I Get What I Want

The great Mick Jagger would say, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes you get what you need.” As stated in class, there is a very thin line that separates “want” and “need”. The Oxford English Dictionary simply states that the definition of “want” is “To be lacking or missing,” while the definition of “need” is “To be necessary.” Clearly we can differentiate the two terms into whether or not a certain action in question is a necessity, but do we distinguish this difference when making choices? In relation to “consumption,” wants and needs drive our consumption, in an economic sense, of products from a provider. The more literal meaning of consumption is “to destroy, to exhaust, to waste, to completely use up” (New Keywords pg. 57). Even with the use of “consumption” in current vernacular inferring capitalism and free trade, it still has a negative connotation because of its inability to differentiate our wants from our needs.


A consumer, in an economic context, is the person who buys products based on their level of wanting or needing a product. For example, Honda is an automobile provider who provides automobiles to consumers who want or need a car. Is a car a necessity or a luxury? A car, from a biological sense, is only a luxury because our legs and muscles are our main means of transportation, but most people do not have the time or energy to walk to work. So, a car can easily become a necessity for any working individual. The individual wants to get to work quickly and without expending too much energy to get there. Therefore, a car is now a necessity for the individual. Luxuries become necessities because consumer mentality tells people they need something in order to live. As a result, other "wants" induce "needs" and therefore blurs the definite line between the two. If a car becomes a necessity, gas too becomes a necessity. More recently, skyrocketing gas prices lead to the development of alternative energy resources such as Honda’s new FCX Clarity (a Hydrogen Fuel Cell automobile). Today, it seems to be a luxury more than a necessity, but because of the inclining gas prices, cars like the FCX Clarity can easily become a new luxury turned necessity. And Hydrogen, an already necessity to life, finds new importance in the human life cycle. We might get what we need, but originally that necessity was once a wanted luxury. So, to contradict Mick Jagger, we do get what we want.

Wearing My Race

When I first thought about writing this blog, I was planning on tying all of my group’s words together in one essay. But I also thought of my idea of race and how it affects my self-identity. I immediately began thinking of the way I dressed as I was growing up. As stated before, I am a Japanese-American. How is a Japanese-American teenager supposed to dress? Well, during middle school and into my first year of high school, I was really into hip-hop and rap music. I associated myself with the hip-hop culture and began dressing in baggy pants and big T-shirts. I even had my sterling silver chain, which I wore proudly to school every day. Once freshmen year was over, I felt like I wasn’t representing myself very well. I was imitating an African-American, specifically the artists whose songs I was listening to, and I wasn’t imitating the image very well either. That summer I deconstructed my image of how a Japanese-American should dress by completely stripping my original ideas and renewing them with something more fitting to me. I started associating more with my Asian friends whom I met through a statewide Asian basketball league. It was a society all on its own. My attire went from baggy pants to basketball shorts and sneakers. The transformation was a fashion revolution and reform. Somehow I felt more comfortable in this new attire than my previously chosen one. Yet, I still felt like I wasn’t fully representing a Japanese-American. With another deconstruction of my idea of Japanese-American attire, I began wearing polo shirts and faded jeans. Later, I realized I felt more “white” than I was comfortable with. What I have concluded now in college is that there is no right attire that represents a Japanese-American. I am who I am and if that means I’m feeling “hip-hop” for a day, I’ll rock my sterling silver. If I’m feeling “baller” (basketballer), I’ll wear my Nike Jordan shorts and sneakers. Finally, if I feel “prep” I’m in my polo and jeans. My race is only a concept and does not define who I am. I am a Japanese-American and I wear what I feel.

This next essay was my original thoughts of how I was going to write this entry, but I think the first is more entertaining, and it's a narrative….

Our word cluster consists of the words, Deconstruction, Diaspora, Society, Revolution and Reform, and Race. I think these words can be related together through one: the cause of each term, “Race.” As stated before, race is a concept that humans have created to feed our natural need to organize things. We have created a concept in which people are separated into groups based on their physical attributes, homeland, and culture. This separation of people almost always causes a sense of inequality because some groups will see themselves as better than others. Black Africans were slaves. White Caucasians were the slave owners. Here we see the relation of Diaspora with Race. The idea of separation by race led whites into thinking they were more sophisticated than blacks and therefore made blacks less human than whites. Whites began to forcefully migrate Africans to America in the slave trade. Blacks were considered property rather than humans and were thus traded and treated as work animals. Once this inequality was realized, the black race began a long struggle of revolution and reform to gain their equality. In order to gain the strength to stand up to the self-proclaimed better race, blacks had to unite under one common idea. They cleverly used the same concept of race to form their own society based upon one uniting theme: being black. Today, the concept of race is not as widely used as a form of prejudice or inequality but is instead used as a form of self-identity. In order to transform the idea of race from a concept of categorization, to a justification for inequality, and finally to a form of self-identity, the meaning of race had to be deconstructed and renewed to fit the standards of the time.

Race: All of the above

A comedian named Carlos Mencia was once asked, “Why do you have to joke about race so much Carlos?” He simply replied, “Because race makes things funny.” I believe Carlos Mencia is right because every person on the earth has experienced something that has to do with either their own or some else’s race and can therefore relate to his jokes. What is race? New Keywords describes race as “a politically charged and ambivalent word that has evaded precise definition.” It is not a fact, but rather a concept that humans have invented to categorize and differentiate between the different people around the world. We separate each other according to our regions of origin, the language we speak, and the color of our skin (the least telling trait of what any one person is capable of).
I am a Japanese American. I do not speak Japanese, nor have I ever been to Japan, though I would love to go. But what makes me Japanese? I am Japanese because my ancestors originated from Japan, but I feel no different than my “white” housemate. I speak English just as well as him and put my pants on one leg at a time. Even still I have been told repeatedly how much I fit the more modern stereotypes that Asians portray: short, smart, and a bad driver. I would say I consider everyone else taller rather than I’m shorter. I wouldn’t say I’m the smartest person in school, but I try my best and succeed most of the time. And, I have received a few traffic tickets, but everyone makes mistakes once and a while. Anyone could say the same about themselves no matter what color their skin. So, race is not fact or set in stone. It is only an ideology that has allowed for people of common physical traits to justify what makes "us" different than "them."

Intriguing

Knowing how crowded the bookstore of UC Davis can get on the first day of class, I decided to go in a couple days earlier to pick up my books. Luckily for me, I was coming from Sacramento so the 25-minute drive (I drive slowly as to save gas and avoid the prices at the pumps) was worth the wait. I had no crowd or line, just an empty basement full of books. Since I didn’t read the description of the course before I went, I was a little worried that I had only found one book assigned for “UWP 101 Section 1”. I looked at every single tag hoping to find more than just one that said “Section 1” just to make sure I wasn’t missing any additional assigned readings. The title confused me, “New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society.” “I thought we would be reading novels and writing formal, boring papers about them, not reading about culture and society,” I was thinking to myself as I reluctantly moved up the stairs to pay. Once I returned home, hopefully expending the least amount of gas as possible, I looked up the course description and after further research through the professor’s links, I realized this class is not what I expected. Yet, the new ideas and concepts are intriguing. I think I might like this class...I’ve never “blogged” before.