[Essay] The True American Look... Aryan

"Retailers defend the approach to hiring based on image as necessary and smart, and industry experts see the point. "In today's competitive retail environment, the methods have changed for capturing the consumer's awareness of your brand," said Marshal Cohen, a senior industry analyst with the NPD group, a market research firm. "Being able to find a brand enhancer, or what I call a walking billboard, is critical. It's really important to create an environment that's enticing to the community, particularly with the younger, fashionable market. A guy wants to go hang out in a store where he can see good-looking gals."

   Cohen's argument is that retailers are using developed methods to advertise and project their brand to get themselves noticed in the increasingly competitive environment but he also says that retailers primarily hires good looking people which is more white people than any other race and that this is necessary for the store to do so. One of these methods is a brand enhancer, which is a person who retailers think will make their brand look better. Brand enhancers vary depending on the brand, for example, Abercrombie & Fitch goes for an all-American look, which in my personal opinion, looks more Aryan than true American while American Apparel goes for a more seductive or sexual appeal when choosing their brand enhancers.

   I do not agree with Cohen's statement. The necessity for "brand enhancers" is miniscule and also harm the brand name. New Orleans lawyer, Stephen J. Roppolo, states: "hiring someone who is attractive isn't illegal per se. But people's views on what's attractive may be influenced bt their race, their religion, their age. ...I tell employers that their main focus needs to be hiring people who get the can get the job done. When they hire to project a certain image, that's where things can get screwy." Hiring based off of looks does not matter in the long run since the government can and will get involved like in the case of Ian Scharger. "The hotel entreprenuer Ian Scharger agreed to a 1.08 million settlement three years ago after the Equal Opportunity Commission accused his Mondrian Hotel in Wesi Hollywood of racial discrimination for firing nine valets and bellhops, eight of them nonwhite. Documents filed in court showed that Mr. Scharger had written memos saying that he wanted a trendier group of workers and that the fired employees were 'too ethnic'." The Civil Rights Act of 1964, specifically Title VII, gives people who applied for a job but got denied because of race the ability to sue the company based on denial of their civil liberties and discrimination.

   These retailer's business practices are questionable morally and their argument is also a little weak. " We want to hire brand representatives that will represent the Abercrombie & Fitch brand with natural classic American style, looking great while exhibiting individuality, project the brand and themselves with energy and enthusiasm" said Abercrombie's communications director, Tom Lennox. Their idea of representatives who will project the brand are people of the Aryan race which causes problems with people of different races."... a lawsuit filed last month in Federal District Court in San Francisco, Some Latino, Asian, and black job applicants maintain otherwise. ... when they applied to the jobs, store managers steered them to the stock rooms not the sales floor." Their argument is that they want their representatives to "looking great while exhibiting individuality" but can they really exhibit individuality where they can only wear the brand of the store they work at and beauty is also an opinion of a person.

   Retailers also choose employees based solely on looks rather than experience which seem inefficient. Antonio Serrano, former assistant manager for Abercrombie & Fitch, states, "We were supposed to approach someone in the mall who we think will look attractive in our store. If that person said 'I never worked in retailing before' we said: 'Who cares? We'll hire you.' But if someone come in who had lots of retail experience and not a pretty face , we were told not to hire them at all." Someone with retail experience would have more of the social skills and the ability to sell the brand than a novice walking around the mall. Also hiring someone with no experience requires training which a veteran of the field would not require since they most likely already have training already.

[Free] Dosh?

    In our current world, Money is a huge issue that separates all peoples and all countries need it to show their worth but is necessary to have so many different kinds of currency. There are 179 different currencies in 196 countries not including Taiwan which has its own currency. I think that it is confusing and a waste to convert money and with the exchange rate being so awkward it makes people lose money most of the time. For example 20,810 Vietnamese dong is about 1.1 US dollar so if you were to convert 100 dollars to dong, you would get 2,081,000 dong but if you were to convert it back to US dollars you would lose a couple cents and maybe a dollar in the conversion plus the fee for the conversion. Now a single currency would be nigh impossible due to all the countries printing it and conflict to occur when a country prints too much. and causes inflation of prices and the degradation of the lone currency.

