Culture is seen as a major source of a person’s
identity and a major determinant of their actions and behavior. People define themselves in terms of where
they live, their gender, their race, their history, their nationality, their
language, etc., all of which are aspects of culture (Phillips 2006). Personally, I’ve never thought much about my
culture and identity in relation to education, and this is probably because I
am of the majority in terms of race and class.
My hometown in America is a dominantly White middle-class town in which
I am a part of the majority. I received
a primary and secondary education in public schools in which there was little
diversity and multiculturalism. In fact,
the high school I attended bused in a small number of African American students
from a nearby inner city to not only to provide those students with a better
education, but to diversify the school a bit more. Thinking about it now and relating it to the
work of McIntosh which we read for class, this act of bussing African American
students to my town to attend school was an example of white privilege. I think that growing up in my town, we were “taught
to think of our lives as morally neutral, normative and average, and also
ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will
allow ‘them’ to be more like ‘us’” (McIntosh 1992).
From my perspective, though there was no blatant
discrimination against these students, everyone knew who they were because
there were so few African American students at the school. It was assumed that all African American
students at the school were from the nearby inner city, though this was not the
case; there were a handful of other African American students at the school
that did live in my town.
From a young age, my parents have taught me that the
world is made up of people of different races, nationalities, languages, etc.
and the fact that everyone is different is what makes the world such a great
place. Everyone has something to offer
to the world, and if we choose to do so, we can learn a great deal from
others. We can expand our thinking and
our horizons and grow, both individually and collectively as a human race. Unfortunately, a lot of my peers did not
share this same view, and though they did not exhibit blatant discrimination,
it was obvious that they felt as though they were the superior. In my opinion, this was a detrimental way of
thinking on my classmates’ part and proves that “white privilege damages white
people” (McIntosh 1992). I think that
these feelings of superiority were a result of not only not having been taught
from a young age by their parents to be accepting of everyone, but also
inexposure to people who were different than them. As I said, most students came from a white
middle-class family, and we all had been going to school together since kindergarten,
so these were the people who made up our everyday life. There was also not much discussion or
incorporation, as I recall, of multiculturalism in school.
References
McIntosh, P. (1992)
White Privilege and Male Privilege: A personal account of
coming to see
correspondences through work in women’s studies, In M.
Andersen & P.
H. Collins (eds), Race, Class, and Gender: An anthology.
Belmont, CA,
Wadsworth Publishing.
Phillips, A. (2006). What is
culture? In Arneil, Barbara and Deveaux, Monique and
Dhamoon, Rita and Eisenberg,
Avigail, (eds.) Sexual justice / cultural
justice.
London, UK : Routledge, 2006, pp. 15-29.
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