The Story of Little Black Sambo

The Story of the Little Black Sambo

In the video that we watched in class about racism, there was a child's story book mentioned and I actually recognized it. I'm not 100% positive which book it was, because there might be different versions of it. But when I was little, I actually read that book! Crazy! Here's a link to it http://www.sterlingtimes.co.uk/sambo.htm. It's called The Story of the LIttle Black Sambo, I remember it and thought how strange it was that even when I was a kid there was still racist type propaganda even though racism wasn't nearly as prominent as in the early 1900's.

It's a really weird story, go ahead and read it.

"Nappy"

A word used to describe hair (mainly black people's) in Caucasia, by Birdie is "nappy."

I thought this was funny. I had heard the term before but decided to look up the correct definition so that we all would know when we read the word "nappy" exactly what it means.

Nappy:
adjective
1. (of hair) in small tight curls [syn: crisp]

You're Sketchy!

Etch-A-Sketch!

A few things I found to be uber-sketch in Caucasia:

1. Birdie's relationship with Alexis

2. Mona being such a slut, and it started before she was even in high school

3. Jim & Sandy's relationship in general, perhaps a lot of the dirty hippiness there

4. Nicholas & his friends buying a fat hooker in Amsterdam

5. DENNIS!!!

6. Mona & her whole life/lifestyle

7. Birdie's attitude problems (adolesence!)

8. Nicholas getting kicked out of boarding prep school

9. The Marshes

10. A female horse being called "Mr. Pleasure"

11. REDBONE & EVERYTHING INVOLVING THIS UBER-CREEP!!! (Thanks Winnie, lol)

Missionary Me

How it Feels to be Missionary Me

I could tell you that I have this all worked out but that wouldn’t be entirely true, so here’s the story…

When I was eight years old, my dad bought me a book called The Flight of the Yellow Woodbee. The book was based on a true story involving the lives of five young missionary men who were martyred on the beaches of Ecuador by a hostile, indigenous, Indian tribe. Before I had read the book, I’d heard stories about the people in my church who were going to foreign countries to feed the hungry and help the poor. It was something I vowed I would do one day when I was old enough.

Within the year I had read the book, one of the missionary’s sons along with one of the tribe members who had killed his father came to speak at my church. I was fascinated by their stories and later ecstatic when they signed my book.

I didn’t know it yet, but about five years later my life crossed paths with Ecuador once again. During the winter of 2005-06 when I was 14, my church’s youth pastor announced that our youth group would be taking a mission trip to Ecuador in June. I knew immediately I was going to be on that plane.

I stayed in Ecuador for two weeks, traveling, building churches, painting, helping at orphanages, and chopping down trees with machetes. It was a life changing experience and I knew missions work was now a true part of who I was and I’d be doing it throughout the rest of my life.

I returned to Ecuador the following summer for another two weeks and nearly frightened the team with my excitement. The tall, green mountains, the vibrant blue skies, and the waterfalls placed every mile or so made me feel at home.

Something I learned about my family during this time was that my great uncle started a mission’s school in Costa Rica along with his wife and kids. This was really cool to learn that I wasn’t the only one with a heart for missions. It turned out that he and his family as well as my grandmother actually knew a couple of the missionaries who were killed on that beach in Ecuador. While I was in Ecuador in 2007, I actually visited the house of one of the missionary families had lived and we stayed in that town. This was five miles from the beach where they were killed.

All of these strange and small connections with my life and these five missionaries really clarified my place in the mission’s field. This was a part of my life now.

Since then, I’ve gone on another mission’s trip to New Orleans, summer of 2008, to help aid Hurricane Katrina victims, slept on State Street in the rain for the Invisible Children of Uganda, written reports on mission’s, and given speeches about sponsoring children in Africa. I plan on going on another trip or two this summer to New Orleans, Haiti, or Uganda and this fall I’m attending a DTS (Discipleship Training School) through a program called YWAM (Youth with a Mission). We will be training then spending time in Southeast Asia and Africa helping children in need, I can’t wait.

In the words of one of the martyred missionaries, Jim Elliot, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” And this is true. I’ve made this a quote to live by. Helping others will always be more important than helping myself, and that is a part of who I am.

Why Yes, I Have A Race

Do you have a race?

Sure! I'm very plainly white. I have eight different nationalities, including Greek which is my favorite, but they don't seem to matter as much as I'm just white and American. I wish I was more Greek-looking, honestly, it'd be pretty cool, exotic.

Being American and white effects me because we're very stereotyped all around the world. Fat, lazy, whiney, selfish, rich, over-working, arrogant, prideful, etc... These are all so terrible, and it effects me more than some because I want to travel for missions work to help others, and it's hard to change that stereotype when people have it pre-programmed in their minds.

Maybe I should just be "conceptually" a different race? lol

For the Girls

Be skinny or nobody will love youuuu!!! ARGHHH!

So the whole "pressure on girls to be skinny and have a body that's not physically possible because of the media," yeah, lame sauce!

Sure, girls are passive, but girls are supposed to be sexy and quiet (sometimes maybe) and elegant (not so much these days...more like revealing but whatever). My point is, is that in a way, I don't really care how some women are portrayed in the media. 

If you pay attention like how that lady in the video during class analyzed every detail of every provocative or sexual ad, then maybe women are being demoralized. 

But guess what, your every day woman is not like ANY of these ad girls. Seriously. And they're not being demoralized. They're standing up for themselves and fighting for independence, equality, and living their own life how they very well please to live it. If anything, us young women should look at these ads and be glad that we're nothing like them! We're not selling ourselves short, lacking intelligence in place of "beauty", not being unable to eat what we want. We're being who we want to be, making our own decisions (even dieting ones!) and are all beautiful in a unique, non-plastic way! We should embrace our differences and individuality from each other, not critique why somebody else is better than us. Because odds are, we're much happier than 99% of those models.

Think about it. You can't eat what you want, you're constantly hit on & treated like a piece of meat, demoralized like I mentioned before, and men are drooling over you. But they're not drooling in a good sense, they're drooling as if they'd be the ones to be gone in the morning after they got you to sleep with them, and leave without a note or goodbye!

That's nowhere near what I'd ever want for my life. Skinny or fat, imperfections or not I'm going to make a difference in this world. And not by selling myself short of a hairspray bottle or tube of lip gloss.

So please girls, don't feel pressure to look perfect! Embrace who you are and what makes you who you are! It's something those girls in those ads can't do because they're just a pretty face with nothing behind it to it's viewers. Be happy with who you are! Everybody else is! =)

Seriously, ew.

I wouldn't want to look like that!!

"Creeper"

Creeperrr!

So last week in class, Mr. Kunkle mentioned how he had not heard the term "creeper" used so much up until maybe a year or two ago. We were discussing it's possible origins and couldn't figure out where this derogatory term quite came from.

Today, on my way home from church with "the fam" somehow Scooby-Doo was brought up. Story of my life. Anyways...this family conversation sent a crazy remembrance to me like it was nobody's business! There was a monster in the old Scooby-Doo series that was called "the creeper"! NO JOKE. He was nassstyyy!!! 

"Jeepers! It's the Creeper!" 

-Velma

Mystery solved! If it wasn't for our "meddling" College Literature class, the Creeper would go un-noticed undeservedly for who knows how much longer!