Book post 4

I'm still reading the book Kasher in the Rye.  A lot has happened in the past couple chapters.  Moshe has gotten a ticket for vandalism and spraying graffiti.  He also has started using harder drugs like inhalents and acid.  He has begun selling drugs too.  "'I'm fucked, man.  That kid  Justin had a fucking heart attack.'  It seemed hard to believe.  This tiny piece of paper had somehow short-circuited a kid's fragile little coronary system."  (Kasher 122)  Moshe didn't know that acid wasn't good for people with heart problems, and had accidentally sold acid to someone with a messed up heart.  I've heard a lot of things about how bad acid is for you, like how some of the chemical can get stored in your back and when you crack your back a certain way you release the chemicals which can make you trip years after you originally took acid.  Moshe just doesnt seem to know when to quit.  He is messing up his life more and more.  He talks down on people older than him saying they are losers who won't get anywhere in life, but the sad thing is that it doesnt seem like he is going to go anywhere in life either at this rate.  Moshe has a lot of growing up to do if he wants to turn his life around.

Post #3

I am still currently reading Kasher in the Rye.  Moshe just told one of his old friends who moved out of Oakland and into a suburb that he smoked weed.  His friend, Richard, told Moshe that he had to quit smoking weed or they wouldn't be friends anymore.  "'I can't be your friend if you do drugs.  You have to choose.  That shit of me.' I never saw Richard again." (Kasher 66)  Doing drugs can destroy families and friendships.  Weed shouldn't come between friends.  This book also brings religion into play.  Moshe's father is forcing him and his brother to be jewish.  "My brother and I went the exact opposite way with Judaism."  (Kasher 69)  Since Moshe is being forced in to being Jewish he is rebeling against his fathers wishes.  I as a child was not baptized by my fathers wishes because he wanted me to choose my own religion.  I think that this was very bold and smart of him.  Religion shouldn't be forced upon someone. 

Post 2

I am still reading the book Kasher in the Rye by Moshe Kasher.  He is about twelve years old at this point is has no friends.  He is looking for social acceptance since he is currently an outcast.  He turns to smoking and stealing cigarettes from the local food mart.  He then starts hanging out with older boys who also smoke cigarettes.  They then start hazing him and making him do horrible things in order to gain their acceptance.  "Every P.A.G. initiation ritual I went through was somehow deemed insufficient afterward and then they'd ask me to perform some other pain ritual or sexual humiliation in order to be acepted in."  (Kasher 59)  This can be related to alot of people who go into college wanting to be accepted.  Someone joins a fraternitiy because they want to be accepted by people but then they have to do painful and humiliating things to themselves.  Do you really want to be accepted by people who justt want to see you get hurt? Also Moshe smokes weed for the first time.  "I smoked and smoked and every hit chipped away another part of my life...puff puff... gone were my worries."  (Kasher 62)  People think that smoking weed will just make all of your troubles go away.  People use marijuana as an escape from reality, but not all of the long term effects of weed are known.  I find that this book is very interesting.  Even though I don't have a hard a troublesome life like Moshe does, there are some parts of this book that I can relate to.

New book

For my outside reading I am reading the book Kasher In the Rye, by Moshe Kasher.  This book is the story of Moshe Kasher a young troubled boy from Oakland, California.  At this poing in the story we have found out all about his family.  Both his parents are deaf and he, his mom, and his big brother ran away from their father at around age 4 because he was abusive.  We also learn that Moshe has anger management issues and must see a therapist.  "Six-year-old therapy looked like this: Ruben would hand me a Nerf sword and I would beat him as savagely as I could around the legs, buttocks, and genitalia." (Kasher 12)  Moshe would attack people, even complete strangers, this became so bad that his mother had to put him on a leash everytime they went out.  Also while he was a baby, Moshe drank a bottle of his mothers perfume and had to be taken to the hospital, which can easily be assumed that it is foreshadowing what is soon to come.   This book is kind of slow in the beginning but later on it starts to pick up with drug use and more violence.  I am really excited to keep reading this book.

