Analyzing the Drug War

The information we get from "Drug War Facts" provides us with an insight into how the Drug War can be considered a racial project against persons of color. We are able to see that alcohol can also be a factor in crime (as opposed to drugs being the only factor), how illicit drug use has affected America, and how the overall majority of drug users are white. These facts communicate to us that the Drug War is not what it seems and it proves to us major false points that we are informed of when it comes to identifying the War on Drugs.

These facts not only tell us the truth, but they also provide us with a view on how the war on drugs is based on a false premise of race and it further vindicates the notion that the Drug War is racially and politically driven. This data affects our cluster because we are subject to be racially profiled when it comes to drugs and we are the ones who are accused of being the drug users. The war on drugs has been forming into more stricter policies than in the past and cops are cracking down on "drug users" more than before.

The significance of this information is that it represents the other facts of the drug war. The drug war is treated as an isolated event and it only focuses on racially-driven drug use, but the politicians and corporations who manage it are ignorant of the fact that other factors come into play. Alcohol influences 40% of murders, as stated in the facts. 40%. Why aren't the politicians and cops trying to fix that as well? Most  of the illicit drug users are white, 72% as a matter of fact. What does that say about applying the war on drugs to neighborhoods in which 72% percent of white people use drugs? Why can't they do that as well? With these facts, we are able to see how the Drug War affects our country on a racial basis.

Maybe the War on Drugs isn't about drugs. Maybe its about money, corporations, people, or race, or even all of them. Maybe it should be named the War on Race.

Source:

Drug War Facts
www.drugwarfacts.org
-"Actual Causes of Death in the United States, 2000," Journal of the American Medical Association.
-Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
-Prevalence of Imprisonment in the US Population, 1974-2001

Managing Life as a LaGuardia Student

 How does a LaGuardia student have to be responsible, and what are the stresses of college for you as a LaGuardia student?

In many ways, LaGuardia students have to be responsible. Some students work, some students have other obligations, and some students only have to worry about school. But in all, students have the same expectations placed upon them. We are all expected to perform at a high level and much is expected of us, and in order to be successful, we must have to be responsible, even if many types of stress get in the way. We have to be able to come into class on time and to participate and to share ideas and to do essays and that's just a part of  it, but every single one of us is capable of doing it. I know that it gets for some people because life gets in the way, but you can do it. For me, it has been a tough year because I have been out of school for 7 months, and it's been a hard adjustment period overall. I have had to deal with motivational issues and managing to do my work on time and trying to figure out what I want to major or or what career path I want to take. But once you realize why you are at LaGuardia, you can focus on trying to manage your stress better.  It took me a while to adjust into school mode again, but after sticking it out for the whole semester, I have learned that if I want success, I have to work for it. We can all get into 4 year schools and we can all get our bachelor degree and we can all improve our lives if we work for it. There will always be people willing to help guide you and to understand everything that goes on, but you just gotta try.

Racial Formation (Notes on 114-116)

This is what I understood from pages 114-116 on racial formation:

-large setbacks in the Americas in the 70's due to the economy had racial contexts
-deindustrialization caused a lot of job losses and caused jobs to move from the frostbelt to the sunbelt, moving from the north into the south
-inflation increased as salaries became stagnant and as prices went up, things became more expensive
-America's position as a national and international and economic power was dwindling
-America blamed japan for unfair foreign competition and was racist towards them for doing what they had to do, antagonistic racism towards them also based on World War II
-people depended on welfare, but so many people were on welfare that the taxpayers who payed for it did not want to pay for it anymore
-immigrants receive an unfair amount of criticism for taking the jobs of the whites; now the whites are the victims of so called discrimination

So the main basis of reaction towards political and economic issues was race and it always seemed to be tied into it. In order to justify what was going on, they had to bemoan and put race in as a factor when it wasn't true.

Annotated Bib: Untouchable

Mukherjee, Ramkrishna. "Caste in Itself, Caste and Class, or Caste in Class." Economic and Political Weekly 34.27 (1999) : 1759-61. Print.


A source I found for my essay on Untouchable is Caste in Itself, Caste and Class, or Caste in Class by Ramkrishna Mukherjee. In this scholarly article, he discusses the relationship between caste and class in India and how they were both tied to the Indian's identification with his own land. Communalization was a major factor in Indian identity and villages and everybody was tied to their role in the community and with what they had to do in order to support it. Also, Mukherjee talks about how capitalization (established by India itself, and also by Britain) affected caste and how India changed over time.

