#mp1298

[drcknowledgeandpower]

Love Yourself, Fat or Skinny.

It’s true, fat people get a lot of hate.  But you know who else gets a lot of hate?  You know who else gets called disgusting?  People who are 10 to 20 pounds underweight.  They too have to spend their lives ridiculed by being called bony and being asked if they have a medical condition; people old your wrists in their hands and they say “wow how can something be so tiny you must be very very sick.”  Maybe skinny people don’t get as much hate as a fat person, I really wouldn’t know since I have never been fat. Fat people get to be called lazy and skinny people get to be called sick, I really don’t think that either stereotype is really a good one.

All I can say is that fat or skinny.  White, black, yellow, purple, green, orange... everyone has in their life experienced some type of ridicule that really hurt them.  Unfortunately it happens, I don’t know why it happens.  Sometimes people are so hurt that they lash out at others and continue this cycle of pain and hurt that goes on in our society.  Everyone goes through struggles so please love yourself and spread love into the world so that little by little the cycle of insult can end.  

[drcknowledgeandpower]

Pam Kessler Plenary

What I liked the most about the plenary with Pam Kessler was hearing about the El Salvadorian girls who get shot everyday there simply because they don’t want to be with a gang member or because their boyfriend did something to upset the gang.  This reminded me that I live in a protected American bubble that keeps me blind from the things that are going on in the world.  Without Pam Kessler talking to me that day about the struggles of these women I would have never known the horror that goes on in that country.  I was able to see the true value of journalism, without journalist we would have no way of knowing what goes on in these other countries and we wouldn’t know who to help or how to help them.  

We as American college students think that the world is in a good state, we go to our classes and buy our expensive required textbooks that most of the time we don’t ever use.  We hide our faces behind our laptop computers reading our powerpoint notes while in the outside world people struggle everyday to stay alive.   Some of us may argue that those other women from those other countries are not our concern, but see the truth is that they are because they are our sisters.  We may be too busy with our schedules to actually do something about these issues but I would like to point out that simply being aware of situations and making others aware of situations has a big impact.  All Pam Kessler did was bring the El Salvadorian women’s stories to my eyes and now I am concerned and I want to help them and I wish that there was something that I could do.  

[drcknowledgeandpower]

This is the first woman to run a marathon in America.  She had to sign into the race using only her first initial and her last name.  When the race coordinator saw her running her tried to push her out of the race using force.  Yes, things were actually once that sexually segregated,  This class has opened my eyes to how much women had to fight for their rights.  Everything was once a fight, we even had to fight for the right to run in a race.  UNBELIEVABLE!!! This class has also inspired me to fight for people in the way that my sisters before me fought for my rights today.  People coming together can change the world.  

[drcknowledgeandpower]

Racism--Not Dead.

Being separated into white and non white groups was probably the strangest experience I’ve ever had in a classroom.  Why?  Racism is supposed to be dead!  What do you mean we have to talk about it?  What do you mean we have to talk about race differences?  We’re supposed to be equal, this is America--we’re past the disgusting segregation and the hate.  At least that was what I thought but I’ve learned that simply because something is hidden and repressed does not mean that it is not there.  

As a child in school I was taught that we are all the same on the inside--we are all human, we all feel and we must all treat each other with respect.  Those are the rules that I live by and I assumed that everyone around me strictly followed those rules as well.  This however is called color blindness and color blindness does not abolish racism or race differences.  One of the examples that was given in class about how the white race has advantages was that if an Indian person got henna done on their hands it was looked down upon but if a white person got henna done it was immediately cute and became a trend.  This shows the white privilege that white people enjoy; they set the trend and the flow of things, they decide what gets done.  People of color talked about how they resented having to give up their customs to fit into the norm that white people set.  The white people talked about how they felt guilty for things being the way they were and how they wanted things to change.    

From this experience I have learned that racism really is not dead--yet.  There are places where people of color are not welcomed.  I wanted to be blind to that because the truth is so ugly.  Thankfully now I am not--we have to talk about racism and bring up the things that have been pushed into repression so that we can really move on forth as a species.