English 2100: Identity and Representation

President Donald Trump has said a lot of things over the years and has approved of actions that usually don’t sit too well with the general public. Once again, he resurfaces the topic of anti-immigration and what methods he’ll use to ensure the prevention of any further immigrants entering the country. Most recently, has been using the hundreds of Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants approaching the United States border. President Trump is considering to pass an executive order to get rid of citizenship for babies who are born to noncitizens. Originally it was believed that it was impossible for him to do this because it’s violating the  14th Amendment , which grants citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws, specifically to those born in the United States. However, Trump has stated that this can be approved through an executive order. What does this mean? Along with the 5,000 troops set at the border, immigrants now fear if leaving their past life for their future children was the best decision or not? This new plan has created a bunch of controversy between politicians and communities.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-plans-end-birthright-citizenship-babies-born-citizens/story?id=58845684

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-plans-end-birthright-citizenship-babies-born-citizens/story?id=58845684

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-plans-end-birthright-citizenship-babies-born-citizens/story?id=58845684

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/27/us/pittsburgh-synagogue-active-shooter/index.html

This heartbreaking news occurred on October 29, 2018. A man went into a synagogue and left 11 killed. Everyone believes that it was an attack due to anti-Semitism, but it’s more due to discrimination in this country. Certain groups hated others due to their religion, culture, race, and gender. Although America has become an advanced country, we still persevere the ideologies of hating/ no accepting one another.

What caught my attention that there’s so much hate towards one another that they would go to an extreme extent to murder them. Many shooting had occurred before this, like school shootings, shooting at a mall etc. However, even with protests and demanding for more protection, shooting, violence and discrimination are still within many people.  Having all of these hatred in the world, no one would feel truly safe anymore. There might be policies, laws, and authorities to keep citizens safe, but even when they do reach out it would be too late by then. This is not just about the Jews, but also the safety of everyone in America.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-says-he-plans-to-sign-executive-order-ending-birthright-citizenship

In a newly released interview, president Trump said he plans to sign an executive order that would end birthright citizenship. Birthright citizenship allows any baby born on U.S. soil to automatically be a U.S. citizen. When I first read this, I laughed because I thought that this was just another stupid thing that Trump was doing. But when I started to think about it seriously, I thought that if his plan actually worked then it would have affected my family. My parents and I only became citizens a few years back, but my brother was born in the US. If Trump’s plan was in motion a few years back, then my whole family would have been in trouble. Thankfully for many immigrants, Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship is most likely not going to happen because it is deemed unconstitutional.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/goldman-jpmorgan-hit-pause-on-intern-recruiting-madness-1540819063?mod=trending_now_4

Goldman Sachs Group and JP Morgan Chase will no longer extend summer internship opportunities to college sophomores this year; they will go back their traditional way of recruiting in the fall.

These are investment banking corporations any student in Finance and Accounting aspire to be at. However, due to past statistics, it has shown that students have lost their focus on their school work and they care more about attending their interview than their final exam. Additionally, with their prestigious names, students are only reaching out to the top 4 companies, rather than going out and exploring a different field of interests in banking and finance.

I feel this is unfair. Many opportunities are limited to minority groups, and these two investment banking organizations open many programs to minorities. However, now this will no longer be an option.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/30/investing/ge-dividend-cut-earnings-culp/index.html

One of the major companies in the U.S, General Electric, has plummeted over the last 5 years. It has been a staple on the NASDAQ (Top 30 companies) for decades. As the company’s value has been plummeting, it has been forced to lower its dividend yield. They didn’t just lower it, they dropped it to one penny. For every share you own through GE, you will only earn a penny per share every quarter. By doing this, they will be saving about $4 billion in cash for the year. The 3rd quarter market correction this year is still undergoing its return back to breaking even. General Electric’s revenue collapse affected the value of its shares negatively. The stock has fallen about 50% this year. The company is in desperate need of help. They have gone from a $461 million profit in 2017 to a $631 million loss so far this year.

This is important to me because my parents have held shares of GE for a while. It was a part of their retirement plan and their own stock trading, Now, it has been a detriment for growth in those accounts and plans. GE was known for having a decent dividend yield and affordable shares. For example, my parents would buy about 30 shares at a time and would accumulate a decent profit by the end of every quarter. Now they have been forced to sell nearly all of those shares. They still benefited from GE, but the company may no longer to be able to represent a NASDAQ company with these low dividend yields and decreasing revenue numbers every quarter.

Because I have to travel very often, one thing that is increasingly becoming a concern now a days is the means used to travel. Then be it a car, or a plane, nothing seems safe enough and with a drastic increase in the incidents that occur every now and then, i usually end up thinking if i really want to travel or not.

