As I have narrowed down my "why" questions for Junior theme this past week, I have been going back and forth between mainly two topics. I found myself contemplating the pros and cons of doing sexual assault in America and why so much of the sexual abuse in America goes unreported, versus why factory farms are on the rise. Sexual assault seemed like a topic that could pertain very well to me because I am going to be going to college in a year and it is a very prominent issue on college campuses.
I began to look into sexual assault statistics in America in recent years and was shocked to find out that only 60% of the victims ever report their stories to the police, and even more appalling was that only 97% of the perpetrators ever are convicted. This enlightened me to the fact that this problem is so large in America and also raised the ginormous question, why was this the case that so many people could commit this horrible crime with no consequence?
However, the factory farming and the whole food industry in America interests me a lot as well because it has been in the news lately with animal rights activists taking secret footage of the horrors that occur in factory farms. In the very popular magazine, Rolling Stone, there was an article that appeared, titled , "In the Belly of the Beast." This title itself is dripping with loaded language, by comparing the food industry and factory farming to a savage, wild animal. There are many text bubbles that are enlarged quotes throughout the article, highlighted in blood red, like one from an animal rights activist, which exclaims, "Wherever you stand on eating animals, I think we agree that making their lives hell is too high a price to pay for cheap food." There are very strong activists out there who believe in this issue as one of the most prominent issues in American society today and you can see they feel very strongly towards it by their use of swear words which would normally never be allowed in a formal article. However in this case they are used to convey the very strong sentiments towards the issue.
Since so many people believe so strongly in the issue of factory farming in America today and I have found many resources available easily in the library I have chosen to pursue this topic. However, I still believe sexual assault is a prominent issue in our country today but it is not the best suitable Junior Theme topic for me.
Friday, March 28, 2014
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Exploration: The Junior Theme
When I first stared at the assignment sheet for the infamous Junior Theme I had so many different thoughts and topics swirling around in my head that I had no idea where to start. Then as I remembered that I had been blogging about topics that interest me for the whole year I decided to use that as a reference. I noticed that most of my blog posts from the recent couple of months, when I finally started to find my voice as a blogger, were about women's rights and degradation of women in our America today. Being a woman, these topics interest me because they pertain to me the most and are relatable to me and my future.
One topic in particular that was a little more controversial was the topic of pornography. I came across this idea after thinking about areas where many women are degraded and sexualized but I did not want to do a topic that is too common, such as body image or eating disorders. Pornography sounded perfect because there is sexualized degradation of women at an extreme level, however, it is not a commonly covered topic at all. But because pornography isn't exactly socially acceptable and is grotesque I still wasn't sure whether there would be much debate around the issue or enough material to cover.
When I looked up statistics for the pornography industry in the past few years I was surprised how many different interesting areas there were and statistics that shocked me. With technology becoming so prominent in our life recently, I found it shocking that according to Covenant Eyes Porn Stats: Annual Report 2014, 1 in 5 mobile searches are for pornography. According to Facts and Figures, "The sex industry is the most profitable industry in the world".
There are even subtopics that range farther than just degradation of women than I could have ever imagined, such as, porn through the different age groups, how the porn industry has changed in the last century with technology, how porn affects your marriage, and even a bizarre phenomenon with christian men and women after they have watched porn.
It seems like there would be enough here to cover at Junior Theme than I had ever imagined, however, it still worries me how I would organize it. Or how I would slim down the subtopics and not stray too far away from the women involved in it themselves. Overall, I am excited to explore if not this topic, something else that sucks me in.
One topic in particular that was a little more controversial was the topic of pornography. I came across this idea after thinking about areas where many women are degraded and sexualized but I did not want to do a topic that is too common, such as body image or eating disorders. Pornography sounded perfect because there is sexualized degradation of women at an extreme level, however, it is not a commonly covered topic at all. But because pornography isn't exactly socially acceptable and is grotesque I still wasn't sure whether there would be much debate around the issue or enough material to cover.
When I looked up statistics for the pornography industry in the past few years I was surprised how many different interesting areas there were and statistics that shocked me. With technology becoming so prominent in our life recently, I found it shocking that according to Covenant Eyes Porn Stats: Annual Report 2014, 1 in 5 mobile searches are for pornography. According to Facts and Figures, "The sex industry is the most profitable industry in the world".
