Nov 5, 2020
Journal #10 for Ideas in Antiquity
By: Rikita Spencer
October 29th, 2020 7:18pm
We started off today’s class discussing the current weather and the looming hurricane. I am in metropolitan Atlanta and am not expecting anything to hit too hard. Then Dr. S introduced our special guess, Ms. Malliron. Her entire talk with us made me think a lot about business and my persepctive of it. I never pictured wanting to pursue business. The main reason being because I never liked the idea of being my own boss. I like the idea of someone being over me and micromanaging sort of. I like having authority to look up to and them having expectations of me. So Ms. Malliron’s talk about her podcast and supporting women of colors in their businesses inspired me. I’m hoping later in life, I can go back to my family’s hometown of Greene County, Alabama, and truly make it into a metropolitis. I want it to prosper with businesses and be a world-renown city where people from all over come and move there and a hospitality city where people come and visit. I truly enjoyed hearing about Ms. Malliron’s Baddies with Business podcast. She also talked about her teacher of color project, selfish leadership, self-full leadership, idea of connection with others and community, stats about black people in business and the reason for her making the podcast, and leadership behaviors in the baddies, women leadership, running start, the idea of balance, unsuccessful business, looking at failure in a different life, the triumphant success of Issa Rae, and the advancement for baddies with a business. Truly inspirational and I enjoyed her presence.
November 3rd, 2020 4:56pm
Today is Election Day. I am currently in Boligee, AL visiting my grandparents. I wasn’t able to attend class today because I was helping drive the local elderly to the polling station. This was my first time seriously volunteering for something. My sister, who is a junior political science major at Tuskegee University, worked at the polls in Montgomery, but she got paid $200 for 5 hours. We love democracy! This election was my first time voting ever. I turned 18 in January of 2020. I voted absentee mail on October 5th. I sat down and looked up all the federal and local candidates and their values, then proceeded with my vote. It was fun doing this in my bathroom instead of a polling station. I hear that this has been one of the biggest voter turn outs in years. It still very much baffles me that a lot of people are voting for Donald Trump, our current president, when they’ve lived through the tumultuous destruction under his rule for the past four years. I cannot believe the race is this close. I believe a lot of Christians are voting for Donald Trump. Republicans are conservative and conservatives are pro life, against gay rights, and a bunch of other nonsense. How can so black people vote for Trump when he said their were good people on both sides during the Charlottesville riots? It is just extremely baffling to me that people are voting for this man. Speaking of voting I got word from my sister that a explicitly racist senator in Mississippi won for the second time with no campaigning over a well rounded black politician, Mike Espy. This woman said on video that she would love to attend a public hanging. Is this stuff for real? This country is so divided and that is our biggest problem. I want to live in Norway or somewhere in South America. Women to me are not even completely equal in America still. Especially black women. I am in school and doing what I am doing now for black women. My interest for Arts and Sciences peaked when I was in the 10th grade. As my science credit, I took Human Anatomy and Physiology. I went into the class thinking I was not going to enjoy it, but my mind was completely changed when the course ended. Being able to learn and grasp the concepts and functions of differing parts of the human body, was exhilarating for me. Throughout adolescence, I struggled trying to discover what I wanted to do when I grew up. I didn’t know what interested me, and what I wanted to wake up and do everyday. I remember asking my mother repeatedly when I was 12, “How does it feel to bring life into the world?” Since then, the concept of conception and birth was something I grew curious about. My Human A&P class only solidified and confirmed my interest into making it a career. Everyone on earth was once just a cluster of cells. The beauty of life and how we all came into existence in similar fashions is something that just brings me to awe. At one point, we were all just a fertilized egg. Over time, we miraculously develop into beings, all while being held in a woman’s uterus. A woman goes through the tumultuous, dangerous, but beautiful process of delivering a child into the world. To me, it’s triumphant. It’s humbling. It’s truly remarkable and something we should all think about and appreciate more.Women are superheros and our bodies are a working machine; while still being a work of art. I discovered during the reproductive Chapter in Human A&P, that black women are more likely to die during childbirth than any other race of women. I want to be a psychologist who studies, researches, and changes the way black women are treated in mental healthcare. I know studying at Howard will help me achieve my overall goal of becoming a Social Psychologist (with a concentration on black women) by completely and ultimately motivating me to do my best. Psychologist service and support women and ensure radiating health is within the people that bring us all into the world. When I attended the Info Session and Campus Tour at Howard over the summer, I learned that Howard University is the #1 HBCU in the country. I also learned that Howard produces a big percentage of the country’s black doctors through their illustrious medical school and graduate school. Being surrounded for 4+ years by some of the best of the best across the country (that I can relate to), has galvanized me. It is going to boost my resilience and remind me who I am am who I’m doing this for, even virtually. I am motivated by all my ancestors who came before me, who weren’t given basic human rights. Those who dreamed about becoming great artists, poets, doctors, lawyers, but were discriminated and banished against doing so. I truly believe in people being a product of their environment. When I arrived on campus, I just felt welcomed. I felt included and surrounded by people I could relate to. Black people wanting to change our community and the world. To know that I was in a place where some of the greats that came before me walked and learned, was truly remarkable. The tour really put my mind into perspective and allowed me to picture a future for myself. Knowing that I would be surrounded by complete and utter black excellence at one of the most prestigious institutions in the world, is inclination enough for me to work hard and pursue my career goals to my fullest potential. I believe when Joe Biden wins (I’m going to just go head and speak it into existence) the Vice President, Senator Kamala Harris, will be making monumental history. This will open up doors for even more women and minorities into office so we can wash all these racist old white men out of the government. President Barack Obama was able to break the cycle, but that old racist white man wheel is still turning. I’ve never seen myself as a politician but seeing others in the White House that look like me may make me interested and appreciate it more. I honestly see with the direction our country is going, we as black people probably won’t be seeing a ton of minority and women representatin in the next 20–25 years. After these next 20–25 years, who knows what check we might be getting in the mail when our country will be run by a president who happens to be a black, non-binary, unitarian universalist who genuinely believes in the equality of all, not just the privilege of some.
November 4th 2020, 4:51pm
I was excited to see that Black Panther was our final work for our weekly lessons on leadership development. This movie is legendary. Let’s go all the way to 2018 to explore why. The film is directed by Ryan Coogler, a very talented black director who has written and directed other beautiful black works. This movie was a big deal for so many black people across the diaspora. We finally got to see ourselves depicted in a genre we are too often left out of. A lot of people who were not black thought the movie was overhyped because us black people were hyping it up so much because we finally got to see ourselves in a whole movie writing a love letter to Africa. It was truly a time to be alive. When the incredibly talented actor, director, writer, and producer Chadwick Boseman (who played T’Challa) passed in August, so many black children were crying because they finally get to see a hero that looks like them; they look up to him, adore him, want to be him, and they sadly lose that representation with his tragic passing. I am blessed and honored to attend the very same institution of higher learning that an incredible man like him attended. Howard University, to me, is truly the mecca and one of the most ecentric hubs for black excellence. This movie, The Black Panther, is truly a movie of a lifetime. There are so many lessons, so many highlights, so many tears, so many smiles. Such a nbeautiful range of actors and actresses. But wow what a moment. A moment that is most…pleasing to me in my career.
