Paul’s words

Today’s Alpha Beta activity reminded me that one’s perception of different cultures is heavily influenced by one’s personal experience.  

In an earlier post, I talked about the “warmth” and friendliness of the Mexican teachers that we talked with last week.  I spoke briefly of my travels to Mexico and how welcoming the Mexican people are.  My intentions were to encourage people to get to know our neighbors.  

The problem is that I generalized about Mexicans and based such generalizations off of my  one year stint alone in Mexico last year.  I still believe the Mexicans to be a very warm and welcoming people, but it was unfair of me to not to qualify that a person’s experience in Mexico and any other country will be influenced by many factors that include your language, race, gender, sexual orientation etc.  Like Americans, Mexicans have stereotypes that influence their perceptions of people.  Thus my experiences as a White straight man who was relatively fluent in Spanish will be different than those of a White Lesbian with little Spanish fluency.  Other factors such as your personality, upbringing, personal connections, and whether you travel or live with someone else in Mexico will dictate your own experience.  

I still encourage everyone to go to Mexico if they get the chance.  I could paint you my picture of Mexico, but you might as well just go and see it for yourself.      

OK, so today’s discussion on gentrification led me to finally check out the Beltline website.  http://beltline.org/  It’s clear that there are a lot of people investing and participating in this project already.  They have local study groups already formed which supposedly represent the concerns of the different regions of the city.  It appears that anyone can go to these study group meetings.  There is also an affordable housing board that meets once a month to discuss affordable housing issues.  I think I will make a point of going to their meeting next month if anybody is interested in going.    

Today was a significant day for me.  I greatly appreciated Sylvia’s response to my comments about the stresses that I perceive Blacks’s confront as they consider current day racial injustices.  It made me realize that I must be more conscious of my status as a racially privileged individual.  Thus, when I think about what struggles a Black person or any other minority experience, I must realize that it is a mere privilege to imagine what it would be like to walk in the shoes of a racial minority.  A Black person can imagine what it might be like to live as a White person, but they do not have the luxury of returning to a place of racial privilege.

Today’s class also made me realize how much more comfortable it is for me, as a beneficiary of White privilege, to talk about race openly.  I do not wake up everyday, look in the mirror and think about my race.  I do not, nor have I ever questioned whether I will be falsely accused of making noise in class or cheating on a test because of my race.  I do not question whether I will be letting my race down or confirming racial stereotypes that perpetuate stigmatization of my race.  I will never know what it feels like to actually live as a Black person in America.  I can only try to comprehend the struggles that Black people face, and do my best to prevent and oppose the racial injustices that perpetuate such present day inequalities.  

            It seems that the best way to go about preventing racial injustices is by working to eliminate racial inequalities within schools.   But it will also require that we work with people outside school communities, and inspire them to question their responsibilities as they relate to reducing racial inequalities.  

After watching Jane Elliote’s video today in class, I was bummed to hear so many Black people in class use the word “reality” to describe Elliote’s video.  I assumed that most Black students would have thought that the video was outdated in terms of how Blacks feel they are treated by society today.  Even though I understand that there are some people today who do in fact treat Blacks with the same degree of disrespect that Jane Elliote used in her interactions with the Blue Eyed Adults, it was my understanding that such disrespect was more common thirty years ago.   

I am interested to hear more about what my classmates have to say about how Black Americans feel that they are disrespected.  It is my initial sense that while many Black students in our class have been disrespected on the level seen in the video, the majority of their everyday stresses are more subtle and in some ways more difficult to understand and address. 

Take our discussion on hurricane Katrina.  As Mr. Dr. Williams noted, many in the press blamed FEMA and the breakdown of communication between the local and federal government as reasons for the failed relief effort.  Despite the fact that these are potentially valid reasons for the failed relief effort, Black people were still confronted with the dilemma of having to question the extent to which relief failures were influenced by race.  This is not an easy dilemma to face.  I would guess that given our countries historical and current day treatment of Blacks,  a Black person might naturally suspect that Katrina was just another example of government’s and society’s failure to address persisting racial inequalities.  Yet, the difficult part about facing this potential reality is not concluding that race influenced the relief effort, but more-so finding a way to address such a concern.  If you as a Black person claim that racial prejudices explain the major failures of the relief effort, you are likely to be perceived by some Whites as shortsighted, ignorant, and stuck in the past.    I say this not in an attempt to discount racial prejudice, but more-so to affirm that such prejudices exist and likely cause anxiety among Blacks as they try to evaluate the extent to which racial prejudice influeces their lives.

I look forward to continuing our discussion about how people in our class act differently as a result of stereotype threats.  The discussion will undoubtedly allow me to grow in my understanding of how these threats create stress in the lives of people that face social dilemas that are different from my own. 

Given that I didn’t blog on Wednesday evening, I thought that I would say a few words to those people who were thinking about taking the 3 week trip to Mexico.  While I cannot speak for the actual trip, I did spend all of 2007 living in Mexico.

I would not be surprised if many of you noticed the warmth and friendliness of the teachers that visited us.  Well, I just wanted to quickly attest that this warm energy was  something that I found in most Mexicans that I have met.  The Mexicans are an extremely welcoming people who will not hesitate to invite you for a drink, joke around and share with you their customs.  I highly encourage all of you to make the trip someday to get to know our Mexican sisters and brothers. 

While there were many great things about the trip to Serenbe, I thought Michael and Jessica’s presentation of their national movement to advance a quality education was the most significant.  The key part to this education in my eyes is that it encourages children to be conscience of social justice history as well as the social justice issues that we face in the present day.  The greatest of these issues being attainment of a quality education.  The Constitution of Georgia already requires that every student have the right to a quality education.   Yes, it will be important for teachers and students to push for more national and statewide funding of schools, but it will be just as important, if not more important to form a community of teachers and students who come to a consensus on how (specifically) such funds and reforms will be implemented.

“Unfortunately, the WASL creates panic, insecurity, low self esteem, and sadness for our children.”

This quotation comes from the letter the Seattle teacher produced in giving his reasoning behind his refusal to administer WASL, the state end of grade assesment test.  I chose the quotation bacause it speaks to a concern that we did not disguss in class.  How do we as future teachers monitor and the limit the potentially damaging effects end of grade tests have on a student’s self esteem?

Do we tell them that assessment tests aren’t important?  While what we tell our student’s is dependent on the actual test, it is important that we place the test within the greater context their lives as learners.   For example, a question on a test may measure whether or not a student remembers a mathematical formula, but it will not measure the creativty a student exerted on his or her fall science project or the perseverance that student showed earlier in the year when strugling with a different mathamatical concept.  In sharing this greater context of achievement with students we can hopefully lessen the pressures they put on themselves and each other.

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