Blog Post 10

 

    I chose to read the article by McKinnon and the article was starting to catch my eye when the conversation about Jewish people were "Gods chosen ones', and I was like okay this part of the article is getting a little weird but then as I kept reading McKinnon explained that she didn't agree with what was going on in the conversation but she didn't want to argue so they just kept nodding their head to what that person was saying, then that reminded me of a part of the truth article where McKinnon said, "Seeking to understand what I had already deemed unreasonable and sometimes even racist, I was always pretending to be more open to them than I could have ever been." To me this quote means that even though McKinnon was disagreeing with what was going on in the conversation, she didn't want to say what she really felt because of what could happen if she did.  So it made me think about should we always choose to keep the peace in a conversation if we don't agree with it? 

I had a situation a few months ago with a coworker where she answered the phone and I could tell she was struggling with understanding who she was on the phone with and she was just sounding frustrated the whole time and eventually when the phone call was done, I asked her what was going on in it. She then responded saying that the persons accent was too hard to understand, she couldn't understand what letters they were saying when they were spelling out their name and then she was saying their name was too hard to spell and say. I noticed that the name was a typical Middle Eastern name that I see all the time since I'm half Lebanese but what bothered me was that she was being rude about that person having an accent and it just hurt me because I have seen countless of people be rude to my mom because of her accent and try to act like they can't understand her but my coworker doesn't understand that because she's American and has never been through something like that. Everything in me wanted to argue with her but I chose to just nod along and kind of tune her out because I didn't want to cause conflict at work but now when I think about that situation, I wish I would've said something so she could have realized how rude and inconsiderate she was being.

    

Blog Post 10

 In a world where so many people want to stand out you can see a lot of communication be misunderstood. Communication ethics is "the call to learn about different views of the good assumed by different positions" and the way to practice it in my opinion is to sit back and listen and understand that everyone is different. You can't go about life thinking you're better than someone by the clothes you wear or the house you grew up in because everyone has different perspectives that define us. I've seen great communication ethics but I have also seen plenty of ways where it isn't practiced to full effect.

I think that the most important thing when it comes to communication ethics is to put yourself in someone else's shoes. Theory is important in communication ethics and the use of theory highlights "individualism" which is how yourself perceives a type of study or topic. Individualism is great for getting new ideas across and can make others appreciate the human side to theory. I've enjoyed seeing the different ways that communication ethics works in our everyday society and how it is rare to see it practiced in everyday conversations especially in media.

Arnett, Ronald C. Communication Ethics Literacy and Difference, 3 Sept. 2020.

Blog Post 10.

  For this week’s blog post, I am really interested in writing about the second reading for this week. The Academic article is titled “#CommunicationSoWhite” written by Paula Chakravartty, Rachel Kuo, Victoria Grubbs, and Charlton McIlwain. In their paper, the authors talk about racial inequality and White supremacy within scholarly work. For this journal, the authors analyze the humanities field for their research. This article is so powerful because the authors point out this racial inequality by measuring the number of citation rates, publication rates, and editorial rates of non-white scholars and women (Chakravartty 2018 ). They then compared the data with White males. The inequality in this representation was shocking. According to the authors, 746 of 5,262 journals were published by non- White authors between the years of 1990-2016, which is a publication rate of about fourteen percent(Chakravartty 2018). The citation rates in the same research turned out to be even lower. I found this article to be powerful due to the use of quantitative-based data. Its study showed indisputable proof that extreme inequality is rooted in many types of scholarly works.

  The online article I wanted to connect to this week’s reading is called “America’s always had black inventors – even when the patent system explicitly excluded them.” When sharing the finding of the academic article with some of my close friends, we eventually talked about how inequality is present in many other fields. While it is not exactly the same idea as the original article, we ultimately got on the topic of how black inventors had been excluded in history. In the newspaper article, the author talks about how important patents, created by slaves and other black inventors of the time, were either stolen or disregarded (Johnson 2017). While I know this is not the exact same concept as the original article for the class, I think the premise is similar. Furthermore, this example also showcases deep inequality within the sciences and other aspects of scholarly work.  

Chakravartty, Paula, et al. “CommunicationSoWhite.” Journal of Communication, vol. 68, no. 2, Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 254–66, https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy003.

Johnson , Shontavia. “America's Always Had Black Inventors – Even When the Patent System Explicitly Excluded Them.” The Conversation, 13 Jan. 2021, https://theconversation.com/americas-always-had-black-inventors-even-when-the-patent-system-explicitly-excluded-them-72619.

