Exploitation of a Human life.

Since becoming a student at the Gaylord college, I have learned a lot about what the word "journalism" means. My definition no longer consists of writing stories in the newspaper and doing on camera interviews. Its a much broader version of what I thought. Multimedia journalism is taught along with public relations and advertisement-and they all find their counterpart in each other. A very important aspect I have learned from all my classes is portrayal of a person or an event. When writing personal interest stories or profiles, we always have to remember what light we are placing the person in. Public relations is all about keeping up a certain image and advertisements aim to appeal to certain publics. However, an important aspect of the media is exploitation. Where is the line drawn between hard news with entertainment value and the exploitation of another life. The media spends and earns an insane amount of money each year feeding the publics about high profile celebrities, political figures, etc. When does the job of a media professional compromise morals or compassion. This brings me to a point I am trying to make..

The recent death of Michael Jackson has covered television, tabloids, radio-basically any kind of media ever since Thursday when he was pronounced dead. While tributes, record sales and feature stories are very important to remember this man by-we have to remember that is what he was. A man, with a family and children and a fast. He was no doubt one of the most influential musicians of all time. He broke barriers, not only racially but musically. He was talented to no end and there is no doubt his music will play years after he is now gone. However, how fair is the exploitation he endured during his lifetime? We all know about the Michael Jackson court cases, but now after his death we learn all of his personal details about his debt, his prescription drug use, etc. The media is making money off of someone else's personal struggle. Where is the justification in the breach of his privacy. Would anyone of us want our messy lives-because we all have them- splattered on internet and paper after we are dead? Is it because he is famous that the media feels they owe the public? Michael Jackson, like I said, was a man with a family. To see papers say he is "worth more dead than alive" based on his recent debt problems is dehumanizing to his death. 

I have always been a Perez Hilton fan, until now. If you do not know who he is, Hilton is a blogger that focuses on celebrities ups and downs in life. If you read this article (at the bottom is Hilton's scandal) it shows the exploitation of a celebrity first hand and is the backlash to Hilton's comments about Jackson's death

http://mashable.com/2009/06/25/perez-hilton-michael-jackson/

I have no clue where I will be in 20 years. And I am okay with that.

After today's tour of the law school and speaking with Dean Evan's, I am not only adding him to my mental list of interesting people that I meet, I also have a new found understanding of the law profession and law school here at OU. I love that Dean Evan's emphasizes the importance of dreaming big. I have had lofty goals my whole like- I am an "out-there" sort of person and believe there is a way you can achieve anything you want. I do believe that it is important to have goals, but as far as a life plan resembling a road mad, I believe in a less structured version. While I don't think he was suggesting that the road you pave is your make or break future, I have a heard time with making plans. 

I like to think that I am an optimist to the max. I have been through many years of my life were glass half-empty ruled my way of thinking. I am glad to come out on the other side a more positive person. Like Dean Evan's suggested, I had a goal list, a life plan, a VERY DETAILED path-whatever you want to call it. I had the same goals and dreams from when I was two years old and they never changed. I wanted to be a dancer, not just a dancer, a famous one. The kind of dancer that made a difference in the art and entertainment world. I was well on my way and I worked my ass off. I gave up a normal childhood and went well into junior high with a less than social existence. Dance was my life and I was going to make it big time. Here is the part where my life path took a long hard detour. Growing up, my home life was less than perfect, just like many other people in this world. Around my sophomore year of high school, right when my dance training became its most important, I developed an eating disorder. To this day, I can't pinpoint where my brian snapped, but it was over. For four years anorexia ravaged my body and mind and needless to say, my dancing career was no longer possible. 

Lucky enough I graduated high school and got into OU. School here is difficult for me. Rehab is not always the best high school setting- I did not learn as much or gain enough insight to what college academics would be like. However, I do just fine for myself. So I got into OU but it didn't matter to me. I wanted to dance but I no longer could. I did not have the strength to train or the basis of technique anymore. I became a "normal" college student, and I hated it. When Dean Evan's spoke about knowing your role at OU today, I feel as if he was talking to me. I still struggle with that daily- I have no clue why I am important here. I am a PR student(like the rest of the world) who makes mediocre grades and USE to be a great dancer. 

