Category Archives: Civic Issues

Creoles

Creoles are a fascinating kind of people for me.  Famous literature was based on them, and many celebrities are of creole descent. Creole is a word derived from the French and Portuguese words créole and crioulu. Both are connoted by “descendent” and “to raise” these descendants overseas. Creoles are not only a racial melange, but they also represent a mixing of cultures through colonists and their native colony people. Contrary to popular belief, Creoles are far more than what New Orleans is known for. Mixing actually happened relatively quickly in Spanish and Portuguese colonies. The “mixing” is attributed to the fact that there was a lack of Spanish and Portuguese women in these colonies, and there was a Crown policy promoted mixed relations to create loyal colony populations.


 

Spanish colonization of Americas

Spanish colonization of Americas


 

There are a crazy amount of ethnic groups associated with being “creole”:

  • Afro-Brazilian Ciroulos (Central South America)
  • Sierra Leone Creole (North West Africa)
  • Aku Krio people (Muslim of Sierra Leone)
  • Belizean Kriol people (Central America)
  • Criollo people (Those of confirmed latin descent in Mexico)
  • Haitian creole (Caribbean Island)
  • Afro-Honduran Creoles (Central America)
  • Liberian Creole (North West Africa)
  • Louisiana Creole people(Southern US)
  • Mauritian Creole (Island off Madagascar – East Africa)
  • Nigerian Creole (North West Africa)
  • Seychellois creole (Island North of Madagascar).

And here is a collage showcasing most of these differentiations:

BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE

BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE


 

They are of mixed descent with African, native American and European. Those originating from Spanish colonized places are of Latino descent, but those in other colonies are of French descent. The French colonized parts of Africa as well as Louisiana in the US. NOLA is like its own little enigma, and I feel like only NOLA natives understand its culture. And what bothers me a little bit is that this “multi culturalism” that the Crown was hoping to instill resulted in this beautiful ethnic group. I mean when you think about it, European settlers and explorers invaded locals’ land but I suppose they found a way to get along. I really liked making the collage above, though, because you can see the Latino and African genes coming together in making these beautiful freaking people. Snoop Dogg on some reality show was told that he’s 23% Native American, which is a pretty big percent! Creole people fascinate me because it’s more than just being a European mut of genes. There are races mixing here, but when looking back on the history of colonisation, I have a feeling that this was a result of somewhat crass imperialism of European colonies.

“The Awakening” by Kate Chopin is a classic American novel written from the French creole perspective. She writes about the difficult life that creole women had to face being “caged in” like a bird. The book is just a long-ass metaphor about being a caged in bird. Her perspective, however, is from the white creole perspective, as in a nationality or ethnicity, and not a racial definition. There is also that interpretation of Creole.

I thought for my last civic issues post I would explore multiculturalism in history, and I feel like the vast mixing of races in creole people is something people over-look all the time. I only knew of it in context of NOLA, but I had no idea that this existed all around the world! In fact, the criollo people I had mentioned above actually used their specific Spanish descent as a class system, meaning that if you’re a native of Mexico and you can trace your Latin descent, it makes you less of a mut than others I suppose, and puts you higher up in class.

When you think about it, at this point, “Creole” can be anyone. Even Nicki Minaj is part indian, african american, trinidadian, etc. National Geographic actually has a beautiful look book on “the changing face of America” which has all these mixed people with naturally amazing photography.  I bet in the future creole will become extinct, because mixed marriages are more and more acceptable in society now.

 

 

 

City culture vs. suburban culture

Lately, I’ve started noticing a lot how different our demographics affect our upbringing. For Schreyer scholars, our biggest struggles are getting an A on an upcoming test, but for other people, their problems may not be bigger but they sure are on completely different plans. For example, when I visit my friends in city schools, a lot of the university towns are similar to any college campus, but as soon as you enter the local community, its so much more different. In cities, people are concerned about their safety, their expensive housing, among other things. When I visit home in the suburbs, I hear my mom talking about how someone asked everyone to bring way too much food to the potluck, and how its unfair for the host to be cooking the least food at a potluck. When I hear that, I think, do these people not have ANY bigger problems in their life??? And then when I see people in the city working at food trucks making their living, I think, how can these people even find a way to live??? I find it overwhelming that we’re approaching real life so soon, and wow, I could not be more thankful that my biggest problem is getting an A on the next test, because that means I’m privy to an education, a luxury that some people just don’t have.

