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The World Answered Through My Eyes

By Joshua Buford

Table of Contents:

Intro to Political Science Syllabus..page 2

National Government of The U.S Syllabus.page 2-3

HUSA......page 3

Gentlemen of Drew.page 4

Campus Pals....page 4

The Constraint of race: legacies of white skin privilege in

America...page 5

Election law in the American political system....page 5

Political Science: An Introduction, 14th Edition...page 6

The End of History and the Last Man.page 6

The Virginia Gazette, 1768..page 6-7

Can Trump Make Mexico Pay for the Wallpage 7

White like me: race, racism, & white privilege in

America.......page 7
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Intro to Political Science Syllabus by Ron Hira

This course syllabus was very useful for my inquiry into the question of, Is the American

election system as fair and accurate as we think? Based off the syllabus and an email to

the teacher about what the course deals with and his thoughts on our elections system.

After a few brief emails back and forth I gathered what I needed to help me answer this

question. Dr. Ron Hira is by all means a specialist in his field having his PHD in Political

Science. What I gathered from talking to him was that although our election system is

comprised of many different platforms mainly to ensure that nothing happens unjustly

that is exactly what happens all the time. See our election system is based on indirect

election of the head of state through the electoral college which is comprised of unequal

representatives from each state who are supposed to vote based on their state citizens.

This does not allow for total equality though with the citizens because every citizens

opinion is not always reflected in the sate representatives vote.

National Government of The U.S Syllabus by John-Patrick Ifedi

I am taking this course now and it has been helping me understand things in English class

as well because a lot of the information overlaps. Reading through this syllabus and

listening to in-class lectures I have gained a lot of valuable information. This helps me to

understand both our election system more and how exactly the Electoral College works

and how the popular vote works. It has also helped me to understand how money ties so

majorly into your campaign. I also see how the electoral college is even more unfair than
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I previously thought especially since a large percentage of Americans do not vote because

of how unfair they believe it is. Also it helps me to understand the different factors that

affect voter participation.

HUSA

This year I applied to be an intern on the student advocacy committee for HUSA. I got

the position just before winter break and throughout the 4 months that I have been

working for them I have learned a lot about politics and government structures. Typically

our meetings are held in a governmental structure with the president at the top and so on.

In our meetings we talk about current issues at the end of every meeting and a question

that has come up often in the past couple of months is how did we let a man like Donald

Trump get elected. That is something that I have not been able to come up with a concrete

answer until now. These past months I have learned that money is power and it can get

anything done depending on the amount that you have and Donald Trump has billions of

it. From our talks and conversations I have concluded that Donald Trump is not unique in

his ideologies and opinions but in fact is just voicing what many of his peers and white

Americans think but have not had the power to say them and get them established.

Although I do believe that theyre definitely some that dont believe this way.
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Gentlemen of Drew

Gentlemen of Drew is a social organization that has different events that are devoted to

helping out the community. Although I am not in this organization I have a lot of friends

that are actually in it. Through a poll given by this organization I gathered that many of

the students here voted but know almost twice the amount of people who didnt vote at

all. This shows how they have been almost brainwashed to think that coting will have no

effect on who becomes our president. I empathize with them because I often feel the

same way. The information gathered from the polls helped me to figure out why again

Donald trump was able to gain power.

Campus Pals

Campus Pals is another organization that devotes most of their time to the community

and helping young black scholars find information about current events. This

organization does a lot of off campus events seeing as many of the members dont

actually reside in Howards on campus housing. I attended the last meeting and there they

were talking about wealth and the reasons why wealth is important. It all ties back to how

the places with the best resources are the places with the highest poverty rates. This ties

into how whites have set up modern society. They also gave information on when did this

happen and how it happened which goes back to the Berlin Conference. All of the

information from the meetings helped me to furthermore answer my questions.

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The Constraint of race: legacies of white skin privilege in

America
The Constraint of race: legacies of white skin privilege in America, was written by author

Linda F Williams in 2003. This book is about challenging a new approach to

understanding the evolution of American politics and social structures. It talks about the

privileges white have instead of focusing on the disadvantages by blacks and shows even

on the federal scale the ignorance displayed by a large percentage of American citizens

today. This book helped me to understand the ignorance displayed by electing such a man

into office is not one that hasnt been seen before in history.

Election law in the American political system

Election law in the American political system is a casebook on how to teach a basic

course on all five major pillars of the political system field. In going through the book

briefly it showed me an understanding on how politics is really understood by those who

arent in the government. The book is basically a guide to the American political system

that anyone can learn how to teach about. In reviewing some of the passages you can see

how it is hard for the average person to accurately understand the political system which

goes back to show the ignorance of our country. This is the case for a large population of

Americans.
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Political Science: An Introduction, 14th Edition

This book was the guiding book for my Introduction to Political Science class. Reading this

book for class taught me a lot of valuable information about the government and how

political ideologies and theories came to be. Every part of the government was broken down

and analyzed as to what purpose the have and more importantly on how much power each

once had. This is how I came to better understanding the question of how you can obtain a

presidency with no real knowledge of how exactly politics work. By this I mean that by

having the tools that other politicians want you can gain higher and higher roles.

The End of History and the Last Man

Francis Fukayama, a noteworthy political scientist who helped develop many political

ideologies and structures, wrote this book. The book is about a foundational philosophical

text trying to understand the neoconservative movement in the United States. It helped

my research in that I was able to understand the way our government deals with those

who do not agree with them or have the same views as them.

The Virginia Gazette, 1768

I read an excerpt from an archive of The Virginia Gazette in 1768, which talks about

virtual representation and actual representation of the citizens in the law making process

as well as the election process. It was in the form of a letter to a man named Mr. Urban.

This helps me with my questions in that it gives me a first hand account of the creation of
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how our government works and why it was formed this way. This allows for me to see

how the election process was built to be fair to all of its citizens.

Can Trump Make Mexico Pay for the Wall

This is excerpt is from the ACI scholarly blog index. It talks about how Trump wants to

construct a huge wall between the United States and Mexico in stricter efforts to stop

illegal immigration. His plan is to raise revenue from trade with Mexico through the

DBCFT and its import taxes on them. Reading this article helped me to understand how

ignorance is widespread through the country. It also helped me to understand how our

government interacts with other countries now and with former presidents, which shows

Donald Trumps ineffectiveness.

White like me: race, racism, & white privilege in America Film

This film by Tim J Wise came from the George Mason Library. The film shows race and

racism and its effects in the government. Watching the film gave me a good understand of

what it must be like to be white in America in terms of representation in the government.

This also helped show me the thoughts of ideas of why people behave towards blacks and

whites.