Author: mazzaro.4

Text Review. Calla Mazzaro. The Fosters

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My focus today for this assignments is being directed towards a television series that is called The Fosters. This is where I immediately went and focused on after reading the assignment prompt. To those of you who are not familiar with this series it is about a family who is made up of two mothers who are married. There is one child who is a biological to the mother who is a cop, then there is two hispanic twins that were adopted into the family, as well as two American kids that were fostered in at the beginning of the series. Right off the bat you can tell from that quick summary that there is some injustices that this family will face.

This first injustice that I will address is the marriage between Stef and Lena. To give you a little more background into relationship, Stef was originally married to a man and had a child and the ultimately left him for Lena. This split in Stef’s life brought some disparity from her parents and this was not really an accepted situation in the beginning. Another injustice that is brought into it is that Stef is white and Lena is African American. Not only is this a same sex marriage but this is also a multi-racial relationship. This can cause a great deal of differences of opinions from the outside world that the entire family has to deal with throughout the show.

The next injustice that I am going to go into more detail with is the multiple races that make up this entire family unit. As I mentioned in the beginning of everyones different races and upbringing this causes a lot of hardships on the kids who are made fun of for their blended family.

Another injustice is the role that Stef plays in the series. She is a female cop. As we know a police officer is a role that was originally more so expected to be filled by a male. There is some unfairness and injustices that are present throughout her time on the show from other male police officers.

The last injustice that I want to touch on is the foster aspect that is brought into the TV show. The insides of foster and group homes are shown as well as the inside of how the foster kids are treated and switched from home to home. This show is a great example of modern day families breaking the barriers and defeating the odds of hate and negative opinions from the outside voices. This type of family is one that is seen all throughout America now a days and I think it brings great awareness to how people that don’t fit an exact mold of what is expected are treated.

Context Research Presentation — Calla Mazzaro — Week 13

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During this week we have been assigned to read a book by the author Jamaica Kincaid that is titled A Small Place. The book’s setting takes place in a small island in the Caribbean, called Antigua. When most of us hear of the place Antigua we generally think of a warm vacation spot on the water. But there is much more to it than just being a beautiful vacation spot. I had to do some research and digging to figure out the history of this place because it is not one I knew much about. I chose to go about the agriculture route of the history of the island of Antigua because that is what I jive best with since I have been raised on a farm and am an Agribusiness and Applied Economics major with a minor in Production Agriculture. This island was found and originally entered on for the hopes and possibilities of it being a sugar plantation in 1684. Sugar plantations were big in the Caribbean around this time, in the 1640’s sugar agriculture began to be very profitable as sugar cane was grown in Barbados. These sugar plantations were primarily using slaves and convicts to do all of the labor of growing the sugar cane and from there making the sugar products. After Christopher Codrington inspected Antigua it was discovered to be fit for large-scale sugar cultivations, in fact it was home to over 150 cane-processing windmills by the time the mid 1700’s hit. Fast forward to the 1970’s when there was a collapse in the sugar industry which left the government to be in control of 60% of the plantations in Antigua. While there has now been a decrease in the booming sugar cane plantations and production there is still many other forms of agriculture found in Antigua, this includes things such as fruits and vegetables as well as fish. I am attaching a few photos for you all, the first being a photo of the sugar production in Antigua in the 1800’s. The second is a photo of some agriculture research that is being done in more present day in Antigua. Finally, the last picture is what I mentioned in the beginning as to what we all probably think of when we hear Antigua.

Resources:
http://www.antigua-barbuda.org/aghis01.htm

Enslaved People’s work on sugar plantations


https://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Americas/Antigua-and-Barbuda-AGRICULTURE.html#:~:text=The%20collapse%20of%20the%20sugar,acres%20of%20sugar%20cane%20plantations.&text=However%2C%20it%20appears%20that%20cultivation,of%20land%20planted%20with%20vegetables.

Diary of Systemic Injustice -Calla Mazzaro

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For this spotlight of the Diary of Systemic Injustices assignment I decided to share with you all my final diary entry. It is about the systemic injustices in airports. Last week I decided to explore the systemic injustices that are found in traveling, more specifically I wanted to look into airports. We are all probably very familiar with how strict TSA security is in the airports today after going through the tragedy of the 9/11 terrorist attack. However, now there are issues in the system that people have to encounter and fight through every single day because of their nationality, culture, clothes, religion and color of skin. I found an article during my research of how injustices are found in airports, I found an article from The Guardian that is titled “How It Feels. to be Racially Profiled While Traveling”. In this article there is statements from interviews from real people who are still experiencing racial profiling and injustices today during traveling. There was one woman by the name of Katie who is a mixed African-British woman who travels frequently. She discusses that she is often pulled to the side and searched extra. But she talks about one specific scenario where she was screened more and the TSA agents found her sheet music in the suitcase because she plays music, and they asked if it was code and then interrogated her. She mentioned that she always plans for extra time needed in her traveling schedule due to security screening. Another person by the name of Uzair discusses his experiences with racism in traveling. He recalls a time that after his flight landed at the final destination that he was pulled off from the plane and questioned. He mentions that he was the only ethnic minority on the flight and said he could only imagine what the rest of the flight thought of this. Issues like this are seen every day in airports and other public transportation facilities. As a white girl I have only one time been taken aside for extra screening due to a makeup wipe I had in my suitcase that through a question during security. However, I was treated with respect. I know this is not the case for many others who are racially profiled. What is happening every day in the airports is not okay and it needs to be fixed. Each person should be treated the same and no one should be assumed to be a threat unless everyone is assumed to be a threat. To bring it back to a connection we can make from the past nine weeks of learning and reading in this course, I thought of connecting it to Recitatif because of the racial divide that is seen towards the later end of the story. The specific example I am thinking of is when the girls meet for the first time after growing up when Roberta wouldn’t speak to Twyla and then later on she explains it’s because the whites and blacks don’t mix. This is immediately what I thought about for racial profiling.

 

TSA screening program risks racial profiling amid shaky science – study | US news | The Guardian

Subtle Signs That May Mark You an Airport Security Risk - WSJ

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Citations:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/12/racially-profiled-while-travelling-discrimination-passengers-security

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304632204579336984217416844

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/08/tsa-screening-racial-religious-profiling-aclu-study