Does Race Matter?

Does race matter? This is a very important question for the United States because there are many races live together in this country.  From Introduction to Journalism class, I went to have race experience at Avila University on February 18th. There was the photo machine called “Race Experience Kiosk”. According to Kiosk website, Over 300 colleges, universities, corporations and government agencies in the US and Canada have used race morphing as part of their diversity and inclusion programming. The Race Experience Kiosk helps us to have new ideas and perspectives about racism and identity. By using the Race Experience Kiosk, we can reach two learning outcomes. The first one is that users of the Race Kiosk will be able to reflect on the factors in our society that perpetuate racism and discrimination. The second one is that users of the race kiosk will be able to consider the value of diversity in our society. I also tried the Race Experience Kiosk, and it was easy to use. You need to answer 3 questions about racism then take a picture. Kiosk will change your face to Asian, White, Black, Indian, Arabian, Latino faces automatically. By experiencing and seeing your own face in different races and skin colors, it would make it easier to understand of different races than your own.

Some people say “Race matters”. However, I strongly believe that race should not matter. Simply we are equal. Look at Avila Campus. We have students who have many different kinds of races, and international students. We all should be treated equally. Because we were born on the same earth. I am not talking about only skin colors. Also LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) should be treated equally. We had no choice how we were born. I am an Asian girl, but I did not choose to be Asian. Please don’t get me wrong, I am proud to be Asian and I am happy with that. Even though I am happy with that, I did not have choice. Nobody had a choice. So why does race matter? Discrimination happens from blindness. Last semester, I was taking philosophy class, and we talked about discrimination. Most of the classmates said, they have discriminated someone in their life. My friend, Asian girl was discriminated once in the dorm. She told me that she was so disappointed and cried I her room at that night. My Arabic friend was discriminated at the airport. Securities took longer time than white people to check his stuff. And he also was screamed at by a stranger when he was in New York City. The stranger basically said something bad about Arabic people. I saw one time by my eyes when discrimination happened. I went to Disneyland with friends, one of them was an Arabic guy. And when we were waiting for an attraction, a white woman stared at him in weird way, and she move her child to not make him close to her child. That was really ridiculous and shameful. It is very sad, but we can see that clearly race still matters.

I strongly wish someday racism, discrimination, and stereotype become things of the past. This things are made by ignorance. In order to not make people racist, we need to have an education about race more. In the United States, we still have a lot of affairs over racism especially between Black people and White people. And actually, I started thinking of racism more since I came to the United States. In Japan which is my country, most of citizens have yellow skin like me. And even if there is other races, I don’t think it is a bad thing at all. Besides I think it is a great thing to be different than others. I feel especially in the United States, there are racism problems. And this is something we need to fix. 

Me as a White girl

Is it ever OK to cheat?

In my opinion, it is a big NO. Personally, I hate cheating so much for some reasons.

First of all, cheating is not fair to you. When you cheat, you are cheating yourself. This is so true. If you are honest and don't cheat at all, you would be a better person and would gain knowledge. However, if you cheat, you won't get nothing but fake prize or whatever. 

Second of all, cheating could destroy trust. If you cheated on exam or quiz and a professor found out about it, the professor wouldn't believe and trust you anymore. Besides you would get in a big trouble and it might ruin your life. 

Finally, you won't be proud of cheating. You would be so proud of yourself if you achieved something by yourself, however, if you cheated or got help by others, you wouldn't be proud if yourself.

Cheating hurts my heart. cheating means lie to myself and people. Even if I could cheat on someone well, I know the truth and it would hurt. I simply want to be an honest person to myself and others. This is why cheating is not OK.

The 87th Academy Awards

The last big entertainment event in February is 87th Academy Awards. It was on February 22nd, last Sunday at Dolby theatre. Academy Awards is the biggest awards for movies and has long history. In this year, the Oscars was presided over by one and only Neil Patrick Harris. In the opening of the Oscars, he sang a song and threw back to the history of movies with pictures. Anna Kendrick also joined him with the costume of Cinderella which she played in the movie “Into the Woods”. In addition, Jack Black joined them from the audience. Neil Patrick Harris successfully made the audience surprised and have fun.

The movie “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” won Best Picture, Cinematography, Writing, and Directing. The film director Alejandro G. Iñárritu had never won any Oscars before, so this means he got 3 Oscars at one time. There is another film that won from 4 categories like Birdman. It’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel”. This film won Costume Design, Music, Makeup and Hairstyling, and Production Design. The most surprising thing from the Oscars was probably that Eddie Redmayne from the movie “The Theory of Everything” won Best Actor. Most of people thought Michael Keaton from the movie “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” would win this, and Michael Keaton self thought he would win too. We can see that he was prepared to give speech with the transcript. Patricia Arquette won Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. On the stage, she gave the audience speech about women rights. Meryl Streep agreed with what she said and applauded. 

The Academy Awards is also about music that is related to the movies. Lady Gaga sang songs from a movie “The Sound of Music”. “It was “new” Lady Gaga.” Ali Alshagrawi, a student at Avila University said. “I had never seen Lady Gaga singing like this before. I have seen her wearing colorful cloths and crazy performances. But this time she seemed very classy and I really liked and enjoyed it,” he said. John Legend and Common also sang “Glory” which is featured on the soundtrack for the movie "Selma". They also won an Oscar for Music –Original song- with “Glory”. On the stage, they remarked about slavery, incarceration are true.

