Critical Reflection #4
During Baldwins explanation of the “Paradox of Education”, he talks about how each society in our world has their own educational system unique t their social standards that allow for their future children to see the world in their own image. The flaw is however, each community has a different style of teaching their children, for example, Baldwin explains how the children raised during the third Reich grew up to become “barbarians” because if the negative ideologies that were implied to them at a young age. Baldwin uses black individuals as an example as countering the education system with their long forgotten black history of being oppressed. In most of the African population, kids are born with a disadvantage that most other races do not have. For their race already being in a bad upbringing, it is still relevant today in that most of them live in cramped community housings and are not able to really see the beauty of the world while stuck in those areas. This does not allow for them to become motivated in school and often turn to crime or other illegal things. In Audre Laurd’s dialogue, as a black lesbian woman, she has been oppressed living in America for those two things that she carries with her. She believes that people who are different from the social norm are often oppressed with hatred and not being accepted in society. Living as a black lesbian, she did not have that voice that let’s say a heterosexual male could possess. This social myth is well alive and I can see many lesbians or black individuals are being oppressed in their day to day lives. During Jose’s time, he said he followed the “cup of promise” or “the American dream”, in that he wanted to pursue a better career from Tijuana to going to America. What he did not realize however, is that 11 million other undocumented were on the same journey as him. This made Jose a small fish in a big pond. All these undocumented immigrants created a negative growth explained with economists, and they mostly blame it on the illegal immigrants. They become pests that the government has to deal with and all these undocumented immigrants are looked down upon. In the social society that Americans live in, we often look down upon undocumented immigrants as criminals or cheap indispensable labor. This could also be correlated to blacks living in the early 20th century.
These three authors use their identity to explain the tiracy of our society living today in different ways such as our educational system and their own identity. These two things help to fuel all the prejudice that goes on in our society. Having to teach our future generation a systematic educational system that often looks down on people who are not of the norm, gives them the voice to look at others in a different perspective, as Baldwin explains, our educational system allows for our children to look at the world in their own eyes and to know what is right or wrong. In the other two readings, being of the minority in the United States arises many societal issues that these people were educated in.
“The decision to strive towards unity in self and community”
I want to implement this into my community work in that, helping these children will not only help them to be successful, but I could potentially learn something more about myself. In doing this, I can hopefully learn more about them and for me to become more educated in how I could help these children.
In a country where undocumented immigrants are looked down upon, I went to a fairly diverse high school with all different ethnicities. In that, I met some kids my age who were underfunded, and they were one of the most humble and hardworking people I have met. I was educated to respect people of any background, and I want to be able to give back to the community that has such a humble and hardworking background. These people work so hard and do not receive the benefits that they should be getting, and by simply tutoring these people, I can at least help them with school work. As being known as a negative growth by economists, I feel that this should not be necessary at all because although they are undocumented, they are in the foundations of our country and doing all the back breaking work that nobody would want to do. Without them, we would not be able to produce twice as much as any country in goods and services. I feel that they deserve to be more recognized in our country rather than being a parasite as what most economists refer them as.
