It's All a Game

For our American flag assignment, I thought about all the American flag themed things I have in my house. At first I was going to take a picture of a picture but it wasn't original. So I thought of something else. I didn't think of it until Saturday morning while playing baseball. I took out my baseball glove and began to play catch when the thought came into my head. On my glove I have an embroidered American flag. Then I thought what it meant to have a flag on a glove. I came up with: baseball is very tightly knit to America. It is called our National Pastime for a reason. That reason is because it is an American game. It was founded in America, it was played solely in America for many years, and it is a our oldest professional sport. I think the flag embroidered on the mitt is supposed to resemble how close America is to baseball. Baseball is a game of struggle and failure. A person who gets a hit three out of ten times is considered successful. America is a lot like that. To separate from England and to get where we are now took struggle and time. Although the US is the most powerful country in the world, there were and are many struggles Americans have had to face. We had to struggle for our freedom, equality of races and religion, and peace in other countries and even our own. baseball and America are very similar because you may lose a battle but you can still win the war.

Tokenism: Is It Really Real?

Today in class we started to talk about Tokenism in drama television shows and other types of entertainment. Right when the brilliant Mr. Bolos asked if tokenism was for real I immediatly thought in my head, "of course". I wrote down in my notebook all the stereotypes tokenism brings into television. After we said a black man will always play the "sidekick" or a "wingman" but never really gets the spotlight. Unless you watch BET where the races flip flop. But I also thought about CSI and the different criminals they have. In CSI Miami i don't think I have seen a black man in any episode ever besides of the black female doctor. The most predominent race in Miami is Latino. In CSI Las Vegas the only black figure in the show is Warrick a secondary forensic agent. Rich white men are the primary basis of Vegas. In CSI New York i haven't really watched that show a lot but from what I remember there aren't a whole lot of minorities. And in the NY branch I am too busy reciting Jim Craig lines from Miracle because Eddie Cahill who plays Jim Craig is in CSI NY. But the main point of my post was to show that Movies also have this "Token black guy" stereotype. In the movie "Not Another Teen Movie" there is a character who is the "Token Black Guy". In one specific scene Malik (the TBG) comes to a party and walks into the kitchen and sees another black guy and is very startled by this "abnormal" sight. He walks up to the other black guy and they have this conversation. 

Malik: "What are you doing here?"

Other guy: "What do you mean?"

Malik: "I am supposed to be the only black guy at this party."

Other guy: "Oh, damn."

Malik: "I know, I know."

Together: "It's whack."

In this little confrontation it shows that this movie is trying to poke fun at past movies and tv shows because Malik freaks out and is startled by another person who is black as well. It makes it seem Malik has never seen another black man. They also throw in the "it's whack" statement to try to mock how in other movies black men only know a small amount of words and can only use slang or "gang talk." I thought it was kind of funny how a movie can make fun of other movies and be so right on. If i can i will post a video of Malik and the other guys confrontation.