If You Think This Is Offensive, Then You're Still Whining

"Beyond Checkboxes: Intersections of Mixed-Race Identities" was a roundtable group discussion on how people in general think and behave when interacting with someone of a different race. Almost every student shared almost the same story involving a person making an ignorant comment or "back handed compliment" by someone who did not understand everything about their race.

I was the only white male in the group until the last five minutes. Most of the stories involved a white person making an ignorant racial comment. I have not made any of the mistakes the other white people in the stories made. Almost everyone in the group had a complaint about a "back handed compliment" they received in the past from an ignorant white person. For these reasons, I did not speak at all. If I did, I would have been maligned a racist because I would have told everyone to stop whining. Since 6th grade up until today, people blatantly tell me I do not have a soul, ask me if I have a soul or if I think I have a soul, and make fun of the color of my pubic hair because I am a "ginger," someone with red hair, light skin and freckles. I never thought this was funny, but I also never complained because the people that say those things are not worth thinking about. The people in the mixed race discussion used an hour of their day to share a complaint about someone with good intentions saying to them that they look exotic or are pretty for resembling some ethnicity. Obviously it is still a compliment, and obviously it is a little racist, but subtle unintentional racism will go away in time and complaining to a group of people that are trying to agree with you is not fixing this so called "problem." I believe being totally color blind means not paying attention to race at all and giving things like this attention will only expose a horrible concept of differences among people to our youth.

SOME TUNES

Ghosts Are Bad For Real Estate

This story is creepy regardless of whether or not you believe in ghosts. When I moved into my new house at the age of five, I was scared of being in my room because I thought someone or something was in there. I would sleep in my older sister's bed most nights. She also believed there was someone in her closet. Sleeping together in the same room would calm us down. There was never any actual proof of a ghost like blood on the walls; we both just had "gut" feelings about it. Therefore, as we grew up, we grew out of these fears.

Over a decade after I started sleeping by myself, I jokingly talked to my mom about the ghost in my room. Her eyebrows rose, and she started telling me a story I never heard before. My dad made her keep it a secret until I told her about my ghost story. Around the time when we moved in, my parents both woke up in the middle of the night to "scampering" down the upstairs hall outside of their room.   They checked every room assuming it was one of the three kids up past their bedtime, but we were all "sound asleep." Her eyebrows rose because the scampering came from my room, where I said I believed there was a ghost. My parents thought it was a burglar after they made sure my siblings and I were asleep, but the house was empty. My dad strictly forbids everyone in the family from telling this story because when houses are rumored to be haunted, they do not sell well. I put this story on the Internet because I do not want my parents to sell the house.

Word Count: 289

Point: If you have a ghost in your house, do not tell anyone because houses are more difficult to sell when people know they are haunted and your home loses financial value.

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Turf Valley Hotel Lobby

The Turf Valley Hotel sits in the center of the residential neighborhood, Turf Valley, and provides a public space for people in the lobby, which has three lounges each with leather furniture and a coffee table. Most people sit in the lobby lounges briefly until they leave for the hotel's restaurant, pools, spa, gym, business conference center or hotel room. Young people sit the longest because they eat snacks sold at the front desk next to the lounges in between swimming.

I highly recommend visiting this place. The spot has everything to encourage people to sit there and is surrounded by recreational activities the hotel provides. To get people of all ages to use the space for extended amounts of time, there should be free Wifi.

Word Count: 120

"EVERYBODY LOVE EVERYBODY"

I was at a party in Morgantown, WV and got hungry so I went to a gas station close by for food, but I could not find my way back. All of the houses looked the same to me and the temperature was in the teens. I was alone, lost and freezing. Before my friends could find me, an employee closing his store invited me inside to get warm. The man could not speak well and kept quivering, but I did not think anything of it because he clearly worked in the shop and kept smiling and being friendly to me. He closed the shop with me inside and told me to lock the door when I left. The man went out of his way to risk his store being robbed so a complete stranger would be warm. I could not get over how kind he was. When I told my friends what happened, they laughed and said the employees at the shop I was in are notorious for using heroin during their shifts. I would not have believed that at first, but it explained the man's bizarre behavior.

This experience led me to believe that there is love in everyone and changed how I see people. People's choices and how I've been taught to malign them for their choices can no longer keep me from at least trying to find a reason to like them back, no matter who they are or what they have done. He performed an extremely kind act without caring how the world expected him to behave for using heroin. He showed me how to believe that people's negative expectations of me cannot change how much I'll still find a reason to be nice.

I'm Not a Communist

One of the first things Shelly Blake-Plock told his audience is that an entrepreneur will fail many times before ever founding a successful, profitable business. When he/she fails, he can either quit entrepreneurship or re-invent himself and pursue another business plan. The audience brainstormed business ideas by first deciding what needs to be changed in the world in the next ten years. Most of the answers involved environmental issues like climate change. Then he asked us to think of something that could be sold to individual people that could help resolve these issues, emphasizing that it did not have to actually save the world; it just needed to entice people to buy the product. He told us about Kodak filing bankruptcy because they were hesitant to re-invent themselves or change what their company sold. Kodak invented the digital camera in 1975, but hesitated to sell it to the public since they would sell less film if digital cameras became popular and eventually fell behind after selling its patents to its competitors for a short-term profit.

Shelly Blake-Plock was mostly interested in business ideas that would make the most money. This kind of thinking is expected in a monetary-based capitalist society. I think people latch on to the idea that capitalism is the best possible system because it brings people freedom and motivation to have strong work ethics more so than any other system in the past. People ignore the flaws of capitalism rather than re-invent the system entirely because most think its the only system. Some of the business ideas the audience thought of were profitable, but none of them would effectively change what the audience originally set out to change before Blake-Plock explained that saving the planet was not the ultimate goal. If humanity is to achieve the most important goals like the one's the audience addressed originally, we must re-invent the system entirely instead of adapting to an environmentally harmful system.

Stossel

Quiznos Subs In My Mouth

Taking the first bite into any Quiznos sub is ecstasy. If you have only eaten fast food subs from Subway or Jimmy John's, then you do not understand Quiznos. If they were not running out of business, then I would be obese. There is one left and it is on the way to the beach so I eat there once a month. Thank God for my beach house. Subway markets to fat people and Jimmy John's markets to college kids while Quiznos simply markets to everyone, giving me the freedom to not let their subs define me in any way and for me to be myself!

Money Does Not Have To Exist

Word Count: 106

The Blog of All Blogs

I am an ice cream server from Soft Stuff Ice Cream and heir to the ownership of Jamestown Builders Construction Company and CSC Real Estate. I have lived in Ellicott City, MD for my entire life. My family lives here too so I consider it to be my home because I think of home as anywhere my family and friends are. I graduated high school a little over a year ago, went to St. Mary's College of Maryland and transferred after a semester to UMBC. I am in this class now because it meets a general education requirement.

Word Count: 95

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