Cultural Exposure
The great topic of “Racism”, lovely. It is something that our generation, when approached, gets quiet about, hush hush, and more or less refuses to talk about. But what is it? In, Everyday Antiracism, it is defined as, “any act that, even unwittingly, tolerates, accepts, or reinforces racially unequal opportunities for children to learn and thrive; allows racial inequalities in opportunity as if they are normal and acceptable; or treats people of color as less worthy or less complex than “white” people.” Now, the real conflict comes when people can be unintentionally practicing racism, when they think they might be doing good. In the educational setting, this may involve the catering to a specific student(s) race that may have proven, in the past, to be prone to fail in certain areas of their education. That singling out, to help with their failures, creates a divide between the majority and the minority. Typically, this divide is between white people/ children, and people/ children of other races (Asian, African, Hispanic, etc.). When a minority student does fail, the educator might put the blame on the culture the student comes from. What does that really mean? Take the example about how educators portray African American students from Ladson-billing’s, It’s Not the Culture of Poverty, It’s the Poverty of Culture. Educators may see obnoxious and loud African American students and simply blame the culture that they come from, assuming all African American students are/will be like that. Unfortunately, they miss the big picture. They miss the external social economic factors that can greatly affect the way a student behaves or participates in school.
Ladson-Billings says that future educators need to first try to interact with students outside of the school setting. This interaction gives the educator the opportunity to understand the student as to why they behave/perform the way they do. In the school setting, it could be difficult to do so since educators are there to educate students. The special catering/ focus to students may be deemed as unintentionally racist. I am pretty sure that I will learn a bunch from the high school students I will be working with. Being Asian, I will probably learn a lot about Guatemalan culture that I did not know before, mostly because I have not immersed myself in a people predominantly Guatemalan. In addition to this, I will be able to learn more about the community through the teens that I will be interacting with. This will help me better understand different people, and this understanding will be available to me when I need to interact with a people similar to the Guatemalan teens from the Canal. Not only will I be learning, but the teens will be learning as well, as I bring another “culture” to the table. One quote from Ladson-billing’s, It’s Not the Culture of Poverty, It’s the Poverty of Culture, encompasses this idea of co-learning. “Ultimately, our students will have to learn to be more discerning about culture and its role in education so that they will not contribute to either the culture of poverty or the poverty of culture.”
I value the idea of diversity, but to a certain extent. It’s a great idea since it allows people that are of the same culture to interact with each other and become a support system. It also exposes others to the different. Now, it starts to become iffy when people ONLY interact with their own culture. They get stuck in their hole of people, and they rely on this people. I moved to Truckee for high school, and this exposed me to a new people. I was the only Asian at my high school, and the rest of the school was white and Hispanic. This allowed me to explore a different people, even though it was very hard to interact with them at first due to the ridicule that I received. I can try my best to facilitate a curiosity in culture rather than hurtful comments or assumptions. Unfortunately, racialized comments will continue to occur, but hopefully creating an understanding would deter people and students from creating hurtful assumptions and ideas.
