Monthly Archives: November 2019

For my research paper I’ve decided to write about a topic that is very interesting and real to me. The connection between the Latino community and the Black Lives Matter movement is one that is beneficial to both parties. There are many inequalities that both Black and Latino people have faced because of racial discrimination in America. These include racial profiling, favoring certain students for gifted school programs, and micro aggressions towards the community.

In my essay I analyze how the Latin community is intertwined or related to the Black Lives Matter movement through their struggles and similar fight for freedom. I also discuss the racial discrimination happening within the actual Latino community. This idea of colorism is especially something that needs to be overcome through the BLM movement in order to create a more equal field for all groups. To fight for a bigger struggle one must defeat inner anti-blackness in the Latin community first.

My research paper was based on albanian women and if we are continuing to still follow these roles and norms that have been set for us by passed centuries till our current generation. Many women in many different cultures not just Albania deal with the role that if u have the title of women then that means you must stay home to cook, clean, take care of the kids, take care of your husband make sure he’s happy despite your own happiness and how these criterias are really affecting women negatively and if you don’t match up with what society has set then u don’t deserve the title of being a woman. I had difficulties finding online sources so i decided to take matters into my own hands on find opinions and views of Albanian women and these issues by interviewing multiple Albanian women that I know, some who are really religious and some who aren’t to see if their views change especially if religion comes back into play. 

Finding my topic has been a hard process for me. I started off writing about how the fashion industry lacks more representation of Muslim women, but when looking into it, I realized that there has been more representation recently. Thus, I shifted my focus to how are Muslim people invisible in popular culture.

In today’s world, we see a lot of music videos and TV shows that have all types of ethnic diversity, but I have not seen one Muslim individual that play a leading role on television or has become a well-known singer. I am curious to know why is that. Why is there just a lack of Muslim people in popular culture? Is it because our society can’t accept as a norm or is it because Muslim people don’t get a chance because of their own cultural and religious views.

In order to answer all of these questions, I will be looking at various TV shows and music and see the way shows Muslim people and how they stereotype them into a category and find outy how are they invisible and why.

After reading Juno Diaz story “Fiesta 1980”,  I became really interested in the topic of parenting styles.Junior was raised by an Authoritarian father who was in charge of the family decisions. Being raised with this type of parenting style really affected Junior during his teenage years. However, I am curious to know if the way someone was raised can also affect later on in the future like in adulthood and if it can impact someone on the way they raise their future children. For example, if someone was raised with permissive parents would that person also raise their future children the same way they were raised. After doing some research I found out that there are four different types of parenting styles which are Authoritarian, Permissive, Uninvolved and Authoritative. Each one is different from one another and each one can have positive or negative effects on the children. So far I found out that people who are raised with Authoritative parents tend to be more successful in the future and have better leadership skills. I also found out that parenting styles can affect social,cognitive, and psychological development. Authoritarian parenting can cause depression in children or teenagers as well as low self esteem. Also, there’s really no respect in permissive parenting as it tends to be more or a son-friend relationship and not parent. Children don’t really look at their parents as a parental figure but more of a friend.

Therefore, I will be looking for information about the four different types of parenting styles and I will also be looking at how parenting styles can affect someone’s social, cognitive, and psychological development. I will then be using that information I found out, to analyze whether being raised a certain way has a relationship with the way one chooses to raise their future children. So will children that were raised with permissive parents also raise their future children with permissive parenting styles.

My research question is; what is Michael Jackson’s relationship with race? Michael Jackson has been one of the biggest influences on pop culture and was known worldwide. During his years of being famous, Michael Jackson went through a transformation. He had many cosmetic procedures and even got his skin bleached. Was he trying to get rid of his “Blackness?” Was he ashamed of his racial background? I want to know why Michael Jackson was changing himself, specifically his race. Did he have internal racism? He ended up sexually abusing two boys who happen to be white. Why did he sexually abuse white boys instead of black boys, and why were they boys not girls? Was he also confused or conflicted about his sexuality?                                                                   I choose this topic because I recently watched the documentary, Leaving Neverland, that is about the two victims that were sexually abused by Michael Jackson. The documentary interested me so much and I wanted to know how why Michael Jackson did it, and it, if it had to do anything, was his problems with his race. I learned that Michael Jackson was abused by his father growing up and even though they were all the same race, his father made fun of his appearance. I also learned that Michael Jackson’s music contradicted his actions because he sang about equality and accepting everyone, meanwhile, he was getting cosmetic procedures to change himself. I have a clear direction with where I want to go with this project and am learning new things about the infamous singer that are very surprising. Most of my sources are scholarly journals, so I know my evidence is strong and will make my research paper make sense. I went from a very broad research paper that sounded more like a report, to an interesting topic that I never really thought about. Overall, I am excited to see where this research paper takes me.

Lauren Flores

My Research process has changed attention from one topic to another. I went from thinking about a topic that was deep and important to just moving on to a topic that would be worth while investigating for me. I was focused on researching Public school students’ opportunities in New York compared to those of private schools. This is a topic that interest me, but that topic is very self-explanatory without the research. I was already drawing a conclusion without knowing any stats because it was a question that didn’t need much research to answer.

I switched to the question of how social media affects people’s engagement in voting. Many people use social media, but I would like to research how it affects the way they vote or what they do. This new question is not simply answered but will require research from me to answer it or get closer to a concrete answer.

