Author: karanth.1

“Yo, Is this Systematically Unjust?” – Hayden DeMark, Pranav Karanth and Jacob Eckert

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http://osu.zoom.us/rec/share/kXGhs8qXYGxr7m-trkhBQG1PMZ86j1W_aXQb90ZWz__Aqr7rh1RoKEzpzY0Gz1mg.3aBrEU7hf_GvsVL6?startTime=1604960350000

Podcast Transcript –

Jacob: Hi, I’m Jacob Eckert. I’m a fourth-year here at OSU, a statistics major taking this for a GE Credit.

Pranav: My name is Pranav Karanth. I’m a fourth-year mechanical engineering major.

Hayden: My name is Hayden DeMark. I’m a second-year computer science major also taking this for a GE credit.

Jacob: Okay. So this in this podcast, we’re talking about systemic injustices and hockey specifically, but sports as a whole. And I wanted to start off with my own personal life experiences growing up, playing hockey. I played for 15 years and through all my years of playing, I only two people of opposite race of that. Weren’t white growing up. So I, I played against two African-Americans everyone else. My entire life was white. Those clearly a not diverse community. And while I never ran into any racist actions, anywhere around me, it was pretty clear that there was a reason that minorities weren’t playing. And, I kind of discovered for myself that, you know, it’s probably the pay gap and where the, the rinks are located. For instance, the rank I played at was in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Cincinnati, and that’s kind of typical. A lot of cities at the rinks were just in nice places and they weren’t as accessible to minority communities. And just on top of that, the actual cost of everything was so much so.

Jacob: I noticed that and I, I researched it more for more showcases and we, we decided this would be a good topic to go even deeper on. So Pranav, if you want to talk about the economics behind it?

Pranav: I wanted to talk mainly about the economic impact of this game about someone professionally trying to pursue hockey in a career perspective. So according to my research in 2015 from a survey by Aspen Institute, it was found that about one in three parents from households making less than $50,000 a year said that sports cost too much and make it difficult for their child to continue participating. That is compared to the one in six parents from households making $50,000 a year or more who said the same. Parents with a child in hockey spent on average $2,500 per year which makes it the most expensive sport compared to other sports where the average is about $700 a year. These costs can easily skyrocket into 5 figures as you consider playing this sport even more professionally. Not to mention the travel aspect of sporting accounting for registration fees, camping fees, equipment, and housing. Such high costs make this sport less accessible to minority children and is generally the reason why sport participation rates for white children exceed that of African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian kids.

Jacob: One thing to comment on this was growing up. I actually asked my parents about how much my hockey stuff cost. And for me, it was an $800 membership fee and then $200 a month, a year to be a part of the hockey club out of that. So that’s already like around $3000 just to get the highest time on the team. And then because of that, I really only played hockey. And I had friends that one year they played multiple sports. And then when they wanted to go to travel teams, it was not, it was not even a question they had to quit all their other sports because not only because of the time commitment, but it was really just like a lifestyle with hours of travel every weekend, like crossing streets, state lines, because frankly there’s not as many people playing hockey and to find the competition at that level it costs so much just to orchestrate these like tournaments with getting people from all over the country and just the travel expenses. So it really does have a big pay barrier.

Pranav: Right? Yeah. And going to the national hockey league perspective historically there have been several work stoppage incidents where like the commissioner, like locks of the players or like shorten the season unexpectedly. This also damages the players a lot as they don’t get paid and impacts the team owners and recovering their investments and their team. And when compared to various other sports like NFL NHL revenue is way lower than the other sports in the United States. As of my research, I found that the biggest deal the national hockey league was able to secure I think a couple of seasons ago was about $4 billion where NFL managed to bring in like nearly $10 billion a year, I guess if this league had greater revenues, perhaps it’s labor difficulties might be easier to solve. And the fact that Americans view this game increasingly as Canadian and does not help either thereby making it a little unpopular down in the Southern part of the country.

Jacob: Yeah. I think one more thing that the NHL is a little irresponsible with is helping create a more diverse culture. Two specific examples that come to mind are there was a player drafted by the Arizona Cardinals this past year. I’m sorry, I’m trying to find his name. It’s Mitch … Mitchell Miller. And he got, he was convicted of hate crimes for bullying and abusing a disabled black team. One of the things he did was him and his friend peed on some candy in a urinal and then forced the kids to eat it. And so obviously this, this was like, everyone’s seeing this as disgusting as they should. It is a disgusting thing and.

Hayden: Super messed up.

