Finding Ourselves Covering—trying to fit into the mainstream—is an argument for a new direction of civil rights advocacy. Kenji Yoshino believes that we should protect people within our society from facing discrimination and other hate acts because of the reasoning behind their covering. We should not require people to “cover” the characteristics and traits they would usually associate with their covering. In an example that had related closely to me and to other teenagers was that we tend to change how we dress and act based on the social groups we want to fit into. This is especially prevalent, in the high school setting, when young teenagers are trying to find exactly where they fit in compared to their peers. I definitely had a little trouble finding the right group in high school. I started out thinking I could fit into the mainstream by being someone I was not. Our society needs to condition the youth that being you is what the mainstream believes in and uniqueness. When in reality those people who are …show more content…
Relating specifically to myself, I noticed everyone in the mainstream was very popular so being the needy teenager that I was; I tried my best to fit in. I would go to parties and get pressured into to doing things I probably shouldn’t have done, because I was letting my false self-take over. Yoshino describes the true self as “the self that gives an individual the feeling of being real” (554). So the true self would be when teenagers have found their right spot in society and are not afraid to express who they really are to society and have come to terms with who they are. In my case it would be when I finally found my right group of friends and am not afraid to conceal who I really was to society. There are hardly any civil rights at harm in my example because I believe that for civil rights to be at stake, it requires a much serious and more impacting example such as
While civil liberties help people to avoid government using too much of their power and control people’s lives, civil rights use the help of government to protect them from discrimination. Overall, comparead to civil liberties, civil rights issues are quite straight forward. However, controversy still rounded-up if people’s race or religous get involed in the decision making process in which employing people. One typical example is EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc. The case happened in 2013, when Samantha Elauf, a Muslim woman who was 18 then, got denied for the sales staff position in Abercrombie & Fitch Stores.
Samantha Kubota’s “School Punished Teen Girl for Working Out in Sports Bra in 100-degree Texas Heat, ACLU Say” (2023) tells the story of a young female athlete. A teenage girl who participates in cross country and track at her high school got in trouble for wearing a sports bra during practice in 100-degree heat while her male counterparts were practicing shirtless. Furthermore, since G.H. wore a sports bra, she was denied the award of being the top runner on the girls’ cross-country team; this award would have been crucial for college recruiting and applications. The girl, who identifies by her initials G.H., requested help from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU sent a letter to her high school stating the coaches, District officials, and employees violated the Fourteenth Amendment and Title IX of the Education Amendments by reinforcing a sex-stereotyped dress code and treating the girls’ and boys’ cross-country teams differently.
Moreover, according to Cohen, society is basically a “pyramid structure…so 90 percent of the world's population is (a) potential ally, (and) therefore it’s very important to think in a coalitional way and look at how these things intersect” (5). It is also essential to recognize that “social identities are not fixed” and that science’s “reliance on the null hypothesis” can be misleading (8,9). Thus, the author urges psychologists and sociologists to “develop a more sophisticated and interdisciplinary understanding of historical and sociological aspects of the social construction of race, gender, class and other categories of identity, difference and disadvantage” (10). By employing this intersectional methodolgy, society will be able to broaden these coalitions and begin to address the most marginalized of
Destroying the Civil Rights Rodney King and Oscar Grant cases both have racial injustice. Rodney king was in a high speed chase, he was caught; therefore, the officers pulled him out of the car and beat him. A couple of police Officers were detaining Oscar Grant then another officer shot him in the back. The beating and shooting of people, because of racial issues can and will defeat the purpose of civil rights.
Civil liberties are different than Civil Rights. Where Civil Rights are to prevent the government from abusing us by treating the people wrong and unequally. The Civil Liberties are there to limit the government power on the people. It is there to protect our freedom. That is why we have our freedom of speech which protects us people from having the government limit what we say.
