Racial Issues at Parker

The issues that have been happening at parker are a shocking to me.  Our school, which is very keen on educating people about racial fairness, had issues in small groups talking about diversity?  When everyone was told we were shocked.  But yet, they still didn't tell everyone exactly what happened.  How can we prevent something from happening if we do not know what has happened in the past?  I heard lots of outrageous stories about certain kids targeting other students and faculty members.  People were being named who I was friends with.  Also arguments were being thrown around about how it was being handled.  One of the opinions was that kids shouldn't be asked to discuss diversity without adults present.  Diversity is a hard topic for anyone to discuss without anyone overreacting or getting offended.  Another opinion is that kids should discuss it because it is the way to make progress themselves.  The way that makes sense the most is that kids should be able to discuss it and it is a hard topic but it should be guided so no kids could start rumors and such.  That was the case at the small groups, kids said something that got twisted around to a racial comment.

1. " Haiti Earthquake"  ,acessed october 28th, 2011, http://search.proquest.com/docview/458861292?accountid=3360,
About the general idea of the earthquake itself.  Written in a newspaper.

2. " A year after the Haiti Earthquake", acessed october 28th, 2011, http://search.proquest.com/docview/832014796/132B09214CF246230A0/2?accountid=3360
The differences that happened a year after the earthqauke.

3." Two months after Haiti Earthqauke",  acessed october 28th, 2011, http://search.proquest.com/docview/443537555/132B09214CF246230A0/9?accountid=3360
Two months after the earthquake the health issues that  were happening.

4.  " Emergency Shelter in Haiti", acessed october 28th, 2011, http://search.proquest.com/docview/444707227/132B0987F3A9F0E778/6?accountid=3360
The Haiti earthquake by a united nations point of view.

5. " Haiti's long term jobs after earthqauke" , acessed on october 28th, 2011,
http://search.proquest.com/docview/835109465/132B09F00F85E02C3E/1?accountid=3360
Jobs in haiti after the earthquake and how they are affect

6. " The world of the Haitian Revolution", acessed on october 28th, 2011, economiclyhttp://search.proquest.com/docview/225680103/132B0A307BE75507571/2?accountid=3360
Haitian revolution and economic statistics

Witches in Africa

In the reading about Bantu Language, the idea of being scared of witch craft caught my eye.  I had always known about back in the middle ages what they thought about witches and how it was a huge deal to catch one.  I found out in africa that there were many types of witches.  On the good side, there were witch doctors who were frowned upon a little but were known for their healing powers.  On the bad side were people thought of to posses huge amounts of evil power.  In the Zulu and Bantu tribes, there were groups of people called witch smellers.  They would host large gatherings of their village in particular and form a circle.  The villagers would not interact while the witch smellers would start to hum low and stomp their feet.  Then they would find who had caused the witchcraft in their village by the pat on the victims back and he or she would be dragged off and beaten till death.  The witch smeller's symbol was a quagga (type of zebra) tail.  Now in modern days witch smellers are illegal.  Yet the witchcraft continues all over africa.  People with albinism are thought to contain large amounts of power.  Because of that, it wasn't unusual for a witches to cut off limbs of people with albinism for luck.  Children were often accused of witchcraft if they had mental illnesses.  Some were sent to wellness centers to get rid of their witchcraft ways or some were just abandoned.  There really is no solution to problems like these.  Could this continue into the future?  Most likely yes.  The idea of witchcraft is part of belief which can be main factors in some peoples lives.  If you take away people beliefs then their individual pyramids could tumble down.  And when individual pyramids fall down then society then has no base and collapses.

Is the term civilization a dead word?

During the course of the year we have been learning about civilizations in general.  In class we mostly cover on how they function in the past.  Something that is never brought up is how is civilization used in the present.  No one refers to cities or countries as civilizations.  When you look at civilizations in the past they were smaller, less civilized, and less populated then cities now.  They are referred to as smaller colonies inside countries.  But they were still groups of people living together under similar circumstances.  So why isn't the United States of America referred to as a civilization? 

 Civilization nounthe stage of human social development and organization that is considered most advanced (Definition from Webster Dictionary)  
As a member of social development thats at one of its most advanced states why are we not referred to as a civilization?  A other way to look at this I guess is that we don't know how advanced we are going to get and what other civilizations may evolve to.  So maybe we aren't called a civilization because we aren't there yet.  It really is just a question that can never be answered.