Anyway, it is interesting to see the different cultures, and their problems, and what our eventual contributions to the world will be. I am inspired to write this post because Kendrick Lamar, my favorite rapper/musician/artist just released a new album “To Pimp a Butterfly”, which is about is overwhelming new fame. He came from Compton, CA city south of Los Angeles where a few rappers have actually come from (Tyga, Dr. Dre, Schoolboy Q, N.W.A) and a lot of their music is inspired by the cultural differences between the black and hispanic gangs in this city. Now, I will take the disparity of multiculturalism and boil it down to this city in California. Kendrick’s second album “good kid, M.A.A.D city” is lyrically genius. good kid, refers to Kendrick, a kid with good intentions, in a “Mad city” which makes him do crazy things. M.A.A.D also stands for “my angel on angel dust”, which is PCP, which is apparently the scariest drug on the streets. He finds solace from the crime through God, actually, and is why he refers to angels in the title as well.

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I know rap is hard to get into for a lot of people, but if you go on rap genius (explains each lyric) and look through all the songs in this album, its amazing poetry. My favorite is money trees. In Compton, the culture is to be born into your gang, and hate the gang you’re suppose to. It’s a lot like Romeo and Juliet. Kendrick was born into the “Pirus bloods” gang. This whole album is about the struggle of how his gang makes him throw up their signs, and pledge allegiance to its values like drugs and crime, but he finds solace in his actions with his connection to God.In this song, he talks about how they’d “go at a reverend for the revenue”, which means they would mug or steal from a reverend because that’s how desperate they are. Later on, he says “halle berry or hallelujah//Pick your poison…”, because he sees halle berry, or a life of spoils as nothing fulfilling, but salvation in the darkness of compton as impossible, so both futures are like “poison”. This whole song is about stealing money from people with his homies, but he battles this bad with finding salvation through God. In the last verse he says “them serpents lurking [for] blood//Bitches selling pu***, niggas selling drugs, but it’s all good”. This is a play on words referring to the Garden of Eden that serpents are also in Compton tempting the bad out of people, which he explains with that next fruitful line.

City Compton California Considers Bankruptcy oLfdkMpOnGKl

Can you imagine living in a place where no other culture but the one you’re born into is respected? Kendrick found solace by writing music and finding inspiration from his predecessors like Tupac and Dr. Dre. I have noticed how vastly different everyone’s problems are, and someone like Kendrick really sheds a light on just how much multiculturalism lacks in low-income places. In this case, it manifests as a fight between two gangs. Who even knew gang culture was prevalent anymore! Rappers do take steps to stop their childhoods from happening to other people, though, because for example in the song maad city, kendrick says how when he’s in the crips’ streets, he hears “yawk, yawk, yawk” on the street as a warning, which he has schoolboy q (previous crips member) sing. Even their friendship is enough of an influence to instill a small change in Compton.

Anyway, this post has run way over, but another one of Kendrick’s moving pieces is Keisha’s song which doesn’t concern multiculturalism much, but it’s about rape and the horrible life that this poor girl has to live to support herself. Listen and read to be moved!!

Reflection on other deliberation

The other deliberation I decided to attend was about high stakes testing and a discussion about if we really need them. It was at Websters last Thursday by students from Cynthia Mazzantes class. To be honest, the only reason I went was because it was the only one at Webster’s I could attend and I figured they’d have good refreshments.

Which they did...

Either way, this deliberation hit home for me because I went to an IB school, and we had NO multiple choice tests. Our process was more valued than our answer (which I think SHOULD be the case!), and it makes me mad how I take 3 15 question multiple choice tests in physics that somehow prove the fact that I do or do not know physics. I had the same frustration over the SATs. I was happy that this deliberation enlightened me on some of the sad truths about high stakes testing. Because I’m a science major, I am very focused on the content of a test, and not the implications. Meanwhile, the business majors in the room spoke to the college board business, and how its been around since 1926! The associate dean of student affairs of schreyer, Mitch Kerschinski was also in attendance, which was a nice perspective when us students started going off on more of a rant than a deliberation. The three approaches were 1) Keep the test, but what can be done in schools to help prepare for it 2) change the use of the test (instead of such a heavy emphasis on admission, it will be a factor) 3) Get rid of it. I had figured something like Webster’s would lend itself to a deliberation but its chairs were very cluttered and it actually made it harder for each mini team to get around. They were flustered to begin with, but I only thought team 1 had a very structured and specific approach. They asked us what we thought the test is used for, and what helps people do well in the test. And from there we discussed how the approach to the test can be changed. Approach 2 and 3 were very practical and focused much less on the implications and more on the execution of WHAT can be done, which I didn’t really like. For example, it was more like “Okay we’ll teach more geometry in high school. Then people will be able to take the test.” I think it made sense to discuss implications first, because in theory each approach is executable. I think the real problem is the TEST and how its worded etc, not the INFORMATION on the test.

