Week 9

The two articles assigned for this week made me think of my husband and our sons. Based on what I have seen in my two boys and getting to know my husband throughout the 11 years we have been together, being a boy and becoming a man involve many aspects in life, just like being a girl and becoming a woman.  Getting to know ourselves is important, as well as our surroundings that affects almost everything in our life. It is very important that boys and girls are able to live in a positive environment, learn how to love themselves and be themselves, who cares what anyone else thinks or says about them. Although, it is wrong that may be a safety hazard in the world we live in because it is infested with ignorance and hate. It is best to learn about these things and to become skilled at knowing  how to maneuver this planet and lifestyles that exist in it.

Cyntoia's story reminded me how permanently wrong my life could have went a long time ago. She didn't deserve to be in jail serving her life for a crime that someone else had committed. She was out and about where she should not have been, doing what she should have never been doing, but that doesn't justify the law to charge her for the murder of the man who was committing a crime in the first place. They basically put her in jail for killing a man who was going to pay a minor to have sex with him, or who knows what he was going to do, he could have killed her. She was obviously experiencing trauma, severe trust issues, and whatever else that was bothering her. How did she get there in the first place? The closed captioning wasn't perfect so I struggled to keep up with what was going on but clearly, the system is messed up big time. Cyntoia was ignored, its like the law doesn't care or acknowledge that they can do better than what they did. This happens all over the world, when is it going to stop? We as a community have to step in and intervene.

Because Who is Perfect is another first of its kind that I have seen. It was nice to see something different, artistic, and like a teachable piece of display that could be useful and used more often. I have been reading a lot about disability lately as another class is focused on the social construction of disabilities and while not really have been close to many people who have disabilities, it feels good to learn more about the area of disabilities. This video made me think how there may be differences in life and indeed, no one is perfect, but perhaps they are in their own little way?

I saw the video A Girl Like Me Before and but it wasn’t closed captioning like this one but I think I understood most of it. I think it is really, really, disappointing that black girls have experienced this. In my mind, it just doesn’t make any sense, like, how people could even set their mind to making people thinking like this but I guess that is the nature of evil, oppression, discrimination, ignorance, hate, and narrow-mindness. I hope that this kind of negative perspective can fade away. When one of the girls started talking about how not knowing where they are really from in Africa, because there are so many different tribes, cultures, and origins, it totally makes sense, that not knowing your true ancestral line and where your family originated from is a negative feeling and reality that I have been experiencing lately. I want to know where my family is from, who they were, what they did, how they got to this country, and from where, etc. I feel like because of not knowing where we really come from, that makes life more difficult, disconnected, and srange. What black girls have had to go through due to society’s oppressive, discriminative, and racial perspectives need to come to an end once and for all. Black is beautiful, but it looks like it is painful too.

I LOVED the TED Talk for this week. It reminds me that the U.S. Constitution is really not what it sounds like it is. There are so many things wrong with it and the society that has been structured to follow rules of some made up agenda that is totally off track from where we should be. LGBTQ should be able to adopt children without any problems, they should be able to live without worrying about what the law or anyone thinks about or does to them. I really hope that these things will change but just today someone was telling me that the world will never change. That is the hardest, not knowing what to do or say, I can only keep hoping, and learning what to do that might have more impact on the world.