Post reading Week 4

          Privilege and right are defined and supported by laws, rules, customs, conventions and individual strength. Laws and rules are the instruments used by government to determine the social structure, the right to sell or gift property supports the privilege of the propertied class. Customs and convention are social determinants of structure, the privilege based on caste, religion or economic class. Individual capacity and personality strength also define social privilege the rights accruing to the strongest, wisest most skillful or most courageous individual.
          
           Privilege is a good first step to start thinking about our nation’s structural inequalities — if one can’t understand one’s own privileges, how can one combat structural problems such as poverty, racism and sexism? Even though these problems manifest themselves through institutions and laws, they are deeply personal and require acute awareness to be fixed. Although I may cringe at the conservative ideal of “taking personal responsibility” for righting the wrongs of structural inequality, I believe that a deep conversation must take place with one’s self in order to deal with the problems of privilege.
           
             The "Black Girl Dangerous" blog in my opinion just reading it is Reverse Racism. I don't care if you are white, purple, black, green, yellow or any colored person talking about a race is racism. It works both ways. It makes me so mad that people with color get so mad when a white person talks about a person with color. And its okay for a colored person to talk about a white person. NO!! NO its not okay! More often than not, reverse racism is in the form of giving special benefits or opportunities to people who belong to a group which has been under privaleged in the past. In effect, you are essentially committing a racist act by giving preference to one person over another because of their race, religion, or ethnicity, rather than their personal merit, skills, or knowledge. In my opinion if people everyone wants to be treated the same then they should act like it. People with color shouldn't be pulling the "oh you racist card." Its not okay!! Being racist works both ways.

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Pre-Reading Week 4

What I think privilege means is a special advantage or right that a person is born into or acquires during their lifetime. It’s not also available to everyone in society.  Privilege isn't a right, it’s something you earn. Like we have the right to speak. No one can stop us from speaking. If speaking was a privilege then it would mean someone of a higher power has the authority to make us not speak. Since social status is conferred in many different ways everything from race to geography to class; all people are both privileged and non-privileged in certain aspects of their life. Furthermore, since dynamics of social status are highly dependent on situation, a person can benefit from privilege in one situation while not benefiting from it in another. It is also possible to have a situation in which a person simultaneously is the beneficiary of privilege while also being the recipient of discrimination in an area which they do not benefit from privilege. For example -- Male privilege is a set of privileges that are given to men as a class due to their institutional power in relation to women as a class. While every man experiences privilege differently due to his own individual position in the social hierarchy, every man, by virtue of being read as male by society, benefits from male privilege.

White Privilege - describe certain unintentional benefits given to people of Caucasian descent. It is distinct from racism, as the recipients and even practitioners may be unaware that they are in a race-based system of decisions. Experts are divided over the presence and prevalence of white privilege in modern society; some believe it is a serious problem.

Structural inequality-concept that when a social structure is built take for example a workplace, it is already defined with its own set of inequality. In a workplace you have something along the lines of this: Owners are 'higher class' than managers, managers are 'higher' than workers.

Advantage/Disadvantage- Advantage is someone that has more power and more control. Some that has advantage to the upper hand. Disadvantage is when you don’t have any say don’t have any control. You are limited to do stuff.

Racism is the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics. In opinion privilege can be linked to racism just because back in the day colored people didn’t have a lot of privileges like the whites did. In today’s society some people don’t have a lot of privileges because of their race. For an example- in the South there are some parts that blacks can’t go because they get mistreated or don’t have the same privilege as the whites do. I’m not saying colored people have less privilege but there are limited people don’t see it or just don’t want to see it but it’s true. I’ve played for a coach one year that only played white girls most of the time I’m not being racist but it happened. The only colored people on the team was me and another Hawaiian girl and a half black half Asian girl and we only saw at least 1 inning per game.

