When prompted with this assignment one specific and heart wrenching topic comes to mind, the femicide taking place in Latin America. I know that this is unfortunately not a specific historical event, however, it is an extremely underreported and devastating issue everyone must understand to understand Latin America. Many are not even aware that a femicide epidemic is taking place in our southern hemisphere. Women all throughout but especially in Central American countries are being tortured, raped, and killed by gangs. Their bodies are left in plastic bags on the side of the road, in agricultural fields, or wherever else is most convenient for their attacker. It is even said that many women take birth control before they begin their migration from their native country to the United States border so that if they get raped along the way they will not end up with child.

Since this topic is very important to me and I believe very important to inform others on I want to hone in on a more specific example or starting point as to when the femicide began getting so bad. It is unfortunately for this reason that my father does not always allow us to go see and share with our family in South America and why we have been disconnected from our culture and loved ones.

Femicide in Latin America is relevant today because of feminism and how prominent it is in our society. The definition of feminism in the States versus in Latin America are two very very different ideas, yet Latin America has a multitude of female presidents. I think it relates to our society and our discussion as a generation because the women in Latin America have vastly different obstacles.

Group work 4/26:

Group Members: Alec Hakimian, Alessandra Aguirre, Celeste Addison 

White rhinos are famous for their big horns; they are among the endangered species.

The teacher didn’t know if she should laugh or cry, but she knew it was quite hilarious.

Three things matter in life: perseverance, commitment, and aptitude for learning.

A dog trotted over to the computer in Sara’s office, typed out a perfect letter, and printed it!

The manager was stunned, but she told the dog; “The sign says you have to be good with the computer, just because you’re good at typing doesn’t mean that you are good with it”.

A man walked into a pet shop and ordered three things: a centipede, a kitten, and a parrot.

Sama was the best person for the job because she had an excellent service record in one key area; community health training. 

Amy served with 4 stars in the army, therefore, she was awarded the Medal of Honor.

Rhetorical Analysis:

Julia Chang’s award winning speech about the loss of heritage and language was extremely strong in structure, content, and organization. Chang used her own personal experience with her mother and being raised speaking a second language to open her topic and indeed closed with her personal story as well. This symmetry and connection to emotion not only humanized her and her message but also created an underlying sense of understanding and credibility. The use of other examples such as proposition 227 strengthened Chang’s words. I do however have one criticism to this award winning speech.

Yes, it is important to acknowledge the content in Chang’s speech is vastly different from the CNN speech by Emma Gonzalez after the parkland shooting, the tone and difference in reality are complete opposites. I felt that Chang’s speech sounded very dry and fake. She did have certain bouts of emotion but she mostly sounded like she was reading off of notecards. I thought that this made it hard to follow. As I watched Gonzalez’s speech I felt every word of their message. The parkland shooting speech may have not been as structurally or factually developed, but it I felt it more and understood it easier. I think ultimately with a speech you need to find a balance between formality and casualness. Ultimately each speech was extremely impressive and I hope to be able to formulate a final project that aims to be on their level.

Anthony Jack’s Ted Talk was assertive, powerful, and clear. He highlighted the graveness and relevance of two specific issues which allowed him to show the scope of racist and privilege based systems in the U.S. and how each can have wide spread and surprising implications in multiple different systems and structures.

The topic of accessibility not meaning inclusion is similar to that of what I focused on in my discussion post. Once students are given the platforms, resources, or confidence to go and share in experiences they also need the understanding of how to make these experiences happen. It is similar to many philosophies by educators that simply leveling the playing field to some degree is not effective enough. Once we are all on the same level of equity and/ or equality THEN we can begin the real work. Just as Jack mentioned about the term “office hours,” knowing and understanding this term as well as other vocabulary used in educational or vocational systems is a privilege and we must be aware that with inclusion and diversity comes the awareness of different backgrounds, comfortability levels, and unique perspectives.

