Higher Education??

                

               Everything seems to revolve around school. On average we will spend seventeen years in school and that will be just to receive a bachelor’s degree. From the age of five to about the age of twenty-two we spend most of our time in school. It is almost like a full-time job except we spend more time doing work for school. Not only are we in school from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., we also spend countless hours on homework. With all this work what are we really getting out of school?

                School is where kids go to learn but the adults set the rules to which have to abide. The constant monotony will cause all students at one point to loathe school. In his book “Texting Toward Utopia”, Agger comes out and clearly says that “they hate the structure, the endless homework, the compulsive testing and grading, authoritarianism, physical confinement behind desks, lack of free time, dress and comportment codes”. School is the same every year and has been that way for several decades if not longer. Agger says kids hate school for a few reasons. One reason is that school is a pre-labor force that leads to the real labor force. Another reason is that the kids don’t like how the adults are trying to turn the kids into versions of themselves. School is repetitive and leads to self-esteem issues. The finally issue Agger says why kids don’t like school is that it splits their body and mind. Their body is confined and not allowed to be active while their mind is forced into overhaul constantly getting new information.

                Agger calls school a factory. He says the goal is social control, denying students and teachers opportunities for open-ended spontaneous learning. While at school everything is structured and you are told when to do something. You are told when to be in class, you are told when to eat, and you are even told when you’re allowed to go to the bathroom. Agger points out that schools are more worried about getting students to class on time than what they actually learn. I would have to agree with this. Schools receive money based on attendance so grades come second to getting students in seats. Once the final bell rings and kids think they are free, they really aren’t. Once they get home they have to spend most of their time on homework until they go to sleep. And sometimes students will have so much homework that they end up staying awake until two or three in the morning. This lack of sleep can have a major negative impact on the children and it is never ending because the student has to do the same thing the next day. This never ending cycle can be associated with the rise in ADD and ADHD. We need to stop and take a step back to look at what exactly schools are doing to the children. It adds a ton of stress to the students and can really hurt some students.

                From the time we start school, we are told that it is the key to being successful in life. We have to graduate to get a good job and to be able to support our kids through school so they can get a good job. The students are told that they need good grades so they will look good on paper but I feel that students are never given an opportunity  to express what they can really do or who they really are. They are simply judged based on a letter on a paper. The grading system causes an immense amount of stress on students. If a student does not pass they are looked down upon when all that could have happened was that they know the material they just do not test very well. Grades should not be based on such an objective scale but rather find a way to actually test a student’s knowledge, not their test-taking ability.

In order to get a good job you need a degree from college. And in order to get into college you have to not only have good grades in high school but also be involved in extracurricular activities. Student’s time is already filled with school work but then they are asked to partake in multiple other activities which take up more of their time. This work load puts major stress on the students. Most adults do not have this much work to do. Because of all that the students are asked to do, it is no wonder that ADD and ADHD are on the raise and obesity is at an all-time high. Too much focus is put on trying to do multiple things rather than just enjoying them.

School may be a way for students to learn but it is not utilized to the best of its potential. School is so structured and regimented that it outputs almost a cookie cutter model of a person. Agger says that “the schools product is a marketable self, the member of a future adult workforce”. He says that schools are factories that the output directly is school work and homework but indirectly it is the industrious selves of youngsters.

Music

            Music is way to express yourself. A song can tell a story. It seems that everyone has a deep connection to music. And with there being so many different kinds of genres of music, it can be used as a connection between people. A major way music united a group of people was in the mid to late 20^th century with rap music.

With a division in race in our society today, we can almost see a division in the music people listen to. Primarily Black people will listen to rap music and rap music is primarily produced by Black people. Also white people tend to listen to country music which is usually made by white people. Of course there are always exceptions to this just like with anything else. We see Darius Rucker singing country music and we see Eminem making rap music. There are also many other kinds of genres of music that people listen to but looking at the stereotype this is what usually happens.

In the early days of hip-hop music it was used almost like a rally call to unite the Black people against the oppressing whites. This was in the time just after the civil rights movement. During this time there groups like N.W.A. or Public Enemy singing songs like “F*** Tha Police” and “Fight the Power”. These songs united the Black people. But when we compare this rap music to the rap music of today, it is completely different.

Rap music has changed over time. The rap music of today talks about having sex, smoking weed and getting drunk. Because the theme of the music has changed, it is not a rallying point for Blacks. All the music is talking about today is money and fame and sex. And some are using the messages these raps songs are portraying to claim that rap is having a negative impact on the youth of America.