So staring at a wall for 30 minutes trying to decide my life path is a horrible task to me. I can't even relax enough to take a  Yoga class, much less contemplate a future I have no clue what I am doing with. Here is what I came up with. This next year I want to finish school and move somewhere I can have a transition from college to adulthood. I am not sure if I will start a "career" yet, just something to do with PR. Ideally, I want to end up in Austin, Florida, California (if it is still there) or Atlanta doing something with arts and entertainment. I do not care about money, I just want to enjoy what I do. Ten years from now I will just now be settling down with someone. I plan on 30 because I guarantee it will not happen before then. Taking some time after college to find out who I am without every title I have had is something I think is necessary for me. I also want to see who I am living on my own, supporting myself, with no relationship to define me. I want to also be settled into a PR job doing entertainment or art gallery work. Twenty years from now, I want to be in the same field, maybe in a different location. I always wanted to end up in Austin, Texas. It is close enough to my family but far away from what I grew up around. 

So while the biggest problem I feel I face is not dreaming big, its knowing that making plans does not set you up for disappointment. Its easy to call myself a dreamer-because that I am, I tell myself everyday eventually I will be a Victoria Secret model. It is hard for me to grasp that plans change and while now I am only a "normal" college student, I am far from ordinary.

Yet another post about discrimination.

I like to think that law enforcement and public officials are always fair and just in their actions.As a society, for the most part, that is striving for equality among races and genders, I hope that the people who work for our safety and well-being do so equally. While we have been talking about the portrayal of different minority groups in the media, I am not sure most people in the class can understand the feel of people accused based on race. We talked a little in class about how certain areas of the world were seeing discrimination among their police officers. People of color were pulled over most often, being suspected of drugs, while most of the time white males were the biggest in drug possession. After talking about Latin American's in the media today, I wanted to share with you a personal experience I had with police officers and discrimination. While reading the article my group led the discussion on today, I was not shocked to learn that most stories reported about Latino's were about crime or immigration. 

This is again a story from my job at Charleston's. Its pretty interesting the amount of discrimination I witness there, considering its a fairly nice restaurant in suburbia of Norman, Oklahoma. Anyways, my story. I got my car broken into one night when I was at work. I came out to find my right passenger seat window shattered and my purse taken. I know I know, you are never supposed to leave your purse in the car, but in my defense I had put it all the way under the seat. So I called the police and waited (for almost two hours I might add) for them to come and check things out. When the officer finally arrived, he did the questioning as usual so he could file a report. Besides for asking my time away from the vehicle and what was stolen, the only other question he asked me was if I was close to any of the kitchen workers. Wait, what? Not employees, not all the people that worked there, just the kitchen workers. While most of the people who work in the kitchen at Charleston's are in fact Hispanic (there are a few white men), they are all friends of mine and never once did it cross my mind. I was just as much assume some 20 year old white kid I work with broke into my car as much as a Hispanic man who works in a restaurant kitchen to feed his whole family. I know most of those guys on a friend level and none are illegal, incompetent or breaking into coworkers cars during shifts. (On a side note, a kitchen employee at the restaurant that is on the main line of food preparation makes $11 dollars an hour, not nearly close to a measly minimum wage. I make $2.15 an hour plus tips waiting tables. So those who think that kitchen workers are illegal immigrants flipping burgers for a dollar an hour need to check facts.) I found it rude and discriminatory how the officer asked only about the kitchen staff, and I let him know it as well. Apparently he had ever been called out for prejudice remarks before, because he really had nothing to say.

While the officer's ignorant questioning did not break my optimism for law enforcement all together, it did open my eyes even more to the discrimination our country still faces today. If we can't trust people employed by our government to serve and protect to also instill common decency and moral behavior, then I guess it is up to everyone else to make sure we do so double. 

If you have never seen the Free Hugs video, here ya go. Its pretty awesome. There are people in the world who fight discrimination everyday, whether its against race, gender or lifestyle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuEr9D4-xJs

Assumed prejudice?

