Blog #5

Monster and Incognegro are both about African Americans who find themselves mistreated and judged by people of other races. Discrimination and white privilege are present in both novels.  In Monster the main character, Steve is discriminated against and has to try to overcome white privilege.   The jury is already thinking he is guilty just because he’s a young black on trial.  In the story Steve’s lawyer tells Steve repeatedly that she has to make him apart more human or that he has to find a way to separate himself from the other person on trail. In Incognegro the main character, Zane, is a fair skinned African American. He passes for white and therefore enjoys all the benefits of white privilege. Discrimination is also present in this book because lynchings were a popular pass time in the south at the time in this story. It can also be see when you consider the sheriff is holding Zane’s brother for murder when he knows he didn’t do it. Race can also be discussed in this unit because in Incognegro Zane says that race is just a bunch of rules and that it’s a strategy. This brings a lot of questions to the surface for discussion. Is race something someone just made up and if so what are the rules of race? Can the rules be changed?

Blog #4

The videos that were assigned for this unit had very personal accounts of experiences with white privilege and also an exercise that forced children and adults to consider discrimination. The second video, A Class Divided, really made me think about how easily people, not just children, can be brainwashed into believe or doing something they know is wrong. The teacher in that video had her students turned against each other in a matter of minutes. I can only image how it must have been in Nazi Germany looking back at unit 1. Young people are very impressionable and the look up to adults. If society encourages discriminator behavior it would spread like wild fire, but if all of society were to do the opposite would discrimination disappear?

I think the experiment was a little risk to do on children. The teacher herself said it could be damaging if done incorrectly. It seems that the risk was worth it because as you see in the video those students who are know adults still remember and are pasting on what they had learned. Those individuals know that you don’t judge someone but looks or stereotypes, but on who they are.