The American Creed – SAMO

Throughout my life, I have made it my quest to further my understanding of events around me. No matter how far it was, if I saw something that I knew would help me understand an event, I would travel to it. I was shocked to find that there was something at my local library. They would be premiering the documentary American Creed, and would have a discussion of it afterwards. I drove, along with my brother, David, and my friend Brent to the Northbrook Public Library. After a short 6 minute commute, we arrived. The event was completely free, and after we walked in and took our seats, we saw some of our classmates there. We talked about our hopes for the movie, and waited for it to begin.

image2 (1) — Me, Brent, and David at the end of the Movie

As the movie began, we were brought into a Stanford discussion group with first generation college students. They were discussing what it meant to be an American where we are headed as a nation. This piece was created to really open people’s eyes and make them see the common bond that we all share and how we are starting to tear apart from that goal. This SAMO really connected to my class because it talked about how there is hate out there strictly because people are different then us. It also preached how even though there may be differences out there, we all are similar and have a common goal. In my class, we have had discussions on why we try to look at all these little differences when we all want to accomplish the same thing? This documentary just furthered our discussions and helped to provide the viewers with different ways to shape our own conversations.

image1 (2) — Photo Taken by Me of the Beginning of the Movie

After the movie was over, we were all brought into a room where we sat around a table and discussed the movie and where we all came from. While I sat at a table with a couple of my friends from class, a group of elderly people came and joined us. We learned from them where they came from and different things that shaped who they were. These conversations really opened my eyes to all of the fascinating differences that every person has. I took away from the discussions that we may all have different ways that we got to the point that we did, but we all ended up getting to where we are for a reason and are here to help each other. When I have future discussions about this topic, I will remember what I have learned from my experience of watching The American Creed and will utilize it to help my point.

I strongly recommend that people view this film. It is only a little under an hour and a half and it can help change your viewpoint on certain issues. To view this film, please click the link here!

We Can Change

All my life, I have understood that there are people that are different than us. I have understood that these people sometimes are unable to control their thoughts and actions, and that it can cause them to hallucinate. They don’t have a choice to decide when these hallucinations happen to them, it just happens. After reading The Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Weijun Wang, I now have a new understanding of just how drastic the issue of mental illness is. One of the biggest problems, in regards to mental illness is the different types of treatment plans out there.

When people first began to realize that there were people out there that were mentally ill, they became fearful. They worried as to whether these people were dangerous or not, and how they could better protect themselves from the mentally ill. In order to “make the world safer” mentally ill people were shipped off to asylums where they were to be treated and rehabilitated to normal. These asylums, however, were much worse than anyone could have predicted. The treatment that they followed were inhumane, and plain out wrong.

According to a Ted Talk given by Elyn Saks, a women who has struggled with mental illness, she remembers her time in a mental hospital. “At times, I spent up to 20 hours in mechanical restraints, arms tied, arms and legs tied down, arms and legs tied down with a net tied tightly across my chest. I never struck anyone. I never harmed anyone. I never made any direct threats. (7:10). The fact that she was restrained just because she was considered mentally ill, without even making any threats is just awful. There should no reason that she should be treated like an animal, tied up because they believed she couldn’t control herself. If there were no threats that were made, she should have just been put in a padded room until the symptoms ended, not strapped to a bed. She is a human being, not a science project.

Elyn also states the terrifying fact that “Every week in the United States, it’s been estimated that one to three people die in restraints (7:39).” It is awful to try to comprehend that statistic. The fact that people know this statistic and still continue to use restraints is baffling to me. There are many other ways to help secure someone than using restraints. They also should not be using a restraint when the person doesn’t pose any harm to themselves or others. There just is no reason to do this when there are safer alternatives.

Unfortunately, this is not the only problem with how we treat the mentally ill. In fact, surprisingly, there is another way that we treat them that is even worse: we criminalize them and put them into jail. According to an article from The Atlantic.com “At Cook County Jail, an estimated one in three inmates has some form of mental illness. At least 400,000 inmates currently behind bars in the United States suffer from some type of mental illness – a population larger than the cities of Cleveland, New Orleans, or St. Louis – according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. NAMI estimates that between 25 and 40 percent of all mentally ill Americans will be jailed or incarcerated at some point in their lives (2).”

