Cultural Differences and Movement

Reading “American’s Have a Different Attitude” really opened my eyes to how different ethnicities/cultures see the American culture. The problem I have is that every culture has its own beliefs and customs and one culture should not judge the other for how they do things if they aren’t causing any hurt to others. One thing I did find interesting is that the Filipinos associated the promiscuous American culture with predominantly white women rather than whites, blacks, and others. Looking back, with slavery, and segregation, and even the Tuskegee experiment, it was always the White Americans who looked at the African Americans and other minority races as promiscuous, dirty, etc.

I’m not exactly sure what the numbers are but is it true that white women are more promiscuous, and less family oriented than other cultures/races? If so, it seems that contradicts what it is that White Americans tried to fix with the minority races long ago. One thing that does worry me is that some of these assumptions that other cultures such as the Filipinos have on Americans just aren’t feasible, and they’re way too generalized. Just because some members of one culture do something doesn’t mean that every single person in that culture follows suit. I think the fact that this happens is tied in with prejudice. Prejudices are usually generalized to one culture or race and that can lead to discrimination of that culture and things of that sort. Looking at the Filipino culture presented in the article the beliefs pressured upon them I think may be too strict. I remember talking to my grandparents and parents one time about beliefs and customs and how at times they need to evolve with the time because what they were applied to in the past isn’t the same as what they are being applied to now. There is more technology, more knowledge, and more social advancement in today’s society and in order for children of now to keep up with the advancements and society of now, some things may need to change. I remember reading how one of the Filipino girls did believe that the culture of her people was too strict when it came to dating and having a social life and this caused her to rebel and do what she thought was right.

Another thing that I wanted to touch on was the double standard of gender roles in the cultures like the Filipino culture. Women in these cultures are so restricted that in my opinion they really aren’t allowed to have a life until they get married. I remember reading one of the passages where a young Filipina asked the question “But my question is, if you are not allowed to date, how are you supposed to find your husband?”, I agreed with this question. Why is it that the women are not even allowed to have a male touch their shoulders before they are married, but a male is not even mildly restricted in this area? There is a male privilege in cultures like these, just as there is a white privilege in our American culture. Also, it seems that both of these privileges are somewhat invisible, it’s just a part of the culture and that’s the way that it is. There was an example in a previous lecture dealing with oppositional culture, when white kids do something it’s just kids being kids, but when black or other minority kids do something it suddenly has the title or race on it. I see a connection with that example and what’s going on in cultures such as the Filipino culture. It’s like if a guy were to do something against the culture it’s just boys will be boys but if a girl were to do something slightly against the culture she’s suddenly a disgrace to the culture and women should not be doing what she is doing. It is a new era now and I believe that these cultures need to evolve to fit with the present time. I’m not saying that the American culture is perfect, we do have our faults, especially with promiscuity, but that’s not to say that we don’t have morals. I’m saying, move with the time, but don’t leave the basis of your culture behind.

A Crime Is A Crime

I always knew that there was a misrepresentation of our population in the jail system, but I didn’t know how bad it was until we covered it in class. As we began the class readings and discussions I came to realize that the US seems to consider some crimes “more criminal” than others.

White-collar crime is widespread and very costly. According to “ . . . and the Poor get Prison,” it takes far more dollars from our pockets than all the FBI index crimes combined. If these crimes are costing us more money than the “poor crimes” of America, why don’t American’s care? In a country that is so set on lowering taxes and gaining money, why would we not care about these people who are cheating the US out of money? Why do we consider someone that steals a TV more worthy of punishment than someone that embezzles thousands, or more, of dollars?

As stated in “No Equal Justice: The Color of Punishment,” “When the effects of a criminal law reach the sons and daughters of the white majority, our response is not to get tough, but rather to get lenient.” When I read this I began to wonder why this is so, but as I contemplated, it began to make sense. When the majority white children are affected, the parents are going to start to complain and put up a fight. And when they are loud enough, something will be changed to make them stop. This reminded me of elementary school and when some children from the majority white families were assigned to a teacher that their parents had heard were inadequate it only took one call to the principal’s office to get them switched out. This left some classrooms disproportionately full of minority children. In our culture it seems that until the middle class is affected by something, no one seems to take notice or care.

As discussed in lecture the idea of physiognomy may seem absurd, but if people continue to make comments like “Oh it’s no surprise he committed a crime because he’s black,” then clearly some must believe in it. I feel like is a thought that many people vocalize, or seem to suggest as the watch or discuss the news. It’s not entirely their fault though, when you are constantly watching the news, which is constantly telling you of some crime that some African American committed you eventually begin to believe that it is the Black population that are committing all of the crimes. But one thing that the news does not stress is that blacks are also the most likely race to be a victim of these violent crimes that we consider “black crimes.” According to “An Overview of Trends in Social and Economic Well-being” in our textbook, “Blacks are far more likely to be homicide victims than is any other group.” If this is so, why are they always portrayed as criminals on the news?

