Home Uncategorized Essay

Uncategorized

Essay

You need to write seven papers according to the following requirements. The topics of the papers are in the second document. (each paper 350-500 words). You need to hand in 7 papers.

No plagiarism! No plagiarism! No plagiarism!

YOUR POINTS WILL BE TAKEN AWAY IF IT IS LATER FOUND THAT SOMEONE COPIED YOUR PAPER

Extra credit paper directions:

– You write the paper only on the articles that are on Blackboard for this class.

– If you write more than one paper, you cannot reuse any concepts from prior paper/s.

Technical expectations:

– 300 – 350 words

– double spaced

– in a 12 point non serif font (Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Candara, Verdana are some examples)

Paper expectations:

This paper is not a formal essay or term paper. This paper is not a summary, an opinion or a simple response. The objective of this paper is to allow students to show they have an understanding of course concepts and can apply them to current social conditions. It will include the following conditions:

– After reading one of the articles on Blackboard, students will consider 2 concepts from this course that can be applied to the article. These concepts will be defined according to the definitions in this class. No dictionary, encyclopedia or other source definitions are acceptable.

– Papers will NOT have:

— introduction

— opinion

— citations

— references

– Each paper must include 3 quotes from the article.

– Your paper will be written on a computer, saved to a computer or portable device such as a flash drive, then up-loaded to Blackboard. The title of each paper MUST include some aspect of the title given on Blackboard (example: for a paper on an article about Rosa Parks, the title of the paper might be ‘RosaParksExtraCredit.’)

-The format described below must be followed. Do NOT show references as I’m already very familiar with the course concepts and articles. Do not follow APA, MLA or another academic format.

– PAPERS MUST BE SAVED AS doc, docx, or pdf.
NO EXCEPTIONS

Format of the paper:

– Paragraph 1: Identify and define the first of the two concepts you will be applying.

— note: The definitions MUST come from either our textbook or class notes. Papers using dictionary, Wikipedia, etc definitions will not be read.

– Paragraph 2: Identify and define the second of the two concepts you will be applying.

— note: The definitions MUST come from either our textbook or class notes. Papers using dictionary, Wikipedia, etc definitions will not be read.

– Paragraphs 3 and 4: Show how each of these concepts can be applied to the article you’ve read.

possible concepts for extra credit

— the following concepts are from

chapters 1 and 2 of the text book.

They are in no particular order. There

could still be some concepts in

chapters 1 and 2. There are most

definitely more concepts in the rest of

the book. This list is meant only as a

suggestion.

– socioeconomic status (SES)

– inequality

– definition of minority group

– definition of majority group

– characteristics of a minority group

– racial minority group

– ethnic minority group

– race

– ethnicity

– race as a social construction

– markers of group membership

– stratification

– theories of Karl Marx (proletariat,

bourgeoisie, means of production,

importance of the economy, conflict

as good

– living wage

– theoretical perspective proposed by

Weber

– theoretical perspective proposed by

Lenski

– subsistence technology (foraging,

agriculture, industrial, post-industrial)

– intersectionality (Patricia Hill Collins);

matrix of domination

– relationship between power,

competition, conflict

– evolution

– prejudice

– stereotypes

– gender

– discrimination

– ideological racism

– institutional discrimination

– miscegenation

– assimilation

– pluralism

– Anglo conformity

– social structure

– human capital theory

– multi-culturalism

– ethnic enclaves

– separatism, forced migration,

genocide, revolution

– industrial revolution

– any of the different immigrant groups

discussed in class

– chains of immigration

– anti-Catholicism

– anti-Semitism

– pogrom

– push factors; pull factors

– three generation model

– quota system

– ethnic succession

– labor unions

– structural mobility

– degree of similarity

– ethclass

– sojourners

– ethnic revival

HTTP://WWW.CBSNEWS.COM/NEWS/CLANDESTINE-DRUG-TUNNEL-DISCOVERED-ON-
BORDER-BETWEEN-CALIF-AND-MEXICO/

CBS/AP

October 22, 2015, 2:40 PM
Elaborate drug tunnel discovered between California and Mexico

31 Photos

This Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2015 photo released by Mexico’s Federal Police shows an
underground tunnel that police say was built to smuggle drugs from Tijuana, Mexico to San
Diego in the United States. Mexican federal police said the tunnel extends about 2,600 feet (800
meters) and is lit, ventilated, equipped with a rail car system, and lined with metal beams to
prevent collapse.

AP/ MEXICO FEDERAL POLICE

SAN DIEGO — Mexican authorities said Thursday they seized about 10 tons of marijuana in an
elaborate tunnel with a rail car system that extended well into San Diego and was designed to
smuggle drugs into the U.S. from Tijuana.

The discovery on Wednesday marks one of the longest and more sophisticated clandestine
tunnels found on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The passage was 9 feet deep and about 2,600 feet long – about three-quarters of that distance
in Tijuana and the rest in San Diego. It was lit, ventilated and built with metal beams to prevent
collapse.

It was unclear whether any drugs got through the tunnel or if it had an exit yet in the U.S.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/clandestine-drug-tunnel-discovered-on-border-between-calif-and-mexico/

http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/drug-lord-joaquin-el-chapos-prison-tunnel-escape/

Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to
comment.

It was also unclear which drug trafficking organization began the engineering feat.

The region is largely controlled by Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, whose leader Joaquin “El Chapo”
Guzman escaped from a maximum-security prison in Mexico in July .

Guzman is known to be highly skilled in tunnel building. He escaped from prison through an
elaborate, ventilated tunnel over a mile long with a motorcycle mounted on rails.

Mexican police said in a press release about the drug tunnel that 16 people were detained on
suspicion of drug trafficking and had told authorities that they had ties to a criminal group that
operates in the state of Jalisco – an apparent reference to the Jalisco New Generation cartel,
which controls that part of western Mexico.

The people were caught off-guard when Mexican authorities arrived at a Tijuana warehouse
with a search warrant, police said. No shots were fired.

The drugs were wrapped in 873 packages covered with plastic and tape, police said.

Dozens of tunnels have been found along the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years – the most
sophisticated equipped with hydraulic lifts and electric rail cars.

The San Diego-Tijuana region is popular because its clay-like soil is easy to dig with shovels
and pneumatic tools, and both sides of the border have warehouses that provide cover for
trucks and heavy equipment.

CBS/AP

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/raid-of-mexico-ranch-looking-for-el-chapo-turns-up-empty/

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2012/12/04/hatewatch-exclusive-alaska-serial-killer-exposed-to-christian-identity/

Hatewatch Exclusive: Alaska Serial Killer Exposed to Christian Identity

By Bill Morlin on December 4, 2012 – 12:58 pm, Posted in Christian Identity, Extremist Crime

A confessed serial killer and bank robber who took his own life in an Alaska jail cell on Sunday
was exposed to the racist and anti-Semitic beliefs of Christian Identity theology during his
childhood in a rural corner of Washington state, Hatewatch has learned.

Israel Keyes, 34, now linked to at least eight murders throughout the United States in the past
11 years, was a childhood friend and neighbor in Stevens County, Wash., of terrorists Chevie
and Cheyne Kehoe — two racist brothers now serving lengthy prison sentences for murder and
attempted murder.

“The two families, the Keyeses and the Kehoes, were neighbors and friends and lived about a
half mile apart off Aladdin Road north of Colville” in Stevens County, Wash., a source with direct
knowledge of the situation said. “The kids in both families were home-schooled and they
sometimes attended aChristian Identity church called The Ark, just up the road from their
homes,” the source said.

The Ark, headed by 83-year-old Pastor Dan Henry, preaches that white people are the
superior, chosen race and that the Bible is their story. Identity followers generally believe
that modern-day Jews are not the real descendants of the Hebrews of the Bible, and many say
that Jews are biologically descended from Satan. Identity believers often describe themselves
as the true “Israel,” suggesting that Keyes’ first name is a reference to his family’s beliefs.

Israel Keyes, who apparently wasn’t given a middle name, was born in Utah to Mormon parents
who purchased rural property in Stevens County, near the U.S.-Canadian border, when he was
a child. On a website for the general contracting business he owned, Keyes listed Colville,
Wash., as his hometown and said he built his first log cabin in Stevens County when he was 16.

“He could have attended here, but I don’t specifically remember,” Henry, the Christian Identity
pastor, told Hatewatch today when contacted at his church, Our Place Fellowship, located about
a mile south of the U.S.-Canadian border. Henry said his church, which he founded in 1975
after moving from Nevada, doesn’t keep a membership roster. “We’ve had hundreds of people
attend our fellowship over the years, and I certainly don’t know them all.”

Henry said he had heard news reports about Israel Keyes and his crimes. While he said he
didn’t recall meeting Keyes, “I know his family lived her for a time. I don’t remember seeing him
here at our church, but he could have been.”

