The second Social Justice event I attended this semester was “Dramatic Readings: Oppression Through Our Eyes” on April 28, 2016 at 7:00 p.m. It was presented by a variety of different college students and a social justice professor. The objective, in my opinion, was to enlighten students on different types of oppression. The first speaker was Dani who read Hear Christine Break Her Silence by Emery Vela. She spoke about being in a dark, lonesome place. The only reason she stayed where she did was because she was afraid of being abandoned and ridiculed for who she really was. Eventually she broke out of her shell; she broke her silence and came out as a lesbian. The second speaker was Mckenzie and she read Push: On Holy Thursday by Karen Grace. It was a story …show more content…
Things related to it are homelessness, poverty, AIDS, and cancer. The fourth speaker was Devin Matznick who read is own story, Façade. All Devin wanted was to fix the stereotypes, sadly he could not. He felt like he was wearing a mask. The fifth story was read by everyone, I Have a Dream: Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights by C.E. Rose. The story spoke about numerous stereotypes that need to be broken. The sixth speaker was Mckenzie again, who read God is Gay by Elliot Darrow. It was about the possibilities that God could be gay. The seventh speaker was Liz, who read A History of Lesbianism by Judy Grahn. The story told us about how lesbians deal with name-calling and the history of what lesbians had to deal with. The eighth speaker was Dani, who read The Men’s Group by LJ Mark. The story was about a man who was asked by his pastor to join a Men’s group. Although he was a transgender, he would have felt more comfortable joining the Women’s group but he did not feel comfortable telling the pastor that. The ninth speaker was Devin who read Trans/National by Janani Balasubramnian. It was a story describing how transgender people go through changing
Along with ethos and small touch of logos, the author Roxane Gay uses a strength appeal of pathos to persuade her audience onto her argument. “White people will never know the dangers of being black in America, systemic, unequal opportunity, racial profiling, and the constant threat of police violence. Men will never know the dangers of being a woman in America, harassment, sexual violence, legislated bodies. Heterosexuals will never know what it means to experience homophobia.” (Gay). In this paragraph, the author is identify the inequality between racial barriers, genders and sexual orientation which an emotionally involved topic to bring up. How people are treated differently how the way they look, where they come from. Woman would
Sojourner finishes the initial emotional connection with her audience through her religion. By making biblical references, Sojourner’s mostly Christian audience related to her as a fellow christian and responds more positively to her stance on equality. Through these personal anecdotes, Sojourner invites her audience, who are mostly women suffering from their own forms of discrimination, to realize the injustices of which they too are victims. Sojourner plays on the emotions of her audience in order to grab their attention and their willingness for change by sharing her own personal feelings to which they can relate.
The tragicomic Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel, is generally considered one of the most important pieces of the modern LGBTQ canon of literature. The graphic novel tells the story of Alison Bechdel’s attempt to find the truth about her father’s sexuality and what lead him to possibly commit suicide. Along the way, Bechdel finds her own sexuality. Bechdel’s choice to write about her and her father’s simultaneous journey to finding their sexuality was revolutionary at the time. Very few authors were writing openly about their own sexuality, and something even more revolutionary that Bechdel addressed was mental illness.
My first thing I am going to talk about from the article is how the book is about discrimination,
---. Feminist Writers. Ed. Pamela Kester-Shelton. Detroit: St. James Press, 1996. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 4 Feb. 2011.