This is such an incredibly awful statistic. To have so many people in jail when they deserve to be in a hospital and getting treatment is just terrible. We need people to understand jail is not meant for these people, instead a hospital will help to rehabilitate them. Jail is meant to correct how an inmate behaves, not correct a mental issue. To have between 25 and 40 percent of all mentally ill Americans be in jail at some point in their lives is not right. This statistic shows us that we have a very big problem to address; we need to find a way to characterize who is mentally ill and who is not much earlier on, as being mentally ill and going to jail only hurts them. What really upset me even more was that at Cook County Jail an estimated 1 in 3 inmates were mentally ill. This upset me because this jail is the closest one to my house. That means that there are people who live very close to me that are hurting just because the system does not understand that they are ill.

download (3) — Photo from ChicagoTribune.com

We need to research to find better solutions to help mentally ill people. According to Fortune.com, “1 in 5 (or 43.8 million) adults experience mental illness in a given year. (2)” This is an extremely high number. With a number this high, there needs to be research done to see the possible ways to improve mental health treatment. I am confident that in given time, we will be able to find a way that can help the mentally ill. We will support them and understand what they are going through.

We Are Wrong!

As a young child, my peers and I were always taught that we were special and could do anything that we wanted to in the world. We were told that we had a ton of privileges in this world, and that people would be there along the way in order to help us get by. As we grew a little bit older, we began to see all of the privileges that we had that others, that seemed like us, did not have. Whether it was wealth or even something as simple as what clothes someone was wearing, we took notice that they were not like us.

When we finally grew old enough to understand the complexities of our world, we saw that there were people out there who were not mentally all there. These people had different mental illnesses that affect their day to day lives. Instead of giving these people the help that they need, we were just socialized to not see their problems. We were taught to just look away from them and just say okay to whatever they said. We were told to never try to interact with them because they may hurt us. We were taught to fear them. Since we were taught this, we believed that it was the only true way to treat these people.

download — Photo from theconversation.com

We weren’t just socialized to do this by random people however. As Bobbie Harro, author of The Cycle of Socialization, says “Immediately upon our births, we begin to be socialized by the people we love and trust the most, our families or the adults who are raising us. They shape our self-concepts and self-perceptions, the norms and rules we must follow, the roles we are taught to play, our expectations for the future, and our dreams (17).”

Having our families socialize us and teach us to follow their beliefs is a good thing in some respects, but can also be a very bad thing. Not only do we pick up all of the good that they teach us about the world, but we also pick up all the bad. We pick up certain racist ideologies and other beliefs that they have. Our parents were socialized the wrong way on how to deal with mental illnesses. When our parents were young, their parents had no clue how to deal with mental illnesses. Specialists were still trying to figure out what the best steps were in order to help the people with mental illnesses, while also trying to keep the general public safe. Since our grandparents had no clue what to do, they taught their children to just ignore people with mental illnesses and just say okay to whatever they said. When our parents had us, they just raised us exactly how they were raised. What they didn’t realize was there was a lot of research that came out, that showed that mentally ill people were just like us and just needed a little bit of help.

Unfortunately, it was too late to teach children the right way to interact with the mentally ill. The cycle had already begun. Even though it is our goal to stop this cycle, and correct the misconception that people have on how to treat the mentally ill, it is a very tough task to accomplish. Bobbie Harro says “When we arrive at the results of this terrible cycle, we face the decision of what to do next. It is easiest to do nothing, and simply to allow the perpetuation of the status quo…The cycle has a life of its own. It doesn’t need our active support because it has its own centrifugal force. It goes on, and unless we choose to interrupt it, it will continue to go on. Our silence is consent (20).” We need to try to interrupt this cycle. If we don’t interrupt it, it will just continue to go on and on until it gets to the point where we treat the mentally ill even worse. They do not deserve to be treated like this, as they are normal people just like us. They are trying to do whatever they can in order to get help so we need to be there for them and support them. We can’t be treating them like outcasts. There is just no reason to be rude like this. We were taught wrong. Our parents were taught wrong. Let’s fix this cycle so nobody else will be taught like this.

Not so MICROaggressions

We are taught as young kids that there used to be a lot of racism in our world. We were taught that black people were discriminated against, and were made into slaves. We were told that this happened because people believed that african americans were not as superior as white people were. We were also taught that it was over, and that we evolved as a country, recognizing that every person was created equal. However, as time moved on and we grew older, our eyes, which were not so young anymore, were opened to all of the injustices that still remained in the world. We saw that while african americans were no longer slaves, they were still being treated differently than white people were. They did not receive the same rights that white people received and were treated unfairly because of this.

