Gender & Cultural Studies

Critical Issue Analysis

Reflection

-I feel by taking this class I have improved as a writer. We were asked to read many issues relating to race, class, and gender as it pertains to the United States. Reading these stories have broadened my view of how these issues are happening in everyday life. It has shown me a different perspective on the many subjects that I have not had the opportunity to explore before. There was specific questions to reply to when writing about the issue(s) these readings were about which led me to target specific issues. I have learned to not only analyze issues pf race, class, and gender but to dissect options for change and find possible solutions to these problems.

-When doing the Critical Issue Analysis above, I had to research many different points of views and facts in order to really assert my analysis. I wrote about poverty, but poverty is connected to issues such as race, class, and gender in so many ways. Wage inequality for race and gender is a big issue tying into the issue of poverty in the United States. There is a significant wage gap for those of color and female gender, but if your both a female and colored then the gap wage stretches even wider. Having done many assignments on the readings of these issues, it made it easier to understand how these issues correlate to poverty through social injustices. 

-What I learned about doing this signature assignment is that these issues are something that go beyond poverty due to economics, but it's an issue that has been going on for generations. History has shown us that we have been discriminatory towards minorities whether it be race, class, gender, or homophobia, transgender, lesbian, gays etc... It is hidden in an underlying message of the media to keep this discrimination going, so while we may say we don't discriminate, we may be doing it unconsciously. 

-I would say the skills I have mastered is an understanding of the discrimination issues that have been going on in our own backyards. It has made me realize that I am considered a minority by being a woman and that change is a process, but one person can start change. I have learned to look through the lens of someone else who may be facing discrimination on many other levels, and to be an ally for them whenever possible. They are reflected in this assignment by my ability to connect how many of these issues are intertwined with another and a big cause of poverty goes right back down to the issues of discrimination. I have sought out how we can change these things, but the real question is when.