Contested Spaces

In the three poems by Wong, Rushin, and Carrillo the authors expresses their anger and/or resentment towards whites that comes from their experiences of being a minority. Wong wished she was white instead of dark throughout her whole life and constantly strived to fit into that mold. Rushin is tired of being the only black friend of her group and she explains all the ways that others rely on her for this reason. Carrillo writes about how "white sisters" just do not understand what it is really like to be dark skinned and about their misconceptions. They may have pictures of a black woman but they do not actually have a black friend.

Macintosh's article helps explain the anger that Carrillo shows toward white men and women. White people have a privilege that comes along with being white but they do not realize this. Because they do not recognize that they have an advantage over minorities, minorities become resentful. Macintosh says that if someone is privileged but does not know that they are then they will not be able to work at ending it. Personally, I know their are times when I forget how privileged I am that I am white but their are times that I recognize it. Even when I do recognize it though, I feel as if there is nothing I can do to help fix it. The best that I think that I can do is to try to maintain awareness and to not use my privilege to further disadvantage those that are not privileged.

The article by Macintosh also relates to the poem by Rushin. It seems to me that the white friends of this black individual rely on her to be their link to the black world and make them feel better about themselves because they have a black friend. Even though they are priviliged, by having a black friend they seem to be trying to show that they are equal and not privileged. By having one black friend they are not proving anything about equality. Actually, they are just causing aggrevation to their black friend because of their inability to see that they truly are privileged.

Wong's poem can also be analyzed with the help of Macintosh's article. Wong recognizes the privileges of white people and longs to gain such advantages. Instead of expressing anger, Wong expresses her enviousness of whites. It is a shame that she must feel this way because she even says some things that she was proud of about herself when she was young, like her intelligence. Unfortunately, others have put ideas in her head that being Chinese is not as good as being white. It is true that whites have privileges but minorities should be happy with their selves just the way they are. However, I know this is easier said than done due to the world we live in.

Reaction to Articles for Thursday Presentation

My reaction to the first article, ABC Links American Christans to Anti-Gay Death Penalty in Uganda, is mostly just shocked. The American Pastor with extreme views, Scott Lively, and the Ugandan Pastor Martin Ssempa said some very awful things about homosexuals. Feelings against homosexuals in Uganda are so strong that the potential law could result in the death penalty for some. It is crazy how influential a group of Americans can be on another country. As a country we need to be careful about the messages we are sending to others. I hope that these pastors did not intend for something so extreme to come from what they said and that being the case I hope they will be more careful about what they are portraying to other countries.
In the next article, Ugly Betty is Gone. Now Where's the Latina TV?, they talked about the scarcity of Latina actresses. I do agree with the article that it must be hard for Latinas to find roles in TV but I have to wonder what the difference is in a ratio form because I would think that there are probably a lot less Latinas than Caucasians trying to break into the industry. I would like to know the percent of each, whites and Latinas, that are trying to achieve roles and do or do not succeed.

The third article about gender role perceptions the author talks about the stereotypes that Asian-American women must face. They are thought to be either captive prostitutes, submissive, fragile China dolls, sex pots, or housekeepers. Asian-Americans respond to the societal stereotypes that are put on them by internalizing them which causes them to be part of their attitude and behavior. The gender roles are transmitted through family and other aspects of socialization. In all, gender role perceptions and intergenerational differences are determined by an interaction of macro, micro, and developmental factors. I knew that the gender roles of women were affected in these ways but I had not really considered it through the aspect of race. The lack of diversity of portrayal of Asian-American women in the media negatively affects them because they are forced to take on these stereotypical roles.

Oppression

In class we broke into groups and tried to first define oppression. My group described it as being the opposite of equality and we said that one agency is limited by another. We talked about how someone higher in a hierarchy oppresses someone that is lower in the hierarchy.

When we talked about oppression as a class, we started to become unclear over the difference between discrimination and oppression. The example given of saying that only people with glasses would get A's really cleared the concept up for me. Since wearing glasses is not part of a bigger system in which wearing glasses is discriminated against, the example does not describe oppression but rather just discrimination. The trait that is being considered has to be identifiable outside of the oppressed status. Another misconception that we talked about is that if harm is being done to you that you are being oppressed. This is incorrect because someone must also be benefiting in order to consider this harm to be oppression.

