Life

OUTSIDE THE MAINSTREAM | The NCAA is Anything but Abnormal

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This week, many people criticized the NCAA for its treatment of college basketball players. LeBron James called the NCAA “corrupt.” Stan Van Gundy, the coach of the Charlotte Hornets, remarked that they there were the “worst organization” and labeled their actions as “racist.” This criticism emerged after a report revealed that dozens of players had been paid and given loans as compensation for their play. This violated NCAA policy, which does not permit players to receive any compensation outside of athletic scholarship and stipends. These NBA players and coaches who voiced their criticisms believe the system unfairly benefits administrators and universities, since the NCAA and the colleges obtain a gigantic revenue stream from college sports, especially basketball and football. These sports have a huge concentration of black players, often from poorer backgrounds, who are robbed of fair payment.

Campus

SAVING FACE | Enough Is Enough: On Racism at Cornell

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It’s a tumultuous time to be Cornell student. A University first founded on the principle of “any person, any study” has proven time and time again that the students themselves do not live up to these words. For the uninformed or for those who simply haven’t cared enough to inform themselves, Cornell has recently been rocked by multiple acts of overt racism towards fellow students. Last month, a fraternity member of Zeta Psi was heard chanting “let’s build a wall around the [Latino Living Community]”. Despite raised racial tension and cautionary words from the administration, that still was not enough to prevent a Cornell student from beating a fellow student and calling him the N word a week later.

Campus

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM | Combating White Supremacy Should Not Entail Throwing Other Black Students Under the Bus

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On September 29, The Daily Caller claimed that Black Students United (BSU) at Cornell had insinuated in their list of demands to President Pollack on September 20 that Cornell “is letting in too many African students.” Upon seeing this headline, I dismissed the article as the click bait material straight out of a troll handbook. But because college has taught me to question everything and dismiss nothing, I took another careful look at BSU’s demands. Although the sensationalist article made it seem like BSU had called for Cornell Admissions to ask for birth certificates on the Common App as Trump did during the Obama presidency, to be clear, BSU did not explicitly say that Cornell should stop admitting African, first generation, and Caribbean students. The organization said “the Black student population at Cornell disproportionately represents international or first-generation African or Caribbean students” and that “there is a lack of investment in Black students whose families were affected directly by the African Holocaust in America.” Thus, “Cornell must work actively to support students whose families have been impacted for generations by white supremacy and American fascism.”

While advocating for increases in admissions of African American students is pertinent and should be a priority for all universities, insinuating that Cornell is overrun with foreign and first generation black students and that they are taking away the spots of American black students suggests that there are only a set number of spots for folks with melanin, a quota that should only be filled by a certain kind of black person. The kind of black students who should be here, as per BSU’s definition, are “Black Americans who have several generations (more than two) in this country.” Limiting the definition of “black” to only American students is treading xenophobic waters and unwittingly bolsters the misconception that black students are only admitted into Cornell because they are black.

Politics

KRAVITZ’S KORNER | The More Important Issue of Charlottesville

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The violence that erupted in Charlottesville, Va. this August turned the idyllic town on the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains into ground-zero of the debate on statues and white supremacy in America. There’s been much discussion on what to do with Confederate statues across the country. But, more interestingly, there is much public confusion over the motives of the rally organizers and their connection to Confederate statues. Despite the rally organizers opposing the contemplated removal of a Robert E. Lee statue from a Charlottesville park, the rally really wasn’t about the Confederacy or statues.

Entertainment

OUTSIDE THE MAINSTREAM | Should We Really Be Watching The Lion King?

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When I was a kid, millions of other children and I watched the movie The Lion King, but I did not think really about what the movie meant. I can recall being engrossed in the characters and, to this day, I can repeat the choruses to Hakuna Matata,” “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” and “Be Prepared,” even though I probably haven’t heard those songs in twelve years. Of course, as we know, that does not mean the movie didn’t have a message. Filmmakers, writers and editors bake political and cultural messages into their works, even if they do not attempt to or specifically state they don’t. These messages filter into the minds of their audiences, shaping their worldview and perspective on reality.

Culture

ON MY MIND | Coloring in Mental Illness

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A truck blocked my path. In the fading light of late afternoon, I could barely make out a group of white faces grinning at me through rolled-down windows. And then a voice called out:

“HEY PIKACHU!”

By the time I’d registered the words and bristled in preface to formulating an appropriate retort, the

Culture

ON MY MIND | Wake Up Mr. Kim: On Asians Who Say the N-word

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Hello! Today I want to talk about why it’s not okay for non-black people of color – specifically Asian and Pacific Americans – to say the N-word. But before we can do that, I need you to chew on this interesting and relevant anecdote:

Picture me, Spring, 2015. The air was brimming with promise as I contemplated the two glimmering stars compelling me towards a sweet horizon – a.k.a. high school graduation and Kanye West’s supposed new album So Help Me God SWISH Waves The Life of Pablo. On an otherwise nondescript sunny day in March, I found myself at one of several school-sponsored “parties” for our graduating class.

Entertainment

THE E’ER INSCRUTABLE | 1916 Annus Fructus Extranei: Lynching and America’s Blood Theatre

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“The chief failing of the day with some of our well-meaning philanthropists is their absolute refusal to face inevitable facts, if such facts appear cruel.” -Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race

As a prelude to his article, the second of my series on tumult and upheaval in 1916, I must warn any potential reader that the content may be distressing to those sensitive to racism and violence. I would advise discretion. The controlled use of violence as spectacle has been a social glue since time immemorial: the Romans handpicked slaves to fight to the death over the graves of their patrician masters, and the despots of feudal Europe relished the drawing, quartering and parading of ghettoized pariahs and their ilk, be they Jewish, Huguenot, or Cathar. These previous blood-shows of Antiquity and the Middle Ages were the concerted efforts of knightly orders to, as they saw it, cut off gangrenous social limbs from the corpus politicum. D.H. Lawrence, in his compendium of critical analysis on the growth and stagnation of American literature, once wrote that a white man would never be at ease on American soil: the dust and mud and bronzed ochre itself would forever reject him, the usurper of one native population and the enslaver of a another he had imported.

hobbies

WELCOME TO THE ZOO | Trump

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With an open mind and two sides of the story, you’re bound to learn something new. Welcome to the zoo! This is a blog where both the Republican and Democratic
viewpoints are represented. The blog is not meant to sway you either way necessarily, just present both sides of the story. You may not agree with the whole article, but hey, you’re likely to agree with half!