Workplaces for the Crayola Enthusiast.

My material artifact is three pieces of paper, each with the word "RESUME" written on them. What seperates each sheet is their color. One white, one black, and one yellow. You may have guessed it, but these pieces of paper symbolize a resume from a white, black, and asian person. What I would like to talk about is affirmitave action, more so related to the workplace.

In a nut shell, our country decided it was necassary to find another way to put a foot down on racial discrimination, and this time they took it to the workplace. How does one do this you ask? Well by broadening the color spectrum. Employing the person that does the job well is so outdated, diversity is in. They also say a happy workplace makes a more productive workplace, and what better way to turn those frowns upside down, than by adding some color (because culture has nothing to do with ethnicity)? It's a fault proof plan, since a smart, hard-working workplace makes us really sad, right? Well here are my thoughts on affirmative action:

This is your workplace.


This is your workplace on affirmitave action.


(MS Paint is awesome)

In my first picture everyone is white, which I'm not implying all workers should be white, but what I am implying is companies are actually going out of there way to make sure the white to minority ratio reaches somewhat of an equilibrium.

Disregard the fact this should apply outside the workplace as well, but I don't care what ethnicity you are, as long as you get the job done, and done well. Who honestly thinks, "Man I'm sure glad my company hires a more diverse workforce, rather than the best workers. They sure know how to be productive." If I was working for that company, I'd be putting my two weeks in ASAP, because I'd think I was working for morons. Much like the "Blame Model," described by Marion Young in her essay "From Guilt to Solidarity: Sweatshops and Political Responsibility," affirmative action works backwards than forward. We want to push forward, and perceive people only as people, but affirmative action takes that goal and pulls a 180 on it, giving people labels such as black, white, and asian.

Check For Racist Exempt Status Before You Speak

Here we see a picture of a Middle Eastern man riding a camel. I think it's fair to say we've heard plenty of jokes that could be related to this photo, but to make my point more effective, I'll bestow upon you, an example of one of these jokes (of the cruder sort). I wasn't about to spend an eternity finding a joke, since most of my searches turned up long story-type jokes, so I'll make one up on the fly: What's the difference between a camel and his middle eastern owner? The camel can't ride the owner, it has to take it from behind.

Now just to let everyone know, I am Arabic (my last name is Al-Hakim). Even though I'm only partly Arabic, aside from my big ass nose and catipillar eyebrows I don't look arabic, I don't speak Arabic, and I don't partake in much of the Arab culture, but if I stated that joke here, in good ol' US of A, where "politically correct" is expected, I would be exempt from the label known as racist. Now if a non-Arab stated that joke, he would be slapped with a racist ticket by the "PC" police. Why is it that a non-Arab can't get away with that joke, but an Arab would walk away with nothing, aside from maybe a few laughs (and as a reminder, you're not a racist if you laugh since an Arab said it)? I bet when most of you glanced over my comment about my facial features, where I basically implied all arabs have a "big ass nose and catipillar eyebrows," you didn't think of me as racist, you might have even laughed, since I'm Arabic. This is a problem.

I'm not writing to protest jokes made about ethnicities, because that would make me a hypocrite, but I am writing to protest the "PC" world and its belief of what makes you a racist. Unless its blatanly prejudice, I don't mind racial jokes. In fact, as weird as it sounds, I believe racial jokes can promote equality, as long as every ethnicity gets their turn at the ass end.

Now to my material artifact, which is pretty lame. I couldn't think of anything good to use, so I grabbed a W-2 form I got in the mail recently. Based on certain aspects of yourself which relate to you financially, you can receive exemption from certain taxes. Now just view the W-2 form as the "politically correct" world. Based on certain aspects of yourself, namely your ethnicity, you can receive exemptions from being racist to certain ethnicities.

I need sleep. I guess that's what I get for waiting till the last minute.

Who Bears the White Collar?

Over the course of the weekend, I began writing about my first set of artifacts for class, and to be honest, I was a tad proud of my idea. I found it to be relatively creative and original, but unfortunately, as I was rounding third, I realized it had little correlation to the urban theme. I spent the whole time thinking, "What would be a good way to discuss race without being completely trite," that I lost focus on the central theme of the entire course! This brought me to another realization, I am an idiot. Consequently, I scrapped the idea, so let's see what's behind door number two.

Here we see some textbooks, some pencils and pens, and the last thing looks to be a notebook. You could say they belong to some of the essential tools of knowledge. A great majority of children within the US are given the chance to use these tools, but when utilized by certain minds in certain settings, it seems they're work is not up to par. In many large cities, where blacks and/or hispanics hold a high percentage of the population, schools are overwhelmed by poor test scores and high dropout rates. Statistics like these create a by-product of generalizations for the workplace. Why do we only perceive the hard-working white American, or the "math gene" bearing Asian owning white collar status? I mean, they're not from those parts, right?

My second artifact, or my material artifact, was a white-collared shirt. It seems as if I took the term to a literal sense, but I used it to symbolize the status of the white-collared worker. I chose this symbolization because of our societies ridiculous perception of the white-collared worker (which was described in the previous paragraph), or specifically his or her ethnicity.

Introduction

Welcome to my blog. Although it was initially intended for my English 1020 class, I may use it for anything else that comes to mind (if deemed interesting enough).