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. 

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. 

In a Barbie World

This week there has been some controversy over the new 2014 Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit Edition because this year they are spicing up the issue by adding a picture of Barbie in a striped bathing suit. Critics have gone into hysterics over this because they believe that those two things are the most degrading things to women in society and to pair them together is crossing a whole new line of offensive. Feminist and media critic, Lisi Wade, speaks out against this saying, "Both Barbie and the swimsuit issue have been making women and girls feel inadequate for decades. It's a perfect partnership." 
I would have to agree with Wade on the issue because the comparison of real life woman to an inanimate object is literally objectifying them. Furthermore, this object to which they are being compared has the body that would be extremely unhealthy if Barbie were a real woman. There is research that shows that if Barbie were a real person, she would be 5'9''' and weight 110 lbs which means by her Body Mass Index of 16.24, she would be anorexic.

The cover of the magazine as you can see above features the typical looking barbie doll, however this is a limited edition that is supposed to resemble the first Barbie doll ever released on the market, who was wearing a zebra swim suit similar to this one. That is why the caption to the left of the picture says, "The doll that started it all." But what did this doll really start? An ideal beauty and body image for women that is detrimental to your health to try to achieve?
But we cannot blame the doll for all the problems with body image and objectifying women in the media frequently in America today. Barbie is just one of the many many offenders. However, it is interesting that The Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit Edition and Barbie, some of the largest sources of media and culture that receive a lot of criticism for objectifying women, would want to band together. This "perfect partnership," as Wade puts it sarcastically, makes it 2x clearer what a problem there is in the media today in regard to the portrayal of women in America.

The Right to End Rape

An issue that has been receiving nationwide media attention lately is sexual assault, and on college campuses in particular. I have always heard that when terrible things like this occur, you have to come forward and tell someone so that the culprit cannot walk free and potentially hurt someone else in the future. After going to a self-defense class with my advisory on Thursday my eyes were opened to the truth behind how the cases actually turn out when a man is charged with sexual assault.

As you can see from the bar graph above, in reality 97% of people charged with rape will walk free, and I'm guessing a lot more than 3% of those charged are guilty. This is because of the sad fact that when many women come forward, the authorities are not able to prosecute because of insufficient evidence. This lack of evidence is caused either by the girl waiting to long after the event, or the authorities not taking the proper precautions to preserve or collect the evidence.

There have been many questionable cases at certain universities in which the authorities may have purposely with-held evidence for periods of time or even knowingly failed to collect evidence in order to help the university in some way. One of the most well-known example of this is the sexual assault charge on the Florida State quarterback, Jameis Winston, that was dropped because of the authorities collecting insufficient evidence. Some believe it was purposeful because the star quarterback was probably bringing in millions of dollars for the school and it would benefit them greatly to drop the charge. You can read more about that here.

However, a more recent example is in the news as of this week and it features the story of Joanna Espinosa, who is attempting to convict her ex boyfriend of sexual assault. The authorities have been the opposite of cooperative seeing as when she reported it to the Edinburg Police Department near her Texas-Pan American campus this is how they responded, "they told her that her case would be difficult to prove and took her phone number. She never heard back from them." The authorities couldn't be bothered to even explore the possibility of Espinosa having a case. They wouldn't give her the time of day, let alone a simple phone call. In America today 1 in 5 girls will encounter sexual assault on their college campus, yet why are they treated like the suspect instead of the victim.
This is only one of many flaws in our justice system today and the fact that the justice system values money over the well-being of innocent girls like the victim of Winston shows that the flaw stems from greed. The justice system should value for once what is right instead of what pays and start living up to their expectation of being "just" and fair like their name would suggest.

Help the Homeless in this Bitter Weather

If you've taken one step outside in the past two days I'm sure your aware too that America is experiencing record-breaking cold temperatures, none of which we have seen the likes of for two decades. Here in Chicago, it was -11 degrees yesterday with a wind chill of -42. That's crazy! So crazy that I have seen multiple you tube videos of people throwing boiling water into the air and it comes down as snow! 

I'm sitting here on my day off, not too affected by the bitter cold because I'm bundled up in many many layers, multiple pairs of socks and I have the heat blasting in my house. But I can't help to think that others aren't so lucky. 

There are currently 21,000 homeless people in the city of Chicago alone. I doubt they have many many layers and heaters blasting at all times. In this freezing cold any exposed skin will turn to frost bite in on average 7.5 minutes. After doing a little research, however, I was comforted to see that the city is aware of these dangers as well and have taken measures to help. Homeless shelters that would normally be at maximum capacity are not turning anyone away and the city buses are allowing these homeless people ride continuously (when they would normally be kicked off), even overnight if they have to. 

