Showing posts with label college. Show all posts
Showing posts with label college. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Cursed Out in Class

So last night I got cursed out in a classroom. A classroom that was full of students and one teacher. Let me start out by saying I should have known that when I opened my mouth and said something I was going to start a fire. Even though what I said was something that I would think any reasonable person could agree was not offensive or controversial.



The way all of this started was with the topic of minorities in Sociology class. Now when you hear the word minority a lot of you are already thinking racially, but we talked about many kinds of minority. Another guy in the class who was white asked the question randomly about BET which as I am sure you are aware stands for Black Entertainment Tonight, I mean I think the 'T' is for tonight. I don't give a damn enough to go look.



Anyway, what he asked was 'What would happen if whites had a White Entertainment Tonight (or whatever that 'T' is for)'? Well I could tell where this was going, and after the teacher did her little explanation of how norms and culture trends I stepped in and simply said that the question that should be asked was, 'Why is there still a BET? There is nothing of quality on that station, nothing of substance, this a devoid hole. To quote myself from earlier, its a gaping goatseed anus on our TV dial.



You see, this is where you would think the argument started. But really it wasn't. The teacher bought up something else, I couldn't even hear her much, but she mentioned this neighborhood called Sienna Plantation, its a nice place, floods a lot but still nice. But this black lady cut in, over the teacher, her exact words were 'I don't see how any black person can live in a neighborhood with Plantation in the name.'



I simply said, 'It's just a word, any word is what you make of it.'



This woman started out semi-calm, 'How can you say that?' then I couldn't hear for a second, 'she said something about me not being black enough.' They teacher cut her off. Like ten seconds later she gets up out of her seat yelling and carrying on, telling me how I am an 'ungrateful fuck' then she said the dumbest thing. She asked, 'How can you say slavery is just a word?'



Did you see the word slavery anywhere in what I just typed until this point? I thought not. I tried to explain that Plantations aren't just for slaves, aren't just for blacks and that in South America they are still in use today to make coffee.



This is when she talked right over me and continued to curse, yelling and carrying on. At that point I shut down because you don't have to yell to talk. And I don't deal with crazy bitches, sorry but I have dealt with enough crazy people in my life. I don't have to hear it from one more. And anyone who flips out over the word Plantation...or even the word Nigger can go cry to someone who gives a damn, because I am tried of trying.



Eventually it calmed down, I didn't say anything back to her because she wasn't making sense and that's how crazy people are. In all honesty she's the same one who goes on and on about her good Christian crap and suddenly she can't forgive a bunch of people who died about five generations ago in the late 1800's? That's asinine if I have ever heard of anything being asinine and I dare anyone to argue with me how that opinion she brought up even makes sense.



I'll say this as quickly as I can because I am going to have to wrap this up. But the main problem with race relations is that people of the same race want to group together and blame others. Some of the most racist people I have seen are other blacks talking about whites and they think that anytime something happens to them its racially motivated. A lot of them don't seek to better themselves, they just complain about how its this other races fault they can't rise up. Well let me tell you, maybe if you read a book, got out and did something, got some culture, and I don't mean culture from a record store or a magazine, maybe if you stopped acting like anyone who doesn't have the same skin tone as you is out to get you, or like every time you do something wrong and get caught that its your race that made you get in trouble you wouldn't have such a hard time becoming a productive member of society.



And just in case anyone cared, the high school inside of Sienna Plantation is named after a black guy...

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Hook Ups

Since the day I left Junior High it has seemed like things were changing too fast. I remember when kissing someone was a big deal. My first year of high school I heard from the younger sibling of a friend that three girls at our school had gotten caught having sex.



Back when I was there it was rare to even hear about someone going as far as to get fingered.



Now in college people talk about hooking up as if its something completely normal and even therapeutic. I used to see examples of it everyday. I still see guys that make out with girls, interchangeably in groups, and girls who make out with each other for a guys entertainment. I have to stop and ask, what happened to you women?



The women from a newspaper, Laura Sessions Stepp has written this book called Unhooked about the decline of love and its replacement by hookups in college and high school life. If I didn't see it for myself I wouldn't have believed it at first. In my high school people were so close knit that there wasn't much hooking up in the open, everyone knew everyone.



But when I got to college things changed severely and I could see the stuff that was going on all around me. One girl I knew personally got passed around like a doobie among hippies. Guys would get together and discuss her performance and even rate her on how well she did individual things.



Stories cropped up about different crazy acts she had taken part in, one of the most notorious was her allowing a guy to use the vibrate function on his phone for purposes other than it was intended for, needless to say the phone broke. But the point here is this, hook ups, for the most part, are degrading to women and they harm the guy on the other end of the thing too.



The problem really stems from Feminism, now I know I am going to get a lot of hate speech over this, but I think the second that women led themselves to believe that sexuality was the way for them to become more independent, they left themselves open to be used in a new way. Being outlandishly sexual doesn't empower you. All of the guys and girls I know that get the most crazy sex are the most unhappy people.



I read an article that Laura Stepp wrote on Valentines Day and it amazed me how much I thought the same way she did. She wrote about how many women didn't want anything to do with long term relationships because there wasn't any time for them. Stepp states in her article:



A national survey of 18-to-29-year-olds by the Pew Research Center reported that almost 60 percent were not in committed relationships and the majority of those were not interested in being committed. Young women even have phrases for couples, frequently spoken with a touch of derision: They're 'joined at the hip,' or 'married.'


But I can tell you right now that part of the problem lies in our parents. I had a friend who had a mother who had been divorced several times, and this friend told me that "I don't see the big deal with marriage, its just a short term commitment". Believe it or not the reluctance for people to seek divorce ruins the minds of the children involved.



What I can't do is offer much help. Guys I know think they are happy to be this way, to seek out these things and only these things. And occasionally making out with someone at a party isn't going to damage your mind forever, but going about looking for this as if its going to lead you to eventually meet someone you love is a dumb idea. If the other person only sees you as a hook-up that's all you'll ever be. Even if you marry that person, expect to get divorced, or have major problems. You weren't what they had in mind, just what was convenient.



A link to the original article can be found here: myspace