Jacob: Yeah. You see arguments about people. Well, when you give them, You had a chance to like, come back from this, but it’s well, you know, I get that he was a child when he did it, but there are certain things that no matter what you know, it’s not a good thing to do.

Hayden: Yeah, it damages your character

Jacob: When he was a child that just, Oh, he didn’t really understand it. He understood what he was doing. And so the hockey diversity Alliance which I’ll get to in a second, they were at, they’re asking the coyotes and the NHL, like, please don’t let this guy play. It’s a terrible look for the community. And it, and it makes plenty of players uncomfortable that a kid like this is joining the league in the association. And then another example of this is higher up bill Peters. He was accused of racist comments and actually abusive actions towards players of color. He made a couple comments to Akim Aliu. Who’s a member of that NHL diversity Alliance or the hockey diversity Alliance not NHL. And as well as Michael Jordan, not the basketball player, but put a different hockey player. And after they lodge their allegations on Twitter about the coach.

Jacob: He he was, he eventually resigned after four days, but the, the club themselves didn’t actually fire him. They left it till he resigned after a few days. And then going back to this hockey diversity Alliance Akim Aliu is one of the seven board members of this. They’ve tried multiple times working with the NHL to create a pledge that was aimed at making hockey more affordable and making the hockey community more diverse by requiring a percentage of employees to be of color and in different amounts at different levels. So it was 3.5% at the executive level to 10% at non hockey related operations and a pretty reasonable things they’re asking for, but the NHL barely cooperated all the players were pretty upset about it. And one of the players, one of the co-leaders of the hockey diversity Alliance, Matt Zoomba, he quit recently after making that after making the Alliance with those players, he had this quote in this interview and it was, there’s a conversation that white parents don’t have to have with their kids, that parents of players that players of color have.

Jacob: And that’s what I want to eliminate. And the conversation was that white parents don’t have to worry about their kids being accepted into the culture, whereas black parents do. And the entire hockey diversity Alliance, they all kind of looked at Colin Kaepernick is a leader who has been a massive leader to other sports in general. And, you know, there’s still a lot of other sports that are having these problems. So I think that this hockey diversity alliance could be a way to push forward if they’re starting to take it seriously by the NHL.

Pranav: Yeah, I know, I really hope more people come forward to bridge this gap, try to make it more accessible to everybody.

Jacob: Yeah, me too.

Hayden: Yeah. And then going into those topic of other sports, sports like golf and tennis, which I played growing up and in school, those are also kind of those more elitist white oriented sports. For example, in golf, while there are famous golfers like tiger woods, other golfers that are famous are predominantly white, such as Phil Mickelson, Arnold Palmer and Rory McIlroy and then just the cost of clubs and balls are upwards of like together $500. And that’s not even counting greens fees and to rent a golf cart in entire country. There’s only one free golf course located in Pennsylvania. And then taking into account tennis. Tennis, a lot of teams are only available through private clubs. And once again, we see that approximately 77, 77% of players are white, according to assets.usta.com. And while there are players like Venus and Serena Williams that are helping to kind of break that barrier, and those are kind of household names at this point it’s still viewed, especially like the tournaments are kind of exclusive and elite the Australian open or the US open.

Jacob: Yeah, no, I get that. One of my roommates is on the tennis team here and from meeting him and a couple of his friends, you know, they’re all white and from pretty well off families, from what I can tell, I don’t know him super well, but

Hayden:

Yeah. And then like I went to an inner-city school where half the school was white and half the school was African-American and they both had equal opportunity to be on the golf team or the tennis team. But since out in like the real world, there’s not that opportunity. The African-American kids just weren’t interested. So the teams ended up being completely white anyways.

Jacob: I think that kind of wraps up our discussion on the, the, I’m sorry, I’m blanking, wraps up the discussion on the diversity in some of these elitist sports. I think that one of the main barriers is cost whether it’s cost of equipment, cost of playing cost of travel. There’s a …. There’s a huge barrier there and accessibility, and unfortunately there are people at the higher end of these organizations that are not doing much to ensure that for it to become more diverse.

Hayden: Yeah. Or trying to just stop them from being diverse in general.

Week 11 Context Research Presentation

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This week, we are reading ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ by Mohsin Hamid. This week, we are reading ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ by Mohsin Hamid. It is a fictional novel in which the plot begins in Lahore’s streets. Changez, a Pakistani man, offers a guide to finding a good cup of tea to an American visitor. As they wait to have tea, Changez starts telling a long tale about his life. In particular, about his time spent living in the United States of America reflecting on Lahore, his hometown that he loves and is proud of. I would therefore like to speak about the social and cultural life of Pakistan.