Israel Keyes is believed to have been one of two teenage boys in the Keyes family who showed
up along with Chevie and Cheyne Kehoe at a 1992 rally at Ft. Colville Grange, where human
rights activists where attempting to organize and counter a growing number of racists and neo-
Nazis in Stevens County, the source told Hatewatch.

The FBI is now actively putting together a timeline of Keyes’ past, including times he spent in
Stevens County. It’s not clear if any of the four murders Keyes confessed to committing in

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2012/12/04/hatewatch-exclusive-alaska-serial-killer-exposed-to-christian-identity/

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/topics/christian-identity/

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/topics/extremist-crime/

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/ideology/christian-identity/the-christian-identity-movement

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/1998/fall/kehoe-republic

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/ideology/christian-identity

Washington state occurred in Stevens County, but there is interest in his possible connection to
the 1996 murder there of a 12-year-old girl who had prosthetic legs.

Stevens County Undersheriff LaVonne Webb told Hatewatch that while her office is piecing
together a timeline of Keyes’ activities in Stevens County, he has not been definitively linked to
any unsolved homicides there. “He is not tied at this point to any case that we have in Stevens
County,” the undersheriff said.

Keyes was arrested in March in Texas and later indicted in Alaska on three federal charges
related to the kidnapping-murder in February of 18-year-old Anchorage barista Samantha
Koenig. Keyes was charged with kidnapping resulting in death, receipt and possession of
ransom money, and fraud with access device.

The FBI now says Keyes’ nationwide killing spree may date back at least a decade, to when he
was 24 or even younger. He has been linked to four murders in Washington state, one in New
York and two in Vermont — a couple named Bill and Loraine Currier who were killed in 2011.

Before committing suicide early Sunday, Keyes, a self-employed carpenter, general contractor
and U.S. Army veteran, admitted responsibility for robbing several banks, Mary Rook, the FBI
special agent in charge in Alaska, said Monday.

Keyes was in the U.S. Army from 1998-2000, stationed at Fort Lewis, Wash., Fort Hood, Texas,
and Egypt before being honorably discharged in June 2000, his records show.

Investigators were cautiously interviewing Keyes, attempting to develop a relationship so he
would open up and possibly implicate himself in other crimes, and he was cooperating, at least
to some extent. Now all investigators can do is work with what he told them and develop a
timeline detailing his extensive, almost impulsive travels throughout the United States. They
suspect he may be behind more than the eight killings he already had accepted responsibility
for.

“Keyes used proceeds from his bank robberies to pay for his travel, along with money he made
as a general contractor,” Rook, the FBI official, said in a statement. “Keyes also admitted
traveling to various locations to leave supplies he planned to use in future crimes,” Rook said.
“Keyes buried caches throughout the United States.”

“The FBI has recovered two caches buried by Keyes – one in Eagle River, Alaska, and one
near Blakes Falls Reservoir in New York. The caches contained weapons and other items used
to dispose of bodies. Keyes indicated the other caches he buried throughout the U.S. contain
weapons, money, and items used to dispose of victims,” Rook said.

In a series of interviews with law enforcement officials, Keyes described “significant planning
and preparation for his murders, reflecting a meticulous and organized approach to his crimes,”
Rook said.

“It was not unusual for Keyes to fly into an airport, rent a car, and drive hundreds of miles to his
final destination,” the FBI official said. “This was the case in the murder of Bill and Loraine
Currier, where Keyes flew into Chicago, rented a car, and drove across several states before
arriving in Essex, Vt. After the murder of the Curriers, Keyes continued his travels on the east
coast before returning to Chicago and then to Alaska.”

The FBI official said Keyes “admitted to murdering four people in Washington State. “He killed
two people, independent of each other, sometime during 2005 and 2006, and murdered a
couple in Washington between 2001 and 2000,” Rook said.

“It is unknown if these victims were residents of Washington or if they were vacationing in
Washington but resided in another state. It is also possible Keyes abducted them from a nearby
state and transported them to Washington.

“Additionally, Keyes admitted to investigators that in 2009 he murdered a victim on the East
Coast and disposed of the body in New York State. Based on Keyes’ statements, investigators
believe Keyes abducted the victim from a surrounding state and transported him/her to New
York.”

After murdering the young woman barista in Alaska earlier this year, Keyes dumped her body in
icy Matanuska Lake near Anchorage, and flew from Alaska to Houston, Texas, authorities say.
He returned to Alaska on Feb. 17, investigators say, and used Koenig’s phone and debit card to
demand and collect ransom money that was contributed by the public.

The federal indictment says Koenig subsequently withdrew ransom money in subsequent trips
he made from Alaska to Las Vegas on March 6 and later in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

After Keyes’ arrest, he provided details that led investigators to cut a hole in the ice in
Matanuska Lake and recover Koenig’s body on April 2.

Law enforcement officials are still working feverishly to see if Keyes may be linked to other
unsolved murders around the country over the last decade.

KoreansSlap Bill Gates for ‘Rude’
Handshake

By Joohee Cho

@jooheecho
Follow on Twitter

Apr 23, 2013 7:35am

Credit: Yonhap/EPA

SEOUL, South Korea – The buzz in town today is this photograph of Microsoft founder Bill Gates’

shaking hands with South Korea President Park Geun-hye.

Gates, 57, might have not realized it Monday, but a one-hand shake in Korean culture – and also in

Asia – is notably casual, done only when the other party is a good friend, of the same or younger age.

http://abcnews.go.com/author/joohee_cho

Tweets by jooheecho

http://abcnews.go.com/author/joohee_cho

Using one hand with the other tucked in the pants pocket is considered rude here, done when one is

expressing superiority to the other.

“Perhaps it was his all-American style but an open jacket with hand in pocket? That was way too

casual. It was very regretful,” said Chung Jin-suk, secretary general at the Korean National

Assembly.

President Park’s office has said nothing publicly about the incident and a spokesperson for Gates

declined to comment.

But Internet chat rooms and social network sites are filled with views debating cultural differences

and analyses of Gates’ laid-back style.

“I don’t know if that was ignorance or just plain disrespect,” Cho Park, a Korean student studying in

New York, said. “It was pretty rude of him. The thing is I’m not sure if it is rude in Western culture.”

The controversy doesn’t end there. Gates had met with two other previous South Korean presidents:

Kim Dae-jung and Lee Myung-Bak. He apparently gave the proper handshake with both hands to the

late Kim in 2002 but was spotted giving an improper shake to President Lee in 2008. That also

became a subject of debate.

Some South Korean media have been speculating that perhaps it was intentional, showing his

political preference; respect for the opposition leader Kim but disrespect for the ruling party leaders

Lee and Park, 61.

“Cultural difference or bad manners?” the Joongang Ilbo newspaper wrote.

“A disrespectful handshake or a casual friendly handshake?” DongAh Ilbo newspaper said in its

photo caption.

“It’s a head of state we’re talking about,” said Rick Yoon, a brand retailer in Seoul. “And she’s a lady.

This is not just a Korean thing. It’s an international protocol.

“Maybe it was intentional. Otherwise, he has a very strange habit.”

Gates was in South Korea on a three-day visit to promote his start-up TerraPower, which is

developing next-generation nuclear reactors.

ABC News’ Joanne Kim contributed to this report.

The German General Who Told Hitler to Go Screw Himself

The German General Who Told Hitler to Go
Screw Himself

July 23, 2012 By Timothy Ashby 8 Comments

I am fascinated by colorful historical characters,
especially military or naval figures. Very few of
these people could be considered truly
heroic. One of the rare exceptions is Paul Emil
von Lettow-Vorbeck, commander of a small
German army – largely composed of black
troops – that fought the British Empire in East

Africa during World War I – The German General.

A master of guerrilla warfare, General von Lettow-Vorbeck lived by a
warrior’s code of chivalry embodying honor, respect for one’s enemies, and
humanitarian treatment of his men as well as civilians. During a world war in
which the U.S. Army actively discriminated against black soldiers, von Lettow-
Vorbeck treated his African Askaris no differently from white Germans under
his command. His fluency in the Swahililanguage earned the respect and
admiration of his African soldiers; he appointed black officers and “said – and
believed – [that] ‘we are all Africans here’.” In one historian’s estimation, “It is
probable that no white commander of the era had so keen an appreciation of
the African’s worth not only as a fighting man but as a man.”

General von Lettow-Vorbeck was never defeated in battle,
and only surrendered after learning about the Armistice in
November 1918. The British repatriated the white German
soldiers but confined the Askaris in squalid
camps. General von Lettow-Vorbeck refusedto leave until
he had won promises of decent treatment and early
release for his black troops.

