Archive for year: 2014

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Unfortunately I was not able to attend class last friday due to a personal matter. However, I would have liked to hear those personal stories that we all have to share in regards to the struggles and barriers that we have all overcome. I would now like to  share a little part of my persona and my identity that I talked about in my paper. I wrote about the fact that I am Mexican and how I, my family, and society view me in many different ways. I mainly focused on the way I was treated throughout my education career. But one thing that I have learned is that all those people  have tried to make me feel guilty and ashamed of who I am as a person. They do not accept the fact that I have the same rights as they do to better my life. And I am achieving this dream by putting my greatest effort into my education. One person that I really owe it to is my mother. She brought me into this country at the age of 6 and raised me and my other five siblings all by herself. I thank God for putting such a wonderful woman in my life.  We all have different identities, but under God we are all brothers and sisters. And sometimes we forget that….

This weeks reading, Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person,  was  interesting because without knowing it the “White” individual possesses rights that are seen on a daily basis in our society.  The author states that the fact that were are born into things such as citizenship, class, gender, and not earned puts some people at an advantage. White individuals can roam the streets without being targeted by police officers since they know that they will cause no harm simply because they were born into a wealthy family. On the other hand if a Bald Latino or an African- American is walking out on the streets that is a sign of danger. And those are the kind of people that a police officer will focus their attention on more often. But I ask myself. What about the school shootings? Most of them where white folks were they not? What happened to having this stereotype that they were born in a healthy and wealthy home? They should not be having mental disorders right? They have all the money and happiness in the world don’t they? The police officers were sure surprised to see that it was not a Latino or African-American that was carrying a gun to school. Also I can relate this to the shooter Elliot Roger that went on shooting sprees in Isla Vista, California next to the UCSB campus. I once again bring up my point, the shooter was White. I read in the newspaper that this individual did not have his apartment searched by police  due to the fact that he looked harmless and a good citizen. However, the Police officers did not know that this young man possessed guns and would go on a rampage on the evening of May 2014. I think police officers should attend matters like this more seriously, and not just come across different cases and take different actions on a “suspect” simply by their skin color.

Last week we were asked to make a presentation about the introductory paper we wrote about our identities. They were all awesome! I liked how everyone was able to share a little about our lives to each other. I realized that even if we all have our own identities, we still share the essence of being college students. These presentations made me feel better about being here at CI, because everyone has their on story to share which sometimes can help motivate another to keep pressing on. I really do appreciate that I as given a chance to share a little about myself to you all. What stood out to me about the presentations was that for the first time since I’ve been on campus, I did not feel alone. I was able to relate with many of my classmates. Although we came from different places and experienced different things, we are all in school for a better future. I feel like this presentation was the perfect opportunity for me to get out of my shell because I am a bit shy. Although we were all expected to present on the overhead projector, I really enjoyed the presentations given by the classmates who did not have a slide show. I’m sure they must have felt more nervous than those who did have one. Even if most of us did not really refer our identities back to the articles, I think we did a good job in explaining who we are and where we want to get to in life.

This week’s readings focused on dominant group privilege, inequalities at school and discrimination amongst minorities. When I was at Santa Monica College, I took a couple of classes that opened my eyes to the oppression that people of color still experience today. Like I have lived through some of the examples I have read about and I have also seen them happen to people I know and it makes me a bit upset. Because I feel as long as someone keeps acknowledging stereotypes the separation won’t end. The reading that stood out the most to me was called “White privilege and male privilege” by Peggy McIntosh because it gives couple of examples of how people of color experience a situation with such stigma and shame that someone from the white privileged group wouldn’t. An example of this can be having a group of young brown men walking down the block as the police rolls through. The guys might be seen as suspects and maybe stopped and be tagged with label of being gang affiliated or even for selling drugs. If a group of white men were walking down the same situation they would have been disturbed of even handcuffed because they are civilized citizens. This often happens back in my hometown. And lately prejudice, racism, and stereotypes have been ending many lives because of the ignorance that lives within the community of people who believe in justice but still decide to turn the other check when the person being victimized for their color is pleading for their defense. I really do hope that this inequality amongst all humanity stops one day.

