Webquest

For the past week in English I had to choose a web quest created by another student in my class, and do it. So I chose one focusing on Mexican Immigration in which I had to create 3 1-page journal entries from the perspective of a Mexican Immigrant sneaking across the border. Personally I think it is kind of racist how we stereotype the following experience as THE experience that all immigrants encounter. Anyways, here is my web quest:

Entry 1:
Soon my family and I are leaving to head to America. This trip has been in the works for a while now. Here in Mexico my family has a mediocre living, and is in constant threat of death by local warlords or disease. In fact, just the other day my neighbor’s child was killed in a minor gunfight that took place. The body was horrible to look at; during the wake I couldn’t stop imagining it was one of my kids there. Margarita (14) and Pablo (10) deserve better than that, they deserve a life free from the threat of constant death, and the opportunity to better themselves. This is why we are leaving Mexico tomorrow.
For the past year I have been attempting to save up money. Unfortunately, regardless of how much money I end up saving it will be almost worthless once we get into America. I don’t know what the current rate is between the peso and the American dollar, but regardless it favors the dollar heavily. Tomorrow we are leaving for Tijuana, which will allow us easy access to US city of San Diego via jumping the fence and taking off into the sewer system. My cousin recently performed the trek and we will use the same route he used.
In fact, for the past couple of days me and my husband have been closely watching a certain spot along the fence every night in order to determine which time would be the best to cross over and make a run for it. Our finalized time is 3:15 am, right after the second to last patrol goes by, and the next one doesn’t come until 4:00 am, giving us nearly 45 minutes to get my husband, 2 children, and I over the fence and hidden from the border patrol.

Entry 2:
Today we managed to cross the border. Just as we planned we all jumped the fence and made a run for the nearby sewer system. My husband sent me over first, followed by Margarita and Pablo. He followed close behind, determined to get us into America. If worse came to worse he would distract the border patrol as the kids and I got away. The sewer was about a mile away from the fence, nestled between 2 hills. At one time the pipe had a grate at the end to block off the possibility of entrance, but by the time my family had got there, a mangled hole appeared to allow entrance.
After we took the open mile at a suicide pace, we entered the sewage run off pipe and started on our way. We decided we’d rather follow the pipe into the woods instead of San Diego in order to escape the possibility of being caught when coming above ground. We waded for a mile through filth up to our waste. Rats and cockroaches were everywhere, and at any moment a flashlight or a sound could reveal us to the world. Every second I expected to hear a shout of, “There they are!” followed by the pursuit of La Migra. On the trek through the sewer Pablo nearly fainted from exhaustion so my husband and I took turns carrying him.
Finally we arrived at another sewage run off pipe that led into the middle of a thick forest. We decided our best bet would be to take off into the forest and find a place to stay in the trees to sleep, just in case they patrol the sewers or forest during the day. The past few hours have been a torrent of emotion. I am in constant fear of being caught, but the glory of the better life that awaits us is so close that I am willing to do almost anything to get there.

Entry 3:
We have been living in America for some time now, almost 5 months. After my last journal entry, we kept heading north, sticking to the forest as much as possible. We finally settled close to the Oregon border. As I suspected, the funds we brought with us were worth next to nothing in American money. Nowhere near enough to find a house or apartment. It was enough, however, to allow us to set up a little campsite with a sufficient amount of food and manage to get my husband and I jobs.
The jobs are sporadic and money is never guaranteed. Every cent we make is carefully stored in the campsite in an undisclosed location, and is only ever taken when we absolutely need food. Margarita and Pablo attend the public school nearby, which thinks we live in an abandoned house. We would live there but the foundation is too unstable for our family.
They both say school is tough, but Juan (my husband) and I simply tell them to stick it out. Doing well in school is the way to make it in the world. Every night we try to help them with their schoolwork, but they end up teaching Juan and I more than we can teach them. It upsets me that I can’t help them more along in life, but it makes me happy to see them doing so well. Margarita is even in the top of her class, and may even make it into a good college someday. Juan and I are attempting to save up all the money we can for her.
Life here in America is so different from what I expected. I wanted Juan to get a formal job and enough starting money for us to get a small apartment. Instead Juan and I are both working, everyday, whatever jobs we can get. At least this far north from the border discrimination against us is less widespread.

