Race Tokens

It's currently 9:30 on a Wednesday night, so be honest, how many of you are curled up on your couch watching your favorite Network TV drama air in prime time. I know I would be if I wasn't sitting here typing this blog post. But while you are watching, consider this, is there a minority character in your TV show, and if so are what is their role in the show and how are they portrayed?

My new favorite obsession is a show that ended a just a year ago called 90210 and it is set in an almost all white neighborhood with its plot centered around the Beverly Hills High School. The main character is the girl pictured in the brown ruffled shirt in the center. She is a high school student named Annie and her brother Dixen is the African American boy pictured at her right. He was actually adopted into their family when he was eight years old because of his troubled family life.

I did not realize this until we discussed "TV tokenism" or the rare gesture of offering equal opportunities to the minorities as to the majorities, but these "token" minorities are often added into shows as a way for Networks to prove to their buyers, the advertisement companies, that they can appeal to viewers in minorities and will not seem racist. 

In class we talked about how these "token minorities" often find themselves being deliberately cast in the prestigious "buddy" role that is to always keep the main character in line. This is because the networks are afraid of being criticized for playing the minority in anything less than a prestigious and well respected character because of the fact that in the past the minorities have only received roles as thugs or gang members. This "buddy" character does not usually have that much of a complex background story or different problems in his life. This is exactly how Dixen's role in 90210 plays out. He is always helping Annie out when she goes off the deep end and does something rash. Also, for the first season and a half we do not learn anything about Dixen's life before Beverly Hills, all we are told is that he was adopted.
You can even see this "token minority role" displayed in the cast photo above because Dixen is pictured above Annie's right shoulder, which is where you normally would see the good angel on someone's shoulder guiding them to do the right thing. 

Dixen is Annie's good conscience.

I think the minority character is too often stuck in this role of the token, and that is the role that no actor wants to be cast as. The sad thing too is that no one in society notices it, and I think to myself that I wouldn't have noticed it either if I had not been told. We need to open our eyes and be more critical as a society in America today of our media and the affect it has on certain minority groups and everyone watching as well because that is the first step to change: awareness.

Correctional or Destructional

In America today we make up 5% of the worlds population yet we hold 25% of the world's prisoners. Am I the only one horrified by those numbers?

Bruce Western, a Harvard student, is conducting a study of our country's correctional system and how it affects those who emerge from it. Western interviewed an ex-inmate named Jerry and Jerry admitted to having trouble sleeping because he was so used to the prison quarters. Jerry confessed in the interview, "“It’s like my body left the prison, but my mind is still in there." According to Western, "subjects have said they simply can’t cope on the outside—that going back to prison seems comforting and familiar"

I find it incredible that a prison cell could be referred to as "comforting and familiar," meaning reassuring and intimate or personal. These are words that are frequently saved for describing your own home so it is shocking to me that someone could ever feel at home in a prison. However these inmates are forced to because since they are spending so much time there they slowly lose their connections to the outside world. Western explains that, "Prison time strains relationships with partners and children, and the men often live separately after their release." Some even end up homeless because of financial problems stemming from unemployment.

To top it all off, the people who end up in prisons are most likely troubled in ways that don't stem from a need to kill or murder or rape, they stem from something that is above their control. The nonprofit Human Rights Watch found that 56 percent of U.S. inmates are mentally ill.
at least two-thirds are thought to have substance-abuse problems.

The 2.2 million inmates living in America today require actual help maybe with a substance problem or a mental illness so we shouldn't just stick them behind bars and let them waste their life away as we forget about them, we should put them in a place where they will actually get help. They need rehab or a facility that can take care of their illnesses and problems so that all the fathers out there can be reunited with sons, and mothers to daughters and relationships and precious lives can be salvaged.

The New Feminist

A few weeks ago Kelly Clarkson was asked during an interview with time magazine if she was a feminist yet she quickly batted it down, saying, "No, I wouldn’t say feminist — that’s too strong. I think when people hear feminist, it’s like, “Get out of my way, I don’t need anyone." 