One last thing that really shocked me when I was reading was something I read in “The Mark of a Criminal Record.” The studies in this article seemed to show that a white offender was more likely to be called back for a job that black non-offender. Perhaps it’s because we have a racial stereotype that a black men are criminals, or because we view crimes that the poor commit as worse crimes than those the rich commit and that the face of the prison system are the poor minorities (mostly blacks). Either way, this seemed wrong to me. I don’t understand why a company would rather hire someone that they know has committed a crime over someone that to the best of their knowledge is a law abiding citizen with no previous criminal history.

As pointed out in “ . . . and the Poor get Prison” people who are equally or more dangerous, equally or more criminal are not getting the same punishments as the poor. In my personal opinion a criminal is a criminal, and they should be treated as so. The whole point of our criminal justice system is to keep criminals off the street. They are not doing their job if some guilty people are let free while others, who are equally or less criminal are punished.

I just recently watched the movie the Blindside and it got me thinking about race and opportunity. Michael Ohre’s story is one that is wonderful and hopeful. It shows that no matter where you come from, you can have a great life. But is that really true? Yes, Michael rose above living in the projects and refrained from being involved in gangs and violence but were those the only reasons that he went to college and had a NFL career? If Michael hadn’t been accepted into a rich, white family who had extreme influence in the community and schools, would he have made it? I am not sure if any young man living in the projects could have had the same outcome. Even if he lived a good life and was not involved in drugs or gangs, was dedicated to his education, and was a good athlete, would a university even have looked at him? Most likely this person would not have received the support from his school to encourage his learning and he may not have even had a dedicated coach. His school would probably have less funding and therefore would only be focused on standardized testing. I don’t know if this boy would have had the same opportunities as the boy from the projects who was taken in by a white, rich family.

As we read in “Hitting Them Hardest When They’re Small” by Kozol, children who don’t receive a good education early and who attend schools with little money, have poorer outcomes. The real-life Michael Oher had a GPA of 0.6 when he first applied to Briarcrest Christian School. In his early childhood, he repeated both first and second grade and attended eleven different schools during his first nine years as a student. But after attending Briarcrest his GPA rose to a 2.52. They rich, white family that adopted him also paid for a tutor to work with him for 20 hours a week. No wonder Michael’s GPA improved. He was finally receiving an adequate education and was getting the help he needed to learn what he missed in previous years. Could he have done this if he were still living in the projects? In “Children of the City Invincible: Camden, New Jersey” and “Life on the Mississippi: East St. Louis, Illinois”, both by Kozol, we see the effects on two cities’ children because of little funding for education. These students do not receive the same education as other predominately white schools. How can we expect them to succeed as greatly?

Michael Oher’s story is a great one and the family who took him in and helped him obviously very generous and caring. But this story just shows how going to a school with large amounts of funding and how having large amounts of wealth can get you anywhere.

Consumption as a means to claim social power.

In lecture we talked about how consumerism in America is a way to fit in or even obtain social power. People are many times measured by the amount of things they have or by how expensive their things are. Why is it that in our culture a person’s value is often times judged based on their materialistic worth?
Coincidentally right after our lecture on Tuesday I watched a video for another class called “Kids and Money”. The video fit in perfectly with what we had just talked about because it was about how people, more specifically children, feel about money and material things. It interviewed children from all different backgrounds including children from extremely wealthy families to kids from poorer families. However, the general attitude was the same for all the kids. They all thought of materialistic things as a way to fit into a certain socio-economic status. No one wants to come off as a poor person, so many times people live beyond their means in order to appear of a higher social and economic class.
For kids, the sense of belonging is a very important aspect in their lives. Especially in school kids are more than ever pressured to fit into a certain group. The popular kids are many times the kids with nice clothes and nice things. So kids think of how they look and dress as a way to fit in and be popular. In the video there was one girl who was the epitome of a spoiled brat. She had a more extensive wardrobe than most girls I know, and she was only about 12 years old. The only thing that she seemed to care about was her appearance. She said that in school girls with bad clothes were dorks and weirdoes and that fat girls were not popular. For girls, just having a good wardrobe is not enough to fit in; they must also keep up their physical appearance, all of which cost even more money. Just look at celebrities, who are the role models for many young women, they all have expensive clothes, perfect hair and makeup, and perfect bodies. These women have all of these things because they have the money to buy the clothes, maintain the hair and makeup, and pay for personal trainers. Whenever I see celebrities and feel insecure because I do not look like them, I just say to myself oh I could look like that too if I had the money to pay for the same treatments they get. So many people think that the better they look the more money they appear to have as well. This idea that a person can be judged on how good they look and how much things they have transcends all genders, races, and ages in America. In the video there were also boys who felt that the way they looked determined their social status. One boy said that race doesn’t matter and that only money matters in determining a person’s social worth. I completely agree with this statement. I think that social status does not have anything to do with what race you are because the most important thing in determining someone’s social status is how much money they have. Just because a person is white does not mean they are automatically of a higher social class, it is how much money they have that determines their social status. Since people do not go around telling others how much money they have, it is only natural that they try and portray their wealth through their appearance by how many things they have and how expensive they are.

