Unit 1: You Canât say that!
Some of you may know that there are some words out there that people from different communities use against others in a context that may be very offensive and sometimes not offensive depending on how the word is being used. One community that experiences this is the Black community. Being a part of the black community thereâs some words that weâre allowed to say, and people of other communities arenât allowed to say because of the meanings behind those words. That specific word that I am talking about is the N-word spelt with er at the end.
For those who donât know this word, it is an ethnic slur typically used against black people especially African Americans. This word is considered as an extremely offensive word towards black people even if itâs just mentioned without the intention of using it as a slur. This word is also used by black people in a more neutral meaning usually as âniggaâ.
The word also has two different spellings, and both of those spellings have their own way of how theyâre used. The first one is spelled as âniggerâ which is the way that those who arenât in the black community uses as they would feel the need to say the word and pronounce it with the hard er at the end of it. This way of spelling and pronunciation of the word would mostly help you in a way to tell if someone is a part of the community of those who are considered as racist. The second one is spelled âniggaâ which those who are a part of the black community uses in a more neutral way and can refer to those a part of the same community as a friend. For example, if someone asks you if you know a specific person that you are friends with, but they donât know that some people would respond as âyeah thatâs my niggaâ.
I think everyone know about this word, but some donât know or understand the meaning behind it. This word is a word that holds a lot of things thatâs related towards the black community, and it should be taught too those who donât know what this word holds against the black community. The word originated in the 18th century as an adaptation of the Spanish word negro which means black. Over the time it became a derogatory connotation and then became a racist insult by the 20th century, and it has never been able to shed that baggage since then. During the late 18th and early 19th century the word was used by white people as a derogatory nickname towards African American laborers and their non-standard language.
My first experience of this word was when I first moved to America. Back in the Caribbean this word was never really known, well not that I knew of. First time I heard someone use the word âniggerâ I was confused on what it meant and why people got so mad about it being used against black people. My first impression of the word âniggerâ was that it sounded like a curse word because people would use it as a add on to their curse words and some people werenât allowed to use it at all because of their skin color or community. Instead of asking people about what the word meant, out of curiosity I did a little research to understand the word a little better. Doing so I found out that it was a word that whites used against blacks back in the day around slavery time and it was a way of them causing mental and physical harm to the slaves.
Seeing how this word has some much history behind it on how this word developed and the main characters of that are people from the black community, outsiders who are not a part of the black community should not use the word. Thereâs been so many debates happening between people who arenât a part of the black community talking about why they canât say the word but people in the black community are allowed too. Those same people are the ones that takes advantage of the word whenever they can and just doesnât understand or care to learn about what the word really mean and does to the black community.
When this word is used by people outside of the community it comes off as an insult towards the black community all because of the history of the word and the meaning. Instead, they should try to learn the history of the word and try to understand why people from the black community react the way they do when the word is being used against them. They should try to inform and educate others who tend to just use the word because they hear someone use it and got away with it and think itâs fair for them to also go ahead and use it too.
To those outsiders from other communities besides the black community, I would advise them to learn more about the word and its roots before going out into another community and not caring and just throwing the word around like it doesnât mean something to other communities. I say this because today in the present world we live in there are heavy consequences for using certain words. People are losing their jobs, being disowned by family because of their word choices, and being labeled as a racist for using those words that are connected to being slurs against different communities not only just the black community. You shouldnât feel so comfortable to know that a word holds so much hatred against a community and be out here using it like nothing is wrong with it because I do think if the tables were turned, they would act the same way these communities act when their offended using the word.
Unit 2: Are Autonomous Vehicles safe?
We all have seen someone riding around in that brand new Tesla, Genesis g80, or that BMW 740i that youâve been dreaming of getting one day. From looking at review videos on YouTube to looking up pictures on Instagram, Google, Facebook, Tiktok, etc… all because of the self-driving feature it has with all the high-quality technology that they come with. Well, letâs just say some people arenât really fans of the self-driving features and all the high-tech stuff that comes with these cars nowadays. Why? Because they rely on if the technology thatâs being used for those features are going to be reliable and safe years from now without any issues due to the fact that technology does have failures and isnât always going to work as you think. You might think that theyâre just haters because theyâre old school or just use to the old fashion way of how cars were back in the day years ago but they kind of have a valid point about the whole self-driving car thing today.
