The Men of Today

My day started off with an early trip to the gym. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go, but once I was there I was sure I had made the right decision in going. After an energizing work out, I went back to my dorm room to get ready for the day ahead. About half an hour before class, I met with Chloe for a quick breakfast. We walked to class sipping our coffees, and talked about the previous night's assigned readings.

Today was day two of having Prof. Shannon Lundeen teach the class. Yesterday we talked a lot about how women are treated, perceived, and oppressed in the world, so today was about men. We really only focused on African American males. I remember briefly talking about men from other ethnicities, but it was only to compare them to the African American men. Prof. Lundeen showed us a video that was comparing and contrasting 50 Cent to Barack Obama. I really didn't understand the message of the video, because it was going in so many directions. One direction it went in was that Obama and 50 are exactly the same, they are two very intelligent successful African American males living in world the wasn't made for them. The other direction it went in was that they are nothing alike. 50 Cent had a rough upbringing but he fought through it all to get to where he is, while Barack Obama had everything given to him. Maybe the point of the video was how people tend to make assumptions about others all the time. We did talk about making assumptions quite a bit after that, so that may be the message. Obama is identified as an African American male, but one African American man said that Obama did not represent him because he didn't have a rough upbringing, he didn't know what struggle was, because he is successful, and because he is intelligent. I really did not know how to respond to that man's comments.

The second portion of the class was a field trip, but it was cancelled because of the ridiculously hot weather. So I had the rest of the day to do anything I wanted. After a nice lunch with Chloe and some classmates, I came back to my room. We did have a lot of reading to do for tomorrow, so I decided to get that out of the way. That was followed by a second visit to the gym. I really enjoyed having some time to just do anything I wanted or nothing at all.