no colored allowed — Photo From GGWash.org

African Americans also received little racist comments that seemed innocent on the outside, but really have a much deeper, and meaner, meaning to them. These microaggressions collectively form the experience of racism that people see day to day. There is no reason for these microaggressions to be said; they are just said out of pure hatred. The book Citizen by Claudia Rankine highlights the issue of microaggressions. Mrs. Rankine brings us through the examples of different microaggressions that either her, or others, have been through. As time goes on in the book, the microaggressions get more and more aggressive until it gets to the point where one wonders how someone could say what they said. One microaggression that was extremely problematic to me was during the Stop-and-Frisk chapter. The author of the chapter details what it is like to be an african american male while being stopped by the police. While describing how often he is stopped, he says “still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description (108).” This quote really showed me the major problem that our country is facing. Just because somebody fits a certain racial profile does not mean that that person should automatically be considered when a crime happens. We don’t hear this type of thing happening with a white person so there is no reason that this should be happening with a black person.

This also is extremely upsetting because I can only imagine what it must be like to have to go through this type of stuff all the time. Parents have had to teach their young children what it is like to be african american in today’s world, and how they should interact with the police. People in today’s world have an ethical responsibility to address these issues that our society is facing. It doesn’t matter if you are white or african american, everyone should have this ethical responsibility. If these microaggressions are not addressed soon, then they are just going to get even worse until it gets to the point where it just becomes uncontrollable.

0Dbl0A8r3tNgU4gFE — Photo From MelMagazine.com

There are plenty of ways that people can address microaggressions. One of the best ways to address microaggressions was brought up by Richard Paul and Linda Elder in their book, The Thinker’s Guide to Ethical Reasoning. They say that “actively imagining oneself in the mind of another person in order to fully understand the other person (44).” Actively imagining oneself in the mind of another person, will allow for you to be able to fully understand the other person. If we do this, then there will no longer be any microaggressions because people will understand just how hurtful what they are saying is. I think that putting yourself in the mind of another person is a very good idea, however, it seems like it will be an extremely hard thing to do. You have to convince the person who is saying these microaggressions that they should imagine how the person they are saying it to feels, and they also have to actually think about it.

Q1oD5SW54XypzoYUgGvhhgHr — ThingLink.com

Currently, people are trying to address how much of a problem microaggressions are but they are doing so with very little success. There just is not enough information that is going around about this issue. Had I not taken my Contemporary Social Topics English class, I would have had no clue that this was going on. People like Claudia Rankine are writing books about microaggressions. and the problems that it is causing our country. The problem with these books are that they are just not publicized enough so nobody really knows what it is about or if they should buy it. People also try to address this problem by telling people how rude what they said was, whenever they hear someone say a microaggression. The only problem with this is, while it may prevent the person who said the microaggression from ever saying it again, it just doesn’t reach enough people.

I suggest that we as citizens of the United States, try to teach as many people as we can about this issue. If we do this, then hopefully it will spread and everyone will realize how much of a problem microaggressions are. Only then, will we be able to prevent microaggressions from happening again.

You Will be Found (and Saved)

I have always been very invested in my religion. Whether it was going to services, helping out around the temple, or just talking with my rabbi just to say hi. It was just an expectation for me to join our youth group. Since joining in 8th grade, I have been involved in the youth group, attending events every Thursday and I even am a member of my youth group’s executive board.

On my quest to try to learn more about the world around me a big opportunity came up. My temple was going to see Dear Evan Hansen and they youth was invited to come. My friends and I immediately purchased tickets for $100. When the day of the play came along, my friends, and my brother, David, took a bus down to the city to go see the play. After a long hour commute, shuffling to find whose ticket was whose, we arrived. We all took pictures together, and took our seats.

I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical of the play before it even started. I have never been a big broadway guy, and would rather go to a sporting event in shorts and a t-shirt, over wearing a nice button down shirt and jeans. However, this play definitely changed my view on how important broadway actually is.

The play started and immediately drew the audience into Evan’s life. We saw just how uncomfortable he was in social situations and how he felt like a loner. While this play was extremely good, on a humor and plot level, it contains such a deeper level. This play showed the struggle that people who are suicidal and feel like a loner go through. The songs that were sung really dug into the thoughts that the characters were thinking. One song that really struck me was You Will be Found. This song showcased how alone Evan feels and how he feels like nobody notices him. This song really got to me because it was very upsetting to hear how someone felt like nobody even notices who he is.

