Merry Christmas!

I think now is a good time to reflect on 2010, it has been another interesting year with much going on near the end. I finally got a job this past semester starting in August and I will be leaving that position for another next semester. To make a long story short i was unhappy with my RA position and will now be a lab assistant in Glenn Hall at CSU Chico. Less strenuous and I will actually be happy there. 


Christmas was a great this year because my grandma joined us at home. She hasn't been back to California in over 10 years. That's before 9/11 and she got here in perfect shape. I look forward to our time together. 


Another semester has gone down at Chico. I have three left. WOW. Time has flown. I have to apply for graduation, I can't believe that. I have met another great group of friends at UV. International students are a bunch of fun to hang out with. Some left already to go back home but the time we had this semester was truly wonderful, I can't wait to go visit them when I can. 


I'll make another post soon listing some new year plans but other than that I will be eating seafood tonight. Happy hot pot.  


Merry Christmas y'all.

-Quincy

Tim Wise at Chico

Listening to Tim Wise really helped me realize the position and current state of the United States, and the conditioning we as a society have gone through. You could hear a pin drop as he spoke with such conviction and emotion. At one point, they brought out extra chairs because there were so many people. I’m glad I got there early. The first story he told us was when he just graduated and had no money, but needed a place to stay in New Orleans while he worked. His plan was to try and live with, and I quote,  “9 other roommates” to save money. This is something I can relate to because I live with 3 other guys and we share the kitchen, which if I didn’t periodically mention would never be cleaned. My roommates won’t clean up after themselves and I often put it off because it isn’t my job as I’m not the one who created the mess. However, Mr. Wise tells us eventually it doesn’t matter who creates the mess because the eventual horrible wasteland becomes too much to bear for anybody and it must be dealt with. So, in essence, ignoring the fact will only make things worse.

One of the reasons why we don’t do enough about inequality or social injustices because it’s not our fault, it has been ingrained in our society for a long time that a person or group have gotten to where they are because of their own accord and not because of how society has been created. Tim made sure we realized that the problems that are currently affecting our society and country weren’t created by us, but still have an impact on how we live our lives today. The social injustices in our country are breaking down the lives of the minorities in our society and communities we live in. His speech is coupled with very simple humor that makes it very easy to understand what he is saying. People at the end asked what we could do now and he said that 1) we can identify that we all wear a different lens and to realize that 2) the fact is that we need more collaborative effort to try and change the system of natural cyclical prejudice, bias, racism, and inequality in America. He talks about the white folks that created the social safety nets that saved them back in the day but as soon as Latin and black families began to use these same safety nets, they change their attitudes towards these nets and vilify the newcomers with darker skin and different cultures. The reality is that those benefits were created to help white people in the first place.

The main point that Tim wanted to get across to us is that there is this myth that people get where they are by themselves because that is what our educators have told us, the government has repeated and parents have possibly reinforced. The idea is that if you work hard and do the right things you will earn a living wage, but as Tim pointed out, that is not necessarily true. If you look at the larger picture, you can see that some people, mainly white-males, have been privileged through life and they might not recognize that they were picked for a job or school because of other people’s biases towards the minorities of this country. One of Tim’s examples for this is as follows: you have two resumes in hand and you have to choose one for the position. In one hand you have a white male college graduate that has more experience and so forth, and in the other you have a Latino Male's resume that might look less comparable to the other. Now to say that the white Male's resume is better because he went to a good college would at first seem totally reasonable, but this would be ignoring certain factors. You have to consider how the white male got to where he is today. Is it because he worked harder and is smarter than the Latino male, or is it because he was privileged into his current status? It’s like giving somebody a head start and logically seeing the person who started ahead finishing first. The other person might actually be going faster, but having started behind has to work even harder to catch up. If they had been given the same opportunities, they could be at the same spot in the race, or even ahead.

-Quincy