Just as Zora Neale Hurston explained in her article, “How it Feels to be Colored Me,” I never thought much about race until I was about thirteen years old during my junior high school years. As Zora stated, “I remember the very day that I became colored” (30). I, too, recall the day I realized that I was white and that it meant something more than just a Crayola color. No longer was white just a color; it was the race I belonged to with its own rules and regulations.
Prior to writing this essay, I really had not noticed the effect that race had on my life. That is, not until I was forced to look race straight in the eye. This was a very difficult thing to do because it brought back some unpleasant memories I thought I had locked away in permanent storage. I had to be brutally honest with myself and examine my inner most feelings on how race affected my life. Only then did I truly realize how race impacted my attitude, behavior, education, employment, and privileges
.
As a kid, I didn’t understand what race meant or its implications. I was pretty much oblivious to it. Race meant getting some kids together and running a foot race. The one who made it to the end of the block won. I never felt that I was special because of my race. Nor did I feel discriminated against. Of course, I was sheltered from race and racism. I never knew any people of color because I grew up in an all-white, lower-to-middle-class blue-collar neighborhood. I never encountered someone of another race, and my parents made sure of it. I wasn’t allowed outside of our own neighborhood block, as my mother kept a strong leash on me. Not until I was much older did I wander outside the safety net of our all-white neighborhood.
Without a choice, and after graduating from elementary school, I, like many others in the same grade, had to change schools and begin junior high school. Since I lived within one mile of school, there were no free bus rides. Like many other kids in the surrounding neighborhoods, we had to walk to school. We often heard horror stories about how the black kids would gang up on the white kids and start fights.
America has the highest overall and childhood poverty rate of any major industrialized country on earth. Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year, mostly because they lack health insurance and cannot get beneficial care. From an economic perspective and as the government tries to fight its way out of this terrible recession, it makes no sense that the United States ignores numerous citizens who could be of such great help (Sen. Bernie Sanders). Poverty in America is about a lack of basic necessities and an uncertainty as to where to get food, an uncertainty how to pay your most bills, and it's about a dependence on either imperfect government institutions or overwhelmed private charities. Even though the United States does not have starvation,...
Deborah L. Duffy, Yuying Hsu, James A. Serpell ,Applied Animal Behavior Science - 1 December 2008 (Vol. 114, Issue 3, Pages 441-460, DOI: 10.1016/j.applanim.2008.04.006)
Overall, race, class and culture impacts one’s place in society. I have Four hundred years of history cannot be wiped away so easily. I realized that society has a long way to go and the importance of fighting all injustices. Martin Luther King captured it best by saying “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.
One of the most destructive forces that is destroying young black people in America today is the common cultures wicked image of what an realistic black person is supposed to look like and how that person is supposed to act. African Americans have been struggling for equality since the birth of this land, and the war is very strong. Have you ever been in a situation where you were stereotyped against?
A person might find him- or herself interested in discovering what it is that makes a criminal take the path that he or she does. Is it a personal choice? Coincidence? Circumstance? What exactly is it that starts an individual down a pathway that leads to a criminal life or leads them down a path towards "normal" life within the law? Criminology, or the study of the scientific factors behind criminal behavior, points to the answer of that. As is typical with most sciences, however, there is no one, conclusive answer to all or any of these questions. The field of criminology is loaded with a variety of theories, each with a probability of being true, but none is believed to be the standalone explanation of the total science of the study of criminal behavior.
This cognizance really ensued when I first started work as an educational therapist in a residential placement for severely emotionally disturbed teenage girls. Being in such a arbitrary position of power was difficult enough with people who have issues with control and lack of respect from elders but I also happened to be the only male ever in this position at the facility and a "white guy" to boot. Ninety percent of my clients happened to be Latina or African American. This ethnic flash point did not initially bother me because of my lack of awareness of its existence and my naive determination that it was not important for my therapeutic and educational goals. However, of course I had not really considered at that time what being 'white' really entails in this society. Consideration of one's identity is obviously key to successful educational and therapeutic interventions but it took the actual experience of being what I call "white-washed" to make me realize that skin color may actually have something important to do with one's perceived identity.