Car technology nowadays is becoming pretty much higher tech than before. Some people have their own opinions on whether they think self-driving cars are more reliable and safer but letâs not forget the fact that technology doesnât always function the same all the time and can be unreliable sometimes. The concept of having a self-driving car is for its coolness and its fancy technology but after the amount of money being spent to manufacture these cars and putting high tech technologies that make these cars driverless without anyone operating it still doesnât ignore the fact that these cars arenât technology reliable as you think they are.
In todayâs world self-driving cars are becoming more popular and another type of transportation. We all know that car companies manufacture new vehicles and release them every year with new technology added and some of those same cars are always on recall for some type of technical hardware or software failure issue that results into those cars being a problem to peopleâs safety on the street and that can be a con for autonomous vehicles. According to the company Dawn Project that is the worldâs leading expert in creating software that never fails and canât be hacked states that âHardware and software failures. Complex electronic systems often fail due to false sensors, distorted signals, and software errors. Self-driving vehicles will certainly have failures that contribute to crashes, although their frequency is difficult to predictâ (Dawn Project 2022). In this example, the dawn project points out a con about why self-driving cars can have failures as they are being manufactured and, on the streets, and that itâs not always going to be a positive outcome of them all the time. In this case dawn project has a point about hardware and software failures because technology is not always going to be functioning well all the time, sometimes after a while there can be system bugs that can cause failures to these self-driving cars causing them to function in ways they werenât programmed too.
A big concern about autonomous vehicles is the safety off those cars while there on the street. Researchers believe that autonomous vehicles could be a better solution to putting an end to human error accidents. Do you think that is possible? Knowing that technology has its flaws and isnât always reliable all the time, autonomous vehicles would most likely add to those human error accidents. According to Teena Maddox an Associate manager editor at TechRepublicâs she states that âDoT researchers estimate that fully autonomous vehicles, also known as self-driving cars, could reduce traffic fatalities by up to 94 percent by eliminating those accidents that are due to human error. Using 2016 numbers as a baseline, and multiplying 37,461 by 10, this means that there could be 374,610 deaths in a 10-year span, and 94 percent of these — or 352,133 — could possibly be prevented through fully autonomous cars by eliminating driver errorâ (Maddox, 2018). This shows that researchers think that with autonomous vehicles fully on the streets that it would help prevent and reduce most of accidents that are caused by human error and that it could save 94 percent of peopleâs lives over a decade span. This also shows how researchers see human error as more of risk than autonomous vehicles.
In an article âDriverâs view on driverless vehicles; Public perspectives on defining and using autonomous carsâ they conducted an experiment to see peopleâs perspectives about the pros and cons about autonomous vehicles. They also conducted interviews with questions on the opinions of trust level of autonomous vehicles, are they better than human driven and gave descriptions of how they define autonomous vehicles using different levels. Christophe Schneble a PhD student at the Institute of Bio-and Medical Ethics stated that âMany of the participants agreed that self-driving cars can make faster decisions, either because they have more data at its disposal or because they act rationally rather than intuitively: A human being is out of control, perhaps he or she is too late on the brakes. Or the steering wheel shifts, especially in the case of a deer accident for example. Then you usually end up in jail because you somehow make an action, and I could imagine an AI would bring the car to a halt much more objectively. Should it make these decisions itself or should there be clear rules? So, I would trust the car. Really. I think you would even have to slow down the human being. So that he canât intervene, and the car can decide where it has control. Like this (ArcInt13).â This explains how the participants in the experiment agreed more with autonomous vehicles more because their programmed to do more and respond faster to things than if a car is being human driven. It does show a point in why people would pick that over human driven but letâs not forget the fact that when those same autonomous cars have a technology failure, they would have to be on standby to take control.
Having trust with the technology of these cars is another point regarding autonomous vehicles. If those who consider having more trust in autonomous vehicles like regular human driven vehicles their most likely to care about the safety of their passengers. Schneble stated that âParticipantsâ attitudes towards self-driving cars were largely a function of their level of trust. Most of the participants did not have any negative reaction. Some of them expressed doubt especially on the issue of security (both their own and that of pedestrians and other road users), but interestingly, at that time, almost no issues were raised concerning prioritization in crash situations or other ethical aspects.â (Schneble, 2021). This shows that the participants in the experiment gave their opinions based off their trust level of these autonomous vehicles with concerns more about security of themselves and other road users.