In the play, we were also able to see how it wasn’t only Evan that was struggling. Whether it was Heidi, Evan’s mom, who was struggling with her son being depressed, the Murphy family wondering why their son killed himself, we saw just how everyone was hurting. The idea of others struggling really related to The Person Sitting Next to You by Ross Snyder. Everyone always believes that the one who commits suicide is really struggling, and while they are, the people with that person are also struggling. This show really epitomized the fact that you don’t know what the person next to you is going through.

At the beginning of the play, nobody thought that Evan’s friend Jared was struggling, however as time moved on, we were able to see that Evan was really his only friend and that he was struggling socially. This really gave me a good lesson on the fact of how while someone may seem to be perfectly fine on the outside, on the inside they are in a bad place and can use help. This play really taught me to keep my eye open and to look out for other people.

Going to see Dear Evan Hansen really changed how I think about people around the world because it showed me that some people are really struggling and just need help. Seeing the play ignited my passion to help people that need it.

I believe that everyone around the world should see this play so that way they could better understand the struggle that people go through. While this play is no longer in town right now, it will be back from July 7th 2020 – September 27th 2020.

Changes Need to be Made

As a child I was always told not to take anything for granted, that anything can happen at any time. I was taught to live my life to the fullest and enjoy every minute of it. I used to never understand why my parents always repeated this, I was so incredibly young and had my whole life ahead of me! Recently, however, there has been a lot going on in the world that has made me question my understanding of the phrase. Our country has become plagued with an epidemic of school shootings. Schools all over, regardless of economic status, have witnessed these violent attacks. In the book Glimmer of Hope: How Tragedy Sparked a Movement, the founders of the March for Our Lives Movement take us through their response when a school shooting shook their community. They helped shed light on the fact that school shootings have become more prevalent than ever and that there is no guide on steps to take to rebuild a school after a shooting.

My mashboard was created to inform others about why we need to find a way to make a change. This problem clearly is not fixing itself, and we can’t keep waiting for more kids to die before we make a change. If more people are informed of the issue at hand then, with people helping to pressure congressmen/women, we can make a change. I also used my mashboard to show how complex fixing this issue is. I highlighted towards the top of my mashboard the 2nd Amendment. The 2nd Amendment talks about how we the people have the right to bear arms. This amendment has caused a lot of problems in fixing the issue of school shootings because a shooting cannot happen without arms. This amendment allows for people to argue that they are able to buy any type of gun they want because it is their right. Other people have found for this to be extremely dangerous and in turn, have fought to try to remove the amendment.

My mashboard also showcases quotes from some students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who were plagued with a school shooting in their community, talking about how they had no training or any ideas of what to do after what happened in their community. This showcases a big issue of the fact that there is no guide on how to rebuild a community after a school shooting.

When I was deciding how to best arrange my mashboard, I came upon the decision to put all of the quotes and pictures in a crooked fashion. I did this because I felt that it would better show how communities, who used to have their world be very clear and straight, became crooked after going through such a horrible tragedy. I thought that by doing this it would make the reader of the board feel as if they too were crooked.

I also decided to put a bar graph showcasing how the amount of school shootings that the United States has each year has only been rising. I found this statistic to be so incredibly troubling that I made it bigger than everything else of the board and put it right in the middle. I did this because I wanted it to be the first thing that the viewers saw. I believe that this statistic is just so incredibly troubling that it would really draw the readers in and make them want to read more. It really shows how this problem is not fixing itself and that we need to do something to fix it otherwises the problem is just going to get bigger and bigger until it is becomes almost impossible to fix.

Works Cited

Erickson, Amanda. “This Is How Common School Shootings Are in America.” Chicago Tribune, Chicago Tribune, 15 Feb. 2018, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-america-school-shootings-20180215-story.html.

Harro, Bobbie. The Cycle of Liberation. geography.washington.edu/sites/geography/files/documents/harro-cycle-of-liberation.pdf.

Ktvl. “Measure 18-110: Klamath County Second Amendment Preservation Ordinance.” KTVL, ktvl.com/news/kyc/klamath-county/measure-18-110-klamath-county-second-amendment-preservation-ordinance.

March for Our Lives Founders (COR). Glimmer of Hope: How Tragedy Sparked a Movement. Penguin Group USA, 2018.

“Parkland Students Prepare for Graduation – CNN Video.” CNN, Cable News Network, 2 June 2018, http://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2018/06/02/parkland-marjory-stoneman-douglas-graduation-gallagher-dnt-newday.cnn.

Rubio, Jordan. “Stats and Charts Show How Violent This School Year Has Been.” HoustonChronicle.com, Houston Chronicle, 19 May 2018, http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/gray-matters/article/School-shootings-by-the-numbers-12928096.php.

