Author: burroughs.92

Text Review: Brave New World

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A piece of literature that I will be speaking of today is the dystopian novel, Brave New World written by Aldous Huxley in 1931. The reason that I am writing about this novel is I feel that it applies a few concepts of what we have read about in class quite well. If you are looking for something that displays the concept of the “One and the “Other”, injustices amongst individuals in two parts of the world. The book itself takes place in a dystopian society where everyone is given a drug to numb their feelings, and those individuals who do not take this drug are on the outskirts of town and are see as outsiders, as they do not follow the beliefs present in the center of the city. So how do the applications apply in this book? Quite easily. Let’s begin by looking at the establishment of the “One and the Other”. In this book Huxley establishes a relationship like this with the people in the city and those outside of it, the people inside the city are unaware of so much and are being controlled by a government, yet they believe they are living their best life. While, those on the outside are considered monsters and beasts, but are in control of what they feel and see. Due to this, we see the city, the “One” establishing those on the outside as the “Others” due to being of different culture and overall, just a different being. When it comes to injustices, these are present in every facet of the book from within the city when it comes to an individual who is not being suppressed by the drug and is seen as different, to the reaction of the city people to the outsiders, seeing them as beasts and danger, even though nothing is inherently wrong with them. What I think Huxley wants us to take from this is not to fall into the trap of letting someone control us, resulting in injustice when it comes to power. As well as, do not view people different than you as entirely different human beings as they are likely similar to you. I feel this work inspires a lot of questions revolving identity of a person, power in governmental systems, and injustices amongst people of different views and backgrounds.

Yo Is This Racist? – Brad/Bret/Patrick

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[00:00:00]

[00:00:07] Hello, everybody. My name is Bradley Burroughs.

[00:00:25] And I’m Patrick Campion. Im Bret Benedejcic

[00:00:29] And today we’re going to be speaking on the topic of racism and examples in the world today. I believe, Bret actually has a story that you can share with us about this idea of a good story.

[00:00:39] Raices it’s one of those things like before this year really kicked off as one of the things that wasn’t always in our minds. It was something I was always thinking about. And just to this year, that’s the climate it’s been in America. It’s something that’s, I think, a lot more.

[00:00:51] And what I saw video on Twitter, It was about a month ago, but I saw a video of black passengers in a Lyft car. They got stopped by the police because their tailgate was out and it ended up with The passenger of the lift was pulled out of the car and beaten because he was questioning why he had to show his I.D. because he wasn’t the one driving. And officers bet a man a black man in from his kids just because his tail goes out. And he asked him why he showed his I.D. and that just kind of like I saw this. I was thinking what would happen if I was in this situation? I as a young white man, I wouldn’t have to worry about these kind of things. Then it kind of hit me. I was in the situation. I was in a car with my friends late at night, too. We were driving past eleven thirty and we got pulled over because my friend was actually out and our what happened to us was nothing at all like what happened with this man. Like the officer stopped us. He was just very talkative. He was smiling, just like joking around like oh yeah, this happens. We had the conversation with this guy just about like Swenson’s and stuff like that, you know, thinking like what would have been like like in the moment I really didn’t think about was this unequal treatment some way. And then it kind of hit me when I started thinking this. This never happened to me. Like, I never would have been accused of having to be scared because obviously because my skin color and that kind of struck me. I was like, wow.

[00:02:23] And I’ve even seen in the world today a lot of examples, like you’re saying of videos. And I think, like you said, back to my own previous experiences with being pulled over, because I’ve been pulled over a couple of times for basic traffic violations. And even when I had issues with the police officer, like we never got into a physical altercation, I was mostly just us conversing and we never really had problems.

[00:02:45] But then I see today where these individuals, usually black individuals, are getting pulled over and the cops are just beating them. And it’s just really crazy to think about it.

