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Avatar as a race relations commentary
Dec. 31st, 2009 09:24 amBefore I get down to the work of getting my house ready for a crowd of people tonight, here's my ( rundown of Avatar. )
An observation
Nov. 19th, 2009 06:28 pmI've just been reading the short stories written by my students. The assignment was for a realistic story, with characters similar to themselves experiencing everyday problems.
Now, my class is quite diverse. Out of 24 students, 14 speak a language other than English at home. Of those, three are white (Eastern European) and the rest are mostly from the Indian sub-continent. Five are Muslim, one is a Coptic Christian, the rest are Hindu or Orthodox Christian.
So it was with some surprise that I noted that all of their stories, without exception, used Anglophone names. There was a full complement of Melissas, Jessicas, Amandas, two different Sams, two Maxes, and a few slightly less-common ones. But not a single name in the bunch that seemed to come from their cultures. Not a single reference to cultural food or religion or clothing that wasn't North American. To read the stories, you'd think my class was white-bread middle class from the Prairies.
I find this rather disturbing. We've read more than one story from their cultures, we regularly discuss how each culture in the room has something special to bring to the table, I make opportunities to discuss the things that each culture has in common with the others and the things that set it apart, and yet when it comes to a story that was supposed to relate to their own lives, I get nothing so much as classic examples of acculturation.
I'm not sure what to do about it, though. A classroom is a place where children are enculturated, and if their culture is not the dominant one, some acculturation is almost unavoidable. That said, I want them to feel that their culture is valuable and valid in my classroom, and that a story that involves their experiences as minority cultures in Canada is not only acceptable, but perhaps preferable in this situation because it's closer to their experience. I wouldn't expect all of them to write that way, but I would have expected a few of them to do so.
I'm going to post this to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
racism_101 as soon as someone over there approves me for membership, and see what they have to say.
Now, my class is quite diverse. Out of 24 students, 14 speak a language other than English at home. Of those, three are white (Eastern European) and the rest are mostly from the Indian sub-continent. Five are Muslim, one is a Coptic Christian, the rest are Hindu or Orthodox Christian.
So it was with some surprise that I noted that all of their stories, without exception, used Anglophone names. There was a full complement of Melissas, Jessicas, Amandas, two different Sams, two Maxes, and a few slightly less-common ones. But not a single name in the bunch that seemed to come from their cultures. Not a single reference to cultural food or religion or clothing that wasn't North American. To read the stories, you'd think my class was white-bread middle class from the Prairies.
I find this rather disturbing. We've read more than one story from their cultures, we regularly discuss how each culture in the room has something special to bring to the table, I make opportunities to discuss the things that each culture has in common with the others and the things that set it apart, and yet when it comes to a story that was supposed to relate to their own lives, I get nothing so much as classic examples of acculturation.
I'm not sure what to do about it, though. A classroom is a place where children are enculturated, and if their culture is not the dominant one, some acculturation is almost unavoidable. That said, I want them to feel that their culture is valuable and valid in my classroom, and that a story that involves their experiences as minority cultures in Canada is not only acceptable, but perhaps preferable in this situation because it's closer to their experience. I wouldn't expect all of them to write that way, but I would have expected a few of them to do so.
I'm going to post this to
racism_101 as soon as someone over there approves me for membership, and see what they have to say.
