history

Digging deeper: Finding the counter narrative

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This past Summer I had the chance to travel around Peru and visit a variety of different historical sites. One of the places I visited was a beautiful estate on the southern cost, Hacienda San José. The property was nothing less than stunning, a grand entrance, a courtyard, a wraparound porch, a swimming pool, an impeccable lawn, and even a beautiful chapel. My guide told us many people rent out the estate for weddings or come for a weekend getaway, …

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Listen to Tupac. Really listen to Tupac.

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Tuesday, September 13, 2016 marked the 20th anniversary of the death of Tupac Shakur. Tupac was a prominent hip-hop artist in the early 1990s well known for his deep, progressive lyrics in popular songs such as “Changes” and “Keep Ya Head Up.” However, he was more than just a rapper – he was a poet, a philosopher, and an activist. From a young age, he expressed incredible insight on contentious topics such as education, poverty, feminism, and police brutality. Recently, …

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Fostering Racism

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For our final project for Contemporary Racism, we were placed into groups, asked to pick an interesting topic concerning race, do individual research, and record a podcast with our group. My group chose to look at racial disparities in the American foster care system, a subject about which I had no prior knowledge. At first, I was uneasy about choosing a topic that I knew nothing about, feeling as if my unfamiliarity would provide me with some sort of handicap.  …

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Psychological Parasites

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The world is full of hierarchies, organized in distinct categories with distinct characteristics. Hierarchies have a sense of superiority and inferiority between the things being ordered, such as movie ratings. Movies can be rated in different categories, but there is a sense of one movie being better than the other movie, and then better than the next. This can also happen with people. Some experts, such as Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow) say that the hierarchy of people in …

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The Road to Racism is Paved with Good Intentions

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Recently, a friend of mine introduced me to the Comedy Central web series “Drunk History.” The host of the show conducts a boozy interview about a specific topic based on U.S. history—primarily unconventional stories—that are then retold with famous people. Given the fact that the interviewer and interviewee are at various levels of intoxication throughout the conversation, I was surprised to find how factual the events truly are. Specifically fascinating is the Harriet Tubman story, in which they discuss how, …

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Predisposed to Disaster: Institutional Racism and Hurricane Katrina

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I was only 9 years old when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, so I do not remember that much about the coverage of the disaster at the time. My parents largely tried to shield me from the extreme tragedy that took place in the city. I knew that a hurricane had hit, and I knew that it was bad, but I had no conception of the extent of the damage and lives that were lost as a result of the …

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Race & Poverty: It’s Different in America

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While in Barcelona over spring break, I found myself thinking a lot about our discussions in Contemporary Racism. The points about the history of the racial caste system in our country that were highlighted in the New Jim Crow readings were put into context when I visited Spain. Although race relations are troublesome universally, it seems when you step outside of this country that poverty may impact minority populations to a greater extent here in the United States than in other nations. …

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