Synder, Ross. “The Person Sitting Next to You.” harrellland.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Person-Sitting-Next-to-You-guide-sheet.pdf.

SAMOre Fun

I have always been in search of finding the next little piece of information that could change my life. Whether it was finding out if I got a certain award, or even into a college, these tiny pieces of information altered my life for the better. So, on a warm day over winter break, my brother David, my twelve-year-old cousin Isaac, and I drove over to the city to visit the Chicago Cultural Center. After trying to find a place to get out of the car, we embarked up the steps and into the free center. After a much needed bathroom break, we walked throughout the building, reading about all of the exhibits that they had to offer.

At each exhibit I went to, I saw multiple pieces of artwork that connected to themes discussed in my CST class. I saw pieces related to human rights, racism, gender roles, and so many more. One piece that really disturbed me was the Boston Massacre Diorama Number 12 by Charles Dawson. This piece showed two armies fighting against each other. One army had a white general commanding all-white soldiers, however another army had a white general commanding all african american soldiers. This piece was extremely disturbing to me because it shows how they did not value african american lives as highly as they did for white lives and how the white general was just able to make the african american soldiers go onto the front-line. I was wondering how this would be allowed to happen and then it hit me; the general had an unearned privilege. Just because he was white, he was able to command the troops. This topic is very similar to the text White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible by Peggy McIntosh because it shows yet another unearned privilege that white people have. This piece really shows how race can define the successes that a person has.

Another piece that also disturbed me was a piece called Black is Beautiful by Emmett McBain. It showed some of the words that has “black” in it that have awful meanings, such as black eye, black market, and others. It ends by saying “white lies.” This piece really struck me because it shows that while there are a lot of words that have black in it that have bad meanings, however, there really aren’t that many that have white in it. It really makes me wonder if society calls people of darker skin color black because of the connotation that the word has?

Going to the Chicago Cultural Center really changed how I think because it showed me that some of the injustices that we have today are not new, and that they have been happening for a while. Visiting the center ignited my passion to help create change in the world.

I believe that everyone around the world should see these pieces or pieces similar to this so that way they could better educate themselves. If you were to only follow one of my recommendations, follow this one.

Conscience – The Guide to Life

“Together we are a team, alone we are nothing.” This phrase, a few words tangled together, seem so simple, yet at the same time, so complex. Each practice my swim coach, Brett Buchanan, declares this to us as we stand before him, whether in practice or when we are getting ready for our meet. He reminds us that we are a team and need to make sure that we help each other along the way. If we do this, then we will achieve our goals.

Coach Buchanan’s words have a lot of similarity to Richard Paul and Linda Elder. In their book Thinker’s Guide to Ethical Reasoning, they preach that “we are capable of helping or harming others” (25). When we all work together, helping each other along the way, and make sure that we take into account how others are feeling, then we we will become more connected as a society. We would not face any problem that we couldn’t fix. We would all get along, there would be no hatred, and the world would become a better place.

The main question is how do we achieve this goal? How can we fix our society so that there won’t be any more hatred or problems? One of the methods that can be used in order to achieve this goal is to be conscience. Being conscience allows one to take into consideration other people’s feelings and feel the obligation to help them.

Before I started my senior year of high school, I did not understand what the big deal with being conscience, was and because of that, I was by far one of the least conscience people in the world. I paid no attention to anyone except myself, making sure that I did whatever I could in order to better myself as a person, even if it meant putting down other people. This generally caused others to feel worse about themself.

When I was in junior high school, I was hanging out with my brother and two of my really close friends, Philip and Dustin. It was so exceptionally cold that day that school was cancelled. Like most students on a day when school is cancelled, we were extremely excited and also very energetic. Some people may have even said that we were a little too energetic. We were throwing snowballs around and trying to tackle each other into the snow. After Dustin tackled Philip, Philip’s hat fell off. I immediately ran up to him, picked up his hat, filled it up as much as I could with snow, and jammed the hat on to his head. The snow fell all over his head and trickled down his back. With the cold weather mixed with the freezing cold snow covered all over his body, Philip started to get extremely cold and wanted to go inside to change. Being the immature junior high schooler that I was, I ran into the house and locked the door, trapping him outside as I laughed, thinking it all was a joke. Philip started to bang on the door pleading for me to let him inside the house. All I did was continue to laugh and then about 5 minutes later, I let him in.

What I did here was not conscience at all. I did not take time to think about how he was feeling and instead of helping him, I harmed him by not letting him inside the house.

