The Innocence of Yesterday
When my dad sees a black person, he always says, black dude. He says it with a bitter taste in his mouth. He utters it to me as if to make sure that I take note that the person is black and therefore also a dude. There is no purpose in his saying this, yet he says it without concern for what it reveals about his racial attitudes. Or rather he does not care what others think of his stereotypes. He may be the only person I know who speaks his mind so recklessly, but stereotypes are pervasive throughout society. All of us attach images and experiences to people we have never met. When I was a child, I absorbed negative views on every race and culture. Hispanics are lazy. Jews are untrustworthy. Blacks are inferior. Indians are dirty. Asians are cheap. When I discovered that I was Asian, I did not know what to think about that.
Until elementary school, I did not notice the color of my skin. I, like everyone else I knew, was colorblind. The notion of race did not exist. My friends had brown, blonde, and black hair, and mine was black, too. Straight, poofy, and always gelled to a gleam, my hair should have tipped me off that I was not like everyone else. I assumed that everyone in my family just happened to be born with abnormal hair. There was no reason to think that my friends at school were different from the miniature community of my home.
Before school, my mind was innocent of discrimination. I cannot recall one moment where I looked at a person of color and thought of a racist stereotype. I was in a protected state of naive bliss, unaware that the fragile shelter of my colorblindness was soon to collapse. Discrimination forced itself into my life.
I remember the first time I felt discrimination. It caused my chest to ache. I was seven, and one of my friends put his index fingers on the corners of his eyes and tugged outwards. He said, "hey Dexter, look. I'm you." I laughed at first. Then the little gears in my head clicked into place, and I stopped. I turned to the mirror behind me and gasped in disbelief. Almond-shaped eyes stared back. It was true.
I looked around me, and almost all the kids were white.
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.
The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is the world’s largest coral reef system, located along the northeast coast of Queensland in Australia. GBR stretches from the most northern part in the country – Torres Strait and all the way down to Fraser Island – the southeast part of Queensland. The distance from north to southeast is close to 2575 kilometres and the whole GBR area is covering around 344 400 square kilometres – which might be why you can see the reef all the way from space. GBR contains approximately 2900 individual reefs and not only is it the world’s largest reef but also the earth 's largest formation shaped by living organisms (Zimmermann, 2012).
Discrimination has always been there between blacks and whites. Since the 1800s where racial issues and differences started flourishing till today, we can still find people of different colors treated unequally. “[R]acial differences are more in the mind than in the genes. Thus we conclude superiority and inferiority associated with racial differences are often socially constructed to satisfy the socio-political agenda of the dominant group”(Heewon Chang,Timothy Dodd;2001;1).
The significance of the Great Barrier Reef is mainly because it is the most extensive structure built by living organisms. It is so big and detailed, that it can be seen from the moon. Now part of the World Heritage List, The Great Barrier Reef starts just below Papua New Guinea and is a long stretch of 2000km long running down the North East coast of Australia. (Refer 0.1) It has 2500 different reefs and is home to 1500 species of fish, 350 different types of coral. It is a major breeding area for humpback whales, sea turtles and sea birds. The Great Barrier Reef provides many jobs and has created many industries in Queensland. It is the most significant drawcard for tourism in Queensland. Although the Great Barrier Reef has many species of living creatures. It hold lots of cultural and historical history. In 1975 the Great Barrier Reef was established. It was listed on the world heritage list in October 1981. Now a Marine Park that is managed by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. The Reef extends back to thousands of years ago and even has its involvements with the first European explores in the 17th and 18th century.
Veron, J. E. N. A Reef in Time: The Great Barrier Reef from Beginning to End. Cambridge, MA:
The reef is the is “also the largest structure on Earth made by living organisms” (Zimmermann). The Great Barrier Reef has many different types of reefs. Nearby Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and Swain Reefs is a cresentic reef. A cresentic reef “shaped like crescents” (Zimmermann). The crescentic reefs are commonly found in the middle of the reef system. Bordering Cape York Peninsula, Princess Charlotte Bay and Cairns flat reefs can be found. Planar reefs which are the same as flat reefs can be found in the north and south parts Cape York Peninsula, Princess Charlotte Bay and Cairns. To the north of the Great Barrier Reef, the reef is twisty and narrow. When a reef is twisty and narrow, it is called a ribbon reef. The south of the Great Barrier Reef is a fringing reef. The south of the reef is very unusual, due to the fact the fringing reef is attached to the Whitsunday islands. Usually fringing reefs are not attached to any islands. Also, found all over the reefs are lagoonal reefs
The Great Barrier Reef is extremely old and has been home to an enormous amount of living things. The Reef, being in a cycle composed of living coral growing on to dead coral proves the fact that has the Reef dating back perhaps as much as twenty million years. Due to human intervention and human pollution of our Earth, one of the seven natural wonders of the world is starting to die and disappear. Our pollution has lead to certain effects on the Reef; effects like rising ocean temperatures and acidification, physical pollution, overfishing, shipping and boating pollution, as well as indirectly increasing the amount of the Reef’s natural predator, the Crown of Thorns Starfish. The goal should be protecting, managing, and preserving the Great Barrier Reef for all current and future generations.
