HUMANITIES
Feb. 11, 2019 -
New York Times: Race Documentaries
For this project, we watched documentaries about how people of different racial groups (and cops) viewed race. Then, we reflected on each documentary by choosing quotes and sharing our thoughts on them. Below is some of my reflection work for the documentary.
“It’s a very touchy subject… especially for white people because we don’t want to see the racism we may be holding onto.”
In America, there’s this implication that if you say something racist, you’re a bad person. Racism is more than that though, it’s systemic, and a white person might not realize what they’re saying is racist, and if so they would not like to say that. So instead of confronting that and learning to avoid it, they just ignore it.
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“I think that impulse, that colorblindness impulse, comes mostly from white people.”
As a white person, I don’t really think about my race, so I don’t always recognize it as a culture. So there’s a tendency to ignore the problem in the hopes that it will go away.
Defining Racism: Mind Map
For this project, we made mind maps based on a reading from a book by Beverly Tatum. We defined words she used in the text, as well as taking general notes on concepts and quotes that stood out to us. Some words we defined were passive racism, internalized oppression, white privilege and stereotype. We also went more in depth with the definition of one word, doing research outside of the text we were given. The word I chose was internalized oppression, and I learned about examples of internalized oppression (like shaming others in your group) and subcategories of internalized oppression as well as the definition.
If Beale Street Could Talk
Tish has a problem. She's pregnant at nineteen and her boyfriend Fonny is in jail for a crime that he says that he didn't commit. In order to clear his name, their families must work together to raise bail and find the woman who's accusation landed him in prison to begin with, in a journey that stretches from New Orleans to Puerto Rico. Beautifully splicing Fonny and Tish's romantic past with the problems facing them in the present, James Baldwin weaves a story of tragedy with lasting impact on the American psyche.
For this book, we read 50 pages per week, annotating with 5 post-it notes as we went. Once we were done with the reading, we chose a quote to go more in depth on, explaining the background of the quote, the significance of the quote, and one question we had in a 250-word reflection. Below, you can find a sample quote that I chose.
“‘You’re a good girl, Clementine,’ he said. ‘I’m proud of you, don’t forget that.’
‘She ain’t going to forget it,’ said Ernestine. ‘I’ll whip her ass.’
‘But she’s pregnant!’ Mama cried, and took a sip of her cognac and then we all cracked up.” (page 49)
Before this quote, Clementine, our story’s protagonist, was debating how to break the news of her pregnancy to her parents. She is nineteen years old, the baby’s father is someone she’s not married to as well as being incarcerated, and she’s three months pregnant. Her mother guessed that she was pregnant, and made the announcement to the rest of the family. Her sister had also assumed she was pregnant, and her father was completely surprised. However, they weren’t mad at her; they wanted to celebrate the good news with the baby’s grandfather, Frank. So, after Clementine’s dad called him on the phone and told him to come over, the family got to celebrating, which is where this quote comes from.
This quote is significant to the story, because it shows the emotions of every member in her family upon hearing that Clementine is pregnant. Her dad wants her to know that he’s not mad at her, or if he is, he’s trying not to show it. Ernestine is still her sister, so she jokingly wants Clementine to be chastised for it, because that’s what their parents would do for her. Her mom is showing that she’s on Clementine’s side, and making a joke to lighten the mood, and make it seem like the pregnancy isn’t a large issue. And, luckily, it works. The family laughs.
One question I have is this; how have these responses been shaped by their lives and experiences? In the honors reading for this class, we’ve covered the roles black people in america tend to be pushed towards in black communities. Is Clementine’s dad telling her he’s proud of her because of his own beliefs and morals, or because he doesn’t want to fall into the violent, disapproving stereotype? How much of these responses are authentic, or each person projecting their own hopes and fears onto Clementine? We’ll have to read on to find out.
Our post-it notes were representative of our thoughts on the text as we read the book. Here are some notes that I took, from pages 1-50.
View notes in book.
Prison Presentations
Drugs, Gangs, and Daily Life in Prison
Our presentation covered three separate topics about life in prison, connected to a common theme of society in prison. I researched life in prison, while my group mates Jesse and JC talked about drugs and gangs in prison respectively. Life in prison, I discovered, is often a monotonous affair, where prisoners spend long hours working with very little time for recreation. Quarters are cramped, and prisoners don’t have any scheduled activities that would help them get a life outside of prison. Underneath it all runs a current of aggression that could blow up at any minute, where guards are aggressive and dehumanizing towards prisoners.
HONORS
For Humanities Honors, we read a document every two-three weeks, with the style of document alternating between readings. Some weeks, the reading is something that expands our knowledge of what we've learned in class. For these readings, we annotate important phrases and ideas with our own commentary. The other weeks, the reading is an SAT practice test. For these, we take the test, explaining our thought processes behind why we chose each answer as we go along.
Honors Reading Example: Between The World and Me
Between The World and Me is a memoir/letter written by Ta-Nehisi Coates about his life growing up as black in America. The text is framed as a letter to his son, explaining some of the attitudes surrounding black history he may encounter in his lifetime. For Honors, we read and annotated half of the book, and wrote a reflection on his ideas afterward. Below, i've included the starting paragraph of my reflection about the text.
In Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, the author imparts several lessons to his son through his experiences as a child and in college. Growing up in Baltimore, the rules of the streets were many. “You rolled with a posse to the party as sure as you wore boots in the snow, or raised an umbrella in the rain.” (Coates, 2015, p. 25). It was seen as natural to be face to face with violence on a daily basis, and learning which blocks to avoid walking home came with the same education of learning how to stay warm in the winter. Coates didn’t understand why this fear-driven violence was as natural to his early life as a thunderstorm, and it was that question which he struggled to answer during his time at Howard College, and it’s black culture counterpart of The Mecca. It wasn’t a cut-and-dry answer as he had hoped. “I had come looking for a parade, for a military review of champions marching in ranks. Instead, I was left with a brawl of dissenters, sometimes marching together but just as often marching away from each other.” (Coates, 2015, p. 48) So, he draws his own conclusions, based on the texts of those who had come before him, which he sums up in the last line of the reading. “You cannot forget how much they took from us and how they transfigured our very bodies into sugar, tobacco, and gold.” (Coates, 2015, p. 71) This legacy of black violence, of having no control over their very bodies and yet feeling the need to prove to the world that they could protect themselves, stems from this point of having themselves sold like cattle, a painful legacy that mutated but never went away. It’s tragic, and it’s always been a part of America, just like the Dream itself.
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SAT/ACT PREP
EXAMPLE QUESTION
The work of transportation planners generally includes evaluating current transportation needs, assessing the effectiveness of existing facilities, and improving those facilities or 3 they design new ones. Most transportation planners work in or near cities, 4 but some are employed in rural areas. Say, for example, a large factory is built on the outskirts of a small town. Traffic to and from that location would increase at the beginning and end of work shifts. The transportation 5 planner’s job, might involve conducting a traffic count to determine the daily number of vehicles traveling on the road to the new factory. If analysis of the traffic count indicates that there is more traffic than the 6 current road as it is designed at this time can efficiently accommodate, the transportation planner might recommend widening the road to add another lane.
QUESTION THREE:
Select an Answer:
1) NO CHANGE
2) to design
3) designing
4) design
QUESTION FOUR:
Which choice results in the most effective transition to the information that follows in the paragraph?
1) NO CHANGE
2) where job opportunities are more plentiful
3) and the majority are employed by government agencies
4) DELETE the underlined portion and end the sentence with a period.