Review Four: Community

            On the television show Community there are numerous racial assumptions made by all group members throughout the first season. The “community” is seven individuals that form a Spanish 101 study group. All coming from different backgrounds the group at numerous times have used race and ethnicity against their fellow study group members. In the episode “The Art of Discourse” (season 1, episode 22) Pierce is being kicked out of the group for “pantsing” Shirley. When the group confronts him about the inappropriate actions he has done and things he has said Pierce is completely in denial that anything he does is wrong.

Review Three: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

          

  Something I have always been passionate about is the holocaust. One story in particular that captured my attention was the film The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008) based on the novel of the same title by John Boyne. The movie is based on two boys named Bruno and Shmuel. Bruno is the son of a Nazi commandant and Shmuel is the son of a Jewish inmate in a concentration camp. Having moved to a new house in the country Bruno looks out his bedroom window to notice farmers in the distance. He goes and asks his mother why the farmers are wearing pyjamas. She comes up with some type of excuse but is mortified at her husband for making the camps so close to their house that Bruno and his sister can see the inmates.

Review Two: The Book of Negroes

          

 The Book of Negroes (2007) by Lawrence Hill follows Aminato Diallo, a young female taken from her village in Africa and forced to board a ship that would take her to South Carolina as a slave. This novel follows Aminato through her life that takes her all across America, Nova Scotia, back to Africa and finally to England. Aminato is able to experience many things in her life most slaves never had a chance to experience. After being a slave in South Carolina Aminato serves the British in the American Revolutionary War and becomes a free person, where her name is then written into the “Book of Negroes” before she leaves for Nova Scotia. It gave me goose bumps realizing that 200 years ago someone named Aminato Diallo was here in Nova Scotia. Although black freed slaves were welcomed into Nova Scotia they were not treated as equals and their lives were even threatened on numerous occasions.

Review One: The Big Bang Theory

(Click picture for video link)

As I mentioned on my blog before I am a huge fan of The Big Bang Theory. Throughout many of the episodes viewers witness numerous racial and cultural stereotypes that pertain to all the characters in the series. In this particular episode (season five episode six) Sheldon’s mom, Mary comes to visit from Texas. Whenever Mary visits she says things she probably should not. Many of the things she says are racial slurs. One part in this episode Sheldon and his roommate Leonard take Mary out for supper at a sushi restaurant. She says how she has never had sushi before. The closest place just serves fish sticks and uncle bens rice. Mary then goes on to say “put it in the menu in those kungfu letter but that don’t make it sushi”. Leonard corrects her by saying “kungfu letters might not be politically correct”. She continues by saying “oh, I thought the one we couldn’t say was ching-chong”.

Critical Reflection Five:Why No Borders?

The article by Anderson, Sharma and Wright (2011) is a look at why we have borders and what life would be like if we had the political project No Borders. Areas in the West like Canada have strict immigration policies. As the article states throughout the world “there are now about 200 million international migrants each year” (Anderson, Sharma and Wright, 2005: pp. 5). Obviously each country has different policies in place and these policies do have an effect. Costs have gone up for migrants which involve transportation to get to their destination and living costs. People are willing to risk their lives in order to migrate to other parts of the world, sometimes leading to death. They are willing to risk their lives in order to seek refuge. It is quite clear these people need to leave their current location for whatever reasons. More blame is put on migrants and people who help them to move then the actual policies that borders have in place.

         

Is It Racist?

(Click Photo For Article by CTV News)

In this article Johann Levy made an Iphone app called " A Jew or Not A Jew" which allows users to search its database by entering a celebrity's name or to search by categories of celebrities. The creator of this database believes this is not racist in any way. He believes many people like himself are interested in knowing if certain celebrities are Jewish or not. I personally believe it is fine to inquire about if someone is Jewish but to have a database listing every celebrity that is Jewish can become a problem. People can start to use this app in an incorrect way. That would be like if someone came up with an app to find out every African American celebrity. I really do not think people would be too pleased about it. I believe it is one thing to be proud of who you are and your commonalities with other individuals but there is a fine line that really should not be crossed like with this particular app. 

Something to think about...

Warning: Some explicit language!!

The video pretty much speaks for itself so I won't go on about it. I actually had never seen the original video so I was actually shocked to see that a university student had this kind of mindset! This goes really well with what we did in class today with Kobayashi. Its clearly obvious that the university student (not sure of her name) is being racist but since she is giving her opinion/freedom of speech should she be dismissed from university? Not sure what actually happened since this is over 6 months old but it just makes me think...what would happen if someone at Saint Mary's said something like that. What would our school do?