In class we constantly asses the prejudices that minority groups face in our society today. While I think we all can agree that while we have seen some progressive change towards equality, there is still work that needs to be done. I believe that is my job as a white, female middle-class American citizen to treat everyone equally. I chose to believe that no one is better than I am, and I am no better than them. Everyone has differences in race, career ability and monetary power. More so these days, race is starting to have less correlation with the amount of money you have or the career you can obtain. I will continue to emphasize in my blog that moral power is still more important than monetary and character stands higher than color.

The point I want to make today is about assuming prejudices among different groups. While people of color, or "minority" have plenty of reason to assume that the "white majority" is at times less than wholly accepting, keeping these assumptions will not take us closer to universal acceptance. While I do not agree that we should forget the past and all wrong doings should be erased from memory, but we should learn to forgive in order to move forward. Its like the saying forgive, don't forget. More than 50 years later, I do not want to be clumped in with racial whites of the past. 

A quick story to emphasize my point. I work at Charleston's in Norman as a server. I see many different people all day-shapes, sizes, and colors. I love my job in that I have an opportunity to have interaction with people from different backgrounds and I get different perspectives on life. That and I have to deal with some very infuriating customers, which has tested my patience on more than one occasion. One day, I had a family of four come in, an African American family. I went and greeted them and can honestly say skin color was not my first impression. I remember this table very specifically and I will tell you why. The first thing I noticed was that the daughter was wearing a dress I owned and the son was listening to an IPod. He looked about 11 and was maybe going through the "i'm too cool to be at lunch with my family' stage. I greeted the table said the usual " Hi Im Lauren and I will be taking care of you." Before I could get their drink order the man, I am guessing the father, said "Do you have any black servers, if I am going to spend money here I want good service. Not half-ass service from a white girl." I did not really know how to respond, I was in shock. I told them I could offer them just as good of service as I would anyone else and they had no reason to assume any different. A few short words with the manager and the family left. When my manager and I refused to give into THEIR prejudice, they were asked to leave. 

We can't say that all prejudice is towards those of minority, or those of color. That day opened my eyes to something awful. Being the victim of prejudice made me feel unsettled. My ability to do my job, as well as my moral value of civil rights was questioned in  a ten minute period. 

I might be wrong. But I think I am right.

After class today, I began to think about how many times we apply rules to race and gender that we tag with a double standard. Why are some things acceptable for certain people but not for others? When it comes to being respectful and not crossing the lines of prejudice and racism, should the rules not be universal? I know that there will always be cultural differences, but when it comes to a word that is full of so much negative connotation, can we really allow it to be used by some but not by other? A good point was brought up in class today about the use of the N word. I do not use this word, nor do I think it is appropriate for anyone of any color, race, gender, ethnicity etc. to apply in any conversation. I have very good friends that are African American who use this word frequently in conversation the way I would use the word “friend.”  I never think twice about them using it, its very common these days in music and conversation, but only among those of color. Although these are very good friends of mine, I would never consider using this word in their presence, or at all for that matter. While it is a personal choice for African American’s to use this word in conversation, or musicians to use it in their songs, can we really expect all people to understand why it is okay for some and not for others? I feel that society will not understand the negatives that come with this word if it keeps getting used so frequently. I once was told that it’s not the word but it is how you say it. Can a certain ending can change the meaning entirely?  The point I am trying to make here is how can we make society understand that this word is offensive if we keep using it, no matter which way we say it?

I brought this point up to two of my friends today just to see what their opinion on the topic was.  Their response was that they think it is similar to us calling each other bitches.  I can see my best friend and say, “hey bitch”, why we say this I’m not really sure, but it is as common as my African American friends calling each other the N word.  If some random person on the street, no matter what race or gender, called me a bitch you better believe that I would be running my mouth to them in a heartbeat. So I guess I practice the same double standard I talked about in the paragraph earlier.  Am I going to work to give up using foul language to my friends on a daily basis, probably not.  I tried to give it up for lent once and it lasted maybe a week. I talk like a sailor, unattractive yes, but it’s not a habit I can easily change.  So unless all words with negative connotation can go unused, I guess society just has to understand there are certain rules that come with dropping these gender and racial bombs. It is not hard to understand what is offensive to some and to others. Only my friends can greet me with a “hey bitch” and I can’t use the N word. 

privilege..what we can't have?