.Returning to Germany as a national hero, von Lettow-
Vorbeck became active in politics and tried to establish a
conservative opposition to the Nazis. He was able to bring
some of his black officers with him to serve in the
German Freikorps. When Hitler offered him the
ambassadorship to the Court of St. James’s in 1935, he
“told Hitler to go fuck himself.” Although repeatedly
harassed by the Nazis, he survived their regime due to his
popularity as a genuine hero of the old school.

The old general never forgot his Askaris, and he returned to East Africa in 1953 where he was
tearfully welcomed by his surviving soldiers. Upon returning to Europe, he campaigned to
provide for their welfare. When von Lettow-Vorbeck died at the age of 93 in 1964, the West
German government and the Bundeswehr flew in two former Askaris as state guests so that

The German General Who Told Hitler to Go Screw Himself

http://timashby.com/author/timothy-ashby/

The German General Who Told Hitler to Go Screw Himself

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_of_St._James%27s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundeswehr

http://timashby.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/von-Lettow2

http://timashby.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Askari

http://timashby.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Askari-on-March

they could attend the funeral of “their” general. A few months later, the
old warrior’s fondest wish became reality when the West
German Bundestag voted to deliver back pay to the 350 surviving
Askaris in Africa.

A fitting way to say “f*ck you” to Hitler and Germany’s racist past.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundestag

http://timashby.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Askari-in-car1

1968 – PART 3: ECONOMICS AND SOCIOECONOMICS

Detroit’s black middle class emerged from 1968’s upheaval

John Gallagher, USA TODAY NETWORK – Detroit

Before 1968, America’s small African-American middle class operated mostly in a segregated world.

Black-owned funeral homes, pharmacies, restaurants and clubs served a mostly black clientele in

neighborhoods like Detroit’s Black Bottom, soon to be razed for “urban renewal” — decimated like many

others by new freeways.

Many college-educated blacks were able find jobs only in a few places open to them, such as the post

office. When Ford Motor Co. was asked in 1963 to list its white-collar occupations open to African-

Americans, it had to include service jobs such as valets, porters, messengers and mail clerks just to have

any at all. Blacks then at Ford were relegated mostly to the worst dead-end jobs in assembly plants.

But after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968 and the report of the Kerner Commission on

urban unrest, America began, slowly and painfully, to offer more opportunities to people of color.

Yet, a white backlash grew along with the greater opportunities for African-Americans. In another

momentous change wrought by 1968, the white working class began to drift to the right politically, with

enormous implications for the nation’s political scene that resonate today.

No place did the struggle for opportunity and the backlash against it play out more dramatically than in

Detroit.

Among those who witnessed it all was the Rev. Doug Fitch, a black Methodist pastor from Los Angeles

known for his ministry to the Black Panthers. He was recruited in 1968 to help run the Detroit Industrial

Mission, a task force designed to open up auto industry jobs to African-Americans.

“Often, those who were poor were relegated to the very dirty jobs,” Fitch, now 81, said recently. “They

were on the assembly line, but they were not in the organization as managers.”

Industry responds to Kerner report

During that dramatic year, some of Detroit’s corporate elite, including Henry Ford II and financier Max

Fisher, mandated more opportunities for blacks in industry, including Detroit’s many auto plants. Some

civic leaders sincerely believed change was needed, while others cynically referred to such affirmative

action programs as “buying riot insurance” in hopes it would tamp down black resentment.

Not everything changed, by any means. Schools and housing patterns in Detroit would remain segregated

for decades. But over time, Fitch said, more economic opportunities opened up for African-Americans,

from the factory floor to professional offices.

“What happened is that corporations began to think seriously about new employees coming into their

business that would change the face of that corporation,” Fitch said. The face of work began to “look a lot

like us.”

Statistics bear out that a new black middle class was emerging. Historian Thomas Sugrue notes in his

book Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North that in 1960 the entire

state of Michigan had just 324 black doctors, 142 black lawyers, 201 black engineers and 95 black college

teachers. Those numbers rose dramatically in the years after 1968. By 1990, black doctors in Michigan

numbered 1,076; lawyers, 1,178; engineers, 2,658; and professors, 1,509.

Yet it remained a tense time. Rod Gillum, later a vice president and senior member of General

Motors’ legal staff and chair of the commission that built the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in

Washington, grew up in northwest Detroit in the 1960s at a time when a distinguished legal career for an

African-American youth remained unusual at best.

Gillum remembers vividly how it felt to grow up black in Detroit in 1968. At the time, he had a job at the

Northland Mall in suburban Detroit, where as a black youth, he stood out among the mostly white clientele.

“You would pause a little bit, look over your shoulder, because you’d have some concern,” he said. “That

was just the reality, that was your normal. You always wondered how others kind of viewed you at that

time; and then with the death of Dr. King, whether they viewed you with some trepidation or they viewed

you with more of a welcome. But that was your normal as a teenager.”

During the civil disturbances of 1967, which in Detroit left 43 people dead, President Lyndon B. Johnson

named Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner to head a 12-member advisory panel on civil disorders. The famous

Kerner Report, issued on Feb. 29, 1968, found that black resentment of white racism fueled the unrest.

In its most famous passage, it warned: “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white —

separate and unequal.”

Gary Gilson, a broadcast journalist, documented black resentment during the five months he spent in

Detroit in late 1968 and early ’69 filming Do You Think a Job Is the Answer? His documentary was about

efforts by Detroit industry to integrate more African-Americans into the workforce. It ran on public

television in March 1969.

Driving around Detroit, Gilson saw long lines of blacks lined up outside a movie theater. Puzzled, he

stopped to look into it. They were there to see The Battle of Algiers, a film about Algerians rebelling

against French colonial rule by organizing themselves into secret cells to defeat the occupying French

authorities.

“There’s no way that the cops can crack that secrecy,” Gilson said recently. “Well, all these people were

lining up to learn this! It was a symptom of what was the mood of the town. Resentment that so many

black people felt toward the police was one of the major issues in town.”

President Johnson’s administration rejected the Kerner Report when first issued. But when King was

murdered just weeks later in Memphis, at least some white Americans began to take the concerns of black

America more seriously.

Sugrue, a professor at New York University, said the dramatic events of the year demonstrated the need

for real change.

The streets of Detroit during the 1967 riot.

TONY SPINA, DETROIT FREE PRESS

“The long hot summers and the 1960s all

the way up through the riots that

accompanied the assassination of Martin

Luther King Jr. in April 1968 sent a very

strong signal to government and to civic

elites, particularly in riot-affected cities, that

they needed to address the grievances and

concerns of African Americans,” he said.

But as more opportunities began to open

up for African Americans, the white

backlash grew, too.

Backlash, then flight

In the presidential race that year, the winner, Republican Richard Nixon, running on his law-and-order

message, and independent George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, together garnered

57% of the national popular vote, while liberal Democrat Hubert Humphrey took just 43%.

Holding Michigan for Humphrey that year became a major goal for Detroit union leader Walter Reuther,

president of the powerful United Auto Workers and a national leader of progressive liberalism.

In 1968, Reuther faced criticism from within his own union, both from angry African-American members

who had formed the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement to demand greater opportunities for blacks,

and from resentful white autoworkers resisting black progress.

As Reuther biographer Nelson Lichtenstein writes in his book The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit,

Reuther confronted that growing opposition during one visit to a UAW town hall meeting featuring a

Wallace-friendly crowd. Attempting to respond to a white woman’s question, Reuther addressed her in

union vernacular. “If the sister will sit down, I’ll explain that,” and the woman shot back, “Don’t you call me

a sister!”

For the legendary Reuther, who had led sit-down strikes in the 1930s, survived beatings and

assassination attempts, and negotiated landmark contracts for his members after World War II, the rebuke

from his own ranks was stunning.

Sensing his UAW members drifting toward Wallace with his angry anti-Washington message, Reuther

poured huge resources into saving Michigan for Humphrey. As a result, Humphrey carried Michigan that

year and Nixon and Wallace did several percentage points poorer than their nationwide averages.

But the writing was on the wall. “It was the last heyday of labor liberalism,” said Lichtenstein, a professor of

history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It sent this jolt across the liberal labor leadership

that this whole world was turning against them. They saved the day (in Michigan), but it was an auger for

what would happen in the future.”

Many whites already believed that the equal

opportunity movement was pushing too

aggressively for change. White flight to Detroit’s

suburbs became a flood, ultimately costing the

city of Detroit more than half its population. White

discontent fueled calls for more law and order

and more aggressive policing in cities in

particular.

Within a few years after 1968, the rightward shift

of working-class whites was obvious. A key

moment came in 1970, when hard-hat

construction workers attacked anti-war

demonstrators in New York City. In January

1971, producer Norman Lear launched his iconic All In the Family TV show with Archie Bunker as the

stereotypical working-class bigot. Labor and liberalism were no longer synonymous.

