Why you feel (or don't feel) that racism and discrimination still exist in America

Racism, wow. Only a fool would try to touch this subject without trying to understand the human psych at all. I didn’t refuse to jump the gun and say I understand in anyway why people are racist, but they are. I am 27 years old and living in a white, black, Hispanic, Asians up the street neighborhood, I figured out at a young age that human beings are animals with the instincts as all the other animal species on earth. I figured out that it doesn’t take a hard nosed psychologist to understand that human beings tend to take with them what the learn from the environment in which they are brought up in. take black people and the police for instance. Not all black people including myself hate the police, why? Because I have never in my lifetime dealt with a police officer that didn’t confront me(not that it wont ever change) with a valid reason and allowed me a chance to defend myself and respected tha opinion. But I do understand that in a lot of California, where I am from, that hard on police and minorities, racism plays a big role against police and minorities. Black and white in the inner is only a problem because society made it a problem. I know from growing up in the inner city that the governments when hiring police officers never take the time to integrate the police with officers that can relate to the people in which they are protecting. I strongly believe that if you get police officers that understand the moods and characteristics of certain cultures, its easy to allow a man to be angry and still be able to hear him out without jumping to wrong conclusions. Cops are hated because they don’t understand the environment and the people living in those environments. Racism doesn’t exist in the inner city between black and Hispanics, because in my opinion and it has taken awhile, I believe they now understand each other and appreciate their differences and culture. Hip hop I know strongly impacted that relationship a lot, and it does help that we both struggle and survive, and flourish together, because now we both can feel each others pain in everyway. Now as for the rest of the cultures outside blacks and Hispanics, all I can say is mingle, broaden you cultural horizons, and stop hating before understanding, because with war and religion being a belief of hate now, the only thing we will have in our future is each other. Human no doubt have made this world a better or for worse world, and all the other animals that occupy the earth with us understand that hey we need to find a way to function around that, and they have. I have always believed there are no stupid animal kingdoms out there, just different ways we all go about living our lives. Black, white, or other, just different climates, color, language, culture, that’s all. In the end we are all here for one common goal, to survive, and flourish before we die.

Why you feel (or don't feel) that cigarettes and tobacco-based products should be legal.

First off everyone knows the seriousness of cigarettes and tobacco so I won’t even go into statistics and all that to prove a point on why it should be illegal to have them made and used. It’s crazy that a gun can kill a man, but only if you pull the trigger. A car can kill you or run you over but only if you are near a moving vehicle. A knife can cut you, but only if you have it or someone else physically tries to. Cigarette smoke can kill and you not even know it. Second hand smoke can kill you if someone walks into a coffee shop, smokes, and leaves with the smoke residue flowing over head when you come in. not only that, I hate with a passion cigarettes because it has consumed my families lives and my young cousins lives. They tragically taken the lives of all my grandmothers, and is now threatening the life of my favorite auntie, and I am angry about that. Of course life and the American economy will not allow for the illegalization of tobacco and cigarettes because like cocaine it contributes the economy cold heartily. Let’s be real about this, drugs are allowed in every form, and we all have use cocaine at on time or another in our lives and never really knew it. When you to the dentist, they use a form of cocaine to numb your gums so you won’t feel your teeth being pulled, so yes drugs are for real here to stay. Tobacco is a billion dollar and so on and so on business that will not stop anytime soon. I want cigarettes to be illegal, but why bother getting mad about something that is inevitable to stay. Come on now, the government sued the tobacco companies and won billions, and they made those billions back by raising cigarettes prices because they knew life couldn’t go on without these little sticks if you are already on them. It’s ridiculous how the same people who fight to change laws are the same ones who go home and spark up a cigarettes in the name of habit. They always fight the laws at the lower level so it never affects the way they live their own lives. Like drugs in the inner city, give me a break, how can you not fight something you started, you orchestrated, you provided and you pushed into the inner cities. The answer is I wont fight it, I will instead make even more profit off the government by sweeping away the little man, and allow the government to see we are combating a crime, when in reality its combating a starving problem you started in the first place, as a result, people began to scramble and be killed, money was made and no taxes being paid, and now we have a problem. Cigarettes will never become a real problem until someone in power is affected by this growing cancer by cigarettes problem. Then it has to wide spread over people in power for notable change can ever take place. Lastly, and this is something I feel very strongly about always, cigarettes are illegal anyway, the human body hasn’t ever accepted the cigarette, and because it is killing people everyday, that makes it and those who make it murderers, which in turn is an illegal act, right!

This Essay Earned me A 15/25, Hmm Not Bad for Advanced English I thought.

Comparing and contrasting Boyle's novel vs. other literature from class

The literature we have read in this class goes into great detail the racism that occurs in California everyday, and how diverse it all can be. The Blacker the Berry, If He Holler Let Him Go, and The Tortilla Curtain are the best I have seen to exploit the racism. Whether you are black or brown skinned, Spanish speaking or English speaking, racism will hit you square in the face. You soon figure out that at times as you are growing up, that white folks (as we call them) are not always the only ones who discriminate against cultures. So many times it is the same culture showing envy and discrimination against themselves which is painful to hear sometimes. This is the case in The Blacker the Berry, where one young black girl was faced with being outcaste by her own people. Not even in your own circle of friends or family are you considered a perfect human being, it’s just sad that sometimes an individual has to face it from the normal racist, and then be blind sided by racism from it’s own kind. It was very upsetting for me to read about one girl and her opposing pressure to fit in at predominately all white school, during a time when racism was in plan sight.

