Sunday, December 14, 2008

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.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

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.