Three Possible Topics

For my research essay I have narrowed the field down to three broad topics. Although I still have a ways to go in figuring out exactly what to write about I feel I have three possible main choices to start from. I would like to base my paper either on Race, Gender or Class.

The first topic I was considering was how race is portrayed in the media. There are hundreds of ways to spin this topic, and for that reason I may not chose it. I was thinking of focusing of one of two areas with in the topic of race. The first one being how minorities are often portrayed as violent gangsters who kill for no reason, while white men are often portrayed as freedom fighters or reluctant heroes who chose violence because they have to. A second way I could spin this topic would be to discuss how in most moves either minorities are helping themselves or whites are helping minorities, there is hardly any movie where minorities help whites. These two negative images in movies result in negative images against minorities.

The second topic I was considering is media's portrayal of gender roles in our society. As a back drop to this I could use how the media targets genders when advertising common house hold items like cleaning supplies. I think that the media sets certain gender roles and plays off of them with claims of "You are not a man/or women if you don't have ....." I think these set roles are bad for our society, especially children.

The third topic would be how class issues come into play within the media. Much like the topic of gender, many commercials are geared towards a certain class or status. This approach makes other classes feel inferior or superior, which helps to promote hatred and bigotry between them. I would argue that because the media portrays certain class groups in a negative light this way of thinking leaks out into society as a whole.

Those are are my three broad thoughts. Any ideas or feedback to help me narrow things down would be greatly appreciated.

Now Exiting Melting Pot Island.

The man pictured above may not be famous but his 15 seconds of fame has made him infamous. His name is Keith Bardwell, a justice of the peace in Louisiana. How did a simple justice of the peace get on the news and kicked off my island? Mr. Bardwell denied the marriage between Beth Humphrey and her boyfriend Terence McKay. Why would he do such a thing? Well it seems that Mr. Bardwell is not a fan of the "melting pot." He denied the marriage because Ms. Humphrey is a white female and Terence McKay is a black male. His reasoning for denying the couple was purely based on race. During a recent Associated Press interview Mr. Bardwell stated he would not marry the couple because in his opinion mixed marriages do not last and the kids of the marriage suffer.

He is voted off my island because his racism is hindering his judgment. He is a public servant with guidelines to follow, these guidelines state that with the proper money and papers he is to marry anyone regardless of race. He defends his racist stance by claiming he has seen mixed marriages divorce faster than non-mixed marriages. There is no evidence his opinion is valid, according to divorcerate.org the national average is 50% across the board, regardless of race. Mr. Bardwell claims he is not a racist, in a recent CNN interview he went on to say he has "piles of black friends and lets them use the bathroom of his home." That is the equivalent of someone saying "I'm not a racist I have a black friend." His racist way of thinking and separatist outlook have no place on my island. Much like a president should not be judged on the color of his skin, the decision of who to marry should not be based on race either. Mr. Bardwell is perpetuating the stereotype that the south is racist and playing God, deciding who and who should not be married to each other.

If we allow our public servants to decide who should be married based on race we are destroying the work of the civil rights movement. We are destroying the work of the Freedom Riders, thousands of activists, historical figures like Ceasar Chavez, Rosa Parks and Stokely Carmichael. What Mr. Bardwell is doing is akin to the old south Jim Crow laws and the laws against interracial relations that put people like world boxing champion Jack Johnson behind bars for traveling with his white wife. On my island and in the world around it there is no place for racism. Being born a certain color is as much your choice as being born handicapped is. Racism will never die if we allow people like Mr. Bardwell to have a voice in decisions that affect the public.

Scarface-A History Lesson?

Almost everyone has either seen Scarface, heard about it, or can quote a line from it. Scarface was written by Oliver Stone and directed by Brian De Palma in 1983. The cast is filled with stars such as Al Pacino as Tony Montana (Scarface), Michelle Pheiffer, Steven Bauer, Robert Logia and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. The movie was made in 1983 and was a remake of an old 1932 mob movie of the same name.