Blog Post 10 - Communication Ethics and Difference

Paula Chakravartty, Rachel Kuo, Victoria Grubbs, & Charlton McIlwain all collaborated to write the article #CommunicationSoWhite. In it, they discuss the issues of nonwhite scholars being underrepresented and left out of the public conversation when it comes to racial conversations. White supremacy and the racial norms found in our society are continuously upheld to maintain control of the cultural narrative. "We conclude in responding to a question posed by an anonymous reviewer of this very article: “To put it bluntly, why would White scholars listen?” This question, of course, speaks volumes. But to take it at face value, we would argue that while citational practices are a narrow indicator of the larger structures of racial inequality in the academy and society at large, they help to “reproduce a discipline” that organizes and institutes social orders that have been universally detrimental and dehumanizing." (Chakravartty 9). It is no question that white scholars and reference material available to the general public are the majority. Racially diverse scholarly material is oftentimes suppressed and may not even leave the editor based on the racial bias present in these settings.

I'm reminded of a story I read once of a black author who submitted her work to an editor and received no follow-up or publication. Upon resubmitting her work under a pseudonym that sounded more "racially acceptable", she was then contacted. This in and of itself is incredibly problematic and I'm sure more common than we hear about it.  In opening this discussion, my hope is to see a continuous deconstruction of all the nooks and crannies racial inequality and injustice hides in to make a change in our society. 

Chakravartty, Paula, et al. “CommunicationSoWhite.” Journal of Communication, vol. 68, no. 2, Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 254–66, https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy003.

Blog Post 10

 This week, I read the Chakravarrty article about the lack of representation for the BIPOC community in Journal articles and research. While I found the article interesting it was disappointing to see the low percentages that represented BIPOC contributions to journals. The majority of these numbers were less than 20% which is less than ideal. I feel that this issue of underrepresentation goes hand in hand with the issue of inaccessibility of journal articles due to the language they use (Chakravartty 2018).

Because most research journals do not feature articles that describe their research in the vernacular, it becomes inaccessible to most of the population. As a student, I have struggled through many peer reviewed research articles with Google up in the next tab so I can look up the definition of every other word. Research is meant to advance our society and we will not be able to advance if we keep it on a pedestal where only certain people can read and understand it.

Chakravartty, P., Kuo, R., Grubbs, V., & McIlwain, C. (2018). #communicationsowhite. Journal of Communication, 68(2), 254–266. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy003

Blog Post #10

 One of the main terms put forth by Arnett in this week's reading is "pragmatic" and its connection to the understanding and learning from the "other". Arnett defines pragmatic as "the need for practical engagement of ideas responsive to a particular historical moment," (Arnett et. al, p. 1) noting that this allows for learning from the other. By developing ideas into a pragmatic application, one can tie ethical positions to both new and time-tested ideas. This also connects with the ability for people to "cease using ethics as a weapon.... [and] embrace the necessity of learning as we meet diverse ethical positions contrary to our own with the assumption that learning does not necessarily suggest agreement" (Arnett et. al, p. 1). By using a pragmatic application, one is then able to place their knowledge/ideas into a broader context that allows for variations of ideas and healthy disagreement in terms of communication ethics. Overall, I thought this was a good way to apply the course concepts we have learned to real world applications.

post 10 blog

 The #CommunicationSoWhite debate and critique is a response to a troubling academic and political context that is intricately intertwined. We are in the midst of a widespread expansion and rise of global white supremacy, which is disturbingly evident in the trajectory, rhetoric, and actions of Donald Trump in the United States, Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom, and Golden Dawn in Greece, as well as a growing white supremacy. The power of right-wing and authoritarian regimes more generally: China under Xi Jinping, India under Modi, Brazil under Bolsonaro, etc. In this moment of cultural and political crisis, a large group of scholars recognizes the central role of media and communication in facilitating these shifts, increasingly countering, intervening, and reshaping our field. #CommunicationSoWhite is an intervention that calls attention to the complicity of the academy in perpetuating existing racial and intersectional hierarchies. By focusing on race, inequality, and exclusion, we highlight the importance of engaging issues of power, identity, and politics in communication and media studies. We recognize that the transformative potential of "diversity" efforts has become increasingly diluted as the term is invoked simply for the presence of black or brown people - for example, among faculty - with little regard for the complex intersections of nation, class, caste, and religion, or with no real intention of reflection or structural change. -with little consideration of the complex intersections of nation, class, caste and religion, or any real intention of rethinking or structural change. Emphasizing the problematic dominance of the West in communication studies should not ignore important racial and colonial critiques, including those of marginalized Western scholars about white supremacy as the dominant global ideology.

Chakravartty, Paula, et al. “#Communicationsowhite.” Journal of Communication, vol. 68, no. 2, 2018, p. 262., https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy003.