Historian Sugrue notes, “urban unrest in the 1960s was decisive in pulling working- and middle-class

whites rightward politically. … Recall that even Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t have the support of a majority

of whites north or south by the time he was assassinated in 1968.”

The rightward shift of white workers has been evident since, with the importance of “Reagan Democrats,”

epitomized by suburban Detroit’s Macomb County, key to the 1980 presidential election — and the same

cohort helping Donald Trump win the state in 2016.

The opening of more opportunities for African-Americans and the white backlash against it were only two

of the ways the year 1968 changed the American economic scene.

Years of debt-fueled government spending on both the Vietnam War and Johnson’s Great Society

programs started inflation bubbling by 1968.

From a modest 2.8% inflation in 1967, overall prices jumped 4.3% in 1968 and 5.5% the following year. In

a few short years, that inflation would soar all but out of control, hitting 11.1% in 1974, worsened by the

OPEC oil embargo of the mid-’70s.

In the years that followed, recession marked by waves of corporate and personal defaults and

bankruptcies shattered the American sense of economic security.

It was the twin threads of black opportunity and white backlash that most dramatically changed America in

1968. It’s those threads that still underlie much of the unrest and culture wars in America today.

T r i b e s C r e a t e T h e i r O w n F o o d L a w s t o St o p U S D A Fr o m K i l l i n g N a t i v e F o o d E c o n o m i e s

Jacob Butler checks on grapes in the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian

Community garden. YES! photo by Tristan Ahtone.

From blue corn to bison, narrow federal food-

safety codes impact tribal food systems. But

advocates are writing their own food laws to

preserve Native food sovereignty.

BY TRISTAN AHTONE MAY 24, 2016

SALT RIVER PIMA-MARICOPA INDIAN COMMUNITY, Ariz. – Jacob Butler eyed a lemon tree—its

bright yellow fruit nestled among thick green leaves and set against the blue Arizona sky—then

checked on the tiny pomegranates and grapes in the garden as a black-striped lizard darted into the

shade of a mesquite tree. In the distance, downtown Phoenix glittered under the rising sun.

”Our garden is a platform to perpetuate our culture.“

“We try to grow what’s been here for hundreds, if not thousands, of years,” says Butler, the Salt River

Pima-Maricopa Indian Community garden coordinator, as he surveyed the land and the plants

growing on it. “For the past 13 years we’ve been doing this, so it’s in the minds of the people now.”

Traditionally, Pima and Maricopa tribal members grew lima beans, squash, corn, and other

vegetables; used mesquite trees for food, medicine, and other practical purposes; and relied on wild

game for food. Today, about 12,000 acres of their reservation are used for industrial farming—cotton,

alfalfa, potatoes, and other commercial crops—but, in the garden where Butler works, agriculture isn’t

a financial boon: It’s a way to strengthen and cultivate culture.

“What are the stories that go along with this tree? What’s the story we tell that says when squash

came to the people or corn came to the people? What are the songs that go with those things?” says

Butler. “That’s what we incorporate here: Our garden is a platform to perpetuate our culture.”

Tristan Ahtone

According to Butler, tribal members once cultivated myriad varieties of beans, squash, and melons.

Now, many of those crops have become extinct and their stories lost, and losing other heirloom foods

would have irreversible effects on cultural practices.

Indigenous communities have been sustained by thousands of years of food knowledge. But recent

federal food safety rules could cripple those traditional systems and prevent the growth of agricultural

economies in Indian Country, according to advocates and attorneys. Of the 567 tribal nations in the

United States, only a handful have adopted laws that address food production and processing.

Without functioning laws around food, tribes engaged in anything from farming to food handling and

animal health are ceding power to state and federal authorities.

To protect tribal food systems, those advocates and attorneys are taking the law into their own hands,

literally, by writing comprehensive food codes that can be adopted by tribes and used to effectively

circumvent federal food safety codes. Because tribes retain sovereignty—complicated and

sometimes limited though it may be—they can assert an equal right with the federal government to

establish regulations for food handling.

Recent federal food safety rules could cripple those traditional systems.

“Tribal sovereignty is food sovereignty, and how do you assert food sovereignty?” says A-dae

Romero-Briones, a consultant with the First Nations Development Institute, an economic

development organization. “You do that through a tribal code.”

Food codes and laws are basic legislation governing agriculture and food processing. Food codes are

good things: They are designed to protect consumers from products that could make them sick or

even kill them, as with a national salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter in 2008, and, more

recently, E. Coli outbreaks at Chipotle restaurants in 11 states.

Since 2011, food laws have become tougher, thanks to the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA),

the first major rewrite of U.S. food-safety laws in more than 50 years. Under FSMA, producers must

take into account everything from the packaging and refrigeration of products to how crops are grown,

all in the name of safety. These safety controls raise interesting questions in Indian Country.

Traditionally Pima and Maricopa tribal members grew
lima beans squash corn and other vegetables. Today
about 12000 acres of their reservation are used for
industrial farming. YES! photo by Tristan Ahtone.

In many Native communities, for example, access to

certified kitchens and state-of-the-art facilities is slim

to nonexistent. That means producers often must rely

on traditional knowledge to make foods that are safe

for consumption. One example, says Romero-Briones, is blue corn products.

“That’s an industry that has existed for generations,” she says. “But if you want to produce it or

process it in traditional fashions, you’re probably not going to be able to do that because you’re going

to have to do it in a certified kitchen.”

Under FSMA, tribal food economies face two options: Assimilate by complying with federal law or

keep tribal food products confined to the reservation.

“It’s one thing to say that we have to develop food and process food in certain ways, but it’s another

thing to recognize that tribes have their own versions of food safety,” says Romero-Briones. “Tribes

have been developing food economies for thousands of years.”

Another example of how traditional foods are impacted is buffalo slaughter. Dozens of tribes from the

Dakotas to Oklahoma are engaged in buffalo management and harvesting. But those hoping to get

buffalo products into markets outside of tribal communities often face big hurdles.
”Tribes have been developing food economies for thousands of years.“

Buffalo, for example, is considered an exotic animal under federal guidelines, says Dan Cornelius,

with the Intertribal Agriculture Council. And that has repercussions when it comes to what the federal

government will support.

“For domestic animals, USDA will pay for the cost of that inspector. For exotics, they don’t,” Cornelius

says.

Inspections can run as high as $70 an animal, and all buffalo products must be processed in an FDA-

approved facility. By implementing food codes, tribes could find alternative ways to getting buffalo

meat inspected and processed. Cornelius says building an infrastructure that lowers costs would

allow buffalo meat to get to market faster.

“Ultimately, is it a safe process? If it is, then how can you develop a tribally specific provision that still

is ensuring a safe and healthy food but is addressing that barrier where there is a conflict?” he says.

So how do 567 different tribes with 567 different traditions, needs, and goals go about writing food

codes specific to their cultural heritages? They call a lawyer. Specifically, Janie Hipp, director of the

Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative, a legal think tank at the University of Arkansas.

Hipp, a former senior advisor for tribal relations at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, says her office

has already received dozens of calls from tribal governments about food inspection and how to get

tribal products off reservation and into other markets.

One area of concern has been general food safety. With the passage of FSMA, laws governing how

food is grown, processed, and handled are changing rapidly.

According to Hipp, tribal governments need to respond, not only to protect their own producers, but

also to protect their own existing food production systems.

Jacob Butler in the seed bank. YES! photo
by Tristan Ahtone.

Intellectual property is another priority. Many

tribes have specific, traditional uses for seeds,

crops, and livestock, and, without laws to

protect a tribe’s unique use of a particular plant

or animal, a corporation could trademark and

commercialize that product—anything from

Wojapi, a Lakota dessert made from berries, to

Piki, a traditional Hopi bread made from cornmeal.

“Having nothing on the books is not an option anymore,” says Hipp. “Regardless of whether it’s a

commercialized product or a traditional and very sheltered and protected product, the law needs to be

robust in that area.”

The development of tribal food codes isn’t a copy-and-paste job, though. It’s more of a choose-your-

own-adventure situation where newly written laws can be adopted, then tweaked to an individual

tribe’s needs. As portions of the code are written, they’re made public so tribal governments can start

adapting them. So far, Hipp says the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative has had more than a

dozen meetings with tribes.

”Are we putting our seeds at

risk?”

“I don’t think it does anybody any good for us to just sit and bake it up for three years,” said Hipp. “We

would prefer to roll things out, get in touch, modify, have it be a more organic process than to just

have everybody sitting outside the room waiting for the release.”

Back at the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community garden, Jacob Butler pulled a brown paper

bag off a shelf. He dipped his hand into the bag and produced a fistful of white pea seeds.

