Is public property more valuable than private property?

This week, mostly when we had our discussion right after finishing Style Wars, one of the biggest arguments that we had, I think, was about whether or not private property was more valuable than public property. I think the general consensus in the room was that the graffiti on the outside of the subway trains were beautiful, artistic, and inspiring, but the main difference in opinion existed about whether or not we cared about the legalities of it. Maybe we all do little things that 'break the law' (I'm sure at least that we all jay-walk), but we all also understand the fine line between actual criminal activity and harmless habits. People who were for self expression through graffiti claimed that since it was public property, it didn't belong to one single owner, and that the artists had as much right to paint on it as others had to ride on it. Conversely, people against graffiti on the trains used the argument that defacing private property (like someone's house) would be disrespectful, and would cause justifiable anger. Is defacing public property less 'bad' than defacing private property? Its hard to say, public property is something that all of us pay for, including those who don't like graffiti. We all pay for the right to have access to efficient, public transportation, but do we all also pay for the right to have clean, efficient, transportation? Graffiti is meant to speak to other writers, but when this exclusive group of writers compose an incredibly small minority of the people who pay for trains, is it fair to impose their art on the majority that either don't care or don't want graffiti? Likewise you could argue that graffiti is a form of self-expression, and it was probably one of the only artistic outlets that early writers had available to them. It's easy to form strong opinions on this topic, but there are always two sides to a story. Its sort of like Nanny and Janie, I'm not really sure who or what I sympathize with.

Yoshiko--The Mail Order Bride

I know it's a little late to be talking about White Boy Shuffle, but it just dawned on me how crazy Yoshiko's role in the book actually was. We all knew that Psycho Loco said he was going to get Gunnar married by the time he turned 18, but I didn't actually take that seriously at all. I skimmed over that little promise, convinced myself that he was joking, and completely forgot about it until Yoshiko was actually a physical presence in the book. The craziest thing was not that Psycho Loco got a mail order bride from who-knows-where out of who-knows-what circumstances for 18 year old Gunnar, but more that later in the novel it turns out that Yoshiko is the perfect girl for Gunnar, and eventually the love of his life. There was definitely a tone of surrealism throughout the whole story, but it struck me especially with Yoshiko and Gunnar's marriage. I mean how many guys have never ever been with a girl in their life, get set up with their wife from a mail order service at 18, and then realize that their new wife is actually their soul mate? For a long time I couldn't believe that Yoshiko was even there in the first place, and secondly that she and Gunnar were really and truly in love. The most puzzling part is that, as we get acclimated to Yoshiko and her character in the novel, the more it feels like she was always there. She fits right into the story, develops into the perfect girl for Gunnar, and even gets pregnant with his child. We have to constantly remind ourselves that her character doesn't even appear until the last quarter of the book, despite the huge impact and influence she has over Gunnar's adult life. The most curious part to me is that regardless of the little time she is given to be a part of the story, Yoshiko blossoms as a character without having any real introduction. We never find out about her past, what drove her to become a mail order bride, how she picked up English so well, and whether or not she even had/has a family. From an outsider point of view she seems like a sorely undeveloped character, but in context, in the actual text of the novel, she is a pivotal piece in Gunnar's narrative. Maybe I should get a mail order husband.

The Multicultural Education Ideaology

Okay, so this title is a little confusing, but for some reason I kept seeing parallels between Gunnar's previous school in Santa Monica with the Brotherhood from Invisible Man. In class during discussions, most of my classmates seemed to be against the 'multicultural' education that Gunnar underwent during his years in Santa Monica. Despite all of its good intentions, the whole schooling system was flawed, it pushed its students to fit into a mainstream mold that was mostly representative of 'white culture'. Likewise, it was almost patronizing in the way that it claimed all students were human, as if some students were privileged to be treated humanly, and as if by acknowledging their human-ness (for lack of a better word), the school was doing something great. After attending this kind of school for such a long time, it was almost next to impossible for Gunnar to fit into the totally different culture he encountered in Hillside.

The ghetto culture in Hillside was as big of a shock to Gunnar as the zootsuiters were to the Narrator. Both of these groups fell outside of the range that the Brotherhood and Santa Monica school catered to, they fell outside of the mainstream, and in the eyes of both institutions, they were nonexistent and not worth caring about. As the Narrator became more involved with the Brotherhood he realized that the Brothers did not care about his individuality but that they only saw him as a useful tool to meet their needs. He was the skilled, black, public speaker, much like Gunnar was the funny, cool, black guy. In order to be successful, both the Narrator and Gunnar had to conform to the societal values that were forced on them.