Introduction:

My goal for this essay is to show how much violence is in our country and how much we see it on a daily basis. I just want people to be aware of this. I'm proud of the work I put in it and shout out to Christina and Tobi for the peer review.

Constant Violence in US

There are a lot of examples of violence being ingrained in our minds in our society. Whether it be subconsciously or consciously we cannot escape because these factors are all around and are influencing us daily. One example is the media. The media always reports shootings, robberies, and other acts of violence on a daily basis and then go on to the next topic: essentially just glossing over it like its nothing new. The second factor is our own president Donald Trump. At his rallies, he has a history of condoning violence.  What both of these examples have in common is that they’re things that people look up too or look at. These are just some of the many things that we see everyday that affect us and ingrain in our brain. If you go on NBC 10 News you’ll see a violent act that was committed and then right next to it is something light-hearted or even silly. In a article on the NBC 10 news website (April 23, 2019) it stated how the body cameras on the policemen were being used incorrectly as there was a police shooting. Then there was a news report about an Easter Bunny using violence to defend a woman who was being assaulted by a man. To be fair this kind of violence (The Easter Bunny) could be justified because he was trying to protect the woman t. The problem in this situation are the bystanders. During the incident they were just watching the woman get beat up. The people on the sidelines were cheering for the Easter Bunny, they said, ” Beat his a** .” multiple times, condoning that this “Easter Bunny fight the man that was fighting the woman. Later that day we come to find out the man in the Easter Bunny suit is a fugitive from New Jersey with a violent past. Here are three pictures of the incident.

In the first picture and second picture, it’s the man in the Easter Bunny suit. In the third picture is him defending the women by beating up the man with excessive force.  

That was just one example of how violence is ingrained in our brains due to the e daily violence shown on media.

Our own president has taken a part of this in many of his rallies and has been known to instigate violence. During Donald Trump’s various rallies he claimed that he didn’t  condone violence. However, that couldn’t be any farther from the truth.

Donald Trump has been contradicting for the longest time.It’s obvious that during this time Donald Trump was trying to gain people’s votes by saying he didn’t condone violence but, it got to the point where he really doesn’t care what he says during his rallies. Donald Trump really has a history of encouraging violence in our country. The crazy part is when he said, “Knock the crap out of them” people were cheering and supporting him with this statement. This shows that if the people in power think it’s ok others will also think its ok that we have violence in our country.   

One last example out of the many examples out there is The Army Experience Center. In the ACE they try to recruit kids in the army by making them play violent video games. They use these games as a means to unlock the violence that’s inside kids without them even realizing it. Here are some statistics from the ACE,” As of October 12, 2009:

• The AEC had registered nearly 13,000 new visitors

• The AEC had contracted a total of 149 recruits -- 134 for active duty and 15 for Reserves

• The AEC had obtained 72 “quality enlistments," referring to recruits who scored in the 50th percentile or above on the Armed Forces Qualification Test

• On average, 80 people visit the AEC per day

• The HMMWV [Humvee] is the AEC’s most popular simulator”

And this is just for 2009. There were 80 People visiting a day being brainwashed by violent video games so they can join the army. Using video games as a means to gather kids to join the army is kind of sick. The kids don’t know better either, they think they’re just there to play some Call of Duty or something when in actuality the people who work at ACE are evaluating how useful they can be in the army.  

There is a way to solve this. We all need to be careful what we look at what we feed our minds because if we feed our minds violence it’s going to want violence. If we feed our minds kind thoughts and kind actions then our minds are going think positively and do positive things. If we keep just following others like Donald Trump it’s just going to strengthen the hold that violence has on our minds but if we don’t allow to take control of us then everything will be fine. This is why we need to be aware that violence is being ingrained in our mins.

These are just three examples of how violence is ingrained in our brains. No matter how hard we try to avoid it there will be violence all around us, it’s just how society is at this day and age. There are even people out there who support violence as seen in example two. In the end, the many examples out here can ingrain violence in our brains but that doesn’t mean everybody is hostile.  

Work sited

https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000004269364/trump-and-violence.html?playlistId=1194811622182&module=tv-carousel&action=click&pgType=Multimedia&contentPlacement=0

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/waging-war/a-new-generation/

https://www.nbcnews.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H3CsKX01ME

the meaning of this essay is to dive into the idea mindset of people who go the hardship of war. Not much else to say but hopefully you enjoy my essay.

