Social Justice Project
By Adrian Greensmith
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“Officer Darren Wilson's story is unbelievable. Literally.” Vox.com, by Ezra Klein
America is a nation shaped by each generation, constantly changing as one opinion turns into another. But there are certain constants that have always battered our nation over and over again. One of the most violent and defining problems that America has faced, and is still fighting, is racism. Every now and then there’s some sort of outrage connected to racism and the whole country explodes in arguments, debates, and riots.
Lately, the case in Ferguson, Missouri has been the cause of said outrage. The case as a whole is completely unjustified and wrong, showing the core of America’s racism. The article I read had to do more with the white police officer’s perspective on what happened. And when reading the article, it became clear that he was your average man. There were no red flags that pointed out that he was a racist and a murderer. But in fact, it’s almost impossible to have an understanding of a person in such a crime, for the opinions flying around the social media are putting words into the mouths of everyone who doesn’t already have an opinion. Though no one supporting Officer Wilson says it, it’s quite clear that Brown and Wilson’s race played the biggest role in the shooting. Switch their races and Brown would have been tried and arrested within the hour. And honestly that’s complete injustice, knowing that white police officers really do have the power to shoot and kill a man without being tried.
This made me think about how when I walk the streets and I see a police car, I feel more than completely safe. I can’t imagine a scenario where I’m walking home and I view the police as a threat. Should the color of my skin really determine how I view the people who are meant to protect me, to protect the American public?
Looking at my Neighborhood, Park Slope
· When I go to a restaurant, most of the waiters seem to be young white men and women, while the bus boys and the cooks are all Latino.
· At MS51, when I go out to lunch, I look around and realize that all the white kids are out and about, while a good amount of the less privileged, Latino children eat in the cafeteria every day.
· The high school admissions process is made so less privileged kids, even if they are extremely smart, are always placed behind the privileged white kids. Parents who are working multiple jobs and have limited income aren’t able to devote the time or resources to supporting their children in the difficult high school admissions process (visiting schools, hiring tutors, etc…)
· When I’m late for school I end up taking the bus, and I notice that all the kids who are going to 51 on the bus are Latino, and Park Slope is socially and geographically far from where they live.
· A majority of the cab drivers are Muslim and speak very little English, but have lived here for many years, showing how little America has embraced them.
After going to 51 for so long, going out to lunch has become what I thought was
the norm for almost all of my grade, if not all of it. I understood that some kids didn’t have the money, but honestly I was hardly ever in the cafeteria to notice what was really going on. That is, until last year, when Mr. Arroyo started giving my class a lot of lunch detentions. Spending time down in the cafeteria let me observe all the kids, kids who I had never talked to, eating down there. There were double, triple, quadruple the number of kids I imagined would be eating in the cafeteria because they couldn’t afford to eat anywhere else. And the scariest part of the whole ordeal, the part that just seemed plain wrong, was how almost every single kid down there was Latino. These were kids who I didn’t even know went to 51. Our socio-economic status differences were so great that I didn’t even know they existed, and I doubt they knew that I did either. And that just enraged me. Kids my age, going to my school, and just because they were brought up in a different environment, I would never even have a conversation with them.
Listening to the News: Kenyan Women Assaulted for Wearing Miniskirts
This NPR segment I listened to definitely gave me a whole new perspective on the idea of a strict dress code. It tells the story of how women in Kenya are being brutally raped by men in public places after being stripped of their clothes, if they are wearing such revealing garments as miniskirts. Girls my age are always complaining about how they aren’t allowed to wear what they want to wear, which I’ve always considered being complaint worthy, but not necessarily unjust. In Kenya, something so trivial as choosing to wear a miniskirt can cause women to be put through great suffering. It demonstrates how women in Kenya have no power in their society. How can women live their life knowing that they mean nothing to their society, that through the eyes of the people around them, they are worthless? What could come after controlling their clothes? If you can’t make even small choices about how you want to live your life, then how can you be considered a free human being? Knowing the many horrific and unjustified acts that take place on this earth really makes one consider what the world will be like in 100 years. Will justice have been sought out, or will life as we know it have changed course for an even worse path?
Interpretation and Analysis: Same Love, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis
Growing up in Park Slope, an extremely liberal neighborhood with a high gay population, I have been brought up to be accepting of all sexual preferences. This means that when I’m exposed to all the homophobic people in the world, lurking in YouTube comments and over social media, it hurts to know how gays are viewed. More and more people come out and admit they are gay every day, all over the nation, and risk not being accepted by those around them.
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, famous musicians in hip hop culture, look at being gay through a different lens than most rappers. Many rappers use homophobic words such as “faggot” as an insult, not addressing how that’s a common word used to damage gay people. Macklemore’s song is for a cause, an anthem for homosexuals who are being tormented, but he’s using a musical genre not commonly know for doing such. The lyrics describe experiences from Macklemore’s and Lewis’ childhood, telling the stories of stereotypes that plagued their minds and those of their peers as kids.
“When I was in the third grade I thought that I was gay, 'Cause I could draw, my uncle was, and I kept my room straight.”
In my opinion, this song is mostly about change, and showing to all the people who don’t believe in gay rights that being gay isn’t something that can be chosen, that they are people just like everyone else. As the gay community grows larger and larger, more and more people start fighting it, causing pressure on state governments to decide if they are pro-gay or not. The divide in the nation is not only hurting itself, but the people of the nation. I believe that this song is not only something to listen to, but something that should spread a message, send out a signal, saying that it’s time for a change, its time for justice.
