Race in America

I have researched about the current controversy which is surrounding the building of the Islamic mosque in New York City. I have an opinion about the whole situation, I didn't want the mosque to be built quite that close to ground zero, but it could be built. Then I watched a news video from ABC news online about the controversy and it has come to my attention that there are many ways to look at the situation. In this video it was said by a woman named Lisa Miller, "Politicians are using the controversy to their advantage. The main issues are that there is sacred ground, 9/11 families still mourning, the religion of Islam, terrorism. All of these things combined are the perfect way for a politician to further their agenda." I thought about this and my opinion changed. I think that she is right and this is just to gain publicity for some people. Here in America we have the right to freedom of religion.

Once the freedom of religion was brought up in the video another man was spoken to and he goes by the name of Rabbi Matthew D. Gewirtz. During the online news video he stated, "We need to have our basic right for religious beliefs. These beliefs cannot intertwine with violence or hatred though." Gewirtz also stated that he is concerned that hatred does exist and added that another mosque dispute is occurring further west. This controversy is starting for the same reason this one is, the mosque wants to expand but many people do not agree with this. This might be due to the fact that America might be "racist", in a sense, towards the religion of Islam. I think this because of the fact that if a Church wanted to be built two blocks away from ground zero there would be no problems. In fact there would be no protests or disputes over the matter. This doesn't just go for ground zero either. If a Church wanted to be expanded on the west coast there also wouldn't be any protests or words of hate being thrown around. This makes me question Americas' morality.

There are many issues that have surfaced in this national debate. Including the ones with the politicians using the publicity on the news, and the hatred leaving the ground zero site in New York City and occurring all the way in the Western United States. This has raised much dispute and it is wondered by many what will be done. If the people who want the mosque to be moved "win" then this might go against our ways of our belief in our freedom of religion. If they don't move the mosque then this will continue to grow, in my opinion, into a much bigger problem. So basically this is a no win situation.

This controversy has grown even bigger and continued to move throughout the nation. A man by the name of Pastor Terry Jones has sparked so much controversy because he wants 09/11/10 to be an international burn a Koran day. People who worship and read from the Koran have been outraged and I don't blame them. It is said that he is considered the enemy of Islam and Jones has even been sent numerous death threats but yet he is continuing with his plans. He is on the news almost everyday and is gaining global recognition. Maybe what Miller is saying is true. Some people can be said to be using the controversy for their own personal hidden agenda. Maybe Terry Jones has a hidden agenda and will be making big money down the road because of what he is doing now. He could be using this global publicity for personal reasons. We don't know if this is true or not and this is the problem. If it is then what do we do? Well one thing we can do is punish him. That would be first and foremost. After this is done we can take responsibility for what he has done to this country and apologize to the people it has offended and this would just be the start.

The outrage that Jones has caused has reached out all the way to the war that the United States is fighting over seas. General David Petraus had this to say, "This puts our soldiers at jeopardy." Now there have been reports of physical harm put upon the soldiers already because of Jones. There have already been attacks. Reports were given that stones were thrown at a military vehicle. If this is happening before the deed has even been followed through with then who is to say what people will do once just one Koran gets burned. Jones claims that Islam is of the devil but who is the real one? Jones also stated that is Jesus were here he would do the same thing that he is doing because once again he states that Islam is of the devil. How is just one man supposed to know what a whole people think together? I have never heard of Jesus being cruel to other people and especially of their differences whether they are religion or skin color. He thought of mankind as a whole and not as one man alone to face to world by himself.

Now that these two problems are occurring within religion there is the issue of immigration. It is thought of to be a major problem just with the Mexican/American border but what about when immigrants of the Islamic religion are trying to get into the country illegally? What would we do then? We would probably try to send them away and say that we consider them terrorists. Now there is a common thread tying all of these stories together and that is the thread of religion. Religion seems to tie everything together and it does. Almost every thing on Earth can be connected to religion. This thread that intertwines the mosque near ground zero, the burning of the Korans' by Pastor Terry Jones, and the immigration laws here will always remain. We as a whole people just have to figure out how to un-tangle it together.

