Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Time to take off the sunglasses...
Armstrong and Wildman have much to say about color blindness and color insight and a quote that resonated with me is "Society cannot battle a phantom that it cannot recognize by name."(67) I feel like too often we try and sweep certain issues "under the rug" because they make us uncomfortable or we do not know how to respond to them in a 'politically correct manner'. This way of dealing with issues is not helpful to us or our students. I spent a little bit of time reflecting on colorblidness, and how limiting it must be to not see color. So much of what I think is beautiful in the world is color filled, so why would a different attitude be adopted for my outlook of people? Trying to take race out of everything makes the world bland. So much of our richness as a country and society is based around our differneces and embracing them. If we aim to take color out of the world then we will end up with a society of robots. Cookie-cutter adults who have trouble thinking for themselves, and acting like themselves because they have been told what is "right" their whole lives. I think Armstrong and Wildman give us as educators practical strategies for activities with our students. "No person is purely privileged or unprivileged; we are privileged in respect to some categories and not privileged in respect to others."(71) This is a statement that I have been thinking about since our first week of class. It has been unsettleing to me to think that just because I am a white "I have it easier" than someone who is not white. I like the image of the koosh ball as a center object with all things that come out from that center to make it work and look as it does. The pieces of the ball are different, but without them the koosh is not anything out of the ordinary, but rather just an ordinary ball. I feel like I am not making any new observations or thoughts as a result of this reading. I feel like the discussion is very similar to that of Delpit, maybe I am missing the mark...I can't wait to hear thoughts in class tonight.
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In the past, I have always believed that it was not my nature to discriminate therefore; I had no need to pay attention and really take a hard look at race. The last three weeks of reading as really put race at the top of my list of things for me to think about. Armstrong and Wildman help identify the "phantom" and provide examples that really help us to take a closer look at the way we see things. I would agree with you that we often "sweep things under the rug" because of our own internal fears. These kinds of conversations make us feel uncomfortable and therefore; we would rather not face these things head on.
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