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"All Black Everything"

Double Standards

Last week, according to the New Trier News, the New Trier Board of Education voted to dismiss a New Trier teacher for an inappropriate relationship, and unprofessional relationship, with a student. Incidents such as this occur around the country, and when there is a female student involved with a male teacher, the female student immediately becomes a victim in the eyes of the public. To many people, this is not necessarily how they view it when a female teacher and male student have an inappropriate relationship. On the NBC  sitcom 30 Rock this week, a character on the show was found to have had an affair with a teacher when he was 14. (You can watch the clip here four minutes in). The show mocks the relationship of a female teacher and male student and even calls a male teacher’s relationship with a female student “wrong”, but a female teacher and a male student having a relationship is “awesome”. This to me is an unfair double standard. I wonder if many others would agree.

Junior Theme #1

The week before I began to work on Junior Theme a family friend came over. While at dinner she talked about giving up corn,  wheat, and other food in an attempt to improve her health. She claims this diet works. I knew then that I wanted to focus on food and food's impact on health for my Junior Theme. After working with the librarians, I found some books, articles, and the movie Food Inc. for more information on my topic. I was surprised to see the relationship between the government and the food industry, and how corrupt this relationship is. I then posed the question, "Why does the government support the production of one kind of food over another?". In my Junior Theme I hope to further explore this relationship between the government and food industry and how it impacts the consumer. Something I find unique and fascinating about my topic is how little the average person understands what is going on in the food industry. Before I had done research all I thought was that some food is unhealthy. I have now found that there are significant issues in how the food we eat is made. People do not know much about this topic because the food industry does not want people to know about it. The food industry is even trying to create laws to prevent the publishing of photos of any livestock facility. The animals are treated poorly, the workers are treated poorly, the food products are being treated poorly, and us as the consumer are being treated poorly.

A few individual writers and reporters have shown light on the food industry. Because of their work, I have been able to find a fair amount of research for my topic. Most articles I read or find, however, are either bashing the food industry or defending the food industry. I hope to find in my research answers to why people do not know about what is going on in the food industry. People know of E. coli and Salmonella outbreaks (still not enough), but nobody really knows what they are eating. People just accept that the food they eat is unhealthy because the food that is available (especially affordable food) is unhealthy. In my paper I hope to explain the answers to these questions, as well as my main question, and get to the root of why we eat what we eat, and what exactly are we eating.

Upbringing's Effect in Politics

Earlier this week in the library I overheard a girl and boy sitting next to me talking about sexism. The girl went  on about how female politicians, or females involved in politics, are being treated completely unfairly. She brought up the fact that in politics you may hear that "Sarah Palin is good looking", or that "Michelle Obama is overweight", but people never criticize how the men look. People just accept a ratty old looking man, but a bad looking woman stands out. I found this particularly interesting because in my last blog, I brought up how very often only the people who are being unfairly treated realize sexism or racism.

In the blog before that I wrote about how Rahm Emmanuel deserved to be a mayor regardless of his privileged upbringing. After what I heard in the library I began to wonder how much someone's perspective actually depends on things like how they grew up.

Earlier today,while watching The Colbert Report, I heard something else relating to how a person's upbringing changed his view. The video can be watched here one minute into the clip. Basically Mike Huckabee claimed that Obama was born in Kenya (which is not actually true) and has different perspectives than any other president because of this.

This again got me to thinking how someone's childhood effects who they are as an adult. I was reminded of my earlier belief, and now again believe that regardless of how people grow up, they can change their opinons. Even if Obama had grown up in Kenya, would that really make him unqualified to make decisions as a president (even though a president must legally be born in America)? It is too simplistic to judge someone on how they grew up, and politicians especially should be judged on their policies and decisions, not their childhood.

Seeing sexism and racism

At the end of The Academy Awards last week, my mom noticed that when all the winners were shown together on the stage, there were significantly more men than women represented. I was already aware that there was a noticeable lack of black nominees. What I found most interesting about this was that my mom noticed this, and my dad and I did not. I find that it is much more difficult to notice sexism or racism when you are not the one being personally effected. Maybe this is why there is talk of society becoming less racist or sexist, yet clearly, even in subtle ways as in TV tokenism, there is. I also wonder how many boys in the class chose the topic of gender for the Huck Finn Paper. Girls are effected by sexism more, and because of this, they are more passionate about the topic.