A META-POST

First, I would like Mr. O'Connor and Mr. Bolos to assess my "Into the Wild: The Sean Penn Version" post.
As I reread my posts, I honestly have to say they're are some I cringe at and they're are some I'm pretty proud of. I do have to say I feel like my "I Love College?" post was just a filler. I was having a very busy weekend, and I did it just to complete it. I feel like my post didn't have too thought or depth into it, and that kind of bugs me. I really enjoy this blogging assignment because I like having the freedom to say what I think. And it bothers me that I just put a post in there, just to show the teacher I did the homework. I wish I would have gone more in depth, or chosen something more interesting to write about. Although, I do think a lot of people can relate to it. I just don't think my post had enough substance.

However, I am proud of my other posts. I think I've incorporated topics that most people can relate to, whether it's racial supremacy in a sport or the reasons why people lie. I do notice a theme of race in my posts, but I account that to what we have been discussing in class. I think our class discussions inspire me to dig deeper into this sensitive topic and see how it affects our society today, such as how we view colors or examples of racism still existing today.

I do notice that in my later posts I have chosen to incorporate more pictures. Well first, I finally figured out how to put the pictures in my posts. But I also think it adds to the message or topic I'm writing about. It gives a visual to the reader and makes it a little easier to understand the post. Now you have something you can see to place with topic.

I think what most surprised me about my posts was how much more evidence I gave than I originally though I did. For example, from my "How Racist are We?" post, I backed up my claim that our society is more racist than we think by providing three examples. One was "I just want to discuss an article I had read in the New York times. Click here to read. It says that new research discovers 'strong evidence that all-white juries acquit whites more often and are less favorable to black versus white defendants when compared to juries with a least one black member.'" I think it was smart of me to try and find different examples of racism occurring today to back up my argument, instead of just providing one example.

I really do enjoy this weekly blogging. Besides the freedom, I like being able to incorporate things I learned in class to events happening in the world today. It makes the learning more real and substantial. I hope my posts convey that.

The Connotations of Color

We've been talking a lot about race in AS lately, and it got me thinking about how colors in general affect society. Every single color has its own connotation. White is associated with purity and cleanliness. It contains every color in the spectrum. Red can be anger or excitement or even love and romance. Green is the color of growth, nature, and money. It can symbolize harmony, or even jealously and greed. Blue symbolizes calmness and wisdom. Ask people and many would say that its their favorite color. While black is often noted as a sign of power or authority, and sometimes even evil. In the Western part of the world, it is the sign of mourning.

Colors are everywhere, and many companies use specific colors in their marketing because they believe it will attract certain types of customers. Color plays a key role in the success of advertising. Look at McDonald's. The two colors of their logo are a bright red and warm yellow. The bright red has the ability to appear closer than it truly is and grabs the customer's attention first. Then the warm yellow activates considerations of food, warmth, shelter, and physical comfort, encouraging the customer to come in and eat.
So if colors have the power to make you stop in and have a burger, can they influence how you view others? If the color white symbolizes purity and goodness, does that mean that all white people are good and pure? And that those who are not white, simply are not? Colors might affect your mood, but they should not affect your thinking. And I don't believe the connotations of colors should be completely at fault for the inequalities and tension between races. I think it's how society chooses to react to those colors that affects how we interact with each other.

I Love College?

I recently conducted an interview with my journalism teacher Mr. Lucadamo for our AS class. During our interview, Mr. Lucadamo, who is sixty-four years old, began talking about the difference between college mentality when he was a teenager to how it is now. He said, "I went to college thinking this is not to get a job; this is to expand your mind. I ask kids today, 'Why do you want to go to college?' And what do you think their response is? To get a job."

It is believed that in order to get a "good" job today, you need a college degree. Employment rates are down because of the recession, which places more pressure on the new college generation. It has been shown that college enrollment is at a record high, with more than 70 percent of the 2009 high school graduating class enrolling in college in October.

Not only is there higher pressure to attend college, but there is also a greater pressure to attend a top college, especially at New Trier. Kids take the ACT multiple times in order to get their "perfect" score, even if each time they take the test they're only a point away. But here the mentality is that every point matters. Which is crazy. How can we expect to learn and enjoy school when it becomes a competition of who can get the highest score? We're competing, not learning. It's the same reason why kids load themselves up with AP classes and drown under the stress of them. They think it looks good for college, but are they really learning or just struggling to barely stay afloat? This pressure is unhealthy, and it causes unhealthy goals for kids these days.

White Boys Can't Jump?

Lately in AS, we watched a documentary detailing in the specifics of race and if it was biological or social. In it, they discussed if certain races were dominate in sports because of their genetics. You've heard the rumors. Some races have an extra muscle that helps them run faster or some races can't jump as high as other ones. Well the video states that there has been no discovery of a correlation between race affecting athletic ability.

But if you look at the any of the major sports, it does seem that one race tends to dominate. In the NBA, 82% of the players were African American. In the NFL, 67% of players were also African American. In the MBL, 60% of players were white. And in the NHL, a staggering 95% of all players are white.
Look at the difference between two championship teams this year, the Chicago Blackhawks and the Los Angeles Lakers.

The difference between races in each sport is not small. In fact, it makes you wonder why are there such huge percentage differentials? If genetics has no factor on a race's athletic ability than why do some races tend to excel at certain sports by an unbelievable margin?

I believe that environment has a lot to do with it. In an interview with Joseph Graves Jr., professor of evolutionary biology, he states that

If we were to look at people from northern climates, who were indigenous residents of northern climates, they tend to be short and stout instead of long or tall and lean. And there are good physical reasons for that. If you evolved in northern climates, like the Aleut or the Eskimo populations did, heat retention is facilitated by being short and stout. If you evolved in the tropics, where the environment is very hot, then heat loss is facilitated by being long and lean. So you're going to see differences in body proportions on that kind of scale.Now, if you were to ask yourself, "Is it likely that an Alaskan Eskimo is going to become a center in the NBA?", well, probably not, because height has something to do with your performance at that position in the NBA.

Obviously in order for someone to be a great basketball player, they would need a good height for the game. There's no way a 5'6 man can hold up against someone is 6'5. I also think another huge component is the way athletes train. Those who take 100 shots a day to improve their free throw percentage would definitely become a better player than those who only took shots at practices.I also have noticed that most runners who are of African ancestry, have trained in other countries than Africa. So that doesn't necessarily mean that Africa truly produced those runners. Maybe the training did.

Graves touches on this when he says,

if you look at those sprinters of Western African ancestry, they all got their records because they trained in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, or even in the Caribbean. If you look at the Western African countries where those sprinters' ancestors supposedly came from, none of those countries have ever produced any world record holders in the sprint events.

So how much of a factor do you think race is?