Locating yourself, myself, ourselves..
"They said they knew at every moment of their lives they were not White, but they felt that White people did not know they were White."
This quote from, Locating Yourself for Your Students by Priya Parmar and Shirley Steinberg heavily caught my attention.
Was there a time I realized I was white? Was there a time I realized other children didn't look like me?
I never can remember a time that I realized I was white, as the reading says. I don't remember being a young child and thinking "you look different than me." The only difference I noticed when I was a kid was a very few things..
1. If you were a boy or a girl because at that age you would hear "boys are icky" "girls have cooties"
2. If I liked to play with you
Another quote that I resonated with was..
"Our students began to write and perform passionately about the recovery of their own ethnic identities, ant their struggles as young women and men of color living in a male-dominated and white-dominated society."
This quote made me think about the powers a paper and pencil can have for an individual.
However, after reading this I automatically resonated this with the story of Erin Gruwell and her 1994 Freshmen class. Where a teacher is able to encourage and connect with her "at-risk" students through writing in a journal. She influenced them to pursue education beyond high school and apply themselves in the classroom and real world.
http://www.freedomwritersfoundation.org
IDENTITIES WITHIN SPACES
Thinking about sharing my identities within youth spaces, I feel as if my biggest share is being a woman in society, which further leads to being a white woman in society.
https://youthinactionri.org
Hi, Jordyn, I really enjoyed reading your blog and really liked reading about the connections you made. I definitely agree with you about never really thinking "you look different then me" but I definitely remember hearing girls have cooties and boys are icky until I was in about 4th grade. which is when I remember my peers start to point out the looks of other people and seeing the differences between one another.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your blog. I like how you connect your experience about your own identity about "being a woman in society". In the space we live in, it does look like we live in an area that is "male-dominated and white-dominated" as a majority of people we see have that identity. How do you experience yourself living in this kind of area and in what ways do you feel different about your own identity compared to others. As a student myself, I never thought about my own identity until high school. I told people I was Hispanic, but said I did not look Hispanic and look white. It did bother me, but I must acknowledge the fact that being born White in America is not the only aspect that identifies who we are as our parents is also part of our culture and their background is what makes us who we are as well. I do remember hearing people say "Girls have cooties" and "Boys are icky" since 5th grade. I remember people would insult others for the way they looked and not respect their identity. This is something we must be careful about as educators in the future.
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