It’s clear there have been a lot of growth in autonomous technology, and the move towards it looks very certain given the potential it could very much impact people’s lives. Nevertheless, it also presents many concerns, and addressing those concerns are necessary if the technology is going to be fully accepted by the public.
Reference:
Litman, Todd. âAutonomous Vehicle Implementation Predictions.â Victoria Transport Policy Institute, 3 Mar. 2022, https://vtpi.org/avip.pdf.
Maddox, Teena. âHow Autonomous Vehicles Could Save over 350K Lives in the US and Millions Worldwide.â ZDNet, ZDNet, 1 Feb. 2018, https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-autonomous-vehicles-could-save-over-350k-lives-in-the-us-and-millions-worldwide/.
Schneble, Christophe O., and David M. Shaw. âDriver’s Views on Driverless Vehicles: Public Perspectives on Defining and Using Autonomous Cars.â Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Elsevier, 12 Aug. 2021, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590198221001524.
Unit 3: Infographic
For this unit 3 project I will be doing an infographic on my research topic which is about the safety of autonomous vehicles. I choose this genre because it would be another way to quickly present my audience which are Cuny students a more detailed way to learn the main points of what my research paper talks about. It also gives them an easier and quicker way to understand or visualize the information given more clearly with the fact that there will be pictures, graphs, charts, and diagrams. As for the design of the infographic I plan to have a design that would be engaging to the readers eyes that they would want to continue to read more.
So far what I have been doing is looking at examples of template based on my research topic and searching for ideas on how I am going to set up the infographic. Other than that, I have been just looking through some of my sources and just browsing for sources with more statistics for information to input into the infographic.
The main point of this unit 3 project is to inform others about how unsafe autonomous vehicles are with their pros and cons. I chose this genre to make this point because it would be an easier way to reach Cuny students by presenting them information with visuals and data that would be appealing to them on a topic that some of them would be interested about. Those students who do own an autonomous vehicle would also be interested because they can learn more about their own vehicles and it can show them another perspective and deeper thinking about the product.
In this process what I have learned is how to maneuver through the Canva website. Itâs an easy website to use to create these presentations and using different genres to show your creativity on informing others or just creating something for yourself. Another thing that I learn in the process of this project is that thereâs always going to be more information that you never got to explore until you do more research. I hope that my audience learn more than they already know about autonomous vehicles and that it makes them want to do more research for themselves and inform others about what theyâve learn.
 Reflection:
Throughout my years of being in school and having to write about all types of topics, I have always had a love hate relationship with writing. I say that because sometimes it comes so easy for me to write about certain things that I have ideas or questions about and on the other hand itâs like my mind is empty with nothing to say. But I find writing as a good way to get your ideas out, being creative with stories and being able to have others visualize what is going on.
My main assumption at the beginning of the semester about me and my writing was that the topics wouldnât interest me and that I would procrastinate and not complete the assignments. Even though I still did procrastinate a little I am proud of myself for completing all my assignments thanks to the help of professor hall for keeping my interest with the writing topics we had this semester. Iâve had other English professors in the past around when classes were online, and I would say that class didnât keep my interest like this one did.
In the start of the semester for unit 1 I wasnât too sure about the topic we were given to write about. The thought of writing about a word just wasnât something I thought could be done. Like what is there for you to say so much about a word. But with the help of professor hall going through the process of having us brainstorm ideas and writing down whatever comes to mind it really helped open my mind more to how you can really write about anything if you come up with good ideas thatâll make everything easier.
Iâve learned so much more about writing than I did before or just activities that can help you start somewhere. My favorite thing about this class was that professor hall always had a different activity for each unit for us to get an easy start and understand what is needed to be done. I really loved those activities where we would just write whatever came to mind about our topic or just in general because when you look back at what you wrote it was always something in there that gave you an idea of what you want to write about.
What I learned about myself as a writer, reader and scholar is that overthinking if a piece is good or not is something that I need to not think about. Instead of doing that I think the best solution is to have people I can get feedback from so I am not fighting myself about if something is good or not. I also learned that at nighttime I work best when thereâs peace and quiet away from everything with just music in my ears, thatâs the best time when my ideas flow the best especially when the music adds a little razzle dazzle to how I am feeling. I believe that there has been progress since the beginning of the semester. Some things from this class would stay with me. In addition, I will save the most useful writing assignment worksheets for future reference. It would also be a useful outline for other classes.
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