With the rise in gangs and gang membership, there are some who claim that rap music is the cause of the violence. They say that because the lyrics talk about acting violently or doing drugs or other things, it is influencing the youth of our society to do bad things. With songs like “Young, Wild and Free” or “Smack That”, it would be easy to see how people would say that these songs are having a negative impact on the youth. But I say that these songs and the lyrics in them are just a way that the artist expresses his or her self. If a person does not agree with the lyrics or does not want their kids to listen to the music then they don’t have to listen. Have you ever heard of free will? People may say that these songs have a subliminal effect on the kids that listen but I say that each person has a choice to make for themselves. And if parents do not want their kids acting bad maybe they should have more control over their children.

   To say that rap music alone has a negative effect on people is to say something very ignorant. There are so many variables that would go into why a person makes a certain decision in their life. Some variables are where the person grows up, race, whether or not the parents are around, where they go to school, or what kind of friends they spend time with. All of these factors play a role in how a person turns out. And it’s not just rap music with suggestive lyrics. Many genres are like that. For example one genre could be heavy metal; another could be pop or even country. Some examples of songs are “Hope you get lonely tonight” by Cole Swindell that talks about hooking up even though they aren’t dating. Other songs that could be suggestive by lyrics are “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield, “Talk Dirty to me” by Poison, or “Metal Health” by Quiet Riot.

Music is not bad. It’s how people interpret it and the choices people choose to make. Musicians do not intend to have bad things happen because of their music. They simply want to express their thoughts in musical form. In my opinion to say that it is rap music that cause people to act bad is an ignorant thing to say.

Our Society and Fahrenheit-451

Sure my professor will read this and maybe some classmates but really who else will read this? Do we live in a society in which everyone is yelling but no one can really hear?

Fahrenheit 451 is a novel written by Ray Bradbury in 1953. The main themes of this book are censorship and knowledge versus ignorance. A very quick summary of the plot is that a man who works as a firemen (they burn the books) in a society where are books are not tolerated and all literature is burned. The people in this society do not read books, enjoy nature, spend time by themselves, think independently or have meaningful conversations. Instead, the drive fast, watch excessive amounts of television on wall-size sets, and listen to the radio on sets attached to their ears. This book was written over sixty years ago but this description sounds a lot like our society today.

                Since you were born you were probably told that reading is important. You were probably told to go read rather than watch TV. Reading is a very important skill we acquire early on because it is through reading that we can acquire more knowledge. I know for me, growing up and going through school meant reading book after book for my classes. I enjoyed reading books. It was nice to be able to hold a book and just sit there with it. But like everything else in our world, there has been a shift in how people read books.

                With new technology coming out, there are new ways to read books. You can read them from your computer or from a little electronic tablet or you can be like most people in our society and not read. The amount of reading in our society has gone down with most adults not reading many books after they leave school. Just because technology is advancing does not mean we should abandon reading.

                Ben Agger makes some good points in his book “Texting Toward Utopia”. He has a list of points he makes in regards to the important changes in the reading culture. Some points include the people read via the internet which leads to bookstores and publishers being in decline.  He says that people write through blogging, texting, messaging and posting but many of these forms float off into cyberspace. Another point in his list that stood out to me is that the decline of public intellectuals is matched, and hastened, by the decline of public readers curious about the state of the world and passionate about changing it. Some of his points do invoke some interesting thought which I will explore later in this blog.

                The premise of Fahrenheit 451 paints a picture of a society that is not too far from the one we live in today. One thing the people of F-451 do is watch TV on their oversize television sets. This book was published in 1953 so there was no way the author would know that one day we would actually have wall-size television. And the people of today’s society spend way too much time in front of the TV watching Netflix or a rerun of a show they've seen a hundred times. Another similarity between our society and the society of F-451 is one I have already pointed out in that people do not read. Then a major similarity between the book and our society is that people do not spend time by themselves which can lead to other things. In our society, the cellphone is like an extra appendage for some people constantly checking their Facebook or twitter. In this sense they are never really alone because their phone just adds extra noise o distract the person. This can lead to people not thinking independently. For example all the couch activists that claim to be making a difference but do nothing except propagate lies on social media. Or you could look at all the people who see something they like on social media and blindly follow it like the Ice Bucket Challenge. Social media can lead to sallow conversations without deep thought going into any of the comments.

