It’s that time of the semester. It’s getting cold, everyone is either in the library or their dorm room studying for the next big exam or writing that next big paper, and tension is generally high. With everyone speeding to the next place they have to be, it’s hard to sit down and have a conversation with anyone, let alone make meaningful progress on one of the many social issues plaguing our society. As such, I want to revisit an issue that occurred at the start of November, one that I missed in the process of making it to “x” lecture or finishing “y” lab report. On November 3rd, Maine became the 31st state to deny homosexuals the opportunity to marry as a result of a popular vote. When I heard about this the next day, the only response I could give was “Really?”
Popular vote is a great way to determine certain things, don’t get me wrong. If you are trying to decide if the Olympics should go to Chicago or Brazil, popular vote works just fine. When you are allowing a populace to determine innate human rights, someone has to be an adult and intervene when the “anti gay rights” bullies punch the “we’re people too” kids in the face. It is morally impermissible to allow the many to subjugate the few because of their differences. So I want to ask a question to anyone who voted to ban gay marriage in the 31 states that have done so: How does gay marriage affect you? Do you lose sleep at night because children are being raised by loving parents? Do you feel that if it’s legal, you have to get a gay marriage because it’s the new “it” thing?
This is a civil rights issue, just as the position of African Americans in the United States was a civil rights issue in the 1960’s and 70’s (and even today). Had popular vote determined the outcome back then would we have made any progress in equality? A higher body than the people had to step in. Particularly when the margin of victory for the populace is 53%, you are denying far too many people rights you take advantage of every day. I want to make it clear: I am not a homosexual; I have no stake in this other than the moral implications of an unjust system. So when you are studying for your exams, or writing your papers, take a few minutes to think about this issue, and be compassionate while doing so because our shortcomings as a society will be our legacy in future generations.
Single-payer, opt-out, free market, headache. Health in the United States is currently at its most critical crossroads in recent history, and despite calling upon the “fierce urgency of now,” the new face of health care in our nation seems to be unfolding at a snail’s pace. It is with good reason that this is: health care is largely an intersection of money and people, which means health care discussions often involve the prioritizing of people according to available funds. How can one possibly measure the needs of children, the elderly, the sick, and the healthy against one another?
The discussion on health care in the United States is intense, pressing, and confusing. As opposed to Boston, the West African country of Niger is home to the world’s highest fertility rate (over 7 children per woman), the world’s poorest conditions (ranking 179/179 on the UN’s Human Development Index), and a sky-high maternal mortality rate (with 1 in 6 women dying in childbirth).
Created with Admarket’sflickrSLiDR
In lieu of this reality, one must wonder how health care is approached in the most destitute conditions in the world. When children die in some villages at an estimated 50% rate before the age of 15, and when people routinely pass away due to infected cuts, burns, and scrapes, the priorities which are placed in rural health care often translates into a decision of life and death.
During a period in which health care is the most hotly debated topic in Washington, it is necessary to examine health care priorities in societies overall. In New York or Niamey, Boston or Bangalore, certain categories are always prioritized – from infectious disease to sexual health. What comes first in an environment of plenty? What comes first in an environment of little? Do these fundamental priorities remain the same?
A bit of advice for those of you planning to dress up like an “illegal alien” for Halloween: don’t! Halloween is supposed to be a time to get together with friends and act silly, not racist. So, please leave your sombreros, gold teeth, “Indian” feathers and blackface at home. I feel like we go through this every year, but some people – and even corporations – just don’t seem to get it.
This year, Target & Walgreens thought it was a good idea to have an “illegal alien” costume (pictured) for sale. The costumes were eventually pulled and according to an official Target statement, “It was never our intent to offend the consumers with the products we offer.” Of course, it never is. With that in mind, you may want to check out Amanda Hess’ “How to Inform a Friend Their Halloween Costume Is Racist.” Aside from being a hilarious post, it underscores the fact that we need to challenge this kind of behavior wherever we see it.
I am tired. I am tired of race, tired of skin color, tired of it all. These exhausted topics, in my eyes, are overrated. Race and skin color has predominated my college experience thus far. In high school, it wasn’t that big of an issue. The topics only arose as appropriate conversations during Civil War and 1960s chapters in history class. But it seems, now, it overrides my life. And it shouldn’t. Nor should it override yours.
Labels, whether assigned or self-assigned, segregate. Labels separate you from everyone else. It automatically makes you different. It automatically provides you with an agenda whether it’s to fight against those different from you or support the community of your label in every way possible.
I am Latina. I am proud of my heritage, but it is not everything I am. I am more than rice and beans, salsa music, and a language. I am my intelligence, my actions, my own person.
The box I check off should not determine the people I hang out with or the clubs I join. It should not shape my life to its own accord. I am in control. You are in control, too.
