On My Block Gentrification
Author: Karina Ramsey
Me as a Writer
Unit 4 ( Revision of Unit 2 )
Proposal
Karina Ramsey
Dr.Carrie Hall
English 1101
May 7, 2019
Revision proposal
I will be revising unit 2 which is my mini documentary about sexual assault based on the singer Kesha and her court case against the man who allegedly sexually assaulted her. Sexually assault is a very serious topic and many artist use their music as and outlet for situations that they have been in. I will be writing an essay where I will dissect two song written by artist who are addressing sexually assault generally or a situation that they have been in. The new audience I will be trying to reach people who have been sexually assaulted and who these songs have helped both directly and indirectly.
Education essay revised
Karina Ramsey
Dr. Carrie Hall
English 1121
April 30, 2019
Not as Seen on TV
Coming from a small island into this big country with so many moving parts it was very intimidating; not to mention attending school in America for the first time. School, where I come from, is very religious and really strict. We had our own stuff that made it fun. However, when I watched TV as a kid, school is America just seemed like so much fun. So, itâs my first day of school in America, and I was super excited but nervous as well. I walked in not knowing that uniform was required because on TV they never wore uniforms. I met my teacher and he was kind and welcoming. To my surprise he was also from the Caribbean, but he spoke âproperâ. I walked into the classroom, and the first thing I said to myself, in my head was, âthis doesnât look like what was on tv.â
The kids on TV had lockers, cool book bags, didnât wear a uniform, they seemed very free-spirited, the food in the cafeteria looked good, they had classes like music and dance, and it just didnât look like school was a lot of work in America. However, in reality, the students looked bored, everyone was wearing uniforms, and the teacher was actually teaching. The food was terrible, there were no lockers, we were locked in a building like we were in a prison. Even the windows had bars. One thing I liked about my school in the islands was the fact it was near to a beach, so I would sit in my classroom with the windows open and feeling the gentle breeze passing seamlessly through my hair. I didnât expect a school in America to be such a rip off from what I saw on tv, or maybe thatâs just schools in Brooklyn.
I took my seat next to the radiator with my back facing the window and sitting next to me was a young lady by the name of Khadijah. Khadijah was very welcoming. She instantly said hi to me and told me what topic we were on. What stood out to me the most was when ask me what my name was. I was surprised because I had a preconceived notion that everyone was going to be mean, you know, because Iâm the âNew Kidâ. Oh, and did I mention she was black. Iâve always thought that I would be in a classroom with a bunch of white kids but, to my surprise, my class was predominately black. For some reason my nerves calmed because everyone looked like me. Darker skin tone, kinky hair, and almost everyone was in uniform.
The teacher got in front of the class and began to teach math, my favorite subject by the way, and then he asked a question. Me, being me and knowing the answer to the question, I raised my hand with no hesitation. He called on me, and I answered. Instantly I felt different. It wasnât because my answer was wrong. It was because it didnât dawn on me that I was different from everyone else until I spoke and didnât sound like my fellow classmates. I didnât have an American accent. Then I felt the eyes. Almost all the students in the classroom were looking at me. I felt out of place like I didnât belong. I looked like everyone else, we were all blackâŠ. but yet a bit different.
