Month: December 2019

I went to Michele Norris’s talk about her initiative called the Race Card Project on November 8^th. Before opening up a question and answer session, Norris explained the main ideas behind her work. She asks people to write a six-word sentence on a notecard about their personal perspective on race in America. She shared several of the cards she has received, and many of them were moving. One, in particular, stuck with me: “There are no categories besides humans.” I think these six words embody the Race Card Project at its root; at the end of the day, if everyone saw each other as equals, race would not be such a taboo in this country.

Norris mentioned how college campuses are often the most diverse environments we experience in our lives because as we get older, we move into more concentric circles. This is definitely something I am going to keep in mind as I continue the next four years here.

Finally, the most meaningful part of the presentation was seeing how listeners interpreted Norris’s words during the question and answer section. One student asked Norris if it is possible to move forward without addressing the past. Norris responded without hesitation. She said trying to move on without addressing the past would be like driving without looking in the rearview mirror. Trying to shove our country’s ugly past under the rug will not improve anything. Norris added on to her analogy by pointing out that the objects in rearview mirror are also closer than they appear, meaning that the system-imposed racism in our country is more recent than it feels. She specifically brought up Jim Crow legislation, and that even though it is no longer in place, you cannot legislate what is in someone’s heart.

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Pure Confidence was another play I attended that was produced by the university’s theater department. This play was very good. It was about slavery and racial tensions that still exist today. The character that I really enjoyed watching was Simon. He was a slave and would ride horses in races for his owner. He did this to make money for his owner. I especially liked Simon because he was very rebellious in the way he did not want to be a slave and wanted to be free. To do so, he had to buy himself from his owner. I liked how passionate he was and when he put his mind to something, he did it.

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I attended the play, Appropriate which was performed by the university’s theater department. The play was about three kids going to their father’s house with their children after their father has passed away. There was much tension all through the house as the siblings have not been in close contact over the years. Then one of the siblings finds a book that has pictures of the remains of black men.

All of the siblings are startled as they had no idea that their father was a supporter of the Klu Klux Klan. They are very upset and some are reluctant to think that their father would be part of such a group. They all have no idea what they should do with the book as they do not want their own children to see it. This play was very good and interesting in the way it explained what the different generations believed in or were apart of.

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I attended the event hosted by Spiders Against Sexual Assault and Violence (SASAV) on Monday, November 18th. They were hosting a film screen “The Hunting Ground”. The movie “The Hunting Ground” is a documentary exposing the underlying sexual assault culture on college campuses across the country, along with the institutional cover-ups and the social retaliation that followed.  The documentary begins by giving the stories of sexual assault and rape survivors and the different ways they were able to cope. It then delves into the reporting process and the administrative side of the issue.  One of the interviewed administrators said that they purposefully made the process difficult, so they do not have as many reports and to “artificially keep their numbers low”. Another discussed how the top priority of the school was to protect its reputation and the protecting the students was second. Many of the schools did not properly punish those convicted of the offense by only giving them a warning or a $25 fine. One example given was Stanford University and from 1996-2013, there was a total of 259 reports of assaults and only 1 expulsion during this time. This is one of the primary reasons why survivors feel as though reporting will not help their cause. They also frequently suffer from victim blaming as they are accused of wearing something revealing, drinking too much, asking for it, and not saying no enough times. Sadly, sexual violence has become a part of the college culture, from fraternities to sports, as 1 in 4 girls experiences this. As a society, we need to do better to address these issues and work to fix them. The problem not only lies with the perpetrators but also with the universities’ administrations who refused to acknowledge and properly hold the assaulters responsible.

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I went to hear a Jepson Alumni, Sean Theriault speak about congress and how it has changed over the years. He is a political science professor at the University of Texas. He spoke about two main points. He talked about the difference in how senators have been voting over the past few years as well as which senators are most likely to vote along party lines.

He showed a graph that shows how a decline in bipartisanship and an increase in grid locks. He talks about a rise in senators that vote for their party in order to get votes to get into the Congress. There has been a rise in outrages politicians because of the political climate. People are upset with the government so they vote in people that they believe will bring about change. However, these radical politicians actually make it harder to bring about change.