The movie follows the life of Tony Montana, an immigrant from Cuba who comes to the U.S.A in search of money and power. When he gets to Miami he is hit with the harsh reality that life is tough in the U.S. and he is forced to take a job as a dishwasher. With the right connections in place he gets into the world of drugs and fast money. Once in the drug lifestyle he thirsts for more power and more money. The story is about his rise from dishwasher to drug kingpin and his struggle to stay on top of a fast life.

The movie is a roller coaster of highs and lows, action and drama not only on the streets but in the interactions of the characters. Scarface in my opinion is a movie that can be analyzed hundreds of ways. We can discuss how the character of Tony Montana can be seen as a tragic hero, or how power corrupts the soul and doesn't always bring happiness, we can even analyze the effects of drugs on each character. All these would be interesting topics but for me the interesting thing about the movie is one point that is overlooked many times.

Scarface is set in Miami during the 1980s. Oliver Stone spoke about the setting in the Scarface DVD box set, he said he wanted to put the film in a setting modern day people could relate to instead of in the mafia times of the 1930s and 40s. So, why did he chose Miami in the 1980s? For that we have to step out of fiction and look at historical events. Miami in the 1980s was the site of the Mariel Boatlift.

The Mariel Boatlift was a mass exodus of Cubans who left from Cuba's Mariel Harbor for the United States in the summer of 1980. The United States opened it's borders to Cubans who were not happy with the Castro regime that was and still is in power in Cuba. The U.S. government thought this would prove disastrous for Castro but the plan backfired as far as many are concerned. Instead of letting Cuba's citizen's go, Castro opened up his prisons and let the Cubans he didn't want in Cuba go to the U.S. There were so many refugees that the U.S. government was forced to put them into "Tent Cities" below the Miami freeway.

It was during this time that the movie Scarface takes place and Tony Montana begins his reign. In one such Tent City, Tony Montana kills a Castro supporter for money. In the movie the men can be seen living in the tents while the cars drove above them on the busy freeway. According to many people I have spoke to who were in Miami at the time, my Father included, what the movie portrays is very much like what it looked like in Miami at that time. The movie highlights how the people who came to the U.S. were pretty much forced to find they're own way to get out of those Tents and into a culture that didn't want them.

The movie Scarface is in no way meant to be a documentary; but, it does highlight a moment in our history that is overlooked. It has been my experience that much of the history of U.S. and Latin American relations is not talked about in school. Before watching the movie Scarface and wanting to know what the Mariel Boatlift was all about, all I knew of was the Cuban Missile Crisis. I think it was a time that many people both Cubans and Americans would like to forget, but it's important to keep history like that alive so it is not repeated.

Scarface is a great movie, lots of action, drama, fights, romance, comedy, basically everything you could ask for in a movie. If you scratch a little bit deeper you also see the struggle of a culture to survive in a foreign land. You can see glimpses of what many immigrants went through to survive and are still going through to survive. If your one of the few people who has never watched it I invite you to give it a look. If you have seen it, I invite you to look at Scarface from a different perspective, one we can learn something from.

Bow Down

The image above is an ad for a computer company. At first glance, the ad looked like any other. It was not until after looking closer I realized the issue. The purpose of this add is to show the streamlined faster service however the outcome of the ad is different. This add is very controversial to me for several reasons. There are several stereotypes the add feeds into.

The first thing wrong with this image is the use of race. In the image there is a white man with his arms crossed in business casual attire. The white man is clearly in charge of the rest of the people. The "Workers" are all black men; to make things worse they are in a posture that looks like they are bowing to the white man. All the black men have they're faces down in reverence of the white man.

Another controversial part of this image is the fact that all the black men are genetically the same looking, all athletic and muscular. All the black men are in less clothes than the white man. These facts highlight two different issues to me. The first being the stereotype that all black men are athletic and superior in sports. The second issue with the black men has to do not only with the image itself but with the tag line for the add.

