XX. I am a Girl. I am a Female. I am a Woman.

Here are some statistics I want to share that I got from the Plan UK website:
-Every 3 seconds a girl is coaxed, coerced, or forced into marriage.
-1 in 3 girls globally are denied secondary education.
-At least 75 million girls around the world are not in school. This isn’t fair. Ignoring it isn’t smart.
-Investing in a girl’s education is vital – it helps her to know she has rights, exercise them when she needs to
   and achieve her potential.
-It is also central to unlocking the cycle of poverty.

• An educated girl is less likely to marry and to have children whilst she is still a child.
• An educated girl is more likely to be literate, healthy and survive into adulthood, as are her children.
• An educated girl is more likely to reinvest her income back into her family, community and country.

This sickens me. Sexism is wrong.

Everyday something comes up in my daily life where I recognize that I am a woman. While I live a very privileged and blessed life, millions of girls and women around the world do not. Women daily face oppression in the United States and all throughout the world. I want to take a moment and share an interesting article I found online in the Times. I encourage you to take a look at the video and then go to the Plan UK website.

This is an excerpt from the article/video I found on the Times:

"Developed by Plan UK, a non-profit organization that helps children in third-world countries, the billboard will promote the group’s “Because I’m a Girl” campaign. The effort is designed to help sponsor girls in developing countries receive a proper education. Men won’t be able to see the full ad, and will be directed to the organization’s website instead, to show men “a glimpse of what it’s like to have basic choices taken away.” The fairer sex, on the other hand, will see a full 40-second video promoting Plan UK’s cause."


Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/02/23/face-recognizing-billboard-shows-ad-to-women-only/?xid=newsletter-weekly#ixzz1ncMlVTdC

 

Here is the video:

 

I would also strongly encourage you to go look at the website this video came from. It is called Plan UK, and is doing some amazing work for females all around the world.

Here is a link to the website: http://www.plan-uk.org/

 

After reading all of this I want to encourage you to affirm the females in your life. Encourage them to stand up for their rights. Remind them to be thankful for what they have, but to not be complacent

 

I am thankful for all the strong, powerful, beautiful, encouraging women in my life. I have been beyond blessed by my mom, grandmothers, aunts, cousins, and friends. I am so thankful for them and hope you tell the women in your life that you love them and respect them for who they are.

 

My Wheels Keep on Spinning

Every week I am stirred and amazed how the knowledge and discussion stemming from this class really gets me going and thinking. Quite honestly, I love it! Despite it's difficulties and me actually losing sleep over things we're learning about, I enjoy having to wrestle through these difficult and emotionally charged issues. Any one else with me there? My sleep schedule has been so whacked because I lay there thinking about this class and my mind gets going... then there's no stopping it! When I finally do get to sleep here come the dreams!  Any delayed sleep or interesting dreams coming out of any of our readings or class discussions for anyone else?

This week brought a diversity in the methods of learning for me, which I enjoyed. We got to listen to LaDon Matthys, from Mart, TX, who shared her experience growing up in such a racially polarized town like Mart. I was very interested in hearing her story, but it left me wanting and searching for more. I personally wish that she would have been able to go in depth with her feelings and stories more. But it was very apparent that her emotions were very raw and real to her and I felt like at any moment she was just going to totally fall apart and not be able to share anything at all. (Which I can understand, she experiences major challenges surrounding Mart). One point from her discussion that I found particularly interesting were her comments on her relationship with her brother and her relationship with her niece and nephew. I remember her talking about how her brother told her for his New Year's resolution that he was going to give up arguing about race with his sister (LaDon). When she responded, positively and that she was excited he was going to work on not being racist or saying racist things, he quickly responded that he wasn't saying that at all. His interpretation of not arguing about race and LaDon's was completely different. From what I gathered by what she said, he thought of it as they just wouldn't talk about it, and she thought it meant that we wouldn't be a racist. Huh, very interesting... And as for LaDon's concern with her niece and nephew growing up in such a poisonous community filled with very racist people, and her approach to being involved was somewhat confusing to me. She made it clear that she was concerned for them and wanted to be active and involved in their lives to I believe counteract the racism, and speak and live a life against it. Yet at the same time, I feel like her difficulties around Mart, and the community was inhibiting that. Just from what I personally interpreted, I felt like her involvement was more on the minimal side because of the number of times she said she goes to Mart being very few. Again, this is me with my "Oh let me analyze everything she says hat on". Regardless, I hope for the absolute best for LaDon and her family. I hope that love and understanding can transcend all of their perceptions and they can communicate and love one another better.