She was afraid to admit to being a feminist because it was too strong of a word, an extreme that she didn't want to be associated with. She even gave a very negative connotation to the word by saying that it was associated with people who "don't need anyone," or aren't connected to other human society. Also, by saying it means "get out of my way," she acts like a feminist is someone who thinks they are better than other people. 

Clarkson even added something at the end of her answer for her reason why she was not a feminist, saying,"I love that I’m being taken care of, and I have a man that’s a leader." Personally, I think that is sickening. If this popular icon in the media believes that she should have a man who is a leader, or someone who takes charge and controls the situation, that implies that she is the follower and does not have any power and is simply ordered around. Celebrities are people who many people look up to, or at least take a strong interest in, and this is a bad message to send to woman everywhere. 

Other prominent female celebrities of today, such as Lady Gaga and Beyonce, have expressed similar views. Rachel Hills from the Daily Life wrote in an article 2 weeks ago, "if you ask a female celebrity if she is a feminist, she will politely demure, insisting that she “loves men,” “doesn’t like labels,” and that if she had to pick a label, she’d prefer “humanist."

Hills has a valid point because this description seems to match Kelly Clarkson's comment perfectly. Clarkson denied being a feminist because the label was just "too strong," as well as mentioning the fact that she loved men, or that men take care of her.

Hills says that these celebs would rather be "humanists" or people who are very interested in human welfare, versus a "feminist," or someone who a person who advocates rights of woman equal to those of men. This means that they are willing to accept the fact that humanity as a whole should treat each other equally, but does this mean that these strong women do not believe that within humanity women deserve the same rights as men?  These extremely popular female celebrities are setting an example for so many other people worldwide. It makes me question whether they don't recognize the fact that women are not entirely equal to men in our society today and like Clarkson are accepting being the "follower," or if they recognize this and are just unwilling to fight for change.

I don't know which is worse.

Stop and Frisk Profile- Darker skin required

Just a month ago in a court ruling the NYPD Stop and Frisk program that had been going on for 10 years was officially unconstitutional and violated the 4th amendment. That amendment states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons... against unreasonable searches, shall not be violated... but upon probable cause.

This clearly states that the police can only search with a probable cause, which means the NYPD must have a reason or grounds to justify the search because they suspect they will find something. 

Apparently the legal system did not find that being a race of black or hispanic proved probable cause enough to justify the stopping of a pedestrian to search for weapons or other contraband. 

There has been a lot of controversy over the profile of a person who is stopped for these random searches. I would put money on the fact that you won't see a 5 year old girl with a lollipop the size of her head being stopped and searched for weapons. An astounding 87% of those stopped were black or hispanic, where only 10% of these stops result in an arrest and it is extremely rare that they will find a weapon. 

This means that 90% of the time these searches are simply for no reason, and we can never be sure if the police officer did suspect something because we don't know what he is thinking but I would hope that his gut isn't that bad at guessing. US district judge Shira Sheindlin said on this subject, "The city and its highest officials believe that blacks and Hispanics should be stopped at the same rate as their proportion of the local criminal suspect population," however then she commented, "But this reasoning is flawed because the stopped population is overwhelmingly innocent - not criminal." 

Sheindlin is saying that the these New York officials justify their support of the the stop and frisk of blacks and hispanics over other races is because in those areas the crime rates of those races are higher. This means that these officials are just acting on stereotypes. It is not fair to more heavily police one area just because some of those people happen to get into some trouble. We cannot just assume that all the people in that area are therefore going to be criminals then. Also, obviously if you stop and frisk 10 hispanics for every white person you stop and frisk, the odds say that you will find more weapons and such with the hispanic, simply because you have rolled the dice 10 more times. This could lead the public to believe that hispanics are more criminal because they were caught with more weapons when in reality they were just singled out on a stereotype. 

I'm grateful that this unconstitutional practice has ended for the time being, and hopefully it will stay that way. Do you the practice of "stop and frisk"generally kept the public safer or just discriminated against minorities? 