All the black men are not only athletic, but they are exactly the same. All the black men are scantily dressed and bowing to a white man. The tag line states that a company can "Multiply computing performance and Maximize the power of employees." The use of the words multiply performance and maximize power; along with how the black men are dressed and postured is controversial. The combined effect of the image of the black men and the tag line make slavery come to mind for me. During slavery times white masters used to breed or "multiply" stronger slaves to maximize power and performance.

The purpose of the ad may have been to sell a service but the outcome was controversial. Even if the maker of the ad did not intend the ad to offend malicious, I do find it offensive. I do not think it is over the top because the ad is subtle but once you look deeper at the issue the issues it brings up are controversies that continue to plague our society for centuries. Race relations, especially between black and white people are usually tense, ads like these do little to help the issue.

Social Networking

Social Networks are websites where people who share a common interest or relationship can gather to share ideas and communicate. Millions of people login to sites like MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, and many others. Using networks like these, families that may not live close by can share information; coworkers or schoolmates can share ideas and get updates. Like much of the internet there are positive aspects of social networking; however, there are many negative aspects that need to be addressed. Some of these negative aspects include identity theft, and fraud, to child porn and child stalkers.

Webmasters and Security professionals are constantly trying to safeguard the users of social networks against the negative aspects of the internet. There are millions of dollars put aside for age verification software, identity recognition databases etc. All of these safe guards are steps in the right direction, however there is still a human aspect that security personal can not account for. Websites rely on its users to be honest and give them the information they are asking for. A child molester under a false name and valid email address can easily setup an account, a child of 12 can pose as 18 with just a click of a button. Although technology has added security to social networks anything short of facial recognition or fingerprint verification still leaves room for dishonesty. Much like a burglar adapts to new security features in a home, in the same way someone who wants to do bad things on the internet will find away to do it.

In class we read two articles dealing with security issues on social networks, specifically MySpace, but the same can be said of anyone. I thought that the first article "MySpace and Sex Offenders: What's the problem" dealt with the issue in more a report type way. The author offered little insight to where the problems might lie. The second article "MySpace Not Responsible for Predators" deals with the author's opinions more than the first article. The author believed that the websites are not responsible for the safety of its users, the responsibility lied on the user themselves.

I think that my personal view of social networks and security lean more in the direction of the second article. When thinking about the problem with security on social network sites two personal context areas come to mind. The first context is Family, this context comes more into play with minors on the web and on these social network sites. I have come across many parents who have little idea what they're children are doing online. In my own family I have seen cousins and nieces who have website profiles giving fake ages and stats. Many of my family members and friends at one time or another have met people offline that they have met online. I think it is up to the parents to not only monitor what the child does online but also monitor what they do offline as well. It is inexcusable to me that there are children downloading instructions on how to make bombs, and then making these bombs at home. The parents always say they didn't know what was going on. Growing up in a two income family, my parents were always working, however they made sure to take the time to find out what was going on in our lives. Without a strong family children are falling prey to people online who are telling them what they want to hear. Children and parents need to sit down and talk about the dangers of social networking and how to avoid becoming a victim. Without guidance from parents and common sense of they're own children will be in danger no matter what safe guards the websites use.

The second context that comes to mind when talking about social networks is Professional. I have worked in IT for the past 10 years. As part of my career I have studied network security and protection. I have come to the realization that there is no easy way to address security on the internet. There is tracking software and monitoring tools that can be used to see where the users are on the net. There are information captures that can gather any illegal activities that are on the net. There is no way to confirm an identity over the internet one hundred percent. Even if date of births and social security needs to be entered, they can still come from incorrect sources. The security of a website and it's users is in a large part based on the honesty of the users. For this reason the users need to be aware of the dangers of giving information out over the net and meeting people they don't know offline. In the end we are all responsible for our actions online or off.

Social networking has become important in our society. There are many areas where users of these networks are exposed to dangers, however they can not be taken down. In my opinion the social networks benefits out way the negative. Millions of people and companies rely on the information exchanged by they networks. If users and parents of minor users were more vigilant there would be less cases of safety issues on the internet.