America's Getting Less White, and That Will Save It

This article was a really cool read. I thought that the way that the article gave us charts and circle graphs were great for people that are visual like me. The paper discussed the way America has reached a different milestone, where minority babies were born instead of white babies in a year. The paper said that in about three decades, white people will constitute minority of all Americans. The baby boom era was where a lot of citizens were getting ready to leave for war and before they left they left a lot of baby mothers back at home. Now, most of those children that were born during that time are getting older and in this generation of people we are having fewer children and having them later in life. The future will have "new minorities" ;such as, Hispanics, Asians, and other multiracial populations. A fact that I found interesting said the America that has large numbers of today's older and middle-aged adults grew up with civic lives. One of these shifts will be larger multiracial populations because of multiracial marriages are going to be far more common. Even though, whites are still a minority in the United States this will eventually change because of minority members will take on more responsibility, more political clout, and show their strengths as consumers to be taken seriously.  

Beyond the Burqa

The article in my classroom textbook was a different article than what I was expecting. I did enjoy reading about the what women have to endure in different countries; such as, the types of clothing that they have to wear,or who they will marry. The story that caught my eye the most in the book was about how a soap opera T.V. show was considered risque for citizens to watch because of the way the women were acting in this show. I thought that in another women's case was that she had wanted to go to school and learn something, but she had to bargain with her parents to see if she was allowed to go to school the parents were allowed to pick out who she was going to marry. I thought that was very unfair! As an American it's hard to even imagine these traditions are carried out. One of my traditions that I have in my family/religious traditions is that we believe that women do not wear pants, or cut their hair. I have never personally cut my hair in all of my 23 years of living. Some people may call me crazy,but this is my tradition and also my belief. I am not going to say that my belief is better than another, because who is really to know if one is better? This is how I was raised and brought up ;therefore, it has been hard for me as a female. As a child in elementary and throughout grade school I was picked on and always asked "why do you wear a skirt all the time?" Being different is always hard. I think of these song lyrics from a Christian band that keep my feet on the ground, so I do not say anything bad or think different of myself. " If you don't stand for something, you might fall for anything." - Thousand Foot Krutch

I read an article on Military Diversity on PBS.org

The article that I read about had to deal with the Pentagon. The Government has made goals to have diversity in lower ranks in the military,but they have found that diversity lacks as the ranks are higher as you go up the officer ranks. The officers are less in Diversity than the enlisted soldiers they lead. Non-Hispanic whites made up at least 66 percent, blacks accounted for the 12 percent and only represent only 8% of the active duty officers. In 2009 the Army was the most diverse branch making up 10% of the generals. Gender diversity was another topic that lead to fifty-one percent of Women Americans and only accounted for 16 percent of officers. The two reasons for the shortage in women were because of the higher turnover rates than the males, and having women in combat arms which could lead to promotion. The article says that women are less likely to stay in the military, since staying in one location and high risk of deployment were reasons to separate. The recommendations for changing racial and gender diversity were to have more training in diverse situations to improve women in the group of qualified enlisted. To have more transparency in promotion system;therefore, service members have better performance for promotion. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/military-report/ 

How Diversity Makes Us Smarter

The article about How Diversity Makes Us Smarter was an interesting and an easy read. I thought it was very free flowing and seemed as though it was written as someone were discussing the topics in the article. My favorite topics were when the title called How Diversity Provokes Thought that they did studies with groups of different genders and races on how people interacted with each other and were given a topic or were told what their subject would be about ;such as, a murder mystery exercise. In those sets of groups certain people were told about information pertaining to the case. The groups then had to talk to each other about the case and share information about what they knew. Studies found that the groups with race had outperformed the group that had no racial diversity. So, being in groups with different race and gender made a difference in figuring out the murder case.