Meta-Post

For me, the most interesting part of the blog is appreciating the connection between what we talk about class, and various current event in our world. I find that each week there is something we talk about in class that comes to mind when I read or listen to current news events. I've compared migrant workers to slaves, and a quote from Juan Williams to a picture, "A Negro in his Homeland". The connections are not made by sitting down, thinking of what our class is talking about, and then looking at news articles. For my blogs, I find connections while writing notes in class or just thinking, and  can just jot down a connection to expand on later. I now realize that at the beginning of the year I wrote about too many connections, the majority of which were too weak to use in my blog because the connections were obviously forced. For example, when we talked about collaboration, I thought of a blog about how many smaller newspapers take articles from larger papers like the New York Times, a concept  I learned in my journalism class. Although there is a connection, there is no debatable stance I could take while writing this, making it an uninteresting and less provocative blog. Now I make fewer connections, but connections that are stronger, and can relate to a bigger picture, and that are more controversial. On a more recent blog titled Monolithic, I claim that Juan Williams comment that when he sees Muslims in airports dressed in Muslim garb, who first and foremost identify themselves as Muslim, he gets scared. I make the claim that he is being a racist. This stance is more controversial, and opens my blog up for debate, because many people believe what Juan Williams said was not in fact racist, but just an honest expression of how he feels.

Also, I find a key part of the blog the specific title I assign to the post. Although I sometimes choose generic titles that simply state the topic of discussion, I also choose to have a more provocative title such as "Human Stock" or "Muslim Problem" because they are more likely to grab readers from class, who, for the most part, are my audience. Not only does the title grab readers attention, but it can determine the tone for a specific post. A post titled "Human Stock" sets up the point I try to make in my blog, that we care too much about how colleges may see us, and not actually do things that we like to do.

Note: Read "Human Stock" as my blog