I thought I already knew enough about race and racism, but this unit has taught me otherwise. Although I still think that there are some aspects to race that are in fact biological, much of it still can be due to culture and history. As a Korean myself, I have to admit that certain stereotypes have been put on me, albeit mostly as a joke. However, I used to live in a less diverse community when I was younger and the vast majority of my school was White, middle to upper class families. Although that was a while ago when I was too young to even know what "Asian" was, it was evident that my culture was different from all of my friends, and I remember getting angered by the fact that people would explicitly call us "Chinese" in public (even they were kids). After moving the my current school district, I realized how different it was to live in a more diverse and heavily Korean populated area. In fact, I've actually had a class before that had a majority of Korean students that wasn't Chinese. There are times where I feel like I'm just automatically pulled and labeled to be with the "Asian" crowd of our school, but I don't just limit myself to it and try my best to keep a good balance between maintaining my culture yet also embracing other ones. Something that especially stuck out to me though were the L.A. riots because although it may be stereotypical, many Koreans are pretty racist (whether implicit or explicit, and it was interesting to see a lot of that racism so extremely manifested.

It took her 2 years to find a job even with a degree, and even with her current job she can barely afford to take care of kids' and her basic everyday needs. For her, a more fair situation would be to have better support for her children and more representation for working mothers like herself. This relates to social class because if she were part of the higher class, she would probably have had an easier time finding a job due to better networking and college education. Her current living conditions would also be more comfortable as opposed to marginally getting through. I chose this image because I sympathize with the fact that she works full time yet still only just gets by and how hard it can be to find a decent job even with a college degree these days.

When she was a college student, she didn't have any support financially for paying for her college education or living expenses. Even though she now makes a lot of money after years of hard work and dedication, she still stands with the 99%. She empathizes with their hardships of having to work that much harder just to get by and still fall into debt and most likely feels that more opportunities and aid should be given to students in actual need. This relates to social class because after her father lost his job, the responsibility to pay for her college education and taking care of her everyday needs all fell on her and she received no extra support from anyone or anything else. I chose this image because going into college soon, I too worry about the financial aspect of it even with my parents both being employed and find her story inspiring.

Her and her husband lost all of their life savings and are now being supported by Social Security and worries for the stability of their future. A more fair situation for her would be to have better support for senior citizens as they have less opportunities due to their age, and that there should be better, stable aid for people put into her type of situation. This relates to social class because her and her husband probably worked extremely hard to save up how much they had only to lose it all, and if she were part of a higher class, she probably wouldn't have had to go through the same experience of going bankrupt and losing everything. She would also have had more connections and opportunities to get back up after this happened. I chose this picture because I agree with the fact that senior citizens need to have better representation and opportunities/support given their given circumstances.