Trayvon Martin case

Lately I have been hearing a lot about the Trayvon Martin case in the news.  But I didnt really know what had happend.  Reading the Rolling Stone article gave me a lot more information.  Supposedly George Zimmerman was acting in self defense by killing Trayvon Martin, and his actions are protected by Floridas Stand Your Ground law, which lets you more or less kill someone if it is an act of self defense.  George Zimmerman said that Trayvon Martin had come up to his car while he was in it.  But somethings don't add up, why would a teenager say to someone "you're going to die now" while in a brawl with that person.  But Zimmerman supposedly suffered from a broken nose and a scratch on his forehead from the fight with Trayvon. 
George Zimmerman was just charged with Second Degree Murder yesterday.  The maximum penalty if found guilty is life in prison.  I believe that if what George Zimmerman says holds up to be true in court, I think that he will be found innocent.  But right now he is one of America's most hated men, and even if he is found innocent I dont't think he will ever really be able to return back into normal society.  I also feel that the community is making a bigger deal out of this than they really should just because Zimmerman is white and hispanic.  Obviously killing someone is a big deal, but when a black person kills a black person, it doesn't become national news, I think that people like Jesse Jackson are just trying to start a race war, because someone who isn't black killed someone who is black.

Affirmative Action

I do think that colleges should use affirmative action.  I think that the diversity of schools should be much bigger.  It seems that most great schools are usually all white, with Asians being a close second.  "At the University of Michigan, Jennifer Gratz decided to sue the school (and ultimately won) because the year she was rejected, around a hundred blacks, Latinos, and American Indian students were admitted despit having lower test scores and grades than her." (Wise 75)  I personally admire the University of Michigan for admitting minorities over some white students in ordder to gain more diversity.  I wouldn't want to go to an all white school because I would want to go to a school with more than just white people.  I don't think that a school should be allowed to get sued just because they admitted someone who has lower test scores than someone else.  A university should be able to admit whoever they want to.  When you bring in more minorities, the minorities can bring more to the table than a bunch of white people, I do not mean that in a racist way, I mean it in a way that white people generally have it easier that minorities, since a lot of minorities live in the inner-city, and have it a lot harder than us.  In order for a minority to succeed, they must try a lot harder, because they usually do not have the same amount or quality of resources that we do here in a place like Deerfield.  Overall, I do think that race should play a part in the admissions process at colleges.

Wrongful Convictions

After reading going to the wrongful convictions website and listening to Terril Swift speak to us in class, I have a better understanding on just how much people are wrongfully convicted.  Terril Swift was obviously an innocent man, but police detained him for so long that he confessed to the rape and murder of a woman.  It seemed that the police used illegal ways to make Terril confess to the crime.  Terill didn't know his rights so he signed the confession.  Terill served seventeen years in prison, until DNA evidence showed that he was not the killer of the woman.  Terill told us that it's practically impossible to make a living while a sex offender.  I don't know why the state of Illinois would classify him as a sex offender even after he was proven innocent.  I don't know if the police officers who treated Terill so badly did it because of his race or what, but they should be prosecuted for forcing him to confess.  I think that DNA evidence is very helpful and should be used no matter what, in every case.

