The weeks where we learned about whiteness and the property value of whiteness helped me learn about myself and learn from myself. One thing I learned about myself, which was the toughest thing to learn about myself, but it is getting easier to accept is that I fit into the category of a closet racist like Paul Gorski talks about in his article “Language of Closet Racism: An Illustration”. It was hard to accept at first because I always believed that I was a person who never discriminate against a person based on their skin colour, but I have never really learned about closet racism before this class and now with the information from this class I can see that some of my action fit into category of closet racism. Being able to see that I fit
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One aspect I really connected with was the idea that colour-blindness is oppressive because by denying that race exists it suggests that everyone is equal to white people and that there is no oppression. (Chiariello, 2016) This is important for me to learn because I had the thought that not seeing race was a good thing, but now I can see that by not seeing race it undermines the history of what has happened and what continues to happen because of race. This is also very important when it comes to teaching because if I were to go into a class and teach how race essentially does not matter and I am colour-blind to it I would be alienating students who are part of the minority and disregarding their perspectives. By doing that it would also help perpetuate that problem of oppression. This disregard for skin colour, which still has white on top also can create an environment where people become hyper aware of skin color to the point where there are hierarchies of skin among skin colours because ignoring it does not allow children or adults to learn about race in a healthy way. In the article “What’s ‘Colorism’?” by David Knight, he discusses how he “witnessed high school students identify, categorize and stereotype their peers based on skin tone.” (Knight, 2015, p.46) …show more content…
I found that even though I was familiar with what feminism was there was something to learn from the article “Fight Like a Girl: How to be a Fearless Feminist” by Seely. I learned from that article that is still had believes about the myth of feminism. One myth that I had believed was the myth of bra burnings. I actually thought that it was a literal bra burning and I never realized that it has had a negative impact on the feminism movement because bra burning is seen as a radical movement in feminism. (Seely, 2007) I have learned that I need to learn more about feminism, for two reasons, one it affects me, and it will also effect my future students. Essentialism when it comes to feminism is the idea that the patriarchy is all that has ever been and it is impossible to escape. (Johnson, 1997) I never realized how harmful this idea can be to society and how it disregards the fact that different societies such as some Indigenous tribes were matrilineal and traced kinship through women. (Johnson, 1997) What I have learned from this is that labels that are used to encompass an entire race, sex, gender, population are not only harmful towards everyone, but they
One aspect I really connected with was the idea that colour-blindness is oppressive because by denying that race exists it suggests that everyone is equal to white people and that there is no oppression. (Chiariello, 2016) This is important for me to learn because I had the thought that not seeing race was a good thing, but now I can see that by not seeing race it undermines the history of what has happened and what continues to happen because of race. This is also very important when it comes to teaching because if I were to go into a class and teach how race essentially does not matter and I am colour-blind to it I would be alienating students who are part of the minority and disregarding their perspectives. By doing that it would also help perpetuate that problem of oppression. This disregard for skin colour, which still has white on top also can create an environment where people become hyper aware of skin color to the point where there are hierarchies of skin among skin colours because ignoring it does not allow children or adults to learn about race in a healthy way. In the article “What’s ‘Colorism’?” by David Knight, he discusses how he “witnessed high school students identify, categorize and stereotype their peers based on skin tone.” (Knight, 2015, p.46) …show more content…
I found that even though I was familiar with what feminism was there was something to learn from the article “Fight Like a Girl: How to be a Fearless Feminist” by Seely. I learned from that article that is still had believes about the myth of feminism. One myth that I had believed was the myth of bra burnings. I actually thought that it was a literal bra burning and I never realized that it has had a negative impact on the feminism movement because bra burning is seen as a radical movement in feminism. (Seely, 2007) I have learned that I need to learn more about feminism, for two reasons, one it affects me, and it will also effect my future students. Essentialism when it comes to feminism is the idea that the patriarchy is all that has ever been and it is impossible to escape. (Johnson, 1997) I never realized how harmful this idea can be to society and how it disregards the fact that different societies such as some Indigenous tribes were matrilineal and traced kinship through women. (Johnson, 1997) What I have learned from this is that labels that are used to encompass an entire race, sex, gender, population are not only harmful towards everyone, but they