BH&H

Our group today focused on how the Caucasian people need to find their identity before ultimately finding ways to teach without prejudice toward other races. In our group, we read about how 40 students took an undergraduate course focused on racism. There were 28 White students, 28 African-Americans, and 1 Latino. One interesting thing that I read was that they had a classroom exercise where students had to select an index card on which “McIntosh’s privileges” was written. Students were then asked to read the card aloud. White students were asked to read the card as it was written, while the other students were asked to say “not” before reading it. Any student was able to pass if they were uncomfortable. The purpose of this card game was to see how some might have more privileges than others. The purpose of this assignment, as the author noted, was to see the racism embedded which was previously invisible. It was certainly hard to read. But it gave me an idea of how people felt just a few decades ago.

After our group reflected on their thoughts on the book, we shifted toward our personal experiences with racism. I personally have not dealt with it, but I’ve heard and still hear stories from other people on how they were discriminated because of their race. I also hear about racism almost every day when I read news. It’s not an easy task to deal with racism. This book certainly inspires me to be careful on how I interact with people who might be less privileged than me. This book also offers different ideas on how we can teach students about racism in the future.