Denial

              I read the chapter on denial, this chapter goes into detail of how white america denies the fact that there is still racism in the USA. Many whites believe that when the blacks got their civil rights, racism somehow ended automatically.  This, sadly is not the case, racism is  still out in America.  Another topic of this chapter is about the myth of reverse racism.  Whenever a white person doesn't get a job because they were competing against a black person, they say it's because they need to get more black people working for them to increase diversity.  At the University of Michigan, a white girl sued the university because about 100 blacks, Latinos, and American Indians who had lower grades and test scores were admitted while she was not.  She even won the case.  But also about 1000 white people with lower grades and tests scores were also admitted.  The article tells us hat what we think is racism against us is really just coincidence and others just being better at some things.
             Another part of this chapter is looking back on when the author traveled to give an anti-racism speech at a college outside Twin Cities, Minnesota.  When he got there the author asked three white liberals about racism on campus, they told him there was no racism on campus or anywhere in Minnesota.  The author then talked to blacks, Latinos, and American Indians, and as he thought, there was racism not only on campus, but in Minnesota.  There are no places with racism, racism will always be in America. 
              Personally I think that whites know that there is racism in America and they just either don't want to admit it, or they don't admit it in hopes that will hide the racism.  Everybody has slight stereotypes that they may even be unaware of, and therse stereotypes will never go away.  Racism will always be denied by whites, because they just don't want to believe that we havent gotten over things that began 500 years ago.

Response to the article on Forbes

I do agree with this post.  The key to being succesful is getting good grades.  There aren't too many succesful people that didn't get good grades.  Mostly everyone who got good grades tried hard.  Another way to be succesful is to try where others fail.  The resources for inner city kids are not always there, a way to help inner city kids is to give them the resources they need in order to be succesful, such as a library or teen youth center.  I think that for someone to do all the things the author of this article said he would do is highly unlikely.  He mentions using skype and other online services, the odds of being a poor kid with a computer camera to video chat or skype with other people is unlikely.  I do agree with the author on somethings but I feel like he just shouldn't talk about this unless he has been in the situation of being a poor black kid.  Because obviously if everyone knew all they needed to do was get good grades to be succesful  they would all do it, but there usually is something else that plays into the mix that prevents them from being succesful.
After reading the responses, I completly agree with some of the stuff they said.  What is the difference between being a poor white kid than being a poor black kid, the resources aren't there for either.  Its not as easy as just going to the library studying, and getting good grades.  I also agree that the author shouldn't have even written that article, it is just going to start a lot of contraversy that doesn't need to be started, it just sound ignorant of him to be talking about that kind of stuff because he has no idea what it would be like to be a poor black kid.

Racial Bias

The test that I took tells me that I have a slight automatic preference for white people compared to blacks.  I think that this just shows that there is a racial bias in a lot of people, making it take longer to associtate blacks with good things.  I grew up in a more diverse setting in St. Louis where there was still racism but people weren't uncomfortable around other races.  Here I find that people don't feel comfortable around people of other races.  I'm not suprised that it said that I was slightly biased towards blacks, almost everyone has some sort of bias.  I have no clue why it said I was bias, I guess I just took longer to select blacks with good words.  Obviously everyone has sterotypes, whether it be towards people of other races or people of the opposite sex, everyone has them.  Deep in the back of our minds we associate things together.  Like if we see on the news that a black man commited a crime, we start thinking that all black people are bad, even though they are not. I don't ever think that our sterotypes and bias' will ever go away.

Last Post

I'm finally done with this book.  Bill is finally done with cocaine.  He started a new job at a different publishing agency and still works there today.  He and his father have rekindled their relationship and talk frequently.  Bill is still with Noah even though he cheated on him many times.  The book doesn't go in depth in how he started using cocaine, just that he started in college.  I really enjoyed reading this book.  In a way it is a scare tactic to keep people away from hard drugs like cocaine.  I can't imagine how horrible it must be to use cocaine and to lose the trust of everyone you know.  This book is unlike any that I have ever read, because it's a memoir and everything in it is the brutally honest truth.  He tells us the worst of what happend to him during this time in his life.  He holds nothing back from the reader and just gives it to us straight.  I would definitly recommend this book to a friend just as a outside read because it's crazy what drugs like cocaine can do to you. 

