PD Meeting 4--Ch. 5 and 6
In Chapter 5, “Ethnicity” (56), Kendi recalls eighth grade when he and his classmates teased each other mercilessly. In particular, he remembers a Ghanian student who was taunted for his ethnicity. Ethnic racism, he explains, originated in the slave trade, when Africans were categorized and ranked by tribe, with some tribes being more desirable than others. He then recalls a Ghanian student he taught himself in a college classroom. This student expressed racist ideas about African Americans, and Kendi helped him to rethink his bias by identifying its source and contemplating the similar racist notions the British espouse about Ghanaians. Black immigrants to the U.S. are often perceived to be more intelligent and ambitious than African Americans, and this is essentially what Kendi's student believed, but in reality, it is simply that immigrants as a group tend to have better resources at their disposal than those born in America.
In Chapter 6, “Body” (69), Kendi recalls attending John Bowne high school in Queens. He rode the bus with a large bully all the students called Smurf. On the bus, Smurf once pulled a gun on Kendi. Later, Kendi watched as Smurf and his friends beat up an Indian boy and stole his Walkman. Kendi felt powerless to stop the attack. Alongside these stories, Kendi tracks the historical and cultural tradition of declaring Black people (men especially) predatory and aggressive by nature, from slavery to the present day. Kendi absorbed the cultural messages about Black aggression and lived in fear of being the victim of violence in his neighborhood and school, yet with the exception of the Smurf incident, this violence never materialized. He explains that, statistically, the unemployed and people of low income are most likely to commit crimes, and that because of structural racism, Black people are more likely to be unemployed or low income. Thus if Black people commit more crimes than White people, it is because of societal inequity, not some inherent predatory drive.
In Chapters 5 and 6, Kendi introduces the terms racialized ethnic groups and racialized bodies.
- Explain what is meant by these terms, as well as how these forms of racism manifest. Thinking beyond the examples Kendi offers, identify an example of ethnic racism or bodily racism that you can think of from recent years.
Good article:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/19/the-fight-to-redefine-racism?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_080420&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5eca735573996d0241069328&cndid=61208358&hasha=93ae6309e105de0a16547c52e612efaa&hashb=fc557ffdda2f3ec4c1dc2f03d3b7d1fa156e0a49&hashc=0ea1e68f0d7835916d3fb1ae101379556cd0889b1c47f0b1901a81605759df51&esrc=Auto_Subs&utm_term=TNY_Daily
I couldn't attend the meeting on Wednesday, so wanted to post on here. When I read these two chapters, one story that really stood out for me was when Kendi had the Ghanaian student in class who was talking about his beliefs/thoughts on African Americans. This story stood out to me for two main reasons. The first is that when Kendi was talking to the student after class and he talked about how the British thought of people from Ghana, it allowed the student to understand how his thoughts about another ethnic group were given to him by others, but are not true. Kendi didn't sit there and yell at the student, he used it as a teaching moment that would make more of an impact on the student and his beliefs. The second reason that story stood out was it made me think about how some people perceive a certain ethnic group and where they get their beliefs from. So many people have wrong information about an ethnic group that they heard from other people, whether it be friends, family members, or the news. It made me think of how can everyone improve to actually learn about a group or a person before judging them based on an untrue belief that they were told. I think that is why BLM day is so important because the conversations we have with the students and that the students have with each other allow them to be open but to also learn new information that they didn't know. However, I think that it needs to happen more often in our school/classrooms, and not just one day a year. I know that reading this book has taught me so much more information that I never learned in school and has made me sit and reflect. I think that having conversations throughout the year will benefit the students and teachers and will also hopefully lead to a better understanding throughout the community. These chapters also made me think about all of the stories you hear on the news. When talking about how the inequality of opportunities is what could cause issues really stood out for me and also made me think of why do you hear news stories of any negative thing that happened, but if it's something powerful, inspiring, or good that happens, you won't see or hear anything about it. I have had conversations with my students about the news and how it only shows the negative of the city of Rochester and will rarely show positive things happening. We have discussed how that impacts their own beliefs of the city and others who don't live there that will then have inaccurate thoughts on what it is actually like.
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