    A single currency would only work if there was a single all powerful government were to form in perhaps Antarctica but this is unlikely due to the fact that no country would form permanent bonds to other countries and nobody lives in Antarctica. If these events were to actually happen (it won't) then much convenience would come from it and we don't need to go through the trouble of money conversion. By the way if you don't know what dosh means, it's British slang for money.

[Bi] It's a draft

It's been a dream of mine to become a teacher so that I could help students learn and to be there for students in their time of need. When I was in middle school, I wasn't treated very fairly by a small group of classmates. These students would relish in the agony they caused, especially mine. Three months of torture and I was done with those people and I never wanted to return to school but the teachers and staff of the school supported me and convinced me to return to school with the promise that they would do better to enforce bullying rules and to listen students like me when they had complaints. Their promise was not kept and the rest of the school year and the two next years became my own personal hell.One of the worst parts was that the principal herself put me at fault even though I felt that I was the victim. I felt betrayed by the entire school staff and alienated from the student body. My salvation finally came after I graduated from middle school. In high school, I learned the joys of aiding fellow classmates learn.

I had always been good at mathematics and foreign languages so some of my classmates from my middle school days had required assistance on some work. Being in greater spirits from the freedom of those bullies who made me miserable, I agreed to help them for a short period of time since I needed to be home. While teaching them, I had realized that I was enjoying giving them, people who prior to this had never done anything to help or harm me and possibly apathetic towards my existence, knowledge. My self-esteem had near skyrocketed from the feeling of purpose and being part of something. Unfortunately, the next year I needed to transfer schools so I had to say goodbye to my acquaintances and re-assimilate myself to a new larger school alongside the problem of meeting new people. There, I managed to expand and continue helping fellow students and met some excellent teachers who have been very helpful to the students. Watching these teachers do their work gives me better understanding of how others around me learn, understand their needs are, and the most important parts of education. From other teachers, I have also found what not to do when teaching or giving assignments. 

Hostage Situation

I cannot comprehend the stress of the families of these 30 boys nor can I predict the action of the Pakistani government in this matter. The Pakistani government must handle this situation with the utmost care or it could blow up in their face. If the Pakistani government appeases the Taliban quickly then the Taliban as well as others around the world would see them as weak and the Taliban would also get the idea to kidnap even more civilians to get what they desire may it be more exchanges of prisoners or to get more weapons to restock their armories. On the other hand if the Pakistani government acts too slowly then there is a chance that the prisoners could be executed which would cause the people of Pakistan and other governments to question the Pakistani Government. Also in this video the Taliban expresses that they want the militias to be disbanded and the elders of the villages to follow the Taliban's rule. This would cause a spike in Taliban strength in the area since they are able to hide without the militia hunting them down or the people living in the villages reporting them to the military will not be able to do so without the Taliban possibly killing them and/or people around them. The Taliban commander not specifically saying a deadline for the exchange of hostages for prisoners could mean that the Taliban is not expecting the Pakistani government to act so quickly but they are ready to kill their hostages if the Pakistani govenmnt decides not to listen to their demands.

A Quick Introduction

My first blog post will most likely cover information about myself and maybe a story. My full name is Andre Vu Quang Nguyen, Andre being my English name and Vu being my Vietnamese name. I am ignorant to all happenings in pop culture. I'm indifferent to almost everything people say so people tell me the most terrible thoughts in their mind and I wouldn't judge or smite them for this idea. I also don't really care what people call me. I've been called many variations of my name, Fuhlaundre, Andre the Giant(even though I'm pretty short), and my normal name with different pronunciations. All people of similar races look the same to me. I can only guess at race by name. Please don't take this as racism, I really cannot differentiate between a French person and a Swedish person just by looking at them. I can eat pretty much anything as long as it's no spoiled but don't eat seafood or exotic foods all to often.  But now a story, a story about how I got the name Andre. Originally, My name was supposed to be Andrew rather than Andre. One story is that some classical music composed by someone named Andre was playing on the radio while my father was filling out the paperwork so he named me after that composer. The other story is that he just forgot to put the W at the end and it was too late to change it.