Class Assignment

Lesson Plan
Create a blog entry in response to the following prompt: Given the links and readings, do you feel the issue of racism towards Asians is successfully being dealt with. Why or why not?

This should be about 3 paragraphs, using at least 2 citations (can be from the material provided)

Some Materials to help you get started:

Itunes- The Fallout Central Podcast (subscribe and listen to the podcast to get a decent understanding of the show)
at least one blog from a peer (it doesn't matter what class)- http://pinghong.blogspot.com/ (mike hong)
at least one blog from outside our class- http://sgrp.typepad.com/sgrp/2008/10/racism-xenophob.html
give a list of sources for your 'student' to peruse through on your delicious site. These sources can be articles, other blogs, pictures, youtube videos,etc. I would create a specific tag to make it easy to search through-saxoncedars and asian-american
at least one source from the school databases-http://www.questiaschool.com/read/5000102736?title=Asian%20Americans%20and%20Racial%20Identity%3a%20Dealing%20with%20Racism%20and%20Snowballs (Asian Americans and Racial Identity: Dealing with Racism and Snowballs.
by Alvin N. Alvarez , Erin F. Kimura) journal
at least four interesting quotes from the novel (it is up to you how you share them - on your blog, google docs...)
1) When they looked out into the whiteness of the world the wind flung it sharply at their narrowed eyes and foreshortened their view of everything.
2) “I'm talking about people . . . who can do things because they run newspapers or arrest people or convict them or decide about their lives. People don't have to be unfair, do they?”
3) “There are things in this universe that we cannot control, and then there are the things we can. . . . Let fate, coincidence, and accident conspire; human beings must act on reason.”
4) No, it would not surprise Sergeant Maples to hear that Kabuo Miyamoto had killed a man with a fishing gaff.

Asian Discrimination

In English class we have been dealing with the racial issues that plague America. I've been reading the book Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson. The book focuses on the trial of an Asian man for the murder of a local fisherman. During the trial we see clear discrimination against the Asian immigrants in the Seattle area.

Recently, New Zealand Asian immigrants have been seeing more and more 

discrimination. An attack on 4 Korean students helped to bring about the realization of this disturbing fact, but most discrimination occurs from the government. In fact, “42% of the reported case of discrimination came from government," says James Liu of Victoria University (“Asians may be facing more prejudice”). The second most discriminated group is people who are overweight, “with 68%, up 6%”(“Asians may be facing more prejudice”). The government is currently trying to enforce certain laws such as the Human Right Acts and the Sentencing Act. So far the Human Rights Commission has seen a decrease in complaints of discrimination; a hopeful sign that discrimination is on its way to extinction.

Although it's not the USA, New Zealand is considered one of the more "advanced" countries. It is democratic and capitalist based, much like most of the major Western Countries, and is very similar to Australia one of

 the most forward thinking countries in the world. This is why it is so scary to se

e a trend like this to exist in a country such as New Zealand. With its close location to Asian countries, one would expect for there to be greater tolerance of their culture in New Zealand than even the USA, but apparently not.
Another scary fact is that this isn’t the first time this has occurred in New Zealand. According to the article “Asians may be facing more prejudice”, Asians first started meeting discrimination in the seventies, but according to Joris de Bres, “there has been [ignorance and prejudice] about Asian peoples in the nineties and this decade” leading to the discrimination and open violence against Asians in New Zealand.
This trend is scarily similar to the book I am currently reading, Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson in that there is a horrible trend of discrimination against Asians. Although in Snow Falling on Cedars the main occurrence took place in the USA when Asian discrimination was still common after WWII, the similarity to the current day discrimination in New Zealand is scary. Especially with the discrimination against people of Japanese descent when during WWII they 

were forced to abandon their homes and belongings and live in internment camps. Hopefully the situ

ation in New Zealand is far better than in the book, where Asians weren’t allowed to own property, quickly accused of murder, and treated as second rate citizens, regardless if they were a citizen or not.

The fact that the article mentions a decrease in the amount of complaints seen by the Human Rights Commission provides a hopeful outlook that New Zealand is on its way to a more accepting society like they did in the 70’s. The only problem is that there has to be constant attention to these issues, otherwise ignorance and prejudice will once again take root and lead to more discrimination, like what occurred in the 90’s and this decade. One can only hope that as time carries

 on-hopefully in the near future-understanding will be able to replace discrimination of not only Asians, but of all races and cultures. But there is only one thing that will be able to make this happen: education. People must be educated in each other’s cultures and be taught to respect them as equal-not inferior-to their own.

