Tim Wise Interview

Racism has been a burden that mankind has been cursed with since the beginning of the exploration. The object is to build a foundation base on color and ethnicity to demand respect and obedience to the “superior” race. After hundreds of years of struggle, the people of color and the minorities have gained equal rights in society, legally that is. Today, many people of color live in extreme poverty. Opportunities are hard to come by due to the lack of proper support and education. Even though we live in a democratic world, sometimes we can’t help but express some social preferences that might be considered racist.
With the election of Barack Obama, racism has been dug a deeper hole to hide in. Chances are, in any community, racism is still there whether it is realized or not. According to Tim Wise, "...there is probably a human tendency..."(6, wise). It is not our fault we're like this to begin with as we are all wired to act/feel this way but it is our fault we have not strived harder to change it. In an age where the press are stating that "Racism has ended." or "The End of Racism has come." shouldn't that mean it really should be ended for them to be able to say that? We use the comfort of social equality to shelter us from the possibility that something is wrong with America today. We subconsciously make these comments because we believe that the jokes are harmless. Those who heard the joke do not take it so lightly, however.
In high school, I had a variety of friends, who I believed were very good people and varied culturally. Sometimes though, when we joke together some hurtful things are said. I would never confront my friends about it though, because I don’t want to create a rift between us. I think that it’s wrong to not confront each other when it is offensive or even “racist” because it promotes social demoralization. When we don’t talk about it though, we would never know if certain things hurt or not. How can we avoid racism if we don’t even know what is considered to be?
On paper three, most of the food communities are created from specific beliefs and cultures that prospered through ethnic pride and normalities. We think that racism does not occur today, but in truth, it is everywhere.

Works Cited
Wise, Tim. "By the Color of their Skin: Tim Wise on the Myth of a Postracial America." Interview by David Cook. The Sun July 2009: 4-12. PDF file

Choosing Sources

In order to find my sources for my papers in English 101, I start by brainstorming what types of sources would pertain to my subject. To do this, I would read about my topic in a variety of mediums to ensure a well-rounded perspective of the matter at hand, making sure that I do not miss any glaring evidence for a clean-cut answer one way or the other. For example, if I was writing an essay on how pennies should be removed from the United States Currency system, I would begin by finding all applicable research to this topic in the past five to ten years and pick from those ones that best support my argument. These sources could be anything from articles, books, financial records, statistics or even pictures of all the extra space pennies take up compared to a nickel.
From there, I would start to look for more specific information which would be the sort of information that the people that wrote the previous articles would base their article on. This could be older information from previous studies on the subject matter or even the articles which those writers cited to see if there is any additional information to peruse. In lieu of this older research, I would attempt to find newer information which either proves or disproves this information to ensure validity of my research. And finally, if these sources fit all my own personal criteria for length, objectivity, usefulness, and the type of language used in the source, they will be the source that I use. In order to improve my source finding techniques, I could try doing my own new research on the topic (if time permits), such as in the penny example where I go to local businesses, see if they can divulge how many pennies they have, then show them how much space they would be saving if pennies were eliminated, since everyone can agree that five pennies take up more space than one nickel.

Norman Borlaug

In the article, “Ending World Hunger: The Promise of Biotechnology and the Threat of Antiscience Zealotry", Norman E. Borlaug discusses his work with GMOs (genetically modified organisms), their effects on societies, and how they might negatively affect the environment. One great point that Borlaug speaks about is how people believe that GMOs are worse for us than organic foods, but this is not entirely true. Organic food or even traditionally raised farm products still carry some risk. If we went back to the original way of agriculture, we would have even more severe hunger issues, not only in our own lands, but also in the lesser fortunate countries.
People tend to forget that just because they have food to place on the table every night does not mean that this is the case for everyone around the world. Even in our own country, there are citizens who starve daily, living on little money, earning low wages and to top it all off, not eating nutritionally at all. There is a reason why Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in this field: his work has saved millions of lives in both our own country and those countries around the world.

Chapters 15,18,19 and 20 -- 3/2/10's Blog

In this week’s reading of chapters 15, 18, 19 and 20, Michael Pollan takes us through his journey on creating the "perfect meal", where he forages, hunts, and gathers all the necessary ingredients for his meal. Throughout Chapter 15, Pollan discusses some of the finer points of the "Omnivore's Dilemma", which he defines a few different ways. One part of the dilemma is knowing what we can and cannot eat before someone else has already tried it. He questions us, as readers, what if we did not know whether or not these foods would be edible: no one is given a guide of what to eat at birth of what exactly to eat and what not to eat.
While hunting the entree of his meal, Pollan believes that he had stumbled upon a more natural mode of human life, one that only those who partake in the hunting lifestyle will ever feel. He felt one with the environment. We aren’t getting to ever experience this mode of human life that is engraved in our DNA. Who decided it was a good idea to steer clear of this lifestyle in the first place? The other portions of his meal, such as the fungi and fruit, were equally challenging to obtain, as well as enlightening. Will it ever be possible for all of humanity to go backward in evolution to this prehistoric mode of living? Most likely not as the population now heavily outweighs the population then, but we, as a species, would benefit integrating parts of this lifestyle though.

