Brats and Polishes

On a whim, my family decided to take a two day road trip up to Milwaukee. On our way there, we had lunch at the "Brat Stop", a fully-fledged Wisconsin dive, serving mostly brats, polishes, and cheese curds. 

While in Wisconsin, there was a clear German (Eastern European) influence peppering the town, in the cuisine, architecture, and beer. I wondered which ethnic group most heavily influenced Chicago to make it the city it is today, contrasting with the likes of Milwaukee. 

Lunching at the Brat Stop made me wonder why restaurants like that one aren't in Chicago. People still eat brats here. What was different between Wisconsin and Illinois that made them develop such different cultures?

On the New York Times website, there is an interactive map that shows where different ethnic groups lived in United States from 1880 all the way to 2000. 

From early on, it is clear the WI and IL had heavy populations of Western and Eastern Europeans but as time goes on, IL's population of these groups decreases whereas WI maintains this heavy population well into the 1900s. This could explain the heavy Eastern European influence that is evident in Milwaukee and other parts of WI. Today, the Eastern European influence is only seen in distinct neighborhoods of Chicago rather than the whole city or even the state of IL.

Another contrast is found if we look at Texas, which has a pretty consistent Latino presence and the New England states have a consistent Western European population. With a difference in not only cuisine, but accents, architecture and life style, it is clear how the different regions have developed according to the ethnic groups populating the area. 

With these different groups populating diverse climates and terrain, obvious cultural differences were abound to take root and continue to influence the development of our country. We are the country that we are today because of the different groups that have shared their cultural history with us, integrating into the American identity. 

When you look around today, what cultural differences to do you see?

Everyone is a Winner

Education is one of the most important pillars that shape a culture. In the New York Times article, "My Family's Experiment in Extreme Schooling", Clifford Levy recounts his experience in Russia and sending his three children to a Russian private school in which they were taught completely in Russian and most teachers couldn't speak English. Most of the article is about his children's experience in the school but what stuck out to me was a brief comparison to the Brooklyn public school they had previously attended.

In Russia, "children were graded and ranked, with results posted". However, as most of us are accustomed to in the U.S., his school in Brooklyn "instill[ed] an everyone's-a-winner ethos".

This "everyone's-a-winner" thinking is evident everywhere in a America. Kids on sports teams get trophies simply for showing up and we have devised a system at my high school where grades are kept as private as possible to defuse the competition around academics.

This system has its advantages, however, as Levy noted in his article, tough competition can sometimes be the best motivator. At the Russian school, the grades of all the students would be posted and ranked with categories for the best and worst students. Levy's children comment on this different system and how it pushed them to keep trying their hardest, even when they couldn't understand what their teachers were saying. By the time they left Russia, not only were they fluent in Russian but they were also at the top of the ranking.

In comparison to the system I've grown up in, posting grades seems like a crazy, unhealthy system and I honestly can't imagine how it would change my already hyper-competitive school environment. But, as frustrating and stressful as it sounds, I know that posting grades would definitely push me to work to be the best student I can be.

America is facing the new reality that we might not be #1 anymore with countries like China pumping out smart kids left and right and beating our test scores. People are baffled, wondering how it's happening, but it's all embedded in how we motivate our children and how that supports our education system.

I'm curious, what incentive would propel American students to excel academically? Do American students need intrinsic or extrinsic motivation?

Mixed Prom

Until 2008, Charleston High School of Charleston, Mississippi had two proms - one for the white kids and one for the black kids. Even though the school had been desegregated in 1970 (16 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered all desegregation), the white parents refused to integrate the prom. This started a long-standing tradition of separate proms.

Morgan Freeman grew up in Charleston and after gaining fame and fortune, he offered to pay for CHS's prom - as long as it was mixed. Morgan Freeman set up a film crew to follow certain kids around as they prepared for prom and interview them regarding the issue of race that continues to grip the town.

The final product, the documentary "Prom Night In Mississippi" is a glaringly honest picture into how racism still exists in the U.S. despite legislative and social changes in the fight for equality.

However, what became clear through each interviews was that all of the inter-racial hate was directly caused by how the students had been raised. Most of the kids were in support of a mixed prom, and had been even before Morgan Freeman made his offer, but it was the parents who refused to let that happen.

This gives hope to America because even in a community like Charleston where racism guides most social proceedings, there is a generation coming of age who want to enact change. They are aware of the hypocrisy of equal rights  when some students can't get jobs in Charleston because they are black or because they are white and have black friends.

It's easy to think that racism is no longer an issue where we live but even on the North Shore, if you look around, how much diversity do you see? We need to ask ourselves how we can start enacting change for a stronger, more united America where the "race card" is no longer relevant and where racial stereotypes are long forgotten.

Progress is evident in America but documentaries like "Prom Night in Mississippi" show us there are still radical cases of racism and remind us that in our own communities, racism can still be evident in significantly less obvious ways.

How can we work to eliminate racism in our own communities?