From Howard Zinn’s chapter “The Optimism of Uncertainty” one quote stood out to me: “despite widespread head-shaking over the ‘apathy’ of successive student generations, an impressive number of students continued to act” (68). This quote reminded me of a conversation I recently had on campus with a long time administrator. In the face of the Board of Trustees failing to do the right thing and just change the names on Ryland Hall and Freeman Hall based on the substantial and conclusive evidence that those men were in fact bad dudes, this administrator was shocked by the student response. She told me that in her time at Richmond (almost 30 years) she had never seen this much involvement from the student body regarding real issues and not just attending spring concert or going to ring dance. On the day of the second protest organized by the Black Student Coalition, I had mentioned it to her in our conversation and she was shocked to hear about it. And immediately committed to going. She told me how moving it was to finally see the student body looking like they actually cared about what happens on campus. 

As the podcast discussed, the student body here is finally making a difference because the Black Student Coalition and all of their followers are convincing people to join in on the fight. I think the analogy of everyone with their little tea cups is fitting. On campus, one person, one measly student, could not have stood up to the Board of Trustees. Based on their recent actions, it is pretty obvious they don’t have a hard time ignoring hundreds of voices, so one (unless it was the perfect one) probably would not have done as much good. Also, placing these protests on the back of one student is grossly unfair and would probably become unhealthy for that individual. But no one student has to do it alone. With whatever tea still fills every individual’s tea cup, combined some of the students and faculty of this campus have been able to push for change successfully. Their work canceled the University’s Giving Day. They pushed the faculty to make major stands against their own Board of Trustees.  They forced even the most racist and bigoted board members to surrender the decision to a new group of people. It seems to me that right now our tea cups are in abundance and I hope that they only multiply. 

The power of the set design in Beyoncé’s video really struck me in Ford’s essay. Ford discusses that the “Formation” video is situated on Beyoncé’s family lineage. On the surface level, that theme could be seen as speaking to Beyoncé’s love or pride of family because that is a typical sentiment to be expected from a successful mom and artist like Beyoncé. But the theme of family goes much deeper than that. Ford says that “creating a public lineage,” as Beyoncé is doing with her lyrics and video in “Formation”, “is an undertaking families do when they are building dynastic power” (196). She’s declaring a black dynasty. Now, I know this word mostly from the Netflix remake of the show Dynasty and thus have a warped image of greed, money, family feuds, and outright violence when it comes to belonging to a dynasty. But really it means the family plays a prominent role in their field. Imagine having the power, resources, and outright confidence to declare your family as prominent, important, noteworthy. Obviously, as Ford agrees as well, Beyoncé deserves this kind of recognition and she already has the prominence in society, music, and now the art industries to make this kind of declaration. Nevertheless, to do it in a home that is supposed to resemble the southern gothic architecture of New Orleans plantations is remarkable. Ford describes Beyoncé’s tactic as “visually rewriting history so that black people win” (197). There is no ignoring the deeply rooted hisotry of slavery and racism in the setting of her video. Viewers are forced to see her rise above it all and reclaim that history in a space that is uniquely hers and only controlled by her and the power she has created for herself. 

The power of music grants the space to make these claims because of its own history as subversive and resistant, as Bezio discusses in this week’s podcast episode. Music provides the perfect mixture of music to help audiences remember the words that amplify a message. Singing has always been a means of protest. “Formation” is no different. I think Beyoncé in “Formation” and her other more recent work is protesting against any previous preconceived ideas about her and recreating them with her own voice, no one else’s. It is rare nowadays for celebrities to be able to tell their own story without it getting misconstrued along the way, but Beyoncé has succeeded in creating her legacy and proudly standing up to tell people about it. 

The beginning of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is really frustrating to read (most of it is frustrating to read as a woman, but I figured I’d start at the beginning). When Stetson first comes down with her “nerves” she writes off her own ability to do what is best for her and how she actually feels. She says that she disagrees with their ideas, “that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do [her] good,” but what is she to do (648)? Stetson is expected to blindly trust that her husband and brother know more about what she needs than she does. Furthermore, if she did not trust the men in her life and value their opinions she would feel “ungrateful not to value it more” (648). It is obvious that she, like many women throughout history as we know, was taught to stifle her own opinion even when, if not especially when, it came to her body.