Most of the seeds in the seed bank are
heirlooms with genealogies stretching back
hundreds of years. YES! photo by Tristan
Ahtone.

“My generation and generations before me, we

all went to school outside of the community,”

says Butler. “None of us really got taught our

culture directly at home because our parents

were taught that it was a detriment to our

success.”

The seed bank is currently housed in a janitor’s closet with brown paper bags, plastic bottles, and

glass containers full of pinto-striped runner beans, amaranth, basil, luffa, corn, and dozens of other

seeds. But Butler says he has concerns for their future.

“For me, it’s cross-contamination with [genetically modified] seeds,” he says. “If this was to become a

bigger enterprise, where we were growing traditional foods for sale, then are we putting our seeds at

risk?”

Most of the seeds are heirlooms with genealogies stretching back hundreds of years, and Butler says

one of his next projects is to meticulously catalogue every item in the bank for future Pima and

Maricopa farmers.

“There are kids that have grown up being a part of this program that know right off the bat, ‘Oh hey,

that’s a Keli Baasho or a muskmelon,’” Butler says as he looked around the shelves. “That word Keli

Baasho means ‘old man’s chest,’ so they’re associating that melon with language.”

With food and culture so intimately intertwined and vital to the survival of Salt River, the tribe has

some big ideas to consider when it comes to the future of agriculture: Will it be commercial or

traditional? What constitutes organic? How will the few remaining heirloom crops be protected from

GMO contamination? Will Pima and Maricopa crops be sold, and, if so, how will they be kept safe for

consumers? Salt River has yet to decide on those issues, and Butler says adopting a comprehensive

food code would start the process of strengthening the tribe’s future: Native people growing native

foods, protected and guided by native laws.

“It’s a conversation we should be having,” says Butler. “People are wanting to see change.”

TRISTAN AHTONE is an award-winning reporter and a
member of the Kiowa Tribe. He serves as associate editor for
tribal affairs at High Country News and is president of the
Native American Journalists Association.

Tristan Ahtone

https://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/2018/06/01/75-years-ago-zoot-suit-riots-marked-a-dark-period-in-

southern-california-history/

75 years ago, Zoot Suit Riots marked a dark period in Southern California history

These youths, one stripped of all his

clothes and the other badly beaten, fell

victim to raging bands of servicemen

who scoured the streets in Los Angeles,

June 20, 1943, looking for and beating

zoot suited youths. The servicemen

blame the zoot suited youths for

numerous unprovoked assaults on their

colleagues. (AP Photo)

By BEATRIZ E. VALENZUELA

bvalenzuela@scng.com | San

Bernardino Sun

PUBLISHED: June 1, 2018 at 4:12 pm |

UPDATED: June 1, 2018 at 4:12 pm

The look is unmistakable: Crisp lines in

voluminous trousers, polished shoes

and exaggerated proportions. They are hallmarks of the zoot suit, which became connected to a

youth subculture during the American jazz era.

In Southern California, the flashy attire also is linked to rebellion and Mexican-American pachuco

culture.

And 75 years ago this weekend, on June 3, 1943, the zoot suit became forever tied to one of the

darkest periods in the region’s history when U.S. military men took the streets of Los Angeles

attacking young Mexican-American men, targeting those adorned in the attire.

Experts and scholars say the causes of the ensuing violence, that came to be known as the Zoot Suit

Riots, are complex and varied: a growing distrust of immigrants, rampant racism and a perceived lack

of patriotism from outsiders, among them.

But what is certain is that signs of racial and cultural tension, exacerbated by changing demographics

— and ultimately by war — had been growing for

years.

Violence erupts during the Zoot Suit Riots in Los

Angeles. MUST CREDIT Special Collections,

UCLA Library

Jose Leonidas Lara, of Fontana, known as “Pachuco Jose,”

models a zoot suit from his clothing line, “Drape Shapes” by

Pachuco Jose Productions, at Tequila Hoppers Bar & Grill in

Upland, CA., Sunday, May 27, 2018. (Staff photo by

Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, Inland Valley Daily

Bulletin/SCNG)

75 years ago, Zoot Suit Riots marked a dark period in Southern California history

mailto:BEATRIZ%20E.%20VALENZUELA

mailto:bvalenzuela@scng.com

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/brief-history-zoot-suit-180958507/

Zoot Suit Riots: Remembering the WWII era Los Angeles race riots

Violence erupts during the Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles. MUST CREDIT
Special Collections, UCLA Library

Jose Leonidas Lara, of Fontana, known as “Pachuco Jose,” models a zoot

suit from his clothing line, “Drape Shapes” by Pachuco Jose Productions,

center, with models Valerie Valentine, left, and Marty Mae, both wearing

Lady De Couture, by Sheena De La Cruz, at Tequila Hoppers Bar & Grill

in Upland, CA., Sunday, May 27, 2018. (Staff photo by Jennifer Cappuccio

Maher, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

Paramount resident Manny Alcaraz, with his 1933 Chevy Master, has
been immersed in the pachuco culture for four decades and although
he was a very young child during the Zoot Suit Riots, he said he’s
experienced bigotry due to the way he dresses. Portrait taken in
Paramount on Friday, May 25, 2018. (Stan Lim, Los Angeles Daily
News/SCNG)

Soldier, sailors and marines who roamed the street of Los
Angeles, June 7, 1943, looking for hoodlums in zoot suits,
stopped this streetcar during their search. Crowds jammed
downtown streets to watch the service men tear clothing off
the zoot suiters they caught. (AP Photo)

BUILDING ANIMOSITIES

What erupted into rioting by servicemen, off-

duty police officers and regular citizens in

1943 began building in the 1920s, explained Eduardo Obregon Pagan, a historian and professor at

Arizona State University who wrote the book, “Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and

Riot in Wartime L.A.“

During that time, immigration increased from countries other than northern European nations such as

Germany and England, according to Pagan.

“We started seeing people who were different,” he said. “They were religiously different. They tended

to be dark-skinned.”

In response to the country’s shifting demographics, in 1924 Congress attempted to close the

bordersof the nation to nearly every country except those in northern and western Europe.

When youth culture began to cross color lines in the 1930s, at a time when there was legally imposed

segregation, it caused anxiety among adults, specifically whites.

“A lot of this was precipitated by black cultural expression hitting the white mainstream,” Pagan said.

“You have this underground highly sexualized, highly physical, artistic expression and it was like the

entire Western civilization was about the collapse.”

Zoot suits became popular during the 1930s and early 1940s among some of those marginalized

young people — particularly black, Latino, Jews and immigrant youth — who frequented jazz clubs

and dance halls where black musicians performed.

Pachucos and pachucas were well-dressed Mexican-American men and women who typically wore a

zoot suit. The term originated in El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.

“It was punk rock before punk rock,” said John de Luna, a pachuco historian and Boyle Heights zoot

suit designer known as Barrio Dandy. “They were actually in resistance, in creating a youth

movement that would hopefully change the world for the better.”

WARTIME TENSIONS

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, pulling the United States into World War

II, anti-immigrant sentiment was on the rise, and along with it disdain for the style of the flashy zoot

suit.

The excessive style of the suit was seen as indulgent, especially when fabric was being rationed for

the war effort.

“Here the sailors are saying, ‘That fabric should be used for our uniform, instead you’re using that

fabric for a zoot suit,’” said artist and zoot suit designer Jose “Pachuco Jose” Lara of Fontana.

“The notion of patriotism was tied to difference — symbolic difference — and the idea that somehow

that recent immigrants are somehow not patriotic and are a threat,” said Professor Brian Levin with

Cal State San Bernardino’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. “And that’s a narrative that

we teach today.”

Then, in the summer of 1942, several pachuco, or Mexican-American, zoot suiters were arrested in

connection to the murder of José Gallardo Díaz. The case was subsequently known as the Sleepy

Lagoon murder.

The zoot suit and anyone who wore it were vilified in the Los Angeles press, Lara said.

https://isearch.asu.edu/profile/749125

http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/how-crossing-the-us-mexico-border-became-a-crime-20170523

https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/the-history-of-pachuco-culture

https://www.facebook.com/BarrioDandy/

https://www.facebook.com/Pachuco-Jose-Y-Los-Diamantes-206062689432861/

https://csbs.csusb.edu/hate-and-extremism-center

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sleepy-Lagoon-murder

Headlines like “Marijuana Orgies Before Terror Sorties Bared in Gang Roundup” and “BLACK

WIDOW GIRLS IN BOY GANGS; WAR ON VANDALS PUSHED” painted young Latinos and Latinas

as hoodlums and thugs and the zoot suit as the uniform of their gang.

While some of the zoot suiters were parts of gangs, not everyone who donned the style was a

criminal, Pagan and Lara both said.