If he Holler let him go, African Americans as a culture and not individual were degraded and preyed upon here. The opposing forces were all around them on the streets, and it had a profound effect on the way people went about there lives in this story. Black people who were going to work, trying to make a living were being treated as if they were bombs or sewage on the street, like something you must get rid of before it pollutes the air or something. “White couple in the middle of the street…giving stare for stare, hate for hate” (613), will always be a quote that I will take with me to my deathbed, because it lets me know just serious people took racism back, and the generation them may take it today. I have never been approached with racism in my life yet as a black man, but I am not a concealed individual, so I know it does exist and my people are suffering because of it. Chester Himes writes this story beautiful though in a sense he gives the perfect account, and the truth about hoe the industrialization of this country was built on the backs of African-Americans, and others glaringly fighting the effects of prejudiced but still painfully aware of the need for labor, regardless of sex or race. That’s something that should touch all hearts no matter the emotion you have about it. Playing the race card, seems to me to have been the easiest thing they did in those days to explain the hardships and labor regulations back then.

Like The Tortilla Curtain, as we approach a new era in literature it seems nothing as changed, just the change In cultures. What I mean by this is that now the focus is on Hispanic immigrants. The blacks and Asians cultures felt the beginnings of isolation but it did not stop with them, and The Tortilla Curtain proves that in detail. “Can I help you?” Deleaney breathed, gesturing futilely, wondering whether to reach down a hand or not-should he be moved? (7) Goes to show how much one man values the life of a minority human being. Goes to show you how much a label impacts the way one culture looks at another. The story allows you to look into the mind of racism first hand, and allows the reader to take a peek into how people talk about other people, talk about isolating themselves from other cultures like there better than another group of people. “And they were moving in the direction of the cash registers-all three of them, as a group-and Jack, the conciliatory Jack, Jack the politician, Jack the sooner of gripes, grievances and hurts real or imaginary, put an arm over Delaney’s shoulder and warbled his sweetest notes: “listen, Delaney, I know how you feel (speaking about a gate they built to keep Mexicans out of their community) and I agree with you. It’s not easy for me either- it’s nothing less than rethinking your whole life, who you are and what you believe in. and we get control of the border again, I will be the first to advocate taking it down.” Racism, as shown all throughout the three important stories to me, and the best pieces I have read, is a thought and a mind frame that will never leave the minds of the so-called majority.

The one word that compares all these works is the racism showed by human beings (mainly whites) as a whole. I notice that the racism shown is not within the same ethnicity, but that of different cultures. I will never fully understand the true meaning behind racism, because human beings are all the same, and the only thing that makes us different is our cultures and skin color. Our different climate where we live around the world is what makes our skin and outlook different from others, when will people get that. I hope in the future, especially after seeing that there is school material like this in the hands of college students, that we as a people, not as white or black or Hispanic, realize that racism is what is tearing human beings apart. Racism is what is creating a need for war, and racism is what renews a hate for one another, and stop it for good. That’s the biggest reason for me appreciating, and loving The Tortilla Curtain so much, because it coincided so much with the old school racism of The Blacker the Berry and If He Holler Let Him Go.

This Here Is A College Essay I Wrote, Had to get in Ya'll

First off, I have had a lot that have gone on in my life that has brought me back to the college scene and has allowed me to see that there is no other real way to go about my dreams than to go to college and get a real education. When I was 18 years old all I wanted to do was graduate, and leave my home because of the pressures and issues home brought to me. I won’t get into to many, but I will talk about the main issues in my life and how it has affected me living here. One has to be family structure and black unity. I want to discuss that mainly because I live in a family where structure and unity is non-existent, and it hurts for everyone there. My family has to learn how to come together as one and help people till the end, not until they feel it is worthy to just let go and say oh well. I love the Hispanic and White culture because I believe they have already come to the conclusion that the only way to rise, is to start by unity in the specific home, that spreads out to the world, and one change is contagious when its in the world. Unity has it benefits because the world needs it. As far as national issues, unity would definitely fit in with how we approach the way we communicate with the world and war. I believe that we have the concept of unity as a culture of one(speaking as an American people now, not a specific culture) we could definitely find a way to bring all of mankind together to approach all situations facing the world that we disagree with to a conclusion feasible for all to live with. We need to make a change in the world today; we need to start unifying our cultures, our societies, our worlds, and our earth to live as one human mankind.

I want to go to go college to study film and English. I want to study those 2 fields because I feel the best way to get out my message to the world is by proper representation and by showing. The world seems like a bad place when you are in a bad situation , but I want to show the world, and those who live in bad situations what life could be like if you just overcome those obstacles in your own personal life and get out there into the world and see how all people in the world live and make due with the choices they were given. To put my images of life out there on film will bring the world in my eyes some justice because it will have an impact on if only one thought process, many. I want to express through film my thoughts on how you are expected to treat your children, which has nothing to do with expectations, but love. My English major will bring forth the exact meaning to what I want to say to the world I am trying to reach, I feel. Without everyone being on the same page, things will never change. You must have a universal form of speech to be able to have all cultures of people and language barrier come to together as one and respect the thoughts you have. LMU, what can u say about this school other than it is the best California has to offer anywhere in the world. My idle hank gathers went here, its been a dream of mine to go here. College isn’t for all I know, I have known that forever in time, but I have come to realize that it is for me, and this is where it all begins for me, this is where life starts for me and my new goals for life. I have a lot to express, a lot to overcome, a lot to preach, a lot to bring to the table, but I can’t do it until I find the avenue that best fits my approach, and learn what is necessary to succeed and move on. Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to fulfill my educational goals, and hopefully I will see you in the fall, thank you.