For the past two months in ELA, the eighth grade has been learning about how to be anti-racist. We have watched videos from the New York times, taken implicit bias tests, read This Book is Anti-Rascist, and Stamped. We have read interviews, written responses and discussed vocabulary. This unit has changed how I think about my whiteness, and shown me how I have so many different experiences as a member of the dominant culture, then I would if I was a different race. I have learned from this unit that I have to speak out, and if we want to end racism, we have to work together. This is my essay on our unit.
The video “A Conversation With Black Women on Race” struck me as a perfect video to do my final project on. This video from the New York Times really stood out to me throughout our anti racism unit. In the video, several Black women were being interviewed on the intersectionality of being a Black woman. They explained what it was like to feel attacked from multiple sides of their identities. Each woman shared her experiences, and many of them had a similar underlying thread of the feeling that the world is not always kind to them. One part of the video that really stood out to me was when the woman in the orange shirt was talking. She was sharing an experience she had when she had been marginalized. One day when she was at a hotel she was staying at, two uniformed security guards came into the hotel and started asking her questions. “Are you staying in this hotel, what room?” etc. By doing this, the security guard was making, and acting on, the assumption that a Black woman could not possibly be staying at a nice hotel. The woman became very upset. Why was she being targeted? She was a paying guest, and was there for a justice conference, but was being treated like a criminal. Like she didn’t belong. It wasn’t until a white colleague was brought in that they were able to get an official response from the hotel. The idea that because the woman was Black, she couldn’t be staying in the hotel is a ridiculous assumption based on bias. Another part of the video that stood out to me was when one woman was talking about how her father shaded in all of the characters in her books as a toddler, so they had brown skin. To me this is sad. It’s sweet that the dad wants his little girl to grow up having a media representation of people who look like her, but why should he have to do that? Almost every fairy tale princess is white. Why is that? Why is there one race that is superior to others? Little boys and girls should have diverse role models. There was another woman in the video who was talking about how if she had a daughter she would tell her that she was intelligent and beautiful all the time, because she feels like in the media we don’t hear that enough. It’s unfair that the media only represents one group of people when in the world, there are so many more types of beauty than the beauty standards we have today. One other part of the video that stood out to me was when the woman was talking about her chorus concert. The chorus was mostly white girls, and for the play they were doing they got beautiful curled hair. However, The Black girls in the play got a lumpy blob sort of hair style. The woman from the video said that she had confronted the costumer and she had said “Oh well your hair can’t do that.” She had never even bothered to ask. In this situation, the woman from the video had no agency. She had no choice but to do what the costume designer said, even though that style wasn’t as pretty as the other girls. As a performer, I understand the need to feel like you look good. It’s not fair to the Black girls in the play that they had to feel othered. Like they were different and ugly. I thought that the video A Conversation with Black Women on Race was a very thought provoking video. It made me realize how different my life is because of my skin color. I would encourage others to watch this video. I realize that I will never fully understand, but I hope through the media, and interviews I can better educate myself on how to be anti-racist. The interview with Danelle from the book Tell me Who you are, also stood out to me when I was looking for an interview to write about. Danelle is a multiracial woman who is a part of the Dine, Navajo tribe. Growing up she felt different from the others on her reservation. Navajo was the one part of her race she was sure about as a kid, and even then, others on her reservation would try to delegitimize her identity. She explains in her interview how now she has come to realize that being Black and Navajo is a beautiful thing, but getting there was difficult with so many people trying to tell her who she was. The vocabulary word internalized racism seemed like a perfect word to connect to Danelle’s story. In the interview Danelle talks about how even though she spent her whole life on the reservation people would look at her with uncertainty and tell her “You don’t look like a Navajo.” Even though in her eyes, Danelle is just Navajo, people were questioning her identity because of how her skin looked. Danelle is African American, but she didn’t find that out until later in her life. People on the reservation would hold their arms up to hers and say “Wow you’re much darker than me” like it was a bad thing. These microaggressions made Danelle