Tim Wise/ Brown Vs. Board of education extended off of Danielle's Blog

I really thought that Danielle wrote about the connections between the videos, the article, and the website really well. i actually had thought of many similar points when i was watching the videos myself, which is why i chose to extend off of her blog. She first goes into talking about how racism is still exists in todays world. Then she begins talking about the videos and how Tim Wise said "Barack Obama is a light skinned African American, this possibly giving a comfort factor to white voters. He is worried that if he was darker, or if future candidates to come are darker that this will make white people uncomfortable with letting themselves give the candidate the deserved vote."  Now after hearing this it clearly shows how racism still very much exists in todays society, and it's awful to think about it but Americans need to be more aware of that fact that it does still exist. Wise also mentions later on that white people are oblivious to things. That if we want to find out the issues we need to go to the people who are being directly effected by it, which i totally agree with. 


She then goes into talking about how in order for black people to share the same privileges as white people they need to be extraordinary people. for example she talks about Obama and says that black people must be be exceptional at their task. In Obama's case he was. He was accepted by the public for his intelligence and sophistication. However she also brings about another point Wise uses. He said to take George Bush for example. He was president of the united states for eight years and most people would say that he's an idiot. Now if George Bush had been black there was no way he would have been elected. There is a perfect example of how racism still exists in the current society. Danielle then uses a quote by Wise to sum it all up, which i thought was great. 


"The proof of racial equity will be the day that people of color can be as mediocre as white folks and still get hired."


This is such a good quote because it's so true. it's terrible to think about but it shows just how much rasicsm is still a big part of society. how is it fair that because someone is white that they are allowed to be mediocre ad still be considered better than someone who is black? that doesn't make any sense to me. it's just plain unfair. why should people of color have to work ten times as hard to gain the respect of society when a white person who doesn't work at all automatically gets it? In no way is that fair. 


She then goes into talking about the stereotypes Wise mentioned in his video, which were pretty amazing.
6 out of 10 people said...
1.black people are precieved as less intelligent
2.black people are less patriotic
3.black people are less hard working than white people
4.75% of white people say that black people want to live on welfare

she then goes into talking about how this proves racism still exist today. i totally agree with her. these statistics are crazy. 

In her last few paragraphs she talk about Bob Herbert's article and shows how it relates to the Brown vs. board of education from 1954. She used two great quotes which i thought really stuck out to me in the article as well. 

1."If you really want to improve the education of poor children, you have to get them away from learning environments that are smothered by poverty. This is being done in some places, with impressive results. An important study conducted by the Century Foundation in Montgomery County, Md., showed that low-income students who happened to be enrolled in affluent elementary schools did much better than similarly low-income students in higher-poverty schools in the county." 

This quote pretty much says it all. It's not kids race that is effecting their learning. it's the environment that they are in. now this is a problem they we should invest in fixing. there is always so much talk about education and how important it is. look at providence right now, with all of the teachers being fired. Maybe we should focus a little more on what Herbert says and fix the environment first, because based on this article it seems that this could greatly improve education for these children. Like Danielle says everything goes back to the brown vs. board of education case years ago. they argued "separate but equal", however it wasn't equal at all. it caused segregation and racism. another great point that i thought she made was that it's similar now with student stuck in poverty schools, and without integration the student will only suffer. this is a great point and i totally agree with her. we need to work on doing a better job of this. her last quote was,

2. "Studies have shown that it is not the race of the students that is significant, but rather the improved all-around environment of schools with better teachers, fewer classroom disruptions, pupils who are more engaged academically, parents who are more involved, and so on. The poorer students benefit from the more affluent environment." 

now if this is the case we need to work on improving these environments, because we spend so much money on everything else in society. well lets focus on fixing the problem rather than blaming it on something. i agree with Herbert's argument. 

I chose Danielle's blog because i thought she made some really good points and i personally thought a lot of the same things while i was watching and reading these assignments. Personally this has opened by eyes a little more to what's going on around me. i have to admit i am one of those people who Wise says is oblivious to thing around them.

In the service of what? by Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer Reflection

Personally i really liked the article. I think that it's a really good idea to have service learning involved in schools. The article talks about a few different types of service learning projects. Honestly i didn't even realize how many different things would qualify as service learning. Personally i think that this is such a positive thing. However i don't know if i would have said that in high school, but i think it would have been a really good experience. When i was in elementary school we kind of did something similar to a service learning experience. When i was in fourth grade we would go to the 1st grade classrooms to help them learn how to read. i remember being really nervous the first time. i wasn't sure how it was going to be. i remember being so nervous about how it would go. Overall it went really well. The little kids loved us because we were the "big kids" of the school. but it turned out to be really fun and i think it was a good experience to have. However before VIPS that was the only other thing similar to service learning that I have done. But i think that we should have done something like this in high school because i think that it's such a good experience to have. i know i say this now, but i probably wouldn't have said the same in high school. but i agree with Kahne and Westheimer that it's a good experience and gives you a lot more confidence. personally i being involved with VIP's i have learned so much already and i have only been there a couple of times. but being involved with the kids now and teaching all different ethnicities of student will be so helpful for me when i start teaching a class of my own. To me i think service learning is a really important experience. there are so many different way that kids can get involved in service learning projects. i actually found a  website that gives you links to help you set up different types of service learning projects. i think it would be a good idea for high schools to require some sort of service learning project in order for kids to graduate. i know most high school kids would resent the idea, but i think it gives kids a good experience. and maybe someone does something like our service learning project and find out they love it. you never know! i just thinks it's a good experience to have! i can't speak for everyone, but my experiences have only been beneficial. I'm not saying they are all wicked exciting and easy going, but they defiantly effect my in a positive way.