[00:02:55] Yeah, yeah. A couple of weeks back, I saw Nat Geo wrote an article back in March of twenty eighteen and it was titled, Like For Black Motorist, there’s a never ending fear of being stopped or pulled over by the cops. And just with racial profiling, like you guys are saying in our examples, like we’ve never had fear with the cops because of our skin color. But for like young African-American men and women like that, there’s like is a fear of like being pulled over because you could get into a physical altercation with the cops.

[00:03:26] Yeah, and I think for everyone that’s listening today, which probably should maybe speak on racism and how it stemmed and like what it really is.

[00:03:35] For some clarification, yeah, racism, really. It started with with slavery back in the early to mid to late. Seventeen hundreds and it wasn’t even like the like the skin color at first. It started with the racism. It was more of just like like how people were perceived. And then as like time moved on and like Jim Crow laws, they started to happen. Then people started to have racial biases against African-American people.

[00:04:05] And even today, like we I feel like it’s just people in general, we’ve worked to try and rid of racism, but I feel like it’s still present. The world is like you see many examples of it, especially like like around this year. Yeah, because of everything going on, like that’s racist, individuals seemingly want to dodge at a point that is racist and to say that, like the cops or the individuals were just, you know, taking care of their business or something. But when you really sit down and think about it, when you compare different colors of people that are having these issues, it’s really it’s definitely some systemic racism that’s still present in the world today.

[00:04:42] One almost like one way that like really positive about this year is it like it’s woken a lot of people up to the idea that it’s real, it’s happening like like me myself. Like I was not thinking about this, like at all is because I didn’t have the me. I wasn’t seeing it. So this year, a lot of people have woken up to the idea that change needs to happen and that what life for like us as white Americans looks a lot different, it looks like to minorities really like before this class, like I really I didn’t really look out for like like.

[00:05:15] Examples of systemic racism, like after starting this class and we’ve had to write our diaries, like I looked out for more and more and I see it more and more every day.

[00:05:25] And this makes me even think about police brutality in the world today, like one example, the case of George Floyd, which is, you know, the individual, no matter what you’re doing, there’s no excuse to have, like, someone’s knee on your neck for that long to kill them. And it really makes me think about police brutality in the world today. It’s really prevalent. And I feel like these individuals that are committing this crime, they’re just not being really it’s not being taken care of. How it should necessarily. And when I’m saying police brutality, I’m pretty much talking about just any abuse by a police officer that isn’t really necessary. For example, just punching people whenever they weren’t combative to begin with, a choking individuals, pushing them. Even some of the peaceful protests we see around the world today. We saw instances of cops just exhibiting police brutality and like pepper spraying individuals. And, you know, overall, it’s a complete mess.

[00:06:17] It really is. I saw a video of cops driving their squad car into a crowd just because they there was the crowd wasn’t being violent. They just drove straight into the crowd. It’s hard to watch them like that.

[00:06:29] Yeah. And unfortunately, like like police brutality against like African-Americans is unfortunately, like nothing new. Like in this class, like we read we read March by John Lewis and he tells examples of how he was like beaten by the cops and he felt like he was beaten up by, like white people at like the diner. And the cops just sat there and did nothing.

[00:06:51] Yeah, I feel like March really makes you think, once you read it, just of the instances of police brutality in the world today because individuals will seemingly bat an eye because they see a different colored person getting beat. But at the end of the day, we’re all Americans, we’re all equal. And it shouldn’t be like that of our. And something else that comes to mind with speaking of this, all this racist, because, like, I feel like everything we’ve spoke about so far is certainly an example of racism. And I believe we can all agree on this. But I even think of, like, racial profiling in instance. Yeah, sure. As a definitely one, I don’t know if you guys have ever seen examples of it, but individuals like I’ve seen a white individual and a black individual enter the same like store, and you even see people look at the black individual differently because he may have a book bag on while the white individual does as well. But these seemingly just don’t bat an eye to the white individual while he walks around, which which I believe is pretty racist, considering all of it really is.

