Writing the Self-Analysis: Race

i)

Looking through my classmates’ blogs regarding race, I chose to write about Emily Richards “The New Kid” and Logan Willfong’s “Race Realization”.  I found myself relating to these stories because they were similar to my story “My Friend Shari” in multiple ways.  We all wrote about how we met a new friend who was a different colour than us.  Our new friends were recognized as different from everyone else around us, they were the minority in our group and they were also treated differently by others.

First of all, I noticed the blogs all made it seem very normal that our new friends were just that – “new”.  They were thought of as separate from our regular friends and acquaintances.  In all three stories, our new friends were all of the minority.  These friends weren’t just different from us, but different from all the rest of our friends and seemingly most other people in our community.  This normative narrative was also treated as normal in all of our blogs.  It was as though these friends were on the outside, coming into a new and foreign circle, like they really didn’t belong.  Not only were our friends thought of as different, they were treated differently.  Perhaps it was because we were all children that we were confused by the way our friends were treated, and we didn’t know how to handle the situations.  Emily stated “I don’t understand”, and Logan “wish(ed) I was more informed as a child so I could have stood up for the boy that was coming in from recess”.  We all knew there was something not quite right about how our new friends were being treated, yet we didn’t know what to do about it.

The most common normative narrative that we all expressed was that we didn’t notice the race of our friends.  In all three blogs we wrote about how others treated our friends poorly, but we did not.  Perhaps the writers were implying that the only reason we recognized them as different was through the actions of others.  This is a normative narrative that is very common in our society; I am not racist, they are.

ii)

In contrast to the three blogs I discussed above, Kelsey Hollinger’s blog “Racial Advantages in Daily Life” disrupted the normative narrative that we didn’t notice skin colour.  Kelsey stated that “skin colour is the first thing the human eye will notice about someone else”.  Her blog continued “noticing an individual’s skin colour does not make you racist, it only makes you a functioning human being”.

Logan, Emily and my blogs included a few common rebuttals.  Two of them were “the exception to the rule” and “I was taught to treat everybody the same”.  We all told stories where we didn’t treat non-white people differently.  Logan stated his parents taught him to “always treat everyone as a friend as well as an equal”.  We three writers were kind and accepting toward our new friends, unlike the others around us.  We alluded to the fact that the colour of our new friends’ skin made no difference to us, as Logan states “they became my family and the colour of their skin never meant a thing to me”.  It is never comfortable to be thought of racist, and we reiterated stories that showed we were not.

When I wrote my self-story about race I chose a story where I was “the exception to the rule” and I was in fact “taught to treat everybody the same”.  I did not choose a story where I rolled my eyes at someone digging through my recycling bin.  And I didn’t choose a story where I judged someone before I even met them.  Looking back at my blog I see that I shared only what I wanted to share, without looking deeper into my own prejudices.  I am part of a racist society whether it’s easy to admit or not.  Even though I try to be a kind and loving person who tries to treat everyone with respect, I still have my prejudices because “everyone has prejudices based on distinctive experiences that are unique to them”.  If I look at the definition of prejudice “learned prejudgement about members of social groups to which I don’t belong” I see that my categorizations are not neutral.  And even though these prejudices may have “innocently” began as stereotypes, they are validated when we add value to our stereotypes.  Reading through our textbook “Is Everyone Really Equal” I see how easily these prejudices can manifest.

Works Cited

Sensoy, Ozlem and Robin DiAngelo.  Is Everyone Really Equal.  An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education, Second Edition.  New York:                                  Teachers College Press, 2007.  Print.