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Performed by University of Richmond’s very own theatre department, Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkin was an extremely thought-provoking play. The play chronicles three children arriving at their father’s plantation home in Arkansas with their own children following his death. The siblings have clearly fallen out of contact with one another and old tensions are immediately brought back to the surface. However, those tensions fall to the wayside as a much bigger one appears: the discovery of photos of lynchings and the remains of a black person.

Not knowing what to believe and not wanting to confront the harsh reality that their father was a member of or at the very least a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan, the struggles the siblings face can be easily seen as a metaphor for the United States today. It is easy to forget that we are only two generations removed from the height of the KKK, Jim Crow, and blatant acts of racially-motivated hate. Many of us want to believe that we as a country have moved past those days, but when confronted with the reality that people we know or are connected to may have contributed to that problem we often shut down or go into denial. This play reinforces the need for a continued dialogue about race in our country today. We’ve made progress in many ways, but just because lynchings aren’t commonplace in today’s world doesn’t mean we’ve solved the problem.

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On November 12, 2019, Peabody Award-winning journalist, NPR host, and author of The Grace of Silence Michele Norris came to the University of Richmond to discuss The Race Card Project. Founded by Norris in 2010, she has turned a flippant phrase into a meaningful discussion about race. Not expecting really anyone to respond, Norris began the project while on a book tour for her memoir The Grace of Silence. At different stops on the tour, Norris and her team left postcards that asked the responders to write six words about their experience, perception, questions, observations, or any thoughts they had on race. Soon, Norris began getting postcards from states she hadn’t even toured and realized she might have found a mechanism for facilitating a conversation our country so desperately needs.

Since the project’s conception, Norris has received over 500,000 postcards, both physical and online, and has a team dedicated just to archiving the postcards. I was personally fascinated not only by the responses she shared but specifically by the decision to limit the responses to just six words. Norris explained her thought process, saying that if she asked people to write an essay or a paragraph she thought they’d never respond because they would think it’s too much work but if she asked for a sentence responders would try to pass off an essay as a sentence. Norris concluded that she would need to make it very specific and with five words being deemed not long enough, she settled on six. Her approach clearly is working as more people than I would have ever expected have responded, taking time out of their days to contribute to a meaningful conversation about race. It gives me hope that the United States is moving towards a place where we can have these difficult conversations on such a large scale in person and in more than six words.

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On October 24, 2019, Dr. Camilla Nonterah from the Department of Psychology gave a talk entitled “How Our World Shapes Our Health”. Dr. Nonterah began by outlining how humans have conceptualized health throughout history. Evolving from a belief in good and evil spirits and sorcery in the prehistoric period, today in the 21st Century we have a multifactorial biomedical and psychosomatic model. This idea of a multifactorial model is echoed by the World Health Organization’s proclamation that “the context of people’s lives determine their health”. This references social determinants of health, which are non-medical factors that affect one’s health and what Dr. Nonterah focused her talk on.

While this concept was not surprising to me as studies have shown how detrimental stress is to the body and how circumstances an individual often cannot control like their genetics, social status, and access to healthcare are all non-medical factors that affect a person’s health. However, Dr. Nonterah raised some other social determinants of health that I hadn’t previously considered, like race-related stress. Studies show how race-related stress negatively impacts health in a variety of ways. For example, early racial discrimination is associated with depressive symptoms and accelerates the aging process. Racial discrimination is also indirectly associated with alcoholism. Another surprising statistic showed that internalized racism is associated with a higher BMI. After discussing other social determinants of health, Dr. Nonterah emphasized the importance of a broader understanding of the effect policies have on health and a deeper understanding of biological pathways. This talk reinforced how complex and multidimensional health is and that you can’t always determine a person’s health just from looking at them.

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Williamson article discusses the evolving aspects of leaders in the 21st century. In the professional world, things and ideas are rapidly changing and improving. Williamson provided six themes of leadership. The first one I found interesting which was “Leadership is no longer the exclusive domain of the ‘boss at the top’. This idea that anybody can lead from within a group is a core feature of a democracy.

I think the most important aspect that Williamson covers is that a leader must bring out the best in everyone. As a leader if if your followers do not feel a sense of self worth then nothing else really matters. In theory you can be an effective but demeaning leader. However, the most effective leaders that Williamson discusses exerts some form of effort to ensure that their followers feel valued.