I am now up to finding my sources which will also develop the main question. My professor has taught me how to play with my words in order to find more varied results. I am very fortunate that the question I am researching does has many different sources, but they do target different parts of my question. There are some sources talking about how social media influences the youths’ voting activism. There are sources that discuss how social media affects the youth’s activism in global warming. So I am now just reshaping my question based on the sources that I find.

In my research paper, I will be writing about gentrification. I chose this topic because this affects almost everyone and places will continue to gentrify without us even noticing it. Places have turned completely upside down and changed drastically. In my paper, I will explain what exactly is gentrification and the reason why many people are for it. I will show in my research paper what are the pros and cons of places getting gentrified. The results can surprise us and show the effects of people that have lived there. There has been a lot of arguments from those who favor neighborhoods changing and from those who disapprove it. I have started research but I still have a lot to research into to. I am going to give stats and images of places that have gone through this process and who benefited from it and who lost both in my research paper and presentation. I will gather more resources and articles that talks more about gentrification. Gentrification is a big thing here in New York City especially from where I am from, Queens. There has been a lot of places in Queens where the neighborhood has changed and many people have moved into. I’ve been affected from gentrification because I am one of the people that have moved into a neighborhood that has been gentrified. Queens is so diverse and it is because of gentrification that many people moved in and found jobs that suits them.

Theres many issues in my community that arise to say the least. But one of the most interesting topics that I’m going to spend time researching on is: Inequality in our educational systems correlated with different incomes. It turns out that we don’t all receive the same education nationally. Some schools give better education than other schools depending on certain social demographics. The amount of resources distributed in this country is quite unfair to say the least. Certain student preferably high income are most likely to get amazing grades of tests whereas low income students, that percentage is incredibly low. Who is most likely to get high SAT scores, or get high scores on their promotion exams, or how are AP scores different amongst different income levels. These certain things I want to get to the bottom of. Is it a race thing? All these questions arise when it comes to our education. Does it explain why our universities and colleges lack diversity? How come folks who attend a high school in a low income community tend to have high levels of drop outs? I feel like everyone deserves an equal amount of education and opportunities regarding how they learn and what resources they actually have access to. Also what about clubs and exposure to the field of their interest? Can certain schools provide that opportunity for their students? All these questions Im willing to  research, and put on a 6-8 page paper!

For my research paper, I’m going to be talking about the concept of the American Dream. What I already know about the concept of the American Dream is that it’s the belief that everyone regardless of their differences in race and  social class, can achieve their own version of success in a society where there are opportunities for everyone. My research question is, To what extent is the concept of the American Dream still relevant in the present day. This topic about the American Dream is interesting to me because I want to learn more about it, what makes the idea of the American seem like something so powerful that many people’s lives are affected by it. In the process of researching answers to my question on the American Dream, I found an interesting academic article from the EBSCO host website, named “ The American Dream and today’s reality” by Topolnicki, Denise M., the data given in the article is what caught my attention. It gives statistics on factors that affect the idea of the American Dream such as, the middle class shrank because many got richer, Upward mobility is still the American way, Today’ s best jobs go to college grads. When I’m given numbers as prove for a certain position, I believe numbers tell the truth and tell the real story. So far I feel like I found a good source but I have to still  find many more sources to make my research paper stronger. I have always heard about what the American Dream was but I didn’t really know anything in-depth about it so that is what motivated me to do research on that topic. I want my research paper to analyze the idea of the American Dream, where I can fully understand whether the idea still exists today, or in what ways it has changed to make it what it is today.

For my research paper, I’ve decided to write about the women in aviation. My research question for this topic is, what kinds of experiences have women faced in the aviation industry? followed by, are there there things that can be done to make it more female friendly? The reason I chose this topic had to do a lot with my prior experience at my high school. My high school was aviation based, specifically focused on aircraft maintenance. The guys dominated the school more than the girls with a 19:1 ratio. Being part of the few girls who attended the school, I had to be tough; first impressions were important, so if I were to ever slack or lack knowledge in anything aviation based, I wouldn’t be taken seriously. When we’d have our shop classes, some guys, not all of them, would expect the girls to not be as good as them with their hand skills; they’d even make sexist comments/jokes and expect us to not take them seriously. Fortunately for me, I didn’t really have a problem with this because I had a reputation of being hard working and non-dependent of other people to do my jobs for me. If anything, I would be the one helping the guys with their work from time to time. During my time at the school, I’d often think about women who started in the industry years ago and what they’ve had to go through in order to inspire more women to be a part of it today. Some times I’d even contemplate about working in the industry because of how male dominating it is, and the fear of being seen as not good enough or not smart enough was eating me up inside. But as I learned more about women in aviation, I became inspired from learning their stories. Moving on, so far I’ve learned about the experience of a women named Sarina Houston, a pilot in the field who has faced a dilemma in the industry and can’t seem to decide whether to stand up against sexism or ignore the topic altogether. She goes on about how she sympathizes with her fellow female aviation professionals, but is tired of hearing about how hard it is to be a women in the industry. In Houston’s experience, she has never faced a situation where someone thought less of her or questioned her for being a female pilot. But unfortunately for the female pilots she knows, they’ve been victims of blatant sexism coming from both male and female co-workers and passengers (saving the rest of the info for the paper). So far, the project is going okay, I still have a lot of research to do on my question, but I should be able to get all of my answers in the allotted time we have.  I’m just a little concerned on how I’m going to organize all of the information once I have it and how I’ll be presenting it in my paper.