Talk about what you learned in Dr. Blane Harding's talk, especially topics that pertain to multiculturalism, identity, privilege, social justice.
Blog posts must be 200-400 words, proofread, and void of common grammatical errors.
Your blog posts are due before the start of class next week.
Please email albreaks@ku.edu if you have any questions!
Living in Lawrence, I have never had to deal with discrimination that comes with being a minority in ethnicity or gender. I have been privileged enough that inequality has been largely invisible to me. In fact, I grew up in an environment where my diversity and multiculturalism were considered positives. I was comfortable with the questions of diversity since people told me that I was diverse and multicultural. Since I was a part of it, how can I ever err against it? I never thought to ask myself if I play a part in the discrimination against minorities.
ReplyDeleteThe social stigma of being different, of being a minority, -- whether being different was positive or negative -- had a greater impact on the way I thought about myself than the ways I was privileged. However, as Dr. Blane Harding pointed out, I have more privileges than disadvantages. I am middle class, heterosexual, educated, and able-bodied, yet I never thought about myself that way. I called myself a minority just because of my ethnicity and gender. Because I didn’t think about all the different ways I am privileged, I was also ignorant of the underlying prejudices I hold from my privileged position. Dr. Harding’s talk made me realize the different aspects of privilege and injustice, beyond the typical talk of race and gender. Discrimination and injustice can and do occur from all positions of privilege. I’m not impervious to these infractions as a “minority” either. I am capable of and is probably guilty of discrimination based on my privileges.
The most memorable part of Dr. Blane Harding’s talk was about expanding one’s comfort zone. I though it was a revolutionary idea to want to expand your comfort zone rather than go outside of it. After all, what good does that do? You are still uncomfortable with the situation and afterwards you feel like you’ve checked the “go outside your comfort zone” box. This mindset is all wrong. Instead, we should expand our comfort zone to be able to encounter strange or uncomfortable situations without thinking twice. I thought it was very interesting that people tend to look up to and surround themselves with people who are similar to them. They tend to fall into the same dominant and subordinate categories. We could learn and experience so much more by breaking out of our stereotypes and going out of our way to meet other people
ReplyDeleteHarding also talked about privilege and defined it as “any advantage given to someone or a group, but not to everyone; often unasked for, unearned, and unrecognized.” What stood out to me most was that it is unearned. I struggled with this for a few minutes, feeling guilty for the privileges I have. But then as he continued to talk, I realized that everyone has some type of privilege. Instead of feeling guilty for the unearned opportunities I have, I should feel blessed. The fact that everyone has different privileges makes them even more unique.
There were a few other sayings during Harding’s lecture that I thought were interesting. I particularly liked “it’s not the figment of the pigment but the enigma of the stigma.” I also liked how he said that we shouldn’t use the word “minority” for a group of people. Instead, we should use the term “minoritized” because the culture shouldn’t dictate who or what is a minority.
Dr. Blane Harding was truly a phenomenal speaker and I really enjoyed the talk that he gave, it was extremely eye opening and interesting to learn about things like multiculturalism, identity, privilege, and social justice. I feel like a lot of Dr. Harding’s discussion was about being able to get to know and respect different cultures within our society and being able to really understand and know what people identify as. A lot of times we just jump to assumptions, but it is important to ask about what people prefer, some people who are mixed may identify as one race or another and knowing their preference is important. This would be the same for sexual orientation and gender identity. Learning about different cultures and people from different backgrounds is important for living in the society that we live in so that we can be knowledgeable about these things and apply them whenever we are in certain situations. Surrounding yourself with people from different backgrounds from different privileges helps with understanding a variety of different people, but it is important to keep in mind that preferences should be based off of the individual. I believe that I personally would have been “successful” in filling out the worksheet that was intended for us. The people that I look up to come from very different backgrounds and are different in many areas like religion, gender, race, and social class. I am very fortunate to have such a diverse group of friends and I feel like I have learned so much about different cultures and really picked up a lot of important life lessons.