There are even subtopics that range farther than just degradation of women than I could have ever imagined, such as, porn through the different age groups, how the porn industry has changed in the last century with technology, how porn affects your marriage, and even a bizarre phenomenon with christian men and women after they have watched porn.
It seems like there would be enough here to cover at Junior Theme than I had ever imagined, however, it still worries me how I would organize it. Or how I would slim down the subtopics and not stray too far away from the women involved in it themselves. Overall, I am excited to explore if not this topic, something else that sucks me in.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
NSA Imperialism
Recently I learned that college is not in the plan for my cousin who is a senior in High School. I was shocked to hear this because I cannot imagine myself or any of my fellow classmates not going to college, so I wanted to learn more. I learned from my uncle that my cousin is very tech-savy and has landed an internship for a company that most 4 year college graduates would be lucky to get. He is planning on following his dream career path in computers but his end goal is especially interesting to me. Apparently, he for people in his field the prized job is working for the NSA.
This did not surprise me because I recently studied how the NSA has expanded their surveillance of American citizens dramatically since 9/11. According to a website called Democracy Now, which you can tell from the name is probably bias towards decrease in national security, and therefore the stretch of NSA coverage, "Through a program called "Prefer," the NSA uses text messages to gather data such as travel plans, contacts and credit card information." This is an insane amount of data collection, and to what end? What can be so interesting in these millions of text messages except someone saying, "OMG! so pumped to travel to Florida this weekend!" It seems a little pointless to me to go to these extremes.
However, they areI, and because of this I can see why they would need to hire so many new tech-savy people like my cousin. I just hope they are not totally disregarding the rights of American citizens in the process. Because in America privacy is a thing that is highly valued. Even in the Declaration it originally preached, "Life, liberty and property," as core American values. And in "property," it was specifically referencing private property because owning something that you can say belongs to you and you only is a major part of individualism, which is the backbone of American ideals.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Labor Camps in Our Own Backyard
Hard to believe, but it appears that there are still some version of forced labor camps in our very own fifty states. The particular camp in the news as of today was mistreating mentally disabled workers, who may have been much easier targets. But just the fact that they are easier to target does not mean it is any more just to mistreat innocent people.
Henry's Turkey Service uprooted hundreds of mentally disabled Texan natives from their homes and shipped them off to labor camps in seven different states within the US. One particular camp in Iowa housed 32 of these workers, "in a dilapidated farm house," for several years, according to ABC news. No matter how many grueling hours they spent on duty, they were paid a flat rate of $65 a month and they suffered verbal and physical abuse. Because of their mental state, these innocent men were helpless and endured theses terrible conditions living in a house in ruins and for almost no compensation. It wasn't until years later when family members reported these cruelties to the state that there was any action taken against it. The camp in Iowa was shut down in 2009, but the article in ABC news today was reflecting on the fact that Henry's Turkey Service has suffered almost no repercussions since.
The Federal Justice Department ruled that the company owed $6 million in repercussions that was going to be used to help compensate for the damages suffered by those hundreds of mentally ill men. However, Henry's has somehow managed to avoid paying these dues for 3 years straight. Although the Justice Department says they are looking into how to get these funds, many people have given up on every receiving any of the money at all.
Sherri Brown, sister of a worker, said, "I have never had any illusions about us seeing one dime from all of this." Yet she believes that it is still worthwhile because even though her own brother may never receive justice she says, "We fought this case for other people, so that this sort of thing would never happen again to anyone else."
I believe these men from Iowa who were cruelly mistreated still deserve their money, and I am not sure if why the government has let Henry's get off so easy is because they are lazy and have moved on past the case, or for another reason. However, as much as it angers me, Sherri is right, and has an amazingly positive attitude by reminding us that in America all our court cases can set a precedent for the future so every small victory now could lead to a much larger victory later. Hopefully in the near future there will be no more labor camps on our own soil, and this is just the first step.
Henry's Turkey Service uprooted hundreds of mentally disabled Texan natives from their homes and shipped them off to labor camps in seven different states within the US. One particular camp in Iowa housed 32 of these workers, "in a dilapidated farm house," for several years, according to ABC news. No matter how many grueling hours they spent on duty, they were paid a flat rate of $65 a month and they suffered verbal and physical abuse. Because of their mental state, these innocent men were helpless and endured theses terrible conditions living in a house in ruins and for almost no compensation. It wasn't until years later when family members reported these cruelties to the state that there was any action taken against it. The camp in Iowa was shut down in 2009, but the article in ABC news today was reflecting on the fact that Henry's Turkey Service has suffered almost no repercussions since.
