I have been watching Hasan Minhaj's Patriot Act on Netflix and at the end of his most recent season he said that our brains are like a browser with a hundred tabs open and he recommended closing those tabs and reducing them to just three; three things that you think are the most important problems right now and that you want to help change. So I headed his advice and I, surprisingly, have a list of the three things that are most on my mind at the ready.
The first would be Climate Change. Although we may not think that climate change is a pressing issue, it is currently in the process of changing the world as we know it. California is one of the many places, along with Australia, Africa, the Arctic, and more, being most strongly affected by it. With the recent wildfires sweeping through Malibu and almost burning down two of my old schools, I can't help but be painfully worried about Climate Change. I feel like, in more privileged areas, we don't think that we are going to be immediately affected by Climate Change but we need to break away from that selfish way of life and focus more on the bigger picture and how we can make a permanent and sustainable change to protect our futures and the futures of the people who, hopefully, come after us.
The second issue that I think about a lot is Reproductive Rights. As a woman, I feel like the worst form of oppression in the world I inhabit (the United States, coming from a "first world" country) is the loss of bodily autonomy. In the medical community, the concept of bodily autonomy is strong and thriving. If something horrible happened to someone and the only way to save them would be if I give them my kidney, for example, I would not be forced to even if that meant they would die. This is bodily autonomy; when a woman's right to choose or her right to birth control is taken away, we have taken away her bodily autonomy.
The last issue that plagues me the most is gun control. This feels way less significant in my mind in comparison with the other two but, in reality, it's just as important. The Right to Bear Arms was made an amendment when it was still necessary to protect our homes, villages, families, and lives in a feudal nature. In addition, the guns at that time were infinitely less sophisticated than the ones we have now. We no longer live in a society where having guns is necessary. Australia had one mass shooting, banned guns, and they haven't had a shooting since. The UK did the same and experienced the same results. We should follow suit.
The Toolkit I researched was White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack. The findings that the author was talking about in the section marked "Daily Effects of White Privilege" really resonated with me. Here, in California, I feel very safe on a day to day basis and I don't view myself as separate to my white friends who are of a different religious or ethnic background as me. In the twelfth point, the author mentions representation and I feel incredibly represented in popculture and I can walk into any store and see someone who looks like me on a magazine cover, or a movie poster, or a record. And, although I've thought about it, I've never known what it's like to not have that and I never will know. Something the author writes about that I had never thought about before was the concept of "Earned Strength vs Unearned Power". I'm really interested to delve deeper into this and explore more what it means to bring the positive privileges that I experience to people who do not benefit from them. I think something that is missing from this piece is how gender privileges into racial privileges and how a white woman has fewer privileges than a white man, a black woman has fewer privileges than a black man, and so on and so forth.
The first would be Climate Change. Although we may not think that climate change is a pressing issue, it is currently in the process of changing the world as we know it. California is one of the many places, along with Australia, Africa, the Arctic, and more, being most strongly affected by it. With the recent wildfires sweeping through Malibu and almost burning down two of my old schools, I can't help but be painfully worried about Climate Change. I feel like, in more privileged areas, we don't think that we are going to be immediately affected by Climate Change but we need to break away from that selfish way of life and focus more on the bigger picture and how we can make a permanent and sustainable change to protect our futures and the futures of the people who, hopefully, come after us.
The second issue that I think about a lot is Reproductive Rights. As a woman, I feel like the worst form of oppression in the world I inhabit (the United States, coming from a "first world" country) is the loss of bodily autonomy. In the medical community, the concept of bodily autonomy is strong and thriving. If something horrible happened to someone and the only way to save them would be if I give them my kidney, for example, I would not be forced to even if that meant they would die. This is bodily autonomy; when a woman's right to choose or her right to birth control is taken away, we have taken away her bodily autonomy.
The last issue that plagues me the most is gun control. This feels way less significant in my mind in comparison with the other two but, in reality, it's just as important. The Right to Bear Arms was made an amendment when it was still necessary to protect our homes, villages, families, and lives in a feudal nature. In addition, the guns at that time were infinitely less sophisticated than the ones we have now. We no longer live in a society where having guns is necessary. Australia had one mass shooting, banned guns, and they haven't had a shooting since. The UK did the same and experienced the same results. We should follow suit.
The Toolkit I researched was White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack. The findings that the author was talking about in the section marked "Daily Effects of White Privilege" really resonated with me. Here, in California, I feel very safe on a day to day basis and I don't view myself as separate to my white friends who are of a different religious or ethnic background as me. In the twelfth point, the author mentions representation and I feel incredibly represented in popculture and I can walk into any store and see someone who looks like me on a magazine cover, or a movie poster, or a record. And, although I've thought about it, I've never known what it's like to not have that and I never will know. Something the author writes about that I had never thought about before was the concept of "Earned Strength vs Unearned Power". I'm really interested to delve deeper into this and explore more what it means to bring the positive privileges that I experience to people who do not benefit from them. I think something that is missing from this piece is how gender privileges into racial privileges and how a white woman has fewer privileges than a white man, a black woman has fewer privileges than a black man, and so on and so forth.
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