100% Melbourne and other fun stuff
100% Melbourne: I went to see this really awesome performance on Fri with reehamification called 100 Percent Melbourne. It's part theatrics, part reality performance, part game, and has everything to do with the population intersection. 100 random people were taken from Melbourne as representatives of the entire Melbourne population by statistics (so 4 people from Hume, 25 people born overseas, etc), and they acted out answering different questions like whether they had cancer or whether they believed in climate change by raising different colored signs, walking to different sides of the room, etc. It was really awesome! My favorite part was the scene where they acted out what they did over a course of 24 hours. It's like seeing a real cross section of Melbourne.
I was surprised by how few Asians/minorities there were though. They had search criteria that needed to be filled (by where they lived, country of birth, age, gender, etc), but not all of them could be filled because the participants had to be linked to each other. One person would recruit another person and so on, so you only get so much variety in that. Still, I would have expected the demographics to be more varied. I didn't feel represented at all =P There were a surprisingly large number of people that supported the death penalty and who liked the USA and who thought that Victoria would never run out of water. (or maybe the latter's just surprising because I study water resource management)
Performance aside, it was really good to catch up with reehamification. I think that was one of the first times we've hung out outside of intheairproject or Route 96 meetings. Ended up talking about confidence crusade stuff and she shared some of her experiences when she first moved to Melbourne to do her masters. How different our experiences are! Still, it's good to know that it's something that a lot of other people struggle with.
Other random thing: Read this interesting article on tips for a white parent from a mixed-race kid. I think as someone from the 'model minority', I didn't suffer through as many negative stereotypes and whatnot as some other racial minorities. Sometimes I must admit that I'm just as ignorant of the depth of anger and emotion that other POC feel when it comes to racial issues because I didn't experience anything like that. Guess that gives me a lot of privilege.
I was surprised by how few Asians/minorities there were though. They had search criteria that needed to be filled (by where they lived, country of birth, age, gender, etc), but not all of them could be filled because the participants had to be linked to each other. One person would recruit another person and so on, so you only get so much variety in that. Still, I would have expected the demographics to be more varied. I didn't feel represented at all =P There were a surprisingly large number of people that supported the death penalty and who liked the USA and who thought that Victoria would never run out of water. (or maybe the latter's just surprising because I study water resource management)
Performance aside, it was really good to catch up with reehamification. I think that was one of the first times we've hung out outside of intheairproject or Route 96 meetings. Ended up talking about confidence crusade stuff and she shared some of her experiences when she first moved to Melbourne to do her masters. How different our experiences are! Still, it's good to know that it's something that a lot of other people struggle with.
Other random thing: Read this interesting article on tips for a white parent from a mixed-race kid. I think as someone from the 'model minority', I didn't suffer through as many negative stereotypes and whatnot as some other racial minorities. Sometimes I must admit that I'm just as ignorant of the depth of anger and emotion that other POC feel when it comes to racial issues because I didn't experience anything like that. Guess that gives me a lot of privilege.