My brother also started school that same day as me but was put in a higher grade. His experience was very different from mine. That afternoon when we were talking about how our first day went, I noticed that the way he spoke changed. His dialect was different. He started to sound and speak like my fellow students and my teacher. Me being me I said to him âwha you talking in style for.â I said this because to me home was our safe haven, where we all spoke the same way, and I didnât have to be the orange chip is a bag full of yellow chips, because at home we were all orange chips. However, it seemed like I was the only one having a hard time adjusting. To my entire family, I just needed to start speaking âproper.â
My family, who mostly speaks the same exact way as I do, is telling me that I need to talk âproper.â I knew what they meant by proper, they wanted me to speak like my American peers. I didnât need to look like the kids on TV, but more so sound and speak like them. âProperâ to my family is speaking English with correct grammar and change of accent. Granted my grammar was horrible and to this day still needs improvement, hearing them use the word proper didnât sit right with me. It didnât because to me, they were implying that the way I spoke wasnât right and that wasnât ok. It made me feel like they forgot that in our home country mostly everyone spoke this way. At this point in was wondering to myself âshould I stop being who I am?â
I am a person who takes the time to think about what people say and take it into consideration. The issue was that, I wasnât purposely speaking with my accent, I just couldnât turn it off and switch to talking like an American, like I guess my brother could do. I literally couldnât because I genuinely tried to. I tried because I didnât want to feel out of place in a place where I would be spending a lot of my time. Then I meet the librarian at my school. When I met her and started speaking the first thing she told me was that she loved my accent. That was something I have never heard before, and I didnât know if I should say thank you or not. She went on to say, âyou should never lose your accent, it makes you very unique.â After she said that to me, I went home and thought to myself, âsheâs right, I should be proud of my accent. No one else in this place speaks like me.â
Over the years I have come to embrace my accent, and I love the way it comes out when Iâm happy, sad, or mad. My education was never flawed because of the way I speak so, I will continue speaking with my accent, but in a professional setting I will speak âproper.â As a kid, watching TV and admiring how awesome school in American would be, I was naive to the differences that set me apart for those kids on TV. It did not help that TV shows didnât do a good job of promoting diversity. It should have showed that students who donât look alike and donât speak the same way coexist. Especially in a school setting.
Gentrification Memo
Karina Ramsey
Dr. Carrie Hall
English 1121
April 4th, 2019
 On My Block (Gentrification Memo)
Gentrification has become a big problem in Brooklyn. Residents of Brooklyn and packing up and leaving their homes because she canât afford to pay the increasing rent. I researched gentrification happening in neighborhoods in Brooklyn like Crown Heights and the rise of gentrification in East Flatbush. In neighborhood like these with a huge Caribbean immigrant population itâs sometimes hard to see it changed in order to make room for higher paying residents. You see local Caribbean food places close down so food places like sushi can open up. Having Cocktails bars replace the fried chicken spots, and Pet spas to giving these new income residents a reason to stay.
Many residents don’t want to move to places like Brownsville, or East New York because they don’t want to be surrounded with the violence and crime that comes with living in those neighborhoods, especially when they are raising young men and women, they rather leave the state of New York. Many even move to Boston, Maryland, or Philadelphia for affordable living but travel back to Brooklyn to shop at their local markets and food places that they enjoy and are used to. A Lot of people end up moving in with their parents because they canât afford to pay their rent when it increases, or they canât pay the asking prices for a new apartment. Many landlords even stoop as low as not providing heat nor hot water to force their tenants out. Landlord are even buying tenants out and offering them as much as 10,000-70,000. It seems like a lot of money to middle-income people, but in fact is nothing, its pocket change. When they add up moving expense, taxes, and the cost of to find a new apartment they would have been better off sticking it out at their old apartment.
Some warnings signs of gentrification are landlords increasing the rent tremendously because they know existing tenants canât afford to pay it. Landlords coming in and changing things like your kitchen countertop which has been there for 10 years to a brand new expensive one. See your childhood neighbors moving out and moving to places like Atlanta and Virginia. What is really common is that that landlords are withholding repairs with the hopes that their current tenants with move out so they can repair and make room for higher-income renters.
A Lot of middle-income residents are living the city of Brooklyn and the state of New York altogether because of the cost of living. Landlords in the neighborhoods I research are not helping the situation of gentrification, in fact they are part of the reason we are losing our neighborhood to rich white folks, who can afford to pay these ridiculous prices these apartments are going for now. Gentrification inn Crown Heights is in a rush and it is slowing moving to East Flatbush. You can slowing see new condos and high-rise building being built in East Flatbush. Rents are slowing stating to increase and more Caucasian people are staying on the train pass Atlantic Ave.