The yellow wallpaper as a symbol for her disintegrating mental state is super interesting. Like everyone’s mental health, the wallpaper just hovered and watched over Stetson for weeks impeding on her life and her “rest”. Instead of being allowed to manage her mental health with people’s company, or her hobbies, or anything at all, Stetson was overcome by the complexity of her mental health. This story served as a warning to many females and doctors that the “rest-cure treatment” was not actually helpful at all. I think in today’s context this story would serve as a prime example of the importance of proactively taking care of your mental health and seeking the right kind of help. In a modern context, we no longer practice “rest-cures” on “nervous” women with extreme frequency, but we do still belittle women’s pain and experiences with health issues. “The Yellow Wallpaper” can still be a lesson to show that women really do know best when it comes to their health and the only outcome of doubting they know best is making matters worse for everyone– especially the women. 

In the spirit of Bezio’s podcast and essay, I want to use a recent example of pop culture, rather than other examples of high culture, as a prime example of how the portrayal of leadership in modern society has changed. I just recently started to watch an Amazon Prime show called The Wilds released in 2020. The story follows 8 girls who are unknowingly, and without consenting, participating in a controversial social experiment. They have been through a staged plane crash and are now stranded on a deserted island trying to survive and wait for search and rescue. A very small team of researchers are monitoring their every move– the girls just do not know this. The characters are a diverse representation of races, ethnicities, sexualities, religions, socioeconomic statuses, and regions within the US. I think this representation speaks to the movement happening at the cinematic level as discussed in the podcast from Hidden Figures to Black Panther. So far, I have gathered that the point of the social experiment in short is to prove that women are better leaders, although admittedly in a very unethical (and illegal) form of experimentation. But the show is so relevant to the content of this class. 

First, the girls amongst themselves begin to develop distinct roles. Dot, one of the girls,  becomes the first leader due to her background knowledge in survival shows that helps the group know exactly what to do to try to survive what they think is a completely deserted and hopeless island.  Harvey states that the general definition of leadership is that “leaders confront and solve problems associated with group survival and well-being” (201). The Wilds allows for a context that matches this definition at the most basic understanding: basic human survival. Dot becomes the leader because she can get water, food, and shelter for the group. She also stands out as a leader because of her ability to manage the group. The group dynamics are widely explored because of the “research” being done on the experiment, so we see how the girls work amongst each other and the disputes and relationships they have over their time on the island. Dot recognizes that there can be no “us” and “them” like Harvey suggests as a poor leadership tactic (206). She knows that even as girls have arguments and fundamental differences, the main objective of survival has to be at the front of their minds. Dot and the other girls at times also represent Harvey’s discussion about how leaders tend to look further ahead while followers preoccupy themselves about the here and now. Dot immediately recognizes that they need to ration their food and drink supplies, while some of the girls don’t ration their own personal stash well and put that burden on the group. Dot recognizes that the girls need to build a shelter to protect themselves from their new and mostly unknown elements, whereas the other girls are exhausted and too dehydrated to want to think about putting in hard labor of constructing shelter. These leader and group dynamics play out so clearly in this show. 

In the podcast, Bezio discusses that our pop culture should represent the world we want, but her example of The Hunger Games not being the literal way we want our world to be fits with The Wilds as well. We definitely don’t want to be able to run unethical experiments on people that do not know they are being experimented on. We as a society have been there and done that. But this show does call into question the beauty of diversity and women in power. Men in this show are most usually the people making bad decisions, causing trauma to these girls, or messing up in general. The underlying message of women empowerment in this show is one that could only exist in this decade of time. It is a clear representation of how we tell stories and who those stories are about has changed in recent pop culture. 

The conversation about invisible leadership is one that is so important to remember as one studies history, and more specifically in the context of our reading and podcast, the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s and 70s. As Bezio discussed in the podcast episode, the Civil Rights Movement did not happen because MLK single handedly spoke so well that it changed the minds of all racist white people. The movement happened because of the people. We are lucky that unlike the Elizabethan era of England we actually have documentation from the so called “common people.” We don’t have to make assumptions about the real emotions, opinions, and actions people were taking during the Civil Rights Movement. We know that black churches became a central organizational point to all parts of the movement. We can understand how communities came together to pay bails or to find rides during bus boycotts. Because of historical documentation, we know the myth that MLK did all the work on his own is not true. He was important, but he was important because he had a huge group of people ready to take his words into action right alongside him.

