Week 10_Section 4_Julia Wells

Particularly in academia, it feels like a dog-eat-dog world. Students, scholars, faculty, and professors compete with one another to get on top. They want to be the top dog because the top dog gets all the benefits. People with a different ranking are treated differently in school. They are oppressed and discriminated against to force them to stay in those lower tier positions. However, as this week’s reading discussed, we don’t seem to realize that we are part of the system, rather than just in the system. We have the opportunity to change what we were given. We need the fight and determination to stop the oppression and begin trusting one another to prevent corrupt social engineering. The purpose of breaking apart what was given to us is so we can present a positive morality to future generations to stay aware and educated and to join the fight of forming a new system.

            It is hard to break away from your roots. Your values and morals are placed in your head and we are trained to believe what our elders say without any question. We gas-light one another and even ourselves if a social or political issue does not seem right. Like the reading said, during the Vietnam War, soldiers were ordered to shoot anything that moves without question. These soldiers were trained to follow orders without hesitation and without their own thought or feelings brought into the matter. Resisting these orders literally is the difference between life or death. To break away from your roots means to create a new and enriched value. A value that others can fight. A new value that others can relate to.

The documentary of Little Saigon in the lecture reminded me of breaking away from generational roots of culture. In this documentary, a generational difference was apparent with the children and the adults. Children were losing their language and were more involved in American culture. Adults kept to their Vietnamese culture and relied on their children to navigate in America. Some adults were demoralized and humiliated because of their color background in a white society. However, Little Saigon shows that something new created from your roots still gives a nostalgic feeling of home.

References: 

Valverde, C. Conclusion Academics Awaken: Power, Resistance, and being woke.

https://www.123rf.com/photo_32993259_addiction-freedom-and-breaking-out-concept-as-a-human-hand-in-a-fist-escaping-from-tree-roots-that-w.html