She believed in Standpoint Epistemology, a term to explain how people can have multiple viewpoints of the world based on what groups they fit into. In the article ‘Racial Divisions Challenge Gay Rights Movement’ we get a glimpse of what this is like for people when Jasmyne Cannick asks, “’I 'm black and I 'm also a lesbian, so, I mean, what side am I supposed to be on?’”(Karen Bates 2008). Being a lesbian during Proposition 8 she was excited for the possibility of legal marriage for gay couples, but being black she was raised, and her friends and family whom are black, are homophobic so the appose gays
Like Wilkins’s piece this narrative was very easy to follow. But where the two differ is Savory’s piece has more details to make her point and even includes other stories she has read or been told. It could have just as easily been a jumbled mess, but all the details she included lead into one another and kept a constant flow. Take for example these few sentences, “In the past, the Bible has been used to justify slavery, segregation, and even denying women the right to vote. As the daughter of a minister, all of this seems strange to me. Like my father, I would like to think that religion is better suited to promoting love—not hate.” (Savory). The detail of how in the past people have used religion to justify their hate leads right into her talking about being a preacher’s daughter. Another effective point in Savory’s writing is the constant use of symbols. Such as the light vs. dark symbol that is so important it is even the title of the story. In this case the symbol of the light being acceptance and the dark being any form of hate. For example, “The way I saw it, if I turned off the spotlight, no one would be able to see the real me. In the darkness, it was easier to hide.” (Savory). But another constant symbol is that of her linking the way African Americans were treated and how homosexuals were treated. She links her experience of what happened with the civil rights movement and what
Finnessy, Patrick. James Baldwin. 2004. Biographies. University of Illinois at Chicago: Office of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Heterosexual Concerns (OGLBTC). 26 Apr 2004.
A clack of Tiny Sparks Remembrance of a Gay Boyhood by Bernard cooper is about a man, who talks about his childhood. He talks about how everyone thought he was gay, and how he noticed boys differently then girls. He explained growing up, trying to figure out his identity and knowing he was different. In the story he talks about both a boy and girl in his class and how they are both amazing, but he sees the boy differently then the girl. He mentions aspects of how the girl is so perfect, and how she always has a book in her hand but when he talks about the boy, it’s when he takes off his shirt. He also talks about how he brought up the derogatory word for gay to his mom and asked her what it meant because someone had called him that. She got upset and asked if someone called him that and he lies telling her that they called another young boy the name. At the end of the article he talks about he came out and he now has lived with another man for seven years. He mentions the only thing he regrets
Being a teacher for social justice is more than just making sure you include all of your students in your discussions. It is being aware of the injustices that your students may have faced, are already facing, or may face in the future. With this awareness, as teachers, we should be able to reflect on what we know, and respond by using our resources to apply it to the classroom.
This presentation related closely to political and economic justice; however, this documentary is certainly related to social justice too. It was evident that this documentary was educating us about the policies and laws in America that have oppressed people who are non-white. It was disheartening to learn that America has a history of making laws that segregate non-whites in our society. I was well aware that African Americans have been oppressed by the policies that were put in place; however, I was shocked to learn that other non-white people too were oppressed by these policies. The documentary talks about what it means to be white by law; I was shocked to learn that our government never
Over the last couple of weeks, all of the readings, lectures, discussions and videos have been very informative. A lot of the information in the readings are what people experience daily or witness with their own eyes. The issues going on with class, gender, and race can be upsetting and hard to grasp because the reality of the matter is we live in a very segregated and divided society. Topics in the lecture that stood out were racial inequality and social movement. When it comes to racial inequality, I witnessed a similar situation while in undergraduate school. A professor at my school displayed hidden racial misconduct towards a black female student in a course.
Intersectionality was one of the greatest concepts this course shed light on, intersectionality is can be broadly defined as the coming together of various social groups to work together to fight against forms of oppression. In the conceptual frameworks portion of the book Readings for Diversity and Social Justice, they talk about the importance of privileged identities and disadvantaged identities coming together to work towards solving a particular issue. While before taking this course I was somewhat aware of the various forms of oppression, I never gave much thought to how I could help combat forms of oppression that I did not necessarily experience with my own identity.
He begins with a brief acknowledgement of Dr. Dorothy Pearson and her incredible contributions to social work. He then moved into discussing social justice and social equity to lay a definitional foundation for his lecture. He went on to say social justice is a process and not
Bawer, Bruce. A Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society. New York: Poseidon, 1993. Print.