War and violence are things that can drastically change a person for better or worse. Thought usually it’s for the worse and that leads to a multitude of other problems. It teaches us who’s hiding something deep within that they themself didn’t even know existed. Violence Teaches us how to react when attacked and how will you respond when they point fingers to figure out who to blame. War teaches us how one tiny battle can blow up to the point it drags everyone and thing till there's nothing left but an empty hollow of what was. In the classic lyrics of ‘’War’’ by Edwin Starr ‘’War...huh….what is it good for? Absolutely Nothin’’.

Some people stay haunted by their past decisions and it can become a life wrecker. Whether or not it’s from guilt, or some suppressed memory they’ve kept locked away for a long time finally coming back to light. These haunting memories can lead to depression, suicide or a long life of self loth and hate towards one’s self. Like Norman Bowker, a man who felt like there was nothing left for him. In the book of ‘’The things they carried’’ by Tim O'brien, he committed suicide at a YMCA and had left a seventeen page hand written letter saying how he couldn’t find meaning. When Bowker was writing ‘’If I die in a combat zone’’ it brought back a lot of memories of his time in vietnam and one of the biggest being the death of his best friend Kiowa. He would constantly blame himself for his death, believing that he caused it with his flashlight looking at a picture of his (Ex) girlfriend during the time. Leading to a mortar hitting the mud, water and shit feld their crew were camped in and Kiowa being sucked into the ground beneath.

Going back into the idea that war changes a person is a very interesting topic and a quite difficult one. The difficult part of it is the question of ‘’were they always like this?’’ or was it the environment that shaped what they would become? Then that's where the interest comes in because your hooked and now you just need to know or you won’t get sleep or even rest. If we say environment then the conditions are what come to mind. Could it be the weather of the area that stings the mind from overbearing heat or bone freezing cold? or maybe it’s the constant annoying animals and insects that never shut up day and night keeping your mind in neverending noise? But if we go by the war itself then it’s easier to figure and understand (from an outside view). A close death encounter could change your view on the world like you take it easy or try to find that thrill again. That or being on the front line of the fighting and seeing the many horrors war can bring to you in one place.

It’s all this that cause people to change from good people to just death wanting husks of their former selves. These horrible and disturbing moments truly twist the way you view the world and make you realize that life isn’t as peaceful as you once thought. So whenever you see a homeless vet or a vet with PTSD think twice before you immediately demonize them. Because they seen and done things that still haunt them to this day and did things you would never do. Respect to the VETs and thank god for your service.       

Sources: ‘’The things they carried’’ by Tim O'brien

When I was young I lived in a neighborhood where no one struggled for money. For a while that was my family too. I lived in a two parent home with two incomes, we were not rich but we were okay. When I was three years old my father left my family. My mom had money she had saved and she thought we would be okay. In the span of one day we had gone from a stable family to having nothing. My father drained the bank accounts and took all the money my mother had worked hard to save. We had nothing left. Living in the suburbs of northern virginia I knew we didn’t have as much money as everyone else. This gave me a sense of feeling out of place. Everyone had the video games and they had name brand food in their lunches. I know my mom did her best to make me and my siblings not feel like we were on the outside.

Other kids in the same grade as me wore name brand clothing while my clothes came from the thrift store up the street. My mom did her best to hide that we were broke. I remember days where we would walk or the neighbor would bring us to school because the car had a boot on it. The lights went out many times because my mother couldn’t pay the bill on time. At the time I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know we had as little as we did.

I’m not going to say my early childhood was hard for me , it wasn’t it was harder for my mom. I knew that everything could have been a lot worse. Sure we had to empty the change jar we kept by the front door to buy food, and the lights did get turned off a few times. My mother worked so hard to make sure we had everything we needed. She made sure we were fed, clean, and dressed well everyday. Your upbringing is a main part of the way you turn out and who you are. Being broke, being comfortable  or being rich has an effect on who you are. There are people you can tell have never struggled for money or people who have never heard the words “we can’t afford it” before. There are people who you know had some struggle or are still struggling to make ends meet. All of this shapes who you become. Similar to how Gatsby put on this fake persona to get people to like him, that's what I was doing. I acted like we could afford all the same things that other kids in my gadre could. I tried so hard to fit in with the wealthy kids, i wanted the sense of belonging that came along with being wealthy.

