Stereotypes

I thought the movie crash was very clever. The different types of race and their stereotypes were very obvious, yet the portrayal of them were very unique. When the Mexican man is changing the lock at the white couples house, the white woman wants them changed again in the morning because she doesn't trust him. She thinks he is a "gang banger" because of his baggie pants and his race. Yes she was just held at gun point and her car was stolen by two black men, but that gives her no right to accuse an innocent Mexican man. We later find that he is not in a gang, but has a wife and daughter and works very hard to protect them. Another stereotype that we have is brought to our attention when we see the motives of the "china man." At first when we see the two black males hit the Asian man we feel bad. But later we see that he was harboring people in the back of his truck and was planning to human traffic and sell them. This is a surprise to us because we see Asians as by the book people who are intelligent and respectful. This just shows that we should not judge people by the color of their skin. I have definitely held my belongings a little closer if I felt uncomfortable. I think this is a little bit of instinct and a little bit of racism. However, it is not always racism, my reasoning is usually because of the way they are dressed and it is always if it is a man, black, white, Mexican, or even Asian. If a guy looks shady to me, then I will always put my guard up. When I went downtown this past Saturday, I thought about what we learned in class and tried not to be racist at all. If I saw a man of color walking by I accepted him as a person, instead of having alarming thoughts. But no matter what, I will always trust my instincts.

"It don't matta if you're black or white"

It's the worst kind, in my opinion. These week we talked about race and how people automatically try to categorize people into a certain race as if that defines who they are. When we did the ball exercise, it was almost frustrating because every time Sal would add a new ball, we would pretty much have to add a category. This relates to races in that we can't put each and every person in the categories of white, black, and brown. We cannot divide them by Caucasian, African American, Asian, or Hispanic. There are so many people with mixed races in them and people with different ethnic backgrounds, which doesn't make them a mutt or miscellaneous, it just makes them an individual human being. We also looked at a chart of people from all over the world. Each person of a different race had a racial slur that another specific race had called them. This just shows that everyone attacks each other, even when we are joking, and it's just wrong. We are all obviously supposed to be on this earth, if we weren't supposed to be, then we wouldn't be! So people just need to accept that there are people like look different than them. On the other hand, people also may have racist tendencies, without even realizing it. We learned that this is called Implicit Racism. When most people are lost, in the city, and all of the suddenly they see a large amount of black people, they suddenly lock their doors and cringe. No matter what race you are, we are trained to automatically cringe in this situation and feel safer in a white neighborhood, run down or not. This type of racism can come about even within the same minority groups. All we do is judge, assume, and stereotype because that is all we are surrounded by. That Slip of the Tongue video was so cool! I love how she told him off after the comment he made about her "make-up." It was a little confusing at times, but her point was pretty clear. She didn't want to be judged by her "ethnic make-up," because she is who she is. It was pretty inspiring.

Minimum Wage

After watching that movie where the guy from "Super Size Me", and his wife live on minimum wage for 30 days really made me think. They could barely get buy, and they didn't even have any kids to take care of or anything. But when it came to medical issues, down-time, and overall health, they were cut short. It made me even more appreciative of what I am able to have in my life and how many luxuries I usually take for granted. In the movie after they had been well into the experience, I could see how worn out they were. They were saying that your home is a sanctuary. It is somewhere you go to relieve yourself of the stresses of your day. However, it is pretty impossible to have a stress free, relaxing moment when you are constantly worrying about paying your bills, and how you're going to eat, and get to work, or anything that is really just a brush off the shoulder for us. We buy our expensive coffee, our specific water, our designer clothes, and so many other things because that is what society teaches us is acceptable. But when you are just barely getting by because you need to survive on minimum wage, none of that matters. The focus is working to pay for the bills, food, water, and transportation to and from work in order to pay for these essentials. Yesterday when Corinne and I were at our community service, we were talking with this women about how ridiculous people are these days. For example, Corinne brought up how one of her friends was complaining about "Aquafina" water. She was saying that it doesn't taste good, and that she prefers "Dasani". Also, that she would NEVER drink out of the drinking fountains at school because of how gross they are. That is so snobby! There are people who are forced to drink out of dirt filled rivers and she can't decide which brand of water she likes best. I have to admit, I used to stray pretty far from the perspective of things, but i'm learning.