Hi all,
I just finished grading Discussion 2.2 and I have some comments and thoughts to pass along to help us stay on tack and, hopefully, to guide you all to improving your understanding of the material and your grades in this class.
- Be sure to connect your comments directly to the readings—show me that you have done the reading and understand it by making this connections explicit. I’ve noticed that we have a lot of great stories being shared about people’s experiences, but we need to make sure the relevance of those stories to the assigned material is made clear.
- Remember, too, that I’m looking for evidence in your posts that you are doing the reading. Consequently, it’s not enough to mention one tiny part of a reading and respond to that. I gently deducted a few points when I saw this happening as a reminder to improve in the future. (For example, very few people commented on the articles about Bush’s use of nicknames I wonder how many of you actually read those articles?)
- There seems to be some confusion of terms. “People of color” is generally an OK term when used in broadly talking about non-white people (blacks, latinos, Asians, Pacific Islanders, etc.); “colored people” is not. "Colored people” carries a lot of historical baggage leftover from legal segregation and Jim Crow laws. Of course, if you are only taking about blacks, or Native Americans, or latinos, then using those labels is also appropriate.
- I noticed that a few people were uncomfortable being labeled “white.” That’s not unusual and we’re going to explore why very soon. In the meantime, if you felt uneasy over being identified as white, bookmark your comment and/or make a note in your notebook about it.
- Finally, do remember that noticing race (which is almost always attached to skin color) and talking about is not a racist act. Indeed, the only way we can learn what it is and how it works is to talk about it. And to do that effectively we need a solid vocabulary.
Thanks!
Tim
