The Art of Prejudice essays

The Art of Prejudice essays Music is a form of art that allows lyricists to express themselves and through their personal feelings with words. Feelings that result from the loss of a family member to hating the dog for eating a favorite pair of shoes. For whatever the personal feelings may put into a tempo of beats then it is considered a form of music. What happens to feelings when they are too personal? For instance, hating of another race, using words such as bitch,hoe or nigga? What does this prove? These derogative lyrics can enforce racial stereotypes that are presented throughout the listeners of these lyrics. Some lyrics can cause problems of prejudice in the streets of the United States. Young children and their friends mimic the lyrics from their favorite rapper repeating the exact same profound language. In childrens minds, they will believe it is all right to repeat such language if their role model is doing it. Role models such as; Eminem, Snoop Dogg, and Kid Rock all have the same derogat ive lyrics that may be represented as contributing to the problems of prejudice. From rap to hip-hop to rock and roll, different genres of music are contributing to the problems of prejudice in our society today. For example, rapper and producer, Eminem, has been in the eyes of the media since the beginning of his career because of the language and visuals he portrays on his records. Songs such as Kim and My Name Is has brought controversy to the media because of the lyrics used on these songs. Constant name-calling and humility of gays, overweight people, and pop icons has contributed to Eminems popularity towards listeners. His hatred towards pop icons such as Christina Aguilera and NSYNC has basically shown his listeners that it is all right to hate people who are different. There is a huge dilemma with Elton John being gay, Eminem disagreeing with his decision to be ga...

Understanding Communities and Ecosystems

Understanding Communities and Ecosystems Biologists have a system for not only distinguishing the animals, plants, and environments (habitats, communities) that make up the natural world but also for describing the complex interactions and relationships between them. The classification is hierarchical: Individuals belong to populations, which together form species, which exist within communities, which in turn thrive within specific ecosystems. Energy flows from one organism to another through these relationships, and the presence of one population influences the environment of another population. All in the Family A community is defined biologically as a set of interacting populations. It is often used to describe the dominant species within a certain area, say, the community of salamanders that lives along the banks of a mountain stream. A community is also the physical environment in which those salamanders thrive- commonly known as a habitat- in this case, a riparian community. Additional examples would be a desert community, a pond community, or a deciduous forest community. Just as organisms have specific properties that make them unique, such as size, weight, age, sex, and so forth, so too do communities. When conducting their studies, biologists and other scientists make note of the following characteristics: Diversity, or the number of species in the community. A community can also be described as being either densely or sparsely populated as a whole.Relative abundance, which refers to the abundance- or lack thereof- of a species within a community with respect to the abundance of all the other species living in that community.Stability, or how much a community changes or remains static over time. These changes can occur because of internal or external factors, or a combination of both. The members of the community can remain stable and thrive in spite of the changes impacting their environment, or they can be ultra-sensitive to even the slightest changes. Community Relations The relationships between populations in a community are varied and may include both positive, negative, and mutually beneficial interactions. Examples of community-level relationships include competition (for food, nesting habitat, or environmental resources), parasitism (organisms that survive by feeding off a host organism), and herbivory (species who depend upon consuming local plant life to survive). These relationships often lead to changes in the genetic makeup of the population. For example, one or another genotype may be more successful due to certain community processes. The System as a Whole An ecosystem can be defined as all the interacting components of the physical and biological world. Thus, an ecosystem can encompass multiple communities. Keep in mind that drawing a line around a community or an ecosystem is not a clear matter either. Communities blend together, and there are gradients throughout nature, from one habitat to another- for instance, the oases that exist within desert environments, or the forests that line ocean shorelines in the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, and Scandinavia. We can at best use the concepts of communities and ecosystems to organize our study and understanding of the natural world but are far from being able to assign exact boundaries to these concepts.