Although I completely understand the comfort of seeking those who “look like you” and share cultural similarities (I do it too), we need to push past the boundaries of our comfort zone. We need to trail blaze; create new paths instead of furrowing ourselves deeper into this hole.
Your culture or heritage should not be a heavy obligation or a burden on your back. It should be an asset to your life. It should be something that accents who you are, not something that swallows you whole.
Contribution to your community can be obtained through other means; it’s about what you do and how you do it.
If you are great at doing what you love, then your race or skin color should not matter.
Over here in BU’s International Development study abroad program, students spent a week embedded in the United States Peace Corps, plunged into the depths of poverty and heights of West African culture. Most of the time spent with our Peace Corps host volunteer, Khue, was spent touring her village of Gandassamou and predominantly hanging out with women. Because a more conservative form of Islam is practiced here, the social dynamics of Gandassamou (Khue’s village) were unlike any most of us have experienced before. Women and men have very different roles, both of which converge in the maintenance of a home. In a recent feature for The New York Times , Nicholas Kristof wrote:
“There’s a growing recognition among everyone from the World Bank to the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism. That’s why foreign aid is increasingly directed to women. The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution.”
It is difficult to capture into words the role that women play in Niger; in fact, it would be difficult to capture the role that any half of a population would play in a developing nation. The terms “feminism” and “empowerment” don’t seem to capture the priorities of our generation, and the words themselves sound like relics from the past, frumpy and outdated. We no longer live in the same fight for equality of prior generations, we have moved to the widely accepted reality that marginalizing 50% of a given population doesn’t make much sense, mathematically or socially. Enabling women to learn, create, and manage enterprises is not discussion of feminism, but rather a global strategy for development.
Is it possible to deny education to half a population and expect to be technologically innovative? Can global market-level competition be achieved without freedom of choice for one out of every two individuals? What if those individuals were primarily responsible for raising the next generation of leaders?
It is in this line of thought with which we approach the opportunities granted to women and their children, a clear departure from the “equality for equality’s sake” struggles of the past. This is a time of forward movement, and because societies tend to be as strong as their weakest player, one must look towards the marginalized in order to progress.
When the little boy asked President Obama, “Why do people hate you?” my jaw dropped. In an eloquent manner, this child was able to ask a question that showed a degree of wisdom and insight beyond his years. Why do people hate Obama? Or Bush? What is it about our culture that has us so terrified of the potential for change? Why does a deviation from the status quo terrify our rational faculties; is it due to the chaotic element of the unknown? Historically, any conception of change has terrified nations, whether it’s the change to give all people the right to vote, to legitimize thousands of unrepresented workers, or even to try to make our nation as a whole healthier.
The reason it terrifies us is because in not knowing what the realized outcome of change will be, we try to visualize the worst case scenario. Though this is a self preservation mechanism, it limits progress. Would we be able to fly if the Wright Brothers were afraid of falling out of the sky and becoming paralyzed, or if we had told them that the invention of the airplane would eventually eliminate people at Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Failure is always an option; even in the best thought out plans. When we limit our elected officials from success because the fear of failure that change COULD bring outweighs a rational discussion of improvements that should be made to an inadequate system, our society is handicapping itself. Change is a historical fact, and don’t hate those who are trying to promote it, embrace them.
Despite the fact that here malaria is as common as the flu, despite the fact that most sleep without a roof, and despite the fact that people’s stomachs aren’t as full as they’d like them to be, there exists an undeniable and unequivocal truth among the people of Niamey: they are happy.
It is neither a result of resignation to poverty nor an acceptance of such as a fact of life. On the contrary, it may be due to having little material distractions that communities here are better able to focus on true sources of contentment – such as each other’s presence. The warmth and familiarity of exchange among complete strangers is valued here.
Not long ago I was sitting in the home of a few friends here, talking about everything and nothing. We sat on woven mats, learning to make Nigerien tea and attempting to capture things often lost in translation. A friend named Ismael took a look at us and asked if these types of gatherings happened often in the United States. “Not really,” said Acca, “people just don’t have the time.” I imagined Ismael in the U.S., having a suited and eager college graduate asking him if working a 9-to-5 was typical in Niger. I imagined him responding; “Not really, we just don’t have the time.”
It’s obvious that in Niamey, social exchange is valued much more than economic exchange. This is not to say that poverty does not exist here – the fact that 1 in every 6 women will die in childbirth is unacceptable; that children cannot count on the survival of their siblings cannot be explained by differing social values. But where is the line between having less and choosing less? Inevitably this begs one, overarching question that continues to follow me around the streets of this developing city: What is poverty?
Student Ambassador Alexandria is currently studying abroad in Niamey, Niger with BU’s International Development program.
