A competition between runners, horses, vehicles, boats, etc., to see which is the fastest in covering a set course.

Race has become an increasingly difficult topic of conversation here in the United States. Over the past year we have seen various "movements" to create awareness and change for some of these social issues where Hobson does a great job painting the picture of reality through her stories and discussion. She graciously discusses her experiences of struggle, hope, and realism from childhood where at the age of 7 she is challenged with questions of race and power through the realistic views of her mother and empowering words of telling her she could be what ever she wanted to be. But, the sad truth is she could be whatever she wanted to be but the system we created may not have even given her a chance to become what she imagined as a child.

I really like that Hobson challenges people to talk and discuss race, evaluate their environments, and engage in conversations with people who are nothing like you. It makes us feel human which people often forget since our culture has been so desensitized to the value of human life and she makes it a point to connect every story back to simple basic humanistic things such as wearing body lotion to help people realize that we are human but then she talks about color blind and color brave.

I know I make this argument all the time and I really hope I am doing so in a way the is conductive to our learning environment on here but the idea of being color blind and being color brave to me is all dependent on your environment. Environment is such an important thing that I feel people always forget about. As much as I love her idea of color brave and challenging others to have the conversation, challenge themselves, and be open minded it all relates back to the environment and sometimes color blind may be a better option and this is where I absolutely love Morgan Freeman. He challenges race and social change by simply not talking about it which works for him. He believes that if race is not talked about there would be no issues. I would know him as Morgan Freeman, an American actor and he would know me as Dennis Poirier, a college student, not Morgan Freeman the Black actor and Dennis Poirier, the white college student.

To address the blog topic I think visibility is dependent on environment. Being a white male living in Rhode Island no I have not felt invisible. But on a trip to the South I very much felt invisible because my skin color was not the social norm or the color of power. But, I was NEVER disrespected or disrespectful towards the people of the community which made me feel welcome and where for me and most of my interactions race was simply not an issue.

I always have lots to say on topics like this and could write a paper so I am going to leave the rest of my thoughts for class. Thanks all.