South Side Shooting and Victim Blame

On September 19th, a gunman with an AK-47 opened fire on a basketball game around 10pm in the Back of the Yards South Side neighborhood. Thirteen people were hit out of the sixteen shots fired, but miraculously they all survived. One of the victims was a three year old boy. Police have since made arrests, although that offered little comfort to the victims and residents.

Article 1 and 2

Gun violence is a popular issue, it seems there is a gun related incident on the news at all times as of late. Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy addressed this, stating that “Every time somebody is shot in this city, it’s a setback,” McCarthy said. “But this is not just a Chicago problem.” 
I don't feel qualified to give my own opinion on gun control laws, but I want to discuss something else: 

This screenshot was posted on reddit.com, bashing the original poster. (highlighted in red)
However, I can't say I completely disagree with him. I would never post something like this myself, but while reading newspaper articles about the incident, this was the first thing to pop into my mind. I think it is incredibly irresponsible of that parent to take their child out into a dangerous neighborhood at night.

If someone leaves their car unlocked in inner-city Detroit and it gets broken into, people tell that person they're an idiot. We do not live in a Utopian world, and it's wrong for people to pretend that we do. You need to take necessary precautions to look out for the safety of your family. I don't think it's right to completely blame this mother, but she is not winning any mother-of-the-year contests in my opinion. The shooter is to blame, not her. But it's a lie to say that she couldn't have been more careful. It is not victim blaming to point out poor risk management.

A particular quote from one of the Chicago Tribune articles stood out to me: 

"Ain't nothing changed since Thursday, to tell the truth," said Keith's older brother, Dennis Earl. "We don't have a library in the Back of the Yards. Doesn't that tell you that the people don't care?"

This says a lot about the people in this area, and maybe their level of education. There is a cycle of repeated violence in the South Side and education probably has something to do with it.


please feel free to add your own opinion

Pageant Racism

Beauty pageants are not something I usually pay attention to. However, the most recent Miss America results have sparked some discussion that I found interesting. They crowned the first Indian-American winner.

"I'm so proud to be the first Indian Miss America," Nina Davuluri said after she won. CNN

In 2013, one would not expect this to be a news-worthy headline. What makes it a headline is the backlash from racists who decided it was unfit for someone of Indian decent to win. 

Nina won the contest of with the platform of "Celebrating Diversity Through Cultural Competency." How fitting that people took to twitter soon after the announcement and bashed the judges and Nina herself, because of her race. Many tweets called her out for being a Muslim, (she is not) a great representation of intelligence levels of people posting the tweets. 

Another thing this reminded me of was the blog of a fellow classmate who blogged about racism. When I read it the first time, I thought it was satirical with lines such as "Our president is black. If our country is still prejudice towards black people, why would we have voted Obama in?" and "The war for racism is over." This is just blatantly false. Obama won by 51%. A very large amount of people did not vote for him. Many of those did not take race into account, but many did. We still live in a nation where racism is a huge problem. To say that it is over is ignorant and disrespectful to those affected by it.

Do you think racism is "over?" Will it ever be?


Also if the author of that blog reads this, I mean no offense

Olympics (Good News and Bad News)

Good News
Last February, the Olympic committee removed wrestling the list of sports in the summer olympics, due to the sports outdated leadership and potentially dull matches. Removing a sport that has been present since the Olympics in 708 B.C. drew harsh criticism, however. It may sound like not that big of a deal, but being pulled from the olympics could potentially drivet he sport into the ground. This is because unlike baseball, (which wrestling opposed for the olympic slot) there isn't a well organized pro league to compete in. After college, there is not where to go, except the olympics. (Unless you count WWE... most people don't). This puts less value in the D1 league, and would result in less scholarships for wrestlers.

According to BBC, a few changes have been made. Two weight classes were eliminated for men, and two were added for women. One of the problems was that matches were only two minutes, so an it wouldn't develope and become entertaining for spectators. They solved this by lengthening the matches.

Hurray for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

But there's Bad News for the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

I won't be watching them, and neither should you.

This is due to the Russian anti-gay laws that have been recently instated. Specifically, the law bans  "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations around minors."Because of this, they have arrested openly gay people, and made it clear that any gay atheletes who come to compete will be arrested.
According to CNN protests involve bars refusing to serve Russian Volkda- as high-schoolers we can't participate in this boycott, but we should not watch the Olympics. Revenue from Olympics depends greatly on advertisements being seen by viewers, and this would be a HUGE hit to a city that has to spend a lot of money to put the games together.
As gay rights have steadily increased in America, it is very surprising to see other countries with such different views.

How long do you think it will take for America to have widespread acceptance of homosexuality? The rest of the world?