In which we are proud...

[jesshartley]

I'm continually amazed at how flippin' awesome and wickedly smart the Valkyrie is.

She's doing some Social Studies homework and they're discussing the Civil Rights movement. She noticed that, while African-Americans are referred to as such in her text, they still refer to Caucasian people as "Whites" (note not only color reference, but capitalization).

She came to ask me about this, and we had a great discussion about underlying (rather than blatant) racism, the good/evil, clean/dirty analogies of calling people by color labels (especially white/black) and the like.

Afterwards, she wrote up a very nice and polite letter to her teacher and requested that they discuss this example of inherent and underlying racism in the class, because it was a very specific example of how even in a text that pre-supposes that the hey-day of racism has passed, remnants of those times still remain.

I hope that he (and the rest of the class) are up for the discussion.

Comments

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

It's so hard for me to find terms in this arena that I like.
Peoples of Color means peoples of a color that is not pink.
If F.W. de Klerk moved to Boston, he'd be an African American. If he moved to Paris, would he be an African Frenchman?
This of course leaves out the question of Egypt, which is also in Africa.
Very few people who would identify as Black are black.
As referenced above, this also goes for people who would identify as white.
I would not mind being a Pink, but I suspect a large number of Americans would resist it.
People can hate many Semitic groups and not be considered anti-Semitic by most people. (I would not advise it. Hate is a poor use of time.)

Unsurprisingly, for a concept that is pretty vague and ill defined, the terms are vague and ill defined. Which is doubly frustrating, when society makes it such an important vague and ill defined concept.

Um. Sorry for hijacking this. Your daughter is a gem, and I can say that I knew her back when.

[bekki-n.livejournal.com]

Your daughter is amazing, and I'm so pleased that she's taking it up in class as well!

[foxdorean.livejournal.com]

Hehe...I sense an evil overlord in the making there. :D

[eseme]

*applauds*

You've got a wonderful daughter there. I just hope her teacher is willing to take the time for that much-needed discussion. It's not only important for the discussion of race, but for the kids in the class to learn that books and newspapers can have a slant or bias.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

That would be an excellent application of critical literacy skills, and I applaud her for noticing what the authors of the textbook clearly missed themselves.

[jesshartley.livejournal.com]

AW! You just made her blush. :)

[just-shauna.livejournal.com]

Your daughter is a truly amazing young woman :D

[keridwen.livejournal.com]

She's totally awesome.

[sagawizard.livejournal.com]

Those are the kind of kids I love having in class.

- SW
(who is married to an "African American" whose skin is lighter than mine...she's 5th generation Egyptian, and the 1st generation born in the US, which makes her closer to Africa than nearly all Americans with black skin...oy, what a country we live in...)