Reflection 1:
+ What was your experience like completing the Implicit Association Tests? Did you feel stressed? Anxious? What were your thoughts while reading your results? Were you surprised? Upset? Or, were your results as you expected? It was rough! I am the type of person that needs to be able to think through things and isn't the best at rapid fire responses. So I experienced many emotions - stress, anxiety, disappointment, failure, and aggravated. While reading my thoughts, it made sense to an extent, but I also became skeptical because we all have different usual behaviors vs. stress behaviors and my stress behaviors became full onset and I wasn't able to counterbalance. A person good at taking rapid fire tests would be more successful, when I was a flop. Reflection 2:
+ What were your initial reactions to this video? What feelings or thoughts did it bring up for you? What types of bias did you notice while watching? I love Jane Elliott and her experiments. I first watched a video about it many years ago and became intrigued. You cannot change your skin tone anymore than your eye color. The main feeling that it brought up was that this needs to be done more. I feel every White person needs to experience, either as a participant or an observer. If more educators did this and continued this education, we might be able to begin working towards true equality. I noticed every type of bias or, at least, associated every action or word to a bias. Reflection 3: + Are there any experience that you related to in the videos above? In the racial group that you identify with, has the societal favoring of light colored skin ever impacted you? Were there any experiences from racial groups that surprised you, or that you never considered before? One experience that stood out was when 1 White man stated that he was often afraid to say the wrong thing. I think this is very common within White people. All of us haven't had the experience, exposure, or education to always understand the right thing to say and that we can get trapped in our own heads trying to make sure that the best is said and not what roles off the tongue and comes across poorly. As I have gotten older and built relationships with People of Color (POC), listened to their experiences, witnessed events, and focused on educating myself, that has become less of a worry. The best intention is not always the right way. Honestly, I think the White community is a bit backwards in our thinking of beauty. If you can tan, your skin tone is beautiful. If you are milky White and burn in the sunlight, you seem to be weird, an outcast, and less favored. That may be a personal experience and outside of the norm, but I have experienced jokes about being pale, too white, etc. I wouldn't say it's necessarily negatively impacted me, but at times I have wished I could tan. Lastly, none of the experiences of the POC surprised me. I actually had a conversation with an African American friend that is light skinned and how she was recently harassed for not being "black enough" even within her family. I think my lack of surprise just comes from hearing experiences from my friends and educating myself. Reflection 4: + What are your thoughts about the concept of white culture, identity, and entitlement as they were discussed? What are your thoughts about the concept of white privilege? As a white man, I never really thought I had a culture. However, I did always see it as an identity. I was "educated" by family on how we are different from POC. Entitlement... I see it everyday and I always have. It made me think back to when family members would discuss their opinions about "illegal" immigrants, POC, spoken language, and, most recently, "Southern/Confederate pride." I feel that White people often need to feel like the cultural victim because of archaic and racist systems of belief. But it made me think about something else, we have a culture of silence. History has shown few White people that have stood by POC and been a voice, when White people refused to listen to the voices of POC. We have a culture of just sitting, watching, enabling, and ignoring the problems of anyone, but ourselves. That, in itself, is the biggest sign of white privilege. If it doesn't impact us, we don't have to worry about it. WRONG! We need to be the ones working the hardest to correct our past mistakes and not allowing history to continue its cycle of repetition because it is our fault. Our ancestors created the foundation and we need to stand by all human beings and fight for a world of equality.