I was very impressed with our cities compassion and will to look out for these people in need, but then I wondered, why can't we do this all the time and not only when these people's lives are in danger? This may help them stay warm for a few nights, but in the long run their situation is not going to get any better. We need to make these kinds of commitments to their well-being all the time and search for the long-term solution as well because no one should ever have to live like that. 

Justice for Beauty

This week in one of America's most popular fashion magazines, Elle, they published four different covers featuring some of America's funniest actors. These four actors are Amy Poehler, Zooey Deschanel, Allison Williams and Mindy Kaling. You may recognize them from their features on many popular sitcoms that I enjoy as well like New Girl, The Mindy Project, and Parks and Recreation. One difference that stands out to me immediately is that they are all body shots in color except for Mindy's picture which is neck-up and black and white. Mindy also happens to be the only ethnically diverse woman here because she is American Indian and she also is not model thin like the rest of the women. 

Commenters on the Elle website like Chinyere Echewe were outraged at Mindy's shot, saying, "Hey, Elle, I know you're only a fashion magazine, but perhaps you should have done Mindy the same justice you did the other ladies." She is so outraged she even questions the legality of this shot by calling justice into question and by saying Mindy deserves the "same justice," as the other girls by letting her true ethnicity shine through. I'm with Chinyere here because it seems like the editors of Elle went to great lengths with the black and white affect to make Mindy's different color skin blend in with the background, almost as if they are ashamed to present it to the public. 

Another commenter, Aisha Mapp, said, "Way to cover up the only normal sized person." The magazine cropped the photo very differently as well as if to hide Mindy's torso from the public because it doesn't fit in with their stick thin standards. One definition of "normal" is mentally and physically healthy and by Aisha calling Mindy "normal" she the calls in to question the other models in Elle   as being abnormal. Whether Aisha meant to or not, this is also making a stab at the fact that many of the average models in Elle are probably underweight and therefore not physically and mentally healthy. 

But in all honesty, the magazines are not responsible for this. The magazines print what the average American will buy and they feature in their magazines the type of woman who they think American's will take the most liking to and want to buy their clothes. This means that the standard of American beauty is specifically a white, stick thin photo shopped woman and we cannot blame the magazines for this because that is a problem deeper en-grained in our American society than we would like to admit.  

Dr Pepper 10: 10 Manly Calories

The newest Dr. Pepper drink on the market is very controversial because all the advertisements for the drink are directed only towards me, and the "manliest" men specifically. After market research showed that men tend to regard diet sodas as not manly, advertisers went above and beyond in their campaign to make it know that this new Dr. Pepper drink has "10 manly calories." 

I became aware of this because in one sitting of TV I viewed the commercial included above for the soft drink twice and became increasingly offended each time. In this commercial you see a scruffy looking man enjoying the outdoors and doing many adventurous activities like biting off a piece of wood, carrying a huge log, climbing cliffs and crossing a roaring stream. Is it portraying the message that these are the only things that make a "manly" man and these are the kinds of men who deserve to drink Dr. Pepper 10. It is obvious that the advertisers are trying to appeal to the men consumers who they were missing before with diet sodas but I believe they are just offending both genders in the process. 

Everything about the drink screams that is it not for women. As it is well stated in an article in The Week, "The can is gunmetal gray, and an extensive campaign for the beverage boldly declares that "it's not for women." Above even the advertisements, the can itself is not the usual metallic silver, it is a "gunmetal grey" which seems to fit their "manly" theme because I'm sure these advertisers wouldn't dare think of a woman holding a gun, would they?

But these advertisements will even offend the male sex because what if a man is more into theater or music or watching the football game on his couch than going outside and hiking in the woods. To me that is perfectly fine and they shouldn't be discriminated for their interests, however according to this campaign they aren't "manly" enough, and are not worthy of drinking Dr Pepper 10. 

The commercial ends with a a screen showing the soda can and these huge bold words, "The MANLIEST low-calorie soda in the history of MANKIND."  "Manly," according to dictionary.com is "having qualities traditionally ascribed to men like strength or bravery." To me I would think that this drink would offend men by questioning their strength and bravery and also would offend woman for being excluded. However, we cannot blame the Dr. Pepper advertisers for this because they do not care about who is offended in the end, they care about the profit. They are banking on the fact that because women in today's society are more concerned about diet or "healthier" sodas, this drink will draw more male consumers and that more people will want to buy the soda than will be offended. The only way we could change the way advertisers campaign would be to as a society break these gender roles that the men are the only strong and brave ones and if we could do that the advertisers would not campaign in this manor, because the advertisers play to what we as an American society want.