Tatum wrote about how not feeling comfortable in your environments and not feeling nurtured by your superiors affects performance. In talking on this issue we come around again to Jack’s discussion about creating relationships or allies in your communities. The bond or lack thereof that we have with our educators is one of the most formative parts of learning. We have people to look up to, to expect great things from us, to give us a break when times get tough. Many students of color, especially those who attend PWI miss out on this experience and therefore miss out on leaning the skills to navigate and create said relationships. As far as creating solutions to the many issues at hand, it needs to be centric around the young adults or kids who themselves are suffering at the hands of the system. The solution is to hear them while assuming the responsibility of improving on transparency and inclusivity.

The United States has painted itself as a country that allows any individual with 1) drive and 2) the willingness to work hard, to succeed and move up through social and economic classes. We preach ideals of “the American Dream” just come to the U.S and opportunity is waiting to be pursued. The sad reality and truth is that this part of our national identity, whether it was true any any point, certainly is not true today and is ultimately a lie that brings people in seek of a refuge to a place that does not offer them this opportunity. I believe one of our biggest social issues as a country is our perspective on, treatment of, and lack of resources provided for: immigrants. Immigrants are essentially the structure on which America has positioned itself and they are the reason we are all able to live the lives we do. Everything down to the products we use, the food we consume, the homes we inhabit, even our living spaces here at USF are taken care of by many people who are themselves immigrants. Without this part of our society the lives of people in the U.S would be unrecognizable. Despite this fact immigrants are treated worse today probably than almost any other point in the history of our country. The risk people are putting themselves at simply trying to seek safety and security is only our doing and the U.S needs to take action to improve living conditions, opportunity, compensation/ benefits, and overall mental and physical well being of immigrants. In my essay I want to touch upon the current state of our immigration practices in the U.S, how harmful they are, and what we could be doing to improve them.

Outline Essay 3:

• Introduction
  • current state of immigration in the U.S
• Body Paragraphs
  • exploitation of immigrants in the U.S throughout history
    • ex: agricultural labor strike: dolores huerta + cesar chávez
  • impossible process of gaining citizenship and/ or residency
  • criminalizing perspective of immigrants
  • how we can improve the social issue of immigration in the u.s
  • conclusion

Identifying Plagiarism:

after reading lauren’s discussion blog post I conclude that we each ultimately made the same final point in our reactions to the reading but I believe she went slightly more in depth with a multitude of examples from the reading, I learned a lot from her response. lauren made an excellent point about one of the more identifiable quotes from the reading, “it bees that way sometimes.” she analyzed how the quote revealed a march larger and more complex perspective of how black women have come to accept a society that does not serve them. i thought lauren’s focus on this quote and how she framed her response around it showed that she was reading between the lines and taking time in her response to truly understand the nuances of language within different cultures or groups. i didn’t pick up on that when reading so it impressed me that she also connected her points to various minority groups as well. she also shared that she had a nurturing group of individuals she was similar to that she relied on in her past, something I did not have other than with my siblings. despite this difference lauren and i both acknowledged how we have had vastly different experiences from the women in the readings, though ultimately through life experience and analyzing the readings we understand the importance of peers or mentors who can validate, relate to, and help you work through your shared experiences.

video analysis:

In Taryn Coe’s Ted Talk about her practices to be an anti-racist teacher I saw arguments being made that would have dismantled issues in Kynard’s essay. Kynard and her students spoke about how it was because of the educators and the educational system that they felt stereotyped when acknowledged or not acknowledged at all. Coe discusses the multiple steps educators can take in order to avoid and eliminate these emotions of doubt within minority students and their expectations of their learning environments. I specifically like how Coe acknowledged that it isn’t the job of these minority students to be the educators of their peers and to lead the way for diversity and inclusion. She explicitly puts this responsibility on educators and other adult leaders in the academic realm. If we are aware of the complexities in America and the obstacles they have created for people not a part of the white race then we are able to not allow history to repeat itself or continue into today’s society.

It isn’t easy as a student to also be an activist, at least not for me. But ways that I have found to incorporate myself into these missions is to constantly be not only educating myself but allowing other people to educate me if they so choose. Many times it isn’t about doing something, it is about giving the power and respect to others to empower them to find justice for their own communities.