Cultural Underpinnings of Literature

There are many religions throughout the world. The list goes on and on and will continue to grow, this goes for the whole world, not just here in America. Many people sometimes consider religion as a superstition, especially in most schools across the whole of the United States. When religion is brought up inside a public school in the United States it is either ignored entirely or asked to never be spoken of again. Besides this unfortunate fact, religion has shaped everything there is to shape in history. Religious beliefs across the world are growing stronger and larger. It is also turning into many controversies rather than a good thing like uniting mankind under many beliefs. Religion should unite the people not destroy them because of their differences. This is a fact that some people believe but not many follow.

The Judeo-Christian paradigm in Western Civilization is what happens when both of these religions were brought to the Western Civilization from the European area. When these religions were brought over this dramatically changed America forever, it was a new chapter in Her history. Over the many years that people had been coming to America and colonizing it it has changed into a world where there are many different religions everywhere you look. This is ok though because it proves that people are starting to think for themselves about what seems to be right or what is wrong. Human beings are the only living things that have the ability to self reflect, this shows that we have to learn what is right or wrong. If we do this that means we can think for ourselves what is right of wrong in our lives. We have the power to make decisions. We also have the power to make that decision and choose what religion we want to follow. This may be good or bad, there are examples of both throughout the course of history. For example, wars have been fought and peace has also crossed the minds of many people because of the fact that religion exists.

What has been changed the most in America because of religion is politics. There are people called democrats and republicans, which are two totally different things because of the fact that religion exists. Republicans tend to be old fashioned, an example of this would be that they do not like President Barack Obama just because he is black and from a Muslim background (note: he has never stated that he follows this religion personally but it was followed within his family). The democrats tend to be more on the "laid back" side. They go with the flow and support Obama because there is nothing wrong with growing up with a Muslim background. They also support him because he is not trying to take over our country and change it he is simply trying to do better and support our country every step of the way.

The cultural and religious beliefs that have shaped America over the past 200 hundred years are the Christian religion and its culture. They have changed America by shaping its politics and general way of living. Christianity is the biggest religion that is being followed here in the United States. Our politics are based off of it, according to the way that the democratic and republican parties work. Our culture is starting to tell us that this is the "best" religion out there and it is to be followed by everyone. This is the way that Christianity is being portrayed here in the United States. History is starting to repeat itself, like when the Europeans came here and started to change the natives’ people religion by force. The same thing is happening again now because this is how religion is being portrayed, just without the force.

The relationship between these beliefs and the culture, politics, religious tolerance and race relations in the United States in 2010 is hard to explain. Race relations in the United States in 2010 is thought of to be cacausion people follow Christian beliefs, people from the Asian area follow Buddhist, Muslim, or Hindu religion. All other people are supposed to pick and choose. The bigger and major religions are trying to get everyone they can to follow their religion. It is important to understand that every human being has the right to choose the way they will continue their life. Even now there are some parents that will let their teens explore the different religions that exist. The parent may want their child to choose the same way of worship as them but should understand that it is ok to choose different.

The cultural religious beliefs of one group have confronted and impacted the religious beliefs and cultures of another group. This seems to happen all the time. Throughout the entire world history there have been so many wars and battles fought that have been sparked by cultural religious beliefs. This usually happens because one will believe in Saints and another one won't, just as an example. Or another example will be that one believes in heaven or in God in general and the other won't. The key word here is believe. It's all in belief and the faith that people carry with them. It causes so many outbursts. There are so many examples that can be used for the confrontation started by religion. The question is, is there really a God? If so, what is he like? This is the question that people have been asking for eternity.

The clash of Western religious thought and culture impacted the Indigenous communities of New Mexico and the Southwest by changing the major religion that is followed here. Christianity is the religion that is being followed here in the Indigenous communities of New Mexico and in the Southwest. The clash of the Western religion doesn't exist but it has sparked the new fire that of passion and worship that is Christianity. The word clash isn't the appropriate word that should be used here; the word that should be used is passion or maybe even belief. The West has truly brought over the religion that has become America.

Intensely Alice By: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

When I read this book I thought to myself that the choice of words is some of the words that I would use to write with. When I got further into the book I started to notice that the words were getting more advanced. Anyway, after I read this book I sat down and analyzed the whole plot. I looked to see if I could find the rising and falling actions and if I could find the climax. I did find all of these things too.

There are many rising and falling actions,as in any book, that I was able to identify.Most of the rising actions were very noticable and they weren"t hidden in the story. As for the falling action, it was really short because the climax was so far into the book. The falling action was after Alices' friend Mark died and that was towards the end of the book so the falling action was all about Marks' death. The rising action that leads to climax was really long though.

