afreeman1199-blog

[afreeman1199-blog]

Immigration Interview- My Father

My dad, Jacob Freeman was a United Nations employee in Liberia during the civil war. After I was born, he sent me to live in Ivory Coast- there I attended a private French speaking school as he helped aided the war back home. As a reward for helping with the war, he was granted “first seats” for moving to America. We came here in 2004 as refugees seeking a better life. Some Pushes a Pulls my dad experienced were for one, the war (a push), family members were dying and the economy was at its worst. A pull was the promise of a new and better life in America.

My dad explains that some Bridges and barriers we faced were the immigration process- was a terrible bridge, it was very lengthy and tedious. Other barriers included language, we spoke broken English and what we did know was with an accent and our main language was French, adapting to American culture was a barrier that took several years to achieve. His experience in American was that “My son, American poor and African poor are two different things. In Africa we were poor but we had access to food and many other resources vs America where if you’re poor- you will find it very hard to have access to natural resources and food.” The gender roles remain the same, both parents worked jobs and could cook, we the kids went to school and cleaned up the house. The expectations my father has for me will always be the same-  go to school, get a great job, take what you’ve earned and learned back home and help your people because America is not your country… Americans are not your people. Through this interview I’ve had with my father, I have learned a great deal. Though I was born in the midst of a war, I was given the opportunity to further my education at a much younger age than my parents. This opportunity opened doors for me that my parents never had. In return, my kids will have an even better opportunity than I did.

[afreeman1199-blog]

The Life of the M&M’s I devoured

1. What are the ingredients?

This product’s main ingredient is milk chocolate, other ingredients include: sugar, peanuts, cornstarch, less than 1% palm oil, corn syrup, dextrin, several colorings, carnauba wax, and gum acacia.

2. Where do they come from?

Mars Inc. is the company that makes the M&M’s and they get their chocolate from several cocoa-growing regions of Asia and West Africa. The sugar comes from plantations in southern U.S.

3. What are the working and living conditions of the people who produce the cocoa?

Cocoa farmers in West African nations are typically local/ family owned farms. Which means, no heavy or advanced machinery is being used, most to all work is done by hands and take long hot hours.

4. How is it produced? Are child laborers involved?

Pods containing cocoa beans grow from the trunk and branches of the cocoa tree. Harvesting involves removing ripe pods from the trees and opening them to extract the wet beans.Once they’ve been harvested, the beans are removed, fermented, dried and roasted. Most to all of these jobs are done by children and family members in rural areas. After being packaged, they are shipped off to different companies worldwide and used to produce cocoa products.

5. How do the producers get the cocoa to the market?

After the cocoa have been turned into consumer loving products, those products are loaded onto trucks and shipped off to warehouses. From there, the orders are sent out for delivery to stores and retail outlets.

6. How are prices set?

Prices, as with every commodity, is based off supply and demand. As demand increase, so does prices. Also, production costs plays apart in this.

7. Which international corporations dominate the chocolate trade?Who regulates it?

There are two main companies that dominate the the chocolate trade- Mars Inc. and Hershey Trust Company. Trade is regulated by the government laws of the land.

8. How is chocolate marketed?

Mainly through magazine ads, commercials, and billboards. Some can even be found in tv shows, comics, and mainly anything that attracts kids because they are the main consumers of the products.

9. Where did you buy it?

I bought this package of M&M’s from my usual place: vending machine in Rawlings Hall (where I live).

10. How much profit does a store owner make on a bar of chocolate?

Store owners make about ⅓ of the retail price.

11. Are there hidden cost that are not included in the price you paid? Consider under payment of labor; environmental impact; government subsidies that are direct (to the company) and indirect (infrastructure such as roads, ports, bridges, and water systems) ; and the health care costs created by harvesting transporting processing or eating the food? How are these costs obscured?

The farmers barely make enough money to send their kids to school, so in turn, kids spend long hours working on these farms. The cost of these kids education should be taken into consideration when we think of these products.

The Life of the M&M’s I devoured.