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COLLOQUIUM: Through an Indigenous Lens

I attended this panel for my Art History class. The panel took place in the Robins School of Business, Ukrop Auditorium. The panel was made up of three filmmakers- Sky Hopinka, Adam Khalil and Zack Khalil and was moderated by to UR members. Going into this talk I did not know what to expect; growing up in the northeast with an uncle who has committed his life to working with Native American communities in the United States and Canada I am very aware of not only their hardships of the past but the lasting and further forced struggles and mistreatment these communities face today. 

I am very interested in film and see it as a tool for change but I am aware of the negative, misinformed ripples it can cause. The three Contemporary Indigenous filmmakers and curators explained the harm and misconceptions media and photos have brought to their communities. This was very interesting and something I was very unaware of. They shared their own works and explained that while the widespread media about indigenous people puts them in a box, limited their people to solely who they were in the past. However, unlike the US Government’s beloved untouchable Constitution, the indigenous people’s practice and social practices are always evolving. This is not what it publicized or taught in schools- limiting the general public to the past practices of the indigenous people is very harmful to their image and carries a large misconception about who they are in present-day which leads these communities to be further oppressed and neglected. This panel was eye-opening. 

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Free the Facts

Free the Facts came to present to UR students on a rainy Tuesday, October 29th, to present a policy seminar on Social Security. I first learned about the Free the Facts presentation when a student ambassador came to WCGA to teach us about what the organization was, their goals, and to ask for our support. They shared that a goal of the presentation was to empower us, our generation, by educating us on the facts and complexity of the United States’ fiscal policy issues. Free the Facts is a nonpartisan organization trying to give students info we need to make informed decisions about the biggest issues facing our generations. They especially emphasized one of their slogans “getting America’s brightest minds on our biggest problems” as they especially focused on the “biggest problems with the biggest price tags. They spoke about the facts behind social security insolvency, the inability to pay one’s debts. While some of the information they shared was over my head, it was clear that this issue needs the attention of our and all generations and attending the presentation made me feel more informed and motivated me to do some personal Social Security research of my own. I was personally drawn to this talk because social security and how it works has never been very clear to me but I knew I wanted to understand it now, early on, both to make informed decisions about my own future AND IN THE POLLS. They mentioned that they also present on student loans, Medicare, and pensions… I would like to see them again.

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The Race Card: Observations on Race, Identity, and Inclusion 11/12 – Michele Norris 

  I really enjoyed getting to see and learn from Mrs. Norris (Peabody Award-winning Journalist, Founder of The Race Card Project, and Author of The Grace of Silence). I first learned about Mrs. Norris in the Sharp Viewpoint Speaker Series in a WCGA meeting weeks prior. How to have constructive, meaningful conversations about race is a skill that I have developed much deeper at my time at UR and am still developing. 

I really liked Mrs. Norris’s talk as it brought to light new perspectives and suggested productive ways to approach conversations about race with people who have opposing views to oneself in a productive way. She explains that it is never beneficial to tell someone you feel that their viewpoints and understandings are WRONG and then attempt to educate them on what you believe is right- that is not productive because people get defensive or become more close-minded to what you are trying to say for the simple reason that YOU were just closed-minded to what they were saying. She explained that you must recognize that their truth is real and logical to them and the only way to have a mature conversation is to first hear them out; she says to listen, you do not have to agree- but acknowledge how they feel because dismissing their truth is not productive. She addresses that she is aware this can be challenging when someone’s truth is hurtful to you but having the tools necessary to have a productive conversation about it is the only chance for change.

 

A main point of hers was that looking at everyone is the only way to look at race. Dismissing opposing mindsets is almost counterproductive in the long run. She uses the metaphor that bridges are held together and able to remain standing and functional only when there is tension form to forces holding it up. 

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About a couple weeks ago I attended a talk for my Russian class called; Putin’s Nostalgia for the Soviet Union and it was run by Paul Josephson. It was super interesting and made me think about how similar Trump is to Putin. During the talk, Josephson kept mentioning that Putin was a charismatic leader just like many would say Trump is. He said that Putin is very infatuated with his appearance stood out to me the most. There are numerous pictures on the internet of him doing exotic things to make him appear perfect. He is pictured taming things in the wild and refers to himself as the “tiger whisperer”. I thought this was really weird and I would be amazed if a president in America ever did this. I don’t think Trump cares about his appearance as much as Putin but like Putin, Trump attracts some extremists. The youth have a cult-like love for Putin and I think we see this in some youth in America for Trump as well. Overall I enjoyed the talk and learned a lot more about Russia then I knew before.

