Will You Marry Me?

Proposal

 

There should be more cultural awareness programs. Why? Because cultural awareness programs like broadcasts on radio and late night talk shows in homogeneous and heterogeneous communities can prevent misconceptions of different ethnicities that make up our country. Although history classes are prevalent in speaking on issues of the past and present, it’s safe to say that most people don’t exactly learn how to be culturally aware from it. We all have different ideas and perspectives, backgrounds and traditions. There’s a chance that those living in homogeneous communities are sheltered from these lessons. They might base their ideas off of stereotypes, resulting in unpreparedness in the world, especially if they move to a more diverse community. By having more cultural awareness programs ignorant situations can be avoided. They’d be aware of what is or isn’t appropriate to say or do towards someone of a different race, ethnicity, or culture compared to themselves.
 Some of the insensitive comments that spark the interest for more cultural programs are sayings like Mexicans eat tacos and hop the border, Chinese people speak like CHING CHANG CHONG, Caucasians are racist, especially Miss America winner Nina Davuluri being called an Arab terrorist.  The Miss America commotion was recent and disgraceful. Nina Davuluri is Indian, not Arab, or a terrorist. After 9/11, anyone coming from the Middle East, or Indo-China was considered an extremist; which I don’t qualify as fair. By having these cultural awareness talk shows or programs actual victims can speak on the differences and generalization they’ve had to deal with because people in some communities have influenced their ideas heavily.
In Article 27 of the United Nations Preamble it states “Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.” In other words, anyone should be able to express themselves appropriately, respectively, without the need to be chastised in anything that they do. Certain individuals like Kamau Bell, a socio-political, community activist, created a show called Totally Biased. There are a variety of activists, actors, overall relevant people who guest on the show to speaks out on what they’ve been through and what they’d like to see from those that have judged them or picked on them because of situations that aren’t normally talked about until put in the situation. He may be a comedic but it’s why people look out for him to observe, learn from his work. Bell also specifies the injustice of ignorance by sex, politics, class, and culture. It’s effective, and not as boring as lectures and activist speeches that most just ignore. 

 The benefit of broadening shows like Totally Biased, is having a fun creative form of eliminating ignorance.  As Alan M. Dershowitz says, “offensiveness is often in the eyes and experiences of the beholder,” like me. I have been teased because I was different in terms of appearance. No parent thinks of the wrong things to ask in order to prevent the child from saying it; it’s a situation that’s impossible to teach. This is why having these programs would help our country. If we can stay “out of the business” of picking amongst the many degrees of offence and discriminatory speech by broadening talk shows to eliminate all of the crap then it should happen.

The purpose is not to have speech or ideas to be limited or regulated; it’s having comedic talk shows, radio segments, and programs that promote freedom of speech the right way. It is possible shows like Totally Biased are watched widely around the country. Creating more may break off the nasty stereotypes that continue to be circulated in our communities.