Buidling bridges or creating gaps?

Chapter seven of Nakkula discusses racial identity development, the labels that are routinely placed upon us and students, and how to break away from the stereotypical teaching of racial identity. I have to admit that before I started this graduate program I was very insecure with talking about race with my students. I consider my school to be racially and culturally diverse, and being a young, white, woman, I was unsure how to approach race and to have meaningful and respectful conversations about it. By learning about things like SCWAAMP, color-blindness, and the theories in Nakkula, I feel more prepared and able to discuss racial identity with my students. I have often thought of Nakkula as a book that addresses all the puzzle pieces that make up the students in front of us, and again I believe that this chapter addresses one of the pieces to that complete puzzle.


While reading this chapter, I can't help but think of a show that I have recently seen advertised on ABC. The show, "Black-ish" is about a family that lives in the suburbs and how they adjust to that life. You can watch the trailer here. The problem with this show, is that from what I can tell by the trailer, it does exactly what Nakkula says that we do all the time. "Students and teachers alike are routinely asked to select a specific racial identity when filling out forms and taking standardized tests....inevitably produces numerous quandaries that seldom get the attention they deserve: "My mom is Puerto Rican and my dad is Black-which box do I check?"(121)." The family in the show are trying to figure out which 'box' they are going to check. Some may say that by trying out different things they are figuring out who they are, but I think that they the show as a whole is seriously playing into a stereotype that 'Black people do not live in nice neighborhoods with great jobs, so they don't know how to act when they do.' I found this other video that talks about exactly this idea. Is the show progressive or problematic? This made me think also of when Lupita Nyong'o won an Academy Award. There were so many comments by news anchors, critics, and viewers that said something like "wow, she is really beautiful." The tone was almost as if it was shocking. It really troubles me that there is so much disrespect for other races. I do not think that we should be color-blind, but we really do need to break down the walls that still exist in society around race. Nakkula says on page 124, "regardless of its lack of basis in scientific fact, "race" functions as a segregating marker of power in nearly all societies on earth." There are many that would disagree with this, but I challenge the most skeptical person to take a look at the wage gap that still exists not only in gender, but in race as well.


I think that a lot of time I automatically and unintentionally mix race and ethnicity together. I am now aware that they are different pieces of the puzzle and needed to be treated as such. I came across this great blog that explains racial identity development quickly according to the theory, some of which were mentioned in Nakkula.