Yes, colored people can be racist also. It just not the whites are racist. Anyone can be racist even lil kids are racist noaway days. There are people in the world who only hang out, have friend(s), date, or marry a certain person just because of their color. I know, someone out there might say "I have friends all races, and I have dated all different kinds of people", but there will be that one person or group of people you might not click with just because of their skin tone. To me, I feel that is racist!The only thing I can see wrong with a racist person is hurting another individuals feelings. The fear people should have is when a racist person used their beliefs into racism. Some one not getting hired because of their skin color, a bank not offering a loan because of someone skin color, a kid not receiving the proper education because of his or her skin tone, a realtor not showing a certain home (location) because of a person’s color, a person being pulled over by the police because of their skin color, and so on. Regardless of race, I believe majority of people are racist. It does not mean every one of us is mean, nasty, or unhappy person. What it does mean that people have racist thoughts to certain situations.

 

 

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Race and Ethnicity

 

Ethnicity is not just a person’s race. Ethnicity gives us room to change because we can reject our own and embrace another. You can move from one region to another and assimilate your beliefs, actions and customs to identify with that ethnic orientation. You cannot do the same with race. Race is your biologically engineered features. It can include skin color, skin tone, eye and hair color, as well as a tendency toward developing certain diseases. It is not something that can be changed or disguised. Race does not have customs or globally learned behavior. Going back to our three Caucasians, each could be cloned and placed in different cultures throughout the world that were primarily not Caucasian. While their behavior would change, their physical and biological features would not.

"Race" related physical variations found in humans have no real significance except for the social and cultural importance put on them by people. Race is a cultural term that Americans use to describe what a person's ancestry is, and that unfortunately brings with it many misconceptions and erroneous biological connotations. It was for some time common to divide people into three main races. Caucasian or the so-called white race, for example, native residents of Britain, France Germany. Natives of Uganda, Somalia, and Nigeria in Africa are considered Negroid or part of the black race. Koreans, Chinese, American Indians are all Mongoloid or members of the yellow race. The distinguishing characteristics of these races are based on their visibly observable traits such as skin color, hair form, and bone structure and body shape. We must keep in mind that the American system of categorizing groups of people on the basis of race, was developed by what was then a dominant white, European-descended population, and serves as a means to distinguish and control other "non-white" populations in various ways.

Most people have mistaken me as a Samoan or Hawaiian. They wouldn’t think I’m Filipino because I’m dark and built bigger than Filipinos. I’ve been raised around Filipino cultural but again I’ve been raised as American. My dad is white so I’ve been raised around two different cultures. My experiences being around two completely cultures are so different. On my mom’s side of the family we celebrate holidays completely different than on my dad’s side. I love it because I get to experience two different sides. On my mom’s side everyone all my aunts and uncles and all the elders speak Illcano so when we talk to them they would prefer all the kids to speak in our language it’s a respect thing.

 

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-          Ethnic studies is a contemporary perspectives to frame the ongoing process by which people of color are grouped and defined at the complex intersections of race, gender, class sexuality and nationality.  Ethnic studies are an enterprise that starts from the assumption that race and racism have been, and continue to be profoundly powerful social and cultural forces in America’s society.

-          Ethnic studies today is a course that draws from a variety of discipline such as literature, history, sociology, and cultural studies. It is unique because it focuses on different cultural not only on American’s but that understanding the experience of the various radicalized minorities. In my opinion ethnic studies will enhance the quality of life and freeing you’re from limiting, narrow perspectives and stereotyping.  It will help you from preparing for work and play in society such as ours with different backgrounds that increasingly will require the ability to negotiate across cultural boundaries and to respect differences. I think all students benefit from this course because it teaches and shows us different people in the world especially today’s society there are so many different cultures, backgrounds, and etc.

-          Today in Arizona, the governing board pulled the plug on its Mexican-American studies program which teachers say was designed to help middle school and high school student navigate in complex, multiethnic world. Some of the reasons that there is a debate over whether ethnic studies should be taught because they felt it was targeting that “promote the over throw of the U.S government” and "resentment toward a race or class of people."

-          It's true that teaching U.S. history and literature with an eye toward a minority experience can give students misgivings about the wisdom of the majority, past and present. But particularly in the Southwest, it's impossible to understand history without acknowledging the subjugation and marginalization of minority groups. Nor can one understand the greatness of the American experiment without seeing it as a 200-year-long struggle to overcome injustices and live up to the highest ideals of its founding documents. Surely one doesn't have to believe in the infallibility of white people to be pro-American.