The people with money turn out many different ways, humble, snobby, or entitled. The people who you know didn’t grow up with this cushioned lifestyle where they didn’t worry about paying rent know about the struggle of having to worry about how you’re going to eat or how you're going to pay the bills. Those people could turn out another variety of ways.  They could come up from having no money to being comfortable and gain that entitlement that comes along with wealth, or they could know where they come from and stay as they were.

I myself, have had and still have my fair share of struggles in my life. When people look at me they think that I am a white girl who had had everything handed to me and life has been easy. I know in my heart that everything has not been easy for me and that I have had to work harder than half of the people who look at me and tell me I have had everything handed to me. I

Being so young when this happened definitely made it much easier for me. Eight year olds didn't care so much about the clothes you wore or if you had fancy shoes. What got to me the most was the fact that I saw the hurt in my mother. I knew she was trying her best and doing everything she could to keep us happy. Beloning was important  to me. I began to belong less and less and this truly took a toll on me. The person I am was majorly shaped by living where I did when my family lost everything.

The purpose of my essay was to not only explain my emotions during this time period but to be able to explain to myself what happened in this situation. I am very proud of myself for just even getting the paper done because this was a very stressful thing to write and not a very easy process. But also my analysis and how in-depth I went. In the future I see myself getting way better in my writing process by asking for more peer edits because that's what really helps the essay, by one getting more than one opinion.

I´d consider myself raised in a respected home and as my mother would say ¨ We had good home training¨. We were very traditional in many aspects. My parents wanted us to know where we came from a part of that was knowing the language. I was thankful for that even though sometimes it didn't show. One thing that they wanted us to know was there was a God and he was above any other. We were Christians. But we were also Nigerian. We were Nigerian Christian. Christians that went to church each Sunday and they made sure we were rooted in the word of God. I was considered a good Christian child up until a certain point. Then I decide to be different, I decided I didn't want to be this idea of Nigerian Christian. Where the thought are going to church seem more like a punishment instead of something to look forward to.

I became  less interested in my culture and an even more hatred for my religion. When the topic of culture was brought up I would always switch it up, or when they would call on me to pray I´d say I didn't want to. Three was a disconnect. With those around me telling me that I had to pick side, I started to believe it. In the novel Americanah written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, she speaks about the judgment foreigners receive when they migrate to America. In the sections she explains her move to America and the different situations she had to endure to order to aline with the social norms. She writes, “Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I'm Jamaican or I'm Ghanaian. America doesn't care.¨(187). With this, we start to see a larger idea of how immigrants of really viewed in society. We are often called a boiling pot but in reality, we are more like a salad because everything goes separately, each group has a group of their own. You can either find a middle ground or just or just lose part of yourself in order to gain from another. People feel the need to do this for acceptance; If they don't act like everyone else than can they really belong. This is very important because everyone wants to belong even someone like me. We live in a society that forces you to leave your own ideas in order to conform to the ideas of others. Society is afraid of the possibility that someone can ever be different so they stripe your labels, your identity and try to give you new ones.

It started to feel like I was living a double life. I was a different person depending on who was around. Like any normal teenager, I was going through a ¨midlife crisis teen edition¨. In the novel The Lies That Bind Rethinking Identity by Kwame Anthony Appiah, he speaks on the practice of his religion and the stages in which there are beliefs or even doubt in your faith. He says, “Every religion can be said to have three dimensions. Sure, there is a body of belief. But there’s also what you do-- call that the practice,” (36). This was the problem with religion and the reasons so many people stray from it because of these things called rules. There was a rule for everything there was a guildless you had to follow in order for you to even call yourself a Christian you have to live a certain lifestyle. The word half Christian is what I was. I began to pick and choose with rules I would follow and which rules to break. When we begin to break down this quote we see that you can't do one without the other. Yes, I would say I was Christians when people asked but I wasn't living the life a Christian would. This is where it hit me if I wanted to live a certain life I would have to make changes.