                Agger says that when he was growing up he did not have access to popular culture 24/7. He uses the example of having to listen to the Giants game on the radio. He says pop culture in his day was not inescapable like it is today but people went to libraries and read long, slow books, both fiction and nonfiction. Agger claims that people lead “active literary lifestyles” through emails, text messages and tweets, which are filled with shorthand, slang, and emoticons. But my argument is that is it really meaningful text? Agger says that a teenager’s text message of “LOL”, “OMG”, and “HAHA” is writing but I say that it is writing only in the loose sense of the word. This “literature” cannot be compared to great masterpieces such as Conte of Monte Cristo or The Jungle or The Heart of Darkness. Agger says the kids in this post-modern world are always writing but does the writing really equate to anything meaningful? Kids are absorbed in the social media of today’s world but Agger says this is a good thing is a good thing because they are still able to express themselves in a literary fashion. You have to think though how much of it is really read? Sure many books are not popular and not read much but I’m sure that most if not all books that are published are read by someone. But how many tweets get sent out and just get lost on the internet? This type of society just makes me think of F-451 in that the people in the book had no meaningful conversations and did not act independently all because they did not read.

                I think it is great that technology provides different means to read but people not to take the opportunity to read a meaningful book.  And after they read, they need to write something meaning not just tweet “I just bought a coffee from Starbucks”.  I disagree with Agger in that simply writing in the form of blogs or text or twitter is literature. I feel that real literature is meant to be read, to inspire ideas and conversations in those that read, and from there those readers become the writer of their own literature. Simply writing a text that says “lol you’re funny” is not literature. (As I am writing this I still have hope in that my computer does not recognize lol as a real word.)

The New Jim Crow

“During Black History Month, Americans congratulate themselves for having put an end to discrimination against African Americans.”

                The Civil War freed the slaves. It was supposed to be after the Civil War that Blacks were supposed to be equal to Whites but they were still discriminated against and segregated from the “white” society. But then America went through an intense Civil Rights Movement and the Blacks were able to gain more rights and segregation was declared illegal. Because of this one would believe that everything would be just fine in today’s world. That whites and blacks would be equal in everything that happens, but sadly this is not the case.

                Even though our society does not practice segregation openly, there is still a covert practice of segregation. This segregation is based off of many things including level of education, annual income and race. The sad truth is that racial segregation still exists in our society. It is structured by the White Racial frame which is discussed in a previous blog. Michelle Alexander talks about this segregation as an unfortunate reality that “manifests itself not only in individual attitudes and stereotypes, but also in the basic structure of society.”  She is saying that segregation is not just an issue with an individual but it is an issue that is ingrained in our society.

The cases of Trayvon Martin or Eric Garner or Michael Brown come to mind. These three individuals were racially stereotyped and they suffered the ultimate penalty because of it. Say for example if a white person had committed the same crime as Michael Brown would he have been shot? Or say a white person committed the same crime as Eric Garner, would the white person have been choked out with a strangle hold? Or what about if a white teenager had been walking around with a hoodie, would he have been perceived as a threat and shot? Michelle Alexander talks about this issue but she talks about the war on drugs. She points out that blacks who commit some sort of drug crime will be given a harsh punishment while whites who commit the same crime will be given a light punishment if they are even punished at all. She cites a studied that in which in 1999 only 992 black men received a bachelor’s degree from Illinois state universities while roughly 7,000 black men were released from the state prison system the following year just for drug offenses.

                Alexander says that “many of the forms of discrimination the relegated African Americans to an inferior caste during Jim Crow continue to apply to huge segments of the black population today- provided they are first labeled felons.” It is fairly easy for blacks to be labeled as a felon. Because many live in a perpetuating cycle of crime it is hard for them to leave. And I do not mean to pass prejudice while writing this. I know there are several blacks who are successful and do not fit this stereotype. But it cannot be denied that there are still several communities in which blacks who are not well-off will tend to drift to and it is in these communities that the cycle is perpetuated. And it is these communities that whites will base their perception of blacks.

If a person goes to prison, regardless of race, it will be difficult to obtain a job after being released. Blacks are persecuted more than whites are. Alexander makes the point that “ex-offenders are banned or severely restricted from employment in a large number of professions, job categories, and fields by professional licensing statues, rules, and practices that discriminate against potential employees with felony records.” Because ex-prisoners have a hard time getting a job, many fall back into old habits and end up back in jail. It’s a never ending cycle and most victims of this cycle happen to be black.