Kesha Documentary
Karina Ramsey
Dr. Carrie Hall
English 1121
03/26/19
Kesha  #MeToo
I am doing a documentary shining light on sexually assault and the some of the people who we as the next generation look up to, who has been sexual assaulted. Sometimes we look at these people and at their lives like itâs all sunshine and rainbows, but in reality, they go through a lot of things as well because at the end of the day we are all human. The pop culture artifact that Iâm basing my project of off is Kesha. Kesha was sexually assaulted by her music producer Dr. Luke. In my opinion I think that people who feel like they have âpowerâ over someone else, they like to abuse their âpowerâ and do horrible things with that power. However, this power that they have is their own self-given power. Kesha wrote a song called praying where she addresses the fact that this man is a monster and sheâs is praying that he gets better and that he doesnât do what he did to her, to someone else. She also shows in the video for this song how lonely she was dealing with this situation by herself. I will also be highlighting some celebrities who have gone through similar situations, that many people wouldnât have think when though something like this. Far too often people are afraid to talk about this because itâs hard to and they are in the public eye. In light of this #MeTooMovement we have seen many celebrities and regular people come out with stories about how they were sexually assaulted and now they are trying to get justices against the people who sexually abuse them.
I started out my documentary with this powerful quote by Eleanor RooseveltâYou gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’â I used this quote because it speaks to the strength of the woman and men who are brave and were able to look these monsters in the face that sexually assaulted them and say Iâve been through this, I survived, and now I want justice. I provided statistics of SexualAssault in the United States to show that this happens far too often, and the more people who come forward the better it is for the little boys and girls who are growing up in this world. I then went on to talk about Kesha and her case with Dr. Luke. I spoke about the facts of the cases presented in court and the reason why Kesha was really suing Dr. Luke. However, over the course of my research, I have come to realize that many people donât believe Keshaâs story, especially when Dr. Luke has very compelling evidence that he has presented in court. I made it a point to say that if Kesha is telling the truth I hope she gets the justice is deserves. However, in the case that she is fabricating her story, I hope that this situation doesnât prevent other brave human being from coming forward in hopes of getting justice for themselves.
creative writing
Karina Ramsey
Dr. Carrie Hall
English 1121
03/14/19
I am doing a documentary shining light on some of the people who we as the next generation look up to, who has been sexual assaulted. Sometimes we look at these people and at their lives like itâs all sunshine and rainbows, but in reality, they go through a lot of things as well because at the end of the day we are all human. The popculture artifact that Iâm basing my project of off is Kesha. Kesha was sexually assaulted by her music producer Dr. Luke. In my opinion I think that people who feel like they have âpowerâ over someone else, they like to abuse their âpowerâ and do horrible things with that power. However, this power that they have is their own self-given power. Kesha wrote a song called praying where she addresses the fact that this man is a monster and sheâs is praying that he gets better and that he doesnât do what he did to her to someone else. She also shows in the video how lonely she was dealing with this situation by herself. I will also be telling the stories (short versions) of some celebrities who have gone through similar situations that many people wouldnât have think when though something like this. Far too often people are afraid to talk about this because itâs hard to and they are in the public eye. In light of this #metoomovement we have seen many celebrities and regular people come out with stories about how they were sexually assaulted and now they are trying to get justices against the people who sexually assaulted them.
pop culture response
Karina Ramsey
Dr. Carrie Hall
English 1121
03/05/19
In the article âmoving beyond painâ the writer is saying that lemonade was primarily written to give power to the black female body which is often times dehumanized. What was confusing at times was the diction used in this writing, it was hard to understand at some points in the reading. The writing had many mixed feelings about the lemonade album and sometimes it was hard to understand her point. From what I understood she was trying to say that this album showed an angry black woman, especially when it starts off with the leading character âBeyoncĂ©â smashing cars with a baseball bat. Black women are often looked like as angry and this album did nothing to show otherwise it showed violence in a sexy way. However, BeyoncĂ© did celebrate the black female body and encouraging black women going after their âbag. She showed that black female womenâs body comes in all different shapes, and sized. I learned that this album was a platform used for healing even though it praised things like violence making it seem ok when it is not. What I like about this writing is that it was very detail oriented and I would like to expand on that in my own writing.
