5/29 The Stepford Wives of good liberal intentions and education

 

TALKING POINTS:

    1) "This means that success in institutions- schools, workplaces, and so on - is predicated upon acquisition of the culture of those who are in power. "

            -feels like a big game, that's hard to win and very easy to lose if you can't crack the code of what is being subtlety suggested

    2) "What the school personnel fail to understand is that if the parents were members of the culture of  power and lived by it's rules and codes, then they would transmit those codes to their children."    

            -kids raised in white homes understand these subtleties because they're raised being conditioned to   understand them, if the culture at large is in tandem with those norms then kids raised in any other             home are immediately at a disadvantage because they would have to see the unsaid rules in order to succeed

    3) "I am also suggesting that the appropriate education for the poor children and children of color can only be devised in consultation with adults who share their culture...good liberal intentions are not            enough."

            -these parents and family members have the true keys to educating the educators about what would  make these kids successful in these environments, whether that is being more authoritative or                     taking time to break down the REAL classroom rules (not weird backhanded suggestions)

            -the whole time the author was talking about the suggested rules of the liberal, middle class classroom, I was thinking about the movie Stepford Wives and how it's all about illusion even when the obvious weirdness is staring you in the face. Everyone is trying to convince you that everything is normal and right and in the end you just don't get it and have to questions your sanity. 

*This author is arguing that... if we truly want to change education, make it equitable for everyone participating...then we HAVE to consider our methods and realize that the passive and hidden manner in which we have been facilitating classrooms is NOT working. Every child has the capacity to learn and as educators, we HAVE to LISTEN (and hear), respect, and modify our methods in order to give every one the education they deserve.         

5/27 "If we can't see it, then it doesn't exist"

Reading through "Colorblindness is the New Racism" by Armstrong and Wilder was reminding me of all the conversations and debates I remember hearing continually in the tragedy of 2020. The topic of colorblindness came up a lot and for good reason. I appreciate the thorough scope of this article in regards to the subject because, as I am ever-learning, I so desperately need the words and articulation of these topics in order to combat these things in myself. My white privilege is something I need to refocus on as much as I can because of how much I wouldn't notice it if I did not attempt this practice. For example, I am always fascinated by my own unawareness of how prevalent whiteness is in the media until I stop and focus on it. Thinking about it from the perspective of someone of another race, it feels so important when a POC is the center and direct focus of media. I remember how big of an impact it made when I saw Rogue One in theaters and Diego Luna used his own accent in the film. Afterward I saw someone I followed on Instagram, who was Hispanic, re-post a story about how someone's dad thought it was so cool that he had the same accent as a main protagonist Star Wars character. I could feel in that moment how special it is to see yourself reflected in the media, as much as a person who is surrounded by their reflection can. 

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/rogue-one-diego-lunas-accent-gave-a-voice-a-new-set-fans-961343/

    "The emphasis on discrimination alone, as if it existed in a vacuum, obscures the operation of privilege, thus aiding in its perpetuation", this quote describes well the frustration of our current world. It's hard to fight something that people gaslight themselves and others into not seeing. You can't fight an invisible thing. As we noted in the previous text by Johnson, "Ignoring privilege keeps us in a state of unreality, by promoting the illusion that difference by itself is the problem".

    Looking for the "me" in each individual is such a sweet practice. Not in a condescending sense of the word "sweet", but to truly acknowledge that every individual can be a set of nuances all their own and attempt to find your similarities is a life-giving practice. I love that moment of finding someone that appears as though they may be my opposite, and connecting on something I never would have assumed about them. It makes the world feel a lot closer and smaller, like a big neighborhood.

    I appreciated that the authors gave a constructive practice, color insight, to combat the colorblindness rhetoric. In a classroom setting, for elementary students, I think this practice could be adapted a little and could be meaningful to start the conversation of race. I think that students this age love sharing stories so the use of the "grandmother story" would be a great opportunity for them to do some at-home research and come back to share their family history and then have the class examine which parts of the grandmother's story resonates with their own.

I also thought it was hilarious that the author used the word "piecemeal" twice in this article.

Overall, I enjoyed Armstrong and Wildman's breakdown of the importance of exposing colorblindness while offering some practices that would be easy to use in a classroom setting (no matter age of the students) to bring race into the conversation.

I could not, sadly, open the Vox article to read but did find this video from a news anchor making a personal statement about All Lives Matter vs Black Lives Matter. TRIGGER WARNING: video of police violence against George Floyd at 1:31.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgrKSsCcBLg

5/22 Intro's and Johnson

While reading through Introduction: Creating Classrooms for Equality and Social Justice by "the editors", I was struck by the distinct feeling of hope. Not to be too cheesy or hyperbolic but I so enjoyed the perspective that this intro was written with. It really set the scene for this class and giving me so much purpose in why we do this work, in order to give our students a better world to grow up in. Creating classrooms that invoke feelings of safety and inclusiveness, while challenging the failing structures of Western education is a central focus of this bold "call to action" and an appropriate one.

"All of us are part of the problem" was a gripping start to the first few chapters of Johnson's book Privilege, Power and Difference. There was so much meat in this article that it took me a while to process. I so appreciate the author's honesty while discussing the difficulties of speaking with his friend, a black woman, about both of their experiences with these topics ("her misfortune is tied to my fortune", was a poignant statement that brings to light the feelings of shame and shaky-footing that comes along with a white person attempting to talk with their friend who is in an unprivileged category. It is a sentiment I have experienced before. The tragedy compounds when then, because of the hesitancy we feel (because of the shame, etc), we DO NOT delve into these discussions. The author argues that the ease in which the dominant group can choose NOT to participate in these conversations (start them) is the "single most powerful barrier to change" around this topic. I have heard so much recently about this topic that Johnson brought up in this article about how "no one is white before he/she came to American and that it took generations and a vast amount of coercion before this became a white country"-James Baldwin. America has such a distinct view of race/sex/sexuality/class. There is a theme that America places a negative (or positive) weight of someone's identifying factors as a value system, more distinctly/broadly than maybe any other place in the world. 

Considering the concept that people want to be valued in their workplace for what they can contribute, I was thinking about the show Love is Blind and how they tried to eliminate some of the ways we judge each other negatively (unfairly) and assign bias based on the physical attributes of another person. It would be an interesting experiment to have an entire company hire with this concept in mind; have the person interviewing use a device to disguise their voice and not be visible for the interview. They would have to be judged solely off of their resume and answers during the interview. I don't think this would be the ideal situation. It would be nice to be valued just as you are without having to hide in order to be judged off of merits alone, however we do not yet live in that world yet. I also was thinking about how remote work has changed some of those dynamics, do people even know what their employees and coworkers look like? How does that change their perception of each other. 

At the end of the article, I noted that in order to experience oppression you MUST exist in an oppressed category. I wrote in my notes, "so white, heterosexual, male, wealthy people cannot be oppressed?". The author did discuss that it is possible (even though they don't experience oppression) that they can still have hardships in life but they still will carry the benefits of their privilege. 

FIRST POST

 Thank goodness that this worked.

My husband, Shaun, and I on a date. We love to explore wherever we live and go to any local spots. 

Traveling to MI to see family and go to the lake is my favorite, any activity on the water is my safe space. 

Paddle-boarding in the summertime <3

Sometimes how I feel when the kiddos that come in my office have complex problems.