In the city of Richmond, invisible leadership sprung up in the fight to ensure equal voting rights policy. As Bezio discussed, sometimes the most effective forms of change are through court cases. This article outlined the importance of the Courts’ decisions throughout the struggle to maintain equal voting rights in Richmond. Each individual that brought a case to court to fight for what was legal showed up as an invisible leader. Going to court and defending yourself does not look the same as making a speech to a big crowd, rallying potential voters, or any of the other images that come to mind when we picture a “leader” fighting for change. But that’s the point of invisible leadership. Many times, it does not match the stereotypical images we automatically come up with even if the lawyer in court or the black women in the church basement really are the leaders we should be imagining. Hayter does a great job in bringing to light a story full of invisible leaders. She works to argue that the change made at the Richmond city level impacted the national voting rights movement. By making this argument, she allows for different faces and names to be brought to light when it comes to the success of the Civil Rights Movement. Diversifying the history we are constantly told is a really important thing and actually learning about people like Oliver Hill, Claudette Colvin, and Curtis J. Holt brings to light a more complex and truthful history. 

http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1960/mrs-jfk

Jackie Kennedy certainly fit the part of the beautiful presidential candidate’s wife. In office, she became a style icon and an image of ideal beauty. So, it is only right that JFK and his campaign team would put her in a commercial all by herself to speak for her husband’s race to the presidency. The visual appeal and family theme of this commercial is a given. A happy wife like Jackie Kennedy in the 60s would have spoken to the ideal household and dream family life. One of the larger themes that came out of JFK’s campaign and presidency was his role as a family man. Clearly, the nation found that storyline appealing. I wasn’t expecting much else besides a strategic commercial to showcase those two things. And then she started talking.

The entire commercial is in Spanish. Now, as a Spanish major I could nitpick her accent (which is very American) and at first I thought she was just reading a script. But apparently Jackie Kennedy was fluent in four languages: English, Spanish, French, and Italian. She spoke Spanish slowly and enunciated well in the commercial. The message of the commercial was not actually about family, as I probably would have expected seeing Jackie at the center of the screen. However, it was another commercial about how JFK was the right candidate to stand firmly against communism. She tells her audience that JFK wants to protect all citizens in all parts of the United States from the danger of the communist party. The campaign team was trying to reach the Spanish speaking population, a marginalized group back then and still a marginalized group today.

It is interesting to me that in the 1960’s the Spanish speaking population was a recognized and important vote for our country, whereas in the recent past presidential campaigns the topic of Spanish speakers was polarizing. Donald Trump successfully convinced many Americans that all Spanish speakers in our country are criminals, undocumented, and only here to take things away from “hard-working Americans”. The topic of immigration and Spanish speakers is now so much more than Jackie Kennedy sitting in front of a camera reciting a short Spanish script. I think on one side of politics, the message that they will continue to be protected by the US government still stands. But on the other side, the Spanish-speaking population is constantly threatened with detention and deportation. This short commercial from 60 years ago compared to our political climate now is really jarring. Jackie makes it seem so simple, way too simple for the reality of 2021. 

From the reading and podcast this week, it was interesting to pinpoint the human tendencies that explain why we always seem to be making mistakes. Dorner suggests that it is innate within us that we cannot see one problem on a larger scale than our immediate situation. He says some analysts “see our tendency to think in simple chains of cause and effect as genetically preprogrammed and locate our inability to solve our problems in this genetic programming” (6). So, it’s genetic that we suck at making decisions sometimes… Whether that really is true or not, humans do still act in a set of patterns that Dorner and Bezio explore that are undeniable. In Dorner’s evaluation of the game stimulations some key patterns stuck out to me. It is interesting to note that good participants made more decisions than bad participants. That seems so simple to me, more decisions, more action, more good obviously. But it also speaks to good participants wanting to ask more questions and see more possibilities in front of them. Dorner suggests that good participants cared about the “why” not just the “what”. Bad participants focusing on the “what” did not dive deep enough into the problems they faced.

Bezio lays out a handful of things that help a system function best, and asking only “what” is not one of them. She tells us that systems function best when humans try not to oversimplify things. When a bad participant only asks “what” questions, they are seeking to simplify the task at hand and face it only at that level in front of them. That is when a system’s extreme complexity is fatally overlooked. Moreover, she tells us that systems function best when humans do not rely on their instincts, biases, or traditions. As good participants asked “why” questions, I think that exemplifies them going beyond their gut reaction in order to understand the new situation in front of them, rather than make assumptions based on surface level information. An over-reliance on tradition and biases is at the forefront of societal issues at the moment. From climate change, to polarized politics, to wearing masks, to racial inequality, humans right now are relying on biases and traditions that formed in an entirely different society with entirely different norms and practices. When humans continue to only rely on their previous knowledge with an unwillingness to change, the traditions and biases we hold onto become so outdated that they become useless even without us realizing. Systems thrive on smaller decisions that build upon each other. The best way to fix our biases is small, repeated exposure over time that allows us to see a different perspective. Humans tend to always think big, but clearly it’s time to change that instinct and think a lot smaller.

