Blog #4 Ted Talk

In my lifetime I very rarely felt that I was invisible.  I had to really think about this question and how it relates to my life.  I use to feel invisible when it came to being a recovering addict.  That aspect of my life is something that is important to me and it is part of who I am.  It is part of my identity.  I would shy away from talking about and the stigma that comes along with it.  I had to become comfortable with myself and now I don't always tell everyone that I am in recovery but I am very open about it to show that yes I may be a recovering addict but I am still capable of doing great things.  People shy away from their identity in this world and that is sad.  As we work with the youth we should embrace every child's identity and not have them shy away from who they are.  It doesn't have to be about race it has to do with who they are as a human.  As humans we are all different and have different backgrounds and upbringings and we should embrace all customs and backgrounds in our settings not just the social norms of what America says we have to.  If I would with a child who doesn't celebrate Christmas I should have time set aside to teach the other children in that group about their customs and believes and that goes to say it should be done for all children who have different believes and customs so that we can educate our youth about other cultures and to be open to celebrating with them.  I know in school we never talked about other kids customs it was always the same American holidays and American culture which is sad.  It wasn't until I got to high school where I saw it more out in the open.  It was never talked about in elementary school.

The video hit on a lot of different emotions and how I feel about what goes on in this country regarding race.  I am very passionate about treating people equal but that's easy for me to say because I am white and have never had to deal with the struggles that others have had to deal with.  Being white in this country there comes a fact of white privilege, now I don't agree with this but it happens and it happens everywhere and it is very unfortunate.  Like Mellody had said, the fact that 70% of the people who run fortune 250 companies are white and out of the 1000's of publicly traded companies only 2 women head up the companies.  These numbers are facts and are despicable.  But again it goes back to the white privilege piece as well as male privilege and our country is working to be better but is still far far away from being where it should be.  I like when she said when will we think it is normal to walk into a board room and the board members are all black?  I agree with her just because it is something we done see doesn't make it abnormal.  I believe in people being treated equally and that we are all humans and we should treat others the way we want to be treated.  Not to go on and on about what I believe in because that could take up pages, I liked how Mellody talked about having the conversations and being comfortable talking about uncomfortable situations which race is.  I am a big believer in having the conversation and bring awareness to the issues which she talks about as well as YIA does very well.  YIA gives children of all different backgrounds, believes, race, sexual identity, etc. a voice and can be heard.  Not only do they do that but the keep children's dreams in tact and give them the strength to become whatever it is that they want to become.  Mellody spoke about encouraging our youth to dream and dream big and it is our responsibility to not only encourage them but to empower them.  I want to go back to the comfort piece again and when she was talking about her swim coach and how he made her swim with holding her breath and the exercise was to get her comfortable with being uncomfortable I thought that was great and I could help think about what a wise women said to me once.  This women said to me "your life begins when you step outside the comfort zone."  I hold on to that statement today and believe that you have to step outside your norm and what is comfortable in order to create change in not only yourself but in other people.  If you are inspired to change yourself and you show passion about change in you and passion in changing other things in the world you can motivate other people to do the same.  YIA empowers youth to be leaders and to have the uncomfortable conversations and raise awareness and that should be done more in the world today.      

I am attaching two videos to my blog one is a scene from Coach Carter and how he inspired his athletes and the other is a video about race and identity. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_fDhqRk_Ro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZFY0dqC0Ks