Nothing is being done about covert segregation or systemic racism because the ones who have the power to do something do not use their power to fix the wrong that exists. Alexander states that “denial is facilitated by persistent racial segregation in housing and schools, by political demagoguery, by racialized media imagery.” She says we see only what we want to see and wear blinders to avoid seeing the rest. This has been true about slavery, genocide torture and every form of systemic oppression. 

The White Racial Frame

“A person does not choose what color skin they have but they do choose how to act.”

It is sad knowing that we live in a world where everyone is not equal. Where someone will be treated differently based on the color of their skin. It makes me angry sitting here and writing this knowing in order for this way of thought to change, a great overhaul of our society would be needed. If we look at it though, this way of thinking didn’t just appear. It has been ingrained in our society for over the past three centuries when Africans were taken from their home and forced to be slaves.  It just so happened that the people with the power taking the Africans happened to be “white”.

                In our society today, people are quick to say that racism is no longer a problem and we all live happily together. But once we look just an inch past the surface we can see a multitude of issues boiling underneath. We live in a society shaped by the white racial frame. Joe Feagin says that the white racial frame is basically the idea of whites looking negatively upon blacks. Feagin says “the frame and associated discriminatory actions are consciously or unconsciously expressed in the routine operation of racist institutions of this society”. Whites have negative views of blacks and hold negative stereotypes of them. But whites have positive views of other whites and hold positive stereotypes of them. These thoughts are shaped by the white racial frame that has been ingrained in our culture since the time of slavery. Feagin says the white racial frame began at an early point in colonial history because of the “highly structured reality of white-on-black oppression that generated the first incarnation of this color-coded framing of society- composite that has been maintained, albeit with some reworking, to the present day.” Racism still exists in our society. It may not be as overt as it once was but covert racism still exists. Because of the white racial frame, there is still a negative view on people who do not fit the white mold. Racism is embedded in the minds of whites. Feagin talks of a study that was done where whites were shown pictures of white and black people and “90% of whites who have taken the test implicitly associate the faces of black Americans with negative words and traits such as evil character or failure.”

                It is sad to say that race is still an issue in our society; how it’s illegal to enforce segregation but we still do it to ourselves. Blacks are afraid to interact with whites for fear they will be prosecuted for something they did not do. Questlove  talks about his interaction with white people. He is a 6’4” black man that weighs 300 lbs. but he is famous and lives in a “nice building”. He talks about how when he walks in people look at him as if he does not belong. He also points out that he thinks it’s a crazy way to live in which you have to think of other people’s safety and comfort first before your own. People don’t see him as a nice man when they first see him, they see him as a large black man that could cause them harm.

                We need to stop looking at the color of people’s skin and look at what’s on the inside in their hearts. This will take a long time to fix but it is an accomplishable task. I remember a story my mom told me of a friend that I had in the first grade. He was black but that’s not how I saw him, I saw him as my best friend. I can’t remember how it was brought up in a conversation between us but my mom told me I did not realize he was black. According to my mom I said something like “he’s black?” This story has stuck with me to this day. Now that I am older I am not naive to the fact that the white racial frame dos exist but I do everything in my power to fight it. In my personal opinion it is not right to judge someone based on the color of their skin. A person does not choose what color skin they have but they do choose how to act.

                We all know about the Michael Brown case and the riots in Ferguson. I think that the black community has a right to be upset but they should not turn to violence. Race is only still an issue because we keep coming back to it and using it as an excuse. People say that the cop only shot the kid cause he was black or other people say that all black people are bad because a few make bad choices. In a video by Prince Ea he talks about the Michael Brown case. He says he was not surprised to see the headline; that every few months it’s the same story over and over. He makes a great point in saying that real justice is coming together to change policies. We all have to look inside and change our hearts.

Martin Luther King Jr. said it the best when he said:

  “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that ALL men are created equal.’”

We are still waiting for this day….

Feminism

“Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's social roles, experience, interests, and feminist politics in a variety of fields. Feminist theory focuses on analyzing gender inequality. Themes explored in feminism include discrimination, objectification (especially sexual objectification), oppression, patriarchy, stereotyping, art history and contemporary art, and aesthetics.” And the definition of feminism is the advocacy of woman’s rights on the grounds of political, social and economic equality to men.

