Progress?

This is a sad picture of seven African American Couples before their African American only prom. Yes, their prom is segregated meaning they were no allowed to attend the white prom the night before. They are standing on a downward slope that represents Americas progress. It is astounding that in 2009, not 1909, not 1809, not 1709, 2009 there are segregated proms. For my final, I did a see, think, wonder model and here it is: I see 7 Black couples standing together on a downward sloping bridge. They look unhappy and defeated.
I think they are unhappy because they are forced to go to an all Black Prom; they feel defeated because they were prohibited from attending the all White prom.
I wonder if the White students who attended prom the night before care that their Black friends are going to a diferent prom.
The downward sloping bridge represents the downward path America is headed. A segregated prom in 2009 is the opposite of progress.
This relates to AIS’ Myths and Mythologies unit because there is a myth that because Obama is president, racism is dead in America. This myth is clearly only a myth because in 2009, there are still segregated proms in America.

Segregation in the United States? In 2009?!?!

Only a short week ago, if I was asked if it was legal in the United States of America if there as still legal segregation in America I would have replied no; then I read this article in the New York Times (so you know it is legitimate) In the month of May, students all over the United States start to prepare for their proms. While most schools have one prom per year, some have too. On May 1st, 2009 a school in Montgomery County in Georgia had their annual white only prom.  Yes, you did not misread that statement,  they had a white only prom (pictured above). The following night they had their black prom (which white students are allowed to attend).  While some may not believe it, there is still racism as well as racial inequality in America. One may wonder how it is possible to have a segregated prom, the answer is that the prom is not school funded, it is privately funded and that is how it has been going on for so long. I was reminded of this article when we were given our final exam question, whether we believe there is progress in America or not. I'm fairly certain most Americans would be very surprised to hear that there are segregated proms in 2009! Segregated proms have been a tradition in the Montgomery county schools in Georgia since schools were desegregated in 1971. 

"'It’s awkward,” acknowledges JonPaul Edge, a senior who is white. “I have as many black friends as I do white friends. We do everything else together. We hang out. We play sports together. We go to class together. I don’t think anybody at our school is racist.' Trying to explain the continued existence of segregated proms, Edge falls back on the same reasoning offered by a number of white students and their parents. 'It’s how it’s always been,' he says. 'It’s just a tradition.'" That was a quote I found interesting from the article. It is ridiculous that these white students can call the African American students their friends, yet they do not care that their prom is segregated. While the white students do not seem to think there is a problem with this, the black students do. You can hear students and parents from both sides talk about the problem by clicking here. One of the black students, Kera Nobles, feels extremely hurt that she cannot share her senior prom with her best friend, who is white, and that her friend does not seem to care. This article relates to our myths and mythologies unit because there is a myth in America that because Barack Obama is president, racism is dead in America. That is clearly a myth, racism is not dead. However, how can these people have a segregated prom if Barack Obama is president. The myth makes sense because you would think that if we can elect a black president we can have desegregated proms. 

American Progress

Yes, I'll admit, as man of the other American Studies students probably should, upon being assigned our final, to find a picture of American progress, I searched 'American progress' in google images. What the results yielded were very interesting. I received, and I kid you not, three and a half pages of American Studies' very own John Gast's painting "American Progress". If you do not believe me click here. While I probably should not be too surprised at the popularity of this image, I am kind of surprised it took up three and one half pages of google images (with  20 images per page). I guess I'll have to use a different method to find the picture of American progress for my final. Maybe I'll use an image of American un-progress. I guess I'm still undecided whether America is actually progressing or not. 

The Friendly Neighborhood Flag

For American Studies class we were asked to take a picture of a flag, any flag and analyze our choices. I took many pictures of flags and this is the one I choose. This flag flies in my neighbor's yard. It is the only flag within a couple blocks of my house. I was trying to get a picture of this flag that made it look more majestic, but the wind wasn't right. However, I like the way it turned out. The flag isn't perfect, but it is protecting the neighborhood, just like Spider-man, thus I call it the Friendly Neighborhood Flag. When we were assigned this project, I started to wonder where flags were by my house. The first flags I thought of belonged to New Trier and Highcrest, two schools near my house. I thought it was funny that I automatically associated the flag with school, so I decided not to go straight to one of the schools and take a picture of one of those flags. I talked to my family about it and my sister reminded me that our neighbor had a flag in their yard. I hadn't really noticed it before. I guess I knew it was there, but I hadn't remembered it until my sister had reminded me. Then I took several photos of the flag from my window and ended up choosing this one. I like it because the flag is centered in with a lot of nature, but if you look closely you can see houses and power lines. It also looks like the flag is standing guard over the neighborhood, like our stars and stripes are protecting us. 

