Posts Tagged "Week 22"

Baby Kimyesus

Posted by on Mar 28, 2013 in Passion | 4 comments


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I want to kind of connect my passion post this week with what I’ve been focusing my Civic Issues blogs on: Issues of race and diversity.

As you all probably know, Baby Kimyesus is upon us. The baby that will try and probably fail to top adorable Blue Ivy. This child will probably be born with a leather diaper, 5 gold chains and stilettos no matter what the gender is. At least we still have a few months to prepare before the arrival of Kim Kardashian’s child (Am I the only one still amazed that she is actually having a child??). As we all know the father of Kim’s baby is none other than rap superstar Kanye West. Kim was asked during an interview if she would be prepared to raise a bi-racial baby seeing as she is Armenian and white and Kanye is Black.  Kim’s response was,  “the way I want to raise my children is to not see color”. 

I can see where Kim’s good intentions lie. It’s difficult to be bi-racial in this world, especially in a country where everyone obsesses over what race they are and how they’re 177th % this or that. It will be hard for Kim and Kanye to teach their child that discrimination exists for people of mixed races and that there will be inevitable struggles down the road for their child. However, the solution to these problems is not to just pretend that race or racism does not exist. For one it is impossible. If their child won’t learn it at home they will soon be made aware of their race by the outside world. Also the implications of teaching your child to ignore color can be detrimental.

For one, if Kim does not show her child what race is she will be denying the cultures that herself and Kanye both come from. Cultures that have gone through tremendous hardship but also are beautiful and rich in culture. Raising someone to be “color blind” makes them just that, blind to influence of race on a person. Your heritage, culture, and language  shapes their past, present, and future and this is a lesson that no one should be denied of.

I consider myself proud to know my heritage and how my race overcame and went through struggles and still is beautiful. Even though I did struggle with identity when it comes to my culture at times I can say that I’m glad that someone took the time to sit me down and tell me of where I came from and the experiences of others like me. I hope that Kim and Kanye come to the realization that denying race does no good, even with the best of intentions.

Comment below with your thoughts!

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Global Diversity

Posted by on Mar 28, 2013 in Uncategorized | 2 comments

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In my previous post I examined how diversity plays out across the nation on various types of college campuses. I explained the differences between Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Predominantly White Colleges and how the different experiences that a student might have at each type of school would affect their life past college. Now, I want to examine how diversity plays out on an international scale. Do other countries value diversity and consider it an issue as we do here in the states? How diverse are other countries compared to America? On a scale where diversity is measured in the difference in ethnicity  language, and religion America gains a very high rank while countries such as South Korea are described as ethnically homogeneous and those who are not Korean are discriminated against or shunned. .

In America and other countries such as Canada and England, there are organizations that work to promote diversity not only in everyday life but also the workplace. Foundations such as Global Diversity (The company and the organization). These organizations believe that diverse societies are the only way that people can truly express themselves in a society. How is diversity seen in places such as third world countries? There are countries where there simply is no word for diversity due to the fact that on the grand scale of issues, diversity does not rank so high. It sounds harsh but in a place where food and water are not always guaranteed I don’t think the citizens are going to be too focused on how high their country ranks on the diversity index.  It seems that the view of diversity as a cultural issue is something that only first world countries deal with.

If we as a society are to come to terms with how diversity is looked at and dealt with it seems that first there should be a recognized, worldwide view on what exactly a fundamental right is. We need to gauge if by “diversity” some countries mean in terms of gender, race, or other terms. There also needs to be a re-examination of how important diversity is in other cultures. In some parts of Europe, diversity is sometimes an illegal issue to talk about and not at all discussed like it is here By doing this we can then begin to address the various problems that come along with diversity.

After reading various articles on the subject of diversity on a  global scale, I feel that the issue should be kept on more of a regional scale. For instance, each country or state should choose how they want to deal with diversity. The reason for this is that because there can really be no way to move forward in terms of diversity if not everyone views the issue the same way which I mentioned is the case with third world countries.

 

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