Recently, I was going through the headlines and I read about the plane crash that took place on the Indonesian coast, killing around 189 passengers. For someone to go through these kind of news frequently might not be that disturbing because eventually we get so used to a certain news if its displayed over and over again but after losing some of the closest people in my life in a tragic plane crash, every time I hear the word Plane crash, my heart sinks because I can understand what people go through when they lose their loved ones in a plane crash. Plane crash is probably one of the most unexpected ways to lose a life, and how excitement of travelling can change into misery of death in a matter of a few minutes moves me to my core.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1442136/all-189-passengers-aboard-crashed-indonesian-lion-air-plane-likely-dead

The world’s climate has changed dramatically over the past few years, not in a good way. There have been rising sea levels,  global temperature rise and even extreme events such as hurricanes. This can all be blamed on humans. We have taken the planet we live on for granted and now we are facing the consequences. In the UK there has been a new invention called the Hydrogen train. This new invention can bring us one step closer to a cleaner earth. Its powered by hydrogen cells and oxygen and its emission is literally pure water. It can be a substitute for heavily polluting diesel trains. Even though it may be a bit more expensive its a price we humans should pay to make sure our environment stays clean and healthy.

Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-45985510/are-hydrogen-trains-the-future-of-uk-travel.

Whether or not you are in the habit of reading the news on a regular basis, please take some time to look through some current news sources.  (Choose sources that are publishing their own journalism, not offering a digest of someone else’s reporting.)  Select a story that YOU find meaningful or important, and link to it on our class blog together with a paragraph explaining why you think it’s significant.  For the purposes of this assignment, limit yourself to stories that have been published within the last 10 days.

Your posts should be up before class on Wednesday, October 31st.

When the professor first gave us this topic, I was a little moved. My essay was going to be about all the difficulties I have faced with the language till now, about the country and family I come from, and a few embarrassing moments. I had the fear of being judged by everybody after sharing this story of mine. I knew that I wasn’t alone, and that there were 2 to 3 more people like me who struggled with the language. So I decided to do it.

After listening to my classmates’ essays, I got to know that everybody was in the same boat, and everybody was struggling with one language or more. Everybody was a little nervous to tell about their linguistic identity because of the fear of being looked down to, which usually happens when one can’t speak a language. I observed that there were two types of people – one who had difficulties speaking their own native language, and the other who had difficulties speaking English (like me). There were people who had difficulties learning their own language because they focused so much on learning English while growing up, that they missed out on their own mother tongue. For example, Anson and Jacky said that they forgot their first language as they started speaking English. Jenny regretted not learning Chinese while growing up and then she was having a little difficulty in communicating with her family. Nazima’s and Gauri’s stories showed that English was given more importance than their own language, Urdu and Hindi, in their home country as people believe that speaking English is a high status thing. I could relate my experience to Jhenyuan’s experience. Both of us being strong at our own native language, we struggle at English. And we speak a mixture of the first language and English in our country, like Hinglish (Hindi and English), Runglish (Russian and English) and Chinglish (Chinese and English). I also observed that parents played a major role in this. Some parents like mine, who don’t know how to speak English, used more of the first language, and I learned the same. Whereas Gauri’s parents forced her to speak English at times, which enhanced her English speaking skills.

After everybody was done sharing their stories, there was a vibe of togetherness as all of us got to know that we were not the only ones struggling with a language, but almost everybody was. For me, it was a great assignment as it removed the little embarrassment of not being able to speak English fluently, from inside me. It made all the students in the class feel that there was nothing to be ashamed of. We all should keep trying to get better at both the languages, English and our first language, and give equal importance to both.

At first, when the teacher assigned this assignment, I was very resistant. I don’t like to reminisce about the past and share my stories with others. I also don’t want to record my true feelings. But now, I realize the point of this assignment. After listening to the audio-essays of each student, I found that each of us has his own unique experience, and just like me, we have experienced many difficulties due to language problems. It makes me realize that our linguistic identity had more or less changed as we grew up. We’ve all been confused or lost in the process of defining our linguistic identity.
I really resonated with the essays of Joan and Gary. We all went to many classes to learn a new language. They doubled their efforts to achieve today’s results and speak fluent English while I’m still trying to learn English. We all struggled a lot to adapt and balance between Chinese and English. In common with them, I also use chinglish when communicating with my family. Joan said that she sometimes would unconsciously speak English and Cantonese in order to express better. I wrote something similar in my essay “when I talk to my mom or my sister, I will mix some English words when I talk to them in Chinese.” I find similarities with Gary’s experience of being struggled when he first came to a new country and no one in his classroom cared or even paid attention to him. When I first came to America, I had experienced exactly the same situation as him.
I think Maria’s essay is very appealing to me. She talked about her experience of learning English, specifically how she transformed from a person who didn’t know English at all into a person who could speak and write in English fluently. Her audio-essay is very positive and it’s interesting to hear that when she said she helped others to learn English and translated English to her native language.
All in all, the way of recording the essays and present them in front of the class is a great way to share our personal stories with others and I really appreciate this activity because it actually helped us to know each other better.