I just wanted to talk in class if people had experienced Service learning project before this class? If they did how did they get involved in them?

"unlearning the myths that blind us" -Christensen reflection

so after reading this article i did a lot of thinking. however i still can't really say whether or not i agree or diagree with the article. i guess i would say i do and i don't agree. personally i grew up with cartoons and i wouldnt say that i am close minded and all these cartoons showed me racism, sexism, and etc. but i just find it hard to believe that kids will pick up on all this stuff. kids our age couldn't even pick up on it until a teacher sat them down and told them to really concentrate on what to look for. in todays cartoons they found it more difficult than in older cartoons. does that mean it's getting better? i just feel like when i was little i wasn't watching cartoons analyzing them the way this study portrays them. however i do agree with how society influences people a lot in certain ways. people are greatly influenced by the media about what they should wear and how their bodies should look like. once again i agree and disagree. ya there are all kinds of famous brands like nike, timberlands and that stuff but people have all different types of styles. it's all what the person likes. however people will still argue that it's because of society. no one will ever win or lose that battle because maybe it is society, maybe it isnt. most people will say it doesn't have to do with society. i would say i doesn't that it's all based on what a person likes.  overall i didnt really like this article i just feel like it yes it does make sense, but do you really think that kids think the same way as us?

that would most likely bring me to the question i would raise in class. do kids really think the same as us? yes they are really smart but are cartoon really effecting them in the depth that this article says they do? think about it did u watch cartoons as a kid? most likely you did. but did you think of these things before someone mentioned this to you? or are you only realizing it now that someone brought about the topic of racism, sexism, and etc in cartoons?

Are they really that bad? I would just like to hear what everyone thinks about this subject. I can see their point, but i don't think kids really think that deeply. I mean did you guys before we talked about it? I also looked at this website about Aladdin which talks about racism and such. I just don't believe that people really thought about all this in creating the movie but maybe they did.

No Name-Calling Week Reflection

After looking over the GLSEN website the article that stuck out to me the most was the "No Name-Calling Week" article. The article basically talks about a project that the organization does to prevent kids from bullying and name calling. Recently my brother, who is in middle school got involved in a so called bullying situation. It was a couple of weeks ago that my brothers school called home. Meanwhile my brother is a little bit of a trouble maker. However he isn't one to bully people. So my mom gets a phone call from the assistant principle saying that a mother called saying that my brother had bullied him and was really upset. so naturally my mother got the call and was furious. she gave him to whole story about how you can't pick on other kids and so on. However my brother denied the whole thing. he told us he was defending another girl in the class. My brother was so upset he was upstairs crying the rest of the night. so the next day my mom gets a call from this little girls mother. the mother of the little girl thanks my mom for my brother sticking up and defending her daughter. My mom a little thrown off asked her what exactly had happened. The little girls mother begins going on and on telling my mom about how this little boy would tease her daughter and make fun of her almost everyday. She told my mom that her daughter would come home crying just about everyday from school, and the mother had called the school a couple of times to address it, but they never really did anything. The mother also said that my brother had seen this other little boy teasing her daughter and he stepped in and actually said something to this little boy. after hearing this story i was so proud of my brother for doing that. however the little boy was embarrassed and told the teacher that my brother had been bullying him, and once the teacher heard that he was sent to the office. after the whole thing was cleared up my brother wasn't in trouble and the little boy ended up getting a good talking to my administration as well as his parents. after reading the article about no-name calling week and hearing this story about my brother i just feel that more people should be like this. also that there should be more focus on this subject. sometimes i feel as if it is so overlooked in schools today and people are to passive about name-calling. names really hurt and it just seems wrong that we don't put enough emphasis on it.

I believe that this No name-calling week should be used in more schools than it already is. i believe that it such a good thing for schools to do, because I think sometimes we over look things. for example if my brother never said anything that little girl probably would have been bullied for the rest of the year maybe even longer. i think that organization is a very good thing to incorporate into schools. It's a topic that we as teachers should be aware of especially in the middle school and high school levels, because no kid should ever have to experience something like that.

