Andrew Barillas

Professor Lee

Ethnic Studies

August 10th, 2022

Humanity Outcomes

1. Students analyze, interpret, and appreciate emerging, contemporary, and/or enduring

works of the human imagination.

The first humanity outcome means that students examine, take in information from and
understand works of the human imagination. The documentary “Landfill Harmonic”
meets this first outcome by showing us how someone was creative enough to have the
idea to make instruments out of garbage. This connects to the human imagination because
it not only allows students to see how a person was able to use their imagination to create
working instruments out of rubbish but also gives us, students, an understanding of how
this person’s innovation works. For example, in the documentary, a scene was presented
where Favio Chavez, the teacher responsible for the construction of the musical
equipment, talked about how he had been a music teacher previously to teaching at the
school and had decided to share his love for music with his students. This clearly shows
that this work connects to this outcome because Chavez used his creativity to create a
community of music lovers by using his resources to make his ideas become a reality,
hence, requiring his imagination to kick in. Moreover, another documentary called “The
Children’s March,” also meets this outcome by presenting the various methods created by
a community of African Americans to communicate with one another in secret about
their movement. For example, in the documentary, it was stated that “The DJs were
talking code and used songs from the hip array that signals for action.”

2. Students reflect on significant questions about the human condition that emerge from
multicultural and/or multilingual perspectives.

The second humanity outcome means that students will think deeply about the conditions
that humans can be in through works that come from multiple cultural perspectives. The
documentary, “Landfill Harmonic,” meets this outcome because it presents the harsh
environment created in a town full of people, who are a part of the Latinx community, to
us by showing the amount of garbage inside the town and the effect it’s had on the
people. For instance, in the documentary, a scene was shown where kids were walking
down a road full of rubbish and water all over the place and had to hop over certain parts
of it from sidewalk to sidewalk due to them being heavily contaminated. This work
clearly shows the human condition by giving the viewers a sense of how their daily lives
were being affected and how the people had to react to the situation, therefore, allowing
students to reflect on it as well. In addition, the work of art shown below meets this
outcome because it show’s the aspect of cultural duties and responsibilities that are
distinct to their own cultures. This is the same with many other cultures and depending on
the person and where they are from, their perspectives and conditions change as well. For
example, a person who is a part of the White community may not see the importance of
celebrating the dead as the Mexican communities do.

3. Students examine cultural works within their global and/or local social contexts,
understanding the way in which questions of power impact a society’s cultural
expressions.

The third humanity outcome means students will view cultural works that correlate with
local and/or the world social circumstances to understand the influence that society’s
cultural expressions have. One of the works that meet this outcome is the documentary
called “Precious Knowledge” because it shows us how these students began to study the
history of diverse communities and their impacts in an ethnic studies course which
allowed them to better understand their communities and see how regular history courses
do not teach these things. This ties into this outcome because it clearly shows how
society’s cultural expression within history has hidden certain aspects of culture and
because of it, it shows how much influence this has on both local and worldwide
communities. Another piece of work that meets this outcome is the documentary “The
Children’s March,” because it allows us to view how the community of African
Americans had to adjust to the local and world social circumstances they have been
placed under to organize against their discrimination by using their culture. This is true
because, in the documentary, there was a scene where all of the African American
students began marching out of class and walked to church to sing and gather together to
show not only their rebellion but also their culture since, as for many other communities,
religion was apart of their culture. At the end of the movement, the president
acknowledged their efforts to stop their discrimination and began to implement tactics to
stop this mistreatment, which goes to show we were able to analyze the “power impact”
of society’s cultural expressions in a world and local setting by seeing the community
work together using various methods to rebel against these actions conducted towards
them.

4. Students communicate emotional and personal responses to cultural works.

The fourth humanity outcome means that students will be able to get in touch with both
emotional and personal reactions through works of culture. The documentary “Found
Voices: Slave Narratives,” meets this outcome by showing us interviews with former
slaves to show their emotional and distinctive responses to what occurred during slavery.
As proof, in the documentary, various audio files were played where former slaves, in
voices that sounded demoralized and depressing, would talk about themselves and the
abuse and mistreatment they had to live through. This explains how the documentary
meets this outcome because it show’s us former slaves' individual experiences and
emotional insights on slavery and by doing this, students can get in touch with these two
responses. Furthermore, the documentary, “The Children’s March,” connects to this
outcome because it shows the personal experiences the African American people have
had with discrimination and the abuse they have had to endure which allows us, the
students, to work closely with emotional and personal responses. For example, in the
documentary, one of the people who participated in the movement stated, “I remember
that morning I woke up with my mind on freedom,” and in another participant’s
interview, she said, “D Day was the day, my mother said ‘okay, Gwen don’t go to the
march, don’t go, you go to school’ and she explained how she told her mother that ‘she
hears her’ but she wasn’t raised to lie so she didn’t say she wasn’t going.

5. Students integrate and apply the insights and approaches gained from multiple
disciplinary perspectives to the study of human experiences.

The fifth and final humanity outcome means that students will combine their perceptions
and their attitudes received from various points of view to the study of human
experiences. The ted talk that we watched in class called “The Danger Of A Single
Story,” meets this outcome by presenting how Chimamanda, the woman who gave the ted
talk, was told by her mother that their houseboy was poor which led her to apply this
perspective onto her own and assumed the houseboy and his family did not have
anything. For instance, in the ted talk, she states, “Then one Saturday, we went to his
village to visit, and his mother showed us a beautifully patterned basket…I was startled,
it had not occurred to me that anybody in his family could actually make something.”
This shows that this meets the outcome because when she went to go visit the family of
her houseboy, she approached the situation as if they had nothing due to the perspective
she had been given that they were poor, which also shows the human experience since
she was able to get a small taste of what the lives of poor people were like. Another work
that meets this outcome is the book A People’s History Of The United States by Howard
Zinn because it presents history through many aspects rather than the typical way it is
taught, with a bias towards the white community, in high school throughout schools in
America. Zinn, on multiple occasions, shows accounts of how, those in other diverse
communities, responded to points in history. A perfect example of this would be when
Zinn touches on how slavery was seen as something to break the African American
communities by the upper-class whites but those who were enslaved saw this as an
opportunity and took it to make these communities stronger.