Also, we didn’t have a “difficult one” attend ours, but there was one sarcastic member that just did not stop talking about his personal stake, but I do think the moderator handled this well in just simply asking a question over top the rant that was inspired by another question. I did like the deliberation though, because I developed a new perspective on the test. At one point we all shared which test we took (ACT or SAT), which one we thought was easier, and which one we did better on. A majority said that they liked the ACT better but scored worse on it, probably because they “prepped” more for the SATs. Now recently, the SAT has changed the test so that it took out some content but did not change the way it tested the person. The method is still the same. This brings up two points.

First, we discussed how the only time we will encounter SAT-like questions is during prep and during the test, and this speaks to the fact that the SAT is a private sector and most schooling is public, making it easy for the SAT to not test “aptitude” but to actually test students on how specifically they know the SAT. Also, because people like the Act better, they changed the SAT to essentially make it easier, but now that its easier, the bottom of the curve will move up while the top will continue to max out, so perhaps colleges will put less of an emphasis on it. I do agree that colleges need a stream lined way to somewhat get rid of applicants, but based on the approaches, I ended up agreeing with 3 in that the test needs to be changed, in 2 that the colleges can’t put a great emphasis on it, and 1 that if it does change, schooling will help students with the test and reduce the “prep” industry. It was an interesting conversation, and I’m glad I attended.

Multiculturalism and why it is hard to teach

America has often times been called a “melting pot”. It’s roots may even be traced back to the founding fathers. There is a belief of national unity, that can be traced back to embracing diversity:

“Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people”

Multiculturalism began as an idea inspired by the “pragmatism” philosophy from the end of the 19th century. Pragmatism is understood as assessing theories and beliefs in terms of their practical application and success. This pragmatic view was partly to justify the mass immigration in the late 19th century. This is not to be confused with cultural plurism which is an existence of smaller cultural niches within a large dominant culture.

We can see an encouragement in modern day grade school teaching about diversity from an early age. However, what needs to be understood about American education is that it has never been simply to “impart knowledge”, but it also has the approach of “making children into americans” (cited from here).

“John Quincy Adams wrote that immigrants ‘must cast off their European skin, never to resume it.’ Horace Mann argued that ‘a foreign people — cannot be transformed into the full stature of American citizens merely by a voyage across the Atlantic.’ One of the strongest motives for building public schools was, therefore, the need to make Americans out of Europeans.”

However, a small change can be seen in after the 1960’s with the civil rights movement. Now, Americans changed their teachings of history. A very commonly cited example is the colonization of America. Instead of treating it like a wonderful advance in civilization, they paid more heed to the misfortunes that happened to the Indians living here at the time. Now the question here becomes, what exactly is a multiculturalist approach to teaching history? Is it teaching that American colonists were bad to dislocate the native Indians? Or is it teaching that while an advance in civilisation was a worthy contribution but the dislocation of native Americans was also an unfortunate and consequent casualty?

A similar problem arises when addressing slavery in America’s past. Once it becomes accepted as an “unparalleled evil”, it is easy to question all of America’s history. Once an acceptance of multiculturalism manifests in a modern society, the people whose ideas created America immediately become questionable, because the truth is that one of those ideas/practices was slavery.

Teaching a multicultural history is hard. Schools that are becoming more and more diverse try to teach history by addressing all perspectives, but it becomes uncertain exactly what to learn from this kind of history, because after all, we study history to learn from it. While yes some people may argue that teaching a different perspective is not difficult, and is in fact needed, the problem becomes apparent when trying to approach implied historical knowledge from the perspective of certain cultures. In the same Journal of HIstorical Review that I linked previously, they explain this problem in context of French and British people. The mere geography of London, or famous geographical locations (Waterloo Station, Tralgafer Station) are coined by defeat of the Frenchman, and a triumph for the British aka something to be proud of. But from the French perspective, these are not moments of embarrassment or defeat but memories of the British and all the horrible things they have done. It becomes confusing to teach a history like this, and almost makes the student run in circles.

This article written by James Banks from JHU school of education (I found this through many different search engines and sources… Banks seems to be a big name in multicultural education) explains how teaching with “diversity” can be improved. It is based on studies at University of Maryland and University of Washington, and supported by Carnegie Institute in NY. Its a systematic approach that article one so cynically pointed out with learning a multicultural history. I like principle 3 in their “student learning” section the best.

Principle 3: The curriculum should help students understand that knowledge is socially constructed and reflects researchers’ personal experiences as well as the social, political, and economic contexts in which they live and work.

This addresses a historiography aspect that I wouldn’t have known about if it weren’t for the international baccalaureate curriculum that I was in. While I am still in the generation of education that is changing to approach history and multiculturalism in this way, I have found myself interested, and somewhat understanding of the problem that article 1 pointed out (Because I chose this topic willingly). I think it’s interesting to see that before we can even address multiculturalism as a goal to strive for, we must find a way to teach why it was wrong not to have it in the past.

