Category: McCoy 101 Fall 2017

Recently during class we went over the topic of medical volunteerism, which has to do with visiting certain areas in other countries that may not have the same medical resources that there are in the United States and assisting those in need of medical help. We read an article that had to do with medical volunteerism being an issue, due to several ethical and antiseptic reasons. The program allows inexperienced high school students assist people who are in need of medical health and sometimes, that means life or death.

In the blog post, “The Trouble with Medical “Voluntourism””, we learned that there is a program called “Projects Abroad” that allows people whom are at least 16 years of age, “lack prior medical experience and don’t speak the language” to travel and receive experience that people usually get two to five years after medical school. They travel to counties of lower income and developing countries such as, Tanzania, Ghana, Cambodia, India, Nepal, the Philippines, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras. This program “touts itself as a “Doctors without Borders Alternative.”” The purpose of high school students taking advantage of this opportunity is so that they can begin gathering experience to put on to their resume, so that by the time they apply to medical school they can have a higher chance of getting in.

These students are way more focused on themselves rather than what the opportunity entitles them to do. They take this opportunity as a chance to make themselves look better and prepare for medical school to serve as doctor in the United States. It seems like many students say that they’re doing it for a good cause but in reality it’s to get the experience that they need in order be a top choice for their desired medical school.

There are also ethical and antiseptic issues that take a role when it comes to partaking in this event. According to the blog post, The Trouble with Medical “Voluntourism, the same program, “Projects Abroad” allows students to deliver babies, remove teeth, and even do “unnecessary episiotomies and pulling breech babies”. These all can be dangerous because if you aren’t using the right equipment, cleaning the area of that person’s body with the right items or doing things correctly, that situation can become life or death.

I personally believe that these people shouldn’t allow high school students to take this “opportunity”. No matter how good it looks on their resume for medical school, they are dealing with fragile conditions that others are going through and using it to make themselves look better.

Bringing it back to our conversation regarding race and its origins, we talked about how exactly the idea of race came to be. After a detailed discussion and the viewing of a film in class (in which the name of it I am unsure of), it became clear that the idea of racism is just that- an idea. This idea could not have started with just one person, because if only one person believed in it then it never would have become as prominent in our society as it did. Therefore, racism is a collective idea that is fueled by those who continue to feed into it.  Continue reading “Feeling vs Seeing Race”

While reading Chapter A of Zulus by Percival Everett, I questioned why Alice Achitophel didn’t yell for help when the dirty man was violating her, yet did yell for help in Chapter N when the hungry man was attacking her. I was curious to why Alice allows the first man to act on her, when she knows the ramifications of being pregnant. After my initial reading of Chapter A, I believed that Alice was too weak to yell for help and feared that if she did yell for help and was found, all the blame would be placed on her for not becoming sterilized. However, after reading Chapter N, my initial thoughts on why Alice Achitophel did not call for help changed. Continue reading “Yelling for Help”

Recently, fellow student and long-time friend of mine, Sunita Singh, wrote a beautiful blog post on the need for communication between the medical establishment and those utilizing traditional recipes as a cure for ailments. As with most of her work, the blog was stunning and I highly recommend you read it before continuing with my post. Reading Sunita’s post, I find myself wondering to what extent is respecting one’s own cultural tradition a priority in the context of medical care. In particular, I am drawn to one claim she makes: “Medical techniques differ around the world based on the cultures they originate from. No technique is superior to another.” (Integrating Medical Cultures, Singh) Understand, of course, that I would never condone discrimination, bigotry, or hostility towards a patient for having cultural beliefs different from my own. Such actions are abhorrent and should be punished accordingly. However, not all traditional medicine was created equally and I feel it is important to distinguish the possible beneficial from the deadly. Continue reading “Killing with Kindness, a response to Integrating Medical Cultures”

Novels with a Dystopian Society are all the rage now, ranging from The Giver by Lois Lowry to The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and so many more from the English High School days. The core of these books include a life set in the future where the government is in charge of every facet of life, and restrictions surround the citizens. In this instance, the book we are currently reading in class, Zulus, it reminds me of these two dystopian society books that I have read in the past. For each protagonist in each of these novels, they’re lives are dictated by order of the government, and what they are to do with their lives; Jonas and his job of taking the planets memories, Katniss and needing to fight for her life for entertainment, and Alice Achitophel and her fertility in a non-fertile world.