Education Essay
Karina Ramsey
Dr. Carrie hall
English 1121
02/14/19
Not As Seen On TV
Coming from a small island into this big country with so many moving parts it was very intimidating; not to mention attending school in America for the first time. School, where I come from, was basic and very religious. We had our own stuff that made it fun, however, when I watched TV as a kid, school is America just seemed like so much fun. So, itâs my first day of school in America, and I was super excited. I walked it in not knowing that uniform was required because on tv they never wore uniforms. I met my teacher, and to my surprise, he was also from a small island as well, so I wasnât as nervous, because he was kind and welcoming. I walked into the classroom, and the first thing I said to myself, in my head was, âthis doesnât look like what was on tv.â
The kids on TV had lockers, cool book bags, didnât wear a uniform, they seemed very free-spirited, the food in the cafeteria looked good, they had classes like music and dance, and it just didnât look like school was a lot of work in America. However, in reality, the students looked bored, everyone was wearing uniforms, and the teacher was actually teaching. The food was terrible, there were no lockers, we were locked in a building like we were in a prison even the windows had bars. One thing I liked about my school in the islands was the fact it was near to a beach, so I would sit in my classroom with the windows open and feeling the gentle breeze passing seamlessly through my hair. I didn’t expect a school in America to be such a rip off from what I saw on tv, or maybe thatâs just schools in Brooklyn.
I took my seat next to the radiator with my back facing the window and sitting next to me was a young lady by the name of Khadijah. Khadijah was very welcoming, she instantly said hi to me, told me what topic we were on and did the simplest thing, ask me what my name was, oh and did I mention she was black. Iâve always thought that I would be in a classroom with a bunch of white kids but, to my surprise, my class was predominately black. The teacher got in front of the class and began to teach math, my favorite subject by the way, and then he asked a question. Me, being me and knowing the answer to the question, I raised my hand with no hesitation. He called on me, and I answered. Instantly I felt different. It wasnât because my answer was wrong, it was because it didnât dawn on me that I was different from everyone else until I spoke and didnât sound like my fellow classmates. I didnât have an American accent. Then I felt the eyes. Almost all the students in the classroom were looking at me. I felt out of place like I didnât belong. I looked like everyone else, we were all black….but yet a bit different.
My brother also started school that same day as me but was put in a higher grade. His experience was very different from mine, because that afternoon when we were talking about how our first day went, I noticed that the way he spoke, and his English was different. Again, me being me I said to him âwha you talking in style for.â I said this because to me home was our safe haven, where we all spoke the same way, and I didnât have to be the orange chip is a bag full of yellow chips, because at home we were all orange chips. However, it seemed like I was the only one having a hard time adjusting. Â To my entire family, I just needed to start speaking âproper.â
My family, who mostly speaks the same exact way as I do, is telling me that I need to talk âproper.â I knew what they meant by proper, they wanted me to speak like my American peers. “Proper” to my family is speaking English with correct grammar and change of accent.
Granted my grammar was horrible and to this day still needs improvement, hearing them use the word proper didnât sit right with me. It didnât because to me, they were implying that the way I spoke wasnât right and that wasnât ok. It made me feel like they forgot that in our home country mostly everyone spoke this way. At this point in was wondering to myself âshould I stop being who I am?”
I am a person who takes the time to think about what people say and take it into consideration. The issue was that, I wasnât purposely speaking with my accent, I just couldnât turn it off and switch to talking like an American, like I guess my brother could do. I literally couldnât because I genuinely tried to. I tried because I didnât want to feel out of place in a place where I would be spending a lot of my time. Then I meet the Liberian at my school, when I met her and started speaking the first thing she told me was that she loved my accent. That was something I have never heard before, and I didnât know if I should say thank you or not. She went on to say, âyou should never lose your accent, it makes you very unique.â After she said that to me, I went home and thought to myself, “sheâs right, I should be proud of my accent. No one else in this place speaks like me.” Over the years I have come to embrace my accent, and I love the way it comes out when Iâm happy, sad, or mad. My education was never flawed because of the way I speak so, I will continue speaking with my accent, but in a professional setting I will speak âproper.â
Final Draft