To end my story, it wasn’t easy on the journey to find not only who I was but also who I wanted to believe in. There was a process of self-discovery. In not only who I wanted to be but what was allowed of me. See that's the thing with the society we are so afraid of being different that we feel the need to be put into a box and if that box doesn't find correctly we find another because that's just the way society is. Society tells you, you are not normal until you have a label because we are so afraid of being different we feel we have to listen to them. But with knowledge comes understanding with that, I was able to understand that I didn't have to conform to these beliefs. It was only then that I was able to see why I was a Christian. A Nigerian Christian.

It was a cold Saturday night, the wind was blowing so hard you can hear it. It was December 30, 2017, and I was coming home from dance practice. I was in the car with my mom, dad, and one of my sisters. The car was so quiet, I decided to put my headphones in and listen to some music.

When I was jamming to my music, I notice that my mom had tears coming down her face. I quickly paused my music and asked, “Mom, why are you crying?”  

My dad said, “Wait until we get in the house.” When we got in the house, my mom sat on the couch and told me and my sister to “come here.” This is when my whole life had changed forever. My dad said: “Pop-Pop Kenny had died.” My heart stopped and I fell into my mom's arms and said: “Why it had to be him?”  Then I went upstairs and just sat in complete silence.

The following day was   I had to come to school and put on a mask to show that I wasn’t hurting or depressed. But that didn’t work because people kept asking if I was ok and I would respond, “Yes,” and kept on moving.

Because I was raised to be a man, I was taught to hide my emotions cause it shows weakness. I knew that this was tough for me cause when someone who you love dies then your emotions are raised really high. But my dad only said don’t show your emotions in public when your alone cause people will start to make fun of you.

Lenard Sax wrote in his New York Times article titled Many Boys Today Define Masculinity Negatively challenges us to think about how gender and masculinity affect our identity and how we express our emotions: “Being a real man means doing things that girls don’t do.” This quote is significant because it highlights the way that boys are being raised and raises questions if parents should change the way they raise their kids? I can relate to this quote because I have personal experiences on the way my parents have raised me. My dad specifically wouldn’t let me do anything a girl does and he always made sure that I only do what boys normally do.

Another idea related to boys and the idea of Masculinity is raised by Tim King. He wrote a New York Times article titled  Encourage Boys to Embrace Individuality, So They Can Respect It in Others and it is challenging the idea of how parent raised their kids: “When we mold our sons in the image of unrealistically rugged masculinity, they are encouraged to view girls through the lens of some idealized version of femininity.” This quote is significant because it highlights the reason why boys think and do things a certain way.  Also, it makes a realization of why the parents raise their children like this. Like for example when was growing up my parents always told me to respect everyone. And they said when you look at/talk female just know to be cautious of what you say because they will show you their emotions. So my parents taught me to respect all genders equally.

These ideals our young men short-sighted ad lost. What I mean by that is that we can't keep making boys think one-sided. As a society, we need to make sure that young men and children can accept who they are and what that means is that they don’t have to think of life as one thing when there are many aspects of life.  Masculinity isn’t formulated. You can mold and shape your kids the way you want to, but if you want them to become a better ma let them define what Masculinity for themselves.

The goal of my essay was to analyze the way other people affect ones sense of identity and how an individual is affected by the opinion of a mass. I am proud of some of the descriptions in my essay and finally expressing how I felt about this process in detail. I had never explained to myself why I wanted locs it just happened and I went with it. I feel like this essay starts to explain other aspects of my personality that might change with time.

In Beasts of the southern wild, everyone in The Bathtub was happy with the life they had, they still lived in fear of those who were superior, they had nowhere to go but where they were. They knew that people would tell them where they lived was unsafe, or how they lived was disgusting but they were adapted to that lifestyle so outsiders would not understand. The way they lived worked for them, it was not meant or made to work for anybody else. Anyone coming into a community will not understand how that community works if they have already had exposure to another one, there is an immediate bias.

¨I´m apart of a big big universe and I make things right¨Hushpuppy says this all throughout the movie, she is saying her people created balance and variety and without that the community would fall apart because everything has an equal or opposite reaction. When they left, everything went out of control and everyone was forced to adjust in a way that did not necessarily work for them. Everyone had an opinion on what they should be doing but for everyone´s well being everything has to fit together just right so it does not matter if something is different it is necessary.

