Cornell West Affirmative Action Response

I disagree with Cornell West's statement that "the elimination of affirmative action would only justify racial discrimination," because I believe that participating in affirmative action is justifying racial discrimination. Using affirmative action as a tool to accept or hire a person is wrong, because it favors and focuses on minorities for who they are and not what makes them, them. Affirmative action is a way of discrimination and it does not justify racial discrimination. I do not agree with affirmative action, because it singles out and gives others special treatment that they may not deserve. By using affirmative action we are using race and gender and bringing it in account when making decisions, and I believe that basing those decisions only off those two facts is not the proper way to accept people.

Visual Essay Follow Up Questions

For my group, I believe that some characteristics of Creative Collaboration were achieved and used. We were always kind and empathetic towards each other, and I was in charge of keeping the group work fun by cracking a few jokes here and there. However, there were some times where we all did not agree on a topic or what pictures we should select and we all had different ideas and believed that your own idea was the better one. Like the first day we were assigned the topics, my group got together to brainstorm ideas, but took us the whole class and some to agree on the decided topic. Overall, I believe that our group's flow was off and on through different stages. Off when we were brainstorming, on when we took pictures, off when selecting pictures and music, and semi-on with the final project. A cool aspect that I did not realize is that you don't have complete control of the outcome. When my group was drafting the plan we decided to do it steps starting from the beginning to the middle to the end. Well, once we showed the class our essay, they came up ideas that we did not even think about, and hearing those ideas put different ideas about my own project in my head. Then I started asking myself questions and it kind of changed my views or ideas around about that section.

I think I became a leader in the project, by putting some of my ideas aside and put the group first. There were times where none of us agreed, and it took a leader to bring us together and I believe that I was, when needed, a leader. But don't get me wrong, my whole group had their times of leadership. I believe that in the end, we all put our egos to the side, and put all four brains together to create a great project. I believe that Quianna showed strong leadership in this project. She was the one who shouted out Woodley and it's years of History, which was out goal for the paper. She also was the one who met with Mr. Kilborne to find out more about the history. And finally, she had the song choice. I am glad that Quianna stepped up in our group, because without her, we probably wouldn't have had such a great project and that cool song.

I think that our greatest challenges in this group were staying focus, saying what you think, owning to what you say, and pushing yourself without whining. Even though we finished our project on time, and we meat all the requirements, our group took the drive on the bumpy road several times. One of our problems, was to stay focused. If we were to go to the library to take pictures, we all could not do that. Some of us would take pictures, where some of us would take a couple of meaningless pictures and talk to a friend or get on a computer. Another issue we had was to say what think and own up to whatever you say. I know in the past, I had/still have this problem in class, however I knew that I needed to work on it. In the group, when we were planning, I could see on some peoples faces that they were not fully satisfied and agreed on what we finalized. I remember asking somebody what they though, and they said "It's fine, I like it." Maybe they were being a leader at the time by putting the group first, but I saw that they had something important to say, and maybe if they said it our project could have only gotten better. The final challenge we faced was to continue working without whining and push until it was complete. There were a couple instances, where some did not like the topic and wondered why Mr. Gordon would give us such a hard topic. Instead of moaping around and complaining, we should have sucked it up, and just started working. We probably wasted an entire work day because the group would not collaborate. Overall, I though this project was unique, interesting, and cool, and I am glad that it was a group project, because I don't think that I would have thought of all the ideas that my group came up with.

Udated Catalyst for Change (Blueprint)