Defining Health Care

We ended class on Tuesday asking if health care is a human or civil right, a market commodity, public good, privilege or responsibility?

Human Rights can be defined as basic rights of all human beings to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (as the US Constitution provides). Although usually thought of basic liberties -- freedom of speech, freedom of religion, right to associate freely -- as well as the right to a basic standard of living. Health care arguably is necessary for the enjoyment of all these freedoms and the ability to participate in the life of a nation. From my perspective, healthcare is a human right that everyone is entitled to. I believe the only way to have a fair society is to provide universal health care for every human being no matter what income level, race or age. Something as serious as ones life should not have to be gambled on and health care should be considered a basic necessity. Basic necessities such as electricity and natural gas have been made available to every citizen at reasonable rates regardless of economic status. Utility subsidies, both at the state and federal law have made this possible. So why should health care be any different?

Regarding civil rights, these are also thought of typically in terms of the rights of people to participate in the civil life of their countries. For example, the right to vote, to eat at public restaurants, to not be discriminated against because of skin color, gender or ethnicity, etc. but basic economic rights are also considered to be part of this. The right to seek employment and obtain loans, without facing discrimination, and so forth. Again, not having access to health care can be worse in many respects than facing discrimination or being denied the right to participate in public life. People without health insurance can face financial ruin if they get sick in addition to becoming sicker if they cannot get the care they need. Similarly, people who have health insurance through their employers may face difficult choices regarding employment if the job they would like to switch to do not come with health insurance.

Health care has been treated as a market commodity in recent years and competition by health care providers and insurers can serve to improve health care. But the problem with using the "market" to allocate health care is that it inevitably will leave some people without care because they are either unable to afford it or unwilling to pay for it if they perceive themselves as healthy. Without getting too technical, every "market" has a market-clearing price where supply equals demand. The part of the demand curve to the right and below of this price point represent people who are not able or willing to buy health care insurance. In most markets we don't care about this. For example, in the market for luxury cars, there will be many people who choose not to buy or cannot afford such a car.

But the problem with this scenario is that everyone will eventually need to access the health care system. And what usually happens is those people are treated in emergency rooms or in other ways even though they do not have insurance -- probably because as a society we treat such access as a human or civil right, or the moral equivalent of that. This combination of uninsured individuals plus our society's impulse to provide health care services to these individuals, give health care the key characteristic of a "public good", a good that we cannot really exclude an individual from without creating a barrier to others receiving it. In other words, the existence of the very large US health care system, and our ethic of providing care to the uninsured anyway, creates not only great difficulty excluding people from it, but also creates a classic "free rider" problem, characteristic of public goods, that means that those who could afford health insurance may choose to wait until they get sick before accessing the "free" system. This is why it is important that real reform of the health care system have a mandate requiring all people to buy health insurance.

I find it a bit inconsistent to argue that health care is a privilege given the preceding discussion. But good health often depends as much on an individual's personal dietary, exercise, and lifestyle decisions as it does on the quality of health care people can access. In other words, the patient needs to accept responsibility for his or her health. Good health is something one "earns" and in that sense it is a privilege, it is the result of many personal decisions as well as access to good health care. That said, we really cannot deny health care services even to those who make poor personal choices and in that sense it is probably a stretch to think of health care as a classic "privilege." It would be more productive to think of a quality health care system as one that would encourage and reward (even financially) good personal choices regarding diet, exercise and lifestyles.

Does money matter?

Education is a right. Good education is a privilege. Our children are our future. If children are our future, why isn’t it a right that all children get a good education? What determines if one child deserves proper schooling over another? These are all questions that crossed my mind as we discussed inequalities in the school system during lecture. The question, as always, is who has the money. It is the schools that are doing well, the schools in good neighborhoods with mostly white student populations, that have the money. If the parents in these communities have good schools to send their children to, why would they bother to fix the schools that other children go to?

