Monday, May 2, 2011
What is the next step?
This class has really made me think about how people interpret why we have race in America. I have taken Philosophy of Race with all of you, plus Athro: Race and Human Relations. This past Thursday on the last day of class we talked about what the next step is. Yes we have all established that Rhodes college screams privilege, and we have issues within out campus in terms of diversity. We talk about the issues that we have in terms of how deep the system of race is in America, but how do we start to cut this idea down? Broadly we have spoken about the issues outside our gates, but before we talk about those issues we should change the diversity issues within our campus. I have no clue where to start, but I have been thinking about this a lot. Sometimes I feel weird bringing up these issues because I am of the white race, and therefore I have this "privilege of whiteness" which we have been talking about these last couple of weeks. It's a difficult issue to speak about, and something that a majority of our population wouldn't doesn't even think is an issue because of their color blindness. A majority of our population in the US think that we are an "equal" society. I just feel like we take these classes to take them, and not really try to go out and change things about these issues. I for one am stuck on how we can even come close to the deconstruction of Race in America, but I think with the amount of help Rhodes gets on and off campus we can give it a try.
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Mae,
ReplyDeleteThese are great questions that you raise. Because of Kimberly's post I'm now attempting to think of the privilege at Rhodes in a positive light. It seems to me that this class was most effective at conscience raising - it brought to our attention many issues and examples of privilege that most of us were probably largely unaware of. Granted, conscience raising on its own does nothing practical. The privilege we experience at Rhodes, however, puts us in the unique situation to move on to positions of influence and power in society, if we so choose. Thus, we can use the privilege we have at Rhodes to work to deconstruct racial privilege and disadvantage.
Mae,
ReplyDeleteI agree that it seems that most people do take classes like this one just to take them. I personally took this class expecting to talk about issues of race. I had no idea that I would feel the need to deconstruct the construct of race. It is a different way to think about things just to know that that is possible.