Modern Family. It is an interesting topic in our generation. A modern family has gone far farther than the traditional nuclear family. Modern family has developed through the influence of media, technology, life choices, life’s incidents, and many other reasons.

I remember in Ethiopia sitting at the family dinner. My father will tell me to take my elbow off the dinner table. He would say, sitting at the end of the table, “that is rude”.  We prayed as a family including my brother and my mother whom also sat at the table. We were actually the modern family of the Ethiopian culture. In Ethiopian culture, the women was the one who would prepare the food, clean the children, set the table, and greet the father “with all do respect” to the highness and not as a wife but more of a servant. However, we had a maid, who did all the house work. My mother, however, was a working mother. She worked within the government and loved being an independent women, at least for the time being. Although my family was becoming more modern, its old traditions did not totally go away. My mother still answered to the “bread-winner”, still treated my father like a king. I remember my mother telling how he would oppresses, how he wouldn’t even allow her to go certain places because her happiness meant less attention for him.

            It got even worse in America. All eyes turned to my mother to cook, to clean, to do all the house work since we did not have a maid. She became with all do respect, the families maid as well the mother. It felt like we went back in time to the traditional Ethiopian culture. However, that will all change back to a modern family, after the death of my father. After his death, my mother was an independent woman, who could stand with her own two feet for her children and herself. I know it was difficult for my mother to take on her role as well as my mothers. You know, I am proud of my mother for taking on the role. She could have easily broke down, looked for another man, abandoned her children, but she stayed and matriculated from the servant of the house to the almighty queen of the house, surpassing the King’s power.

            Modern families are completely different from the old traditional families. Mr. Tim’m showed the class a video illustrating how a family should behave called “How to Have a Family Dinner: A Date with Your Family (1950).” This video is interesting because its hard evidence of how a society tries to control a person’s life. How a society draws the status quo shape and everyone has to fit that shape. Even today, we see commercials that say sit together with your family, ask questions about each other’s day, talk about issues, etc.

 Our age is defying that way of thinking. Families are not a systematically equated shape, they are different families as they are different kind of people, and America knows and acknowledges that they are many different people in the world and each individual has their own pencil to draw how they want to shape their family and not have to try to squeeze in society’s narrow-minded art.   

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Self-objectifying because of the lack of self-intrinsic value.

The act of objectifying the body is a complicated and serious problem. Objectification of your own body is what I want to talk about. I chose to focus on this instead of men objectification of female bodies because self-objectification has to do with the self. Although hard to change objectification of females, it is a definite that self-objectification can be stopped with a knowledge of self-intrinsic value.

I am a logical person. Being logical makes me question and try to rationalize everything, even life. I usually ask philosophical questions like why am I in this world? What is my purpose? That, however, would lead me no where. There is no rational answer why I am here in the world or if have any purpose in this world. Then, I just gave up trying to philosophize because it left me to think that if there is no purpose here in life, then maybe I don’t have a value.

When one does not value themselves, they tend to do things that might to make them feel like they have value. Therefore, a person’s value comes from whatever they can perform or produce. For me, my life value was attained from my ability to play soccer, to help others, to make my family proud, and other things. This is also called extrinsic value, the value of an object based on it relation to other things. The search for extrinsic value is what makes people do things that society is against. In this situation, I believe that women in music videos self-objectifying their bodies are looking for a sense of value. If there not cherished by their families, not given love from their parents, and things like that, they look for another way to fulfill this hole in their life. For example, Ciara was born in Austin, Texas on October 25, 1985 as the only child of Jackie and Carlton Harris. Since her father was in the United States Army, throughout her childhood, Ciara grew up on army bases in Germany, New York, Utah, California, Arizona, and Nevada. With all do respect, Ciara might not have gotten the love and cherish she wanted from her family. In terms of this video, she might be self-objectifying herself like many other females so she gains extrinsic value.

Now, this applies to everyone. We can agree that there are other people looking for extrinsic value through many ways, owning a company, having a job, having a family, etc. Although there might be a reason for their self-objectification, females should be held accountable for their action. They should seek intrinsic value, which generally implies caring and appreciating one self and in turn they will gain self-respect for their body.

Without the dependency on other people a person can still feel valuable and in-turn feel confident, happy, and self-respecting, etc. Intrinsic value, a person values their life simply because it’s a life. Although hard to do, if some females had more self-intrinsic value then the self-objectifying might stop.

