Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Saturday, December 20, 2014
Liberal Education
I found this essay to be much more entertaining for the final. I found it was a good choice and I felt like I could write over ten pages with all of the dissectable points the author made throughout. I also did fancy the author's name, Nussbaum. It reminded me of a funny from an old TV show.
Nussbaum focuses on the detriments of fear and ignorance and how their application in American education calls for the need for liberal education. However, seeing as Nussbaum does not go much into the negatives of liberal education it can be said that her stance is biased and her essay is a form of propaganda.
Nevertheless Nussbaum makes some solid points as to why liberal education should be strengthened. I found these points easy to recognize as Brooklyn College is a liberal arts school and my very own english class is filled with assignments that demand me to write outside of what I already know. In order to take an educated stance on a topic I must first inform myself of the opposition and then weigh out the pros and cons of both sides before I can be truly satisfied with my stance. In this sense, liberal education helps promote mutual understanding and instill a sense of humanity in people. A sense of humanity that will allow people to understand that a terrorist organization is not representative of an entire group of people. An understanding that will compel people to search for the information that the media does not provide. This understanding, this humanity is what adolescents truly need to receive from American higher education in order to become adults who can tackle such critical problems in the world.
Nussbaum focuses on the detriments of fear and ignorance and how their application in American education calls for the need for liberal education. However, seeing as Nussbaum does not go much into the negatives of liberal education it can be said that her stance is biased and her essay is a form of propaganda.
Nevertheless Nussbaum makes some solid points as to why liberal education should be strengthened. I found these points easy to recognize as Brooklyn College is a liberal arts school and my very own english class is filled with assignments that demand me to write outside of what I already know. In order to take an educated stance on a topic I must first inform myself of the opposition and then weigh out the pros and cons of both sides before I can be truly satisfied with my stance. In this sense, liberal education helps promote mutual understanding and instill a sense of humanity in people. A sense of humanity that will allow people to understand that a terrorist organization is not representative of an entire group of people. An understanding that will compel people to search for the information that the media does not provide. This understanding, this humanity is what adolescents truly need to receive from American higher education in order to become adults who can tackle such critical problems in the world.
Need money for college. Need college for job. Need job for money.
Andrew Delbanco's: "College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be" was an interesting essay. It didn't particularly tickle my fancy with any amazing points, but what I did like was Delbanco's use of contrast. In his essay he uses childhood terms like "a boy-who-cried-wolf"(4) and "Once upon a time"(5). Throughout his essay he is trying to stress his point that higher education systems in America aren't properly preparing adolescents for the transition into adulthood. He contrasts those childhood terms with his considerably impressive vocabularly comprised of words such as "adjunctification", "casualizatoin", and other words with more than three syllables.
Sunday, November 2, 2014
Sheep in the Big City
It’s Not an Oxymoron: The Search for an Arab Feminism
I feel that what led me to inherently believe that the author was Muslim was the various social media outlets and misinforming articles that I'm barraged with every day. I believe it's this same source of misinformation that caused the white feminists Durraj mentioned to believe that she was doomed to a life of constant pregnancies. I also feel like the author confirmed that she was an Arab Christian deep into the passage, not only to show what made the other feminists' comments so shocking, but also to shock readers who believed the same as well.
I feel that what led me to inherently believe that the author was Muslim was the various social media outlets and misinforming articles that I'm barraged with every day. I believe it's this same source of misinformation that caused the white feminists Durraj mentioned to believe that she was doomed to a life of constant pregnancies. I also feel like the author confirmed that she was an Arab Christian deep into the passage, not only to show what made the other feminists' comments so shocking, but also to shock readers who believed the same as well.
Shroud of Shadows
Toni Morrison's Playing in the Darl: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination caught my attention, especially when the style of writing differed greatly from her work in The Disappearing Acts.
In my belief, we would not know what it means for something to be black without knowing, simultaneously, what it means for something to be white. Black and white go hand in hand like love and hate; they are not entirely opposites as they need each other to coexist and we all experience them at least once in our life. The extent to which we experience blackness or whitness depends on the interactions we have with the world around us.
On page 9 Morrison mentions that blackness symbolizes voluptuousness, sinful desires, and sensuality. I also noted it to be important that the effects jazz music has on listeners is specifically described as consequences. Consequences does not necessarily have to mean something bad, but as it is usually used in a negative sense I like to believe that jazz music is seen as something that rakes up something bad. That bad thing is instinct and passion which many humans have tried to suppress to feel more "human". This also goes in to what it means to feel humans. What makes many humans feel superior to creatures around them is their excessive use of reason in decision-making as opposed to instinct. The effects jazz music is also a negative consequence in regards to the instance mentioned in the essay where the music incited a panic attack in the listener.