¨When you ask me am I really a woman, a human being,

a coherent identity, I’ll say No, I’m something else

like that though. ¨

A poem by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza speaks to people finding one aspect of a person then assuming their entire identity. Everyone is a combination of different traits, and a product of their environment. No black person has all the stereotypical traits, you can be black but be articulate or have no rhythm. It does not make you less black. In this poem the artist is separating herself from a group and becoming an individual. She is defining herself before going out into the world, if this happens then no one can tell you who you are or are not.

Sweatpants sitting on my thighs while my converse hugged my toes. My two aunts pick up pace behind me. The soles of my shoes shed rubber against tar, I reach the sidewalk and open the door. The wide salon greets me with aerosol clouds and clumps of hair sitting on the floor. Two brown skinned women with butterscotch locs smile and look to me. ¨Are you ready?¨ They each ask one after the other. They were beautiful no doubt, earthly goddesses but is their hair journey right for me? I forced a laugh and flashed a smile to my aunts, I had already asked for this as a birthday gift. The appointment was made, money ready to be spent, in about two hours there would be no turning back.

My feet found their way around and next thing I knew I was sitting i the waiting room. The salon was beautiful, the hair dressers were gorgeous, but only two had locs. Sza sings in the background as I constantly replay my mothers words,

¨You look awful, from now on you will either loc your hair or wear extensions¨

I never liked extensions or the feeling of artificial on natural. I loved my lions mane no matter how many times my grandmother unsuccessfully tried to tame it.

I don´t think I realized what was happening while it happened, I only went through motions.

I stand up. My feet led my legs somewhere. I sat down. Hands rushed through my hair, met with water. Everything stopped. I look up.

A lady with long brazilian bundles in a ponytail grasped my curls

¨So why do you wanna get locs?¨

My eyes started to dart around the salon, the bounced off the lights, away from her, onto the wall, over to the shampoos, I was seemingly searching for an answer to her question. It shouldn´t be that difficult I´m already here, my heart speeds up, I stutter,

do I actually want to be here? It doesn´t matter I already am I flush out fear and push words out.

¨Oh yeah, ummm my aunts have locs, and they look nice.¨ Honestly at that point I knew I sounded stupid, but that was the only other reason other than

my mother wanted me to. Brazilian bundles set out a soft breath with a smile, I guess it was imitating a laugh.

¨You have beautiful hair.¨ She wasn't the only person who had told me that. Less than 24 hours ago my older cousin pleaded with me not to get locs.

¨You´re so pretty why would you want locs?¨ I greeted but not welcomed her question with silence. Countless people had opinions about my hair, one boy had texted me ¨don´t get locs, it will mess up your curl pattern¨ as if he was an expert on hair types, he uses Cantu on his hair so his current curl pattern is already messed up, but moving on. I guess I would just get locs then end up loving them on me.

I followed Brazilian Bundles to a salon chair, as a woman a little taller than me slides into my peripheral vision. Her locs came to her clavicle, she had been growing them for some time. Her overall energy was welcoming, I felt more at ease starting my locs with someone who had them, but not all the way.

Sitting in her slippery salon chair, my feet dangled reminding me that it would be hard to escape this. So there was the artist, the stylist, with a tangled mess before her, my hair. Before she begun, I saw three different tools, loc styling gel, a fine rat tail comb, then scissors. My stomach tightened, turned rock solid no one has ever cut my hair before. Sure it was not super long because of how I brushed it and how my hair always shed, but scissors were never put to it. In a matter of seconds my hair went from shoulder length (with shrinkage) to earlobe length.

Why did you need to cut it? I steadily repeated in my head. I did not know what to do with short hair. My stylist, LaRhea took the rat tail comb, parted a section, then completed it by twisting the comb. She was careful but quick.

¨Please don´t revert this process¨ she said to me when she had finished. Meaning follow her instructions to maintain my hair until the next time we met. And I did. I saw her every month for the next year to retwist my locs until I found someone new.

¨Oh my gosh¨ squealed my aunt and my older cousin in unison as they walked into the salon to pick me up. ¨You look so cute¨

I smiled at the compliment longing for inches of my hair, not completely believing it.