I was born in Ivory Coast, that’s a country in West Africa. This kid, Dieu Donne took care of me on his parents farm, he was in charge of us cocoa beans and his sister was in charge of the okras on the other side of the farm. After being harvested, I knew I would no longer see my care taker because I was packaged and sent off to a port when I was 5 years old. I remember being shipped to a factory and grinded up. This factory turned me- a cocoa bean into cocoa powder. I was then shipped off to a facility where I was used as ingredients for a company called MARS Inc., I remember a piece of me was used for something called Snickers but the majority of me was used for M&M’s peanut candy. I was shipped off to different factories and woke up in a vending machine. After a man staring at me while seductively licking his lips purchased me, I fell from the vending machine. He ripped me open and chewed me up, all while whispering to himself - “Damn this some good chocolate”.

[afreeman1199-blog]

Max Weber: Prestige and Life Chances

Recently, there's been talk about the Admission Scandal: several wealthy individuals found a way to cheat the system in which gave their children an advantage while taking the SATs and ACTs, resulting in higher test scores and admissions into just about any college.

This case falls under Max Weber’s ideology of how your job or career has a societal reputation that holds weight in society thus increasing your financial and social resources to better the quality of your life. One of the main individuals being charged is Felicity Huffman- now, in American society, actors’ (such as herself) reputation holds much more value than say an high school teacher or government official. This reputation or social ranking allows for their class to have resources that gives them opportunities to commit such crimes that the average working class citizen wouldn't even know how to get. Because of her social ranking in society, she and several others were able to connect with the right people that had access to power that allowed for these advantages. They use their prestige to get their children better grades on these test and in return, these kids were granted admission into higher ranking universities. Whether the kids knew or not, what their parents did was something all parents try to accomplish for their own kids- improve their life chances. But since I’m a broke college student that didn’t receive special treatment or privileges, I hope their parents are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

https://people.com/crime/felicity-huffman-pleads-guilty-college-admissions-cheating-scandal/

[afreeman1199-blog]

Anthropology Work w. Daniel Barreda

Women get maternity leave, men don't

https://hbr.org/2019/03/to-make-the-case-for-paternity-leave-dads-will-have-to-work-together

Gender pay gap

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/28/18116388/equal-pay-day-2019-gender-gap-equity

US Women Soccer team suing the league for getting paid less- they perform better (won several world cups while men have won none) and higher viewers than men

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/sports/womens-soccer-team-lawsuit-gender-discrimination.html

Most men are CEOs

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/21/2018s-fortune-500-companies-have-just-24-female-ceos.html

Doctors are looked at as men, females are looked at nurses

https://www.popsugar.com/family/Internet-Calls-Nurse-Doctor-Photo-Sexist-45921560

School shooters are typically white men

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/us/mass-murderers.html

Drug dealers are typically seen as black and hispanic males:

https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/25/politics/lepage-controversy-drug-dealer-remarks/index.html

Teachers are typically females https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sunday-review/why-dont-more-men-go-into-teaching.html   

In the military- Trump is trying to ban transgenders from joining

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/house-votes-to-condemn-trump-ban-on-transgender-military-service/2019/03/28/fa1b6056-515b-11e9-8d28-f5149e5a2fda_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.57dec616de71

Women almost never make it into special forces

https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/11/14/a-female-soldier-has-made-it-through-the-armys-special-forces-selection/

Seriousness of sexual assault: Men on women vs Women on men:

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2018/03/26/boy-molested-his-teacher-lucky-goodyear/460188002/

Gender based toys for kids

https://www.wnd.com/2018/12/happy-meal-toys-blasted-for-being-gender-specific/

Shelby Osborne: first female football player (nonkicker)

https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2019/03/08/detroit-woman-gets-a-college-football-scholarship-to-play-defense-on-mens-team/

Gender based clothings in schools

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/03/30/girls-were-forced-wear-skirts-school-preserve-chivalry-so-they-sued-won/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.af49df351ac6

[afreeman1199-blog]

Field Work, Chapter 7: Ethnicity and Nationalism

‘Mobilizing Ethnic Differences in Rwanda’

[afreeman1199-blog]

The Thomas Theorem

• Parents (especially those within the underprivileged gap) teaching their children to believe in Holidays such as Christmas: this ridiculousness creates several issues- 1. It’s ok for someone to sneak in your house as long as he’s white. 2. No your parents didn’t work hard to please you, it was a white guy that made it happen. 3. Because Satan Clause is ‘real’ we must pay our respect and ALWAYS celebrate this holiday. Tragic...