Individuality VS. Conformity: The Healthy Middle? The author in the article, Individuality VS. Conformity: The Healthy Middle? discuses, on how most of high school students try to fit in but also try to be different at the same time. The author supports her discussion by Illustrating different types of examples that make us different but that also make it difficult to fit in, like: “What about the kid who confesses to his best friend that he’s gay, and then looks up to meet a horrified expression?”
a. There are a number of issues in regards to civil rights. A number of them being women right’s, hate crimes, worker rights, racial profiling, and many more. Numerous issues just as those listed have yet to be resolved. Racial profiling is a huge issue today that coincides with other civil rights issues such as hate crimes and immigration. This is a troubling problem the nation is currently suffering from “despite claims that the United States has entered a ‘post-racial era’”
Some peer groups can be good and some can be bad. The peer group that I was a part of in high school was bad. In high school I was always a little different and did not have many fiends because the clique or peer group in my high school used the Social Typing which is a “labeling process that begins when a person violates a norm. Negate sanctions are applied to norm violates in the form of criticisms, punishments, and/or labels.” They labeled me as a “dorky weird girl.”
Even at a young age, people are striving for acceptance through normality. Humans are scared of conflict and to avoid it will agree with topics that they truly oppose. Students are meant to be able to go against the crowd and disagree with the majority in their classes, but most tend to follow the crowd in fear of rejection. They need to be taught that they will not always agree with the popular selection and to speak for themselves, which is often seen in fictitious literature (such as in the popular novel 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher). “Teens are five times likelier to be in a car accident when in a group than when driving alone, and likelier to commit a crime or drink alcohol when with a group of peers” (Temple University).
Kenji Yoshino's Covering explores what it means to hide elements of your identity in order to succeed in modern American Society. Yoshino analyses the act of covering through many lenses, highlighting it most clearly as an act of assimilation to a dominant norm, in this case the heterosexual norm. Yoshino argues that covering for one's sexual orientation is not meant to disguise one's "gayness" completely, but rather mask it to an extent by which the individual cannot be charged with 'excessive' overtness of their homosexuality. In the author's life he has covered in terms of both his racial identity and his sexual orientation, creating a unique intersectional lens from which he distinguishes types of covering. Yoshino dedicates a majority
This included things like the discrimination of gender, race, color, or national origin. If we didn’t have civil rights, our nation could be a much darker place than it is right now. There would be people of color who were enslaved and didn’t have voting rights or the right to have a job or the right to own any land or money. It would be very different to live in such a
Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird explores the question of whether humans are naturally social or individual. It tells the story of a young girl finding her place in society, deciding whether to conform to her aunt’s standards, her classmates’, or her own. This coming-of-age tale is interrupted by the trial of a black man named Tom Robinson who is accused, on circumstantial evidence, of raping a young white woman named Mayella. Scout is called out because her father is defending Robinson, which most Maycomb citizens don’t appreciate. People’s innate tendency is to drift towards a group setting and fall into place with a community by following their standards.
For a text to be valuable, the only thing it must do is evoke strong and withstanding emotion within the reader. For an emotion to be strong enough to meet this criteria, it must change a person’s state of being or perspective, which occur most heavily in plot reveals, the structure of the narrative, and emotional scenes. Texts succeed to fulfil this criteria in varying amounts, with the poem La Belle Dame sans Merci by John Keats failing to evoke strong emotion within the reader as it tells the story of a knight who falls in love with a faery. We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler meets this criteria perfectly, in its telling of Rosemary’s unconventional life from early childhood to college in an unconventional storytelling
Growing up around social media and movies that contrast stereotypes frequently, it has become almost natural to presume a way about a group or individual without knowing one’s identity. Before interacting with those who attended a private school, my mind was entrenched to the assurance that those students were wealthy, preppy, and superior who wore the same uniform everyday, resembling everyone else. From kindergarten till seventh grade, I attend a small charter school called Sherman Thomas where uniforms were enforced. Being mistaken as a private school majority of the time, outsiders viewed me differently. Mrs. Napier, the principle felt as if all students wore the same attire, no judgement towards the less fortunate would take place.
I never tried to fit in anymore, but instead I wanted to stand out. I learned to love myself for who I am and accept that I am different from everyone else. I am different and that’s okay, because everyone is different and unique in their own way. Everyone has a different