In conclusion, the academy awards was successful. And people well enjoyed watching Oscars. People who won the Oscars deserve them. College students watch movies a lot in their spare time, so the Academy Awards was related to college students more than other entertainment events. 

My Five Favorite Presidents

These are my five favorite presidents, and reasons why I chose!

1. Abraham Lincoln
He is credited with the emancipation of the slaves. This is very important.

2. Barack Obama
He is the first African American president and he did great things for the U.S. and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

3. John F Kennedy
He did his best to protect human rights for African Americans. For example, he put army in action to let a black girl go to school that was for white people. He tried to protect her civil rights.

4. George Washington
The first president of the United States, and he laid the foundation for America.

5. Thomas Jefferson
In 1776, he drew up America Declaration of Independence.

What I'd buy with a $50 iTunes Gift Card?

So what would I buy if I had a $50 iTunes Gift Card?

I would buy 
1. Katy Perry's album "PRISM" $11.99
2. Ariana Grande's album "My Everything (Deluxe)" $12.99
3. Sam Smith's album "In the Lonely Hour (Deluxe)" $13.99
4. Beyonce's album "BEYONCE (more only)" $8.99

The total is going to be $47.96

NBA All-Star Game

February 15th, 2015. It is time for NBA All-Star Game! NBA All-Star Game is a special annual game. Eastern Conference and Western Conference play against one another. Players and head coaches are chosen in fan balloting. Since NBA All-Star game started for the first time in 1951, it became an annual event. Every year, it is held on one weekend, so it is called “NBA All-Star Weekend”. Usually on Friday, there is Rising Stars Challenge, on Saturday, there are Slam dunk Contest and Three-Point Contest, and on Sunday, finally there is NBA All-Star Game. As a result, West All-Stars won the game against East All-Stars with score 163-158. From West All-Stars, Russell Westbrook got MVP this year.

The game itself is important, but there is other important thing too. The half time show. As I mentioned about Katy Perry’s half time show for Super Bowl, it seems like for big sports games’ half time shows are common and popular to people. This time, Ariana Grande was chosen to sing during the half time show. She sang “Problem”, “Love You Harder”, “The Way”, and her ballad “One Last Time”, and “Bang Bang” with Nicki Minaj. Finally she closed with “Break Free”. Most of people might be watching NBA All-Star Game for watching a basketball game of course. However, half time shows attract attention, and give the singers status.

I interviewed some international students about NBA All-Stars Game this year. Zeyad Al-ammar from Saudi Arabia, Computer Science majoring at Avila University, told me that he had no idea what the NBA All-Star Game is. When I explained to him what NBA All-Star Game is, he told me that he is not interested in basketball at all. Because in Saudi Arabia, soccer is the most common sport. I asked other international student if she watched the game or not. Uyen Dang from Vietnam told me that she did not watch it. I asked her if she even knew that there was NBA All-Star Game last Sunday, and she said “no”. She told me she is not a big fan of American Sports. Other international students told me the same thing. They didn’t watch the game.

As a result, it seems like international students are not into NBA All-Star Game after all. Some of them did not even know what NBA All-Star Game is. They grew up in other countries and they might not had the opportunity to watch NBA All-Star Game before, so it would not be important for them. Everyone has opinions for themselves and we should respect that.

This weekend, there is Academy Award. Let’s see what is going to happen!

The 57th Grammy Awards

The second big event in February is here! The 57^th Grammy Awards 2015 was on 8^th February, 2015 at Staples Center in Los Angeles. The Grammy Awards is the most important music award in the entire world, and obviously it has a long history. Every year, the Grammy Awards is held in February. This is not only about award presentation ceremony. You can also watch performances by successful singers and interviews on red carpet. This is not only about music. Sounds like there’s a lot of entertainment in the Grammys. 

Lots of things happen in the Grammys, however, Sam Smith definitely got attention the most. He got four Grammys which were Song of the Year, Record of the Year, Best New Artist, and Best Pop Vocal Album. This is crazy and amazing! He was an unknown British singer just one year ago. Who imagined he would be such a successful singer like this? 

The other person who got attention was Sia. She is a great singer and her songs have strong messages. However, this time she got attention not because of her song, because of her outfit (or should I say her big wig?). She hates social media so she didn’t to want to take it off. Even during performing “Chandelier”, she didn’t look at the camera at all. Unfortunately, she didn’t get any Grammys this year.

Clearly the Grammys gathered momentum at the popular level, but what about for college students? I asked Katie Bryant, nursing major at Avila University if she watched the Grammys or not. She said, no. She had to work at that time. I also asked others but they gave me the same answer. College students listen to music a lot, and they grew up with iPod or other music devices and players, so music would have been closer to them than the parents’ generation. However, not a lot of college students didn’t watch the Grammys. It is not that important to them. And they have some stuff to do more than watching the Grammys, for example, taking assignment, working for tuition, and hanging out with friends or not interested. Even if missed the show, you can watch it anytime on YouTube if you want. This useful stuff make students think they don’t need to watch it on time. 

Even though it was a big event for the world, it wasn’t for most of the students. They are busy and got lots of things to do and not interested. Last week’s Super bowl was successful. Of course the Grammys was successful too. However, Super Bowl got more attentions from students more than the Grammys did. Maybe it is because the Grammys is not related to students well. Super Bowl is definitely related to students. There is a football team in Avila University, and Football is the most popular sport in the U.S. This weekend is going to be NBA all-star game. Let’s see how the students will react!