Accordion to 12AP

In the article "Body Rituals among the Nacirema", the author makes fun of Americans' use of medicine and bathrooms by describing it as a "body rituals" of a native tribe. It also shows how some of the things that people do don't really make sense when looked at from out of context. The article really made me wonder what other "normal" things are actually useless and weird when out of context. After thinking about it, I was able to come up with a familiar example, and I think it should be described in the same way Miner did. A long time ago, an interesting tribe was created on Earth, they were spread out into every corner of the world but no one knows about them. They have many unusual traditions that they don't notice themselves. Most of the times, these traditions are harmless or insignificant, but one of those traditions have changed the way they think about appearance since they were kids. This ritual usually starts on the third birthday ...

At the start of the week, we had to write down a time when another person or I changed other people's behaviors just by entering a situation. I wasn't really able to come up with anything that significant because there is no stereotype associated with Asians that involves violence, unlike the ones described in "Just Walk On By" against African Americans. Most stereotypes associated with Asians are related to being good at math and having strict parents which don't really make people scared of Asians, especially on the streets. However, I thought about it a bit more and I finally recalled the times I changed the way people acted and it happened in the sketchiest place in the world: Troy High boy's bathrooms(especially the second-floor ones). Now you may be wondering why the Troy High boy's bathrooms are sketchy, let me give you a quick tour. When you first walk into the bathroom, you immediately smell a "comforting" tutti-frutti flavor; then, y...

In Tannen's article "There Is No Unmarked Women", the author argues that men can make unmarked choices while women cannot make a choice without telling others about their personalities or other features. I think that the second part of that argument is correct because women tend to spend more time to get ready so they can accurately represent themselves in the appropriate clothes, makeup, etc. However, the first part of the argument made me wonder if there is really an unmarked case for males. In the passage, the author viewed the men's clothing and hairstyle as usual and unmarked in the conference room; they all wore similar clothes and shoes while the women wore very different outfits. I believe that this viewpoint is created because the author is a woman and she is viewing the women's outfits as an insider while viewing the men's outfits as an outsider.  When the author looks at the women's outfits, she was able to recognize the different styles of c...

This week we started the book clubs and I was assigned "The Leavers". The story is based around an Asian American family that was separated multiple times. As I read through the book, I noticed that each character is always involved in 2 or 3 time periods; each chapter jumps between those time periods which makes the start of chapters more interesting. So for my note page, I decided to focus on individual characters and how they were affected or involved in different time periods. I wrote down many characteristics that each character shows throughout the story such as Deming's resistance to the white culture during his childhood, Angel, Jim, and Elaine's ignorance of other cultures, Polly's love for Deming. Interestingly, the more I wrote about the Chinese characters the more I understood their thoughts because I have experienced some similar things. For example, there was a passage that described the return of Jing from the US that actually represented what the...

After discussing the eminent domain and the racial issues such as housing discrimination in A Raisin In the Sun, I think that they are actually connected to each other. When there is segregated housing in a society, everyone is split off by racial, ethnic or class. Because of this separation, one community is visibly poorer or richer than the others. Today we can see this type of wealth inequality in many states such as the one between Clawson and Troy school district. Once upon a time , both districts had somewhat equal educational rankings and similar grades, however with the influx of new racial groups and different people from different social classes -- which began after the global expansion of the auto industries in Michigan -- the two districts started to become more and more different. As newcomers move into an area, others with similar races, classes or ethnicities tend to also move there with them. This caused more and more people to move into Troy and greatly increased the...

During the discussion of A Raisin In the Sun, the issue of housing discrimination was brought up numerous times as a major cause of a segregated society. We also connect this issue in the book to the real-life where the same issue is taking place, such as in the articles where the author called Michigan one of the most segregated states. I was actually pretty surprised to find out that racial discrimination of this scale still exists today. One question that I had was why aren't there any regulations that restrict these types of discrimination; however, now I realize that the issue will not be easily resolved. First, the biggest factor of this issue is the presence of self-discrimination which I blogged about last week. Self-discrimination leads to the prevention of integration of different ethnicities or races. In the case of Housing discrimination, the buyers of the house are not restricted from buying housing in areas with different races or ethnic groups, they simply chose no...

In many of the articles that called Michigan the most segregated state in the US, they used housing discrimination to explain why this segregation is happening. But I think that people in the world today kind of self segregate themselves from other ethnic groups. This self-segregation gives people a sense of comfort as the people they live with are similar to them and therefore cares more about each other. The housing discrimination example used in one of the articles is also caused by self-segregation. The article talks about how whites and African Americans are moving further and further into the suburban areas like a giant ring that is always expanding. Each ethnic group moved out of the cities in a group which caused the ring-like expansion of the people leaving for the suburban areas. We can see here that there were no restrictions for where each ethnic group has to be, they all moved in a group by their own choice. They are choosing to become more segregated instead of all blendi...