The Federal Justice Department ruled that the company owed $6 million in repercussions that was going to be used to help compensate for the damages suffered by those hundreds of mentally ill men. However, Henry's has somehow managed to avoid paying these dues for 3 years straight. Although the Justice Department says they are looking into how to get these funds, many people have given up on every receiving any of the money at all.
Sherri Brown, sister of a worker, said, "I have never had any illusions about us seeing one dime from all of this." Yet she believes that it is still worthwhile because even though her own brother may never receive justice she says, "We fought this case for other people, so that this sort of thing would never happen again to anyone else."
I believe these men from Iowa who were cruelly mistreated still deserve their money, and I am not sure if why the government has let Henry's get off so easy is because they are lazy and have moved on past the case, or for another reason. However, as much as it angers me, Sherri is right, and has an amazingly positive attitude by reminding us that in America all our court cases can set a precedent for the future so every small victory now could lead to a much larger victory later. Hopefully in the near future there will be no more labor camps on our own soil, and this is just the first step.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Racism: does it ripen with age?
My grandpa who I don't get to see very often visited from out of town this weekend, yet there were noticeable things he would say that caught my attention as being very racist. It shocked me at first because I feel like around people my age and my parents age you would never hear something so racially bias come out of someone's mouth because it is not socially acceptable and frowned upon. As we were sitting down to dinner and one of my brothers was talking about fried chicken, my grandpa announced, "Black people make the best fried chicken." I was extremely shocked because he said it in such a casual way and to me it was clearly racist, but he did not seem to notice, to him it was a normal topic of conversation.
The question came to mind, is this common in his generation? But in reality none of my other grandparents say something that blunt, however I have noticed some much subtler things that suggest to me that they may have some similarly racist thoughts. I looked into it to see if there was any actual research to back up my hypothesis that my grandpa's generation is naturally more racist than ours. I found that just 2 months ago, Oprah Winfrey did an interview with Will Gompertz on the very subject of racism today. Oprah would agree with my hypothesis but she takes it to a whole new level that I would not entirely agree with when she proclaims, "There are still generations of people, older people, who were born and bred and marinated in that prejudice and racism, and they just have to die." Oprah is saying that the older generations were more exposed to racism when they grew up and by saying "they just have to die," she claims that when this generation is past this racism will vanish.
Although I do think that the older generations, like my grandma grew up in a world where they were exposed to more racial hatred, so it would make sense that they may hold some of those views into adulthood, I do not believe that simply that generation is the problem. In our generation today there are plenty of racial jokes, for example this entire website is devoted to racial jokes, and I can assure you that the grandpa's of this generation are not the ones creating this website. We have also explored as a class the subtle racism in media today through TV Tokenism. This is not a problem we can simply scapegoat onto one generation or another, it is something we all have to face in America together.
The question came to mind, is this common in his generation? But in reality none of my other grandparents say something that blunt, however I have noticed some much subtler things that suggest to me that they may have some similarly racist thoughts. I looked into it to see if there was any actual research to back up my hypothesis that my grandpa's generation is naturally more racist than ours. I found that just 2 months ago, Oprah Winfrey did an interview with Will Gompertz on the very subject of racism today. Oprah would agree with my hypothesis but she takes it to a whole new level that I would not entirely agree with when she proclaims, "There are still generations of people, older people, who were born and bred and marinated in that prejudice and racism, and they just have to die." Oprah is saying that the older generations were more exposed to racism when they grew up and by saying "they just have to die," she claims that when this generation is past this racism will vanish.
Although I do think that the older generations, like my grandma grew up in a world where they were exposed to more racial hatred, so it would make sense that they may hold some of those views into adulthood, I do not believe that simply that generation is the problem. In our generation today there are plenty of racial jokes, for example this entire website is devoted to racial jokes, and I can assure you that the grandpa's of this generation are not the ones creating this website. We have also explored as a class the subtle racism in media today through TV Tokenism. This is not a problem we can simply scapegoat onto one generation or another, it is something we all have to face in America together.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)