Heterosexist Stereotypes

Lately in my english class we have been discussing LGBT rights and the stereotypes imposed in everyday life. One of the best examples is TV shows. Although most are unrealistic, they still show the ideals of our society. Our assignment was to watch an episode of a show of our choosing, summarize it and see how the stereotype is perpetuated or broken.

The show Futurama, by Matt Groening, takes place around the year 3000 and focuses on a pizza delivery boy who has been unfrozen after being cryogenically frozen for the past 1000 years. Upon arriving in the future he meets a relative of his, who is a genius scientist and owns a delivery service. The main character, Fry, upon working there meets a Cyclops named Leela and a robot named Bender, as well as a host of other characters.

The episode that I decided to summarize and dissect was the episode in which the Planet Express ship crash lands on a planet inhabited by Amazonian women and ruled by a femputer (female computer) which turns out to be a female robot. Upon discovering the crew, the 

Amazonian women take the male crew and imprison them and wait for the verdict of the femputer. While they are imprisoned the “space hero” and his second in command, Zaff Branigan and Kif respectively, come to rescue them but also get imprisoned by the Amazonian women.
The femputer dooms them to death by snoo-snoo (sex) and they are enveloped by the emotions of fear and joy at the same time. The death sentence starts up, with an obvious preference for Kiff (the feminite man) over Fry (the nerdy idiot) and Zaff (the cocky space hero). Leela and Amy (Kif’s girlfriend) appeal to the femputer only to discover she is already occupied with Bender, who then sets his fellow men free and grabs all the gold he can.
The Amazonian home world throws the first break at the heterosexual stereotype by indicating an emotional dislike of all men, and using them only for procreation instead of as life partners. The over confidence of the male crew (with the exception of Kif) eventually leads to their downfall, because although they have no problem with their sexuality, it will lead to there death. Finally, the obvious preference for Kif (the more feminine man) is yet another break from the heterosexual stereotype in which a female prefers someone from the opposite sex, yet here they obviously prefer an individual that reminds them of their own sex. This is an obvious reference to lesbianism.
The fact that although the show is set 1000 years in the future, and there seems to be no mention of LGBT could be either a good or bad sign. Good in the sense that there might finally be acceptance of all sexualities and decide that there is no point in even mentioning it. Bad in the sense that LGBT sexuality may not be tolerated and that it isn’t mentioned because they ignore it, or have “expunged” it from society. Hopefully it is the former case, and hopefully our society can mirror this fictional one.

Gender Roles

Recently in English class we had to find an article that focused on Gender roles and how they play out in society, summarize it, and either agree or disagree with it. The article I used was As Layoffs Surge, Women May Pass Men in Job Force by Catherine Rampell. Anything that is taken to be offensive was not intended to do so, so here is the paper:

In the recent recession that we are experiencing, many people have been facing unemployment. Unexpected trends show that more men are losing jobs as opposed to women who, according to studies have higher jobs that are more recession proof, as discussed in the article “As Layoffs Surge, Women May Surpass Men in Job Force” by Catherine Rampell. This trend does correlate with the findings that, “the percentage of families supported by women tends to rise slightly” and poises women to possibly surpass men in the work place (Rampell). Prior to the recession, women made up 49.1% of the workplace, and after the layoffs, which men made up 82%, women now seem to be the dominant force in the job market. Because of this shift, more women are becoming the, as Rampell says, breadwinner of the household. Rampell also provides plenty of examples to prove her point, that although women have become the main source of income, men have not picked up the slack at home, and have instead devoted most of their time to finding jobs; a task that society dictates men do.
Rampell has said that although the job market has now shifted in favor of women, they are still being resisted in the workplace. She states facts about specific individuals who make 80 cents to the dollar of their male counterparts, or do not share the same benefits as men. However, the reason why men are being laid off over women is because women are in more white-collared jobs, which seem to be more recession proof than the blue-collar jobs that most men have gotten laid off from. This alone would imply that women now hold more power in the workplace: the fact that they have replaced men as the business people of America. Yet Catherine still complains that women only make 80 cents to the dollar of their male counterparts…who are currently getting sacked over them.
So why is Rampell complaining that women are allowed to keep their jobs over men, but at a 20 cent lower rate? This is because Rampell, like most women, want to be “equal” to men, or at least claim that. In reality women such as Rampell want to be separate but equal to men, or even superior to men. Rampell remarks at the apparent disregard for family life that unemployed men have as opposed to women, whose time with children nearly doubles when unemployed. Yet “Many of the unemployed men interviewed say they have tried to help out…but they have not had time to do more because job-hunting consumes their days” as it should because, as Rampell has stated, when make more money in the same job as a women (Rampell). So why should men, who had been making a 6 digit income for their family, take backseat to their spouse, with a lower paying job, and stay home and take on the family oriented roles? In my opinion, the answer is they shouldn’t; if women want to be equal then they should protest for men to partake in equal amounts of time doing household chores and having equal types of jobs. This means men should spend more time at home, but women, as a whole, should enter more blue-collared jobs and become just as susceptible to the recession as men.