doubt herself. Asking pointed questions, and making comments such as these made Danelle feel like she wasn’t one whole race. They made her feel like because she was half of something, she wasn’t good enough. When people make hurtful comments about race like that, those are examples of overt racism. The kids weren’t trying to hide that they thought darker skin was bad. Danelle says that she didn’t feel like she had a place to fit. There were other mixed race kids on the reservation but their skin was much lighter than hers and wasn’t a noticeable difference. She also says “I felt ostracized from everyone else. Being left out because of your skin color makes me sad. Danelle is a Navajo. She was born and raised on the reservation just like the other kids. Just because she is one thing doesn’t mean she can’t be something else. Danelle says now that she has accepted and learned to love her ethnicity. She says “The melanin in your body is just as beautiful as the curls in your hair.” She also says that she’s proud to be able to speak Navajo. However growing up she should have been accepted too. She shouldn’t only feel welcome now, now that she has a label for the different parts of her ethnicity. This interview made me feel uncomfortable and sad. It’s saddening that Danelle, as a child, felt excluded because she was part of another race along with Navajo. I’m glad that she came to the conclusion that she is beautiful as an adult, but I don’t think that she should have had to wait until an adult to find that beauty. It’s unfortunate that Danelle’s tribe weren’t more welcoming to her, even though their acts may have been through implicit bias rather than them consciously thinking about race. To be anti-racist means to be kind. To be patient. To listen. To like Black people and Brown people and white people, and to not like other Black people and Brown people and white people. It means to see past the color of people’s skin, and like or dislike people based on their personality. To enjoy peoples’ company regardless of their race. To not like people because you are trying to fill a quota of diverse people, but keeping your mind open and finding people whose company you enjoy. Assimilationist is someone who is trying to change you to make you better. They think that certain races aren’t good enough so they say things like “If you straighten your hair then you would fit in better.” Or other things that suggest that if people give up who they are and try to be more like the dominant culture then they’ll be better. They usually believe that they are doing good and genuinely helping. Segregationists believe that people of different races shouldn’t hang out with each other, go to school together, or shop at the same stores. They believe that we should be separated based on our race. The race with which I identify is white. I am a European American. My mom is from the US, my dad from England. I was born in England and moved to the US when I was less than a year old. All of our ancestors are European. Before this unit I didn’t think about my race. Pretty much ever. I realize that that is a privilege that unfortunately not everyone can share. I know that there are people who have a constant consciousness of their race. For a lot of people this is not a voluntary consciousness, it’s something that is forced upon them by our upside down society. I think that since this unit, I have become more aware of the fact that I have this privilege as a white person. I now realize that being white has a complicated history. There were and are some white people who did some really crappy stuff. I’m not proud to be white, but I’m hoping that in my life I will be able to do enough to prove that I’m not a horrible person. I have become more aware of the fact that being white can be whatever I make it, and I need to use it to help people who maybe don’t have as much agency as I do. This unit was meaningful to me because it taught me a lot about myself, and a lot about how different my life would be if I looked different. Race has never been a problem for me. I am part of the dominant culture because I am white. I really am glad that I got to learn about all the people who go through so much because of their race or ethnicity. It really humbled me and showed me how little I know, and how different my life experiences would have been if I was different. It was really good that we learned a lot of the terms from TBIAR. I feel like as our culture progresses and more people start talking about their experiences with race, or gender, or sexuality, we need to have the vocabulary to understand and contribute to those conversations I feel this unit came at a really good time, especially because middle school is when everyone is figuring themselves out. This unit also made me think a lot about racism. We are taught that racists are white men in white robes. Period end of story. This unit made me think about my own implicit bias, and the implicit biases of our American culture in general. My goal is that some time soon I will be able to take any of those Harvard implicit bias tests and say that I have no preference. I think that this unit should absolutely be offered to next year’s eighth graders. It is a really important unit and I hope they get as much out of it as I did.
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