More Than Just Race

I almost dreaded the idea of having to watch an almost 2 hour long video, but then i started listening to how this man talked during this speaking. The speaker made this a very comfortable environment to talk about a controversial topic, Race.

I want to start at a point close to the end where the speaker talks about a time where he talked to younger students about their views, these children may have only been about 10 years old but they had their own ideas about race. Through TV shows and the society in which they have grown up in, i thought this idea of students formulating their own ideas and maybe even bias's due to social media and society directly connected with the conversational topics that have been discussed in our classroom the last couple weeks. I found this fact very interesting that there are more people out there that find it important to look at the young minds in our society, you can really learn a lot about how the rest of society thinks about a situation or problem by talking to young kids. These children are like sponges, they pick up everything around them, for good and bad, they begin to formulate their own opinions early in life. They do this just by listening to the adults in their lives and the way they themselves views ideas and political topics such as race.

I know for a fact that there are many kids when i was growing up that "stole" their parents political and social views. I say "stole" because instead of learning about these topics and formulating their own true ideas they would say they believe it because its what their parents believe. I remember one year in school we had an election, they held fake elections for Obama or Romney, one girl asked me who i was voting for, at the time i really didn't know because i didn't really have an opinion. She told me that i had to vote for Romney because her parents make a lot of money and Obama would hurt her parents and make them pay more in taxes. More shocking is what she said after, she said her parents didn't like black people, that the president had always been white and that is how it was supposed to be. Then i really didn't understand how someone could be so mean, i had asked her what she thought  and she simply said she believed what was right... This i feel is a continuing problem, children are picking up on their parents ideals may it be social or political and applying them to their own lives, i believe that most don't see how big of an impact their opinions have on youth. We need to show people that your own opinion rather then the one you adopted growing up is most times better.

This speaker of course touched upon several other important topics such as the astonishing number of white people who say they have multiple black friends while the black population polled said they only had one white friends. These results contradicted the population variable of white to blacks in the nation greatly, so who is lying?

I still wonder to this day why Race is such a barrier in our society, we have come so far you would think but it still seems we are stuck in the age of the oppression, is this because i am white? Does the color of my skin act as a veil to the real problems? I like to think that i don't judge, but i know myself to make judgments because of the social stereotypes i have become so familiar with. Is the speaker right, is it hard for white people to recognize racism, do we only recognize the serious offenses?

Affirmative Action, Equality, Discrimination

"Fierce Urgency of Now"

Shirley Wilcher -"race knows no economic bonds" 

• Roosevelt and Truman were among the first to order successful executive orders in the name of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunities.
• John F. Kennedy was the first to use Affirmative Action

The Philadelphia Plan- had to do with the construction industry, which is one of the most difficult to integrate. Now the Philadelphia Plan is used as a model.

Civil Rights Landmarks
1949: Desegregation of the US Armed Forces
1954: Brown v. Board of Education
1955: Montgomary buscott
1963: Betty Friedon
1964: Civil Rights Act Signed
1966: EEO-1 Private Sector Report if company has more than 100 employees
1969: Stonewall Riot
1973: Rehabilitation Act
1990: Americans with Disabilities
1991: Civil Rights Act of 1991
1997: Cali. banned all forms of affirmation action
1998: Washington state abolished affirmation action
2000: Florida bans using race as a factor in college admissions
2007: Michigan banning preferential treatments of minorities

Quote from President Truman:

"Freedom is not enough, you do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. all our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates..."

Why can't women get jobs above a certain level?
Why are minorities jumping from job to job?
WHY? Where is you Affirmative Action Plan? 
"Plans for Progress" ? - during the Kennedy Administration contractor, reportedly designed to take positive action and prevent discrimination lawsuits

• Employers need to take Affirmative Action in the work place and in the hiring process - you cannot exclude a person because of race, gender, looks, etc. !!!
• Affirmative action program is a management tool designed to enforce equal opportunities.

• Student Body Diversity is Constitutional!
• Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger
• Abigail Fisher v. University of Texas - "discriminated her because of her race"
• several colleges had this problem, in some aspects the colleges were not always at fault.
• Affirmative Action protects LGBT
• poor white kids do better on standardize tests then poor kids of color, why?

"To get beyond race you have to first take race into account"

Unlearning Myths That Bind Us

There are always controversies with Body Image, is anyone really happy with there appearance, why are there so many ways to change a person's appearance? In this article it talks about the distorted perception that Disney has given to today's youths. If you were to sit down and watch any Disney movie you would come to the conclusion quite simply that to be a princess you have to be beautiful, beyond skinny, exaggerated features and white. Also among other things, this to be the short list, these are all things that a young child is able to pull out of these movies and is easily able to start their own conceptions of life. These early misconceptions that these children are learning is harming them in a great way, not only intellectually but physiologically.  

I've yet to understand why we allow our children to go through life thinking that if they can achieve all of these characteristics they will be taken away to a far off land with their prince charming and never have to worry. When will it be time to teach children that they are fine the way they are and that life is what they make of it? When will we take a stand to put happiness and pride in our self first and not worry about what society thinks?



I found this video that i think illustrates the misconceptions of Disney in reality i thought people may enjoy

Its Elementary - Talking About Gay Issues In Schools

Children are among the most open minded, because of their innocence children are open books. Introducing children to LGBT relationship as early as primary school is a step in the right direction; to creating a fully acceptable environment in the future. I agree completely with the ideas of this article, i believe that if children are exposed to non-heterosexual relationships early in life, they will be more likely to accept or feel more accepted. I found this passage from the article to be very interesting...

     "Arguments suggesting that LGBT teachers refrain from discussing their relationships within the school fail to acknowledge that children themselves might benefit from the openness of LGBT role models for a variety of reasons: because they may identify (or eventually 322 A. Allan et al.identify) themselves as LGBT or just ‘different’, because they have gay or lesbian parents (Letts and Sears 1999; Kissen 2002) and because one of the duties of school is to prepare all children to live in a diverse society (DePalma and Jennett 2007)."

This passage directly relates to my own personal ideas on this subject, children do not benefit from being sheltered from the real world. Those teachers that are in seemingly "normal" heterosexual relationships do not have to hide any aspects of their lives, but the teachers who are not "out" have to hide from their children every Monday to Friday. I will never understand the double standard that society puts on those people would do not want a "normal" relationship. Why is it "weird" to be in a LGBT relationship, why not the other way around? 

I think watching this video would give a lot of people a new respect for children and their ability to accept differences around them. I know after I watched this video I have a new respect for children's awareness.