Nowadays, you can’t read a book without it being about a dystopian society, or a corrupt government type that needs to be taken out for the Greater Good. Dystopian societies has always been contrasted with Utopian societies to figure out which one is the better. A utopia is a place where you can only dream of how wonderful it is.  A dystopia is a where the illusion of perfection is forced onto its subjects, there are different types of dystopias, but for this post, we will focus on the bureaucratic control. (Dystopia). In The Giver, the world has been ravaged by war and disease, so a small community bands together to create a world of ‘sameness’ for everyone should be equal and the same. Once a child hits their tweens, they are given an assignment of what their future job is to be. One child, who is different from the others in looks and thoughts, is given the very special job of being the keeper of the memories of the community. Since he has those memories of how society was before this regimen of ‘sameness’, and he found out how his community keeps their subjects submissive, he runs away to another place where he can be free to live as they once had. There is so much more to The Giver than this, but for this blogs sake, we will focus on Jonas and his difference from the others in his society (Giver).

For the connection to Zulus, Alice Achitophel is the last fertile person in the non-fertile world, so she is special and she knows it. Jonas is special for he looks like no one else in his community, and he is destined for the position of having the communities’ memories given to him. Of course, Alice wasn’t destined to be the last fertile person, she only had a bout of rebellious attitude and didn’t go to her sterilization and Jonas was picked. Then again, both Jonas and Alice realized it was better to go back to the life that everybody used to have before being forced into the society they live in now. Jonas left his community in the hopes that since he is not there to receive the memories of the past, that everyone will soon remember how it was, and Alice leaving the city to go to rebel country in the hopes that she will be welcomed and reveled due to her condition.

For the Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen is just trying to get by one day at a time, but she puts herself in danger of being killed to save the life of her younger sister, who is drafted to go into the Hunger Games, an entertainment venue for rich people to watch the poor and despot fight for their lives and kill others. Of course with every book that has to do with corrupt government, there has to be a rebellion, and Katniss is just the girl chosen to be the symbol of the rebellion, The Mockingjay, Katniss Everdeen the Girl on Fire! For Katniss’ society, there is a corrupt ruler, but the cause she is fighting for is also corrupt in its own way, so really there is no true winner.

The Hunger Games connects more to Zulus for me, as Katniss has played on either side of the fence in her story. She has played the capitol’s game to try and keep the ones she loves alive, but when they pushed too far and tried to kill her again, she joined the other side. Once on the other side however, she found that the rebels leader wasn’t all sunshine and morals as she turned out to be. However, once shown Katniss quickly rectifies the situation in her own way, killing the leader and going on with the rest of her life in a meadow. Alice realizes that even though the city she came from held out no favors for her, the rebel life was not her friend either. In any instance the rebels treated her worse than in the city life, for in the city Alice had more freedom while with the rebels she was literally shoved into a tiny room and left to fend for herself. Neither the rebels or the government life are bad guys, but for Alice both options don’t emit welcoming feelings from Alice. Although there are no obvious comparisons between Katniss and Alice, their situations are somewhat similar, due to the constant danger both of them face.

After reading Serhiy’s blog post about how children’s mind are often molded based on their environment’s and the people they are surrounded by,  I felt like I needed to reflect upon my own life, and revisit my own childhood.

I grew up in a community where just about everyone blended in with one another. Light skin, brown, blue, green eyes, blonde, brown, red hair. And then there was me. Tan skin, dark eyes, jet black hair, and a name that makes everyone have the same strange, puzzled look on their face, and makes people pause, say “how do you spell that?” and “oh, that’s so pretty!”  I stuck out like a sore thumb, as cliche as it may sound. On top of that, I was the nerdy, shy kid with glasses. However, I was not very familiar with racism throughout my schooling, because it didn’t really impacted me. As I’m typing this, I’m realizing how strange this sounds to me. All throughout school, my community treated me as an equal in all aspects. Not only had racism not impacted me, but I was never bullied or taunted for being that shy kid with the glasses. If anything, I tended to ostracize myself. I knew from a very young age that I had an appearance that set me apart from most, which definitely took a big hit to my self-esteem. I felt as though I needed to change to look more like them, and less like me. However the more I taunted and ostracized myself with my differences, the more my community embraced me and treated me the same as the rest.

 

But, back to Serhiy’s point. Unlike me, our heroine, Alice Achitophel, in the novel Zulus by Percival Everett, is constantly haunted by her physical differences. She is reminded that she is fat by everyone around her, and it is a heavy load to bear.  Clearly, racist tendencies aren’t written into our brains when we are born. We are taught to discriminate. But how do we fix it? Many of us are reminded through school and parents to treat other equally and to “treat people the way you would like to be treated.” But regardless of preaching this mantra, we start to see subtle evidence suggesting otherwise on TV shows, in music, and through the news starting at a young age.

 

I read an article recently from the New York times (to which I will post the link to at the end), that suggests that children begin to notice differences between groups and people and the different ways people are treated as early as five years old. Writer Jennifer Harvey states that parents and community members who rely on the “generic messages” of treating everyone equal simply are not doing enough. Harvey says this message is dangerous and that parents must acknowledge discrimination and the fact that is happens. They must point out racism and discrimination to their children when it does happen and have a discussion as to why it happens and why it is wrong.