A Connection Between Teenage Stereotypes and a Movie: 21 Jump Street
21 Jump Street is popular movie based on cops going undercover in a high school for a drug bust. While it is a comedy, the movie creates images of teenagers partying all day and all night long, with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. These scenes of intense partying make kids my age look up to that kind of lifestyle and say, “That’s what I want to do in high school.” While watching the movie a kid will look at how much fun everyone’s having with drugs and will want to be like the teenagers taking the drug. Of course, they don’t know what the drugs shown in the movie can really do to you, just that everybody cool in the movie takes it.
The teenagers in the movie are perfect examples of what Hollywood is modeling future teenagers to look up to. Kids will start associating being rich, white, and disconnected from your family with being popular. And there is no contrast between different types of teenagers (unlike such movies as The Breakfast Club which shows a wider variety of students), just countless white, popular teenagers. It sends a message to younger children saying that, to be accepted you have to be a member of a certain class and race.
Interview with Simon Dinnerstein
Adrian: How do you think the nation has changed socially since you were a kid? Do you think it is a more just nation?
Simon: In the United States the progress towards racial harmony is much better than it was in 1960 or ‘63 when I went to the March on Washington. It isn’t really great but it’s much, much better. The fact that you couldn’t call someone a poor racial name now is much different than that many years ago. I think very few people would stand for it now. But the way we see people is colored by the lens that is our lens and you could see that in the example in Ferguson - whether people saw that young man as dangerous or threatening or a thug varies between the white and black population.
Adrian: You talked a bit about going to the March on Washington. What kind of experience was that for you and what inspired you to march that day?
Simon: I thought that march dealt with a specific issue. It wasn’t like you were going to some general idea like the million man march. It was connected with voting and public accommodations in the South so it struck me a s a very good thing to participate in. That March on Washington has become a very casual thing but at the time it was not so. Not everyone went and not everyone wanted to go and I thought it was extremely impressive and it seemed to me that King put it all together in that one speech.
Adrian: Do you think that what King stood for and prayed for has been accomplished?
Simon: Well I think that things have gotten better and there is more opportunity but I don’t’ think its an equal playing field,. The fact that people are so upset now about this ruling in Ferguson clearly indicates that there are two systems of justice, two perceptions of justice, and I don’t think you can get away from that. It’s a very complicated country and I think that race is the defining feature of the country even though people don’t want to believe that.
I have always looked at my grandfather, Simon, as being a very wise man. Maybe it’s just his beard, but being an artist, he always has had very observant and unexpected opinions on a variety of topics. He is right to be pointing out that the nation really has become less racist, which not many people consider, but he also knows the hardships that people from different backgrounds face. In his drawings, his subjects are diverse and he shows their humanity in their faces.
Interview with Renée Dinnerstein, my grandmother.
Renée, or as I call her, Nonna, is currently a teaching consultant, but has worked in education for many years. She helped inspire my dad to become a teacher, and is still helping him till this day. She has worked in many different areas, but spent much of her time as a kindergarten teacher at PS 321, where I went for elementary school and where my dad teaches. She has views on teaching much unlike a vast majority of teachers nowadays, with a much more hands-on and inquiry based approach to teaching. Her passionate feelings on how modern teaching needs to modified have inspired her to write a well known blog, Investigating Choice Time, which has inspired many teachers to change the way they teach, and she is currently writing a book based on choice time.
Adrian: For how many years have you worked as a teacher/consultant?
Renée: I started teaching in 1968 and have been working in education in some form or another ever since then, either as a classroom teacher, an administrator, a curriculum writer, or as a consultant.
Adrian: You’ve been in this area for quite a long time. What have you noticed that’s changed either in a good way for education or a bad way? Have you noticed any trends amongst the students and where they come from and how they’ve learned?
Renée: I think that the changes that have taken place in education depend very much on the neighborhood where the school is located and that’s been a big disappointment for me. In neighborhoods like where we live, which is middle class, there’s more freedom in the classrooms , less scripted programs for children, often better quality teacher. And then when I go into a neighborhood that is poorer, for a variety of reasons I find children being taught with scripted programs where the teachers don’t get the opportunity to create appropriate instruction for the children in the class. I will go into a classroom in a more middle class neighborhood and the classroom looks beautiful with carpets and curtains and beautiful materials and then I go into a classroom where the children come from poor and difficult life situations, where they live in shelters and foster homes, and the classrooms are rather sad looking. If any children need to come into a place of beauty it’s those children. I find this somewhat frustrating in my work.
Adrian: You were talking between the difference in education between classes. Do you think socioeconomic difference affects how schools approach their students?
Renée: There’s no denying that in a school in a more middle class neighborhood, children come in with richer experiences, though all children come in with experience. Nobody comes in with a clean slate. But the middle class children come in with a lot of language, with having been talked with not just talked to. And that’s what a lot of the children from the poor neighborhoods are missing for a lot of reasons, some because their parents are busy trying to make a go of life, some because the parents themselves are not educated. So they come in with a sort of deficit. That being said I think that in those schools there are a lot of misguided solutions. A lot of the ‘solutions’ are that we have to quickly get them into reading, give them workbooks and flashcards. And the people that make the decisions are missing the point because what the schools need to do for those children is to give them those experiences that they have missed , to have lots of rich experiences in the classroom, to take them on trips out into the world, and then they will be more ready to do the academics that the city, the state and the nation are pushing them to do.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/11/28/367154315/viral-videos-show-kenyan-women-assaulted-for-wearing-miniskirts
http://investigatingchoicetime.com
http://www.simondinnerstein.com
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