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One of the events I went to was a slave burial ritual. The event took place at a famous slave burial site under a bridge  on October 17, 2019. When I first arrived they gave me a pair of headphones to wear throughout the event. We listened to music that didn’t sound like music we listen to nowadays. There were also other people who were part of the event playing instruments like the drums. Right before the event started a lady who had what looked like a smoking torch was performing some sort of cleansing act by waving the smoke around the people attending the event. When the event started the people were all dressed and white and they started by looking up at other people dressed in white on the bridge. The people on the bridge were pointing and looking in the air. I wasn’t sure what was going on at this point. They then proceeded to start what looked like ritualistic behavior under the bridge. They carried this behavior all the way around the opposite side of the bridge and up the stairs around the corner. The behavior consisted of dancing and switching focus to other people dancing. The experience was very interesting and looking forward to going to more.

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In the beginning of the year I went to a play called Appropriate and it was a very interesting play. The setting was an old farm house in a rural area in Kansas. The play started as a man and his girlfriend sneaking into their parents old house. His siblings are also in the house and he ends up finding them there. When one of the kids finds a picture of dead black people in an old photo album the family starts to be really suspicious of the picture. Then later in the play one of the characters finds human remains in a hidden place and the family freaks out. They soon find out that the house used to be a slave plantation and the theme of racism is presented. It was interesting to see the theme of racism be applied to a family that has learned about slavery and to understand that in their past they have had ancestors that were slaveholders.

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Michelle Norris came to speak about her initiative “Race Card Project”. It is a 6 word identity exercise that forces people to dive into the deepest but most simplistic form of their identity. It was an amazing talk to listen to and to participate in. One of the most iconic things that she addressed was the melting pot theory. She said that the US is diverse and is unique because of it. There is a large mix of cultures that each group takes immense pride in. Why would we want to mix up everything that each of us identifies by? Instead Norris suggests that we build bridges. Instead of trying to pour my ideas onto someone and to make them believe it, through education and enlightenment I will teach others about my identity. Through this process we will build bridges across cultures and identity and educate people around us while we also learn. This is the first process required before we can earn equality because it requires awareness. However, before awareness can be attained people must be willing to teach and equally as willing to learn.

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This play was amazing. There were many parallels between the end of the era slavery and the racial tensions that exists today. The author did an amazing job writing for the characters that played slaves and showing that they were multifaceted. I loved the character dynamic of Simon who refused to blindly align with the restrictions applied to him through slavery.

After the play ended there was a talk back where the playwright answered questions about the play and ideas behind some of his decisions. The audience addressed their discomfort in the presence of domestic abuse between the two married slaves throughout the play. People questioned why even black writers portray black people as aggressive and violent in the media made by and for people of color. A gentleman challenged the validity and accuracy of this relationship. Black men are not animals and not all abusive so why do we continue to perpetuate the presence these tendencies and stereotypes in the media as if it is true.

I heard these concerns but at the same time do not disagree with its presence in the play. It was not uncommon to find domestic abuse in this era because of how prevalent violence was in the everyday life of marginalized groups during this time period. Domestic abuse did not become as taboo and cautioned until recently. This is not to say that white men are not abusive too and I do agree that black men are very frequently villainized in the media but Pure Confidence was accurate. It depicted an accurate story for someone somewhere which is not to be generalized across an entire race of people. Pure Confidence is a story that needed to be told.

