Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Color Blind or Color Brave

Luckily, growing up, I have never really felt invisible. I was always part of some type of group in school and at home it was kind of hard to feel invisible being the only girl with four brothers. There were always eyes on me. 

Both my parents always taught me to never treat anyone badly because they may seem "different" and treat everyone the way you want to be treated. I always followed what they said which lead me to "never see race." Growing up in Providence and going to inner city schools this was very easy to do since almost everyone looked like me.  Whenever I was interacting with anyone who was different from me I would never treat them like an "other" and never pushed them away.
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I never noticed that this wasn't necessarily a good thing to do until I grew into an adult. Listening to Mellody talking about ignoring race or color makes a lot of sense to me now, but if I was told that a few years ago, I probably wouldn't have agreed. The topic about race DOES make people uncomfortable so people do avoid it, I even do sometimes depending who the conversation is with. The story Mellody told about her swimming coach making her hold her breathe while doing laps didn't make sense to me at first because I thought that her coach meant she (as a black woman) has to be comfortable with possibly being treated differently. After Mellody explained how she interpreted it by being comfortable with having race conversations it all came together. If no one is comfortable about talking about race and color then how can we understand each other?

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Youth In Action can be an antidote for invisibility because of everything they stand for. This organization empowers youth to have their voices heard and be leaders. The youth who are apart of this organization are from all different backgrounds, but don't ignore their differences. They try their best to understand all the different backgrounds because they believe that the more diverse the group the better they are at decision making which is what Mellody said as well.


 
How one company is increasing visibility for women in the workplace

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

YIA

The stories from the workers at YIA all sound too familiar to me. Being someone who grew up in Providence, went to public schools, and am a minority, I know first hand what a lot of these kids at YIA felt like while in school. We aren't given the best education, we aren't given the right support or resources because we simply don't have it. We never had a voice in school because the adults knew what was best for us. If we felt like speaking out, good luck finding other kids who will speak up and support you because no one felt like we can change anything anyways. Just like Monay, I felt like traditional education never addressed my needs and all the information that was spit out at me was useless. The students are powerless in public schools because they aren’t any (adult) leaders to encourage them to do so. A few months ago, I made the decision to move out of Rhode Island after I graduate and my heart is still set on it. In this article, it does mention how the kids who are “best positioned to give their voice and power to help fix what’s broken in these cities usually move on to better places and opportunities.” I’m one of the many people raised in Providence, brought up in not the best neighborhoods, and put through public schools, love their hometown, but feel like this is not the place where they want to be for the rest of my life or raise their future children for the simple fact that it’s hard to reach your full potential in a city like mine.


Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Who Am I

Hi, Guys!

My names Jessel and just like you all, I'm so excited to finally be entering my senior year of college. This summer I have been working and enrolled in two summer classes so I can be caught up and able to graduate this upcoming may. When I'm not in school, I'm usually at one of the two of my jobs or trying to catch up on all the sleep I miss out on every night. I'm looking forward to this semester and finishing up the year strong!
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