Everyone everywhere loves to be entertained, whether it’s watching a movie, play, or concert or listening to an album. But how much would you pay actor or a musician?

As of August 2015, Robert Downey Jr. is the highest paid actor of the year with an $80 million dollar salary, including a percentage of the box office returns.

Tom Cruise earned a total of $40 million dollars this year. With an amount of money fit for a king, you would think that these men are in a line of work that would warrant that kind of pay day.c

But the truth of the matter is these men and many other actors and actresses, simply pretend to be other people.  Let’s talk about the people who invest time and energy solely for the benefit of others.??? Is the list that follows people who invest time and energy etc.?

1. Robert Downey Jr.: $80 million

1. Jackie Chan: $50 million

1. Vin Diesel: $47 million

1. Bradley Cooper: $41.5 million

1. Adam Sandler: $41 million

1. Tom Cruise: $40 million

As you can see, the highest paid physician only makes a little over $400,000 dollars annually. Did you mean for another list to appear there? A fraction of what an A list actor is paid annually. That last sentence lacked a noun-verb and so it was a fragmentary sentence. Avoid those For the extensive amount of education that is required to enter the medical profession and the added stress of the job, where is the sense in this?

All K-12 Teachers Median Salary by Job

Even the highest teachers, who have one of the most thankless jobs, earn less then the highest paid physicians. How can we expect people to want to pursue practical careers with a sense of pride when we pay the people who do the least so much?

By Jibreel Mahmud

As one of eight children, I was raised believing that if you worked hard, went to school, and kept out of trouble, you’d probably be OK. My parents worked hard to provide for us. But they wanted more for us than they had. Statistically speaking my family lived below the poverty line for many years. While it was my parents’ desire for us all to go to college, there was a family expectation for us to work and financially help the family.

So, what is the “Poverty Line” and how do these statistics affect educating our children? According to the 2014 U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty line is defined as a family of 4 (2 adults, 2 children under 18) earning less than $23,021. Just last year, 47.7 million Americans (or 14.8 percent of the population) were living in poverty, and it’s become an annual epidemic.

16 to 24-years-old students from low-income families are seven times more likely to dropout than those from families with higher incomes. Clearly education is the best way out of poverty. But how can we expect our children to focus on education if they are continually faced with the problem of trying to survive.

by Signe Lambertsen

• In 1979, the median black wage was 82.5 percent of the white median.
• Since then, the black median has barely budged—slipping to just 76.6 percent of the white median.
• In 1967, the median black family income was 59.2 percent of the white median.
• In 2012, the median black family income was 61.5 percent of white median income.

My name is

Nicolette Johnston. I am a 22 year old white female and a full time worker and student. My boyfriend’s name is Terrance Koelsch. He is the son of Jason, a white male, and Diedre, a black female, high school sweethearts who have been happily married for over 20 years. They have a daughter and two sons, one of which I could not imagine my life without. He gets judged every day based simply on the color of his skin. Ignorant of the fact that he is the most handsome, kind, intelligent man I will ever meet, they worry me of the challenges we face as an interracial couple. Upon graduation Terrance hopes to become a police officer. I hope to get married and start a family. Yet I worry if the odds will be against my children. Will the color of their skin determine their future in today’s world? Who gets to decide whether my babies will be free?

The late great soul singer Marvin Gaye said it best when he said “Makes me wanna holla and throw up both my hands!”.  Race and inequality in America really does make me feel that way. Whether it is Ferguson, Baltimore, or even the North end of Hartford, we still must address the “elephant in the room“… melanin (or a lack there of) and money (or again a lack thereof). We are only seen when we are heard (the Invisible Man 2015). If money talks then, we have to find a way for those without it to be heard.

The Ferguson Report addressed this point by attempting to chart a path of discussion to address issues of how we treat each other and why. The report made it clear that no journey begins without taking the first step. That first step in this case is non-avoidance and by this I mean discussing, debating, arguing, and even laughing together about these issues that keep us divided. Black men used to get hanged before we got together and put a stop to that shizz and that type of movement is needed again.  Ignorance ain’t bliss y’all.

The movements in Ferguson, Baltimore, New York City only caught steam after those in power saw that united our voices grew louder. The Invisible Man was only seen when he has heard. The Ferguson Report seemed to highlight the need to come together and chart that path through this societal jungle filled with lions, tigers, and bears (oh, my!). Never forget that the police are here to serve and protect not attack and neglect. THINK ABOUT IT!

College is a crucial time in any person’s life. Whether you’re 18 and fresh out of high school, or in your forties returning for your degree, making the decision of which school to attend is one of the hardest decisions you have to make in life. Your success academically will determine your future, so picking the right school for you couldn’t be more imperative.

Collegescoreboard.ed.gov has set out to try to make that decision a little easier. With numbers and statistics on everything from graduation rates and the average earnings after graduation, this site has provided some essential information on picking a school. Or has it?

Yes of course money is important, and knowing how much debt you’ll be in after college is necessary, but where are the numbers telling you that this debt will be worth it. You can stare at numbers all day on this site, but one thing it will not ever tell you, is will your college experience, whether is be socially, emotionally or academically, be worth the thousands of dollars you’re investing in this one school.

Sure, a great school that’s $60,000 a year can give you a higher salary and change you into a more marketable employee. But what this site won’t tell you is how pleased you are with your experience from that school, or if you just spent four years of your life miserable for a higher pay in the future. Is sacrificing who you are in college worth it?

