Article on Zimmerman bail

With all the talk and the public outcry over the February 26^th shooting death of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin, I was interested in following how the public and authorities handled the case with George Zimmerman, who was the shooter in the incident.  I recently came across an article that talked about the fact that Zimmerman was released from jail on $150,000 bail.  This has many people upset, because a majority of the public viewed the shooting as racially motivated, and therefore an even worse crime than other shootings.  The defense wanted Zimmerman’s bail to be denied or to be posted at one million dollars.  Although I am definitely not comfortable commenting on the incident too much, from what I know I think that Zimmerman should have been allowed the bail at the $150,000 it was set at.  Our country prides itself on our ideals, and one of those is the fact that every man is innocent until proven guilty, and at this point he is still an innocent man who is being accused of an incident with the concept of “race” behind it.

Whither the Female Sports Fan

In my English class, we read an article entitled “Whither the Female Sports Fan?” from the Carolina Reader textbook.  It takes a look at how women’s sports have struggled to compete with their male counterparts.  It was very shocking yet realistic how the author details the fact that even when making history, women’s sports teams such as the Connecticut Huskies ladies basketball team when they broke the UCLA men’s basketball team’s record win-streak.  I couldn’t believe that an accomplishment such as that was not given any serious media attention, at least not like a men’s team would have received.  In order for there to be complete gender equality, equality in sports is a necessity.  Men and women alike should be more open to attending and giving the due attention to women’s sports, whether they happen to be young women or professional female athletes.  It is not an absurd step to take, and I fully believe that it is a necessary step to take for equality to be fully realized.

Official Statement on "Race"

“Official Statement on “Race”” is an article prepared and released by the American Anthropological Association (AAA).  This article was a very good addition to a previous reading, “Mixed Blood”, which more or less outlined the fact that race is a common misconception among most people.  In the AAA’s article, they clearly and without a doubt set things straight, especially by stating, “the concept of ‘race’ has no validity as a biological category in the human species.”  This would seem to put the issue to rest once and for all, and the AAA did a great job of elaborating on this delicate topic.  The AAA talks about where this misconception originated, when the white Europeans felt the need to categorize “superior” peoples as opposed to “inferior” peoples, and that is where we the human race began confusing biological differences with the idea of alleged “racial” differences.  In order to move forward and get past the “racial” issues that have plagued our species for centuries, we need to first and foremost realize and accept that “race” does not exist in the context in which we use it at all. 

White Privilege

“White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”, an article written by Peggy McIntosh, takes a look at the usually overlooked elephant in the room, so to speak: white privilege.  When one looks at their daily lives, assuming they are white, it should be evident in most cases that they take their “privileges” for granted.  These include subtle things such as not being racially profiled by companies or the authorities, to a majority of products in every store imaginable being tailored to the white population.  This goes back centuries to the Europeans, with their empires and later on colonies, which established the idea of “white dominance” worldwide.  Unfortunately, this idea has subtly persisted even to our modern day and age, where being white goes a long way.  As a white myself, I can definitely say that I am one who overlooks this day-to-day advantage that I have available to me without even recognizing it. 

Mixed Blood

“Mixed Blood”, written by Jeffrey Fish, is a great article that seeks to tackle the persistent myth that there is such a thing as “race” among the human species.  This was a fascinating article to read because it is a very methodical and logical look at what we as humans incorrectly think race is.  Race is nothing more than the average persons’ way of making sense of all the biological differences between different groups of people, whether that pertains to skin color or eyelid form, for example.  Fish makes a point of noting that we (mostly referring to Americans in this article) overlook other obvious giveaways that race is nothing but a misconception like the fact that different people have different body shapes, whether they are round in cold climates to allow for less surface area for heat to radiate off of, or long bodies in the much hotter climates.  The best substitute that Fish presented, in my mind, to replace “race” would by the Portuguese word tipo, meaning “type” in Englsih.  After reading what Fish had to say on the matter, I feel that although we as humans are without a doubt the same species, and that race is nonexistent, there are different “types” of humans due to inevitable factors such as natural selection, mutation, and genetic drift, as cited by Fish early on in the article.  This use of tipo should not be taken negatively or as a derogatory word at all, but rather as a description of the small differences between humans.

Federally Sponsored Immigrant Workers

“Federally Sponsored Mexican Migrants” is an article written by Sandy Smith-Nonini about the use of migrant workers, in this case from Mexico, coming to work in the US legally.  The most important element of this concept is that legal does not translate into ideal or fair whatsoever.  Although these workers are able to make a better living by working in the United States (this article focuses on North Carolina in particular), they are often taken advantage of by those who control the labor and the money involved.  Even the H2A program that is set up to assist with these “federally sponsored” workers from Mexico is not without its fair share of faults.  Leroy Dunn’s H2A program is quite deceiving in the fact that the brochures show West Coast crops, not crops from the East Coast like North Carolina.  Also, the wording of the brochures is not in layman’s terms, it is worded above the level that the immigrant workers could easily understand.

Just Another Job?

“Just Another Job? The Commodification of Domestic Labor” is an article written by Bridget Anderson detailing the ins-and-outs of domestic labor, particularly in Europe.  It is noted that the popularity of domestic labor has been rising in Europe, and in the case of this article, Athens, Greece is of importance because many of the women interviewed worked there.  I was shocked to learn of the horrors that migrant workers still apparently face in this day and age, when all they are trying to do is make money to help their families survive.  To me, the most horrific statistic was this: “In 1996-1997, 84 percent (of workers) reported psychological abuse, 34 percent (of workers) physical abuse, and 10 percent (of workers) sexual abuse.”  This comes from the employers perceived racial and ethnic superiority over the foreign, and often colored, workers that they hire.  I couldn’t believe that these conditions were still present to this extent anywhere that we consider to be a Western, industrialized country today.