Trouble

I am in trouble. This is really annoying. I exchanged a couple emails with a possible interview candidate a week and a half ago who said he wouldn't mind answering some questions. I sent him the interview questions and he still hasn't gotten back to me. I then proceeded to send out 4 more emails on Wednesday. I just got one back saying he would not have time to answer any interview questions, but gave me a link to one of his websites. This is really annoying because it would have only taken him a few more minutes than it took to answer the email to answer a couple questions.  I guess my only option now is to send the questions out to the other people and as a first email to other possible people. However, I do not have a lot of time because the paper is due on Tuesday!!  

Junior Theme Post 2

A week from today our rough drafts are due. I'm actually feeling pretty confident in my Junior Theme because I already have two body paragraphs done and I think they're pretty solid. The main thing I have to do now is set up my interview and then I'll be pretty much set.

Junior Theme Post 1

My Junior Theme question is, "Why do Americans Love Violence?" When I say violence I mean violence in movies, video games, sports, books, and other forms of entertainment. I do not mean actual real life violence. As I am writing this blog post, I am also writing the introduction to my Junior Theme. Its kind of hard to actually start writing this paper, there is so much pressure involved. This is the most important paper of the year! In fact, it could possibly be the biggest and most important paper I ever write. I cannot think of a grabber for the life of me. I've been looking for witty quotes, statistics, and real world examples, but I can't seem to find what I'm looking for... scratch that, I just found it. I'm using a grabber that relates to me. I'm using phrases such as "I love," I'm not sure if thats ok though. I guess I'll find out tomorrow in AS.

What is the Deal with Snow on the last day of Spring Break?

So I woke up this morning around 11 and looked out the window. What I saw seriously annoyed me, snow. What is the deal here? Snow on the last day of spring break. Does the weather not realize its supposed to be warm and sunny? Snow is supposed to fall in winter, not spring. We can't even get excited about the snow here like you can in other places, snow is just annoying in Chicago, everywhere else it gets you out of school. There were a couple days this break where the weather was warm and the sun was out, but some of the days weren't what I would call spring. I wish the weather could just get out track because if its still cold when May rolls around I'm going to be seriously depressed, I can only take so much cold.  

Should we play the best or the hardest working?

The other day in SALT (student athletic leadership training) we were asked if we had any problems we wanted to talk about on our teams. I brought up the problem of who should be allowed to run (I run track) the kids who are naturally fast, or the harder workers? Sometimes, those kids are the same kids, which makes the decision easy, but sometimes they are not. For example, we have conference coming up and some of our fastest guys on our team have been slacking off and some of the kids who are not top two for the open events and top four for the relays have been working really hard because they want to race.  This leaves us with an ethical dilemma because even though these kids are working really hard, the probably won't be as fast as the fast slackers by conference. So who do you allow to race? The fast slackers or the kids who work hard, but aren't as fast? I wish I could simply say the harder workers, but that would probably mean forfeiting a lot of points at the meet, which we don't want to do. This problem applies to all sports. Do you let the kid you cannot win without play if he is slacking off? If you punish the slacker, you end up punishing the whole team. It seems like this is an ethical dilemma with no right answer. 

March Madness

So the other day in business management we were talking about March Madness. My teacher was explaining that the United States of America looses huge amounts of money due to the NCAA tournament. There is a huge lost of productivity due to people making brackets and watching the games. We debated whether we should make the first friday of March Madness a holiday and make people work harder the next monday to make up for losses. This way, people are more open about what they are doing instead of sneaking and making brackets behind their boss' back. I heard that in Brazil they take a week off during the World Cup. One thing my dad's company did last year was called everyone into the conference rooms pretending they had some annoying meeting and instead put up TVs and let everyone watch the games for a little while. They had an understanding with the employees that afterwards they couldn't fool around and had to work hard for the rest of day/week. I think that is not that bad of an idea. However, if you allow one sport holiday people might call for the monday after the Superbowl to be a day off and then things might get out of hand. 

Symbols

 

Yesterday in American Studies we discussed the picture above. A lot of people had trouble believing that not only there were no symbols in this photo, because it happened in real life, but that there are no symbols in real life what so ever. I disagree with those who think that. I think there are many symbols in this photo and in real life. For one, obviously the flag is a symbol. The young man is using it as a weapon to attack a defenseless African American Lawyer. I think this is another symbol, the fact that the African American is a Lawyer, who is supposed to help serve justice is being beaten up by a teenager with an American flag. Just because all this happened in real life doesn't mean that they are not symbols. For example, in class we discussed the different symbols that identify teachers and students. The teacher sits behind a desk in the center of the room, this is a clear symbol to the students that this guy is in charge. Students carry heavy backpacks, while the teachers do not. A car or house can symbolize how successful someone is. Symbols exist all around us.