Family organization is highly patriarchal in Pakistan, as in most agrarian societies; most people live in the same or family compound with large extended families. The eldest male in the family leader and makes all important decisions about the family and its members, whether he is the father, grandfather, or paternal uncle. The position of a woman in society has predominantly been secondary to that of men, and she has been confined to performing household duties and serving the role of a dutiful wife and mother. It is still common to hold women isolated; women are traditionally covered by their heads (purdah) when leaving their houses. The houses of the Purdah people are in front of the house with a men’s section so that the women don’t be bothered by their guests. However, among the richest Pakistanis, western education and ways of life have removed Purdah. In general, even among that population, attitudes towards women are often regarded as old-fashioned in society and the family.

Pakistan’s cultural heritage goes back to the time of Indus civilization, over five thousand years ago. However, emphasis on Islamic philosophy has produced the Islamic culture – not only of the Indian subcontinent but the wider Islamic world – highly romanticized. The richest of all Pakistani forms of art are literature, particularly poetry and music. The country is highly influenced by the northern Indian music tradition. Music has been an important part of Pakistani culture for a long time. There are plenty of conventional and local forms. The ghazal is also musically a kind of romantic poem. Singers like Mehdi Hassan and Ghulam Ali establish an extensive repertoire in their own countries and abroad. Qawwali is also widely practiced and has inspired a variety of modern styles, which implies a devotional singing associated with Sufism. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, one of his biggest followers, was renowned in Pakistan and the wider world. Recently, painting and sculpture have made major strides as a reflection of a highly sophisticated urban culture. Pakistan shares in sculpture, literature, architecture, and manner with other parts of South Asia the great Mughal heritage. The ancient city of Taxila and ruins of Mohenjo Daro are some of the few places that are known to be UNESCO World Heritage sites. Among the architectural gems of the region, there are the Mosque des Pearls, the Badshahi Mosque, and the Shalimar Garden.

 

 

References –

The Reluctant Fundamentalist. 26 Oct. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reluctant_Fundamentalist.

“Culture of Pakistan.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Oct. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Pakistan.

Ziring, Lawrence. “The Arts.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 30 Oct. 2020, www.britannica.com/place/Pakistan/The-arts.

Diary of Systemic Injustices Showcase – Pranav Karanth

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I would like to talk about the atrocities committed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) guards that came to light recently in this week’s assignment. Some of these guards have been accused of “systematically” sexually assaulting detainees at a facility in El Paso. Most of these victims are minor children held at their detention centers. In addition to all this, it has come to light that these children unlawfully detained for several days or months while they are allowed to detain them for a maximum of 72 hours according to government policy. The children were provided with insufficient food and have had to go without bathing or changing clothes for weeks. The pandemic situation has made life even miserable for such children as they are secretively being housed in hotels with no contact with their respective families and the outside world. In fact, they are being deported to their home countries without even seeing an attorney or a judge which is illegal and a serious case of systemic injustice.

In fact, the current administration’s approach to immigration is extremely regressive, encouraging the agencies to treat immigrants especially illegal immigrants devoid of basic human rights. The Justice Department ordered the arrest of anyone entering the country without permission when thousands of Central American families crossed the southern US border to seek asylum. This caused hundreds of families to be divided, even the separation of children from nursing mothers. Jeff Sessions, the attorney general at the time, said, “We need to take away children,” in order to scare people from getting their families across the border. It did not matter to him how young the children were. The administration however rescinded the policy of family separation after receiving widespread international criticism. Therefore, they altered their strategy, locking out asylum seekers, bare-knuckle diplomacy, and ignoring legality through minute attention to administrative information. In the current climate, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement is more than twice as likely to pick up illegal immigrants with no prior criminal record outside of immigration violations despite President Trump’s initial promise was to shut only the ones with criminal records.

I believe it is high time this has to come to an end and politicians and immigration officials need to be stopped from abusing their authority. I believe the recent calls for the abolition of ICE should see the light of the day. Organizations like ACLU and SPLC have taken to suing the government in light of such cases to put an end to this systemic injustice. Beyond this, I strongly believe that change can occur only when everyone exercises their voting privileges and elect politicians who will defend immigrants instead of dehumanizing them.

 

Citation –

Lariat, B. (2020, September 25). Baylor Lariat. Retrieved September 26, 2020, from https://baylorlariat.com/2020/09/24/its-long-past-time-to-end-americas-immigration-injustices/

Board, T. (2020, October 10). Trump’s Overhaul of Immigration Is Worse Than You Think. Retrieved October 25, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/10/opinion/sunday/trump-immigration-child-separations