Socratic Seminar

Here are the questions for tomorrow's Socratic Seminar so you can look along during the seminar:

Questions for Socratic Seminar:

• The poem Girl that we read during class outlined the rules of a specific social group. Do the sexes really have defined rules today like the poem makes it out to seem?
o Are the rules of guys and girls that different? Why?
o
• In the story X a family raises a child with an unknown sex, were the reactions of fellow children and other people believable?
o
• In the movie When Harry met Sally, Harry states, “Men and woman can never be friends.” Do you think this is true?
o Yes- Was this always so? What led to this? Difference of roles? Insensitivity of men? Stereotypes? Sexual tension?
o No- Was this always so? What could lead to the statement coming true?
• In the gender roles of the past, it was more difficult for women to succeed in the workplace. During the recession, however, more men have been laid off than women, why do you think that is?
o Does this mean we are now sexist towards men?
o Or are we finally “equal”?
• Does a specific gender have higher expectations? Which one?
o Do you think these are inherent or taught to us by society?
• Why is the most insulting thing for a guy to say to another guy an inmasculating insult, yet girls don’t go calling each other butch, etc.?
o How does this play into the expected traits of each sex?
o

Sorry Internet

This is my first post on this blog, and its for school work. Unfortunately I have to unleash my horrible poetry upon the internet, in the form of the poem Girl by Jamaica Kincaid. The poem itself I found lacking in interesting writing. For those who don't wish to go and read it, its a long list of "rules" for how to live a certain lifestyle. We are discussing the rules that a specific person must live in, like a jock and nerd have different standards and expectations to live up to. In fact everyone is expected to live in a certain way depending upon which group they relate with. My specific topic was how to be an Earthling, so read it if you want, and try to enjoy...

Be born on Earth; breathe the air; live your life; partake in the food; avoid death; don’t run with scissors; don’t get shot; don’t get Ponzied; do physical activities; find your love; break some laws; find your niche; go to school; work on a farm; live in a city; go to the store; pay for your food or hunt for your food; dress properly; don’t streak like I know you want to; okay maybe once; feel pain, emotional and physical; learn from pain; avoid pain, but not completely; go play soccer; go play football; go swim in the ocean; go swim in a pool; go run on a track; go fly in a plane; exist; perspire; go experience sadness; experience joy; go get angry, and turn a bit green; don’t be stubborn; go make a living; go get exhausted; relax a little; do a hard days work; obey you parents; make friends; rebel against authority; be immature; act your age; be creative; paint a picture; take some photos; pull an all-nighter; party with friends; fornicate; procreate; get married; age; question the norm; value life; appreciate your surroundings; travel; sight see; pursue a talent; take care of your loved ones; read a book; laugh; cry; shout to the sky; stand up for yourself; play in the sand; sleep for 8 hours each day; have metabolic reactions; have thoughts; go to sleep on the beach; explore an abandoned building; play in a storm; catch snow flakes on your tongue; smell flowers; climb trees; go on a picnic; go sledding; go snorkeling; sleep on the beach; try not to fall asleep in school; play with fire, but don’t get burned; watch the lightning; play in the waves; look for shapes in the clouds; don’t destroy your planet; climb on buildings; pay attention in school; play in gym; become successful; die; be remembered