Mukherjee's article is useful because it gives me an alternate perspective on how the caste system worked and it provides an economic and a sociological perspective on caste and class. Even so, it gives me a limited view of how caste and class affected identity their social impact on it. His source is a solid source that is very educated and informative on one part of my essay.

Mukherjee's article is a solid article because it covers all the bases on caste and class in India. It helps me shape my argument because it provides me with valid points of view on caste and class and it further reinforces my notion that caste and class are intertwined and inseparable in India. I can use this source to help me further my argument on false consciousness and it could help me expand on how caste and class affected Bahka in 1930's India and how it could tie into race as well.

Untouchable- Essay #2 (Rough Draft)

Well, it's not organized yet, but I'm getting there.

Tentative Thesis:

In Untouchable, Anand describes how Bakha adopts a false consciousness, trying to live up to the life of the Englishmen instead of identifying with his own Hindu culture. He adopts a false consciousness by wanting to learn how to read and write as the English do (since his low place in the caste system didn't allow him to do so), by trying to play hockey (an english sport) and by being exposed to the English culture and religion as he lives with Colonel Hutchinson (pg 130, quote sandwich could be made on this point) . The ideology of the caste system reflects upon race and class (key term?) in India.

Supporting claims (paragraphs that should follow the thesis):

How each of the following:

1. learning how to write
2. playing hockey
3. being exposed to a different religion (pg 130)

magnify and affect false consciousness in Bahka. Expand and clarify and I can use key terms from racial formation here

Other thoughts:

In various points of the novel, we also see how Bakha's false consciousness evolves and changes throughout. We see how significant it is to Bakha to want to escape the unfairness of his own culture by trying to adopt the English culture, and we see how trying to adopt a new culture and neglect affects his own identity.

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Intersectionality can be used to analyze how the ideology of the caste system works. We see that in the novel, Bakha is a sweeper and is looked upon as a filthy person but when he accidentally bumps into someone above him in the caste system, he is bemoaned and insulted for not announcing that he was passing by. We also see that Bakha steps into a temple/shrine and when he is seen, he is insulted over and over for desecrating the temple, but when he realizes that the priest of the temple molested his sister, we see that Bakha cannot do anything about it, simply because the priest is higher than him in the caste system. Bakha experiences intense discrimination, and his own people, people who live in the same country and who are Hindu like he is, still discriminate him, simply for being different than him.

In Retrospect...

This cluster has impressed me from beginning to end. Sometimes it is hard to make connections with each class in the cluster, but in the end it all ties into each other. We see how slavery was back in the day and we also see how sometimes the effects of slavery ring true in today's world. Topics that we talk about in each class seem to always intertwine with each other. Talking about race and culture in each of the three classes make me critically think about what race and culture really mean to me. Not a day goes by where I ride the train and try to see people and their cultures and not identify them solely by their race. I see how linguistics and accents are a part of different cultures in NY and I see how different we all are and instead of dismissing the differences  I learn to acknowledge them. Instead of judging people by their race, I acknowledge them as equals. Now I see how different races and cultures influence me and the world around me.  Suddenly, I no longer feel the need to use the term "n**ga" as a term of endearment since I am now aware of the implications of the term. Now, I am able to be socially and culturally aware of the people around me. We all live on the same floating rock we call Earth, and learning about wat I have learned in these classes lets me see that maybe we aren't black or latino or hispanic or white or dark skinned. Maybe we are all those things.

Maybe we are all just human after all.

Twitter goes educational, political, and more

Overall, I was impressed by the new twitter handles we were exposed to. They provide information about society and things that are going on, ranging from politics to the prison system as well. Although some provide more information than others (BAMN provides a lot, and I mean a lot of thank you’s in their recent tweets), but mostly they provide thought-provoking dialogue and articles that make us think differently of our own lives. I am a favorite of @lobojost's blog because it hits so close to home (since I live in the Bronx myself) and he talks about things that happen that I would have never even thought about until I would be older. He talks about housing, education, economic justice and anti-systemic-racism organizing, and I have never really thought about those things, so his sources provide me with a background of what really goes on in the Bronx. I honestly don't think that I would have found these twitter handles by myself, but being exposed to them helps me learn more about what I don't really know. I am not convinced that twitter is a legitimate way to have interesting conversations, mainly because of the limited characters one can type to each other. Interesting conversations would most likely be more than 140 characters, and people would probably prefer to have longer and extended conversations, as they would be able to on a blog or on a chat, but twitter makes it easy to share information, and the speed in which one can do so provides a lot of sources for one to look through. These twitter handles provide a great array of information that I would have never been exposed to and which provide me a new perspective in my life.