We also talked about in-group/out-group discrimination. When you are a minority and you do something wrong, others will blame the whole group and attribute that particular characteristic to everyone in the group. When you are not a minority and you do something wrong, the whole group does not get blamed or stereotyped. I think it is really difficult not to do this especially in cases where you only know a few people that are a part of the minority and they have a certain trait. I think people often believe misconceptions like this because they have one experience with a certain race in their life and assume that the rest will be the same. People do this all the time, not even just in regards to race. For instance, if one time a person goes to say Olive Garden and they have a bad experience they will assume that Olive Gardens are all going to result in this bad experience (unless they have previously had many good experiences). People really need to be more open minded in this aspect because if not, they will miss out on a lot of good experiences and miss out on getting to know good people.

Our Racist, Sexist Selves

In class we were given this New York Times article by Nicholas Kristof called "Our Racist, Sexist Selves." The author states that he is a racist, at least according to an online test. This interested me so I went on to his blog and took one of the race tests. In my test first you had to categorize white faces and black faces and then good words and bad words. Then the categories are grouped and you put words either in the white and good category or black and bad category. Finally, they switched the categories to black and good and white and bad. I scored strong automatic preference for white. I am not very convinced by this technique though because of the order in which it was presented. I think I would have scored much differently if they had first grouped black and good together and white and bad. A lot of the time, I do not even recognize someones race when I talk to someone I do not know. For instance, the other day I was at the mall and one of the employees helped me get something off a high shelf. When I was at the register, the lady asked me if someone had helped me and I said yes. She asked me who it was and I said that I was not sure of her name. She then asked me if she was black or white and I did not know the answer. Regardless of this though, it is likely that I do hold some unconscious bias considering where and how I grew up, considering media influences, and because I am white.

The article goes on to discuss the role the unconscious is playing in politics not only against blacks but against women as well. Racism appears to be easier to overcome than sexism. Unconsciously, women are thought of as warm and friendly which could be why voters feel a female candidate for a political position is not the right person for the job. Friendly and warm are not typically thought of as attributes of leaders but rather they should be strong and tough. I do not even need to take the test on gender to know that I am biased when it comes to this. I would like to be able to break that bias but it is so ingrained in my mind that I do not think I would be able to.

Sex Education

For our presentation we told the class to read two articles. The one article was called "How to End the War Over Sex Ed." This article was about a county in South Carolina where they are teaching kids in an abstinence plus style meaning that they are teaching about abstinence and safe sex practices. For the program, a teacher administers two classes, one of which is based on sexuality and the other on decision-making skills. She teaches about STIs, pregnancy, contraceptives and also encourages them to delay sexual activity. This program runs from middle school throughout high school and they keep the same teacher throughout it. Because of this, the students can feel secure with this teacher and are able to ask her questions. This program appears to be effective since the birth rates at this school have decreased. Although this program seems to be working, it would be very expensive to implement it in lots of schools. The difference in this comprehensive program from previous ones that were not as successful is the new focus on behavior while emphasizing that not having sex is the safest choice.

In our second article, "Sex Ed in Washington," it discusses Bush's policy priority of abstinence-based sex education. After 15 years of a decline in birthrates, they increased earlier in this year. A lot of people blame the abstinence only programs but that is not logical. If you blame this increase on the programs, you must also give them credit for 15 years of improvement. This does not appear to be the case according to the data. In fact, the data indicate that neither abstinence only nor comprehensive are very effective at improving statistics. This article also says that the debate should be kept at a local level instead of requiring the federal government to make the decision for everyone.

Personally, I do not think that the second article's idea to decide on sex education programs locally would be very effective at improving statistics because it is hard to generalize values in any given area. Just because one area is typically more religious, it is not right to just assume that abstinence only is the way to go. Not everyone in that area is going to share the same values and so they need to be taught about other options. I think that the first article shows that a combination of promoting abstinence while also explaining safe sex practices is the best choice for everyone. If this combined program was implemented it would give students of all different values the encouragement to delay sexual activity as well as the information they needed in case they decided not to.

