Homework #8

One my favorite books is Slam by Walter Dean Myers. This book is about a inner city kid named Greg who is a all star on his high school basketball team. He is so talented at basketball that he gets the nickname "Slam" from being able to dunk the ball so well. Greg lives with his mother and little brother in a dangerous neighborhood in New York. He often interacts during the novel with his best friend Ice, or his girlfriend Kiesha. Slam and Ice used to be best best friends when they went to the same school but Greg was forced to transfer to a predominantly white school outside of his neighborhood. Throughout the book Greg fights with his mother, his girlfriend, Ice and Coaches at his new school and struggles to maintain good grades with this new curriculum.

Other than Walter Dean Myers, I think they're are many authors of the story. I am one of the authors as well as the rest of the mass that read this book. I also believe that the conditions that Myers lived in during his childhood helped create and author this novel. His mother died while giving birth to his little brother and his father was no where to be found. He also dropped out of high school and joined the military. So other authors could include the people who raised him, his neighborhood, his high school, and the military.

Homework #5

I thought it was interesting to compare not just the two contrasting ideas of Leroi and Goodman but also the views Sean Thomas as well. Armand Leroi believed that race is biological and can be blamed from common genetic variants. He says race is a vague shorthand way of separating people genetically rather than culturally or politically.  Sean Thomas stated that race is merely a social construct which constricts society into common boundaries. He suggested that we eliminate race in general for it has no apparent purpose. Alan Goodman stated that race is neither biological nor just a social construct but rather also an experience that society has to go through.

I think all three views are valid points but if I had to agree with one of the statements it would definitely be Alan Goodman's point. From all of the excerpts we have read that said there is barely any genetic variations when it comes to race, forces me to believe race is not at all genetic but a term created to divide people in order to create some sort of a hierarchy. The reason why I can not completely side with Sean Thomas' idea is that even though race has caused separation, animosity, violent backlash amongst races, teaching people to forget such is nearly impossible.

In my opinion, whether race is a genetic variation or a social construct, it shouldn't even matter. There's no reason for the human race to sub-classify themselves in order to create a social hierarchy. Apparently genetic science shows us that an Europeans genes are no different than an Africans. So what makes us different? Solely our external appearance. If I could decide what to do with the idea of race, I would not force later generations not to learn about it, I would teach how to accept all cultures which would lessen some of the animosities that society has today. Eventually humans are going to be a hodgepodge of mixed races so why not get accustomed to other "races" right now?

Homework #3

3. Human subspecies don't exist. Unlike many animals, modern humans simply haven't been around long enough or isolated enough to evolve into separate subspecies or races. Despite surface appearances, we are one of the most similar of all species.

I have always thought all races were irrelevant because we are all the same on the inside but I never thought of it as a process of evolution. This is a very interesting way of looking at race. When thinking of animals, they do not have races, they have different species. For example dogs, the don't have races, they have breeds and the difference between the breeds is that they are shaped differently because they have evolved and adapted to the terrain that they reside in. The only thing that separates humans is that skin color is different but no "race" has really adapted to their surronddings.

My Design

The reason why I made my blog the way it is because I want  people to look at my blog and say "Wow that's different" or "Wow, what was he thinking." Basically I want to go across the grain and have a design that is not "normal" or isn't a standard blog design. So that is why I picked the chickens as my background, I thought it would be different from the mass and set my blog apart from the others. The other stuff I added such as pictures, quotes, and other multimedia was just me trying out the blogspot site to see what cool stuff I could do with my blog, not much planning went into that part of the design. It was just trial and error and I ended up just keeping the media.