but it also requires attending student senate weekly. Student senate is where the officers of every class board and officers of student council meet to discuss upcoming school events such as dances, spirit walk, project dance, etc.

I'm also one of the choreographers for BOSS. Whenever people hear that I'm in BOSS, they get confused and ask how I'm in it if I'm a girl. BOSS has girl choreographers to make the dances and teach to the guys for the assemblies. But, we don't take all the credit, a lot of the boys help out in creating dances too!

Other than that, I work too. I work at Macy's in Northbrook Court(which Salituro seemed pretty excited about). Its a pain in the butt, but its not too bad of a job. I've had worse.

Now that I'm done sounding like a work-a-holic nerd, I guess I'll say a little about my social life. During the week I'm always packed with my clubs and work but on the weekends I always find time to hang out with my friends. We don't do anything too exciting. I think the most exciting things we've done this summer is go to my friend's lake house and went tubing in the water. Or go to shows where our friends' band plays. And I guess that pretty much sums everything up!