 

What do you guys think? How can we eliminate discrimination? Can we eliminate it? Do you think Harvey’s method is effective?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/opinion/are-we-raising-racists.html

When I found out that we were going to be reading Zulus in this class, I couldn’t tell if I was excited or annoyed. Maybe it was because I had read it before that I thought this was going to be a breeze or maybe it was the fact that I had read it before that I knew it was going to be a difficult book to get through, for a second time. But holding the same book in my hand that I did last year, reading the same words that I had done just a year ago, I feel as though I am reading a completely different book. Continue reading “Another Year of Zulus”

As we have been reading Zulus and having discussions about the novel in class, I have noticed a common feeling among our class: we do not like being confused. Continue reading “An Answer to an Important Question”

How Zulus relates to our class topic of racism was on my mind while we have been covering the book. Prior to our conversation of how the book reflects the consequences of prejudices that is associated with Alice’s weight and its parallelism to racism, I had wondered what race Alice was. Although this may not be relevant to the story overall, I had assumed that Alice was black due to the context of the class. However, it didn’t occur to me until not too long ago that there is an overweight white woman on the cover who is most likely Alice. This actually reminded me of a debate I had whilst reading Home. There is a scene in which Frank arrives in Georgia and is jumped by a number of people. An individual he calls a “Samaritan” approaches Frank, helps him up, gives him money, and then sends him along his way. I do remember that there was a conversation in class where we discussed the possible race of this Samaritan, and many agreed that he is most likely African American like Frank due to his use of the word “brother” when talking to Frank. This assumption of the race of both the Samaritan and Alice reminded me of a riddle I would like to propose to you all.

“A father and son are in a horrible car crash that kills the dad. The son is rushed to the hospital; just as he’s about to go under the knife, the surgeon says, “I can’t operate – that boy is my son!” Explain.

Were you confused at this? Did you think how could the son be the surgeon’s son if the dad is dead? It might be because you assumed that the doctor is a male; the surgeon is actually the boy’s mother. This is a riddle that a psychology professor from Boston University has utilized in order to reveal how ingrained gender bias is in the minds of groups of children and university students. This made me wonder about how I assumed Alice’s race to be African American due to her unfortunate circumstances. It also made me realize how in my mind, I associated overweight women with the African American women that was portrayed to me through high school. I still remember the pictures shown during history class of African American women slaves who were always shown to be on the bigger side with the title as a cook. It was just interesting to me that even with a book that does not address the idea of racism directly (even with a black character present), I still find myself exhibiting such stereotypes onto the characters in the book. Have you?

Grace

There is always the debate about nature vs. nurture. Is a person born evil or have there been events that caused them to become evil. The one thing we do know is that children are very good at learning. If a child is constantly told they are stupid by their parent, who is pretty much guiding them through life while they still can’t reason on their own, that is what they will believe. Alice in the book Zulus by Percival Everett is constantly reminded that she is fat. Her mother died while Alice was very young and her father later committed suicide. Her grandmother blames her father’s suicide on her. “Alice Achitophel hadn’t liked her grandmother; the old woman had blamed her for son’s death, claiming that her obesity had embarrassed him and driven him to suicide.” pg. 40. Although Alice knew the real reason her father killed himself, I think it still gave her a sense of insecurity and low self-esteem. Hearing some tell me that my parent killed themselves because they were embarrassed by me would definitely destroy my self-esteem.  Also in Home by Chloe Ardelia Wofford, Frank’s sister Cee was always put down by her grandmother while her parents were away at work. “Being born in the street–or the gutter, as she usually put it–was prelude to a sinful, worthless life.” Pg 43. This constant reminder of being worthless prevented Cee from reaching her full potential. It was not until she went through a traumatizing experience and learned from the women that helped her heal, that she was able to become strong and independent.

This also got me thinking how exposing a child to racism at a young age could shape their whole future of how they look at people. I personally never had a very diverse community so I never knew about racism. However Avery replied to my first post and said the community she grew up in was very diverse but she was also never exposed to racism (Link). We grew up on totally different environments and never considered racism. “So where does this hate or though that someone is less valued based on their looks come from?” I think it is just based on what children are exposed to from a young age. Teaching a child that someone is worse than them will most likely stick with them for majority of their life. Of course maybe not their whole life, at least until they are able to reason it for themselves but even then there will be some form of bias. Just like anything that we learn wrong for the first time, it is much harder to learn it the right way the second time around.  It feels like racism almost becomes heritable. That is why proper parenting is so important. Children need to learn confidence and love for others at a young age because it will shape their whole life.