You can conclude from this essay that racism is very complex issue and to address it we need to destroy the fundamental belief that race doesn 't matter . This is a time where yes race matters because past colored or different people were prosecuted for being who they were born to be in a physical form, I think race became such a hot topic when our system was invented to fail those of
Prior to beginning my readings on white racial identity, I did not pay much attention to my white race. If someone had asked me to describe my appearance I would have said short blond hair, blue eyes, average stature, etc. One of the last things I would have noted was the color of my skin. Growing up in overwhelmingly white communities, I never thought to use the color of my skin to differentiate myself from others. Over the course of this dialogue I have learned that my white racial identity is one of the most defining aspects of my appearance in this society. There is a certain level of privilege that I am afforded based solely on the color of my skin. According to Peggy McIntosh, “White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank checks” (71). All these objects listed by McIntosh are things I have access to and certainly take for granted. Due to a history of non-white racial oppression, which transformed into decades of racial discrimination that still lingers today, the white race has dominated our society in terms of resources and prosperity. The ideas of wealth, higher-level education and ambition to succeed are all traits commonly linked to people of the white race that collectively define privilege. The aspect of privilege can also produce disadvantages for people of the white race as well. In the book Promoting Diversity and Justice, the author D. Goodman notes that people of advantage groups develop a sense of superiority, which will sometimes lead them to wonder if, “their achievements were based on privilege or merit” (107). Along with a diminished sense of accomplishment, the cost ...
Predators of the meerkat include eagles and hawks, who can easily scoop up the tiny fellows, who weigh only two pounds. This danger requires at least one meerkat to be kept on “watch duty” at all times. This is quite the sacrifice, for the meerkat keeping watch is almost universally killed and eaten. However, the unfortunate meerkat will have already signaled an alarm to the rest of its manor before it is caught, thereby protecting its family and relatives and, in turn, fulfilling its only true purpose in life – passing on its genes.
Introduction: Criminology is a scientific approach to the study of crime and why it occurs. Criminologists examine this both on the individual and on the societal level. Meaning, why do individuals commit crime, and how society reacts to those crimes. As we look at the root causes of crime, we begin to notice certain aspects of people’s lives that causes them to offend - like a poor social standing, or perhaps an individual’s peer group who may allow or even support negative influences. We can also try to understand why some individuals choose NOT to offend and live pro-social lives despite negative external influences. These concepts and ideas are known as crime theories. There are many and they are wide-ranging.
I wanted to wear brand clothes/shoes they did, I wanted to do my hair like them, and make good grades like them. I wanted to fit in. My cultural identify took a back seat. But it was not long before I felt black and white did not mix. I must have heard too many comments asking to speak Haitian or I do not look Haitian, but more than that, I am black, so I always had to answer question about my hair or why my nose is big, and that I talked white. This feeling carried on to high school because the questions never went away and the distance between me and them grew larger. There was not much action my family could take for those moments in my life, but shared their encounters or conversations to show me I was not alone in dealing with people of other background. I surrounded myself with less white people and more people of color and today, not much has
In “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” Hurston breaks from the tradition of her time by rejecting the idea that the African American people should be ashamed or saddened by the color of their skin. She tells other African Americans that they should embrace their color and be proud of who they are. She writes, “[A socialite]…has nothing on me. The cosmic Zora emerges,” and “I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads” (942-943). Whether she feels “colored” or not, she knows she is beautiful and of value. But Hurston writes about a time when she did not always know that she was considered colored.
Criminals have been committing crimes for centuries, and they are always fooling the police detectives and federal agencies sometimes. If the justice departments would actually look at the persons thought processes and reasoning before a crime is committed, the justice departments will be able to answer the reason for the crime. The different departments could possibly figure out why the criminal did what they did in the first. For instance, they should use a couple of criminology theories to help them with certain cases that are more difficult than the rest. The theories that the justice departments should use in their systems are the rational choice and biological theories of criminology.
Criminology has been defined as the scientific study of the making of laws, the breaking of laws, and society’s reactions to the breaking of the laws (Riedel & Welsh, 2011). While criminology focuses on trying to explain the behavior of the offenders, it also tries to understand four central themes such as the conflict between personal liberty and the safety of the community. When the different law enforcement agencies, courts and corrections are on the same page they are seen as working together. The second theme explores what happens when one system affects the others.The third and fourth themes deal with ethical and legal decisions as well as ensuring those decisions being made after the information is scientifically gathered and properly evaluated. Criminology or criminologist study causes if the crimes committed by the individual and are known to work on the front end of the criminal justice system. The study of criminology relies on scientific theories and methods in order to understand and evaluate criminality. It looks at the causes reviewing the intentions, motivations, and background of the offenders involved in their studies.
Confucius. The Four Books. Mandarin and English. Ed. And Trans. By James Legge. Beijing: Culture Book Co. 1992. Print.