Privilege

We have talked a lot about white privilege through the beginning of this year. After watching the video on Ethan Couch, it struck me that though white privilege has a big play in court, so does wealth privilege. Ethan came from a very wealthy family without rules. When in court, the negligence he experienced from his parents overall gave him very little of a sentence. A student in my class brought up a good question about how if that was a black male who drunk drove and killed four people, would he have gotten the same sentence. In this situation, I do not think that race would have any factor in the overall decision. It was money that influenced the outcome. Being white or black didn't matter, it was if that person had money. If it were a poor person who was in that exact situation, neglection from their parents wouldn't have mattered in my opinion. It is hard to say of course what they outcome would be with a poor person involved, but anyone would agree Ethan should have been charged and have paid for killing multiple people under the influence.

We see the effects of money on most every case in some sort of way. With Ethan, it was that his money didn't give him guidance. In the OJ Simpson trial that we are currently studying, he was able to pay for the BEST lawyers to try to prove that he was not guilty. Without that money, the entire case would have turned out differently. Though we haven't finished the case, it is clear to see that money has a huge influence in court. It is interesting to think of the court in that way though because we are all entitled to a lawyer if we can't provide one, but if that lawyer is not half as good as the opposing one, your case is bound to lose. We say that we have a fair justice system, but when money comes into play, there is nothing fair about it.

Crazy Yates

Andrea Yates a mother of 5 children, she was your normal house wife for the most part. Till little by little she started acting weird and turning crazy. She plead that she was being talked by Satan and if she didn't take her kids life , Satan would make her do something worse. She said that she was a bad mother that they were going to be bad kids so she had to do it. She was crazy before she did it and every hospital let her go saying she was fine to go home. She needed help but no one helped her, they just let her go from many hospitals and let her do that to her family. Satan really had taken over her.

The consequences of a stigmatized society

It has been a while since we looked closely at the Andrea Yates case study. I typed up this blog post but I have been hesitant about sharing, simply because I fear that many people in this class who have had the privilege of being completely mentally healthy their entire lives will not be able to be empathetic towards someone who was suffering a great deal. This post is not going to be about me justifying the actions of Andrea Yates, but I do believe that nearly all crimes can be explained and prevented to a certain degree.

One could argue that a suicide or homicide is the responsibility of an entire community. For whatever reason, whether it be stigma or simply a lack of resources and doctors she felt comfortable with, Yates was unable to get all the help she needed to overcome her mental illness, and the entire community suffered heartbreak and confusion because of this- the worst of the suffering belonging to 5 innocent children; first losing their caring and energetic mother- then losing their own lives.

Andrea Yates was not a monster or the face of evil and carelessness- she was sick. Sick, in a sense that none of us understand. The brain is incredibly powerful. From my own experience with OCD, I can honestly say that compulsions are not a choice and for me, even the most pragmatic reasoning cannot overpower fear that drives compulsions. Being placed in a position of a terrifying swell of psychosis, none of us are in the position to say that we would be able to control our actions either. If we look at her now, Yates does not condone her actions- she likely would not have killed her children if she wasn’t suffering from the paranoia, hallucinations and delusions associated with psychosis. When an extremely sick person is at the verge of suicide or homicide it is simply because they cannot see another way out. No one wants to experience psychosis or depression- if she knew how to make it better  it’s likely she would have. In fact, she made attempts at controlling her mental illness, but it seemed as though nothing was working and she was ignored when she cried out for help.

I wonder, would people have had the same reaction had her psychosis had only suicidal tendencies rather than suicidal and homicidal? People pity those suffering with suicidal depression, yet we ostracize those with homicidal psychosis or antisocial personality disorder. I don’t think that homicide should be easily excused, but I do believe that it should be explained and understood pragmatically. Andrea Yates deserves to have her situation understood- instead of seeing the murders as a gruesome act of disgust and evil , the situation needs to be seen as what it is- a terrible consequence of an untreated mental illness that could have been prevented if others had seen how greatly she was suffering.

Spagetti

Yesterday my group worked really well together and was able to share ideas really well. We listened to each others ideas and thoughts. We created a sturdy base and built on top of that. It took us a few times to try and make it work. We changed the creation a few times and it finally worked out. The higher we went the less stable it would be. We did not win but we win by working as a time and not just by ourselves.

