Race And Racism Analysis

Over the past semester my view on race and racism has evolved and changed in just a short amount of time. Before I read Tatum’s articles on race I did not have a clear understanding of racism. I only knew from my past experiences that it seemed as if only white people were ever deemed a racist and I did not understand why. I even had the idea that other races could be racist too. According to Tatum’s article the term racist and how it can be used depends on your definition of racism, however Tatum concludes that because white people are the dominate group and hold the power that the term racist can only be applied to white people (Tatum 2003). This does not mean that people who are of a race other than white cannot committee racial prejudices, …show more content…
By seeing race and racism instead of ignoring it we can teach our students to celebrate each other and to look further into each other and pass the surface level of serotyping others because of the way a person looks. Lee suggests that it starts in steps but you have to acknowledge that there are students of different races and begin by including supplementary curriculum that has to do with people who are not just white (Lee 2014). Even small changes can spark a start to change the cycle of socialization in students and move towards are more racially diverse education for students. It will be also important for me as a teacher to not feed in to racial stereotypes of my students such as the articles we read about the model minority of Asian students and expecting them to be good at all school subjects, especially math. On the other side there is stereotype threat to African American students that are not expected to do well in school and this threat begins to overcome them and in turn the student who is very capable of doing well in school does not succeed because the lack of support from educators. I am a pre-service History and Government teacher and it will be extremely important for me to be a multicultural educator and to provide examples of historical figures who were not white and to fill in the curriculum with the actual truth. In the article Once upon a Genocide, Bigelow goes into the issue of our history textbooks and how many races are underrepresented in history curriculum to make white people look better (Bigelow 2014). Bigelow’s article discusses Christopher Columbus who until recently has been dubbed a hero in history books yet did horrible damage to the native people living in North America before he sailed in. It is misrepresented history like this