Three brutal beatings in a matter of day! What is going on America? An expert at the Center for Parenting on Fox news yesterday said that it is all stemming from the sensation that children are experiencing from the entertainment media, violent movies and the norm at an early age; adding that parents should start being more in control of what kids are watching on TV and browsing on the Web.
Wouldn’t that be great! Let me tell you, I’ve seen some pretty violent movies in my days! Not once have i ever had the urge to hurt anyone, let alone beat them to death! Today, the parents are always the first to blame whenever a child has an issue, and granted everything more or less starts at home but i think we need to start acknowledging that we live in a society nowadays that can be highly influential, even more so than the home!
Six children, sorry… “juvenilles”, between the ages of 11 and 14 beat up a grown adult while he slept because of his race! Simply seems like a hate crime to me. Yes we should sit and talk about how to improve parenting and the effect of the media on children thats causing such “sensation”, but shouldn’t we try to more than anything else find the origin of such hate within our society?
Since freshmen year, I’ve always had a pretty diverse group of friends. I was on a pre-med floor, which made it easy for me to get to know everyone because we were basically studying the same things. I went out and met a few other Latinos, as I definitely wanted to meet other people like me, but it’s not like my group of friends suddenly was dominated by one particular race. As a junior now, I’ve met many different people, but my core friends has not changed. I never really thought about the racial diversity I myself had set up until now, when I started listening to other upperclassmen talking about the “problem” with the new freshmen. I was like, “there’s a problem with the new freshmen?” Apparently, people feel that minorities in the current freshmen class are not as tight knit and active in their communities as they have been in the past.
I’ve been thinking about this conundrum a lot this weekend and really evaluating myself as a junior and how the relationships I have now were formed. I’ve also been trying to determine whether or not it’s a bad thing that minorities are associating with other races. The most important thing for incoming freshmen is for them to feel comfortable with their social environment in a way that matches their priorities. For me as a freshmen and sophomore, my priorities were to do well in my pre-med classes; many of my friendships grew out of that drive. So far as a junior, my priorities have been to meet new people and get more involved with the community. If a freshmen’s priority is to get to know their community they will go out of their way to do so. Each year students get more and more motivated; it becomes more competitive in classes and acceptance to the university, and as a function of that priorities shift. It may not be as important for freshmen to form those racial connections that many upperclassmen have, but isn’t that a sign that relations between the races in just a few classes have changed? If we’re seeing more diversity on campus but less division in the races, isn’t that a sign that progress is being made? It is important to build communities among the races, but it is also as important to build a community. It shouldn’t matter if it’s a community amongst Blacks, Latinos, dancers, basketball players, band members, physicists, pre-med students, or people who like the office, as long as Boston University is ensuring that the connections and communities are being made.
September 2008; the Class of 2012 showed their face on campus. I remember it like it was yesterday. All these freshmen, girls and guys (more so the girls though), all up in our sophomore, junior, and senior faces, introducing themselves and being extremely proactive. A vast majority of them seemed to want to get involved in everything. Specifically for the Howard Thurman Center’s Cultural Mentorship Program, a lot more freshman mentees than upperclassmen mentors came forward. Now, a lot of these 2012 students hold executive board positions in some of the organizations you see around….
Now, we can only sit and notice that things have changed. The Cultural Mentorship Program, which was so successful last year, faces a dilemma: For African Americans, the number of mentors who were interested in the program were above 30; freshman mentees…less than 10. So, what is going on?! Everybody feels itt. This change in dynamic is so apparent, seeing as how the African-American community is so small. I look around and see a TON of new black faces, either by themselves or chillin’ with their white friends. Don’t get me wrong; there’s ABSOLUTELY NOTHING wrong with that. As a matter of fact, I encourage it. That’s what BU is about: expanding your horizons and widening your peripherals. But, for the upperclassmen student leaders of these Cultural organizations, the question becomes, ‘How do we get you involved in our community as well?’
Trust me when I say, WE WANT YOU, FRESHMEN. We want your friendship; we want your support. We want you to have a good Boston University experience, exploring all cultures. As for myself, the Black Community is extremely important and I would love to strengthen it. Problem is, I need your assistance to do it….
A bit of advice for those of you planning to dress up like an “illegal alien” for Halloween: don’t! Halloween is supposed to be a time to get together with friends and act silly, not racist. So, please leave your sombreros, gold teeth, “Indian” feathers and blackface at home. I feel like we go through this every year, but some people – and even corporations – just don’t seem to get it.
Three brutal beatings in a matter of day! What is going on America? An expert at the Center for Parenting on Fox news yesterday said that it is all stemming from the sensation that children are experiencing from the entertainment media, violent movies and the norm at an early age; adding that parents should start being more in control of what kids are watching on TV and browsing on the Web.
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