Bullying in School

After watching an hour long video in class about how homosexual are discriminated against one thing I kept thinking about was how no one promoted the victim to stand up for themselves. No matter the circumstance, whenever a bully singles out a person for torment they never expect that person to resist their actions and stand up for themselves. Promoting awareness of this discrimination will help to prevent future bullying because others will see the impact their actions have on the people being bullied. The best way to prevent bullying from continuing is to educate the general population of the school about how their actions affect others. Once this has been done, the majority of the school will realize the signs of bullying and draw attention to those who still decide to take part in the bullying.

Glock The Rise of America's Gun Part 1

Glock, The Rise of America's Gun is a book that overviews all about the way Glock have raised to the top of the American markets. The beginning of the book talks about how Gaston Glock, Glocks founder, went from towel rack maker to international firearm celebrity. The first few chapters of the book set the scene for the reason why Gaston Glock became so popular in the niche market of personal defense handguns.  While Glock was working as a towel rack maker he also made knives in his garage for the Austrian military. One day while he was in the Austrian embassy he overheard two generals in the military talking about how they were going to be doing military testing for a new service pistol. Glock took this as an opportunity to ask them whether he could submit a pistol for military testing. The generals laughed in his face and effectively said yeah of course but we won’t really consider anything you have made since you don’t have your own gun company. Gaston took this as motivation and went home immediately to start designing his own handgun. He knew that he wasn’t very experienced in designing handguns but he had the talent to put all the pieces and elements together. The next thing he did that no other gun maker has ever done before was sit down the five highest ranking officials in the Austrian military and asked them what they wanted in a perfect handgun. He bought the most popular models of handguns in Austria and brought them with him when he had this meeting. The high ranking military officials told him everything they wanted ranging from grip angle, capacity, weight, and reliability. Gaston went back to his work shop and took only a year to perfect his initial design for a polymer pistol which held 17 + 1 rounds and recoiled substantially less than any gun back in the 80’s anywhere in the world. The first issue once Glock’s became popular in America was the way the gun was composed of 50% polymer and the common misconception that the media caused all Americans to over react was that terrorisms would become aware of this fact and use it to take down airplanes. This reaction was before 9/11 when all the security was still in its adolescent period of early prediction of possible threats. During the initial year span of American hysteria about Glock, many gun shops banned the gun from being sold behind their counters. The thing most people didn’t predict with the banning of Glock in gun stores across the country was how popular it became. In the gun industry whenever a specific weapon gets negative publicity it actually works inversely for the amount of demand there is for the gun in American markets. Once the ban of Glock was lifted after a NYPD police chief was caught “testing” out the new option for his police officers to carry. Immediately the American gun industry changed once Glock was allowed to be sold. The original pre-brady ban Glock sold like hot cakes because during the time when they were originally released the Brady Assault Weapons Ban was in the adolescent stages of becoming law. Anytime that a future president is coming into office or any legislation that is going to limit gun rights there is always a frenzy to buy all the weapons that will be banned or limited.

Racism in America Cont.

After reading all the articles that we have been given on race in America I feel as though I have given myself enough information to help shape the already existent opinion’s on minorities in America. I know there are a lot of opinions to talk about in this short blog post but I believe I will be able to get my point across thoroughly. I believe that once we have all realized that all the races are equal we can now move on with the acceptance and reconciliation process for the minorities in America. The example that I would like to give for this idea is that one about our unconscious biases and how they contribute to the ways we act in everyday life. Many people associate minorities with crime, but the truth is that more people in the majority race in America are committing more crimes than we ever thought before. But without actually knowing the facts of the argument one will almost always find themselves circling their same old opinions on race in America, especially when its associated with crime. When we can control and asses these unconscious desires then we can finally move to a point where we treat everyone the same. Also to move beyond this point where racism could be completely diminished we need to dismiss all stereotypes associated with both sides of the spectrum. The majority needs to dismiss the stereotypes about the minorities and vise versa but it’s much easier said than done.

Race, And The College Acceptance Process

From all the resources we have been given during the time we have had to study race and the college acceptance process, something’s actually surprised me in my own opinion. First let me start with my opinions that didn’t surprise me as much as the others that I formed while completing this part of our quarter. I have always known from all the research I have done on police work that because of our unconscious bias’s one will always assume that without being provoked police officers will see criminals in minorities. This happens way more frequently compared to the times that we have encounters with people of the majority. We recently have been talking about this exact topic in Psychology class were we studied our unconscious bias’s and how we can overcome them. Without knowing one’s own personal bias it would be difficult to realize how they play into our everyday decisions or actions we do without thinking. If we can answer this first inquisition about our unconscious bias’s we can then start to consider the reasons for giving minorities a better chance at getting into college.