Queen Bee Syndrome

I'm sure all you girls have seen this hilarious classic, "The Devil Wears Prada," and even you boys have probably seen your sisters and mothers watching is and stayed to watch for a while because it's so good. This clip is showing Andy Sachs, or Anne Hathaway, at her first day on the job as the assistant to the editor of a fashion magazine. Her coworkers are trying to show their ideas of clothing lines to her boss Miranda Priestly, or Meryl Streep, but Miranda is making rude remarks back and is proving to be extremely hard to impress. Andy let's out a giggle on accident at the ridiculous spectacle her new boss is putting on and suddenly Miranda sharply turns towards her and just rips her apart. Miranda criticizes her fashion sense and even her her competence in the workplace. 

Modern female bosses are almost always portrayed in this light as the terrible "queen bee" of the office who demands an excessive amount of work from her assistants, is rude to everyone in the workplace and works at the expense of anyone around her to succeed. There are countless examples of the queen bee of the workplace in the media, including in popular movies like Margaret Tate from The Proposal. Can you think of a movie where the female boss is a nice, caring young woman who does wonders for the workplace? I certainly can't.

One article even gives a name to this stereotype of the female boss in the workplace, calling it the "Queen Bee Syndrome," and defining it as, "The alpha female who tries to preserve her power at all costs," and instead of supporting her younger coworkers, "she feels threatened by them and ends up obstructing their attempts to climb the corporate ladder."  

The words "threatened" and "obstructing" both have very negative connotations as they refer to someone who lives in constant fear that the people around them intend to do them harm, which is almost never the case in our modern day workplace, and she has the intention of "obstructing" or making the lives of her colleagues more difficult instead of working collaboratively with them. 

American media is perpetuating this stereotype of the "queen bee syndrome" and affecting the way all female bosses are viewed, even to their own gender. As you can see from this previous post on female bosses in the workplace, we need to increase the numbers of women in high professional positions and stereotypes like this one can only hurt the chances. As a woman myself striving to one day have a future in the business world we need to open our eyes and realize what kind of effect things in the media like this have on our American society. 

What other stereotypes do you see being perpetuated in American media? 

Feel free to comment your thoughts! 

How many woman CEOs do you know?

The recent best seller on Amazon in the Business Management and Leadership section addressed this issue and it is "Lean in," by the successful COO of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg. It discusses how women are are underrepresented in the top positions of their careers and Sandberg encourages woman to do their best top break through the barriers that they put up or may just be naturally there in society holding them back from reaching their full potential.

Her book has been very successful, however, it has received a lot of criticism because of the fact that she comes from a positions of power and money and may not be representing all woman in America and also because she "puts the burden on women to change," instead of, "challenging the institutional and cultural factors that present extra challenges for women."
One example the cultural factors that cause extra challenges for women is the fact that there is not a reliable form of day care set up for women in the work place. This can hold them back because you cannot be as productive as you would like to be if you are constantly worrying if your child is receiving the proper amount of care. This also sheds some light on how much our American culture values child care, because some other countries around the world, for example some in Europe, have a much more reliable system of day care in place for working mothers.

 Just like how Sandberg talks about how women are underrepresented in management of their professions, right now on the 2013 Fortune 1000 list of companies only 4.5% of the CEO positions are held by woman. For American women like me striving to have a future in the business world this number could use some major improvement.

I think that she is right about putting some burden on women to change because there are some social barriers that we woman put up ourselves like not going into fields that men usually dominate or not striving for the highest position in our field because of the fact that men have normally held them in the past. However, the burden cannot fall only on women to make a change, it also has to fall on those "institutional and cultural factors" that the article above mentions.
These extra challenges that women face are the fine print in women's rights that need to be scrutinized under a magnifying glass and corrected if women are going to have complete equal opportunity as men in American society.

What is one extra challenge you can think of that women face in American society today?

Feel free to leave your thoughts :)

Standardized? Or standard for the affluent?

