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Existed over a decade, Racism and has been known as hatred from one to another; whether you’re an African American, Caucasian, Jew, Asian, and Hispanic; from skin color, the language we speak, where we are born, and the religion we follow. Racism has been in act of wars, legal codes, and the way some nations may see each other. In Wikipedia “Racism is usually defined as views, practices and actions reflecting the belief that humanity is divided into distinct biological groups called races and that members of a certain race share certain attributes which make that group as a whole less desirable, more desirable, inferior or superior.”

The major part in racism led to was slavery, particularly to African American’s. African American’s can be seen as a deficient “species”, “savages.” African American’s were and ideal to slavery overtime of the 15^th to 16^th century. When European invaded Africa, they tried to remove the African American’s to work as slaves across seas. The African American’s were treated as property, forced to work without pay and against their will from time to time; beaten by sticks and whips, caged and in chains. Even children were forced to work as slaves. Dec. 8, 1865 slavery was abolished, but some parts of the world, slavery/racism exists. As slavery ended and the African Americans got their freedom in the later years, there was an issue in culture that they had trouble to work alongside with any culture. Till today, African Americans, Latino’s, Asian’s, and Muslims are still targeted as a threat.

In the 18^th to 19^th century, near all nationalities became an issue. Blacks can’t work alongside Caucasians, Hispanics, Jews, Asian, and other cultures, nor attend school with them. People were against each other because they were different. Not a lot of people cared if you shared the same view as them or work with them. Because someone is different than themself, random cultures makes them an easy target to become an enemy threat. If one culture were to marry or hang around a different culture. Both cultures would fight each other because it is wrong to marry or hang out with someone different. Wikipedia mentioned “Practices and ideologies of racism are universally condemned by the United Nations in the Declaration of Human Rights.”^[9] Anyone whom supports the cause and initiates the form of racism is punishable by law.

In the 1960’s a boycott emerged from all types of race to abolish Racism. Thus the Civil Rights Act 1964 was created. Racism still continued for about near 30 years, but has died down afterwards. The Civil Rights Act hasn’t completely wiped out Racism because up till today, Racism still exists. The Civil Rights Act is intended to a legal consequences to those that practice any prejudice and/or discrimination to those that are from a different country, color of the skin, and ethnicity. Even President Obama has to stand behind the bullet proof glass from so many death threats against him. I personally seen a lot of discrimination around the world. Officers who uphold the law can be seen as being prejudice and show a lot of discrimination toward the main targets of African Americans and Hispanics. Some stores can be seen as prejudice as they are seen hiring only Caucasian employees. Today people joke about Racism and being prejudice, some people take it very seriously if it’s a joke. There is no clue when Racism will completely be gone.

RR #2 Killer Culture

Killer Culture

Here’s a story of the future we see today in society. Teen’s and semi adults that see different styles in how to fit in with everybody, the peer pressure in doing something that you’re not sure of, and social media of how should we act, listen, observe from one to other people. A trend we all follow or once followed.

Born in ancient times, Hip Hop has evolved into a clean civilize trend. Journalist Patricia Hersch said “We are living in the gansta generation” (649) meaning teens today wearing pants below their waste, shirts longer than your waist, hats on backwards and the language we use with profanity. I semi agree on what she said. What I think is that if one person idolizes a gangsta trend and another person copies that trend. Either he/she wants to fit in, was born with the same trend, or is under peer pressure because of that person or persons. It is true how teens are going back to the trend that happened way back in time. The trend only occurs if a teen has friends that follow a Hip Hop trend and speaks in a profanity like language or see other people on the internet or on a monitor.

Rushkoff disloses “five enormous companies are responsible for selling nearly all of youth culture, Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp, Disney, Viacom, Universal Vivendi, and AOL/Time Warner.” (650) Companies that not only trend on young teens but adults as well. Rushkoff said “The documentary demonstrates how big corporations literally send spies to infiltrate young people’s social setting to gather intelligence on what they can induce these children to buy next.” (650). These companies that produce their own branded clothing and/or music isn’t something a trend would take place. It’s more of a style of how they look in the clothing or how they like the sound of the music. Sending in spies that gather information of what teens will buy next isn’t the proper way to get an input of what a teen would buy next. A person interested in what to buy next is base off of what the person want. What they need it for. If this may be a gift for someone.


As for MTV, Rushkoff talks about how the MTV show is like a commercial that is promoting to the young teens. It’s like they are promoting something to sell to the young viewers. “In reality, the companies are creating new and lower and more shocking marketing campaigns, disguised as genuine expressions of youthful searching for identity and belonging, for the sole purpose of profiting financially from America’s children.” (Kupelian 650). I think MTV has nothing to do with promoting to sell. MTV was once a full music with a video to match the song. Now MTV is just full of infomercials like any other TV shows with infomercial. MTV is just marketing the music for viewers to listen and/or purchase later on.

In teens today, there will be peer pressure, there will be body piercings, and a trend will happen, people will follow what other people are doing. Society in teens today have evolved to what was a trend when kids wore a well suited pair of clothing with your shirt tucked in, pants up to your waist, hair comb back and played Golf, Frisbee, and Tennis. Not a lot of teens agree with a clean look, others rebel and wore leather jacks, smoke, drag race, bet, and fight. All that has changed a bit on clothing and those stereotypes of being call a square or greasers. Now teens want to party and have fun. Some fights due happen but it’s just for entertainment or showing who’s better. Overall, teens will explore on what they like and don’t. They will make mistakes and they will ascend in society from others who just want to have fun. Companies have nothing to do with America’s culture, they just want to make a profit regardless what a lot of people think. (Example the Tabaco Company) they don’t think it will kill people or harm them, they just want your money to buy their products.