            As we have seen in the article we read after making our own college acceptance decisions in class that the Supreme Court has allowed affirmative action under two circumstances. “both constitutionally permissible and substantial, and that its sue of the classification is ‘necessary… to the accomplishment’ of its purpose” with both of these descriptions drawn out by the courts schools still have taken different approach’s on the acceptance process. The first one we talked about was Michigan and how they made their acceptance process based on a score that you were given for a number of things including race. This I believe is the most effective process for giving everyone a fair chance at college no matter their socioeconomic background. The scoring takes in affect many different factors including race, strength of school, essay, regional and many others. With all of these factors coming together to make a decision only the best will be admitted and it won’t necessarily take all of the applicants who have all the best test scores.

Exoneration Speaker

Yesterday in issues class we had a special guest speaker who talked about his experiences with the justice, and how he was forced to sign a confession to a crime he did not commit. When he was being interviewed by the police in the investigation for the crime they had no leads on for 3 months. During these 3 months they pooled suspects together and interrogated them separately to try to extract all the information they could about this heinous crime. During one of those interrogations someone mentioned the speakers name as a possible suspect because they were looking to get their friend out of the hot seat for the crime. After taking him to the police station they verbally forced him to sign a confession by convincing him he would be set free after. 17 years later he still isn’t completely out of the woods yet, he still has to do some actions civilly to compensate him for all the years he has lost to this wrongful conviction. During this speech it really was a humbling experience because of my plans in the future to be in law enforcement. His man’s story has personally moved me to think more about how people in power can so easily take advantage of everything they have earned to promote themselves in their career. This speaker couldn’t have come at a better time, I have already committed to my school and I’m on the verge of graduating at Deerfield. I have always wanted to be the best police officer I could be, but now I feel as though I’m not just working for myself, but I’m also trying to change the bad reputation corruption has in the law enforcement community.

White Privilege

After reading this article about white privilege I can’t help but agree with all the contentions that point to the same conclusion. One specific aspect that I didn’t realize I lived on the privileged side of things was the law. After a few example of this in the article I realized from all my research from wanting to be a police officer that white people have less privilege today but still have the edge on all the other races. Some of the reasons for this are because the way the American public perceives white’s as being less of a threat than any other race. This was specifically emphasized in the article during the portion when Mr. Wise talked about how he would get pulled over all the time while he was driving in a beat up car. It talked about the time he talked to a police officer and tried to find this hidden bias toward whites in their answer to just a few basic profiling questions. The question that really threw me off was the one that talked about how whenever police officer see an expensive car with a white driver they think, spoiled white kid. But when they see a nice car with a minority driving it they automatically assume drug dealer. This really caught me off guard because I was always trained to think that cops were held to one of the highest standards for any professions, but still have racially driven actions. In reality it has been statistically proven that white people are more likely to be dealing drugs, which makes the racial stereotype completely false. The other thing I found incredibly surprising about the article was the situation when a black mother has to tell her black son to keep his hands on the wheel when he gets pulled over or else he could be shot. This is crazy to think that even though you have a less likely chance of doing something wrong, police officer treat you as if you are a felony suspect without any prior information for them to jump to that conclusion. The last thing that I found to be crazy to finally think about was the notion that police in white suburban town’s like Deerfield take it easier on their suspects because they are white. This kind of mistake can be extremely deadly in any police encounter. As the article illustrates when a white person does something illegal like, drink underage, they are “looked at with a wink and a nod.”

If I were a poor black kid...

After reading this article I couldn't agree more with the contentions that this author brought to the table. He focused on the specific things he saw necessary for any underprivileged student to get ahead. He gave specific examples of the way he would approach the situation of being a poor black kid. No matter your socioeconomic background I do believe if you work hard enough you can get ahead. Many kids in this situation just don’t know where to find these opportunities to help them get ahead. The overburdened school systems that these children attend aren’t the problem; the problem is the kids just don’t want to make an effort to go above and beyond the call to make them stand out. The second article I read in response to this original article talked about how these types of opportunities are unrealistic for an underprivileged student. I wouldn’t necessarily agree with the second article but I do think that the original article made it sound way too easy for these things to all fall into place. The part that threw me about all these responses was how most of the people believed it over stepped its boundaries for this article to be published by a person who didn’t personally experience it themselves. I also wouldn’t agree with the notion in the response article about how there is no way these kids would know about these opportunities. The whole point of these resources is to help those who need it and when someone isn’t interested in the help then it will be impossible for them use it. The original article is spot on with the idea that everyone can find success only if they know to start looking for opportunities to get ahead.