Why did I wake up yesterday, on saturday morning, at 6:50am? The dreaded ACT, that's why.

However, I came out of that test thinking, wow that was terrible, but it's ok because I can just take it again. But, I was talking to my parents after taking the test and was shocked to find out that they took the test only once and with no tutoring, that was it. Flashback to the very first practice test I took with my ACT tutor and how poorly I thought I had scored. I made huge strides of improvement just by practicing and taking the test many different times with a tutor, but does everyone have that luxury?

In reality, many students in the US today are not capable of taking the ACT more than once and would never even be able to consider the use of ACT prep tools, at least not to the extent that I see used in my neighborhood. 

In an article in Education Week, Kohn states on the subject of test prep, "Affluent families, schools, and districts are better able to afford such products... exacerbating the inequity of such testing...Poorer schools manage to scrape together the money." 

More affluent school districts have a major advantage with this extra test prep available to them, while the poorer school districts can barely "scrape together the money," or gather it laboriously and with much difficulty. This simply "exacerbates" or severely increases the "inequity" or inequality of the tests because the rich have a huge advantage.

The result of this sad phenomenon is that these scores on the ACT and other standardized tests ultimately have a big effect on the college you will be able to attend. The more affluent students will be able to attend a more prestigious university with generally more career opportunities available to them simply because of one standardized evaluation, while the poorer communities will either not get to attend college or not be admitted to the college of their choice. The college or no college they decide to attend then limits the opportunities that they have available to them as a career. This one number, 19,23,36 can end up defining their career and ultimately their life.

I believe that these standardized tests should not carry so much weight on the fate of someone's future if they create such unequal opportunity. They should be part of a college's consideration but maybe not such a large part because they does not show exactly how much potential a student truly has. Just because one student received more ACT tutoring than the other does not mean that that student is smarter or a better candidate for a certain university. 

What are some other possible solutions to reduce the inequality of "standardized" testing? 

Feel free to comment! ;)

A Real Scandal

I finished the television show Friday Night Lights this summer so in recent weeks my new craze has been Scandal. If your not familiar with this show, first of all, turn on your TV and familiarize yourself with it, but for now here's the lowdown. It is a show about a woman named Olivia Pope who worked on the campaign to get the current president elected, but there is a bit of a scandal going on because she is having an affair with the current president and has been since the campaign. But it's not at all one of those sappy drama love stories, Mrs. Pope quit her job at the white house and now has her own investigation firm where she helps politicians or anyone who needs help solving murders or undercover things that cannot be directly handled by the actual law enforcement for whatever reason. 

However, everything in the show revolves around the government and politics in D.C., and although I realize that this is a fictional show, some of the things that go on in the politics of the show are so controversial yet realistic that they really make me consider how controversial our politics is in today's day and age and what is really going on behind closed doors in our great nation's capital. 

 

In our constitution you can't miss the 100 point font, "WE THE PEOPLE," yet in the show Scandal I seriously question how much power WE, as in your average non-government official US citizen, has, and sometimes I feel like it should really say "Them the people," as in the government officials in office. In the show, Olivia Pope actually rigged the election to get her candidate elected president. Even in office, the president does many controversial things, like abuses his power to get certain things or moving obstacles in his way most often by tarnishing their reputation or murder. And most of all everything you see in the media in this fantasy America is almost entirely different than what you would see behind the doors in the oval office. 

Even though I realize this is all made-up, it makes me question, could something even remotely similar actually be happening in D.C with elected officials in the real word America? Especially because right now we are in the middle of one of the most controversial events in our nations history- the government shutdown. You can learn more about it here, but 4 days ago our government was completely shut down except for essential functions for 16 days straight. 

This is certainly not something I would have voted for, and apparently the majority of the American people agree with me, "According to the survey, 63 percent of those questioned said they were angry at Republicans, with 57 percent also angry at Democrats, and 53 percent unhappy with President Obama. Nearly half of those surveyed said the shutdown has caused major problems." (Source). 