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Awareness of Race

At the end of the year, I had an epiphany. As any other day, I walked to the Foggy Bottom train station with some friends. We went to L'Enfant Plaza station and waited for the train to come. There were three seats and four people so my friend, Philemon, and I started fighting for the last seat. From then on, the pushing and shoving led to my paper, which was in my hand, to fall on the train tracks. I stood there thinking, as Philemon took my seat, trying to remember if that paper was important or not. As I was pondering, I was shoved from the back. I looked up and told the man, that kept on walking, that he needs to say “excuse me!” He turned around and loudly said “you need to say excuse me”. I shouted back at him as they were some distance between us, “You shoved me from the back”. He then knew he was wrong but as I was young and black he would not admit it as he talked back saying that “I shoved him from the back”. As my two friends, to my disappointment, were sitting, my best friend Philemon got up and stood up for me and said “How did he bump to you when he was turned around and you came behind him”. The man, embarrassed but reluctant to give up, came closer and He looked with his sky blue eyes straight into my eyes. He held there for 30 long seconds, I did not blink once. Philemon standing by the side comically said “Are you just going to stare at him”, the man then walked off. Afterwards, two other fellows walked by and said excuse me and Philemon shouted, making sure the man heard him, “Thank you for saying excuse me”. The man walked back and stood right in front of us as he looked in the bag as he had something for us. As fear struck me, I stood back but still to my amazement Philemon was still standing there waiting for him. The man looked up and dramatically said “I’ll let you off this time”. I felt like I stood up to something big. WOW! I thought in my mind imaging what it took for Frederick Douglass to stand up to his master or Harriet Jacobs dealing with her master each and every day. From then on, I was aware of race.  

Racism is just another barrier not an excuse. Combating racism starts with me, with my mentality. I have to acknowledge that being black does not set me back and does not make me weaker or inferior. I also have to know that it does not make me special. On top of that, to be more open minded and not be racist to other ethnics. Then, I will expect the same from others. I have learned that pulling the race cards as most will say does not get you far. Now, I am not saying when I see discrimination, I am going to be scared to accuse someone of racism. I am saying to make it hard for anyone to be racist because of my skin color, my background, or anything that does not measure me as a person.

During class, many times students always underestimate my abilities to speak English, to understand hard concepts, to be clever, or to be at the same level as them. I know when I began speaking English or reading in class, students look up in surprise at my ability to read so well. They already had prejudge my ability because of my skin color or because I am from Ethiopia. Even afterwards, if I mess up on one word out of like three pages of text, they immediately correct me in a condescending way thinking they are superior because English is their first language. The funny thing is that they don’t even notice that they’re doing that. In addition, they don’t know that’s what MLK, Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez, and many other human rights activist fought for. I learned this year that whatever my background, my skin color, nor my economic standing decides who I am, what my future will be, and definitely not what I am capable of doing. When people try to discriminate on basis of skin color, economic standing, ethnic background, then they better be ready to be denounced and hit with the truth.

An Independent Man

Empowerment means to be an independent man. I believe that in this world some people will care about you, others will not care to think about you, your family will love you for some not unfortunately, but in the end you’re the only for yourself. In a logical way, there is only one person who cares for your life, you. Before you are left alone, however, you are nourished by your parents as you matriculate from a baby, to a teenager, to an independent adult.  I will be empowered when I am an adult, who is financially stable, educated, and achieved. When I wake up in my own house, when I make my breakfast, when I think for myself, when I know myself, and when I am independent I am empowered. 

One of the greatest difficulties in achieving my empowerment is “change”. I usually do a lot of talking but not too much walking. Action! I need to take Action on my beliefs. I am fearful of the consequences or as a philosopher said the “unknown”. Humans are naturally scared of the unknown; therefore, it is not natural for me to change. Changing is not just black and white, it has many different criteria, from the positive to negative, to know consequences and the unknown. For me to be empowered, I think it just takes more guts. More guts to live happier, to follow my beliefs, more guts to be independent, more guts to be empowered. It seems impossible to start from nothing to something. Sometimes I might fall constantly in despair, sometimes I might be pushed down, but it in the end when I become empowered is when the impossible comes true.

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.

-Malcolm X