It seems that white privileges and male privileges are real concerns in our today’s society

because many writers and scholars argue about those privileges. Peggy McIntosh in her essay

argues that white and male privileges exist overtly and covertly in U.S. Historically, we had all

kinds of racism and sexism in the United States. We had slavery, segregation, and men’s ultimate

power in society. But, in my opinion, Peggy McIntosh’s argument is more subjective rather than

objective. Peggy claims all sort of implicit and explicit white and male privileges without

supporting any evidence. Peggy has not done any research or experiment to support her claims.

Peggy just argues about her personal experiences and her ideal society. Therefore, I argue that

Peggy’s point of view is personal experience and more subjective.

However, Stulberg and Weinberg, in their book, Diversity in American Higher Education

argue that white privilege exist in schools in U.S. Stulberg and Weinberg support their arguments

by bringing many evidences. For instance, racial discrimination in schools and stereotyping can

dramatically change teacher-student interaction (Walker, 2007). They also argue that another

great deal of recent research suggest that racial stereotype are a part of everyday school life, and

this has a great negative impact for students of color (Ferguson, 2000). The disadvantage of

Black and Latino students take in many different forms, and Stulberg and Weinberg claim that

some teachers perceive low-income, Black, and Latino students as lower academic capability and

intelligence than white students. I assume that this book is more heavily contributes of liberal

and democrat point of view, and I believe conservatives have opposite and different point of

view from the writers of the book. Thus, I support those writers who support their point of views

by empirical evidences.

In my personal experiences, I have never felt or been in a situation to observe any kind

of implicit or explicit white privilege. In my all classes, I was treated equally. I am a psychology

student and a critical thinker, and I observe any social issues in society without judging people.

But I have never seen or felt white or male privilege, of course, being a male makes more

complicated to accept male privilege. I have been living in the United States for five years, and

sometimes it is hard for me to distinguish those privileges if they exist. I have born and rose in a

patriarchal society, however, I have always believed in equality. Back to my country, Iran, I was

strongly disagreeing about racism, sexism, and heterosexualism. And steel believe in equality in

all societies. I am familiar that how male are privilege in patriarchal society, but I need to study

more about male privilege in U.S. I really enjoyed and learned a lot from my classmates in last

presentation, but I was surprised to hear that some students felt that white privilege and male

privilege exist and they had some kind of experience about it. Furthermore, I hope this

educational journey teaches us how to prevent any kind of privilege, sexism, and racism.

In the previous class we had to present our “Who Am I?” presentations. We had to select one element of our identity and discuss how it has shaped our life in a day to day basis, our educational journey, future goals and overall our life as a whole. I enjoyed hearing my classmates’ presentations because I learned that I have a lot in common with most of my peers. It made me feel more at ease as well as connected with them. I also learned that a couple of my colleagues are the big sister in their family so I can empathize with them a lot since I am also the big sister in my family. A couple of students talked about how they wanted to make their parents proud by getting a degree and have a good career. I can relate a lot to them because not only is being a role model for my siblings my biggest motivator to succeed, but also to make my parents proud of me for my accomplishments. I thought it was interesting to hear how the majority of my peers want to get a college degree to set an example for the people they love and for their benefit. Overall, I feel privileged to have learned an element of their identity.

 

In chapter, Inside the K-12 Pipeline for Black and Latino Students, I was not shocked to learn that Blacks and Latinos have a huge disadvantage in the K-12 school system. While reading this chapter I recalled my own experience in middle and high school. In my high school about 10 percent of my peers were white and the majority of the teachers were white. I witness how teachers had more expectations from the white students than nonwhite students. I believe this inequality is the reason why some of my non-white peers felt discouraged. I felt the same until the school hired an American-Mexican history teacher in my sophomore year. It was her first year teaching and she shared with the class that she was a Stanford graduate. She talked about her own struggles and how she managed to beat the system by working hard to overcome many obstacles. She inspired me to continue my education after high school and beat the system even though it’s working against us Latinos.  The chapter, Testing, No Child Left Behind, and Educational Equity, was an eye-opener for me because after reading I realized that there is a vicious cycle in the K-12 system that will continue on unless the federal government steps in and increases public school funds. I thought a good example of these two chapters is the movie Freedom Writers. The other four articles I read were about White privilege. Although I do not relate to the articles I enjoyed reading them especially, 6 Things White Parents can do to raise Racially Conscious Children, because I believe we can all apply most of the ‘6 things’ when it comes to raising our children.