Journal 3- Focus Focus Focus

I've got a few things on my mind, including Good Hair, white people's wavering support for the president, and questions so awkward I could NEVER come up with anything even half as funny and honest.

First things first, what constitutes good hair? While watching the Jay Leno segment where people were interviewed in Harlem, the few minutes of black women discussing their hair was eye opening. I had never realized the amount of work that went into everything from straightening, relaxing and... I suppose I'd call it "weaving".

While the segment was good, it was short, so after a youtube search for similar segments, I came across a trailer for Chris Rock's upcoming movie Good Hair.



Simply enough, Rock sets out to answer the question, what exactly constitutes "good hair"? From the scenes available, it seems as if though black women have come to identify aspects of white women's hair as the desirable traits (i.e. straight, wavy, etc.) This gave me an uneasy feeling, almost the same as when I look at my area of Overtown, its seems as if though the black community is making themselves and their envoironment "whiter".

Being a faceless (or raceless) entity, was an interesting portion of Tom Fiedler's piece in the Miami Herald on bloc voting.

Interestingly enough, a familiar name popped up:

"People do it because they're very comfortable with people of their own ethnicity,'' said Marvin Dunn, a psychology professor at Florida International University. He once tested the process as a black man running for mayor of predominately white Miami. He lost.

The piece also tied in with the recent piece from the L.A. Times "Obama is fast losing white voters' support." It seems ridiculous, seeing as the figures are based off changes after Obama's first 100 days in office. Just because a segment of the public had high hopes and became disillusioned doesn't mean there is a "freefall" of support, it just means people are rethinking their decisions (as people often do), an action far more difficult than simply taking a stance.

Dunn continued on in the Herald piece with a degree of optimism:

"Society seems to be moving away from racial and ethnic matters,'' said Dunn, the FIU psychologist. "That is the overall trend. Politics may trail it, but eventually it will be swept along with it.

While inspiring, it came off as a sickly optimistic viewpoint, as if "I Have a Dream" became "I Have a Vague Notion".


In the end, with all these readings, I'm unsure if people really get what constitutes racism. While the class allows more freedom than the usual social settings, we are involved in a class. We can apply it to our own worlds and those we come in contact with, but I don't see a day where racism ends and politics becomes a clean game with voting based solely on qualifications and positions on key issues. It's human nature to be prejudiced, but to show that I'm not entirely cynical on the matters at hand, it's also human nature to call the social norms into question. I find myself kicking and screaming with no real audience and no real direction other than forward. I'm not entirely sure where exactly I'll end up, but the more I cut down the massive sound bites and pundits, the more ridiculous I realize our world becomes.

Anything can seem ridiculous, just think of walking. Essentially falling forward with some coordination. We, as a society, are always falling forward, hoping our feet continue their alternate pattern in a weird stumble through time.