“Even before the Zoot Suit Riots, people were tearing the zoot suits off these kids,” Pagan said. “Why

would you try to rip clothing off of kids? This was a way of putting working class kids back into their

place. As a person of color your obligation was to remain in the background of public places.”

Americans were so incensed and offended by a piece of clothing, they felt the need to tear it off the

person, which both Pagan and Levin said has been echoed in recent reported attacks.

“We see it in the ripping of the hijabs off Muslim women’s heads — it’s just a piece of cloth. It’s doing

nothing to anyone else,” Pagan said.

THE RIOTS AND THEIR LEGACY

The skirmishes between young Latinos and servicemen intesified on the evening of June 3, 1943,

when about 50 sailors, armed with clubs and sticks, from the local U.S. Naval Reserve Armory

marched through downtown Los Angeles, attacking anyone in the pachuco garb.

Over the next several days, it was more servicemen, off-duty police officers and civilians joined the

racially motivated, riots not only attacking zoot-suiters but also blacks and Filipinos.

It wasn’t until the U.S. military barred personnel from leaving their barracks did the attacks finally die

down on June 8. The Los Angeles City Council issued a ban on zoot suits the following day.

“When people who are different are affirmatively exercising their rights in public, it is frequently

deemed a threat,” Levin said. “It’s also presented as a symbol that existing tradition is somehow

under attack.”

But the week-long attacks did not stop young Latinos from wearing the suits. In fact, the riots may

have had the opposite effect, despite the temporary ban on the suits after the riots.

“A lot of the zoot-suiters became activists,” De Luna said. “Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez, Dolores

Huerta, they were pachucos and zoot-suiters. They became involved in these movements of youth

resistance that would allow them the take on these large systems of oppression in the ’60s and ’70s.

They defined themselves in a new way. In an American identity born in the barrios and in the

boroughs of New York.”

In the 1950s and 1960s, the popularity of the suits began to wane. That changed in 1979, when Luis

Valdez brought the style back into the spotlight with his play, “Zoot Suit.” It told the story of the Sleepy

Lagoon murder trial and subsequent riots.

One of those inspired by the “Zoot Suit” movie starring Edward James Olmos was Manny Alcaraz, 70,

of Paramount.

“It really grabbed me,” Alcaraz said. “It’s part of my heritage and since then I knew I had to have a

zoot suit. I have seven now.”

Alcaraz feels the suit and the associated car culture gives him a connection to his cultural past.

https://www.history.com/topics/zoot-suit-riots

Primer día de escuela for Fontana Unified’s dual-language Dolores Huerta International Academy

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083365/

Today, the pachuco subculture continues to thrive and evolve in Southern California with a variety of

styles that mimic the vibrant East Coast zoot and the more subtle and subdued West Coast drape.

There are regular meetups, including the popular Barrio Boogie in Los Angeles.

And on the 75th anniversary of the Zoot Suit Riots, a commemorative cruise, organized by Alcaraz,

will kick off Sunday, June 3 at 11 a.m. at Lincoln Park at 3845 Selig Place, make its way into

Downtown Los Angeles and conclude at Joe’s Autopark Lot at 330 S. Main Street. The cruise will

then be followed by an after-party, complete with music and dancing and a photo exhibition entitled,

“From East to West; Heads up, fists clinched: 1943 & The Black & Brown Zoot.”

“It’s important for people to know that it was a real thing that actually happened and that it’s part of

our history,” said Alcaraz.

Seventy-five years later, some historians see similarities in the climate during World War II-era Los

Angeles and today.

“I think the fears that existed at that time: international conflict, immigration and even the taking in of

refugees, has some reflection today,” Levin said.”The difference today is we actually keep data on

these kinds of things.”

According to the center’s most recent study released in May, Los Angeles had a 10.8 percent

increase in reported hate crimes from 229 in 2016 to 254 in 2017. This marks the fourth consecutive

annual increase in hate crimes in the city.

Pagan noted the views that preceded the riots included one that “race caused social danger,” and

that there are troubling parallels evident today.

“Those who didn’t fit into the box of Americanization was seen as a threat and that is part of the

subtext that we’re seeing today,” he said. “If someone stands out as a religious or racial minority they

are a threat of what the American society is.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjOV73mlOjd/?taken-by=tudyz_36

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjT3VRIF5ae/?taken-by=tudyz_36

https://csbs.csusb.edu/sites/csusb_csbs/files/2018%20Hate%20Report%205-141PM

White supremacist hate crimes, violence against transgender people surge in LA County, report finds

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/21/anti-muslim-harassment-american-
classrooms-student-bullying

How anti-Muslim sentiment plays out in classrooms across the US

Words are the most common weapon of bullies, but in the past month harassment in schools is
increasingly manifesting in physical attacks and incidents are taking a psychological toll on some
students

Ghazala Irshad
Monday 21 December 2015 07.00 ESTLast modified on Tuesday 5 January 2016 07.27 EST

While watching a TV news report on the Paris attacks with her seventh-grade class, Farah
Darvesh became acutely aware that she was suddenly the center of her classmates’ attention.

“When they said Muslim terrorists did it, everyone’s heads turned and all eyes in the room
were on me,” says 12-year-old Farah, one of only three Muslims at her middle school in
Columbus, Georgia.

A few weeks later, a classmate asked Farah point blank: “Why did your people kill those people
in Paris and San Bernardino?”

Farah, a highly confident and self-described popular girl among her peers and teachers, had
“gotten used to people joking” that she was a terrorist. But even so, she said: “Before the
attacks I was mostly treated like everyone else. But now I’m having to answer questions about
my religion and the actions of people I don’t even know. It’s a lot of pressure. I mean, I’m only
12.”

She waited for her anger to cool down before retorting to her classmate: “Don’t ask me, ask
them. Do I ask you why your people are shooting up schools?”

“That shut him up,” Farah said. She concedes that she may not have the best answer, but
she’s doing her best considering the circumstances. “I’m feeling the same way everybody else is
– I’m mad at Isis too. They’re killing innocent Muslims everywhere too. The shooting in San
Bernardino happened 9 miles from my cousin’s school. It’s very scary that she was so close to
danger. But exactly because I’m a good Muslim, I’m not going to take my anger out on
anyone.”

Muslim American students, many of whom weren’t even born until after September 11, are
coming of age in an era of a protracted “war on terror” abroad, and broad surveillance and
profiling of their community at home. In the month since attacks in Paris and San Bernardino
have spurred escalating rhetoric from Donald Trump and other politicians, the long-
simmering Islamophobia in America has reached a boiling point with a litany of threats,
vandalism, and violence against Muslims.

Versions of this anti-Muslim sentiment have also been playing out in the classroom setting.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/21/anti-muslim-harassment-american-classrooms-student-bullying

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/10/living/mosques-attack-study-2015/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/21/anti-muslim-harassment-american-classrooms-student-bullying#img-1

Muhammad Rahman, a 15-year-old at a Chicago high school, says he gets asked “Is that a
clock or a bomb?” at least once a day since the international outcry over the arrest of 14-year-
old Ahmed Mohamed. That the uproar was over teachers and police wrongfully assuming
Ahmed’s homemade clock to be a bomb – when in fact it was a clock – doesn’t matter to

Muhammad’s bullies.

Muhammad Rahman is a 15-year-old Chicago high school student. Photograph: Ghazala Irshad

“Even the nicest people, who you wouldn’t expect to be mean, say stuff,” Muhammad says. “I
know my friends aren’t racist of course, but the jokes aren’t funny when they’re disrespectful.

“Every day, they make sure to let me know that I’m different from everyone else.”

In Georgia, a school principal apologized last week after a teacher asked a Muslim student if
she had a bomb in her backpack.

Words are the most common weapon of school bullies, but in the past month, anti-Muslim
sentiment in schools is increasingly manifesting in physical attacks, particularly against girls who
wear the hijab. On 19 November, three boys allegedly beat up a sixth-grade girl wearing a
hijab, calling her “Isis”. A 2014 study by Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) study
found 29% of students who wore hijab experienced offensive touching or pulling of their
scarves.

Fear of ‘being judged as either oppressed or radicalized’

Lana Alshahrour is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed 12-year-old Syrian Muslim at a Chicago middle
school. Because she does not wear the hijab and has Caucasian features, when Lana was a new
student she was privy to Islamophobic gossip about a classmate who wore the hijab.

Lana risked her social standing to defend the girl. “Instead of making fun of her, why don’t you
get to know her?” she told the bullies. “But that’s what terrorists wear,” they replied. “No, that’s
what Muslims wear. It’s just a piece of cloth,” Lana countered.

Lana appears to be clearing the path for her own future, too – she is conflicted by her desire to
wear the hijab out of devotion to God, her fear of “being judged as either oppressed or
radicalized,” and the “pressure to represent the hijab for all Muslims without letting it define
me”.

