Monday, August 10, 2015

Tommy McMahon - Blog Posts 3-5

Micro-aggressions and other inequalities will continue to persist due to the middle class to the dominant middle class culture of power. Discuss.

            Personally, I think that these inequalities, micro-aggressions in particular, have not necessarily continued to persist due to a dominant middle class culture of power. It’s come from centuries of heavy racism which has not fully dissipated. This racism goes as far back as the 1600’s, when black slaves were first imported. For centuries, this culture of white superiority formed, which at first may have been formed to protect the idea of slavery in a slowly progressing world. But it turned into an ideology, perhaps unintentionally, perhaps intentionally. Many believe that since we’ve had 60+ years to fix these micro-aggressions, it’s largely instead due to a middle class culture, which is dominated by the Caucasian race. But 60 years isn’t enough time. For centuries, it’s been persistent that white people were richer, and minorities are poorer. This had been going for centuries. Hundreds and hundreds of years. Yet some say that despite this, only a little bit more than half a century should have been enough to fix it. But it’s not. This is not a small area of the world where black people are less wealthy. This is an entire country, an entire world perhaps. Some people are going to be able, or at least choose to be able, to grasp these new opportunities, and that’s why there’s been any sort of progress at all. But some don’t choose to, some aren’t even able to. And because of this, micro-aggressions and small inequalities on the same level were created. An age of semi-tolerance mixed in with generally similar statistics from statistics 20, 30, 40 years ago. Not necessarily because of a ‘dominant middle class culture’.

            How would you encourage diversity in the classroom?

            As much as I think that diversity is a very important asset in learning, there’s really no way to encourage it. It’s not like you can really take kids from one school, take some more kids from a different race, gender, experience, etc., and smash them together into one big school. Because that’s not how the education system works here, or in any democratic country. The lack of diversity is due to more white, middle class people being together, and more minority lower class people being in another place. How that is, or why that is, is because people in the lower class (Which tends to be minorities) have less advantages than people who are better off financially. Therefore, the people who are better off financially will get into better schools, while the people with less advantages will get into lower class schools. So the only real way to encourage it is to get everyone, no matter what race, gender, whatever, on the same level, and hopefully that level is everyone’s well off. Whether that means providing more welfare to the lower class, setting up better funded, better managed programs to provide the lower class more opportunities that the middle/richer class already have, that’s the government’s call. But what’s undisputable is that something should be done.


                                    Affirmative action causes reverse racism: Discuss.


            Well, it seriously differs on the situation. If it’s come down to two people, where one of color has a much poorer background, and one white person who has a much wealthier background, it’s not necessarily racist. But if it comes down to two people with the similar backgrounds, just that person is of color, then yes, it could be considered to be racist. Though personally, I don’t think it intentionally causes reverse racism. It’s just that people looked at the situation, they saw that statistically more minorities are poorer, and they asked themselves “How can we fix this?”. Now, if a solution can cause reverse racism, then I personally think that it’s not the right solution. We want a solution that causes little to no racism of any type, which I think can be done. Is it a solution with good intentions? Yes, of course. But can it cause reverse racism, therefore suggesting that it might not be the best solution? I believe so.

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