Reality TV

So, I'm a sucker for VH1 shows. My new favorite because it is just plain humorous is Tool Academy. Which is about girlfriends who bring their "tool" boyfriends to get shaped up into being real, true boyfriends instead of tools. On the previous episode that aired on Sunday, the show made a big deal about one of the girlfriends. Her current boyfriend has some sort of asian descent it appears, but the previous guys she slept with were all black. She has not slept with this boyfriend yet, and the show made a big deal of it because he wasn't black and that might be the reason why. It kind of bothered me. WHO CARES! I have never seen interracial relationships that big of a deal. If you like someone for who they are, then date whoever makes you happy. My best friend is in an interracial relationship. They're happy together, so what's the big deal. In reality, we are all of the same race...the human race.

In class yesterday after our activity, the discussion about hispanics being landscapers arose. I have to admit, I was the one that wrote it on the piece of paper of how they mow lawns. I live in an all white subdivision of my neighborhood, Elk Grove Village. My neighbors always hired hispanics to mow their lawns every week. As a child, that's all I saw hispanics doing. In fact, I was rather annoyed because they would always wake me up at 7 am when they were mowing my neighbor's lawns.

My dad is Vice President of a packaging company. In the warehouse, it is predominantly hispanics. My dad is more conservative, and doesn't give them much respect. Some he hired were illegal, and many others didn't even get paid minimum wage. My mom and I always had issues with this. 2 summers ago I didn't have a "real" summer job. I was just doing temp work here and there. There was a project in the warehouse my dad needed extra help on, and it would have been cheaper hiring me and some friends to make cash then bringing in temp workers. I was the only white person in this large warehouse. I took 5 years of Spanish, so I knew how to vaguely communicate with them. The warehouse was not air-conditioned, and in the hot summer months it was rather unbearable. All the workers were acting kind of weird towards me, one because my dad is a complete asshole in the workplace, and two because they felt if I had a bad impression of them, there goes their job. It was a rather unique experience. After a few weeks they realized I was just a nice, down to earth girl working just as hard as them to make some money. When my dad saw how miserable I was working in the warehouse in the heat, he made a $20,000 investment installing huge gigantic fans in the ceiling to cool the place off a little bit. It kind of sucked that my dad only did that because I started working there, but the hundreds of other employees in the warehouse greatly appreciated it! All in all, it was an interesting work experience I have on my resume and I was able to see first hand how low income families work in the workplace, and I was put in the position working right along next to them.

Fantasia

My friends and I recently booked a trip to Disney World over Spring Break to celebrate my 21st. We're all Disney nerds and I told them about my Disney analysis paper and we could all watch the Disney movie together to get psyched up even more for our trip. My friend Leianne knew about this article when I brought up the paper:

http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Disney/Sunflower.html

It's about a scene in the original Fantasia from the 40's that they had to take out when they re-released it in later decades. The scene involved 2 centaurs, one that was tall, white, and blonde, and the other one was black, had big lips, and nappy hair, who was the white centaur's personal assistant. When they deleted this scene, the music that went along with it was off time wise. Also, the article mentions how Disney denied such characters ever existed. I found it pretty interesting, and the cartoon depictions went along the lines of the video we watched in class this week.

I just remembered this practical joke my mom and I played on my dad. My dad is rather conservative and doesn't believe in interracial relationships. My senior year of high school, I started dating my boyfriend. My mom is more liberal and doesn't mind interracial relationships, but knew it was a topic that irked my father. My boyfriend is white, but my mom came up with this idea to tell my dad that my new boyfriend was black. He was rather bothered and frustrated with the situation. He never said I wasn't allowed to date him, but you can tell in his eyes that he wasn't happy about the situation. My mom told me the joke she was playing on my father and asked me to go along with it. I did and when he asked me if my boyfriend was black it was quite humorous to see how pissed he was about it but was holding it in. About 2 weeks later, he finally met my boyfriend, and realized what my mom and I had been doing.
It's very interesting how people see these issues differently and can get so bothered. I don't have a problem with interracial relationships, and I don't really understand why people do. It is part of the reason I am in this course, to help me better understand things like this.

Growing up

As a child, my parents never taught me about different races or who was "good" and who was "bad". Therefore, I grew up seeing everyone the same as I was in elementary school. I didn't learn about different races and the controversies until my history classes. Even though I did attend a predominantly white elementary school, there were still a handful of color. I didn't treat them different. I don't even recall other students blantently calling out other students on their race or anything of that nature. Kivel mentioned the store with the black Barbie doll at show and tell, but I don't recall any of that in elementary school.

Growing up, the handful of people of color at elementary school and junior high had the most character in my opinion. They were rather popular because they were the class clowns and just fun to be around. I was in orchestra in junior high and there was another black student that sat near me. He was very popular. Everyone wanted to be his friend, and I even remember several girls having a crush on him.

I think it was very interesting growing up and being taught about all of these cases of racism but not from my parents, but through school. It makes me more intrigued to learn more about the topic since I never had those thoughts or feelings towards another race.