AnnaLise Coble RGM

Photo: Globalresearch.ca Today we heard from Saad Yousuf, a sports journalist as ESPN. Yousuf is young and what us journalists would consider successful, after all, he has a job. He is well spoken and wise beyond his years. He explains what it means to be a Muslim and how he is affected being a Muslim in a post 9/11 world. He tells us in detail how his own sister is affected by being a hijab-wearing muslim today. He goes into detail about how the Muslim holy book can be taken out of context for good and evil to both non-muslims and Muslims. In turn, he shows us how the Christian Holy Bible can also be taken in and out of context for good or evil to Christians and non-christians.  I was astounded, not only by his and his sister's fears and thoughts. But I realized, there were two women in class who were Muslims. And they had been affected by Islamophobia too, one of them right on our universities' campus. They shared a few stories and became overwhelmed with emotion whi...

Photo: Natalie Hage Instagram Today we heard from Natalie Hage. I had managed to completely miss this story, and that's pretty abnormal for me as I am certainly a news hound who is constantly scouring and surfing news sites. But when I heard Hage's story, I was absolutely horrified. To hear that someone would be so insanely uncomfortable with some one sitting near them because they are overweight is unfathomable to me.  So the story goes, Hage boarded a plane to LA, heading to a photoshoot. Yea, a photoshoot, because she's gorgeous, lovely, and a freaking model. The man seated next to her was immediately and vocally annoyed by her size from the moment she entered his eye line. Hage was forced to endure the man texting a friend throughout the flight about her size. The phone was visible enough to Hage that she was actually able to take photos of his screen without him knowing and post those to social media. Her friends rallied behind her and motivated her to speak...

This week, we watched a movie entitled "The Black Press: Soldiers without Swords." Wow. I was completely unaware that there was a black press movement and It was an impressive one. It's incomprehensible to think that not only did black people have no rights, but essentially they had no importance in "white media". The words that stuck out to me the most in the film were "we didn't live, we didn't die, we didn't get married, and we didn't have children." The speaker was of course not literal in what he was saying, but basically he was saying, to the white man, the black man was completely non-existent. It was so sad to hear and see how these people were treated, and that it was ever ok to treat them as such is an atrocious thought. But it was also inspiring and impressive to see how they fought to be heard and seen when the world was telling them to be silent and to hide. I just kept thinking how they must have been so terrified, ...

Photo credit: YouTube-RasTafari TV In today's class we watched the film "White Like Me". It derived from the idea of an older story that became a movie called "Black Like Me" and it is very interesting because it is the movie's perfect opposite from what I can tell. The author was a lot like myself, as he was brought up in a situation where race was not a question or a thought. Every color of skin in my eyes, while different, was essentially the same. No one person was bad or more menacing just because they weren't the same color as me. A bad reputation was earned, not expected. I am a Spanish American and in the schools that I grew up in, I was the minority. African Americans and Asian Americans were the majority in every school I attended. I was completely unaware of the stigma surrounding my school and my "side of town" as it were. As I grew older, I became aware that I went to the school that was on the wrong side of town and that t...