Race, Class, and Gender

Over the past week I really enjoyed reading the Rothenberg book. For one it was a nice change of topics. Even though a lot was centered on race it didn't seem to be as much about Black and White as our other readings. My favorite reading was The Ethics of Living Jim Crow. I really liked that this piece was someone's personal account and that it was told in story form. When stories are told in this manner it makes it much easier to put things in perspective and realize what some people have had to go through in life. In Karen Brodkin's How Jews Became White Folks I was surprised at how much she actually talked about African Americans. I felt that the piece focused more on this aspect than the title would have suggested. It was also refreshing to read more about gender and sexuality and the formation of classifications used today.

When looking at Part V and realizing that the main topic was about economics I immediately thought to myself "man this part's going to be boring." To my surprise I found all these sections to be rather interesting. Granted in helped that a lot of the sections were only a few pages. It also was more interesting to me because I am also in Economic Development in Higher Ed. this semester and these reading serve as a great supplement to that class.

Opening My Eyes

Since starting this class I'm starting to realize that there are many things I have taken for granted in my life. The most obvious being my college experience. I wouldn't say that I had it easy coming to college, meaning college wasn't handed to me on a silver platter. Before reading "Scholarship Girl" and Museus' article I never really thought about what it might be like for students coming from a more cultured backgroud to enter into a land of unkown culture. Granted college can be considered an unknown land for any new student, but possibly having to "give up" your culture in order to fit in is something I never really thought of before.

Personally I don't feel that anyone should have to deny who they are in order to be accepted into a particular setting or group. I found Tinto's theory to be quite interesting. The idea that one must detach themselves from their original culture and adopt the values and norms of the culture they are joining in order to succeed just doesn't seem right. Although sadly it seems that this is true for the most part. It seems that most of the articles we've read so far say that underrepresented students don't feel a part of their campus culture so they tend to not complete school or succeed as much as White students. It just makes me wonder how many more years it will be before this is no longer the norm? It seems that the change has begun because everyone talks about the millennial generation and how they are a much more engaging generation. It seems that children now are starting to be raised where they no longer see as much of a difference in race. I guess we'll see when our children get to college how prominent these issues still are.

Possibly more to come...

First Post About Readings

There was a comment that I wanted to make about the video from last week so I'll start with that. I enjoyed the video that we watched in class last week. It would be such an experience to be a part of something like that. Although I must say after watching the video I feel like as white person I would feel bad about myself after every class. I'm sure the same can be said for all the students of various backgrouds. But for some reason after watching the video I felt like a lot of the sessions where an attack on the white students. I guess it's just hard to not personalize things when it comes to race, especially if you're the one being attacked. It's like one of the incidents with one of the white students where another student was commenting that he was the enemy. I just feel like it came down to Whites against everyone else and that issues between other races and cultures didn't seem to be addressed as much.

I enjoyed this weeks readings and am finding the Creating Inclusive Campus Environment book to be a very easy read. A couple of things really stood out to me in Chapter 7. It talked about how when you come to college it's important to get involved and how you need to join student groups right away. I feel like, while this a great idea and theory, it's hard for students to reach out on their own. I know when I went through freshman orientation the last thing I wanted to do was go to another activity fair and approach even more new people and step outside of my comfort zone. After reading the chapter I never thought about how hard it might be for students who are part of underrepresented populations because not only are they dealing with the insecurities that all freshman might face they might also have to struggle with not even having a group to identify with. I also like that the chapter listed actual strategies that could be effective in reaching out to underrepresented students.

I liked that Chapter 8 addressed the issue of MACCs and SAOs working together. I'd be interested to see or hear how well the two offices work together on our campus. I also thought it was an interesting and valid point about the MACC needing to be careful to make it's own identity and show that it needs to stand alone and not get sucked into being a part of the SAO.