I only have one memory of my childhood. A memory that would not make sense without a little bit of background information. I grew up in the Dominican Republic in an area where the living conditions were hard and the surroundings were dangerous not because of robberies or anything like that but more because it was in the middle of the forest and you only had your neighbor to help you survive. It was about a 15-minute walk up and down hills to the bus stop and an hour-and-a-half bus ride to the city. It was by definition the middle of nowhere. It rained all the time and we were surrounded by forest on one side and sand on the other. 

       Growing up there was the highlight of my life. When I was about 5 or 6, my grandmother and I were home alone like most days and it was raining. I still remember the sound of the rain hitting the metal roof of our house and the rhythmic sound of the water falling sounding almost like a small waterfall. The smell of the wet grown and the lemon tree out back. It was like paradise to me. My grandmother and I were sitting by the door in our backyard which looked out into the forest. We sat eating mangoes and singing songs to the rain. I could swear that I saw the trees dancing to our song. I wanted to dance with the trees and I told my mother, she got up and started dancing in the rain. She screamed at me to never be afraid to dance with the trees in the rain. She told me that the trees were my friends because I belong to them as much as they belong to me. I danced with her that day in the rain. I sang to the rain and asked her to turn the water into blessings. I danced with the trees and made them my friends. To this day I do not use an umbrella when it rains. I just let the rain wash over me, just like it did that day.

The two teams were decided. Seven on both sides. The best of the best were posted at the frontlines. Hands on their knees, each of them set in a crouch start position. All eyes were on the three cherry red dodgeballs perfectly centered for the taking. Ready? Set. Go! My trembling heart was begging to run in the opposite direction. But, my devilish grin said otherwise. As a stranny and short elementary schooler, playing a game of dodgeball was a concussion or a broken rib waiting to happen. It was too late. Squeaking sneakers and an inaudible loud chatter had already started. My mission was to stay hidden so my chances of getting cracked in the nose by a speeding ball of rubber were low. Of course, that plan could not last forever since eventually everyone will be out of the game and I would be forced to scrounge up the little athleticism I had. Using your teammates as human shields also becomes increasingly difficult when their sweat-stained shirts and the aroma of wet mops kick in. “Bing!” “Dong!” The sound of the dodgeballs crashing into walls and limbs makes the game more worrisome, yet all the more exciting. The poker-face expressions on faces as they cock their arms back to beam the ball in a direction nobody saw coming is testament to how dodgeball brings out the sadism in pre-teens.

I still remember the rules of the game. If you catch the opponent’s ball, they are out. If you get hit by the ball without catching it, you are out. You can, for some reason, punch or kick the ball out of the way. My best bet was to catch the ball of someone with a weak throw so I could sustain the tingling sensation of getting hit as my abdomen takes a second to absorb the impact. Then, I will pass it to one of the heavy hitters on my team and we can form our own Batman and Robin duo. The problem with that strategy is I would no longer be hidden and I’d become public enemy #1. “Thoomp!” I caught one! The rough and scratchy texture of the ball stung in the palm of my hands as the smell of burning plastic lingered. I finally got someone out. I passed the ball to the tallest kid on our team and he windmilled his arm before the ball cut through the air and bounced off of an exposed forehead. We were gaining momentum. My feet were jittery. My blood was pumping. The taste of salty sweat was reaching my lips.

Like all good things, that momentum came to an end. With adrenaline comes bravery, and I wandered too closely to the boundary. It was just three kids on both sides now. Two of the balls were in the hands of the enemy. My attention was split in half. Whose ball could I dodge? Whose throws hurt more? It was a matter of relying on my reflexes or my pain tolerance at this point. That was when I threw my torso to the right and felt the breeze of the ball fly past me. “Bing!” Everything went dark. The smell of burning plastic returned. My right ear was reduced to an endless ringing. My face felt doused in boiling grease. I opened my eyes to find myself sitting on the cold gym floor and rubbing the heat on my face. The abrupt laughter of mean kids could not drown out the thought of “I’m never doing this again.”