Another big part of my week included the Liptak and Lewin articles on affirmative action. I must admit that before reading these articles this week and letting myself have a good think about affirmative action, I haven't really ever given it much thought. And to be honest that makes me upset and concerned with myself. Upset because it has definitely impacted me personally and concerned because why the heck haven't I thought of it before?!?! I applied to college, actually, I applied to college at the university where this recent Supreme Court case is coming from. Why is it that when I was doing all sorts of college applications at both private and public universities in Texas and out-of- state this never crossed my mind? My conclusions to this question= power and privilege. I am a white, middle-class, able-bodied, Christian. (I am not trying to brag on this next part, so bear with me...) Another reason is intelligence. I am smart. I have, and grew up with two educated and intelligent parents who continually share their wisdom with me. I grew up with a very intelligent extended family as well. I went to great schools, that gave me lots of opportunities to learn and succeed in whatever areas I has interest in and more. I went to schools with peers who were very smart and challenged me in my learning. And with regard to affirmative action, I was in higher than the top 10% at a 5A school in the suburbs of Houston. But the most important factor to me is that regardless of everything, I worked my butt off! I read, studied, did my homework, applied for scholarships, took advanced classes, and tried my best to never take any of my many blessings for granted. I worked to get where I am today. When I was in that point of my life, I was highly aware of my blessings and accessibility to everything I needed to prepare and go to college, but I never viewed it in the way I do now. I have power and privilege. It's as simple as that. While I whole-heartily believe that everyone at The University of Texas is intelligent, I know for a fact that it was not nearly as easy for some students to get where they are today. I commend and applaud those students for their dedication and work ethic. As I think about affirmative action and the old law that gave automatic acceptance to the top 10% in Texas (the new law has decrease the %, not sure of to what though), I realize what a big deal affirmative action really is. It plays a big role in learning and the dichotomy of colleges nationwide. All I know is that think about it I will continue to do, and I hope you do the same.

I can't close this post without saying something about the culture boxes. I LOVED THEM!!! I loved making mine, but I especially have loved getting to see a glimpse into y'alls lives and hear your stories and experiences. It has been a privilege to get to know you all better and hear about what makes you you. My biggest problem with them is that I want way more time to hear your stories and to share with one another! The have been great and I look forward to hearing the rest of them :)

Keep on truckin' classmates! I know the semester is picking up more than ever, but I know we can do this!!!
Until next week...
Peace,
Maija

MY Perception of MY Own Identity

This week as we learned about racism, and the Fatal Flood, topics of great interest to me, I was surprised to find myself thinking more about the identity exercise and the social identity wheel exercise. Since Wednesday I have honestly been upset as to why this was so. I mean we are talking about something as huge a racism and two little exercises that we did in class are for some reason or another what I keep thinking about. Why is that?! Thinking about why this is, I have concluded that maybe it's because I have thought a lot about racism before this class, or learned a little information on the Fatal Flood. Yet those answers don't really satisfy me... Who knows why I keep looking at these sheets, all I know is that I do.

I am going to break down these exercises and explain my selections for each:
Under each category we were told to label each category with how we feel about it. A triangle for if we feel it's important to us, a square if we feel unsafe or uncomfortable, a circle if we feel safe and comfortable, a rectangle if we feel oppressed and discriminated, and a star if we feel power and privilege. My markings were as follows:
Race= star, square
Sexual Orientation= circle, star
Language= circle, star
Ability= circle, star
Class= star, square
Religion= triangle, circle
Immigration= star
Age= circle
Gender= rectangle, triangle circle

Some of the observations and surprises that I felt after reflecting on my choices were the dominance of stars I put down. 6 out of 9 areas I feel power and privilege. That's a lot of power and privilege! Another interesting thing that I found was that I put down the same amount of circles, 6 out of 9 areas. That's a good amount of safety and comfort. On the flip slide, I only put down one rectangle, that being under gender. Something I noticed was that I regularly think about gender related oppression and discrimination that I feel, experience, or see, but I seldom recognize all the many areas that I identify with where I feel power, privilege, safety and comfort. This made me upset to think that I lack recognition in such areas and dwell on the area I feel oppressed and discriminated against.

For the Social Identity Wheel exercise we were asked to think about a variety of categories and break them down by labeling with one of four ratings. The ratings were: #1= identities you think most often about, #2= identities you think about least often, #3= your own identities you would like to learn more about, #4= identities that have the strongest effect on how you see yourself as a person.
My markings were as follows:
Ethnicity= 3
Socio-economic class=1
Gender= 1,4
Sexual Orientation= 2
Age=2
National Origin=3
First Language=2
Physical, Emotional, Developmental Ability= 1,4
Religion or Spiritual Affliction= 1, 4
Race= 3

One of the biggest things that I noticed was that in all places that I put a 4, I also put a 1. So in the areas that I think about most often, they are also the identities that I have the strongest effect on how I feel as a person.  But, I do have one area that have a 1 that stands alone (socio-economic class). That combination of the two numbers is something that I find very interesting because gender and religion were the only two areas on the identity exercise that I labeled with two of the same shapes and I marked them the same numbers on the wheel exercise.

I enjoyed these activities, because it allowed me to see and reflect on the areas and places I identify myself.

Confused, mad, and ready to do something about it!

As I have chatted with my classmates before and after class and around the School of Social Work, I feel like many of us feel the same way; somewhere along the lines of confused, mad and ready to do something about it. Well at least that is how I feel more and more. Just to give a preface, this post will be more on the emotional side, because at the moment my mind and my emotions are struggling with the stuff I have been learning, reading, and discussing and that is all I feel like I can do adequately now.

