Reflection: Identity, Race, Injudice, And Diversity In Class

I have learned a great deal since being in this class. I have learned terms and concepts, ideas and theories, but most of all, I have learned the staggering problem that involves diversity and social injustice. There are many terms that I have been introduced to in a whole new light. Those include: identity, power, privilege, prejudice, and discrimination. Identity is very complex and is way more than just someone’s skin color or personality. Identity is shaped by many factors including individual characteristics, family dynamics, historical factors, and social and political factors (Tatum 6). Identity is the simple answer to the simple question: who am I? Next, there is power. Power was a term that the class and I defined as a whole. We define

I can remember the very first assignment we had to do was to bring a object that represents you. This assignment got the wheels turning in my head for hours. I was thinking to myself, wondering, how many different objects someone could bring in to represent themselves. This was the first time I realized that identity is much more than just the sport I play or the God I worship. Another moment that made me really think was when I was watching the I Have a Dream speech by Martin Luther king Jr. He challenged people to see others not by their exterior looks, but by their interior character. I then noticed that I may be part of the problem instead of the solution, and that needed to change. I caught myself again and again judging people by how they look on outside instead of how they look in the inside. The identity we should be judging is the one that has nothing to do with appearance but everything to do we his or her character. This is not what I saw when the class and I watched What Would You do? in class one day. Again and again people made snap judgments about how the person is a terrible person and started scolding them. The interesting thing was that when the person was white, not a lot of people started to yell, but when the person was black, he drew a crowd around him just because of the color of his skin. The book, Privilege, Power, and Difference by Allan G. Johnson has also taught me so much about identity. The

There are many three levels to social structure which include the micro, meso, and macro levels. The micro level is the level that involves just yourself. This is the level that people are usually not ashamed of themselves and are not afraid to admit they are gay or are not ashamed of being a minority of any kind. This level is also the level that one can best feel their identity shaping and forming. The next level is the meso level. This level involves communities such as schools, at the workplace, or on a sports team. This is the level when people often categorize others into groups. One example of this happening was in the video of A Class Divided. At this level there was a sense of community, but also clear categories separating the class. Different eye colors were perceived as ideal or acceptable and if a child did not have that eye color, they were not privileged. In the RDSJ book, Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey examine how people go the extra mile to fit in with the group standards and expectations. This for example, showed in the video What Would You Do? As people saw the kid stealing the bike, if there was nobody around people usually did not get involved, but if there was a crowd of people, more and more would come. They did this because they wanted to fit in and feel they needed to conform to the patterns of the group. The last level in of social structure would be the macro level. The macro