Spheres of Influence

     As I read through Annah Anti-Palindrome’s article, “This White Feminist Loved Her Dreadlocks Here’s Why She Cut Them Off” I felt a mixture of emotions. I was familiar with what cultural appropriation was but I never really put too much thought into it. At first, I felt similar to the way Annah felt when her friends were telling her it was offensive to wear dreads. In my head, I was thinking that people need to loosen up…what’s the big deal- it’s just hair? But the more I read it the more I realized why it could be seen as offensive. As a person of color, I am lucky to live in a city that, compared to other cities, is pretty open-minded and diverse. Because of that, I have grown up without feeling the same weight of discrimination and oppression that people of my race feel in other parts of the country. So I have to remind myself that just because even though I am half black, I don’t have the same experience as other people of color. Just because I am not offended by a white person wearing dreads, doesn’t mean it isn’t offensive to other people and should be something treated with cultural respect.                                                                                                                                          

      I found Drew Dudley’s TED talk about every day leadership to be very inspiring. The way he discussed leadership really resonated with me because it is so true that society makes it into something so much bigger than what it should be about. I do not see myself as a leader because I am an anxious and introverted person, and while I do want to make a difference in the world and do my part in making it a better place, I feel hesitant to carry the responsibility and pressure of being a leader. It is interesting to think about those “lollipop moments” that he mentioned and how we might not even remember certain times we have had impacts on people’s lives and been leaders to them. He made a huge impact on a girl’s life and he did not even remember doing so. That day, he was that girl’s biggest leader, and that probably was not even his goal.                                                                  

     Nicholas Christakis’s TED talk on the hidden influence of social networks really opened my eyes up to the strength in social networks. The examples he used of the obesity epidemic, or the widow effect made me realize how these connections we have are so much larger than we think. How we act, what we believe, and the actions we do, impact so much more people than we think. I really liked the point he made at the end when he said, “if we realized how valuable social networks are, we'd spend a lot more time nourishing them and sustaining them, because I think social networks are fundamentally related to goodness.” This is so true- I feel like if we really knew how valuable social networks are, especially in today’s age where social network consists of our social groups on social media as well, we would be a lot more careful about what we were putting out there.