Fifty-five percent of Muslim students surveyed by the Council on American Islamic Relations
(CAIR) last year reported that they were bullied at school in some form because of their Islamic
faith. That’s twice the national percentage of bullying reported by all students, regardless of
their religion. According to the CAIR survey, verbal harassment is the most common, with non-
Muslims calling Muslim students terrorists or referencing bombs. But physical assaults also
occur.

These incidents are taking a psychological toll on Muslim youth. “At a crucial time in their
identity development, they’re suffering from chronic trauma,” says Dr Halim Naeem, a

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/12/muslim-teen-upset-georgia-teacher-question-backpack

http://news.yahoo.com/muslim-sixth-grader-allegedly-attacked-165100570.html

https://ca.cair.com/sfba/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/CAIR-CA-2015-Bullying-Report-Web

psychotherapist and president of The Institute of Muslim Mental Health. Dr Naeem says that in
the past few months alone, he has seen increased cases of depression, anxiety, image issues,
paranoia, and substance abuse among Muslim American youth. In the short term, the constant
stress wreaks havoc on students’ immune systems and destroys their focus, disrupting learning
ability.

The role of teachers

Most kids don’t report any Islamophobic harassment to their teachers. “I don’t think they’d do
anything that would make a difference, because they probably wouldn’t take it seriously,” says
Farah. Her fear may not be unfounded, as she reports that even some of her teachers recently
asked her questions about Islam“in a way that wasn’t just curious.”

Lana Alshahrour worries that if she wears her hijab, she’ll be “judged as either oppressed or
radicalized”. Photograph: Ghazala Irshad

The CAIR survey found that the sentiment that teachers don’t take Islamophobia seriously is
shared by a majority of Muslim American students, and it goes beyond the typical adolescent
fear of being labeled a tattle-tale. “I was afraid they [teachers and administration] would have
their own opinions and give priority to the others,” reported one California student when asked
about reporting Islamophobic bullying to teachers.

One in five Muslim students reported being discriminated against by school staff. Recently,
a California teacher asked her class “Who thinks Muslims should die?” and called a Muslim
student in class a terrorist. The school board disciplined the teacher, but he is still teaching.
Students discriminated against by teachers often transfer classes or schools in order to feel
more comfortable, as Ahmed Mohamed ended up doing.

How parents respond

Muslim parents are grappling with how to respond appropriately to protect their children while
maintaining a sense of normalcy. Some have reluctantly kept their children home from school,
fearing reprisals after the Paris and California attacks.
Many are sitting down to give them “The Talk,” much like African American parents do with
their children, about how to avoid raising suspicion and avoid physical harm or arrest. “I told
Farah that it’s not wrong to be Muslim, but it might not be a good idea to be vocal about it right
now,” says Mrs Darvesh. “It’s sad because I want my kids to be proud of who they are, and
that’s what this country is about.”

Others, such as St Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Aisha Sultan, call for engaging kids instead.
“Part of raising your child when you’re a minority is showing them and modeling through your
own confidence and advocating for them non-confrontationally without shame, and without
fear.”

Experts say addressing the problem requires the cooperation of non-Muslim parents and
teachers to educate their kids.

Homepage

https://www.theguardian.com/world/islam

http://ktla.com/2015/11/11/muslim-advocacy-group-files-complaint-after-teacher-makes-offensive-comments-to-student/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/21/ahmed-mohamed-clock-texas-scholarship-qatar

http://www.stltoday.com/users/profile/asultan/

“This is where teachers and parents of all faiths need to come up with a plan together to talk to
kids about Islam and current events both at home and at school,” says Naeem, the
psychotherapist. “When you teach racism and incite hatred in a developing brain, you actually
alter its structure.”

Shaheen Pasha, a professor of journalism at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and
mother of two, says that she sees too many students come into her classroom unaware of
what’s going on in the world. “Non-Muslim student awareness and allyship can play a big part in
resolving this issue.”

Islam in the curriculum

On Friday, tensions boiled over in Augusta County, Virginia, when schools were closed after a
lesson in Arabic calligraphy elicited an uproar from the community. Students in the world
geography class were presented with an Islamic Statement of faith written in Arabic to
demonstrate the artistry of the calligraphy, but a community forum that night blasted it as an
“indoctrination” of faith.

The incident sparked a fiery social media debate that reinforced the fears many students have
about expressing their religion at school.

But while Lana ponders the consequences of appearing visibly Muslim through the hijab, she
can’t help herself from using her own background for reference when the subjects of Islam,
terrorism, and Arab refugees come up in her eighth-grade classes. In a recent debate about
refugees, her classmates argued that Middle Eastern refugees should not be allowed into the
US “because they could be Isis”.

Lana laughs. “They think if we don’t let anyone in here, then the terrorism stays overseas. But
Isis doesn’t need to send fighters to America – they can recruit from the internet. Besides, Isis
is not the root of the refugee problem.”

When someone suggested bombing the entire country of Syria to eliminate all threat of terror,
Lana realized that her classmates didn’t see them as individual humans. “They think all Muslims
and Arabs are scary. So I shared my family’s story: My uncle was a student in Syria but he is
now a refugee living with us in Chicago after he had to escape being captured by Bashar al-
Assad’s forces. The root of the problem is Assad, not Isis.”

Here's the full statement from #Augusta County Public Schools on why they cancelled school activities. pic.twitter.com/FmcHVmtWBy

— 29News – Charlottesville (@29NewsWVIR) December 17, 2015

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/04/we-should-all-be-concerned-about-the-student-debt-crisis.html

We should all be concerned about the student debt crisis

PUBLISHED MON, NOV 4 2019 8:00 AM ESTUPDATED MON, NOV 4 201910:01 AM EST

Patrick B. Healey, founder and president of Caliber Financial Partners

Alys Tomlinson | Cultura |

Getty Images

Many Americans are still

recovering from the 2008

financial crisis. Almost

everyone knows someone

who lost a job, their

retirement savings or even

a home in its aftermath.

While the effects of the

Great Recession were felt

throughout the economy, its main cause can be traced back to subprime lending in the mortgage

industry.

In the early to mid-2000s, lenders introduced risky products such as zero-down home loans and

payment-option adjustable-rate mortgages, which enabled borrowers to take on more debt than they

could afford. Lax lending practices led to increased demand and skyrocketing home prices.

When the housing bubble burst and sent home prices plummeting, it set off a chain of defaults that

snowballed into a recession. This cautionary tale of risky lending, ballooning debt and market

speculation should be a clear warning of looming perils in the student loan industry.

Higher education is increasingly considered a necessity, and today’s young people are often encouraged

to borrow to cover the costs. With approximately $1.4 trillion of outstanding debt, student loans are

now the second-largest category of household debt in the U.S., trailing only home loans. Many of these

loans are guaranteed by the federal government, the largest student lender in the U.S., so all American

taxpayers have a stake in this issue.

As tuition and fees continue to increase at both public and private institutions, students’ debt loads are

rising along with them. Over the past 20 years, college costs have grown at over three times the rate of

inflation. The result: 70% of college graduates have student debt, with the average borrower owing

more than $37,000 at graduation.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/04/we-should-all-be-concerned-about-the-student-debt-crisis.html

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/subprime-market-2008.asp

https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc.html

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2015/12/21/uncle-sam-student-college-loans-federal-government/77510578/

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2017-09-20/see-20-years-of-tuition-growth-at-national-universities

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/15/heres-how-much-the-average-student-loan-borrower-owes-when-they-graduate.html

WATCH NOW

VIDEO01:42

This college student had to choose: Go to class, or go to work so she can afford to eat

Unfortunately, many students take out student loans without a clear understanding of the

consequences. Choosing a college is a major decision, and some parents encourage their children to

attend the best school they can, regardless of cost.

Many students aren’t worried about taking on debt, reasoning that they’ll be able to easily pay it back

after they graduate. With readily available student and parent loans, obtaining financing is as easy as

filling out a few financial aid forms.

Much like the mortgage industry before the housing crisis, lenders are extending credit to students

without fully weighing their ability to repay the debt. This is particularly true with federally-guaranteed

Stafford loans.

While some students choose majors that make it more difficult to pay back their loans, others leave

school without completing a degree. In fact, approximately 40% of students who pursue a bachelor’s

degree do not graduate in six years. That percentage is much higher among those who attend private

for-profit schools.

Experts believe that student loan defaults have the potential to adversely impact the U.S. economy,

which could trigger another recession.

Patrick Healey

FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT OF CALIBER FINANCIAL PARTNERS

Both nonprofit and for-profit institutions are eager to enroll students, but many borrowers, especially

those who leave school without a degree, struggle to find well-paying jobs to pay back their loans.

