Welcome to my blog.
Here you’ll find featured academic, professional, and personal writing.
Musing on Social Justice Research Practices During Family Feud
Our current climate does not allow space for the discussion around reliable data. How could it? We live in the era of “Fake News,” and the biggest secret I will divulge here is that while he is inherently wrong in how he uses the phrase, the leader of the free world has a point. He would know, considering his career has thrived this long on his relationship with the press. This relationship relied on the fact that the press would print whatever he told them, considering he actually spoke to them willingly. By being so forward, his actions were mistaken for transparency.Can a nation built on genocide ever be truly free of state-sanctioned violence?
The dominant narrative found in American history today drastically skews the truth of state-sanctioned violence and abuse of power at the hands of police to reinforce white supremacy. Through administration and enforcement, the criminal justice system and immigration system have both played into this narrative. This began with the birth of our nation and has not diminished, but rather changed in form, since then. It is going to take more than reform – we need to look at the entire picture and approach from that angle – if we are ever going to see a true escape from state-sanctioned violence.Deriving Purpose From Within
Personally, my definition of being successful is finding my purpose. After reading some definitions of purpose, I only became more rooted in my own. To me, my purpose is found in using my skill set to do the things that make the most sense to me. This means having a strong sense of self and knowing what I hold to be valuable in my life. This definition of success has changed drastically in recent years. I used to think of success as being financially stable, having a job, and being an independent adult. These came from family, society, and other outside influences. While these things do hold some merit, they are not where I derive my purpose from. Developing my self-awareness and knowledge has led me to my current definition, and it is one that I am incredibly satisfied with.“The Perfect Ask”
In the following proposal for this position, I outline the clearly defined outcome measures I have found that we share. These can be boiled down to three words found across three fields: conceptualization, consolidation, and communication in social determinants of health, community health, and LGBTQ+ health.Marx & the Education Crisis in Chicago
Education is a key factor in empowering the proletariat in their fight against the bourgeois. The bourgeois is aware of this, and because of this, they will not supply the wealth or power necessary to fix this crisis, because it would make working class a little too powerful for the capitalist’s liking. This educational crisis will remain the way that it is in order to continue the oppressive hold the bourgeois has over the proletariat, and the only way to solve this crisis would be when the bourgeois feels that they need the proletariat’s help in the political arena, for it is then that they will provide the working class with the general education that they so desperately need.The Grass Is Greener On The Other Side: An Autoethnography
Education is “the central means by which a society transmits its knowledge, values, and expectations to its members” (Ferris & Stein). From a sociological perspective, this statement resonates through my educational experiences. I’ve learned a lot from the education system, and I have experienced outside forces playing a role in my own schools. In elementary school, I was a part of a referendum and the introduction of the “No Child Left Behind” Act. In high school, I experienced what it was like to be in one of the poorest schools in our district, due to the crash of the housing market. These experiences have opened my eyes to the quality of education I was given versus the people I encounter now, who come from varied other backgrounds. I was made aware of not only the fragility of the educational system, but also the massive influence education has on every person.How White Supremacy Led Donald Trump to The White House
Among these white supremacist policies on the campaign trail, one stood out the most: radical immigration reform. The most extreme part of this policy was to build a wall along the southern border of the United States, in order to keep undocumented immigrants from traveling over the border into the United States. Donald Trump painted a picture of “Making America Great Again”, which essentially meant trying everything he could to make sure that the majority population of the United States remain white. This notion led him to the White House.The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
In the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot paints a daunting picture of the ethics (or lack thereof) that consisted of the 1950’s medical profession, and the toll it took on the survivors Henrietta left behind.Bourdieu & U.S. Society
Our society thrives on competition and conflict. We are constantly fighting over resources, and those who dominate their fields have the most control over those resources. They build their networks in order to maintain their control over these resources to ensure that anyone they feel shouldn’t have access to these resources won’t. This only leads to more competition and conflict, because the people who have the most capital rig the doxa to ensure that they continue to gain more and more capital. This then ensures that those in the lower classes with less capital will have a much harder time gaining more capital, if they even can at all.Animate Planet
This book is phenomenal. Kath Weston does a great job of digging in deeper at why the current responses posed to climate change are ineffective. They are based around keeping industry’s discourse, and with that discourse surviving, then we will not be able to actually respond to climate change.No Is Not Enough
This book is a breath of fresh air in terms of arming those who read it with the necessary knowledge and tools to move forward in the right direction towards radical cultural change. I felt inspired and awakened by the end of the book, and truthfully during the last chapter was almost moved to tears. I was in awe at the the fact that I had finally found what I was looking for in this book – a blueprint for social change. It finally didn’t overwhelm me or leave me feeling depressed. It inspired me to think of how I wanted to see our culture and country, and what could be done to get there. The daunting task of changing our culture loses its menace through her knowledge and experience. It was a great book that fully addressed the issues we face equally with solutions.Conservation is Our Government Now
My first question is to think, are we just pushing capitalism on them in the form of “saving the environment”? How do we think this will possibly work? Does no one care about the cultural that existed before we came here, and who is going to stop us from erasing it completely? (We, as in Westernized culture seeking economic development.)Greenroof and Greenwall Project Expansion in Chicago
I propose that we re-visit the Greenroof and Greenwall project to see if the initial cost of the garden could be reduced in anyway while maintaining the amount of money saved. Not only could this be a great financial opportunity for the city, but it would have a great impact on the environment as well as generate essential revenue for the state.Interest in Bioethics
After I learned about the Tuskegee Study, my interests have increased within different areas of biomedical ethics. While learning about patient’s rights, I found that there can be many gray areas that bring about a lot of concern for patients. This can cause many patients to stop seeking treatment, or to have a bias against physicians. These areas can be corrected with proper research and awareness, which is what I have involved myself in.On W.E.B Du Bois
He recognized class struggle, gender relations, family relations, work and occupational force, crime, economics, even power. As an African-American man, he understood why he was being suppressed. But, to this day, we still study all of the above social forces and turn to empirical evidence to prove our theories. W.E.B Du Bois claimed it was his duty to put the science in sociology. I believe he achieved his goal, considering there is still science in sociology to this day. The fact that he was written out just proves his findings further.