Blog #3

In the previous class we started by sharing our short and long goals in our life which it was very exciting to learn about other students goals and how we created visions to achieve our goals. What really surprised me was that everybody had realistic goals because when I talked to my friends or relatives most of them had unrealistic goals. For instance, some of them want and dream about playing basketball in NBA, or being an actor or actress in Hollywood which statistically have less probability to occur. I really like the idea to write down our goals and then put it in an envelop because later when we open it, that would surprise all of us. I believe success started by making first decision and then follow it. That is really good to have a vision and create our goals and then use our full potential to achieve our goals. I am pretty hopeful and optimistic to achieve my goals, but the most important thing for me is that to use my full potential and be in the right track. I have learned that not to fight with outcomes. I just do my job, and be the best I can be, then, there is nothing to be worried and accept the outcome. After talking about our goals, we discussed about NCLB which I really learned about some aspects of educational system in California. I was surprised to learn about private and public schools which it seems that it needs a ground research to find out the differences. I have never had a chance to study at high school in U.S, therefore, I had no experience to share, but I learned a lot from my classmates. Furthermore, I hope everybody achieve all their goals in future.

During the history of America, African-Americans have been experienced oppression, prejudice, and discrimination. Those horrible experiences were not caused by nature. Race and culture are socially constructed. For instance, African-American, Asian-American, Middle-Eastern- American, or Iranian-American are all socially constructed. We rarely hear the word White-American or European-American because those people who had power in history, they did not want to constructed. As humans, we were and we are all responsible for that discrimination. African-Americans have high rate of drop from schools and being poor in the U.S. 24 percent of African-American live on poverty, and they don’t have equal opportunity to continue their educations. Those oppression and discrimination from the past, made Blacks to suffer many psychological problems and still continues. On the one hand, everybody have a negative attitude towards racism, but on the other hand, we do not take enough action to eliminate discrimination. Action speaks lauder than words. We need to take an action. We need to educate people to understand the underlying problem of discrimination, especially, towards Blacks. As a result, we, humans, created this discrimination, and we have to finish it all together.