Why weren't "We the People," included in a decision that affects 313 million other Americans who say that this "would cause major problems," so they obviously were not in support of it. One of the biggest decisions in our nation's history was made soley by "them the people," how does this reflect upon how our nation is run? 

 

Feel free to comment!

Statistics, Fabricated or Fact?

The ACT. It should stand for Actually Controls my Total life, because lately, as junior in High School, the main thing it seems everyone wants me to think about lately has been the ACT. I know it may seem a little early, but nowadays everyone's trying to get a jump start on things, and my mom is no exception. I am taking my second ACT next weekend and this weekend she has been all up in my grill about doing my practice. But in reality, it is all down to one number. Your a 26, 27, 30... and all it translates to is a statistic. If you score a 30, perhaps you are in the 90th percentile, meaning you did better than 90 percent of the other students who took the test on that date with you. But what does that number even mean? It is all relative. For example, you could have happened to take the test on one date where all the dumbest students in the country took it at the same time as you so you scored a 36 or the 99th percentile, where if you took it maybe 3 weeks earlier you scored a 25 because you took it with all the Harvard wannabes.

Statistics turn an entire population into one number. You could be that hated but desired 1% of America, but why does that have to define you? 

Statistics can also be an unfair or misleading representation of a population. For example, of all the enslaved persons that crossed the horrible middle passage during the era of slavery it is said that around 10-15% of those enslaved persons died during their many week long journey. Some may look at that number and think that compared to 100%, those are decently good odds, but when you actually calculate out of the 6 million enslaved persons who crossed the middle passage yearly (Source), 900,000 of them would perish. 

There's a joke that "75% of statistics are a lie," get it? That's a statistic...

It's scary that in our day and age people allow statistics to carry an enormous amount of weight and truth. They let percentages define how they think of certain populations, but no one ever considers the possibility that the number, even though it may appear in print and be supported by research, may not be telling the whole story. 

Breaking the Gender Mold

With Junior year and the college process just beginning, I've been thinking about what I want to be when I grow up, and I decided that for myself as a 16 year old girl, my top two choices are fire fighter or professional football player. Just kidding.

Many people would think that absurd and probably laugh, but the real question is, why in our society today would that be a joke? Who decides that women are not allowed to be football players or fire fighters, that those are careers for a man. Our society today is one that is supposed to be so revolutionary, one that has made immense progress with women's rights and one in which you would not think of racial hatred as an every day thing. However, many people overlook the subtle gender roles inflicted on youths even today.

Just yesterday, my grandpa was visiting from out of town and when I walked in from a field hockey game looking all sweaty and disgusting he did not say anything but a simple hello.  However, when my brother strolled in behind me after his hockey game in the same condition my grandpa could not stop bombarding him with questions about the game, "How did you play!... Did you score?...Did you take anybody out?...Was it a close game?" Then twenty minutes later when my brother and I came downstairs after showering, changing, and getting ready for dinner, my grandpa's comment to me was, "Wow, your a changed woman, you look so beautiful," with no comment directed to my brother.  

It was very interesting to think that by his comments he was subtly making a statement that my brother looked great and that being in his sports gear was the mold he was meant to fill, while I was meant to be dressed to impress.  These are the types of comments that affect the younger generation and guide them to their "correct" gender role, even though in America today it would be frowned upon to tell a girl directly they cannot play sports. 

Even last night I was babysitting a family where the parents had taken their son to the Northwestern vs Ohio State football game and left the girls at home with me. Was that because they felt the young girls wouldn't be interested in something as "manly" as football? Even as I hung out with these young girls, their favorite activity was playing make believe, where the youngest daughter played the baby, I played the older sister, and the eldest daughter played the mother. The eldest daughter would direct us to act out scenes of her taking care of her children. Is this just what is engrained into our DNA, or is it something that our society inflicts on children in subtle cues that tell them what gender mold they are supposed to fill?



