Looking Back

It's hard to believe that it was just at the beginning of this semester that I had such a different view about society. I didn't acknowledge certain implicit biases and prejudices that I had because I thought that it made me a bad person. I learned that it's better to recognize these bits of implicit racism and learn to correct them instead of pretending that they don't exist at all. I learned that there are so many different types of people in the world, or even just outside our local community, that live in such different conditions from me. I've learned to not fear things that are different, but to embrace the differences and learn from them. I don't think that this class has changed the person that I am, but it has certainly influenced my beliefs and the way I view the world around me. I find myself stopping people from making prejudiced comments whether it be about race, gender, sexuality, or age. I used to pay little attention to these things that I had just learned to accept as part of my friends' usual remarks. I don't know how I was fine with all of the comments in the past because it actually upsets me now when people say things that put down another group of people, of whom they know little to nothing about. I realized how much the media influences the way that everyone thinks and acts, especially when it comes to appearance and body image. I think it's so important for people to be more aware of society's impacts on the way we each think and act every day because this has truly changed the way I look at life everyday. 

Crash

This week in class we watched the movie Crash. I had never seen it before, and the ways that it demonstrated all of the different types and ways that racism is a part of everyday life. All of the characters in the movie each had their own conflicts they face and each of them interact in various ways to learn to overcome their problems. Today in class we started to discuss whether the cop that was trying to change his ways and not be as racist, or the cop that openly admitted he was racist was worse overall. I came to the conclusion that while both of them are far from perfect, the cop that openly accepted that he had a problem with racism is better in my eyes. It's much worse to avoid dealing with a problem because pretending a problem doesn't exist will only lead to more problems in the end. The young cop who failed to admit to his issues with race ended up killing an innocent man, simply because he wouldn't accept that he had a real problem and ignoring it wasn't the answer. I think that there are so many people on a daily basis that don't really think that they have a problem with race, but it's definitely more common than people think. I've actually noticed some of the things that people say, even when they're joking around, or the things that I've thought to myself, are extremely judgmental and unfair. This movie really made me change my perspective on the way I think and has made me so much more aware of how I act and what I think and say on a daily basis.

Race isn't Real

After reading the article Mixed Blood and discussing the issue in class, I've started to see why sociologists are trying to prove that race is a myth. We've grown up in a society where race is simply taken at face value: no one questions it's validity, or the legitmacy behind it. I had never realized how much people's skin color might vary within a designated category of race. One thing I found particularly interesting was that race is just one way of categorizing people, just like you could group people by height, hair color, weight, or eye color. Since there's no biological proof that race exists, I think that it's important to use this idea to begin shifting away from classifying people by race. It's something that I find myself doing more often than I realized before I ever took the time to really think about it. This unit has helped me to become more aware of how I think about different groups of people, and I really want to apply this idea to my everyday life, and share it with other people, too.