Open Response One: Grace Gerely
I honestly don't know what I expected to get out of this class. I knew we'd be watching and discussing telenovelas, but, outside of that, I didn't know what kind of information, what kind of value I'd find in this two hour class every Wednesday. However, I've discovered that I'm learning far more about the world around me than I ever expected. When we talked about racism and sexuality last Wednesday something clicked in me: I realized that I had never truly imagined what racism looks like across the world. I suppose that I always correlated racism with caucasians, with regions of the world that are far more powerful than others. I had no idea that racism is threaded through every culture, even those who are populated mostly by people of color. This has really shifted my world-view. I had a conversation with a friend about this the other night, and he and I both agreed that our image of racism is that of white cops beating African-Americans, of redneck kids in our high school telling Latin American students to "pack their bags because Trump is going to ship them back to Mexico." Neither of us had any reason to believe that this "white is superior" stigma is seeped into primarily non-white cultures, but now I see that it is. Now I see that racism is just as prevalent here as it is all over the world, and this saddens me, and shocks me; however, I'm grateful for the enlightenment.
It's really interesting to know that you had applied racism only in America. I find that to be interesting because unlike you, I have experienced racism among my own culture since I was little. I am from Colombia, and well let me just say that Colombians can be very arrogrant and rude. (Of course I am proud to be Colombian, but sometimes they seem to be too much). When I was little, I had super dark skin and curly black hair. To my classmates, I was seen as inferior to them due to how I looked; everyone else was of lighter skin with light hair and no curls. I didn't pay attention to it since we were little, and it wasn't a big deal. It wasn't until I came to the United States that I realized I had experienced racism. Here, everyone (like you said) associates racism with white vs. black or white vs. Mexicans, etc. So when I was exposed to that, I realized that racism occurs everywhere and not just different cultures. Racism can literally exist within the same culture based on someone's appearance. I agree, it's sad that racism does exist everywhere, but it's cool to know you're no longer oblivious to the fact that it happens every where.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing such an intimate account of your own experience. I really appreciate that. I find it so insane that kids your own age treated you like that. The fact that they so blindly adopt their parent's and society's ideals of superiority is scary, and I honestly hate that even children have to be subjugated to the racism which burrows itself into cultures all over the world. I remember watching this documentary a while ago where these little African American girls were shown two dolls-- a black doll and a white doll-- and were asked to choose which one was the prettiest, and a grand majority of them chose the white doll with blonde hair. This made me so angry because, even little girls know that society favors people who are lighter skinned.
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