I believe America today still inflicts these subtle gender cues in many things that are generic items for children, like giving little girls dolls to play with and practice childcare, while we buy little boys balls or toy cars that they can build and practice creating things on their own.  

The cartoon above depicts a prehistoric couple demonstrating the most basic gender roles where the man does all the hard manual labor like hunting and the woman does the easy gathering. However, in this cartoon the woman is rebelling against her assigned gender role because she has hunted down and killed an animal and she is now getting reprimanded. The picture above represents the traditional gender roles that many people would choose to say simply do not exist still in our society. But that is the easy answer, in reality it is not true.

Although woman in America today have made great progress in society by having more rights and such, there are still subtle cues such as the one represented in the picture to the right.  It starts with the young children and takes place in modern day, and even on bathroom signs, there is a stereotype that girls must wear dresses, or at least look more ladylike. Very much like how my grandfather expected me to be more ladylike and look more presentable than be wearing my athletic shorts.

The picture on the right poses some questions to consider in today's America, because although we have made progress with gender roles, we need to keep progressing because there is still a mold that needs to be broken, "How do traditional gender roles limit you? How much should they limit you? What are you going to do about it?" 

Feel free to comment your thoughts! I'm curious to hear ;) 

The American Grizzly Man

A question that many of us don't ask ourselves nearly enough is, what does it mean to be an American? I know a man named Timmothy Treadwell, also known as The Grizzly Man.  He was legally American, born and raised, yet many people people would still question whether he truly upheld the American values.

Timmothy Treadwell grew up as your typical middle class American, with a college diving scholarship, and on the path to make his daddy proud. However, it all began to crash and burn when he hurt his back, lost his scholarship and fell faster and faster on a downward spiral into the world of alcohol and drugs. Feeling neglected and out of place in the human civilization, he ventured into the world of the most dangerous animal on our continent, the bears. He journeyed across Alaska with nothing but the company of his camera and tripod, and seemed to form a greater bond with the wild bears than with his own family and friends.
Learn more here.

Some would say that Treadwell had a bright future ahead of him and simply threw his life away, but I don't think Timmothy himself would have the same view on it. He was simply living his dream of protecting the bears and in his own way rising above his earlier substance abuse troubles and making himself more successful than he was to begin with.  He may have not lived the typical "American dream" of going to school, getting a job, then raising a family and doing better off than your parents before you, but he did live his own form or success.  He simply had his own version of an American dream.

What is the first thing that everyone learns about America as early as the 1st grade? I don't know about you, but for me it was the pioneers.  When we learned about the pioneers, we were taught to see them as heroes, paving their way across unknown territory and building the country we now know of today. Treadwell is his own form of a pioneer, he is exploring a new kind of society that no one has ever dared to dip their feet into.  The "Secret World of the Bears." Many people criticize Treadwell's sanity and faith in these dangerous creatures, even the director of the movie "Grizzly Man," himself, Werner Herzog,

"What haunts me, is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature.  To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears. But for Timmothy Treadwell, this bear was a friend, a savior."

Many people in the movie, included Herzog, questioned the bond that Treadwell believed he had with the animals, but to Treadwell, even through the dead of being mauled by his so-called friend bear, he had faith in the animals to make him feel a part of their society since he felt that the human society wasn't enough for him. Timmothy did believe in the bears as a kind of "savior," from the pressures of the human society and the problems that were waiting for him there.  In the Bear Maze there was no need for money or material success, and most of all no temptation from harmful substances.

Timmothy Treadwell, in daring to venture into the unknown and the outskirts of what is considered the civil "norm" and doing what he believes will bring him success in his own eyes and rising above his earlier troubles, he is truly an American living his own American Dream.

Popping the Bubble

Today in class, when analyzing "Division Street," by Studs Terkel, we discussed the difference between the city and the suburbs and how the residents of the two areas view each other.  This really interested me, because I have lived a good thirty minute drive from the beautiful city of Chicago (on a good day of traffic, that is) for my entire life, and there is so much of the city that I have yet to set foot in.  Me, as the classic suburbanite, have only explored the common destination spots like, Michigan Ave., Navy Pier, and the Water Tower Place.  In all honestly, the only reason I usually venture down to the city is to shop, go out to lunch, go to the beach, or for big events like "Lollapalooza."