[00:07:50] Oh, yeah. With racial profiling, like minorities and especially African-Americans are just pulled over like an alarmingly higher rate than white people.

[00:08:02] Yeah, for sure. I’ve even seen statistics on it where it’s like they even put it into odds with the odds based on your skin color of having like an altercation with the police. And you just see with African-Americans, it’s much higher than white males and white females.

[00:08:18] You know, we we tend to focus on like seem like the violent crimes, like by police officers, which should have our attention, of course. But like, there’s so much more little things like profiling and unlawful searches, like frisking and just say we think about like, yeah, I agree.

[00:08:35] And the end of the day, it’s all it’s all racism. But I feel like just like you said, that while we’re seeing these violent instances of racism, individuals getting beat, we should also be focusing on the small ones, like racial profiling. You know, and these are important because while they’re not necessarily violent crimes, they’re still getting this doesn’t get hurt. It’s not like yes, it’s not racist. It’s still racist. Even if they’re not getting hurt, it’s like you’re still putting an individual below. Another person is something that should never happen.

[00:09:07] And I even think about disparity in employment. There’s been instances of it with the unemployment rate between white, whites and blacks. And we even see that usually actually have a statistic here, if I can pull it up quick. It says that the black unemployment rate is consistently twice the white unemployment rate, and this is a graph from 1972 to twenty nineteen. Which makes you think because we’re not meant to discriminate based on race, gender, sex, age or disability or any other things, but even though that’s not meant to happen, you still see a lot of employments, you know, prefer another person over another person. So I feel like we need to really increase the awareness about racism and we need to, you know, show what can be done to really change things.

[00:09:56] And unfortunately, with unemployment also comes homelessness. And I have a stat about that. As African-Americans make up more than 40 percent of the homeless population, however, they only represent 30 percent of that general population. So like with people not having a job and eventually having to go to the streets, they can’t support their families. And then it just it’s a never ending cycle.

[00:10:22] Yeah, I mean, it’s a complete mess, really. And for individuals to look at all of it and say that there isn’t blatant systemic racism in the world today is definitely something that is pretty much just complete nonsense, really.

[00:10:38] And I just feel like we as individuals really need to bring awareness about racism or what it is, and when you see instances of racism, just point out like ask other individuals, is that a racist? I feel like that’s really important to speak out about it more. Yeah, we used to make everyone more aware, and I feel like there’s still things that can be done about this. I don’t know about you guys, but like, we can educate the public more about it. We can of course not.

[00:11:02] Let maybe our friends or individuals we care about just make blatant racist jokes and just really educate them on everything.

[00:11:08] Oh, yeah. Also, if we were to bring it back to police, like we could also greatly increase the training within the police academy and just try to make everyone more open and more smart and smarter to deal with these racial issues.

[00:11:22] Yeah. And even looking at. Oh, you go ahead.

[00:11:25] Oh yeah. I would say like it would really cut down on like racist things happen. Police officers, if we just stopped it at the source, if we just teach officers and their training to be better educated would be more like openmindedness and we really cut down all the things that happened.

[00:11:42] Oh yeah, definitely. I agree. And even looking at diversity, like a lot of a lot of individuals, even companies like a diverse workplace, because with diversity, the wonderful thing about it is you have individuals from different backgrounds. And I just feel like when you’re when you’re blatantly racist about things like this, you can’t get the benefits of having a diverse background. I feel like that’s just things we need to work on today, even even simple things like picking group members at work on making a more diverse group so everyone feels involved and really try to rid the systemic racism that is blatantly rampant in the world today.

[00:12:18] Yeah, if everyone was just being more open, like you said, with diversity, but people of different backgrounds come together, you just increase like how but you like increase productivity in the workforce because people have different ideas and they could share those different ideas with other people.

[00:12:37] Oh, yeah, I totally agree.

[00:12:40] Yeah, I mean, I feel like everything we touched I know really spoke about racism in the world. I don’t know if you guys have anything else you want to add.