I discussed this chart in my Quantitative Social Science class which is supposed to display the average female height per country. The title is clear and the x-axis is labeled well, but beyond that is where the problems begin and the graph becomes less representative of the main goal. The y-axis measurements paired with the use of a female stick figure visually misrepresent the actual difference between the female heights in the different countries. The y-axis starts at 5’0” and only goes up to measure 5’7”. The tallest females are in Latvia at 5’5” and the shortest is from India at 5’0”. That’s only a 5 inch difference, yet the size of the figures representing India and Latvia suggest the size difference is very noticeable, almost extreme. The larger the stick figure gets as well, the wider the figure becomes. This effect subconsciously makes us also picture a much skinner, tinier woman in India than in Latvia which is not supposed to be represented here at all. Whoever made this chart, let the desire to make the chart look appealing overshadow the goal to present the information in a straightforward way. 

From the reading this week, I found it interesting to read how misleading information manifested in 1954, when Huff wrote the book, in comparison to 2021. There were two points specifically that stood out to me. First, he claimed that “some of the strongest feeling against public-opinion polls is found in liberal or left-wing circles, where it is rather commonly believed that polls are generally rigged” (Huff 28). This claim echoed the sentiment felt throughout the most recent presidential election, but not necessarily most represented by “liberals or left-wing circles” (28). The public had a hard time trusting the polls whenever they said their candidate wasn’t going to win. It’s disheartening to read that even in 1954 sentiments like this were noteworthy to discuss and we continue that conversation today instead of making any real ideological change. Furthermore, the second point that stood out to me was Huff stating that “public pressure and hasty journalism often launch a treatment that is unproved, particularly when the demand is great and that statistical background is hazy” (43). The pressure for news outlets to provide information first or to have this amazing breaking news story still applies today, almost 60 years later. Many examples exist of news platforms misreporting a story because they had the wrong information and did not take the time to fact check themselves or they chose to create a narrative that they didn’t actually have evidence for, but it was entertaining. I think some of the charts that we all picked probably reflect these poor journalism habits as well. 

My initial reaction to Flanigan’s article against prescription requirements is a great example of the assumptions Bezio discussed in podcast 3. I honestly thought that the article was a satire at first. Prescription drugs, in our lifetime, have always been an accepted and understood norm in society. Exactly like Bezio said, for me since prescription drugs have always been my reality then they must require prescriptions for a good reason. My immediate reaction to the text was to see it as so far from being feasible that it was essentially a joke. Now, I hope this doesn’t come off as disrespectful in any way to Flanigan’s work because after reading the essay I clearly see it was well structured, argued, and researched. But I thought it only fitting to share that upon reading the title and just the abstract, my gut instinct was to assume Bezio somehow was going to say “gotcha! that article was fictitious, but you believed it anyway!” 

Upon further analysis, it was clear to see how ethical reasoning played an explicit role in Flanigan’s argument. The first two reasons she uses to support her acceptance of the DIC she categorizes as consequentialist issues. Medical outcomes and epistemic authority both reflect that upon evaluation, the consequences are what should be evaluated to decide whether the action is morally good or bad. For medical outcomes, both doctors and patients should want the best outcome, or the best consequence and therefore decide on the action that provides the best consequence. For epistemic authority, Flanigan argues that because patients know their own overall interest better, they should be able to judge their treatment decisions. The patients get to decide which action would provide the best consequences for themselves, not their doctor. Finally, the third reason in support of the DIC is presented through a deontic lens. The third reason is normative authority which means the patients have authority to decide their treatment plan even if overall it does not have the best consequences for their health. In deontism, we must only evaluate the action itself being taken not the consequences. Medical professionals should only judge a patient’s action, not whether or not the consequence of said action is what they view as bad or good. Furthermore, I also think it is implied here that virtue ethics could be applied in getting rid of prescription requirements. If we eliminate the need to have a prescription, it falls on the virtue of the individual to keep themselves safe and healthy. It is also their responsibility to seek guidance if they need it. I think if we take away the responsibility from doctors to prescribe drugs, then the system will begin to rely on individual ethics. We are learning how much ethics vary from person to person and to me that seems like an unstable foundation to set a system of drugs on.