I read the book, “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas sometime during 2020. I did watch the movie first and even though the book will always be better, the movie did the book justice. I enjoy looking for differences between the two mediums so I bought the book. Finished it in a few hours or so even while knowing everything that was going to happen. Thomas used vernacular language yet managed to still be so dynamic, expressive and completely captivating with her descriptions and realistic characters that I held the hard cover four hundred and sixty four page book in one hand like nothing. While this book did not change my perspective on being against racism, police brutality, stereotypes, poverty, etc, it did make me feel a lot of heavy emotions throughout. One feeling that was persistent was despair because of how prevalent racism and police brutality is and how long the list of innocent black people being murdered by cops is; and that despite knowing that this should be stopped, many protests against it, we’re nowhere near seeing the end to it. Feeling despair at how normal it is. Other themes are identity, weaponizing stereotypes, racialized poverty, and one that’s not brought up as much is generational trauma. The full quote of T.H.U.G L.I.F.E is “the hate u give little infants f*cks everybody”. In the book, Khalil is a sweet and smart young man who is a childhood friend of Starr, who unfortunately became a drug dealer due to hard times and a dysfunctional family. The responsibility of being the breadwinner fell on him when his own mother became addicted to drugs and could no longer parent her own son.  Khalil then fulfilled a stereotype. Another example of this comes from the movie, where Starr’s younger brother, Sekani, a child who is eight years old is holding a gun pointing it at King, the leader of the King Lords gang in Garden Heights. This occurs because the father and King were about to pull their guns out at each other due to a dispute. Two cops pull up, two fully trained adult officers, point their firearms at the child. It is only when Starr stands in front of her brother do they put down their guns. The cycle was about to repeat itself again. This scene in the movie is very powerful because Sekani who’s too young to be experiencing that much hate, feels enough of it to do what he did, was about to fulfill another stereotype and be another statistic in only a few seconds. This is the scene where the full quote comes to fruition. It was also terrifying, enough to stop breathing that it did not matter to the cops that the child was eight. It did not seem impossible to believe that they would pull the trigger because they, fully trained cops, felt threatened by a child. There are many more things to point out and it goes without saying that this book is still very relevant today. 

I attended SUNY New Paltz Fall of 2018, as a Freshman. Before arriving at New Paltz, I was aware that I was going to learn many different things, academically. I knew that I was also going to experience things outside of lectures that were going to play a big role in my life in general and as a student on campus. What I did not expect was to not only learn about but experience different matters having to do with race, racism, and ethnicity.

Sometime during the Fall semester, there was a picture of a young White man mocking Mexicans who were being detained by ICE. Obviously, this is a very sensitive topic and one that has no humor attached to it so it was not taken lightly by Non-white students.

The young man was a part of the school’s Basketball team hence the reason why when the picture reached the faculty, not much was done. It was water under the bridge. Instead of holding him accountable for his actions, he was assigned two “bodyguards” to escort him around campus.

Because adequate actions were not taken, students on campus decided to take matters into their own. A march on campus was organized and I decided to join. During the march, we walked into different buildings, and faculty offices, and many upperclassmen gave speeches.

Being a part of this as a Freshman changed the way I view social issues about race, racism, and ethnicity. It was my first time experiencing anything like that. After that first experience, I joined different events and activities on campus to expand my knowledge. It is part of the reason why I started taking Black Studies classes.

I once took an international relations class and ended up doing research for an assignment on social injustice. After reading several articles on people from the Uighur ethnic group in China being kept in concentration camps, I realized that government oppression is a prevalent issue in today’s society, across many countries in the world. When I first found out about the injustice the Uighurs faced, I also realized that not many world leaders or people, in general, were speaking up about this issue, but I thought it was my duty to speak up about it if I could. I was so compelled that I made a blog post different from the normal content I posted, to address this issue.

The Uighurs were treated as prisoners of conscience (people imprisoned for holding political or religious views that are not tolerated by their own government) for being Muslim, and faced atrocities such as imprisonment and being separated from their families, forced organ harvesting, and different types of abuse. I backed up my blog post with facts, citing sources, and checked it more than once for accuracy. As a person who writes poetry to help myself and others understand the world, I recognized that words have power once again. My research enlightened me so much that I wanted to address the issue myself apart from getting my assignment done. Since then, I can’t help but look closely at how the different governments that make up our world may impede on the rights of the people existing.

When I can, I continue to read up on current events. I recently found out about the death of yet another innocent black man due to police brutality. His name was Tyre Nichols, and he was a young man with a family who cared for him. The people meant to protect him failed to do so. While being disappointed, I was reminded when reading news articles about this tragedy, that police brutality continues to be an issue in the US. It helps to know about what’s going on around you no matter what.

Learning about different issues faced around the globe and in our own communities may seem like an inconvenience when we’re busy with our day to day lives, and even in instances where you might feel like a certain issue doesn’t affect you, but if every person on the planet says “Why should I care?,” then who will be there to help pick up the pieces. Even having knowledge about an issue and being able to tell your family and friends about it is power. Knowledge is power.

