Learning Processing Blog Post 2

While reading Takaki's A Different Mirror, I can't help compare each chapter to how I learned about each period and each group of people in past academic settings as well as in situations where I have learned about them on my own. And I would like to take this opportunity to thank Jamesville DeWitt public schools for the exposure to the many facets of American History they offered. My education wasn't perfect, but as I read Takaki's book, I realize that I have a foundation for everything mentioned so far. However, Takaki includes an overwhelming amount of details I had not previously been aware of.

Throughout my schooling, at a predominately white school (though it did have the distinction of being the most diverse in the county, based on what research and criteria I will never know), we spent what I would think counts as a considerable amount of time learning and discussing the roles of African-Americans in US society. In elementary school we sang slave spirituals in music class and wrote letters to Ruby Bridges. We discussed slavery and read lots of books about Harriet Tubman and the underground railroad. In forth grade we memorized MLK's I Have A Dream Speech and then recited it to the whole school and anyone whose parents could take the afternoon off work.

I'm not sure who came up with our currciulum or who decided we needed to be sure to know how Black Americans shaped US history, but I have a feeling it was some how realted to wanting to assauge White guilt for oppressing a race of people for so long. I've come to this conclusion becuase the way in whcih much of the material was presented also hyped how there were White people who helped Blacks. I'm from Upstate New York, so we learned plenty about the Underground Railroad as Syracuse was a busy operating station.

However, despite my exposure to Black history and culture, even as it was presented as part of my own history as an American, specifically as a Central New Yorker, I still feel uncomfortable talking about race. Would it just be easier to ignore it and focus on our similarities and hope that one day we will all completely integrate and become one blended race or is it better to try and preserve individual races and cultures and acklowedge/ clebrate our differences? I could try and sell myself as a person an open, culurally aware and sensitive and point out my multicolored friends. Everybody knows this person. They are all over AU and are the first to point how accepting and non-racisit they are becuase of thier token minority friends. And while I do have friends from different backgrounds and a handful or biracial cousins, when I evaulate who my closest friends are, they are white and upper middle class, just like me. And, of all the conversations I've had with black friends, I've only had one where we acknoledged how race, and society's preceptions and expectations of race, have determined much of the persons we have become.

It worries me a little then when I am in the classroom I will be more perceptive to the needs of students who are most like me and not to the ones with which I least identify. Yesterday, as it was picture day at my practicum site, I had the chance to see how race can divide a student from her peers and teacher without the teacher even realizing. While the class stood inline waiting their turn, the teacher helped several of the little girls run a fine toothed comb through silky straight hair. One little girl, with a gorgeous mane of course, textured curls, worn down as opposed to her usual braids for picture day, cried because she hated her hair. The teacher did nothing to calm her and seemed annoyed that she couldn't abide the photos like everyone else. Well, I'm not black so I don't know first hand about the relationship Black women have with their hair, but I do know, as it is often the subject of magazine articles and an upcoming documentary, it is a big deal. I also know what it is like to have different hair. It may seem like a trivial feature, but over the years I have felt isolated, left out, different and ugly because of it. When my elementary school teachers were fixing the other girls hair, no one was fixing mine. Being separated based on a physical trait, even when those discriminating are not cognizant of their actions, is still hurtful and confusing.

I'm not really sure how to relate reading Takaki with development of metacognition. While I find the book very interesting and thought provoking, I haven't noticed any new patterns in the way I think, absorb and process new material. I already know that I retain information best when I can relate it to something I already know. They one thing I did notice in terms of my thinking is that I have been trained to associate Abolitionism in the US with Women's Sufferage. This is not how Takaki organizes material, but it's how it was often presented throughout my schooling, so I kept anticipating him to include the struggle for women's rights within in the chapter. I don't know if other schools like for students to draw the parallels between the two movements, or if my school did because they both tie in heavily to local history, but in my mind they are intertwined and I am now cognizant of how my brain organizes these particular schema.