Now this book is about an older teenager whose name is Alice, which would be found out in the title. The book just basically goes through her life experience over her last summer of her high school career. During the summer she gets to go be a bridesmaid for her cousins wedding all the way in Chicago and from there she goes to visit her boyfriend a town away. She has to have a long distance relationship with him because he goes to college out of state. She was actually planning on spending an intament night with him because that was the first night she would be spending alone with a guy, particulary her boyfriend. Her plans were ruined when she found out that he couldn't because he had a roomate and the next morning he had to be to class at nine a.m.

After this she spends the rest of the summer just gossiping with her friends, one of which was a boy named Mark. She wasn't the closest with him but she was still always around him so she started to become close to him, like best friend close. They had actually known eachother since the fourth grade actually most of their "crew" had know him that long. Well one day one of her friends calls her up crying. As you can guess she was calling to tell Alice that Mark had died. HE was killed in a car accident. There was an eighteen wheeler coming up behind him when he was waiting for a light to change to turn left. The eighteen wheeler plowed into his car and Mark slammed into the SUV that was in fron of him. No one died or had serios injuries in the accident, except for Mark.

So the remainder of the book is spent talking about how Alice and her friends greive over her friends death.

I Dream A World

When I read this poem by Langston Hughes I didn't quite understand what he was talking about because the word choice that he had used. There were two words in particular that I had to look up and these words are avarice and blights. I figured out, by using a thesaurus, the word avarice meant greedy and the word blights meant disfigurement. When I put these words back into the original poem I learned that what he was trying to say was this, "Nor avarice (greed) blights (will disfigure) our day." When I finally figured out what he said I reflected on that.

The meaning of the poem is related to my views tremendously. I know that racism still exists throughout the entire world but the country that I live in has a huge problem with it. I view all people as one and think that we all came from one background and that we are all perfect in our own way, why should the color of skin get in the way of that? It is rather quite childish to be going around and hurting people emotionally, physically, and mentally just because of the amount of pigment in their skin. I think Hughes hit it right on the mark when it comes to my views.

I also have a philosophy when it comes to this major controversial topic. I have been taught the history of my country and the majority of it was being spent murdering, raping, and torturing those of a darker skin tone. This was happening to the Natives of this land when the Europeans came here, and then to the African slaves who were being brought here against their will. I think that being racist means that you're just insecure of your own culture and heritage which is sad because everyone on Earth has a good and full background at some point in their history.

I can relate Hughes' poem easily to my life; it is all around me whether it's trying to be hidden from me like in some news stations or if it's being told to me flat-out face to face. I know that there is a big problem in the state that I live in with people being extremely racist towards Mexicans. This is astounding because of the fact that the place where I live was Mexican soil before it was even American soil. There is also racism going on around the country that affects me right here in my hometown. This racism is towards President Barack Obama (whom I support). It is especially geared toward him because he is part black and Muslim.

When I envision my world in the future I can still see racism in it. This is not good but this is just what I think. I think this because it has been like this for thousands of years and there have been brief moments in our history where an amazing person will step up to the plate and take on the challenge of racism. For example, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Even though this is what I think the future will be like this is not what I want it to be like. I want to change it. To do this I can do things like raise awareness in my school or even take things to the local news about how I feel and that may even go national. I can even go online and sign an online petition to help stop racism. There are so many possibilities.

Show and Tell (:

I can see it now, the faded navy blue with its knotted ends. I have a feeling that I am getting to old for this kind of thing but that's not going to stop me. I should just throw it out but how am I to do that when we have been through so many good times together. I have cried, laughed, and even laughed so hard that I cried with this keepsake. I sleep with it everynight, and even though they don't light up in reality they are my night light, these are the white stars that roam free across their canvas. Have you guessed what this precious gift is yet? This treasure of mine is no ordinary one beacuse of the simple fact that it is mine and only mine. I love it with all my heart and will always have a place for it in my memories. If you're into NFL then you might not like the words I am about to type but written all across it is the big proud and strong words, Dallas Cowboys. I know, I know boo! Well no, I do like them and this is my choice. Have I given you enough information yet? Well here it is the big "bang" my Blanket!

On This Night

I have felt love, I have felt truth, this I cannot deny, I have fears.

Show no love, hide the truth, and face my fears my new morning light will cease.

One night to say all. Should have spent my lifetime. I wanted to be me.