Bong Hits for Phelps

Michael Phelps, the best Olympian to ever live, smoked weed out of a bong. This may surprise many people that America's greatest champion would smoke weed, which is not only illegal but bad for him as well. Phelps had this to say. "I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment. I'm 23 years old and despite the successes I've had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again." I think that a lot of his endorsements will now drop him because of this making it a multimillion dollar mistake. This is not his first mistake however, he has a DUI from a couple years ago. 

The Big Seventeen

Why is blogging once a week so hard for me? It is a simple assignment, yet it is very hard for me to keep up with, as it is for many others. In my case, I think it is not only my procrastination that I've been struggling with since I was 6, but for the fact we are not graded once a week. These on going assignments that are only checked in bulk are for some reason very, very hard for me too keep up with. I always find myself procrastinating until the end. I mean, I try to sit down once a week to write, but for some reason whenever I do, unless if its at the last minute, I have writers block so I just say to myself, I'll make up for it next week. Seriously, what is my problem? I really hope that next semester I'll be able to stay on top of this blog once a week instead of waiting, but the damn procrastination refuses to leave me, no matter how hard I try not to procrastinate.

Witch Hunt

The other day I saw a headline titled, Modern Day Witch Hunt. I have to say, it brought me back to the beautiful Crucible Days. It got me thinking, what were these little girls problems? Seriously, assuming they really weren't witches, from the begging all they had to do was say, "Guys, none of us are witches! We were just dancing in the forest, STOP HANGING PEOPLE!!!" Alas, these girls needed to have their fun by pretending to have spoken to the devils and knowingly and willingly falsely accusing innocent women. Well, I hope those girls had their fun because hopefully a group of people will never again believe something that is obviously b.s. (excuse my french) that will lead to the deaths of many people.

Another Post about TV Tokenism

I have a question this time, what is more racist, having the token black character or not having any at all? I feel like its having the token black character. I mean come on, why would you insult minorities by labeling them as the token, as Doc Oc stated, a token isn't even real, it just resembles something that is(paraphrased). If I was a minority, I would not stand for this, the Television Industry needs to change, and so does it's viewers. We need to take action by boycotting shows without diversity or with the token character. Also, maybe the actors should step up. Who wants to be a token anyway? You could argue that minority actors are doing what ever they can to get a role, but if every stepped up, actors, viewers, minorities, and majorities alike, there would be a change in the Television Industry. We would see more diverse casts with minority character with more complex roles. It doesn't matter if you absolutely love a show like Friday Night Lights, which I do love, that doesn't have a diverse cast, if we didn't watch it, it would either make a change or get canceled (which would stink, maybe we shouldn't take a chance with Friday Night Lights, but that's the thinking every one does, we need to stand up to shows without diverse casts and we ought to not like shows without diverse casts). I thought that the TV Tokenism unit was actually very interesting and enlightening, and that is why I felt it deserved two posts. If only everyone had their eyes opened to what the TV gets away with, and then maybe things would change. Minorities cannot do it alone, because they are the minority and people pend to not listen to the minority.

Finals

As everyone knows finals are coming up and I do not think one person is excited. Seriously, who wants to try to remember a full semester worth of knowledge? The typical final is 15% of your ENTIRE grade for the quarter and it can really only bring you down. If you get a zero, you'll loose 15% of your grade, while if you get ace it you can only really go up 3%. I don't like those stakes, if it were up to me we wouldn't take any finals, however I'd bet any highschooler would say the same thing. Finals are such a pain, I wish they'd just go away.

TV Tokenism

For the past couple of weeks we have been studying TV Tokenism. I feel that TV Tokenism is definitely a problem, but I feel like it is not a problem for most of America. If America truly cared about the problem, it would not exist. If people saw a cast and thought that it was not diverse enough they wouldn't watch the show, simple as that. If America did not watch shows without diverse casts, the ratings would go down and changes would be made. I feel that America is simply happy the way things are, that's why the casts are not diverse. However there are a few shows with diverse casts. One of my favorite shows, Dexter, has a very diverse cast. While the main role, of course, is played by a white male the supporting characters are very diverse. The lieutenant is a Latina and she is a pretty complex character, while in most shows the minority character is not complex. Also, the main detective is African American and is a very interesting character who gets even more complex in the episodes preceding his death. There are two more main roles with minority characters and that is one of the main reasons the show is so succesfull.