The Academic and Social Value of Ethnic Studies
Written By: Christine E. Sletter
Reflection:
Throughout this reading, I drew a large connection in relation to the fact of students in United States schooling. In most classes, curriculums focus on mostly White Historical figures and downplay those of color. For many years, I can mostly remember studying about the Holocaust focusing on the idea of Hilter. The concept of the Nazis, concentration camps, and Hitler himself. The history of people such as Martin Luther King or Rose Parks did not get as much attention to those of white skin color. After thinking about this fully I came to a realization that the education system must make a change. We must shift our curriculums away from the Eurocentric bias and allow room for different histories and cultures to be represented. As a society, I believe we treat racism as something of the past but fail to recognize it’s something that is current. Even outside of our schools people face daily racism which is something that blows my mind. After all these years we still can’t get a handle on treating everyone equally. We have grown such a bias to racial views that I believe sometimes we don’t even realize our actions and our words.
As a white female, I find the concept of racism hard to explain. For the rest of my life I will never face discrimination, or hate regarding the color of my skin. I almost feel a sense of awkwardness around this topic because I believe in some ways my opinion doesn't matter. I don’t have to go through the awful social hatred just based on my culture and skin color. Not only in our schools but out in our daily lives, we must strengthen our ethnic identity and self-esteem. As each individual we must work on ourselves to then one day help our community as an entirety.
I agree in history we rarely talked about individuals of color it was typically the white males we learned about such as Christopher Columbus.
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