Post 4

It turns out that Bill did go through with rehab.  He spends four weeks in rehab in Portlan, Oregon.  We find out that his family has a had many generations of drug and alcoholism on both his mom and dads' side of the family.  A few months after being clean he finds a used crack stem and smokes the leftover residue from the stem.  A few days later he calls up his drug dealer and spends $600 on cocaine.  Bill then asks himself why he ever left smoking.  This shows that a drug users abuse is usually reoccuring.  He blows off all of his appointments and lies to people.  He goes to a film festivle he promised to go to but only stays one day instead of two.  He is throwing away his life so that he can smoke.  He becomes increasingly paranoid that he is being watched by police and even questions suicide.  He overdoses and is sent to the hospital.  He then goes to a psychiactric hospital with a rehab center.  So far this book has had many twists.  Right when you think that Bill is finally going to turn his life around and do some good, he goes and smokes and everything just becomes hell for him and his family.

Post #3

Right now in the book, Bill is still a heavy drinker and uses cocaine.  But he is starting to go back to his publishing company that he owns.  His company is miraculosly making decent profit from a book that they recently published.  One night to celebrate a book publishing he drinks to much goes home wakes up and his boyfriend Noah tells him that his sister and two other close friends are there for an intervention sort of thing.  "I don't struggle, not yet.  I am quiet and cooperative as each of them, in turn-- Kim, Kate, Noah, David- tells me they will support my getting sober but won't support me, won't have anyrhing to do with me, if i continue to use." (Clegg 181)  I find this part very emotional and interesting mainly becuase I'm curious as to what Bill is going to do.  In the past they have told him to sober up but he has never gone through with it.  But now that they are all threatening to leave him, he realizes that he must make a choice to either keep using drugs, or to have his family with him.  The next couple of chapters will definitly be interesting.

Book Post 2

I am currently about 3/4ths done with Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man by Bill Clegg.  Bill is currently in a hotel room where he is with a man that he met at an airport.  They first begin drink alcohol and after a couple hours they start doing crack/cocaine.  While doing the drugs, Bills boyfriend calls him on his cell phone asking where he is.  His boyfriend, Noah, correctly assumes that he is doing cocaine, and demands that he go back home immediatly, thus showing that Bill does have people who care about him and want him to stop using the drugs.  Bill then hangs up on his boyfriend and starts a one night relationship with the man from the airport.  This shows that these kinds of drugs can destroy relationships with friends and family.  The next morning Bill discovers that alltogether he has less than $30,000 dollars in the bank.  He has spent all of his money on buying cocaine for himself and people that he does the drugs with.  He also somehow manages to help his mother with her finances that came with divorcing his father a few years before.  The drug abuse by Bill was a major factor in the downfall of his parents marriage. 

Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man

I am reading the book Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man, which is a memoir written by Bill Clegg.  Bill Clegg is a cocaine addict, an alcoholic, and a homosexual.  I am halfway done with the book so far, and a lot has happend.  Bill does crack-cocaine regularly and cannot control his urges to smoke it.  He smokes in public restrooms, such as in airports and restaurants.  He also does crack with random people that he meets, such asa taxi drivers.  The life of a crack-cocaine addict doesn't seem to be a very good life.  Bill used to own his own publishing company that he has driven into the ground because of drug abuse.  He spends all of his money on cocaine, almost every day he pulls 2,000 dollars out of his bank account to be spent on cocaine.  The book shows how drug abuse can destroy relationships, families, jobs and confidence.  He knows that he needs help but whenever somone tries to help him he just shuts them down. People in our society need to know that people do care about their drug abuse, but they also need to carry out the rehabilitation process.  So far this book seems really interesting.

Invisible Children

One thing that really stuck out to me during the video we watched is how it took seventeen years for this war going on in Africa to really get noticed by the media.  You would think that a war where kids and civilians are being killed and abducted would make the front page news everyday, but before Invisible Children was created hardly anybody knew of the war going on in central Africa.  I think that this program is doing a lot of good in giving the people of Africa a voice, but I think that the real goal should be to deploy more troops to central Africa.  Last month Obama sent 100 troops to Uganda to help out, but I think that he should send more.  I don't really think that the crisis tracker and protection plan help out that much, I think that the best thing to do would be to take action against the LRA.  I like the fact that we are helping out the Invisible children foundation.