Critical Reflection 2

What?

The Participant Observation chapter had LOADS of information to offer and deciphering through all of it was a daunting task. I gathered that the gist of the reading was to provide an abundance of strategies and tips for researchers — specifically researchers who will be emerging themselves in the environment they will be researching. These are referred to participant observers. They are being active in a community or society while also doing research. Learning through doing type of thing. Table 3.4, which is just one of six tables in the chapter, discusses general things to observe. Inadvertently I implemented part of this table on the first day I did my Service Learning this semester. When I walked into the room on the first day I was trying to figure out who Tran Nguyen was. Up until this day I had only corresponded with her over e-mail, so to help myself out I did a quick observation of people’s appearance and their respective verbal behavior/interactions. And that quick 5 second observation actually totally helped me figure out who she was. Table 3.6 has some strategies and tips for note-taking while in the field. One of the main things it talks about is expanding the notes rendered as soon as possible. This is something that I know I could be better at. Often times I don’t write my impacts until Sunday even though my SL is on Friday afternoons. Sometimes it is hard to write my impacts as soon as possible though as my Friday nights are usually consumed with work. I will try to be more diligent about when I write them though as I have noticed that sometimes it is hard to recall exactly everything that happened on Friday when I write the impacts on Sunday afternoon.

So what?

The concept of The Other is something that has been discussed in FOUR of my classes here at Dominican — two of my religion class, my ethics class, and now this one. It isn’t a particularly new concept for me. In the most simplest form, The Other, to me, refers to anyone who isn’t like me. In that sense anyone could potentially be the other. Depending on the circumstance and how I choose to identify myself I could be the majority or The Other at any given time. For example if I want to a festival for redheads, I would be the majority in that particular setting, but most of the time I’m an Other because I am a redhead. My red hair is something I identify heavily with as it sets me apart from about 98% of the population. I actually get a kick out of being The Other in that sense; it is genuinely gratifying. However, when I do my service learning I am the epitome of The Other in that setting, and sometimes it does give a bit of an odd feeling. Not a bad feeling or an uncomfortable one, just a feeling that makes me really reflect on who I am,and who the individuals are who I am getting the opportunity to work with. When I do my Service Learning I am not only the only redhead in the room, but I am also the only white girl in the room too. Everyone else in Vietnamese. There are two other Dominican students there. One of which is Vietnamese and the other is Hispanic. Based on my last name though one would likely think I am not as white as they come — if not whiter. It is actually hilarious to see people’s reactions when they find out my last name is Valdez. You can just totally tell from their facial expressions that they’re thinking “how are you a ‘Valdez’”? Going back to my community partner though I actually like being in the position of the complete other. Like I said it gives me a lot of material to reflect and write on, and it is good to be put in that situation because even though I like to say that my red hair grants me the feeling of being Othered, 9 times out of 10 I really can’t use that to my advantage. I am a white middle class woman. Not exactly a minority, and I certainly don’t fall into any real jeopardizing categories.

Now what?

I’ll be honest, it was really difficult for me to understand John Powell’s video. Not a lot of it really resonated with me. I watched it a number of times too, and each time it just kind of bounced off me. I only really remembered the part in the beginning in his speech that was about the anxiety that has been associated with the colorization of America. Powell was talking about two different books that discussed this particular issue and one of them was much better than the other. Thinking about it further I do think there is that sense of anxiety in a lot of Americans when it comes to the immigration status of this country. Whether it is really addressed as anxiety is debatable. I think this anxiety is expressed sort of indirectly. Maybe one could make the argument that the resistance of certain people is driven by fear. It is a pretty weak argument but a lot of times anxiety is a result of being fearful. Phobias are an anxiety disorder. Though I do think it is pretty illogical to be fearful of a certain group of people. I can understand where it might stem from, but I personally don’t think it is particularly pragmatic. The war, if you will, on immigration seems to be growing more and more each day and no practical resolution seems to be on the horizon. By practical resolution I mean some sort of resolution that doesn’t involve building a wall. The presidential cabinet we have in D.C. nowadays is Othering the rest of the entire world by instilling the acts and laws that it has so far, and is proposing to do so. It’s like they’re trying to separate America out as this superior nation which in its current state is anything but. I’m sorry, but superior nations don’t run like America does and they certainly don’t have presidents like the one we do. Ironically if you were to look at this situation from the perspective of the rest of the world one could make the argument that America is Othering itself from the rest of the world. By creating all these shittin ass policies the leaders of this nation of ours are doing a really fine job at getting even more negative worldly attention. It is not hard to see why a lot of different nations aren’t fond of ours. I think most of us Americans aren’t really that fond of it anymore. Even on the day that I’m writing this there was a horrific school shooting down in Florida, and events like this really drive home the fact that the US of A is a distressed nation. It is a nation full of hate and crime and hate crimes and othering and the way to fix that would most clearly be to eradicate othering, but the process of doing that is more daunting than achievable. It is a pretty much a human fact that you can’t just entirely sway an entire group of people’s thinking. I think it is something that’ll take generations to accomplish. This new age generation has done well for itself in that we seem to be a more accepting bunch, but it is within this new age generation that a lot of these heinous gun crimes are being committed. In this day and age you can hardly breathe without offending somebody and god forbid you aren’t considerate TO EVERY SINGLE PERSON’S POTENTIAL FEELINGS. Because we live in this new age generation of accepting and embracing we have to tippy toe our way through life especially when talking about certain topics in order to ensure that we can include this particular group of people while also making sure we don’t Other a different group.