[00:12:48] I really don’t have too much I think we I think we went into it pretty did. I think that’s a conversation. All right. Well, thank you, guys.

Diary of Systemic Injustice

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In my last and final installment of the systemic injustice’s, I will be speaking about an article that I read recently about 4998 people that died in U.S jails without getting an established day in court. In the article, it opens up with the story of Harvey Hill, who was suspected of needing a mental evaluation for how he was acting but was instead jailed for a misdemeanor offense that put him in prison. Afterwards, he was beaten in jail many times by the guards, pepper sprayed, kicked and many other terrible things until he was taken to his cell and let out of his restraints and eventually died. This goes against one of the key principles in play when someone is jailed and awaiting a sentence, innocent until proven guilty. So where is the injustice? It is the fact that many people are dying in jails without having an established court date to trial them for their crimes, and this data is not public to the people for them to know how these individuals died. The major impact of this is the fact that many of these people dying are those who committed a small time offense and are effectively being sentenced to a death sentence without having a chance for their crime to be evaluated. The major form of identity in play would be socioeconomic class, as those who are in jail like this to be sentenced for things like theft and such, are likely going to be more poor than other people. The main way for this to become right is to establish a better system for mentally ill patients, devote more money to jails and make this more public accessible data.

When it comes to this class, something that I think of when I was writing this injustice was the reading we did, March. The reason for this is because, in March when John Lewis and many were beaten by people despite doing something as simple as a nonviolent protest. Similar to Harvey Hill, who I outlined in this reading, who despite doing a very small crime, was beaten and killed, displaying issues that are still present in the world today, police brutality and many issues amongst the justice system.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-jails-deaths/

Week Six- Context Research Presentation – Bradley Burroughs

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To provide context for the reading that we will be doing this week, this blog will help better explain what the Iranian Revolution is, and its relevance in this week’s reading, “Persepolis”. To begin, the Iranian Revolution began in January 1978 and ended around February 1979. The overarching goal of this revolution was to overthrow the current dynasty, which was effectively a monarchy and as a result replace it with a republic that would be of Islamic religion. So what would bring a group of people to overthrow their government in a situation like this? To begin with, Mohammad Reza Shah, who presided over them, effectively oppressed their rights by doing things such as suppressing the Tudeh, (Iranian communist party) The National Front, suppressing the press, and strengthening the secret police (History). Due to this, the people simply had enough after some time and began to revolt against this.

Thousands of youth began to take to the streets and began protesting what the regime had been doing. Unfortunately at this time, Shah had been stricken by cancer and as a result, felt that these protests were an effort to try and conspire against him. Due to this, the government began to kill many of those protesting, which would only make the violence way worse. Due to the escalating violence from death after death, martial law was eventually declared in September, and lead to even more deaths, as well as government workers beginning to strike, because they were unhappy with what was going on. Due to the unmounting civil unrest that was going on, eventually, the Shah left, and as a result, Iran would be considered an Islamic Republic.

Unfortunately, even after the fall of the Shah and replacing him with a new leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, women’s rights would still be limited. The book “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi goes to show the effects of women’s rights during, the revolution and post-revolution. Such things as segregated schools, as well as mandatory dress codes, are just a few of the many difficulties faced in this book.

Citations:
Afary, Janet. “Aftermath.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 25 Mar. 2020, www.britannica.com/event/Iranian-Revolution/Aftermath.

Erdbrink, Thomas. “The Iran Revolution at 40: From Theocracy to ‘Normality’.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/02/10/world/middleeast/iran-revolution-40.html.

History of Iran: White Revolution, www.iranchamber.com/history/white_revolution/white_revolution.php.

Parvaz, D. “Iran 1979: the Islamic Revolution That Shook the World.” Middle East News | Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera, 11 Feb. 2014, www.aljazeera.com/features/2014/02/11/iran-1979-the-islamic-revolution-that-shook-the-world/?gb=true.