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On November 21st I went to see the play Hamilton at the Altria Theater. This play was about the timeline of Hamilton’s life from the time he worked under President George Washington to the time he was in a standoff with Alexander Burr. Hamilton began as an immigrant who wasn’t very wealthy, simply looking for a chance to show his talent. Eventually, once Washington discovered his talent, he was employed as a writer for the American Revolution. However, he wanted to be on the field at war with the soldiers. It angered Hamilton further when the leader that Washington put at the front line was incompetent. Eventually, Hamilton was given his opportunity or his “shot” as he kept saying in the play but soon realized 1) he was better with writing and 2) his family was suffering with him never being at home. A major part of his life that was emphasized was his writing of the Federalist papers. The play noted that although he worked with John Adams and James Madison he ended up writing most of the papers because that is how strongly he believed in creating a foundation for the new country that was free. Apart from his role in the politics and forming of America, the play went into Hamilton’s family life and discussed his love interests in Angelica and Eliza, the Schuyler sisters. In addition, the play also went into his love affair with another woman while he was working abroad–exposing each part of his life even down to his flaws.

The part I enjoyed the most about the play was the ending when the focus shifted slightly from Hamilton to Burr. After the stand-off where Hamilton and Burr both stood in the circle and Burr shot Hamilton, the narration described that because of this moment Burr is seen as the villain in history. All of his accomplishments and the work that he did for the country were overshadowed by this one moment which he admitted himself was juvenile of him but at the time he could not see that. All he saw was an opportunity to get rid of his opponent which he took advantage of. I appreciated and liked the fact that this was included in the play because it showed a part of history that isn’t often discussed– instead of simply referring to Burr as Hamilton’s killer we were able to get an inside view on what actually happened to Burr after the shooting (he was hated by everyone) and that he himself regretted the action but knew no better.

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Williamson mentions the common argument made that it does not matter which side— Red Republicans or Blue Democrats— wins elections because not much change takes place anyway. As a result, people are willing to vote for whichever side and whoever represents that side to shake things up a bit. This instance definitely took place during the 2016 election season. Many people thought it was pointless to vote because they either believed their voice did not matter, both political parties and their candidates were corrupt anyway, or neither candidate was good enough to take on the position and title of president. Some American voters knew it would be a huge risk to vote in either Donald Trump or Hilary Clinton. Although Clinton won the popular vote, Trump’s popular vote amount was not too far behind in numbers. It only makes sense that some people were willing to take such a big risk in voting for Trump because the policies and practices that he promised to the American people were outrageous. People were willing to risk Trump taking the presidency because his ideas were so out-of-the-box, so extraordinarily controversial.

Would the abolition of the electoral college allow for a more fair and practical application of democracy in the United States? I’m thinking, surely, if the pick for president was solely based on the popular vote then we would have gotten the chance to witness history— the first woman to be elected president— much, much sooner. This may also be where the dissatisfaction with “democracy” comes in for numerous people. The U.S. totes the title of democracy way more than it practices democracy. The American people wanted something different (a more overt, blunt, and emboldened manner to practice racism), so they did something different by allowing a bold racist to grab hold of the executive office.

McFarland strongly urges for leadership to take on a new definition, one in which leaders are supposed to encourage others to reach their best potentials to eventually become leaders themselves, or “facilitate excellence in others.” For this approach to work, leaders must throw out the old and embrace the new, avoid limiting themselves. Some of McFarland’s points about redefining leadership remind me of discussions from earlier on this semester about whether or not leadership is an innate or learned quality. The two outstanding points, everyone is a leader and the best can be brought out in everyone, speaks to this memory. I believe everyone may not have the potential to lead at the forefront in popular/mainstream ways, such as pastoring, social justice activism, being president, being a government official, etc. Yet, each person has a unique set of potential in something that they are good at, and therefore, they can be a leader in that category. A young kid may not have to be president to be a leader. But maybe the kid would be good at making pottery and have the potential to practice leadership in the art world.

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In this discussion Joshua B. Kaplan discusses the Electoral college and potential reforms to this seemingly broken system. He boils it down to essentially two different cases if we would like to reform the institution. He says it is “the devil we know” or something with seen and unforeseen consequences that would completely change how a president is elected for better or for worse. He then for the majority of the talk talks about potential reforms and discusses the known consequences and the questions each proposed reform asks about future elections.

In regards to leadership the electoral college is an interesting factor in how we chose leaders and subsequently view our own power as leaders within the community. the most interesting thing Dr. Kaplan discussed to me was the popular vote system, it never occured to me that politicians would literally just hit up 5 or 6 states no matter their political affiliation. I just always assumed that the campaign system would always remain the same.

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