Thursday, December 3, 2015

1.)     I attended two different events on campus. The first one I attended was the “check it right, You Ain’t white: Arab Americans and the US census” The Speaker, Linda Sarsour talked a lot about different topics pertaining to Different Muslim women getting criticized for just being who they are. She talks a lot about how White people are so privileged and that people who are not whit get treated way differently and worse than the white race. She makes many points about how privileged many White Americans are compared to the Arab group in America. She address some stories of incidents where some Arab women get characterized as something poorly when in fact the women was actually accused falsely and ended up taking the consequence of people characterizing her just because of one encounter that the accuser had with people from the middle east. A main issue that Sarsour talked about was mostly about how whites dominate the privileges in America. She says many facts about incidences with underprivileged races do not get the same respect as Whites do. So in conclusion her main points were that Whites are in a better living situation when living in America. Frankly I disagree with her words. I believe that not all whites are privileged and not all other ethnicity are looked down upon or work harder. In some cases, colleges even recruit some students based on their ethnicity to increase their diversity. Helping those students get a better education. The second talk I went to was the Sarab Al’Jijakli talk. Where he talked about different issues with Isis and how people in sierra fight against one another in order to survive. And how many of those people want to leave and go home. I did not get to stay for long but that is the most I got out of it.
2.)     The community service that I participated in was to be the collector of donations and clothing from people while at the “Check it right, You ain’t white: Arab Americans and the US census”. A fellow classmate (Katelyn) and I were the ones who worked the first shift of the talk. Once we arrived the overseer asked one of us to also be in charge of people signing in to the event. But I chose to be the one to accept donations for the charity and clothing drive. We did not receive any donations or items of clothing. We just sat there and watched the speaker speak about her topic and waited until our time was up. One gentleman did come up and offer us Euro's for the donations but it was more of a joke. Overall, the service was not as expected but it was a great help that we had us there in order to help with the sign in’s of people coming and going. The crowd was a good audience with people getting involved with everything the speaker was speaking about too. After our jobs were over, I stayed a bit longer to listen to the speaker because I thought the topic was interesting even though I did not agree with some points of her’s.
(I do not have any pictures of me working the donations because I was not aware that we needed them at the time.)

3.)     In many different ways one can argue that the different activities could relate to some of the topics that we talked about in classes. For example, with the talk about Middle Eastern women being decimated because of just who they are or where they came from, can relate to Israel being looked differently because he is the second son. But he still was the favored son and the better choice to get his father’s inheritance. But just because he was the second son in the family, he would not get a single thing(until he tricks his father and brother). Another way that the “Check it right, you ain’t white: Arab Americans and the US census” can relate to a topic in our class would be when she tells us that the white race is more privileged than other races. In my opinion I believe this statement to be wrong, that everyone is equal no matter what as long as they follow the rules and do not do any decisions they would regret. With that being said, We talked about all kinds of religion and how they are all different in their own beliefs and traditions. The way I see it, there are no dominate religions nor do any dominate race in that matter. I Believe these two topics are related because people generally think one way of a religion based on an individual doing an act out of context of that religion even though he still claims to worship that religion. Also, people usually look at race and stereotype them based on they’re appearance. But once people learn about the truth religion or ethnicity, then it’s a lot easier to see the whole picture of the two instead of one incident that occurred. In my opinion, religion does indeed impact the outcome of a situation. People mistranslated the way their holy book/readings and that can conclude to people taking actions in situations that are not exactly what the books says and could end in violence or worse. But on the bright side, religion does help people by giving them a way to live life. There are usually good clear guidelines in ever religion that helps one become a better human being to themselves and to others as well. While doing the community service, I did realize how one person, even doing such a small job, can help another person greatly. And that the feeling of helping others is worth it.