My experience with White Privilege

 White Privileges means to have money and that might be the case sometimes but not with every white person. Just the other night I had a fight with my best friend which caused us to not be friends anymore. What she said was really hurtful and had to do with having "White Privileges." She said to me," You know your mom puts so much effort into your life and you walk around with your hand out expecting shit all the time. "  Just because my Mom and Dad spend so much time and money on me to do well in school doesn't mean I walk around with my hands out expecting things to magically appear. I work and pay for my gas and for the things I want that I want in life.I may come from a wealthy family but my parents do not act like we are. My parents are conservative and do not just hand me money whenever I want it. I am not being raised that way.

A 13 Year Old Adult

Last week we watched the "Playtime" court case video in class, and in that case, they tried Lionel Tate, a 13 year old boy as an adult. I don't know about you guys, but I still can't believe he was tried as an adult. He's 13, barely a teenager with no record and clearly her death wasn't planned (qualifications for murder of the first degree). Not only did they try him as an adult, but in the court room, he was treated as a minor, not letting him decide whether or not to take the plea deal, but his mother. If you are legally tried as an adult, then you should be treated like one.

Human Behavior Experiments

I found it very interesting how we will act when we're in a group versus alone in a situation. It's amazing how we can conform to ideas and beliefs simply because the group is making that decision. I feel like it shouldn't be this way but we as human beings can't avoid it as it is part of who we are as individuals. The prison experiment was intriguing because it showed us the extent to which we will go to when given a lot of power and no responsibility for any of our actions. The guards in the experiment took it so far to the point where they couldn't let the experiment go for a week because of the torture the prisoners were going through. Another interesting one is the McDonald's one where they took orders from the person who was claiming to be a police officer. It was so eye opening how words could manipulate someone's actions into doing things they would never think of doing. This reminded me of the Holocaust where they would take orders form Hitler and actually do what he told them. It's hard to believe there are people that would go to those types of levels and there only excuse be "he told me to".

More on Morals

Warning: Word dump.

During my free fifth today, I discussed morals with my former English teacher, Ms. Mark, and one other student.  The prompt was this: if someone steals bread in order to feed their family, is it bad, should they be punished, and what is your duty?

This, basically.

See, the other student, whom I'll call Tom, and I had very different views on this, so it made for an extremely interesting conversation.  He said that so long as someone is breaking the law, no matter how good their intent, it's wrong.  He thought that the ordinary person only has a duty to stop immoral behavior that's legal, because everything else is up to law enforcement.  Essentially, the law is god, and everyone should stay out of it.  (He might disagree with me on my phrasing.  I am, to be honest, biased against his view.)

Meanwhile, I argued that any society is meant to support its least advantaged members, that a society can be judged on how it treats its weakest members.  Therefore, the average person's duty, when they see this sort of injustice, is to petition the government for change.  I feel that because the person is only stealing out of necessity, it is the government's duty to provide their family with food or money.  Essentially, that people in need must always be helped, and it is everyone's duty to change a corrupt system.

Which, really, is a very roundabout way of coming to the essential question: are people obligated to attempt to fix every problem they see to the best of their ability?  We live in a democratic republic, which I feel only functions if every person does their part.  Otherwise, it becomes an oligarchy.  Tom, on the other hand, feels that the democracy portion is broken and largely unnecessary anyway, which means people don't have an individual responsibility to fix problems as they arise or criticize the legal system.

What do you think?  I'm honestly interested in seeing other viewpoints here.  It's not something I see laid out often.

Apologies, ALWAYS necessary

Manners are very important, most of us hopefully learned this at a young age and continue to value them. But nowadays, people seem to "forget" to say "please" or "thank you". Maybe it's because their rude, or maybe its because their parents didn't seem to stress how important they are. Perhaps parents should tell their kids how important something as simple as an apology is. Because, some didn't seem to get the message, like Marjorie and Robert Noel. If only their parents could have told them, that you should always apologize because if you don't you might be found guilty of second degree murder...just a thought...