According to “Hitting them Hardest When They’re Small” the US can afford to provide equally-equipped and clean schools, with green spaces and playgrounds, but we refuse to do so by arguing that we are in a crisis even though we continue to spend more and more on the judicial court system each year. This is the judicial court system that many of the students from poor schools will end up in, as was pointed out in “ . . . And the Poor Get Prison.” I think that we should be focusing on preventing the problem not just punishing it. By putting money into our school systems we can begin to give all children an equal opportunity for higher education and for higher paying jobs.

Some people argue that money doesn’t matter. In “Children of the City Invincible: Camden, New Jersey” Marilyn Morheuser points out that if this were true, people would not be willing to spend so much money to fight in court and argue that money doesn’t matter? The author, Kozol also pointed out that money does matter. It not only attracts better teachers, by offering better pay, it also makes it possible for the students to have an acceptable environment to learn in.

Reading about the conditions that some of the students in “Life On the Mississippi” and “Children of the City Invincible: Camden, New Jersey” have had to go to school in made me sick to my stomach: Out-dated sewage systems causing leakage into the schools, broken heating system causing some rooms to be unbearably hot, lack of books let alone up to date ones, and lack of lab equipment. This sounds more like a school in a third world country than the US. Why would citizens allow such horrible learning conditions? If I had gone to a school like that, I think it would have been near impossible to learn. These depictions are a good example of how money does matter. My high school lacked funding, which was apparent when my teachers had to pay for simple teaching materials, like paper, out of their pockets. This said, I always had a clean, safe, and somewhat comfortable environment to learn in.

One final thing that really made me think was “The Ordering Regime.” This article describes the “School reform” passed for historically underperforming schools (schools with mostly black and Hispanic students). As I read it, I began to think that perhaps this new stricter form of teaching was meant to instill “decent” values into “street” children from troubled school systems. I was thinking that it might possibly be trying to instill a value of respecting authority. But as I read on, this new structure of teaching seemed slightly militaristic; the students were rated on how well they walked down the hall and how well they could restate information rather than how well they could think critically. When the children were asked about things they had learned in class under a different context they were unable to understand it (The Ordering Regime”). This militaristic approach to teaching, and the fact that most of the teachers and administrators at the schools in the article were white, made me wonder if instead of instilling a respect of authority this was instilling an understanding of suppression and being controlled by whites.

For More Reasons Than One: Health Disparities Between Races

As I’ve continued to read the assigned articles throughout the semester I’ve begun to see a long chain of connections. It seems that through each unit the articles are trying to figure out which one idea is the cause of the many disparities between races. I don’t see one cause, I see many causes that contribute to the disparities in a sort of “domino affect” I guess you could say. Now that we’re looking at the health disparities between races, morbitity rate, mortality rate, etc., the studies still seem to portray that it is the environments that these people live in that are the biggest causes. I agree that when it comes down to it, the environments/residential areas do have an effect on the disparities but I think it goes much deeper than that and much further back in time. I think it all started even before the civil rights movement. African Americans, and many other minority groups had faced much oppression, discrimination, and segregation and when a certain group faces something like that, all they want to do is stick together. From all of the hardships that these racial groups faced they were already in a bad place to begin with. With them wanting to stick together it just led to them segregating themselves from everyone else whether it was consciously or subconsciously. Minority racial groups such as African Americans developed this comfort zone within their own race and they don’t want to get out of it, therefore they end up living in predominantly African American residential areas which are majority poor due to the low collective SES of the African American race. With having a low SES and living in poor residential areas it is very difficult to access good quality healthcare or even keep a good healthy diet and therefore the health of African Americans becomes much lower than other races.

After reading the article by Why Are There No Supermarkets in My Neighborhood? The Long Search for Fresh Fruit, Produce, and Healthy Food by Shannon Zenk I still couldn’t quite understand why good quality supermarkets were not in close proximity to the neighborhoods that really needed them. Some argue that these good quality supermarkets would not be able to make good business in an area where people could not afford their products. Sure, that reason is legitimate but I also argue that racism plays a part too. Everyone knows which races are the majorities that reside in the areas plagued by poverty and some may not want to help and serve those in these areas or just are not comfortable around them. The first step to good health is having a good diet but without access to the food needed to make these diets one will get nowhere. Better quality supermarkets need to take a shot at doing business in these poor areas, but try to compromise their prices to something that these people can afford but won’t put the company out of business. If access to good quality foods can be established then I believe the health disparities will begin to lessen and the health of this country as a whole can become better.