Reading for Tues. 2/23

In Chapters 16 and 17, Pollan writes about what the true definition of Omnivore is, both in a literal and metaphorical sense. People normally associate the need to eat both meat and vegetables just human life, without recognizing how their meat and/or vegetables got to their plate. As humans, we need both the luscious nutrients from greens, as well as the fatty acids and proteins contained in meat. Is it ethically or morally wrong to eat meat? I would like to believe no. We have been eating meat since the dawn of human existence, and no one has fussed about it since to the extent we are now.
Most people when they eat a hamburger, they have no idea at all where that meat came from, be it a healthy cow on a pasture or a cow cramped on a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (just the name is terrifying, let alone what they do there). Should we be referring to our farming as an “operation” of any sort? Sounds significantly underhanded to me that we are hiding these terms, although if we were to hear about them, they would be referred to by a more euphemistic term such as “natural feed lot”…

The Omnivore's Dilemma Ch8,10,11

In this weekend's reading, Pollan focuses on one farmer and his farm: Joel Salatin and Polyface Farms, the same Joel Salatin from last reading. This week, Pollan continues to talk about how Joel's farm is a wondrous adventure compared to the industrial farms who wreak havoc on the environments and the animals themselves. What Joel does is use a more natural rotation which does not rob the soil of its nitrogen and other nutrients and allows for multiple crops to be sown, not just corn. Along with this rotation, his animals are grass-fed and have area to roam, unlike the majority of industrial farms.
Now if Joel’s farming techniques are so great and natural, the epitome of organic, why do we have industrial farms? The answer is rather simple: it's consistent, inexpensive, and efficient. Industrial farms were created for the same exact reason that most other human inventions base their usefulness on. During, roughly, the 18th century is where the agricultural revolution began, when hundreds of new inventions were created to make farming much easier and more manageable, which often allowed for more organized farms. Farms shrank and as a result, so did the health-awareness of the farmers and consumers. Could we possibly get along without industrial farms? Could we fill the world with organic farms? Without reorganizing urban vs. rural land distribution, I doubt so.

(Sorry if it is a bit late.. blogger decided to not post it last night and only noticed when I got up this morning >.<)

2/8/10 - Slaughter and the Market

In this week's reading, Pollan chronicles his experiences at the Polyface farm. I believe that I connect well with this reading for a few reasons: the first being that my great grandfather is both a farmer and logger who believes in organic and chemical-free farming. He slaughters all his animals humanely and by himself, selling the products to our family and his friends in Northport. His teachings have given most of Northport a good reason to abstain from using chemicals and doing everything the old-fashioned way. Joel of Polyface farm and his family take this one step further, turning their beliefs into a political act, pushing their beliefs past just their small communities.

In the second chapter, Joel and his brother Art speak about how they sell their meats: the biggest shock to me was that most of their meat/crops were sold through CSAs, or rather community supported agricultures, where groups of people from the city would place orders for farmers’ goods and they would either be shipped over short distances or picked up by the customer. I remember my great grandfather did this but, it was only for a few people and not nearly the large portion of income that it is for Joel and his family. If I were a farmer, I’d model my farm after Joel’s ideals.

2/1/10 - Chapter 9

Chapter nine of The Omnivore’s Dilemma was rather interesting to me personally for a few reasons. For the past year and a half, my mother has been attempting to feed us only organic food as much as she possibly can. The only reason why she has been doing this, however, is not because she believes that the process of industrial food is wrong or inhumane as many uninformed individuals love to accept as true. In this chapter, Michael Pollan chooses to follow organic food back to its roots to compare it to how pesticides and other chemicals are not used in the process of organic farming to begin with, but as any other commerce, industrialized or not, will eventually turn into the process they were trying to avoid in order to conform to the market.
In his experiences, Pollan followed back products such as organic milk and organic chicken. The process for creating organic milk was rather vague in both legality of the term “organic” being applied to their process and just how organic they could be considered compared to a real organic farm. For example, the USDA allows producers to apply the term “organic” to their products if the animals bearing the original products have access to a natural environment they would normally be in with the absence of chemicals. In one case, the cows were only allowed to go out and graze the last few weeks before they were slaughtered: this was also the same with chicken, who were not allowed to leave their cages until they were upwards of eight weeks old. Should the process of becoming an “organic” product be more constrictive and more straight-forward?

Weekly Reading Response, due 1/25/10

In today’s reading of The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, we experienced one of the main perspectives that Pollan takes in his Manifesto, which is that of the American farmer. The second chapter of this book is an account of George Naylor, his father, and their collective land, passed down for two generations. For all intents and purposes, I believe that this is a major perspective in the corn industry that is quite literally impossible to not look upon: their lives are corn, be it their economic prospects or their lifestyle choice, farmers are the people which are the cause, and slightly to at fault, for this surge in corn products. High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is a processed product of corn, which is seen as the most profitable form of processed product which can come from corn.

This need for financial stand-hold in economies of the present and past have caused farmers to take up corn as their sole crop, after bioengineering has led to dramatic increases of bushels per acre yields. Having corn as your lone crop before the advent of synthetic fertilizers, and hybrid strains, would devastate the top soil of your land, rendering it useless for numerous years. This was originally countered by planting legumes after each successful harvest of corn to add nitrates to the soil, but this practice rapidly died out once synthetic fertilizers allowed for the perpetual plantation of corn year after year. No longer was agriculture solely for supplying the farmer, his family and a few other families with sufficient resources to sustain life as it had now turned into a national, then global, affair to feed the nation corn products and bi-products.