Part of the class discussion included watching a part of the Radical Islam Documentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AediQLpoGGM I found the clip we watched very interesting, so I found the full documentary and will be relating it to this weeks topic of privilege. The documentary took an in-depth look at a radical group of Islamic people. What I found most interesting about this was how easy it was to believe everything that was said, and how easy it was to immediately react to their positions and agree. One of the first lines in the documentary said 'It's important to remember, most Muslims are peaceful and do not support terror.' However the next 70 minutes made it seem like all Muslims are violent. I think this shows examples of discrimination and therefor privilege. It was immediately understood that if you are Muslim, you were categorized and treated differently. It also means that if you were not Muslim, you were given a privilege. You were given a privilege to put in a nice group, a group that banded together over all being threaten by the same radical Muslim group. Years down the road after the documentary came out and after the terrorist attacks on September 11th, you can still find examples of the existence of these two groups. Muslims are still profiled in certain scenarios, and most everyone else still has a negative opinion about Islam or at least a hesitation. It seems that once segregations, descriminations, and privileges are created they are extremely difficult to get rid of.
There is discrimination and privileges all around us in society. They are nearly impossible to get away from. This cartoon shows how the United States is trying to fix them. I will leave it up to your comments to determine if the government stepping in and regulating and encouraging society to be more accepting and equal is the best plan of action. What else could be done?
I think that you did a good job of showing privilege from the Macro perspective in this post. I also think that watching the full documentary would have been a beneficial opportunity. In response to your question, I think that the government's affirmative action is suspect to say the least. I think it simply encourages tokenism and leads to a complicated hiring process. Until people want to change, little will change, regardless of what the government does or doesn't do.
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