In my school, I did not receive much sex education. The only time I remember talking about sex in school was one year in my high school health class. This did not negatively affect me but I think that the high teen birth rates of my school indicate that the sex education needs some work. Because the school didn't provide us with adequate information, students had to rely on their parents. I do not think that this is a wise strategy because kids are often too embarrassed to talk to their parents about it and are too afraid to ask questions. Personally, I think that schools should be required to teach sex education. As of now, 17 states do not require this but I would like to think that this number will decrease over time.

Presentation: Gender and War

During the Gender and War presentation we split into groups and discussed certain topics relating to the articles we read for class. In my group, we discussed female suicide bombers. We tried to decide whether the fact that women were partaking in suicide bombing was or was not a gain for women in the particular culture being examined. Since women are taking on this job that was previously only performed by men, it would seem that women are becoming more equal to men; however, we felt that because women are still seen as victims in the situation of suicide bombing that it really is not a gain for them and does not make them more equal to men. Because this occurrence is still a phenomena, when it happens we do not attribute the wrong doing to the women but instead to others that somehow caused these women to do such a thing. If this were to become more common of women we believe that it would be more of an equalizer than it is currently.

Another topic that was explored in the presentation was rape as a weapon of war. Rape is such a terrible tactic that tears apart communities and leaves victims scarred with anxiety, stress, depression, and other detrimental effects. I was extremely appalled to learn that US female soldiers are frequently sexually assaulted and raped. What is even worse is that these women refrain from reporting these instances because they are afraid of losing their career. I would think that other women who want to join the military and know about this would be deterred from joining and I certainly don't blame them. It really is a shame that women have to fear their fellow soldiers possibly more than they fear the enemies.

The behavior of US soldiers committing rape and the women not reporting it is a bigger version of what occurs in every day life. Examples of this same behavior can be found all over the United States, even on the Juniata College campus. Women are too afraid to report what has happened to them because they feel like they are to fault. This is probably a result of women constantly being seen as inferior to men. When someone is superior to you, it is extremely difficult to tell them they did something wrong even when it is something small. In this case where the wrong doing is extreme, it would have to be even more difficult to admit.

Gender Roles

The presentation on gender roles was very interesting to me, especially since it really got me to thinking about the dynamics of my relationship with my boyfriend. I would say that I would classify our relationship as egalitarian but with some traditional values. For us, we maintain some traditional values because we like them but not because we expect that of each other. For instance, when we go on dates my boyfriend often pays but I do not expect him to and I offer to pay for myself. Sometimes I even pay for both of us on a date and that does not cause any gender role issues. Because we both do things in our relationship because we want to instead of because we have to in order to fit into certain gender roles, we do not get into fights about those little things. From listening to others talk in class about examples of parents that get mad for having to fulfill certain roles it seems to me that this can be the cause of fights that are unnecessary. For instance, one mother would get mad that she is expected to fill the motherly role of doing laundry. In an egalitarian relationship this duty would likely be shared thus preventing a fight over it. In an egalitarian relationship with traditional values, the woman might still fulfill this role but because she enjoys it rather than because she has to which would also prevent fighting. In my relationship I know that I would take over this role because I wanted to not because I was expected to. Also, I know that if I asked my boyfriend to do it for me, he would. In reverse, he would fulfill certain male roles such as doing yard work because he wanted to and if he asked me fill that role for him, I would. So at least for me egalitarian with traditional values is the ideal relationship which is probably a result of the way in which I was raised. My mother and father fulfill normal gender roles in most things but they both seem to be content in doing so. I am sure if I had been raised in a different household, my idea of the ideal relationship would be different.

After writing this I realized that when I was referring to the woman I used the word "motherly" to describe the roles she was fulfilling but for the man I just used "male" to describe his roles. I thought about going back and changing it but then I decided not to because it just shows how ingrained it is in me than women are identified as mothers and men are just men, not fathers. I have to wonder if as gender roles change and men and women become more egalitarian if people will continue to still view women as mothers and men as just men or if it will move more towards women as mothers and men as fathers. My guess is no but I am sure it is a possibility. I just think that because women are the ones physically giving birth that we cannot help but view them as mothers. The woman will have to care for her child throughout pregnancy whereas a father could just get up and leave.