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First aerial video...

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We’ve become a country where race is no longer so black or white.

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This is how I think I dance... in my mind.

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Sampaloc, Philipines, my nany's home town

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Pushpa Basnet aka lady hero.

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Beautiful

For me, this poem draws a connection to the discrimination we’ve been discussing in class. I don’t understand what it feels like to be discriminated against because of my language or my skin color. I’ve felt bad about that a lot in my life because I’ve had many friends from many backgrounds. It’s easy to see the unfairness of it. It’s easy to know there is a problem. But it’s not so easy to know what to do. How to help. Or how to express sympathy and empathy appropriately. But something I do have experience with is bullying. I do know what it feels like to be othered and discriminated against by my peers. And I have known that feeling from a young age. I thought I’d share some poetry about the impact hurtful words can have on people for their whole lives. 

Source: Koyczan, Shane. “To This Day” Recorded February 19 2012. http://www.tothisdayproject.com/ February 19 2013. Web, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltun92DfnPY.

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Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon, comedy skit best friends and the human couple equivalent of a pair of colorful striped socks, teamed up yet again to shed light on a disease that's been plaguing phone-connected humans for years now: the ridiculous overuse of hashtags.

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Love her!

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Hahaha

In this video Lily (the girl) acts out a scene where she asks her mom if she can go to the movies at night. Her mom agrees, but the next day acts angry and refuses to let her daughter go to the movies because another Indian woman (possibly a relative or a friend of the mom) is visiting. But why?

For the most part, desi* girls are not supposed to go out with friends at night. Instead, they are expected to stay at home. Those traditional views are in conflict with modern day Western culture. Lily and her family live in Canada so they have chosen let go of that principle for the purpose of assimilation into Western society. Lily’s mom makes her stay at home because the woman that is visiting does not approve of such Western customs. The mother is saving face because she does not want the visiting woman to think that she had let go of her Indian values.     

I thought that this was an interesting comparison to Halualani’s mother’s overt deviation from Japanese gender norms. This example shows how some people are more open to adopting aspects of Western culture versus hiding their choice to assimilate into Western cuture. It makes me wonder how far people would assimilate into Western culture if people of our own ethnicity did not judge us for doing so.

*Desi is a word that refers to people who are Pakistani, Indian, or Bengali, and possibly to other ethnicities on the Indian sub-continent. Essentially, brown people.

[amber-soley]

Awesome awesome awesome

This video demonstrates why I believe story telling is so important. I have already made a blog post this week relating to our discussion in class on Tuesday. But I feel that this is relevant to our overall views on cultural relativism. I also feel it’s relevant to being human. We are so much more than our thoughts and theories about things. Our thoughts and thinking about our world and ourselves are meant to help us make sense of it. But we must be careful that we do not let our ideas about things rule us. That when they no longer serve us, we have the courage to write new stories; to think new things. And this idea is counter-intuitive to what we’ve been taught to think - but I think that’s its strength. What do you think?  

Source: 

Eisenstien, Charles. “A New Story of the People” Posted April 05 2013. http://sustainableman.org. Web, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wviYuKDlKs.

[amber-soley]

Awesome self observation.

Before a downfall the heart is haughty, but humility comes before honor. - proverbs 11:2

I’m not sure when I began to notice it - but I’m in the uncomfortable position of realizing that I’m far more prideful that I thought. I want to feel that I’m right in a majority of my interactions with...

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In the 1660s, Maryland became the first colony to prohibit interracial marriages.

in Maryland, when slavery was introduced in 1664, “the law also prohibited marriages between white women and black men…. between 1935 and 1967, the law was extended to forbid marriage between Malaysians with...

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New Census data show the number of multiracial people in the U.S. has grown significantly since 2010.

Estimates released Thursday show that as of last year, there were 7.5 million people who identify as being of more than one race living in the U.S.

That’s only about 2.5 percent of the...

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Awesome!

#throwback to Loving vs the state of VA. #miscegenation

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Promiscegenation!

etymology lesson: miscegenation

The term “miscegenation” popped up in my reading a couple times this week to discuss issues of integration in the mid century. Here’s the Oxford English Dictionary etymology of the word:

miscegenation, n.

Pronunciation:  Brit. /ˌmɪsᵻdʒᵻˈneɪʃn/ , /mᵻˌsɛdʒᵻˈneɪʃən/ , U.S. /məˌsɛdʒəˈneɪʃ(ə)n/ , /ˌmɪsədʒəˈneɪʃ(ə)n/

Etymology:  Irregularly < classical Latin miscēre to mix (see mixed adj.2) + genus race (see genus n.) + -ation suffix. Coined by David Goodman Croly and George Wakeman in an anonymously published hoax pamphlet circulated in 1863, which implied that the American Republican party favoured mixed-race relationships (see quot. 1863 at sense 1). Compare Portuguese miscigenação (c1960).(Show Less)

orig. U.S.

 1. The mixing or interbreeding of (people of) different races or ethnic groups, esp. the interbreeding or sexual union of whites and non-whites; a theory which advocates this as being advantageous to society; marriage or cohabitation by members of different ethnic groups. Also: an instance of this, and in extended use. Cf. amalgamation n. 3.

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