I wanted to talk in class if anyone has every done something like this at there schools. I have never heard of this. But i also found another similar even which i thought was cool. The website is: http://www.dayofsilence.org/

Aria - Rodriguez

This article talks about a spanish speaking family and how the children had to adjust their language in order to fit in to society. looking at it like that i figured ok well that makes sense that they to get the kids to speak english. in order for them to be able to be involved in many things in society they would have to learn english. however what i didn't realize was the impact this truly has on a family. 

quote 1

"One Saturday morning I entered the kitchen where my parents were talking in Spanish. I did not realize that they were talking in Spanish however until, at the moment they saw me, I heard their voices change to speak English." This quote is basically talking about how they parents are trying to change there life style to benefit their kids. It's good that they are trying to help their kids but it's changing who the family is. It's  not fair that they need to give up their culture all together. this kind of made me angry, because they are giving up who they are all together because a group of nuns told them that they should be speaking english in order for their kids to survive in society. why can't they speak both? i don't think it's fair that they are putting the pressure on the parents to eliminate their spanish culture to accommodate for the rest of the society. they should be able to speak both if they want. the teachers should help them to learn english, but not try and get them to lose their spanish back round. in society it is an achievement to be bilingual. why can't they be bilingual. why is it that they can't speak both? to me i don't believe this is right. it made me pretty mad throughout the entire article, because it's just not fair to this family.  

quote 2

"We remained a loving family, but one greatly changed. No longer so close; no longer bound tight by the pleasing and troubling knowledge of Our public separateness. Neither my older brother nor sister rushed home after school anymore. Nor did I." this quote is talking about how he family is slowly growing apart because they are starting to lose the one major thing that connects them, their spanish. to me this doesn't seem right. should a family be broken up because society says they must conform to the rest of society? because these kids are being taught that they need to follow society they are growing more and more apart from their families. this is not fair to these spanish speaking families, as well as families of other cultures. they should be taught english, because it is a huge part of society. however they shouldn't lose there back round in the process. to me that is what it seems like society is making them do here. 

quote 3

"But the bilingualists simplistically scorn the value and necessity of assimilation. They do not seem to realize that there are two ways a person is individualized. So they do not realize that while one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilated into public society, such assimilation makes possible the achievement of public individuality. " i really liked this quote because i believe it pretty much sums up the entire article and how i feel about it. it talks about how people are almost forced to conform to society's wishes, but it's the difference in people that make individuals in society. i believe that is why this article makes me so mad. the family is forced to conform to society in order to think about succeeding. to me that's not right. i do believe that they must learn english, but they shouldn't have to lose their first language in the process. in this case it broke up a family. is it worth it for anyone who speaks a different language to have to be jut like every other individual in america? if so then we aren't individuals because we are all the same. i don't think that is fair in anyway. that was one of the main reasons why this article made me so angry. personally i'm pretty close with my family, and i would hate to lose that closeness if we spoke a different language and had lose our back round in order to feel like a part of society.

Lastly I would like to talk in class about if people agree with Rodriguez. Personally i don't I'm more of a Collier fan!!!

White Privilege by Macintosh

After reading McIntosh's article i totally agree with her. Basically the article talks a lot about what she calls "white Privilege" which is how white people are born with all of these extra advantages just because of their skin color.
quote 1
 "White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, code books, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks. " This quote basically talks about how white people have an advantage just because of their skin color. To me this is very interesting because i have never really thought about all the advantages white people have. however do other races also have advantages? i know that white people are born with much more privileges, but i believe that other races have advantages as well. the question is how many advantages do other races have. However i do not disagree with McIntosh when she talks about white privilege. she lists a lot of advantages in the article that most people take for granted and don't even realize.  


quote 2
"In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth." this quote is basically saying that she grew up thinking racism was only talking negatively or acting meanly toward another race. however this is not the case. if white people take advantage of what she calls "white privilege" that is just as bad as being racist. it's not right that white people get these advantages just based on the color of their skin. everyone should have to work for what they want, and no one should have any more advantage than anyone else. but if you look at the daily advantages that occur for white people i'm sure everyone can find one thing on that list that they are guilty of. however the common thought about how racism is only based on meanness is such a common misconception, and i thought the same exact thing until i read this article. most people are blind to "white privilege". 


quote 3
"Although systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and, I imagine, for some others like 

me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light-skinned." this quote os basically saying that if we can change the problems what will happen. i find this quote interesting because how can we change something so big like this. i completely agree with McIntosh and i don't believe that it is right that white people get these undeserved advantages just because of their skin, but what steps can be taken to change it. is it just changing it yourself and hoping people follow? i just feel like this is a very difficult topic to change, but if we can then by all means it needs to be changed because it is so unfair that based on a persons skin they have an advantage. it should be changed but i just cant see how we can change something so big.

About Me :)

Hey guys! I'm a sophomore this year at RIC. I'm studying Secondary education with a concentration of math. I play basketball here at RIC and I absolutely love it. My favorite thing to eat is ice cream or pizza. See everyone in class!