Well, That Was Fun.

Hey all, I wanted to do one of these recap posts to thank everyone for allowing me to hear their own experiences, thoughts, and for challenging my own opinions and beliefs. I am also doing this post for my own benefit, just so I can reflect on this experience and hopefully learn a little more about myself and my conception of this world. So I guess thank you for allowing me to use this space to do that. This semester we have used this blog to make posts and tease out ideas we have had in our heads. One of the toughest concepts I struggled with was seen reflected in my post about "the n-word" and I thank all of you who read and commented on this. I still have no real conclusion on the subject, I do however, have a better understanding of my own positioning and my limitation for judgment because of my role in this world as a white dude. This foregrounding extends beyond just my race, but it has been enlightening to focus on this and become aware of how my own race and how society views me because of my race has shaped how I think about and view the world. It has been a privilege to hear each of your experiences on this campus and how societies view of you makes your experience different or similar to my own.

When I think about this semester, I know that we have learned and experienced a lot, but what's crazy is that through this experience I have been exposed to more, and I realized that we have only skimmed the surface despite the extensive progress we have made. This speaks to the complexity of this issue. It's exciting to make a little headway, but its is also daunting to know what still lies ahead for us in terms of changing this whole thing (assuming that we can). I guess the best thing I can say is that I hope we all can remain optimistic and hopefully that we can continue to correct this error in the conception of race. We can see all the different areas of life that have been affected by this error, and we can work to make changes to each of these areas, and eventually hopefully rid our world of the negative aspects of this error.

Anyway, keep of trucking. To you graduating folk: good luck with your future endeavors. To you non-graduating folk: see you around, hope finals are going well. To all: hopefully 2012 doesn't bring a zombie apocalypse, but if it does, hopefully we can transcend race and hatred (at least towards living humans) during that time.

Later y'all.