However, there have been a few eye opening experiences for me, and one occurred just this past weekend.  Last Sunday, my family and I crammed in the car and drove past the familiar areas- Millenium Park, Michigan Ave., Lake Street- and ended up in a new territory for me, Chicago's Chinatown.  I was very surprised at how different this new area was than anything I am used to.  The streets were crowded and little shops boasted the latest and greatest items with big neons signs written in a very unfamiliar language, and there was not a tree in sight.  Even in the sea of cement and parking garages, we still drove around for twenty minutes searching for a parking spot, and ended up creating our own.  I looked around and noticed that there were piles of trash spewed aimlessly around, and after buying a frozen drink and carrying the empty cup around for an hour, I understood why.  I am used to having a trash can accessible at every street corner, all over the North side of the city, but there wasn't a can to be found.

The experience made me think about how little of the city I really knew, and how enclosed I can be sometimes in the "North Shore Bubble" that I don't have a clue about my surroundings only twenty miles away.

In this photo, the large bright signs that line the streets are filled with a foreign language that many of us can't even begin to understand, and the architecture of the buildings are in a style very unlike what I might see in Winnetka, or even down Michigan Ave.  All of these things about the culture that I don't seem to understand make the place feel very different and foreign to me, but the Willis Tower and the faded black buildings towering over it all stand like shadows in the background.  These menacing shadows that I am so familiar with remind me that this "foreign" place is actually located right under my nose.

Rain Rain Go Away

We thought we had it bad today? Our rain is nothing compared to the severe flash flood warnings in Boulder, CO today.  Rains have been building up flood water in boulder for the past few days and now these conditions have severely damaged entire towns, leaving at least six people dead and hundreds still unaccounted for.  This devastating natural disaster could have caused even more absurd amounts of damage, had it not been for amazing rescue teams who arrived from all across the state and country.  They have been working for 24 hours straight and in this span of time more than 1,200 have been rescued.  There are still search crews working day and night for those many victims who are still unaccounted for.  Learn more here. 

Just imagine the elderly and disabled who would not be able to escape the deadly flood water.  This image above is incredible, and it demonstrates the hard work of the entire task force.  The man seems to be plucked right out of a shivering cold as he is wrapped entirely in a blanket is carried to safety.  The ratio of support is 5-1 just for this one elderly man, so we can reasonably infer that there are plenty of rescuers hard at work searching for those in peril right now.  

These natural disasters are a terrible thing, but they test our ability to support each other as a country in times of need.

A Recurring Cycle

I was just sitting watching the US open with my mom and there was a news break interrupting the event with an update on the Syria conflict.  Russia, as an ally of Syria, has offered to intervene and is negotiating a way for the Russians to safely remove any chemical threats from the destructive hands of Syria.  In press conferences today Obama has remarked on the issue that, "It's possible if it's real." This could provide a silver lining to the American troops, allowing them to stay home with their families for a while longer.  You can find more details here.

The thing that came to my mind is that this conflict seems to be a flashback to a mere thirty years ago when it was us in this situation with Russia.  Nothing seems to have changed.  Just last year I was learning about The Cold War in history class and viewing it as a thing of the past, something I would only experience in textbooks.  But those same allies that I learned about in the textbooks are the same ones I see in this current conflict.  Our nation versus the nation of Syria, allied with our old rivals Russia and Iran, all on the verge of destruction.  We are even fighting with the same tactics as in the past as we are using a form of MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) when they threaten to attack with chemical weapons and we counter with the threat of a military invasion.  I have heard that history repeats itself, this is just the first time, and surely not the last time, that I am truly understanding and experiencing it first hand.

Do you believe the Syria conflict will end up resembling the cold war? What are other examples when history has repeated itself?  Feel free to leave a comment!