Climate change is predicted to become a major threat to biodiversity in the 21st century, but accurate predictions and effective solutions have proved difficult to formulate(Terence P et al., 2011). Warmer and more acidic conditions inhibit coral calcification, carbonate precipitation, and submarine cementation; These effects are expected to reduce long-term rates of reef framework construction(Lauren et al., 2012).As global warming gradually becoming severe, it’s effects on the coral reefs also leads a critical concern about the diversity and quantity of coral reefs in Great Barrier. Great Barrier Reef is not only functioned as a beautiful landscape, but also an essential component of the coral reef ecosystem. Any change of could have a great
Osborne, K, Dolman, A, Burgess, S, & Johns, K 2011, 'Disturbance and the Dynamics of Coral Cover on the Great Barrier Reef (1995-2009)', Plos ONE, 6, 3, p. 1, Publisher Provided Full Text Searching File, EBSCOhost, viewed 28 April 2014.
First, I remember my first experience with oppression. One day my mom and I went to Barnes & Noble so that I could get a book that I had been asking her to buy. While I was looking for the book, I noticed that one of the employees was following me, so I told my mom about it. When my mom confronted the employee she said that she wanted to make sure that I wasn’t stealing anything. Consequently, I started worrying that people wouldn’t treat me fairly because of the color of my skin. Second, as a child, I was marginalized every day. One example was when my 5th grade teacher took us outside to have a foot race and she picked two captains to pick the people they wanted on their team. I was overweight and I couldn’t run fast so my classmates never picked me. I was excluded because I wasn’t small in size and I cried each day and would only eat one meal and drink water to lose weight. Third, I was alienated because I was bullied in the 6th grade. Kids would tease me because of the way my skin looked due to eczema and wouldn’t sit with me during lunch time. Kids would look at me in disgust if I tried to talk to them. I dreaded going to school just to be teased and feel lonely each day. Fourth, I had one experience where I had a position of power. My teacher had to leave the classroom to discuss something with a parent and she put me in charge. She told me to write down the name of any student
As I was walking my way through my first day of Georgian Forest Elementary School, I, like my peers believed that I was there to receive an education. I could do what everyone else could and treated like everyone the same. At least that’s what I thought. And, then, I saw stares. Thinking that I was the one everyone looked at. However I was wrong. I turned around to see a beautiful little girl child in a wheelchair with her head down. There were whispers, giggles and looks of concern at that time I realized discrimination within children is real.
By 2050, the United States will consist of about 53% White, 25% Hispanic, 14% Black, 8% Asian/Pacific Islander, and 1% American Indian. Due to this diversity, it is no doubt that the school system will also change (D’Angelo and Dixey, 2001, p. 83). Thus, the more diverse these classrooms are becoming, the more liable prejudice is to occur. According to Aboud (1998), prejudice is defined as “…a unified, stable, and consistent tendency to respond in a negative way towards members of a particular ethnic group” that is regarded inferior (D’Angelo and Dixey, 2001, p. 83). Prejudice is a socially learned behavior, and as “children, [we] gain knowledge of race and prejudice at an early age from [our] associations with others” (D’Angelo and Dixey, 2001, p. 83-4). Hence, there are only a few solutions to possibly remove prejudice from within the classroom. One possible solution is to have students learn about past cases of prejudice and the effects it has had on our world (Kleg, 1993, p...
Experiencing a society of multi-cultures is beneficial through a variety of concepts to epitomize each individual identity. A person may vary in the degree to which he or she identifies with, morals, or...
Just a few days ago, I found a quiz that helped me determine if I showed any bias towards African Americans. Surprisingly, the results concluded that I viewed African Americans and European Americans in an equal manner, but if I was to take this quiz when I was eight years old the results would have been radically different. Ever since I was a little girl, I always had the impression that African Americans were very dangerous people due to the color of their skin. I came to this theory because when I was in second grade, there was a boy in my neighborhood that didn’t have any respect for his peers or elders. He would tease me, harass me, and he even trespassed on another neighbor’s property. I was scarred by this event in my life, and I rarely viewed African Americans in a positive way. However, this past summer changed my whole entire perspective.
This research project is centered upon the idea that individuals, specifically those in second and third world countries, need to protect their cultural identity by combating the imperialism of western, dominant cultures. According to research, some reasons behind this imperialism are war, totalitarianism, tourism, the need to fit in, peer pressure, immigration, and globalization. These reasons are prevalent in today’s society and can be seen worldwide. Some solutions to the problem that I found in my research are to create a multicultural society that embraces diversity, encouraging a multilingual society along with preserving dying languages, and protecting smaller villages and towns from tourism, industrialization, and globalization. While