Week 6: Diversity and Inclusion 2 - 'Documented' and 'White People'

Hello to anyone and everyone that is reading this! Before I dive into the this week's topic, it is time for a quick rundown of my week. The week started off like any other with a routine schedule of classes and assignments to do. The week started to get interesting once I got to Thursday. On Thursday morning, I had an exam for my Geography class which I thought went relatively well. In my Engineering Processing Lab later in the afternoon, I made too deep of a cut on a certain part which basically means that the dimensions of the final product will not line up to what it should be. I was supposed to have a flag football game after that class but it ended up getting cancelled due to the other team not being able to attend. Besides those things, the week went pretty smoothly and nothing over the top happened. Now to get to the topics discussed in my FYE class.

Our discussions and readings for this week were a continuation of last week's topic. Before class on Wednesday, we had to watch the films Documented and White People which based on the titles would  generate some interesting in-class discussions on Monday and Wednesday. On Monday, we discussed the film Documented and our views and opinions on it. The film was centered around a man by the name of Jose Antonio Vargas. Jose was born in the Philippines and came to the United States at the age of 12 to live with his grandparents. While he came to the United States, he did not come to the United States through legal terms. Jose did not find this out about himself until he was 16 years old when he was trying to obtain his driver's license. Jose came out as a 'undocumented immigrant' through the article named 'Outlaw' in the New York Times. Since then, Jose has been fighting against the media and laws in order to give undocumented immigrants like himself paths to citizenship. The film was pretty solid overall except for the fact that Jose has been pushing off most connections and any forms of communication his mother. I was acknowledging Jose's viewpoints and pushes for better  laws towards undocumented immigrants but the situation with his mother kind of hindered my ability to support Jose and the causes he was pushing towards. I felt like Jose was taking out his frustrations and sadness with his situations in the United States out on his mother. While I can understand that Jose can not handle the topic about his mother, I think that he should have dealt with his mother the way that he did.

Before Wednesday's class, I took the time to look over a short interview of a lady by the name of Pam Gonzalez. This interview was done by the website defineamerican.com, and they asked what it means to be an American. Pam claimed that an American is a person with their own personal story that does not bring down other people down and their personal stories. I agree with Pam's statement as the American population as of today if filled with people of every background and increases the diversity within our country.

On Wednesday, our class went reviewed the film White People and talked about other modern day issues revolving around races. The film was hosted by Jose Antonio Vargas, and Jose went around to several different places to inspect the lifestyle and opinions of white people in today's society. The film jumped around a lot as it did not have a centralized goal or point. Despite this, the film had some great points and statistics regarding the position of white people in society today. While white people heavily populated the United States in the past, 'whites' are emerging as a new minority as less than 50 percent of the high school graduation class of 2015 which was 4 years ago so that means the population of white people in the United States continues to shrink as many different people of many different backgrounds come into the United States. After discussing the film, we were put into student groups to discuss the two films we watched over the last week and tackle questions regarding them. I had some solid discussions with Gracie and Enysa as we pretty much highlighted the topics and general concepts of both films.

Personal Reflection

I was not heavily intrigued and involved with discussing and giving feedback this week as I typically do not want to say anything contradictory or something that may come out my mouth the wrong way. Despite this, the lessons from this week also provide me with the opportunity to listen and view the situations and modern problems that other people are dealing with and how those problems and situations can or does affect me. 

Thank you for reading my blog once again and here are the references for the pictures and videos mentioned and used. 

Sources:

www.defineamerican.com

www.time.com

www.cnn.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zjj1PmJcRM