•Black men standing on the block or outside of corner stores are selling drugs. This isn’t only widely believed by whites but also many other races, cops and even our OWN people. This causes several issues: Black men are targeted and harassed by cops, Black men fear for their life so they run and end up getting shot to death, business owners discriminat against us because they believe we’re bad for business...etc. The idea of standing outside a common area derives from our ancestors whom would stand outside their homes to flaunt their outfits, garments, and elaborate designs and fabric.

[afreeman1199-blog]

Wheelchairs

Natural Selection is defined as the process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. With this process, its all about survival of the fittest species- this kills off the weaker ones while the strong survive and adapt to their environment. The invention of the wheel chair is a prime example of how cultural adaptation has trumped natural selection. Many lives have been extended and even saved due to this transportation device. Because no one knows exactly when the first wheelchair was invented (most likely in Africa) we will have to direct our attention to the modern wheelchair which was invented in 1783 by John Dawson of Bath, England. Wheelchairs are used by people for whom walking is difficult or impossible due to illness (physiological or physical), injury, or disability. This invention allows for older people with health issues to become mobile, people that experience severe leg, back, or hip injuries to move around with ease, and so many more. Without this invention, most of these people would’ve died from their injuries much earlier than expected. The wheelchair allows for victims to go about their daily lives with ease instead of being on bedrest until death comes for them.

[afreeman1199-blog]

Language and Gender in the Classroom

The class is Math 241- Calculus 1

There are 11 males and 17 females in the class.

Out of content: When I could hear their conversations-  Males spoke about non math related things about 34 times. Females spoke on non math related things about 8 times.

Math related things: Females raised their hands (or blurted out) to ask questions or for clarifications 47 times. Males on the other hand spoke  23 times.

Questions were typically short and to the point- roughly 8.16 seconds for females but males was 9.22 seconds on average.

Majority of the men seem to be scared or shy to ask their question, they hesitated and were slouching. On the other hand, the females boldly and repeatedly ask as many questions as possible and they typically seemed more anxious- leg shaking, tapping….

The instructor is a female, this lady (in my opinion/ observation) seems to have no interest in encouraging communication. She consistently reminds students that “I already explained that” whenever students ask for clarification. She also rushes and doesn’t consistently look at students when she’s talking.

The professor never calls on any student, she typically answers her own questions.

I do not believe the instructor’s gender influences the way they interact with the class because a teacher is a teacher. Gender doesn’t and shouldn’t control how math is taught because math is a universal language. This teacher just isn’t a good teacher.

[afreeman1199-blog]

Dialect

“Lor Scoota, they love me in the hood like Oodles of Noodles. Lor Scoota, they love me in the hood like Loose Ones” - Here Lor Scoota compares how he’s loved in any and every hood in Baltimore as much as the residents love Oodles of Noodles (a hood favorite meal) and Loose Ones (Individually sold cigarettes).

Power

“Summer time coming up, might get me a boo… might slide through your block with your bitch inna coupe….Lor Scoota, imma Young Baller, no Hooper, Lor Scoota eat Sullivan- No Hooters. Lor Scoota, turn into a Star- Bitch my life is like a movie!”- Within these verses, Lor Scoota  boasts about his wealth and fame which allows him to potentially take another man’s woman, eat at luxurious restaurants, and live a lavish lifestyle.

Gender

“One thing for certain, Two thing for sure- We don't love these Bitches! We be sharing all these hoes” - Scoota emphasizes the main use of females in the hood, they’re to be passed around and used for whatever purpose they’re meant to serve but make sure you do not fall in love with these hoes.

[afreeman1199-blog]

My location of choice is Rawlings’ Lobby/Front Desk. I chose this spot because this area is where I used to spend most of my free time last semester whenever I had breaks from my classes (I was a commuter). Being in this space allowed me to indulge in conversations with the RAs, DAs, RD, and several residents. The experiences I had last semester are what drove me to not only move on campus but also pursue the opportunity of becoming lan RA next semester. It’s not that I’ve never noticed this but instead, I’ve never acknowledged that this lady always sits in the lobby at 9 pm and waits for her ride. This attention to detail influenced to move a chair (particularly for her) closer to the door so can have a better view of when her ride comes and also a shorter walking distance. Today, the loud and obnoxious girls weren't in the lobby. During the week, there's a lot of foot traffic but on Friday- a lot of residence are packing up to leave (which I really find annoying).