By Jessica Vezina

Last Thursday, I was in New York for my brand new job. I work in a news studio, and as one would imagine, the news of the hour was the arrival of the Pope. We haven’t had a Papal visit in many years, and the Vatican usually has absolutely no say in US Politics, but with the approaching potential government shutdown, it seemed appropriate that the Pope would be the one to speak to our Congress.

There is a new “brand” that Pope Francis has been pushing to represent the Catholic Church, and it’s all about poverty. He dresses more plainly than past Popes, and he prefers driving in simples vehicles instead of expensive limousines.  He spoke to Congress to try and push this agenda to the United States Government. In fact, he is so focused on fighting poverty that he declined Congress’s offer for a meal to instead help feed the homeless.

But why is the Vatican doing this? Sure, we could say it is because religion has always been about helping the poor. Some might even say that it is a deliberate move to convince more people to go back to the faith. But most likely, it is about the Christian ideal of humility. Here is what the Pope had to say:

“For us Christians, poverty is not a sociological, philosophical or cultural category.  No, it is a theological category.  I would say, perhaps the first category, because God, the Son of God, abased Himself, made Himself poor to walk with us on the road.  And this is our poverty:  the poverty of the flesh of Christ, the poverty that the Son of God brought us with His Incarnation.  A poor Church for the poor begins by going to the flesh of Christ.  If we go to the flesh of Christ, we begin to understand something, to understand what this poverty is, the poverty of the Lord.”

These types of ideals are missing in modern society: perhaps the adoption of a new belief system is the real solution to our poverty problem. This year, it seems that Congress could learn a thing or two from the Pope on how to address the issues of the people.

By Nicholas Evangelista

In my writing for electronic media course I was instructed to take some sort of online test in order to show me which group of people I relate to more, light skinned or dark skinned people.

This was highly interesting, I’ve always noticed myself leaning towards one set group of friends more than the other which of course were two different race groups.

Now even though I grew up around mainly dark skinned people, I always found myself relating more to the light skinned group throughout high school and I would say even now.

Cousins of mines are light skinned and good friends are the same so before taking this test, I already had a picture in my mind that I one hundred percent related to the light skinned group although I’m dark skinned myself.

It took me through a series of tests, asking me to group words together along with colored and non colored faces to sort of calculate which group I related to and clicked into the group faster.

I knew, or at least thought I knew for a fact that my score would indicate that I would relate with the lighter skinned individuals, but to my surprise, I was wrong.

Then it dawned on me, this is a computer test that I didn’t even take seriously because once I learn how something works, I tend to attempt to speed through it; so for example once I knew I had to press a certain button to group a dark face with the others then my muscle memory would allow me to do it faster when it reoccurs.

There’s no way you could tell which group I am more familiar with based off of a computer test, I believe it would take a bit more studying and information to be taken down before you can make that assumption. Until then…….

On August 9, 2014 in Ferguson, MO an unarmed black teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed which gain national media coverage. What goes beyond this horrific event is that economic justice has not serve minorities which furthers widen the gap of income inequality among white Americans. Colin Gordon did a fantastic blog titled “Segregation’s Long Shadow” in which he explained, “In 2012, median black family income ($40,517) was 61.5 percent of white median income ($53,706).” I would argue that historically that the U.S. Constitution and the legal system allowed whites to acquire wealth and power off the back of black slave labor. Back then, the foundation was laid for whites to have better educated resources and slave laws to suppress black revolts. I feel even the legal system back then was a major player to further enhance income inequality to blacks and later on in time to all minorities. A good example would be the famous 1857 Dred Scott case which stated that blacks had no rights and economic aid to blacks was against the Constitution. Fast forward to 2015 and it seems like a modern day slave plantation. According to the Pew Research Center George Gao stated, “In 2010, all black men were six times as likely as all white men to be incarcerated in federal, state and local jails, according to a 2013 Pew Research Center Study.” Yes we do have affirmation action but I do not feel it is not enough to balance income equality towards everyone. When black males are mostly criminalized like Michael Brown this destroys the black family unit. A household that is raised by a single black mother is more difficult to sustain a financial cushion. This does not excuse blacks and other minorities from engaging in petty criminal activities and they should be held accountable. However, the system should provide more financial opportunity across the board in urban cities. More financial opportunities lead to less criminal activities, leads to more co-parenting leads to better educated resource.

         Am I Racist

And the answer is ‘inconclusive.’ According to the Implicit Bias Test after five separate attempts there were too many errors to determine a result.

Thing is do I really need a test to determine if I’m in favor of or against a particular group?This test wouldn’t be able to determine that MY PREFERENCE is multicultural. But it would box me in a category of white or black. Although it would have been interesting to see my results, I feel that this test had too many restrictions. I asked myself did the structure of this test make sense and Why was it?

CONFUSING. When having to choose a black or white face along with the word associations and pressing the letters { E or I} it became very frustrating and confusing to me to match up the correct identities. I felt like i was playing a game instead.

TIMED. I know first impressions are usually based on what we see. But my biggest problem with this test is that you have to rush to give an answer. If you rush how accurate is your answer?

LIMITED. The questions that were being asked in this test had a lot to do with upbringing. Asking for things like zip codes and parents point of views about black or white are all important aspects of trying to get a full understanding of someones preference.

WHAT ABOUT QUESTIONS THAT ALSO HAVE DIRECT INFLUENCES ON US SUCH AS: 

Music Social Media

Which do you choose? 

This test might help you to determine your subconscious feelings.

Click The Link: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html

By: Krystal Copeland