I've been really diggin the American Indian unit right now, I like how this unit ties back to our African American unit as well. The way that the caricatures and stereotypes change throughout history make the topic interesting because you could pinpoint certain parts of history that really paved the way for the future. Really cool stuff.
My book "The Black Image in the White Mind" is hella nice, though sometimes monotonous. I thought that the first few chapters regarding African American representation in news broadcasts was really neat as that was not the first concept that came to my head when talking about African American portrayal in media. The average person is either watching the news or creative media (like movies and tv shows) so it makes sense why not having black "experts" come onto news broadcasts can subconsciously make the viewers think a certain way. I don't know, I thought it was really fun to read into something that was unexpected. The book itself itself is nice and I'm really looking forward to writing that book report. Everything is somewhat straightforward, I think, so I'll definitely be talking about the major themes and discussion points of the book during my report. Also, little fun thing I just found: my first grade Native American Day pictures! This was at a private catholic school in Atlanta with all my kids in my class. Talk about cultural appropriation! Obviously I thought this was all fine and dandy at the time, but shame on the parents for allowing this. I asked my mom about why this was an activity we all were apart of, she thought that it was all fun and games and a good way to learn about the American Indians in the process. She said that everything was private and that no one got hurt, so whats the problem? Theres a whole gallery of pictures that my mom took of me but heres the one that I personally like the most. Cheers.
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I didn't post something last week because I fell asleep at the keyboard Friday night last week and I didn't want to post a blog post late. This post is covering the two weeks, kinda.
I've been really appreciating the movies we've been watching about race. I thought that "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" was a good watch that really made the viewer question the stereotypes of African Americans. Just like the Draytons and Tilly, the viewer subconsciously might think that Dr. Prentice is all fake and has ulterior motives due to the "buck" caricature. The audience eventually sees that Dr. Prentice is a great guy and doesn't have any problems, defying the stereotypes. I guess this showed racist audiences that African Americans are just normal people and that they don't deserve the bad stereotypes. "The Evolution of a Criminal", "Good Hair", and "Trouble in the Water" gives viewers a real life view of African American lifestyles and communities. The movies are genuine, they're movies about blacks made by blacks. This prevents other people from adding their own twist to the movies. Overall, all the movies are grand. I had a blast watching them. I really liked getting a new perspective on life and the various communities in African American lives. My choice book on race is "The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America" . I'll be honest, I haven't really read my book. Mainly due to the fact that I just got my book yesterday. I know I'm screwing myself over for the future. I'm sorry, I'll try to make up the fact that I haven't read my book yet. When it came down to my performance task this week, I was pretty much free. I had to write up a little bit and had to read more into my book, but for the most part I was finished with the performance task last week. All I really ended up changing was that I added some sub titles of the techniques I was using and that I fixed a grammatical error or two. Most of my time working on the performance task this week was making the text portion, which I feel like is still lacking in book references.
But what really got me wound up this week was what we all talked about during class involving white privilege. I'm all for having an open mind when approaching topics like this. During the gender unit I felt very informed and had to do some self-reflection about how I personally saw the codes of gender. That was all fine and dandy, I had a great time in that unit. What really got to me recently was our whole class discussion about white privilege and the various videos talking about the topic. I ended up realizing something about myself that I sort of knew before but never fully understood until that lesson. White privilege is something I really want to avoid until I spend more time looking into it. The problem that I faced was that the debate had no right or wrong answers, everyone's opinion can be correct when discussing white privilege. I could possibly debate about whether or not teachers should carry firearms on campus but I wouldn't even stand a chance trying to debate whether or not white privilege exists. I felt like I couldn't even give my real opinion on the matter because there could've been some loophole in my statement and I would've been outed as a racist or something. The topic is extremely broad and complex, I just don't have that knowledge to really share my opinion about it. It also doesn't help that I'm a perfectly average, normal white guy that has experienced some white privilege here and there, so I felt like my voice on the situation was null. What I'm going to work on is listening more than speaking, as I have much to learn. I'm very eager to grow in that sense. |
AuthorMy name is James King. I'm a senior and extremely passionate about lifting, video gaming, and cycling. If you want to be friends with me just bring one of those bad boys up with me in class and we're gonna be buddies real quick. Archives
May 2018
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