Memes and Whatnot

Here's me, chilling on my bed scrolling through TikTok like the lifeless person I am, and I stumble upon this:  https://vm.tiktok.com/H3wkPv/ . I highly recommend y'all watch this, if you don't this entire blog post will have no context. Claiming that I'm Hispanic, I mean this in no offense to Hispanic people, will help me get into college. After some researching, aka reading a Vox article on this, I stumbled upon this image:  To most people, the above infographic shouldn't come as a surprise. We all have the notion that race does in fact play a role in college admission, and this study by Princeton researchers proves it. Don't get me wrong, I think affirmative action is definitely a step in the right direction in the efforts of reducing de facto racism in America, however, I truly believe that there are better ways to be going about this. To address the issue of why do something other than affirmative action, the answer is quite simple: it doesn't work...

Years of high unemployment rates let to underemployment for those who were working, and this led to more unemployment for those who were not working. Gas prices were also incredibly high, regardless of the fact that oil prices were dropping. This then lead to high food prices and higher health care costs. You might be confused as to what this is about, this is about the unattainability of the American Dream. The American Dream relies upon a key concept that people can make enough money to get themselves out of whatever dire situation they are in and with enough hard work they are able to move up the socio-economic ladder. Well think again buckaroo. Here's a little graph comparing minimum wage to the GDP. What do you see? What I see is that our country is becoming more and more prosperous, which leads to increasing cost of living, but a minimum wage that isn't keeping up with this. We now live in a world where working minimum wage means that you are earning far less money t...

The Great Gatsby highlights the disparity between the upper and the lower classes of society. The disparity between classes is extremely visible in the United States. Poverty, the classic marker of the lower class is a constant, self-propagating cycle. We start the poverty cycle with a family in poverty. This family in poverty cannot afford to properly educate their children. These children continue their lives with sub-par education, which leads them to make sub-par decisions. They are more likely to choose not to pursue higher education, which then leads them to struggle to find jobs. Their inability to find jobs means they struggle to earn enough money to get out of the poverty threshold. They then start a family, which just continues the cycle of poverty over and over and over again. There is a couple of welfare programs that the government can instill to help alleviate the problem of poverty. Obviously, the easiest way to get people out of poverty is to simply provide them w...

Okay so you might be wondering what type of title that is, and in all fairness, I have no idea either. The title comes from my first reaction to reading on page 337 when Milkman "leaped". I personally thought what Milkman did was probably the stupidest thing he could've done. Yeah I get it Toni, you need to be all symbolic and come full circle, but come on, no one is that stupid.  On to the assigned part of this blog. If Vsauce existed back in the 60's, Guitar probably thought of the exact same thing I did. I can only imagine that he was extremely confused by Milkman's actions. I'm assuming everyone knows the saying "Don't bring a knife to a gunfight", Milkman was the type of guy to bring just himself to a gunfight. If Guitar could read what Morrison wrote about Milkman's leap, I think he'd also be confused by how a person could be "bright".  Again, I get it Ms. Morrison, symbolism, but c'mon he's an African ...

I think it is astounding at how desperate some people can get in their search for riches. Milkman traveled so far away from home in search of something that he wasn't even sure was there. I think it was quite ironic that Milkman was wealthy enough to afford the trip all the way down to Philadelphia, and he was able to simply carry $500 worth of cash in his pocket, but yet he still craved for more money. What stood out to me was that Milkman was so ignorant during his search for the gold. He simply gets out a lighter and takes about 30 seconds looking for the gold. What I think he should've done is went back to town, rested up for a bit and collected the tools that he needed to succeed in his search for the gold. If he had just went out and bought a shovel as well as a proper flashlight, there seems to have been a good chance that he would've found the gold. I thought it was also incredibly dumb of him to just tuck his tail between his legs and run off to Virginia in hopes o...

I understand that this book has so much hidden meaning, and the amount of detail that you can get from reading between the lines is astounding. But regardless of that, this is such. a. weird. book. like what even. A mother who breast feeds her four year old son? A daughter who sucked on her dead father's fingers? First cousins who are kids who sleep together for 14 years? That's just messed up. The concept of first cousins being together isn't so far out of the realm of possibility - Einstein married his first cousin. But I find it out that they were kids when they were sleeping together. The first time they sleep together, Milkman is a minor, while Hagar is an adult, that's very messed up. What I found extremely interesting however, is that Milkman gives Hagar money when he breaks up with her. Their relationship was focused a lot on the physical aspect of love - sex. This made it almost seem like Milkman was paying Hagar for sex, which reminded me of prostitution. ...

I was struck by how relatable the last source was in our packet of sources (the one where the news reporters minimize something that is much more important than something else). Many of us, including me, get the majority of our information about the daily goings of the world from the news, and usually, the first thing we see about something shapes our opinion about that something. There have been countless cases of bias in mass media; one of the biggest perpetrators,  Fox News. Fox News has become something of a State TV for the president. Fox News' reporting has become so skewed in favor of the republican party, their reporting is not to be trusted. This is due to a variety of reasons: the president is an avid viewer of the channel, he regularly quotes them, Sean Hannity, a political host on Fox, has close ties with the president, the president's previous DoC and DCoS was the copresident of Fox. What this has led to is the continual defense of the President's actions, ...