ReplyDeleteDr. Blane Harding’s talk really inspired me to think outside the box. While I was in grade school, it was an all-white school. The population stayed that way until my high school years when we had several black kids enrolled.
ReplyDeleteBut to think that other schools are so diverse is beyond me. I can’t imagine what that life would be like and Dr. Harding really changed my views. I’ve always thought Kansas was one of those “all-white schools” type even after the Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954.
When I enrolled to KU in the fall of 2011 right after high school, I really felt out of place. I didn’t know what it was like to go to class with other students different from white or black. It was a really fun experience for me because my dorm floor was so diverse. I’d think we’d be the most diverse floor in McCollum. We had Asian, black, Hispanic, and white students. After a while I realized that we’re all here to get the education we’re looking for, well, some of us anyway.
Moving onto privileges, I was surprised when Dr. Harding mentioned that only 27% of the US population has a four-year college degree. I thought that percentage would be a lot higher. My dad didn’t go to college but my mom did and she graduated with a BA in 1986. Currently, my brother is attending a community college in KC to get his associate’s and my sister is attending Johnson County Community College to get her associate’s as well.
I remember thinking when I was in first grade that everyone goes to college no matter who we’d want to be. If we wanted to be a big time singer or a CEO for a major company, we knew we had to go to college first. When I enrolled in high school, that idea shifted a little bit. College was meant for students with high intelligence and is likely to graduate from a university. Not the idea we had when we were younger.
For me, having a privilege to attend college despite financial situations, I’m proud to be a part of the 27%. Even if I have to deal with the looming student loan debt, at least I got the privilege to attend a university and have the opportunities ahead of me.
When I moved to Florida toward the end of elementary school, I came from a very privileged suburb in Texas. The ratio of black to white students at my new school in Florida really surprised me. I entered into a culture I had only seen from a distance in the past. The shock of it sent me running home in tears almost every day. Despite my discomfort, my father definitely had the worst culture shock. Once a boy from a poor family in Chicago, he never considered himself prejudiced until he entered the electron microscopy lab in Gainesville, Florida. He was one of two white people, and he quickly found out why. Several of the African American employees despised white people and would attempt to run them out in a series of hazing events. In my father’s case, they worked and he inevitably quit his job.
ReplyDeleteMy family’s experience in Florida hit us like a slap in the face, but I believe we desperately needed that wake up call. We ended up moving back to Texas, mainly because my father had difficulty finding another job, but I found myself embracing the idea of multiculturalism. In high school, I attended World Affairs Seminar to meet new people from all over the world. After high school, I moved to Australia for a few months, immersing myself yet again in a vastly different culture.
Blane Harding’s talk really hit home for me. With so many different kinds of people out there, true social justice seems nearly impossible. However, Dr. Harding’s handout and definitions of multiculturalism show exactly what challenges social justice faces and what we can do about it. We don’t have to participate or agree with every culture, we just have to strive to understand them and allow them to diversify our world view.
I was so excited to see Blane at our meeting! He was my Freshman Seminar instructor and is my advisor so it was really cool to be able to see him in a classroom-type setting again. The topic of our class was people immigrating to America and the “Melting Pot” concept of the people of our country so I had previously heard about most of these topics from him last semester. He stayed consistent with what he taught us and shared things about his family that he had not shared with my class.
ReplyDeleteIt was wonderful to be reminded of the definitions of multiculturalism and how it is different than diversity, though they are used almost interchangeably. The example he gave of a McDonald’s commercial with people of many different ethnic backgrounds interacting and calling it “multicultural” made the whole thing make a lot more sense. We would normally identify these people as black, Asian, white, et cetera, but we need to let people identify themselves. It is quite possible that they would all identify themselves as American rather than anything other people would call them. I thought the point Blane made about that was extraordinary and really made me think about how identity is so personal and should not be determined by someone else.
Talking about privilege and social justice also made me aware of who I surround myself with, and how others might view me. I realized that I am very privileged and have been my entire life. Hearing Blane speak about it made me grateful for all the things I have been provided in my life and want to do what I can for others that have not had the same privileges as me.