Text Review Assignment: Yellowstone, Season 1

One of the newest and most obsessive TV show’s is Yellowstone.  With the season 4 premiere around 14.7 million people tuned in to watch the new drama.  Around this show is lots of realistic issues that America’s farmers and ranchers, Native Americans, and everyday people face.  The story throughout the season is about the death of a family and its ranch as outside influences begin to slowly ruin the family.  Season 1 helps establish the main conflicts as it shows the great difference in viewpoints of John Dutton, the owner of the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch, and antagonist like Thomas Rainwater.  Rainwater is a newly appointed chief of the Broken Rock Indian Reservation who attempts to make a point as Mr. Dutton’s cattle have broke the fence and gone into the reservation.  This starts a repeated battle between these two, Rainwater wants the land to be as his ancestors saw it and Mr. Dutton wants to raise cattle and continue his lifestyle.  The family faces endless controversy because of how the Dutton’s handle their issues in a “Wild-West” fashion.  Jamie Dutton is the second oldest of John’s children and in season 1 he slowly removes himself from the family as he discovers as if he doesn’t belong.  He is also a character who struggles with mental issue and a strong conflict with his sister Beth Dutton.  One of the best pieces of work to compare this series to is de Beauvoir’s One and Other.  I think one very easy comparison of this is The wranglers to John Dutton.  Several of these wranglers wear what is called “The Brand.”  This brand signifies their loyalty and life devotion to the Dutton Ranch and John himself.  So it easy to spot out that in this case John would be the one as he has full control over the other.  I would recommend watching this series for it is very interesting and entertaining.  Meanwhile it is able to teach life lessons and show cultures from parts of the United States we may not always think about.

“Yo is this Racial Profiling” Olivia Congrove and Spencer Logan

Transcript:

14:59:27  hello! My name is Spencer Logan and we’re doing our podcast on police brutality.
14:59:52 My name’s Olivia Congrove so before he gives a specific story.
15:00:00 I’m going to just do a little bit of background information, although most of us are very aware of the police brutality and specifically police racially profiling people.
15:00:14 I have a couple statistics. Yahoo News created a poll 4 days after the burning, brutal killing of George Floyd, which a 1,060 us adults found 94% of Black, Americans believed that criminal
15:00:31 justice system treats white Americans better. The same. Poll also found that 91% of black Americans don’t believe white and black people receive equal treatment from the police.
15:00:42 Just being in college and in high school i’m sure all age groups are aware, just because of what’s on the news, especially in the past few years.
15:00:53 There has been more and more killings by the police. and typically it is happens to be African Americans.
15:01:04 I think it is racially profiling and you know we don’t see in the news
15:01:10 of white people are being killed because typically they’re not so it’s just odd how police never face consequences of their actions.
15:01:19 Typically they might get an absence of leave or something small like a slap on the wrist, but recently George Floyd’s cop, who was responsible for his death, was prosecuted and Spencer’s gonna give us a little bit of
15:01:40 background story in case you’re unfamiliar of the specifics about the George Floyd case.
15:01:45 So the George Floyd case is one of the cases that it seems like has kind of sparked this whole the real movement of police brutality and black lives matter.
15:01:55 Its seems to be pretty familiar it’s one of those things that we see in day-to-day life.
15:02:02 George Floyd was a 46 year old black man who was murdered in Minneapolis.
15:02:13 And we saw videos on the news of him being pinned on the ground by police officer held by his neck.
15:02:23 It was one of those things where you saw technique not being used correctly, and also maybe a little bit of fear by the police as they acted. Obviously the incorrect manner for being who they are supposed to represent as a protector of the
15:02:40 law. Recently they have actually been prosecuted for what they’ve done
15:02:49 There was the first police officer, Derek Chauvin who is the man who actually held him down, and he is the one they originally arrested him on for a counterfeit
15:03:04 20 bill for using it in a convenience store.
15:03:08 2 other officers were there, Jay Alexander and Thomas Lane.
15:03:16 They have also been arrested for being what you could say is bystanders.
15:03:22 Lane was the officer who pointed a gun at Floyd’s head prior to Floyd being put in handcuffs.
15:03:32 There is another police officer who prevented bystanders from interfering.
15:03:40 And all of these we saw that Floyd had shown issues of anxiety and complaining about having issues of to breathe, and he also had claustrophobia.
15:04:00 He was being restrained, and held down very tightly by the neon his neck, and we saw that on the news a lot and kind of like the details of the officers.
15:04:23 The autopsy actually from floyd’s body was considered to be a homicide from being killed the way he was, and held down and restrained March 12, 2021 Minneapolis agreed
15:04:34 to pay $27,000,000 to settle a wrongful death lawsuit with George Floyd’s family. April 20, 2021 Trovin was convicted of a second degree unintentional murder third degree murder and second degree,
15:04:54 manslaughter, and said he was sentenced to 22 years in prison.
15:05:00 On June the twentieth fifth I mean This is believe this is one of the cases where officers acted incorrectly, according to what you could say, as their procedures. and maybe what they’re required to do versus what they actually did
15:05:16 do Think one thing you need to be careful about, though it seems people are leaning towards their neighborhood watch groups or personal security ideas.
15:05:27 But that in reality doesn’t have any jurisdiction or authority that you know, like our law enforcement seems to have maybe overstepped their boundaries, as like in this case or others like it.
15:05:45 Do you have anything to add in that Olivia? Yeah I think that first of all, one of the most important things we can look at is George Floyd didn’t even have a weapon.
15:05:57 They considered him under the influence by his appearance, which it did come back that
15:06:00 He did have drugs in his system, but by no means think that means they needed to
15:06:09 Hold him down with deadly force, especially because he had no knife, no gun, nothing that could harm the police officers other than maybe him physically.
15:06:19 But then, again, I don’t think he at all was punching them in the face, or maybe he was resisting to a certain extent, but he definitely did not deserve to be held down by his throat.
15:06:33 So I think that’s common theme in all of these killings or injuries.
15:06:40 Most of the time the person in question doesn’t even have a weapon.
15:06:46 Maybe they did. Maybe they don’t i’m just speaking broadly, but definitely, when there’s no weapon involved.
15:06:58 I don’t understand why the police are taking that extra step to be brutal to the person in question so like I said, George didn’t have a weapon, but he did lose his life that day over what? a $20 bill a fake $20?
15:07:15. it’s a little little extreme if you ask me yeah that is kind of the thing that it seems like they have overstepped the rule and their boundary.
15:07:28 I do think there is. You still need to have your police.
15:07:31 I mean, as far as one of the things I watched is at this police brutality.
15:07:39 It was that a Black Lives matter movement Sorry. and I think the protests turn violent, and the first thing you start hearing people say, or the first thing they resort to is call 911, call the police.
15:07:54 We? Well, it’s hard to say that we needed to fund these kind of people and get rid of them when the first people you resort to are the ones you’re trying to get rid of that at me is a little bit of an
15:08:10 uneasy feeling you know it It you’re trying to remove people from their jobs.
15:08:14 That do every day. I mean it is hard to generalize the group and stereotype an entire group of people based on these actions. Now don’t get me wrong.
15:08:24 I’m not saying they’re right and I don’t believe they were.
15:08:26 But it just. we need to be careful on how we go about actually taking care of the situation, as we’ve seen some places before have actually removed their place.
15:08:37 Force, and or begin to defund it; and it results in not helping their community whatsoever.
15:08:45 So I definitely think the sentence for the police responsible for George Floyd’s death 22 years in prison. Whether or not he serves that whole thing I have no idea. but that was a huge win for the black lives matter. movement.
15:09:03 And I think it was a huge win overall for the United States because they’re trying to set an example of this isn’t
15:09:13 Okay, and we are going to start prosecuting more seriously, which I do think they have skipped out on a lot of other cases that harmed or killed African Americans.
15:09:23 But I hope that this is a step in the right direction to where they can start to make up for their mistakes, because I do think they regret not prosecuting some of the police that were responsible for any individuals death white or black or
whatever race you may be.
15:11:38 Well, I hope you guys have enjoyed on podcasts.
15:11:49 I hope you’ve learned something from it and maybe you can take away something that you haven’t learned yet, you know, before you start listening to the have a personal side on it.