When I started my senior year of high school, and, more specifically, started my english class, my eyes were opened to just how important it is to be conscience. Just as Bobbie Harro said in his article, The Cycle of Liberation, “once we know something, we can’t not know it anymore” (620). I could not just forget how important it is to be conscience. I knew that I had no choice, I needed to do something in order to fix what I had done in the past.

After studying even more what I could do in order to offset what I had done before, I came across a quote in the book, A Thinker’s Guide to Ethical Reasoning, that really struck me. “We can never eliminate our egocentric tendencies absolutely and finally. But we can actively combat them to develop as ethical persons” (4). While I can never undo what I had done to Philip, or others, I can, and will, however, “actively combat” my previous actions in order to make the world a better place.

Word Count: 757 Words

We Can be Conscious

We work together to restore hope to the future.

We no longer live in those sweet slow days when life felt predictable.

We actually knew what to do next.

We live in a complex world.

We often don’t know what’s going on

We weren’t trained to admit we don’t know.

We don’t know!

We aren’t conscious!

Most of us were taught to sound certain and confident, to state our opinion as if it were true

We’ve spent many years listening to others mainly to determine whether we agree with them or not.

We didn’t have time or interest to sit and listen to those who think differently than we do.

We live in a dense and tangled global system.

We live in different parts of this complexity.

We didn’t know!

We weren’t conscious!

We live in a complex world.

No two people are physically identical.

We each experience life differently.

It’s impossible for any two people to ever see things exactly the same.

But the world now is quite perplexing.

We must succeed!

We will succeed!

We can be conscious!

We can think and work together in new ways!

With our conscious,

we work together.

We listen to others.

We collaborate to find a better solution.

We will change the world.

We will restore the hope to the future.

No two people are physically identical.

We all have our own thoughts and beliefs.

We have to be willing to admit that we’re not capable of figuring things out alone.

If our solutions don’t work as well as we want them to,

If our explanations of why something happened doesn’t feel sufficient,

It’s time to begin asking others about what they see and think.

So many interpretations are available.

We must be conscious.

We can think about others ideas and elaborate on them.

We work together to restore hope to the future.

We fix our ideas.

SAMOre Art!

I was always taught to question the world around me. Look at what each city had different, try to see the effects of their different choices, and then try to see what I could do to make my own city better. In order to try to learn more about the world around me, and especially my city, last Saturday, I drove, along with my brother, David, to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. After a long hour commute, and attempting to find the main entrance, we arrived. Since we were both under 18, we did not have to pay the normal $15 fee and were able to get in for free. After checking in with the front desk, to get a map and tickets, I immediately saw my friend, Idan, with his girlfriend. We talked for 20 minutes about what was happening in our lives and went on our separate ways to go look at the museum.

20181020_141140 — Me and Idan posing for a fun picture

Looking at each piece of artwork, I saw multiple themes that connected to my CST class. I saw pieces that related to human rights, gender sexuality, and even sexual assault. I also saw a piece by Matt Lipps called Special Problems, which highlighted how famous African Americans attempted to fight through racism in order to be considered equal.

20181020_142859 — A Picture I took of the piece by Matt Lipas

This piece really disturbed me because I was able to see how some people believed that african americans were not equal to white people and just how hard it was for african americans to try to fight through the racist barrier. Another piece by Xaviera Simmons which showed an african american lady’s hand with pictures clipped on it describing who she was and what was most important to her. This related to my class because it talked about how what she was born with was an important part of her identity and how she wanted to make it known that this was important to her.

20181020_142743 — A Picture I took of the piece by Xaviera Simmons

Going to this museum really challenged my thinking because it showed me just how hard some people had to work in order to truly be themselves. Since I am white, I am fortunate enough to not have work hard in order to be myself. People are just accepting of who I am because of my skin color. People of other skin colors, however, are not as fortunate as I am and really need to put a lot of effort to be themself. This topic is very similar to the text White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible by Peggy McIntosh because it shows yet another unearned privilege that white people have that people of color don’t have. I don’t believe that these privileges are quite fair, what did white people do to deserve these privileges. If anything, people of color have had it harder and should be getting more benefits. These pieces of artwork truly opened my eyes and allowed me to see the differences that people face and how some things can define who a person is.

After looking at these pictures, and some others, I asked one of the employees of the museum how long the piece by Matt Lipas and Xaviera Simmons would be on display for. I was told that they would only be there for another month and a half. These pieces are pieces that everyone around the world should see so I recommend others to try and get to the museum before these pieces are moved to another museum.