The Changes in Our World Based on Race

There are many things that Dr. King believed in very strongly. In the 1970’s there were many people who believed that African-Americans, Asians, and Native Americans were not as good as the whites were. There were separate schools, drinking fountains, different rights, all because the whites believed that they were all “masters” of colored people. Dr. King got us started, but in no way are we even close to completely ridding ourselves of stereotyping and prejudice.

I know for a fact that we still have stereotyping. Nowadays we think that all Latinos are illegal, Chinese make the best piano players and African-American athletes are the best athletes. We still have a lot of work to do if we want to eliminate all the problems we still have in our society today.

Some people nowadays are very prejudice to other races in our country. Have you ever met someone who just couldn’t get along with someone and said it was because he was “Mexican?” Or he has “Black man hops?”

Another one of Dr. King’s hopes was a day to come when a man is judged by the content of his heart and not the color of his skin and I think that that will happen over the next 100 years. With more and more countries studying English, I think that we will come to a time when we all understand the same language and we all understand each other a lot easier. The best way to be able to judge the content of an individual’s heart is to be able to effectively communicate with them. I have noticed in my home how effective communication can overcome a lot of frustration. My 3 year old sister cannot speak yet. She tries to tell us what she wants and how she feels, but there is always a gap of understanding, which complicates things for both of us. As she learns a new word or a new sign, the level of frustration changes, we usually know better what she wants and we can get her that effectively. Common language breaks down barriers. However, I think that the major communication problem lies not in the language used, but in communicating ideas.

I believe that there are many ways to learn to communicate effectively. One, we can try to learn several languages so we can understand them. Two, we can try to avoid frustration when we talk to others who may not understand us very well and eliminate the overall way of looking at some things for example, “Spanish is hard to understand.” The biggest communication technique, though, is listening. I think if people stopped to objectively listen to other people, without using preconceived biases, but just listened to their ideas, we would see that we are really all the same. We all want to be loved and to love. We all have unique view points and personalities, no matter what our skin or hair color is. If each person could be appreciated for the content of their hearts, then predjudism would be against tyrants and villains.

I think we can and will someday get to the point where we will be at the point where we have eliminated prejudice and stereotyping from our society. May we all work to get someday to happen today.

Southern Utah

Over the 3 day weekend I got to see Southern Utah and Arizona. We spent the night's in St. George but during the day we were everywhere. We would drive to the Grand Canyon and marveled at how BIG and deep it was, I just about wet my pants walking on the trail, then we went ot Zion's and drove through that, then we slept. Then we drove to some sandstone and climbed that, after we went swiming, that was a major opposite. The last day we went to Cedar Break, by Bryce Canyon, and we drove home. I started to realize how cool Southern Utah, Northern Arizona is.

My brother tells me that in Utah Studies they learned that all 5 National Parks in Utah are in Southern Utah. It was cool to go see some of them. I think that most of the national parks in Utah have a "rock" sort of theme, but St. George has some really cool rocks. I saw a lot of cool rock formations that make them cool like Bryce, a bunch of pointy rocks in the same canyon, Zion had a bunch of cool tall rocks, and the Grand Canyon was insane! It was by far the coolest canyon I've ever seen. I knew that it was an incredible thing to see, but to be there was awesome. You looked down into it and thought that it would never end and that you weren't worthy to live again unless you shot yourself or something. I think that it was a neat experience and I would do it again in a heartbeat, but man has also made some cool things in that part of the state.

On the way home we stopped and did some go-karts and that was really fun and I started to wonder, "Why do people live in St. Geoge if it doesn't have very much water?" How did th immigrants decide to just stop in the deseret? They could have gone on to California or even to Mexico and instead they chose the hard way of life. Nowadays it's no big deal to go to St. George and enjoy yourself but how did we ever get to that point? Some pioneer or mountain man was too tired to care where he ended up?

Whatever the reason is, I'm glad they did stop so we could see all those cool sites.

Change

Isn't change a weird thing? I was thinking about change and came to a conclusion, that it is weird. For bed you change your clothes, every 45 minutes you change your teacher, most of our families change with more people added and the favorite change is when you change the time your clock reads.

I woke up this weekend at 7:30 realizing that it was 8:30 to my body, at 10:00 I realized that I was so tired because it was 11:00 to my body so I started to wonder what change is. Every time we change it's a big deal. We can't change our pajamas out in the open instead we find a bathroom, it's hard to sleep in a different bed because it's change. Who's idea was it to change things like we do? I know that Ben Franklin wanted to have daylight savings time, but that is the only person who wanted to have a change like he got. In the Supreme Court their job is to look at all the laws and see what needs to be changed.