I believe using that example was an exemplary way to show the power that black people had over their audience. This power was the ability to extract strong, emotional feelings and desires that their audience tried to keep under control. As Morrison mentioned, this power would show in their music and could have drastic effects on a person's mental and physical states of being like it did with Cardinal. Especially in Cardinal's case she grew up with conflicting views as a French girl living in Algeria during a time of war. She had to fight with her black side which was seen as an evil and her white side which was supposed to be an inherent good. Accepting both of these sides to her was a decision that she could not consciously make, but had to be influenced by some outside force. Music was the outside force in her case.
In my belief, we would not know what it means for something to be black without knowing, simultaneously, what it means for something to be white. Black and white go hand in hand like love and hate; they are not entirely opposites as they need each other to coexist and we all experience them at least once in our life. The extent to which we experience blackness or whitness depends on the interactions we have with the world around us.
On page 9 Morrison mentions that blackness symbolizes voluptuousness, sinful desires, and sensuality. I also noted it to be important that the effects jazz music has on listeners is specifically described as consequences. Consequences does not necessarily have to mean something bad, but as it is usually used in a negative sense I like to believe that jazz music is seen as something that rakes up something bad. That bad thing is instinct and passion which many humans have tried to suppress to feel more "human". This also goes in to what it means to feel humans. What makes many humans feel superior to creatures around them is their excessive use of reason in decision-making as opposed to instinct. The effects jazz music is also a negative consequence in regards to the instance mentioned in the essay where the music incited a panic attack in the listener.
I believe using that example was an exemplary way to show the power that black people had over their audience. This power was the ability to extract strong, emotional feelings and desires that their audience tried to keep under control. As Morrison mentioned, this power would show in their music and could have drastic effects on a person's mental and physical states of being like it did with Cardinal. Especially in Cardinal's case she grew up with conflicting views as a French girl living in Algeria during a time of war. She had to fight with her black side which was seen as an evil and her white side which was supposed to be an inherent good. Accepting both of these sides to her was a decision that she could not consciously make, but had to be influenced by some outside force. Music was the outside force in her case.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Beast Wars
I feel like racism is something that many people are exposed at least three to four times a week. Some forms of racism can be more subtle and unfortunately some can be more severe. It's difficult to weigh whether subtle racism is more preferrable in society than severe racism. It's obvious that people are more accepting of subtle racism when we forge stereotypes that we jokingly laugh at and make assumptions of others based only on what's been fed to us and allow that to dictate our actions around certain groups of people. However, this subtle racism could be more damaging in the long-run on a psychological scale. Take this scenario: You walk on to the bus and bump into a person then apologize. Is it more damaging if:
A) The person immediately barks at you in anger, revealing what they really are
B) The person accepts your apology then trips you purposefully after you walk past them
I'd like to believe the second option to be more damaging, but not everyone will agree with me and they shouldn't. The person in the first scenario reveals their true colors and shows that some people just behave a radically different way that's hard to accept. The second scenario may give you relief that the person forgave you, but then immediately instill distrust in others that will continue to fester until it becomes hard to suppress.
The same issue is with subtle racism. A person could hear millions of jokes about a group of people and laugh. But the million-and-oneth joke could influence how that person views those people, filling their heads with thoughts like "Maybe these people really ARE like people say". Media outlets are great at achieving this.
Bringing it to the Color Complex I have to say that the statement about sex with blacks being equated to bestiality really struck a chord somewhere inside me. I could hear plenty of times that black people are apes or whatever, but seeing that many people believed something so foolish is flabbergasting. That one sentence seemed to degrade black people as a race more than anything I've heard or seen in my life. It truly showed the image that was being projected on people and makes their mistreatment over the years much more depressing in my eyes. So now I ask in futility, has anyone ever felt like they reached a point where they realized how horrible racism truly is?
A) The person immediately barks at you in anger, revealing what they really are
B) The person accepts your apology then trips you purposefully after you walk past them
I'd like to believe the second option to be more damaging, but not everyone will agree with me and they shouldn't. The person in the first scenario reveals their true colors and shows that some people just behave a radically different way that's hard to accept. The second scenario may give you relief that the person forgave you, but then immediately instill distrust in others that will continue to fester until it becomes hard to suppress.
The same issue is with subtle racism. A person could hear millions of jokes about a group of people and laugh. But the million-and-oneth joke could influence how that person views those people, filling their heads with thoughts like "Maybe these people really ARE like people say". Media outlets are great at achieving this.
Bringing it to the Color Complex I have to say that the statement about sex with blacks being equated to bestiality really struck a chord somewhere inside me. I could hear plenty of times that black people are apes or whatever, but seeing that many people believed something so foolish is flabbergasting. That one sentence seemed to degrade black people as a race more than anything I've heard or seen in my life. It truly showed the image that was being projected on people and makes their mistreatment over the years much more depressing in my eyes. So now I ask in futility, has anyone ever felt like they reached a point where they realized how horrible racism truly is?
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