This week while sitting in a coffee shop I was brought to a point of such deep frustration that tears began to fill my eyes, I had to put down Zinn's book, take some deep breathes and go for a walk to process. On one occasion my roommate could tell I was so frustrated she asked me if my book was still as good as I had told her it was several times previously. I told her it was and that is was so difficult to read because I felt like I had been lied to for so long. Realizing the truth isn't always easy. The same situation happened one evening when my Mom called me. She immediately knew that I was upset about something and I was able to share with her some of the things that I had been reading. After I was done sharing she told me about her frustration and difficulty with the care of the Native Americans and the oppression they have experienced for years. She has worked on an Indian reservation before and understands their struggles more than most. I was able to express my sadness with the treatment of the Iroquois Indians and the genocide that Christopher Columbus lead, yet how we "celebrate and honor" him with his special little holiday with many states declaring it a state holiday including school closures and the closure of other state services. I just want to say that is nauseating. Why in the world would we celebrate such a wicked man? And why were we lied to in grade school and throughout history books saying he "discovered America"? No, he first discovered Hispaniola. He's not as glorious as he's made out to be, so why do we teach this to our children in schools? And that is by far not the only lie or inaccurate historical portrayal being made. Lies, lies, lies.

When our guest lecturer came and we did the exercise moving on the spectrum of strongly agree or strongly disagree about if we personally thought if "x" is a social problem or not, it resulted with me having even more questions. If I strongly belief that poverty and wealth are both social problems and others don't, how can change occur? While I understand that because of our own opinions people will never agree on such things, I keep wrestling with a series of questions. How will any change occur if we all just sit around talking about change, learning about change, figuring out what change would look like, but not actually actively doing anything to CHANGE? How silly it sounds, but unfortunately that is exactly what I feel like we do. We think and talk a good talk, but where is the implementation? Go, start, do something! Stop sitting, talking, planning, discussing. Even if we act and fail, I believe it's better than not acting at all and being complacent. I'm struggling with how do we get past differences and unite to fight against all these injustices?  People and society get so bogged down with partisanship, personal morals, and frivolous things instead of identifying needs and focusing on change. How can we support one another? How can we positively shed light on these important things and not shoot ourselves in the foot with all our foolish arguing?

Yes, I have my own beliefs and my own opinions, but I believe that I am called to love and respect others and despite differences help, love and encourage others. With all of these thoughts swarming around in my head, I always been ending up in the same spot. Action. I feel compelled and called to action more now than I have ever before. I can no longer sit by and passively accept things that are thrown around in all areas of life. And I hope that others do to! I am thankful for these discussions, no matter how difficult they may be. They are needed, they are needed.

What We're Not Supposed to Know

Looking back on the reading I have done this week for my classes and for personal pleasure, one theme from both areas surprisingly popped out. Go with me here, let me give you the back story and I promise you it will come full circle. After watching Tim Wise's video on white privilege in class, I had to have more. I was intrigued with his points and his overall delivery that he made. I needed to know more about this guy so I could figure out what I thought about him. I believe that you can't just take one thing you read or watch of a person and support or reject him. What if the one thing you read was a great piece of perspective and insight, yet everything else they wrote was a bunch of mumbo jumbo? So after getting on YouTube and watching a couple of his videos, and researching his biography, I started exploring. Another video that popped up that YouTube connected with the theme of the other videos I was watching was a video called "Killing Us Softly: Advertising's Image of Women".

 After struggling and wrestling with what this video was talking about for awhile, my mind jumped to a section in Howard's Zinn book, A People's History of the United States. Zinn talks about how historical events are portrayed and the level of perception and understanding people have about them. He states that "these atrocities" (major historical events) are still present today because "we have learned to bury then in a mass of other facts" (Zinn, 9). He continues to explain his point saying that a lot of the past is told from the viewpoint of governments, politicians, conquerors, diplomats, leaders and upper-class, leaving us with skewed and misrepresented tellings of what really happened. His point of when "the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is accepted more easily than when it comes from politicians at press conferences" is deadly, is a great point. The level of questioning and objection that we have with society, scholars, politicians, historians, advertising, and the media, in my opinion is not enough. I feel like things aren't challenged or questioned often times because they have been around for so long.

For example, I now know that I was ignorant to the facts surrounding Christopher Columbus's discovery of Cuba and Hispaniola. Unfortunately, in my mind I had the cookie cutter "great discoverer" image of him ingrained in my brain. Not the murdering, greedy, ravenous, oppressor that he was.

This leads me back to the video I watched this week. We are aware of the digitally enhanced and altered methods of advertising and the media, but I don't think we necessarily realize the great extents made to change our perceptions and feed us what "beauty" and "perfection" is. My point is, while I have always thought I examine things with a critical lens, I don't think I do to the level I should. Like Zinn suggests, we often times miss the point of something because of the large amount of facts and details thrown at us. Our focus of what to pay attention to, what is important, what should and shouldn't matter is given to us by others.  I want to encourage you readers to take some time and be more critical of the messages and views being thrown at you. Historically, socially, intellectually, whatever, be a free thinker and try to get all the facts.

Looking at this with a social justice perspective reminds me even more that a critical view is necessary and important.