Middle East Tensions

My best friend ever is Lebanese. We both went to high school together in Pennsylvania, but while I am still a far 3 hour drive from home, she went even farther to Texas for college, and her parents and family back to Lebanon, their home town. Her cousins in Lebanon call me her Atlas friend, because even if we’re in different states or different countries, we have technology to thank for our remaining closeness.

The the quick spread of information also made it easy for her to find out that the south of Lebanon had been bombed by Hezbollah, a terrorist group in Lebanon.

This blog post contains articles in reference to all the events I discuss. I am not necessarily here to write a current event article, but instead the effect of these current events on multiculturalism, so please feel free to click on these articles for further clarification.

Hezbollah Kills 2 Israeli Soldiers Near Lebanon

I can’t imagine how horrifying that must have been for her, but this brings me to my point: the failed attempts at multiculturalism in the middle east. Her family’s hometown should be a safe place to live. Grudges and continued tensions from a conflict that started in 1948 should not be existent in 2015! I wanted to discuss the ambiguous notion of “terrorism in the middle east”. After 9/11, the US in general became very aware of the idea terrorism and often times associated it with the middle east. It has unfortunately been a place of conflict for decades now, but I am glad to have been enlightened on the conflicts there by my inspiring history teacher from high school. He is a Schreyer alum, and is the actually the person I owe my interest in Penn State to. That history class not only taught me important lessons from the world, but also gave me the opportunity to blog about recent civic issues in this RCL class!

In the very recent past there was the bombing in Lebanon, a terrorism attack in Paris coining the hashtag “je suis charlie”, and in the past few years results of the Syrian civil war have wreaked havoc on Syrians and neighboring countries. I can attribute these problems to a failed understanding of multiculturalism, which can be traced back to the beginning of the beginnings of the Arab Isreali conflict.

What Je Suis Charlie Has Become

From that same history teacher's recent trip to Paris @balladinplainh

From that same history teacher’s recent trip to Paris @balladinplainh

Je suis Charlie was a response to the terrorist attacks against a satirical newspaper charlie hebdo who disrespectfully portrayed the prophet mohammed. While the attacks are not justified, it is arguable that they were provoked. Because of the negative connotation associated with Islam, the newspaper may have felt less remorse making fun of the most respected prophet of the religion. Je Suis Charlie simply advocates a disrespect of Islam, and is that justifiable?

Last year, I learned about the Arab-Isreali Conflict in history. I was seriously confused at how coexistence was so difficult. The conflict can be quoted as starting in 1948, marking the partition of Isreal from Palestine and the end of the British Mandate in Palestine. The grudges held from Isreal’s victory in the 1948 war created a web of tensions between the different Arab nations in the middle east, leading from one event to the next. Eventually this ceased somewhat to developed after the Yom Kippur, or 1973 war where there was a ceasefire initiated by the US. At the time, cold war was in its détente, and the US was paranoid that the Arabs would get its hands on nuclear weapons.

Now the problems of multiculturalism can be highlighted from the beginning of the conflict. Jewish people adapted “Zionism” (a right to return to ones “homeland”) to argue why a land blocked off called “Isreal” was theirs. First of all, while the Isreali people did make somewhat of an obnoxious move, claiming a part of a country’s land as their own, the Palestinians hate towards this sector resulted in an “Arab support group” of sorts for the Palestinian people. From this affiliation and on, antisemitism prevailed. Not only was this around the end of WWII, where many displaced Jews from Europe had no where to turn, but also the Arab countries turned an ignorant front to the Isreali struggle. The UN also made it an even bigger mess by drawing random borders for the various Arab countries. While officially on paper Israel painstakingly signed peace treaties with all bordering Arab nations, some extremists were still not happy. In the end, these conflicts resulted in Arab terrorist groups. The first known group would be the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation which emerged in the 1970s. Most recently, the conflict manifests with “Hamas”, and “Hezbollah” terrorist organizations which continue to launch attacks on Israel.

The lack of multiculturalism can explain why Lexi must be so concerned about her parents in Lebanon. It borders Israel, so she can expect attacks by Hamas, or Hezbollah to be bombing the borders of its Arab countries. While the Israel claiming zionism is proper justification for a Palestinian exodus, the Jews have a right for a location or country to call their own, especially if it is around one of the holiest places for those who practice Judaism. The Middle East is a mess. While Western countries attempt to make beaureaucratic amends with UN resolutions, and pleas for peace, the real instillment of peace will happen when anti-semitism stops clouding the judgement of Arab groups in the middle east.