RR # 1 Persepolis

Reader Response #1 Persepolis

Persepolis is where a young Marjane Satrapi grew up in Iran. She lived her days in an Islamic Revolution. In the beginning she tells the reader how the rise of her people were living in a happy and well balanced civilization. Marjane speaks of how the government control destroyed a lot of lives in Iran. How in school boys were separated from girls and girls had to wear a bonnet. In her years as a child she learns the history of what Iran is going through, the conflicts people had to face and how their lives will change from the government. Maryjane joins the revolution fight with her nanny but has no clue of what she is doing.

Marjane encounters a change in her school, children were divided up in two groups from boys and girls. The girls had to wear a veil over there head but have no clue why as Marjane explained “We didn’t really like to wear the veil, especially since we didn’t understand why we had to. (Satrapi 3). Marjane was in the beginning of a “Cultural Revolution.” Maryjane’s mother joined a demonstration and had her picture on the newspaper. Little Marjane knot know why her mother was scarred for her life seeing herself in the newspaper. The mother had to change her appearance to avoid any problems from outside the house. The father not being in the newspaper as well, set outside and went to the demonstration and took pictures of the whole event. At school when demonstrators were happening at the time she had gone to school Maryjane encountered a problem with one of the teachers. Marjane’s beliefs were offset from others when at first she wanted to grow up as a prophet but said a doctor to trick every one of her plan. She wanted to change Iran. Marjane “Wanted to be Justice, Love and the wrath of god all in one.” (9).

Marjane talked about how the King was presented by god but the father had to explain everything to Marjane as she may not understand the story. Her father said “At the time, your grandpa was a young man and the father of the Shah confiscated everything he owned.” (23). The uncle became a communist instead and the Iranian police searched everywhere for him to put under arrest for breaking the law. Another encounter occurred when Maryjane’s nanny first appeared, she was a teenager and came over a frequently when she met this boy across the street from the house the nanny was watching. Apparently she had fallen in love with this boy a few times after visiting a few times. The nanny had fallen so in love that Maryjane had to write all the letters to the boy across the street. Not knowing what could happen the nanny kept having Marjane write letters to the boy. One day the nanny’s story was spread throughout the family as the uncle heard, and the uncle told the grandmother, whom the grandmother told the mother and eventually the father heard and went over to the boy’s house to confess who the nanny is.

It’s not easy living in a country as it’s starting to crumble down. There shouldn’t be a reason why any boys and girls should separate because of religious beliefs. Little girls should choose if they want to wear a veil at school or not. When it come to love and romance, both females and males should be free to whom they want to be with instead of staying with your own social class.

Final Draft Research paper

Iran

“White revolution”

Mohammad Reza Shah in 1960 became a popular leader amongst people in Iran. The
Shah made promises than made the people believe in him. They supported him by cashing in
their votes to have the Shah as their leader. Mohammad Reza Shah made promises and started
a program that included privatization of state factories, female suffrage, land reform, and a
literal corps of young educated people to address the problem of illiteracy in the countryside.
What the people didn’t know was all that the Shah promised, was a lie to gain power and
wealth. Shah ignored what promises he made and eventually chaos from the people of Iran
reign through the streets and the people went to war with the Shah. The poor and struggling
people became worse in struggling to live, and the richer became more powerful and wealthier.

This is how the “White Revolution started. In 1963, he announced a package reforms as the
White Revolution. This package includes privatization of state factories, female suffrage, land
reform, and a literal corps of young educated people to address the problem of illiteracy in the
countryside. “These points are new in Iran and revolutionary, but in 1963 the whole activity of
the nation has been directed at the implementation of one or the other of these programs.”
(Armajani, Yahya. 171-172). “But the White Revolution never constituted a real revolution. It
represented an exercise in political expediency dictated by the man who sat at the top of Iran’s
social order. The old aristocracy, the [thousand families], opposed the White Revolution because
land reform eroded their wealth and position. The middle class dismissed it as nothing more than
a political palliative design to impress the Western press and an American administration.”
(Armajani, Yahya. 171-172). Clergy resisted because the land reform threatened to take ten
thousand villages that helped finance the clerical establishment and its religious mission, and
second, as it hit landowning families a large percent from the upper echelon of the clergy came.
“But the Shah ignored all of them as a regret. He dismissed the landowners in the shah’s
new political order. He refused to placate the middle classes with real political reform, losing
most allies. The White Revolution did nothing less than put Muhammad Reza Shah and the
guardians of Shiism on a collision course over its two most celebrated elements- land reform
and the initial steps toward the emancipation of women.” (Axworthy, Michael. 242).
As a boycott emerges by the National Front, a program broadening and augmented changes in
the country. Under Mohammad Reza Shah the regime even attempted, in the late 1960s and
1970s (as part of the White Revolution program), to replace the traditional ulema with a new
religious structure of mosquitos and mullahs answerable to the state. If the Shah hadn’t lied to
the people, none of the chaos and war would occur in Iran, people in Iran would be able to live
a prosperous life with Shah as their leader.

Works Cited

·         Axworthy, Michael. A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind. New York: Basic, 2008. (242)

·         Armajani, Yahya. Iran. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972. Print. (171-172)

·         Mackey, Sandra, and W. Scott. Harrop. The Iranians Persia, Islam, and the Soul of a Nation, with a New Afterword by the Author. New York: Plume Book, 1998. Print. (221)

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1joHIfmmIg45PWNe9v69_9jYvZlNWQl_mtiRBAAe-1y8/edit#slide=id.p