One thing I know about New York City and almost everyone who either lives here or doesn’t know is that NYC will take your wallet out of your hands. Recently I read a New York Times article titled, “Why Black Families Are Leaving New York, and What It Means for the City” by Troy Closson and Nicole Hong. The title speaks for itself. While reading the article I couldn’t help but feel numerous emotions coursing through my veins, especially negative ones. I feel sad that the city is changing before us and the group that has created the most culture for NYC is now being shifted away from here. The article mentions the rising prices of NYC are what is sending Black families in NYC to shift down south, the percentage of black families in NYC from 2000-2020 has gone down by 200,000 (Hong, Closson 2023). That number is only growing. While, on the other hand, the increase of Hispanic and Asian families has increased within that time. As a fellow Asian myself, I am glad to see our numbers grow but I still understand how gentrification can be caused by other POC*. Upon further research on the topic due to my own personal interest, I have found that Asian Americans are moving to East Harlem, a Latino neighborhood according to a Bloomberg post by Amy Lee. This made me think about how living in NYC there is only so much space to host certain groups of people at a time. The city may be huge, but it truly is a man-eats-man world and one group will eventually kill out another in cycles. We see this all throughout NYC history and each neighborhood changes from culture to culture throughout the decades. NYC is a melting pot, but with rising prices and limited space, the pot might just stop melting.

Citations:

Closson, Troy, and Nicole Hong. “Why Black Families Are Leaving New York, and What It Means for the City.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 31 Jan. 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/nyregion/black-residents-nyc.html.

Yee, Amy. “Why Asian Americans Are Moving to NYC’s East Harlem.” Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, 3 Feb. 2023, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-03/why-asian-americans-are-moving-to-nyc-s-east-harlem.

Online social media discourse over this term has exploded in recent years and I see it all the time regarding entertainment media that possess an inkling of diversity. Once defined as being aware and informed of social issues and mostly associated with black social activism (BLM), “woke” has become synonymous with “bad” where diversity and inclusivity is involved. Specifically in entertainment media, the mere inclusion of a single POC or LGBTQ+ lead or secondary character (or virtually anything outside of the status quo) is considered “woke”, why is that? Different demographics exist in the world and if including different groups of people in entertainment media is so heavily considered “pandering” then why isn’t the default considered pandering? “Woke” has also often been associated with terms like “forced diversity” which seek to interrogate writers in order to justify why the inclusion of people of different race, sexuality, and gender is in “their” entertainment media. Arguments that are anti-”woke” often stem from wanting to distance social issues from entertainment or wanting to coddle oneself from the reality that the world and its people are not homogeneous. 

It seems unnecessary to cite a credential but as an advertising student who has created content for actual clients, most everything in media has a target audience in mind and most every piece of media, no matter how small, is “pandering” to someone.

Another example of THAT definition of “woke” being pushed around in media is with Republican Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, allowing parents to ban books in schools and seeking to remove an AP African American Studies course at a Florida public high school. The Stop W.O.K.E. Act is a direct attack on historical truths and is a blatant form of censorship in the interest that students be less “brainwashed”. It seems once again, “woke” is just another word for “different” and “different” isn’t “good”.

Perhaps one of the most common issues with the modern-world is the presence of Climate Change. I’m certain that term does not require any explanation to any person who is reading this, but perhaps one thing that can be explained is that Climate Change is not just an environmental issue, but also a social one as well. This idea was new to me at one point as well. Sure climate change causes ice to melt, the sea to rise, or some places to get hotter. But it also effects people as well (duh). But what truly makes this a social issue? The effects of climate change hit poorer people harder than rich people. Its harder for people who can’t afford high electricity bills to keep an A/C on through a heat wave or long summer. Or with droughts happening around the world, the only way to access clean drinking water is by purchasing it with money. And flooding along with these droughts in certain places make it harder to grow food, so the prices go up.  There are many more reasons that can be looked into, but those three are the pretty big ones. But as I said earlier, this concept was unknown to me at one time. So how did I find this out? The answer is simple: research.

Throughout my career as a student, I have written many papers for various classes. One thing that I was always told was “it’s easier to write about something you already know”. So, being from California’s Central Valley, an area ruled by agriculture and struck by drought, I knew plenty about Climate Change. So that was always an easy topic for me to write about. The Effects of Climate Change. What Can We Do About Climate Change? Man-made and Natural Causes of Climate Change. All of these are papers I have written, along with a plethora more. But each time I wrote about it, I changed the viewpoint of climate change. And with this change in view, I researched more and more. I started learning about all the different aspects of climate change, such as global warming, drought, flooding, rising sea level. But then, I started coming across pages that talked about how a certain group of people were affected even more by climate change. The lower class struggled more than the upper class from the effects of climate change. I read more and more and it became apparent to me that the well being of people depend on the climate change crisis. All of these new ideas and opinions were opened up to me, and all because I needed to write some papers. So in that way, literacy opened up my eyes to the social aspect of climate change.