The Fear of Being Powerless

       In our latest discussions we have been analyzing human behavior, we see the videos and think how come these people didn't try to stop this, but the thing is that most of us have been placed in a situation like this maybe not in a life or death situation but in a situation where we felt powerless. Powerless in the way that we have no idea of what is going on and we would only make things worse, or where the other person has more authority/ strength/ knowledge, than us and maybe it will lead us to get hurt.
       We often hear stories about abuse of authority especially today with police, and it's easier for us to believe that everyone is the same, "all cops are bad", "all black are gangsters", "all Mexicans are illegal", "all whites are racists", etc. We as humans use these as excuse to justify our actions. We could be driving have our permit, licence, and not doing anything wrong yet we see a cop and we suddenly try to freak out, this is mostly because we know that they have more power and can do things that we can't.
       Another thing we talked about was about people providing help to those who need it but adding to the fact that we don't know what is going on, sometimes people don't want to be helped, and yes it sounds harsh but sometimes it's not that we don't care about others but in a case of a couple fighting maybe husband and wife or  just boyfriend and girl friend but there has been cases where people try to stop it but they don't want help. So the fear of being making it worse or misinterpreting the situation makes the person think twice about helping.
   

Should we get involved

After yesterdays class i thought a lot about whether or not people should be able to be a bystander and let a crime happen. I think that if you know something is going to happen and you do nothing to stop it then you should be held partially responsible because you are contributing to the event of the crime even though your not the one doing the crime. Bystander are people who infuriate me because they are just watching. There are so many things in life that could be prevented if someone had just stepped in to help and/or prevent that occurrence.

Race, real or not?

     For the past couple of days we have been watching a documentary on wether or not race is real. I think that this is a very interesting theory. Since grade school I have been learning that race is a part of society and that it is very much a real thing. When we learn about american history, we are taught that slaves were inferior because they were black. Their race was inferior to whites. History class is one of many examples of how our society pushes race upon kids that are growing up. Because I have been learning that race is a very real thing for the majority of my life, it is still a very new idea to me that race us not real, and honestly I still can not decided if I believe that race is not real. The documentary on race in america talks about how from a biological point of view race can not exist, yet from a social and cultural level race is extremely real. I have come to a conclusion that this is an idea that I can agree with. It makes sense to me that race can not be real from a biological point of view because are bodies are all the same and other than physical characteristics there is no difference between people of different skin colors. However I also think that for now race is a big part of our every day social and cultural lives. I say for now because the documentry also brings up the idea that race is slowly going away. As the world becomes more diverse Racism is slowly disappearing, however because our brains are ingrained with this idea of race from a young age it is hard to get ride of the idea that race does not exist. Some people even refuse to believe that race does not exist because it is part of there social beliefs.

Racism in Liberal Areas

Hey guys-
After reading many of your posts on the complacency that happens in this area, I thought it would be interesting to look at a different part of the country.

I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. My hometown has been named one of the 'best cities for liberals', and has also been named the 'number 1 most educated city' by Forbes. I am incredibly privileged to have grown up in a busy college town with an abundance of educational resources within my grasp. Although I live in Los Altos now, I have kept with my roots long enough to notice a dangerous rumor being spread rampantly throughout the city of Ann Arbor. Many seem to refer to Ann Arbor as a liberal, racism-free bubble. Because of its location in a predominantly white, republican state in the Midwest, Ann Arbor has built up the reputation of being post-racial and forward thinking, unlike the surrounding area. To me, it seems to hide its racism through a liberal mask.

Ann Arbor isn't a bubble or a haven for minorities around the state of Michigan. Ann Arbor houses just as much racism as any other place, shown through series of micro aggressions, stereotypes and prejudice. Ann Arbor covers its racism with a plethora of "liberal" things- we have a lot of coffee shops and book stores so we cant be racist, right? Most people are democrats so racism isn't a problem here, right?
Unfortunately, racism is a problem everywhere. Everyone is influenced by race in some form, which means that anyone can be racist, and a lot of people are. Racism is complex combination of conditioning . There is no simple solution because it isn't a simple problem.

The Bay Area is similar- we place ourselves above outspoken racists because we believe we have been raised to be better than them. In reality, everyone displays racism because everyone experiences racist conditioning, we just show it differently than people in other places.

The Bay Area Bubble

The other day I decided to bring up the discussion of race to a few of my friends, and one of the questions I asked was, "Do you think we are on the right track to overcome racism in our country?" What shocked me was, one of my friends said that we have already overcome racism. She said that the media blows it all up, and if you really look around, there really are not racial issues. She said, that we all get along fine, and that you get more opportunity as an African American than a white person now in this country.  I told her that I disagree, because even though this particular area may not have these issues, everywhere else in the country does. I tried telling her that we live in a very "safe, rich, well maintained, and liberal area". And that everywhere else in the country is VERY DIFFERENT. She didn't end up agreeing with me in the end, but I'm curious if anyone else agrees with her opinion?