In our society today, many people point fingers and place the blame for undesirable issues such as prejudice and tolerance. It is easier to look to others rather than to look within. No one wants to take responsibility for their roles and partaking in race and gender discrimination, even though we all are guilty at some point in time of being less than “fair.” So why do people agree there are gender and racial discrimination problems in our society, but they are not willing to accept that they in some way contribute to the overall issue? In order for there to be any change or movement towards an even more accepting world, all people must take responsibility for their shortcomings.

While watching privileged, I found myself a little uneasy about the message. I do feel that people can be “privileged” in certain ways, but this all depends on how you define privilege. Is it the amount of money you have? The education you were able to obtain? I personally believe there are many ways you could consider a person to be privileged. Most people want what they don’t or can’t have, its just human nature. I could sit and consider someone to be better off than I am just if they had something I didn’t have. Who is to say that we can limit being privileged to how much money you have? I consider the girl who can shop everyday for new clothes with no regards to price to be more privileged than me. My qualifications of privilege may be petty in comparison to the racial prejudice our country faces, but I feel that privilege comes in more forms than money and skin color.

So why do I feel that these two points go together? Why do I believe that privilege is how you define it? That the prominence of it in this country is based on the fact that people place the blame for discrimination on others? The idea of privilege is only as strong as the people who allow it. When will we start taking personal responsibility for the roles we take in prejudice acts and take effective steps towards changing racial and gender views on privilege? When will people realize that most people can be considered privileged in some way or another, and the more strain we put on the idea that it is based on race and gender, the further we are pushing ourselves away from equality.

The two links below I found particularly interesting. The first link is about cultural success and the second is about and the second was the Wikipedia definition for White privilege. I found it quite interesting.
http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/webfeatures_viewpoints_dont_blame_culture/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_privilege

My personal opinion. If you don't agree, I don't care.

When asked what the word race means to me, I find I fall short on coming up with a definition that I find “correct.” I don’t exactly know if I feel it is biological or social construct, but rather a combination of both. I believe skin color is biological, a mere skin pigment and gene that determines pale or tan, light or dark. To me, skin color is no different than brown or blue eyes, blonde or brown hair. Where social construction of “race” becomes an issue is when people take the biological disposition for different skin pigmentation and cause it to determine economic status, education level and home address.  Thankfully, as we become more open minded and less ignorant as a whole, we become closer to the understanding that race and ethnic background does not have to determine what neighborhood you are destined to live in and what grade you can accomplish in school. We have all learned at some point about the evils that can come from making race a negative connotation, rather than a simple color, nothing more than a blue or brown eye.

As a society, we place stereotypes based on race, gender and sexuality versus achievement. Using our examples from class, we get messages that African Americans make great athletes, the British need more dental attention and gay men, well they can really dress. I know plenty of fabulous white athlete’s, African Americans with bad teeth and gay men who dress for an 80’s prom on a daily basis. Stereotypes are never really one size fits all. Stereotypes, in my opinion is just ignorance with a fancier name.

When it comes to the separations in race and in gender roles, I sometimes think it is media driven and at other times feel it can be political, influenced by those in power. Our media sends mixed messages that define their ideas of race and gender. Extreme standards of wealth, power and beauty radiate on every magazine I use to subscribe to, nothing good comes from reading about models and actresses I can in no way identify with. There are beautiful, extremely thin Brazilian models on the runway and our first African American president in the white house. I am neither the former nor the latter, so where I fit into the media’s current standards of fame and fortune has me a bit confused. There is always going to be a love and hate relationship with media attention. The media will always push sex and beauty, it sells and we all are guilty with our addiction to tabloids and Entertainment Tonight. It is a personal responsibility to determine the moral standard you set for allowing negative racial and gender media messages to influence your actions.