FNED 502: Social Issues

     These two videos were frustrating to watch together. As though current events surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement aren't cause enough for frustration, these videos serve as a startling reminder that the same fight has been going on for decades. Just about any American can easily make connections between the children's protest in Alabama and the current BLM protests; protesters, regardless of their age or cause, have been forcefully and aggressively beaten back by police officers and people in power. Whether sprayed with pressurized water or tear gas, black people and their allies have been repeatedly told that their cause isn't worth the fight. How much longer will it take?      The protests today make me think people are finished waiting. Just like in the video about the children's march, young people have come together in an incredible way in order to rally, teach, and define their own generation as one who speaks up and out. Participants fro...

     I briefly studied Judith Butler in a seminar on literary criticism I took as an undergrad. When I clicked on the link to watch this video for class, I was surprised to see her name. She had been one of my favorite authors from the course (definitely the easiest to interpret). As soon as the video began, I understand her role in it. In the course I took in college, we read excerpts of Butler’s book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity , where she explains gender as a performance and its relation to language and politics. Similarly, this video reminds us that language and politics are linked: language supports us outside of ourselves in order to help us construct our own identities.        But if we can use language to write ourselves into being, can’t society do the same for us? And doesn’t it? We are constantly being forced into boxes that mark our identities and shape our existence. Man, woman, Cristian, Muslim, black, white. ...

     “I Am Not Your Negro” was quite an appalling film to watch. Throughout its entirety, I was in awe of both the candor with which the speakers presented their ideas and the disgust at a racial hierarchy that upholds violence and human degradation as its core (albeit blind) tenants: “[White people] don’t want to believe still, less to act on the belief, that what is happening in Birmingham is happening all over the country.” One of the most successful aspects of the current Black Lives Matter protests is the overwhelming presence they’re having across the country. Police brutality doesn’t just occur in Minneapolis, but in all fifty states. Awful video footage of police pushing protesters to the ground (around minute twenty-six) isn’t just a thing of the past, but it continues to happen today. This inundation of voices and evidence and frustration is perhaps the impetus our country (white people, mainly) need in order to enact change. Already, we’re seeing positive resul...

     In Deculturalization , Spring argues that racism is a consequence of cultural intolerance. This idea makes sense to me, and we see it play out in our modern society still to this day. When we look back on British and United States history, it is clear that we (as a privileged, American people) have always feared and fought against difference and migration of any kind. The term “white” was never enough – racism needed to account for religion, heritage, and place of birth. Given recent (and the most current) events, it is still just as clear that racism pervades and continues to run deep. In a country in which so many people (namely, Native Americans) were run off their land and murdered for being different, it’s a shame that modern racism is the same problem with a different façade .      Spring’s essay made me think a lot about cultural responsiveness and competence. If we aren’t being considerate of our students’ cultures and languages, are we doing m...