Blog #2 (:

Lat week’s class consisted of many interesting things, for the first part Julian provided us with reading techniques that we can use for this and any of our other classes. I found many of those techniques very useful, I actually used a couple of them for this weeks readings.  The rest part of the class focused on the reading topics that mainly had to do with white privilege. I really enjoyed the activity that Jaimie had us do, the privilege walk. This activity really opened my eyes to how fortunate and lucky I am to be where I am today. Although some of my classmates have been in a sense more privileged than me, we are all in the same position today. It was also kinda of nice to see that although many classmates have experienced being unprivileged in some time in their lives, we all continue striving for that success that we want so bad. After the activity we moved on to talking about the chapters in the book and the articles , we talked about chapter two and how the K-12 pipeline for Black and Latino students. We saw how race was a major aspect in regards on how children get treated in the K-12 system. Although we have come far from segregation and discrimination in schools, children of African American or Latino descent tend to get shut down or don’t get enough resources they really need. So from the beginning they are at a disadvantage and that later leads to failure or carelessness in higher education.

This weeks readings were Chapter 6 and 8 in the textbook and an article which was connected with the context in chapter 6. Chapter 6 mainly focused on the Diversity Rationale, which allowed the use of race as a selective factor in higher education admissions as long as racial quotas were not promoted. It was stated that the rationale was designed to serve as a legal purpose and not necessarily a educational one, since it was seen as a result of University of California vs Bakke. This chapter contained a lot of information and lead to me re-reading a lot of sections in order to sort of get the concept of the text. Chapter 8 in my opinion was a lot more easier to grasp, it focused on trends in the education of underrepresented racial minority students. It provided statistics that focused on the years of 1940-2007 of how successful Whites, Blacks and Latinos have been with earning college degrees and going on to earn advanced degrees. Whites were, without a surprise the race who had the highest and continues having the highest success race when it comes to earning degrees and although Blacks and Latinos’ numbers have varied for the most part they are at the bottom. I was in a way surprised to see this, since I live in a a community where Latinos make up most of the population and where community colleges have a larger number of Latino students. I in a way have a different perspective since I started CSUCI I noticed most of the population here in campus is White. This makes it easier to understand why Whites and Asians dominate the highly sought-after occupations in the U.S. It was a very interesting reading, and I sincerely hope that the percentage of Latinos that seek those college and advanced degrees continue to rise.