Legend:

The closed circles are the pattern of students going straight to exit doors or the elevator.

Open circles are students going to the front desk and engaging in conversations.

The stars are student that gonto the front desk, say hey then leave right away.

Notes:

Students live here

Students visit frequently

Students walk through here to get to the dining hall

Non students hang out in this area for some reason

Deep conversation and heated debates are discussed here

Students that don't live here frequently try to sneak upstairs

There’s this elderly lady that waits for her MTA transportation every weekday around 9

Since I realized this, I’ve decided to place a chair closer to the door for her.

For many hours, the area was very loud- several conversations were going on at the time. Then there were times where you could hear a pin drop.

[afreeman1199-blog]

Sadly, this reminds me of what these Crackers did to our people. The “researchers” of John Hopkins poisoned our people with Lead. Electric Chair.

[afreeman1199-blog]

The fact that roughly 14% of what I have is a Need is really shocking. All of the items I listed were things I bought myself so hopefully Financial Aid doesn’t see this cause LMFAOOOO I got MONEEYYYY 😭😂 Dummy, $1000+ for some new balances? Yikes... 😬 Even though I’m not a fan of designers, I rack up a lot on these cheaper products and that as you can see- Adds Up. Most of these things are a waste. I don’t need a 4K hd smart tv that talks to me 🤦🏾‍♂️ or a microwave with Alexa built in it (she be like “Alex, your food is ready” 💀) Who do I think I am? Here’s the saddest part, most of these items were aquired within the last year. To keep up with the advancement of technology and the forever changing trends, we as a society tend to spend way more than we should. What do I need a Burberry cologne for!? I can’t even smell 💀😂 (lost my sense of smell to a dirt bike accident). This assignment literally just exposed me and I’m ashamed 😒💯

[afreeman1199-blog]

Concept Map- New Balance 990s

[afreeman1199-blog]

American Culture

Beliefs: Free Enterprise, Patriotism, 9-5 jobs...

Attitudes: World Power, Bullies to other nations, greed, racism, hypocrites...

Values: Independence, Democracy, Diversity 

[afreeman1199-blog]

My item is my iPhone 7 Plus. The iPhones are Apple’s flagship devices, first released June 27, 2009. The iPhone was known as the world’s first smartphone which isn’t true because the first smartphone was created 15 years earlier by IBM- Simon Personal Communicator. The 7 Plus edition were the first of its line made with dual camera, 3d touch (force touch), and the first to lose its headphone jack when it was released in September 2016. The 7 Plus, just like many other iPhone editions are made with parts from all over the world but mainly assembled in Shenzhen, China. The blueprint, crystal, specialized parts and processors are made from the US, while the display panels, chipsets and memory from Japan, Korea and Taiwan, gyroscope from Europe and rare earth minerals from Mongolia all come together in China to be assembled. This item is my main form of communication, it houses everything I use from day to day- phone to make calls and text, apps such as social media to connect with the world through live news feed, journal entries… My phone is my power house, my bank account, id, health stats, and many personal info are all on my phone. The factory in China that assembles many of Apple’s iPhone does no background check on employees, or any research for that matter. A NYU student went undercover to give viewers a behind the scene look at the experience of being an Apple factory worker. To get in, you must have an id and be able to recite the English Alphabet (since all the products are in English). If you can do that then you’re hired. The workers make about $450 USD a month, compared to american standards, this isn’t even enough to live. Apple use these workers because their labor is even cheaper than the cost of maintaining robots to do the work. Employees work about 12 hours a day and some even sleep in the factories with dorm rooms that have about 800 people with each floor containing 1 bathroom that is shared by 200 people (per floor). In a bittersweet way, many factories are shutting down because of increase minimum wages in China while on the other hand, many factories are shifting to other locations where wages are much lower.