Thank you

Interpreter of Maladies: Week 12 Presentation

This collection of nine stories is a historical representaton of Native American past times and struggles.  These stories won several awards with one of them being the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  Leading up to this story was the Partitioning of India.

In August of 1947, India was split as it was made into India and the new country of Pakistan.  For more than 100 years India was ruled by the British East India Company.  This was a horrible time as the country suffered copious amounts of bloodshed.  The people fought day in day out for their freedom.  The conflict left accounts of body parts and corpses scattered across the country.  A truly sad time, as many of these families felt as when the countries split that they had ended up in the wrong area.  These families would leave everything behind to try and travel to what they believed should be the new home.

With these families moving it created one of the greatest migrations known to history.  The migration was the Hindus and Sikhs to India and the Muslims headed to Pakistan.  The mass migration of these people instigated violence that led to communities fighting each other and acts that were not heard of before.  Rape, arson, massacres, and abductions were among the many horrible acts that were experienced by the people in these countries.  In this time it is estimated that around 75,000 women were raped.  Many of these people suffer scars that will cary throughout generations similar similar to the suffering of Jews in the Holocaust.  This is time in history that should be studied as the truly ugly aftermath is not one that should be repeated.

Works Cited:

the-great-divide-books-dalrymple

1947-partition-of-india-pakistan

Dairy of Systemic Injustices Showcase

One thing that I see as an injustice is not so much racial but in jobs.  My mom has been a preschool teacher for nearly twenty years now.  She has always taught in what classifies as low-income or inner-city schools.  Seeing what my mom had to do for her job throughout the years always makes me think she is underpaid for the job she is tasked with.  Teaching the youngest generation my mom has always put the most work in to try and ensure her kids are ready for when they go to kindergarten.  Unfortunately the school system is something that does not always have the availability of funding that would be what she needs.  Many times I know my mom has had to spend her own money to snore kids have proper supplies and they can learn to the best of their ability.  A sad issue that she has had is kids having proper hygiene.  There has been times where my mo. has bought clean clothes for her kids because she recognizes that they come to school with the same clothes over and over.  She has always had a big heart and cares more about other than herself.  I believe this is an issue that needs to be addressed because handling that age of children is a task that is very challenging.  Watching a group of eighteen preschool-age kids is challenging but add into the mix of having to potty train and have the kids learn is an immense task.  Being where my mom works, she has also had to deal with parents using drugs around their children and also has had to report many issues to child services regarding abuse.  The teaching field in general is one that requires a lot of work for any of those involved and in my mind is very underpaid for the task of teaching and in preschool what could be considered babysitting. This connection reminds me of the Self and Other concept we learned about. I think it reminds me of that because my mother along with other teachers put theirselves last as the Other and put the kids first as the Self. My mother would work 12 hour days and of course not all of that is paid but she choose to put her kids needs over herself because they are helpless and are unable to.

Supporting articles:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/04/03/teachers-have-had-it-why-theyre-revolting-against-low-pay-and-inadequate-school-funding/

https://www.aei.org/articles/the-truth-about-teacher-pay/