I will post your assignments in three parts: I. Readings, II. Vocabulary, III. Discussion. While I will not be giving a metric ton of work to do, I would ask that you spend time with each selection and consider it thoughtfully. Read through the vocabulary, and determine how it is being used in the articles. Finally, remember that the discussion portion is all that demands a response.
There is no need to set up an account. To respond, simply click on the link marked "comments" at the bottom of each post. Type your response into the comment box, then click where it says "post as" and select "name and URL." Simply type your name into the box and submit the comment. I suppose as a worst case scenario you can simply email your responses to jonberkbratislava@gmail.com.
At the end of each week, on Monday, I will close the discussion and then respond to each of your comments in an email.
If you have any problems, please feel free to contact me at any time.
>>Jonathan
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Hi Jonathan,
ReplyDeleteI think your questions were two wide and we can write several pages about these topics. Maybe I will not answer your questions thoroughly, but I will try to do my best.
1. Racism is still a topic of concern, interest, debate and it is the same like homosexuality or domestic violence. It is really difficult to solve this kind of problems and to find the answer, e.g. if we are or we are not racists anymore. If the problem of Americans is racism or racialism. I do think that the racism still exists in the USA and it is a big problem, although you may not agree with me. I do not want to generalize and say that all Americans are racist, of course not. It depends on each personal experience and maybe my experience is different because I lived in the south part of the U.S. where people used to be a bit more extreme than in the other parts of the U.S where they might be a bit more tolerant, or not.
2. Yes, Americans voted for a black man, but it does not mean that they are less racist now. I think people voted for Obama because they were expecting some change, somebody young, who will solve all those problems of the crisis. I agree with Christopher that even black people can be racist if their deciding factor was the race. I just hope that American people voted for Obama because of his abilities and not because of his color of skin. Race will not solve the political matters.
3. Benjamin’s article about the black-white friendship was interesting, I have seen most of the movies he mentions in the article and I was also watching The Cosby Show when I was young (as well as Baywatch and M.A.S.H. and I don’t remember any black people there, although I think in Baywatch there was one black character Garner or what was his name). I admire all the possible effort to eliminate the racism and maybe Forrest Gump can be a good example. However, I think that the best movie about the racism is the movie Crash from 2004.
4. Here in Slovakia I have to admit we are a bit racist. Probably, we are now more diplomatic than we used to be and we do not complain so openly. It is difficult for me to say something about the gypsies because I live in the western part of Slovakia and here you can hardly see some gypsy. Maybe this is also a reason why I do not feel racist at all. I can see that somebody has another color of skin but it does not mean anything and I do not consider him inferior. I do not know what kind of examples I should give you. I have a friend from my high school Lucia, she is a gypsy and I don’t consider her different or even inferior. However, my experience with gypsies is different than somebody from the eastern part of Slovakia. They have never done anything bad to me, my family or my close friends.
Zuzana Slivkova