Recent graduates who are unable to obtain work in their fields often enroll in graduate programs,

further increasing their debt loads.

The financial impacts last long after students leave school. Many borrowers don’t pay off their student

loans until they are in their 40s or older, and a significant number never finish paying them off at all. The

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/03/this-is-the-age-most-americans-pay-off-their-student-loans.html

Brookings Institute estimates that nearly 40% of borrowers who entered college in 2004 may default on

their student loans by 2023.

High student debt burdens and defaults on loans affect students’ credit scores, thereby making it more

difficult to buy a home or get ahead in life. I often use the analogy of having a mortgage without the

house.

Andy Sacks | Stone | Getty Images

There’s more at risk than just the borrowers’ futures. As with home loans before the housing crisis, Wall

Street has been speculating on student debt as collateralized loan obligations. Though student loans

typically can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, betting on any unsecured debt can be a risky investment.

Experts believe that student loan defaults have the potential to adversely impact the U.S. economy,
which could trigger another recession.

Finding solutions to the imminent student debt crisis requires a multi-faceted approach.

Research supports tightening regulations on for-profit institutions, focusing on degree attainment and

promoting income-based repayment options. Colleges and universities can better control tuition costs

by taking steps to increase their efficiency, such as embracing shared services.

While governments and institutions need to do their part, students and families should carefully

consider their college funding options and weigh the pros and cons of different programs and schools

before taking out loans.

— By Patrick Healey, founder and president of Caliber Financial Partners.

Disclosure: NBCUniversal and Comcast Ventures are investors in Acorns.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-06/how-us-student-loans-could-cause-the-next-share-market-crash/9019818

https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-looming-student-loan-default-crisis-is-worse-than-we-thought/

https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Colleges-Cut-Costs-by/239580

https://www.investopedia.com/advisor-network/articles/how-fund-college-education/

https://www.acorns.com/?s1=cnbc_invest_in_you

HT T P S : / /W W W . NP R. O RG / S E CT I O NS / T H E TW O -W A Y / 2 0 1 8 / 0 3 / 1 2 / 5 9 2 9 8 2 3 2 7 / NA T I O N A L – G E O G RA P HI C – RE CK O N S -W I T H –
I T S – P A S T – F O R – DE CA DE S – O U R – CO V E R A G E -W A S – R A CI S T

‘National Geographic’ Reckons With Its Past: ‘For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist’

March 12, 20187:40 PM ET

LAUREL WAMSLEY

In a full-issue article on Australia that ran in National

Geographic in 1916, aboriginal Australians were called

“savages” who “rank lowest in intelligence of all

human beings.” The magazine examines its history of

racist coverage in its April issue.
C.P. Scott (L) and H.E. Gregory (R)/National
Geographic

If National Geographic’s April issue was going to be entirely devoted to the subject of race, the
magazine decided it had better take a good hard look at its own history.
Editor in Chief Susan Goldberg asked John Edwin Mason, a professor of African history and the
history of photography at the University of Virginia, to dive into the magazine’s nearly 130-year
archive and report back.

What Mason found was a long tradition of racism in the magazine’s coverage: in its text, its choice of
subjects, and in its famed photography.

The April issue of National Geographic is all about race.
National Geographic

“[U]ntil the 1970s National Geographic all but ignored
people of color who lived in the United States, rarely
acknowledging them beyond laborers or domestic
workers,” writes Goldberg in the issue’s editor letter, where
she discusses Mason’s findings. “Meanwhile it pictured
‘natives’ elsewhere as exotics, famously and frequently
unclothed, happy hunters, noble savages—every type of
cliché.”

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/12/592982327/national-geographic-reckons-with-its-past-for-decades-our-coverage-was-racist

https://www.npr.org/people/463234136/laurel-wamsley

http://natgeo.com/TheRaceIssue

http://history.as.virginia.edu/people/jem3a

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/from-the-editor-race-racism-history/

Unlike magazines such as Life, “National Geographicdid little to push its readers beyond the
stereotypes ingrained in white American culture,” Goldberg says, noting that she is the first woman
and first Jewish person to helm the magazine – “two groups that also once faced discrimination here.”

To assess the magazine’s coverage historically, Mason delved into old issues and read a couple of
key critical studies. He also pored over photographers’ contact sheets, giving him a view of not just
the photos that made it into print, but also the decisions that photographers and editors made.

He saw a number of problematic themes emerge.

“The photography, like the articles, didn’t simply emphasize difference, but made difference … very
exotic, very strange, and put difference into a hierarchy,” Mason tells NPR. “And that hierarchy was
very clear: that the West, and especially the English-speaking world, was at the top of the hierarchy.
And black and brown people were somewhere underneath.”

For much of its history, the pages of National Geographic depicted the Western world as dynamic,
forward-moving and very rational. Meanwhile, Mason says, “the black and brown world was primitive
and backwards and generally unchanging.”

One trope that he noticed time and again was photographs showing native people apparently
fascinated by Westerners’ technology.”It’s not simply that cameras and jeeps and airplanes are
present,” he says. “It’s the people of color looking at this technology in amusement or bewilderment.”
The implication was that Western readers would find humor in such fascination with their everyday
goods.

Then there’s how the magazine chose its subject matter. Mason explains that National
Geographic had an explicit editorial policy of “nothing unpleasant,” so readers rarely saw war, famine
or civic conflict.
He points to an article on South Africa from the early 1960s that barely mentions the Sharpeville
Massacre, in which 69 black South Africans were killed by police.

South African gold miners were “entranced by thundering

drums” during “vigorous tribal dances,” a 1962 issue reported.

Kip Ross/National Geographic Creative

http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960

“There are no voices of black South Africans,” Mason told Goldberg. “That absence is as important as
what is in there. The only black people are doing exotic dances … servants or workers. It’s bizarre,
actually, to consider what the editors, writers, and photographers had to consciously not see.”

Then there’s the way women of color were often depicted in the magazine: topless.

“Teenage boys could always rely, in the ’50s and ’60s, on National Geographic to show them bare-
breasted women as long as the women had brown or black skin,” Mason says. “I think the editors
understood this was frankly a selling point to its male readers. Some of the bare-breasted young
women are shot in a way that almost resembles glamour shots.”
Mason says the magazine has been dealing with its history implicitly for the last two or three decades,
but what made this project different is that Goldberg wanted to make reckoning explicit —
“That National Geographic should not do an issue on race without understanding its own complicity in
shaping understandings of race and racial hierarchy.”

Although slave labor was used to build homes featured in a 1956

article, the writer contended that they “stand for a chapter of this

country’s history every American is proud to remember.”

Robert F. Sisson and Donald McBain/National Geographic

For those of us who have spent long afternoons thumbing old issues of the magazine and dreaming
of far-off lands, Mason wants to make clear that looking at foreign people and places isn’t a bad thing.

“We’re all curious and we all want to see. I’m not criticizing the idea of being curious about the world.
It’s just the other messages that are sent—that it’s not just difference, but inferiority and superiority.”

So where does the storied publication go from here?

One good step would be to invite the diverse contributors to the April issue to become part of the
magazine’s regular pool of writers and photographers, Mason suggests.

“Still it’s too often a Westerner who is telling us about Africa or Asia or Latin America,” he says.
“There are astonishing photographers from all over the world who have unique visions – not just of
their own country, but who could bring a unique vision to photographing Cincinnati, Ohio, if it came to
that.”

He notes that the magazine’s images have so often captivated, even when they were stereotypical or
skewed. Mason says a number of African photographers have told him that it was magazines
like National Geographic and Life that turned them onto photography in the first place.

“They knew that there were problems with the way that they and their people were being
represented,” he says. “And yet the photography was often spectacularly good, it was really inviting,
and it carried this power. And as young people, these men and women said, I want to do that. I want
to make pictures like that.”

Turn in your highest-quality paper
Get a qualified writer to help you with

“ Essay ”

Get high-quality paper

NEW! AI matching with writer

Hire a Writer

Client Reviews

4.9

Sitejabber

4.6

Trustpilot

4.8

Our Guarantees

100% Confidentiality

Information about customers is confidential and never disclosed to third parties.

Original Writing

We complete all papers from scratch. You can get a plagiarism report.

Timely Delivery

No missed deadlines – 97% of assignments are completed in time.

Money Back

If you're confident that a writer didn't follow your order details, ask for a refund.

New to Your Trusted Assignment Help Service? Sign up & Save

Calculate the price of your order

Type of paper needed:

Pages:

You will get a personal manager and a discount.

Academic level:

We'll send you the first draft for approval by at

Total price:

$0.00

Power up Your Academic Success with the
Team of Professionals. We’ve Got Your Back.

Power up Your Study Success with Experts We’ve Got Your Back.

Order Now Order Now