For days I had wanted to untwist my starter locs, but day after day I became more accepting of them until my hair was fully locked.

In a TEDTALK Thandie Newton proposes this thought ¨We each have a self, but I don´t think we´re born with one.¨ The idea here is that we grow into ourselves as time goes on. When we are born, we each have a physical body but as we get older we start to make choices for our own concept of self, from those decisions comes a personality then that´s where you come in as a self. Everyone has some sense of who they are or want to be but no one ever has the concrete knowledge. People project certain energy and everyone is a product of their environment. Often we change to please others.

If we challenged the system more maybe it would not reject us as much, we would not be outcasts or forced to fit in a box. If we were to fight against the dominant culture all the time we would be exhausted so we should question who we are but choose in which ways we challenge the system/expectations when necessary.

Our entire lives we’ve been told that we need to find our own identity and that all of our identities are unique. We always have heard identity as being a single thing, either you’re a boy or a girl, you’re an immigrant or citizen, many of the things we identify usually only connect to one idea. In this way no one really is unique. What makes every single person unique is the fact that every person has different layers to their identity that are more than the surface presents. Identity is a complex topic that can’t be summed up by one phrase.

In the book the Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald,  Jay Gatsby is a young man trying to win over his former love with extravagant parties and boasting his money. He tries to stand out as much as possible, yet no one even knows who the real Jay Gatsby is. “I suppose he'd had the name ready for a long time, even then. His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people – his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all.” This quotes shows that Gatsby is trying to be known only through one piece of his identity. He wants to be known as the Oxford man, who is now very wealthy but, fails to realize that under the top layer of this identity there is more. The fact that he grew up on a farm and that his family was very poor, the fact that he does not make his money in the most respectable way. These are things that were ignored by Gatsby the entire story because he was so stuck on keeping this one idea for his identity, when in reality everyone has multiple layers to who they are.  

In the movie “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” a girl named Hushpuppy is living in the bathtub with her father. Due to icebergs and global warming the government is trying to evacuate the bathtub. This leads to Hushpuppy and her father being taken by the government and taken to a shelter. After being taken to the shelter Hushpuppy says, “I’m recording my story for the scientists in the future.” Hushpuppy unlike Gatsby realizes that there are different levels to her identity. Although she was raised in an environment that is completely different from the modern United States, she still acknowledges that they are apart of the reason she grew up the way she did, unlike Gatsby who completely ignores his past and only wants people to see one layer of his life, Hushpuppy is recording her entire life for the scientists so that they have a clear picture of the different layers of her identity.

“Don’t talk when we get inside, I don’t want them to know we’re not from around here. They’ll give us the discount if they think we live here.” We were waiting in the lobby, we wanted to go waterfall jumping. All of the male employees had buzz cuts, and close to no facial hair. I stood leaning against a wall, my hair grown out long enough to tie it back into a bun, and almost a full beard. I didn’t look anything like any of these men, and I felt their eyes glued on me every time as they walked past. They could tell I was Dominican like them but that my style said something different about me.  For the first time in my life I questioned my Dominican authenticity. I understand why she would tell my brother not to speak, he didn’t even speak spanish, but what was so different between me and them. I realized that giving off the impression that we were “authentic” and “regular” would work better in our favor. Saying that I only identify as a Dominican male would be wrong, as that is only one part of my identity, and in this case it was the identity that would work best in our favor, but I am more than just that. I had to accept the fact that I am also an American child and that it’s apart of who I am and how I should identify. We have different layers so that we can change based on our situation, we shouldn’t only be defined by one part of our identity.

People only tend to scrape the top layer when they are talking about their identity, and it’s because they only ever decided to identify with that top layer. Identity is more complex than just saying you are one thing or another, identity is made up of several pieces that fit together like a puzzle to make every single person unique.  Everyone can use the different layers of their identity depending on their situation. We saw Hushpuppy recognize the different layers of her identity in “Beasts of the Southern Wild” being stuck between the Bathtub and the modern US. I realized that part of my identity would disadvantage me in DR and I would need to hide that part. All of us have layered identities, it’s up to us if we want to start using all the layers.