Week 4 - In a Different Voice

I have to say that I wasn’t as pleased with the reading this week as I have been with the past two. I thought the book was good and informative I just think that it is very outdated. The book itself obviously looked very old when I bought it but it wasn’t until I started reading it that I realized just how outdated it really was. I wasn’t even 10 pages in and I decided to look at the copyright date of the book – 1982. Not to sound like an angry feminist, but I wasn’t even born in 1982. I think good portions of the people in this class were not born in 1982. Most of the research was done in the 60's and 70's. Don’t get me wrong some of the information in the text was very good and informative; I think that many of what these reports say may still follow true and translate to today. I feel like even a book on women’s/gender issues written when I was in high school in the early 2000’s would be outdated. For example, just on gender and sexuality, when I was in high school we talked about gay/lesbian issues and had a club. We did not talk about trans-gender or bisexuality. It wasn't until 3-4 years later when I went to college that this became the norm. Maybe I went into this with my hopes too high. I was excited to be reading about gender and women’s issues because for one I am a woman and secondly I am very interested in these issues. Again, I am not trying to completely knock the book or the selection of the book. I think that in Chapter 3 when Gilligan gets into talking about abortion and other sex-related topics is interesting because these topics are very prevalent in young girls these days. It would be very interesting to see the numbers and statistics of what happened 5-10 years ago rather than 30 years ago.

Week 3 - The "Model Minority Stereotype"

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book, but I found that chapter 5 was particularly interesting to read. This chapter is called “Student Voices on Race.” I thought it was an important chapter to have in the book because it ties a lot of the concepts together and brings the issue of race full circle. I suppose that I never thought twice about it but people of a minority can also be racist. Being a white person, I just assumed that any time race or racism is brought up it is white people being racist to a minority group. This chapter points out that minority groups can be racist towards one another and that minorities can also be can also be racist to their own race. 

Based on the book, it seemed that many of the minorities were actually speaking poorly of one another. African American students felt that the Asian Americans were climbing over them and becoming more successful than them faster (pg. 107). Korean students felt that African Americans were lazy and depended on the welfare system to survive. One student even mentions that they would share a drink with a white friend but not with a black person because “we might think they have AIDS or something.” (pg. 109). It was surprising to me that in these examples minorities were so hard and critical of one another and generally had positive things to say about whites. Many students even went so far to say that they wanted to emulate white middle-class students. I wouldn’t expect all minority students to band together and say “let’s take down the whites!” but I did think that they would be a little more understanding toward another minority. 

From the book it seems that different races are always going to make generalizations about other races. For example, the book states that African American students used the terms “Asian, Chinese and Korean” interchangeably. I think it would be a safe assumption that Asian students (or others for that matter) would not know how to categorize African Americans properly. A student would not be able to tell if someone grew up in Trinidad, South Africa, or down the street. I know that I cannot look at any group of people and be able to tell their exact race or ethnicity by appearance. Maybe I’m bad at making judgments but French-Canadian, Irish and English, etc. generally look the same to me, so I don’t mean to offend you by calling you Irish if you’re really not. I doubt that a person who did not know my ethnic background would be able to look at me and pinpoint exactly what ethnicities I am and where my ancestors came from; I would not expect anyone to. 

My question would be how do we overcome this? Can we overcome this? Is there any way that people can stop making generalizations about other groups of people?

Week 2 - Children of Immigration

First of all, I thought that this book was fantastic and very easy to read. It can be a daunting task knowing that you have to read an entire book in one week’s time but I thought that this book was so interesting that it went by very quickly. On that note, I also found it very depressing. Some of the accounts of the different children truly saddened me. 

The story that sticks out most in my mind was that of a nine year old boy from the Dominican Republic. In the book he says “life is good to you if you are pretty and if you are white. If your face looks white and you are not very dark, life is good.” (p. 98). How does a nine year old understand this concept? That is a very heavy burden for a nine year old child to be carrying. At nine years old I can’t even remember thinking about race. Race was absolutely a non factor in my life and this poor child (and countless others) have their childhood stripped away from them because they are worried about being picked on and out casted because the color of their skin? Other children have to bear the burden of being interpreters, babysitting younger siblings while parents are at work and basically taking on the role of the adult. Granted, many immigrants come here for a better life, to escape war, genocide and to build a better life, but these children deserve their childhood. 

And how are we not setting them up for failure? In this book, there were many accounts of the general population reacting negatively to immigrant groups. On page 97 there is a chart that breaks down the different ethnic groups and how people of that group are perceived by others. For every group, the majority of the responses were negative. If we keep acting negatively towards them of course they are going to succumb to that. The book points this out by saying, “[f]or these youth, the response is, ‘You think I’m bad? Let me show you how bad I can be.’” (p. 100). They are mirroring the behavior that is being portrayed out to them. If we tell them that they’re awful, a burden on society and their culture is strange how should we expect them to act? On pages 96-97 the book lists out “most Americans think that we are…” and all of the responses are negative, cruel and malicious. These responses were not coming from adults, but from children ages nine to fourteen. 

I hope that by being in the classroom I can help bring back childhood for some of my students. I hope that I can portray a more positive influence towards their race and culture. I may not be fully aware of many different cultures but it is something that I can learn from my students. At the very least, teachers need to stop the negativity towards these students. It is not their fault that they have been put into the situation that they are in and for them to be punished for that is truly unfair.