                

In my opinion, or simple terms, feminism is just the push for women to have rights equal to that of men in our society. In our world today we see more women in power and in other roles that were typically known as a “mans” position. But even though women have been making great strides to be equal with men, they are still lacking behind. A major area that we see this in is the business realm. “Among the 200 best-paid chief executives in the country, just 11 are women, according to a data analysis conducted for the New York Times. That figure means women make up just 5.5 percent of the highest paid CEOs. And to make matters worse, they appear to earn less." Women are now able to become great business leaders but when we look at the study done by the New York Times we can see that female CEO's are being paid less than their male counterparts. Even though women are now more visible in the CEO position of a company, only 48 of the chief executives at the country's 1,000 largest companies are women.

If we are to look at feminism and if we are going to fight for equal rights for women, we need to look at women’s role in society and how it was established centuries ago. Looking back at the hunter and gather society, men went out to hunt and kill for food, while women stayed behind caring for the children and doing other things while the men were gone. These actions established the roles for the men and women; then men were the strong who provided while the women were the nurtures who cared for everything else. And these roles persisted throughout time and I feel that they still exist today but only to an extent.

Today women are more equal to men than in the past. I feel that women made their first steps in becoming equals with men on August 18, 1920. It was on this date that women were granted the right to vote. Being able to vote meant that women could have a bigger voice in what the government did. Another big step for women, and what I feel really opened the door for equal rights was during WWII. When all the men were conscripted into war, the women were left behind to fill all the jobs the men left behind. Major jobs that needed to be filled were jobs like mechanics or factory workers. And even when the men came back from war and claimed their jobs back, the women were still empowered with what they had accomplished.

                

Comparing today’s society to the societies of the past, women have made great strides in being equals with men. Not only is this evident in the business world but it can be seen in our media as well. There are several movies and TV shows out today that have a female as the main protagonist rather than a female being the typical damsel in distress. Some examples include The Hunger Games with Jennifer Lawrence or Divergent with Shailene Woodley. An example of a TV show is the Legend of Korra on nickelodeon. The creators were hesitant about making this because of a female main character but the show is now on its fourth season. Females should completely equal to men but the truth is our world is not there yet. More men need to be open to this and not talk down to women or objectify them.

Consumer Culture

Today we live in a world that is fueled by the market. We have this consumer culture that we live by. By this I mean all I see are people striving to have the newest thing, regardless of how long ago they bought the newest model. A big example is the iPhone; one year they release one version and then the next year a newer version comes out. Another example of our Consumer Culture is how people have to have the name brand of everything. The iPhone can be looked at as another example but what I am thinking of is how all the teenagers have to have Abercrombie and Fitch, or Aeropostale. But the way I see it what is the difference between a t-shirt from one of those stores or a store like Old Navy; besides one shirt costing $50 and the other costing $10. People are willing to pay for a brand these days and get caught in the hype of the brand. The culture thesis states how businesses are “circulating cultural commodities and manipulating people’s consciousness”. The three words that stand out to me and should stand out to everyone is, “manipulating people’s consciousness”. In our society everyone has to follow the trend and someone is not going along with that trend, they are looked down on from deviating from the consumer culture.

In our world today, we are surrounded by different outlets that feed us ideas of what we should wear, how we should look, what we should eat, how we should act, how we should live our lives. Often times we get caught in the flow of the consumer culture and live the life of society rather than live our lives as individuals. As a result of the culture industry blasting us with images of how we should live, these images both stimulate consumption and deflect critical thought. So therefore we can see that the culture industry is telling us how to live in order to make money. This can be equated to Lemert’s “Center” with how those with all the power, and money, dictate what the norms are of society.

 Through multiple media outlets, we view hundreds of commercials and things that companies want us to buy. These commercials feed into the consumer industry, influencing what society is. People make their decisions based on what the commercials say and what others are doing. But in the thesis of the culture industry, it is argued that the needs of people are false “when people do not arrive at them freely but rather have them imposed on them from the outside, through the subtle acculturation processes of capitalist everyday life”. Businesses are relying on their commercials to coerce you into buying their product, but what I think this argument is saying and what I believe is that even with the consumer industry telling us how to live, we need to make our own decisions based on what we actually need and not what we are told we need. If we choose based in the overarching consumer culture then we have not chosen for ourselves but for the business’s wallet. The thesis of the culture industry makes a good argument when they that “false needs are generated by the one-sided relationship between cultural producers and consumers” and that “people accept their subordinate relationship to the giant colossi of corporate cultural production as second nature”.

If we don’t change our ways, and start thinking for ourselves, our culture will be based off of what the businesses want it to be.