Thursday, October 20, 2011
Barriers
It never really occurred to me that social barriers and personal barriers were a problem in the world until reading Chapter 3 of Diversity Consciousness. I guess it makes sense though for me not to understand, for I am a white American living in America my entire life. I have never been somewhere where I have been a minority, or considered different. Because of this, I have been oblivious to the fact that discrimination does occur here. Looking back now, kind of embarrassed, I can say that I have been someone with social barriers. I remember in high school we got a new math teacher, Mrs. Kim. She was Korean and had what I thought to be at the time a very strong accent. I struggled understanding what she said a lot of the time because she had trouble pronouncing words in english. I remember going home and complaining everyday of how I didn't like her and that she was a bad teacher. Now, I cant believe I ever thought that because she was actually the best teacher, in terms of actually teaching, that we had at our school. She also grew to be my favorite teacher. So I guess these "barriers" and discrimination are real, but majority of us are too comfortable in our lives to open our eyes and see the truth in the issue.
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I really feel identified with your blog post, we usually don't feel offended by stereotypes because we are not the direct victims. I lived a similar story in high school. when I was in 10th grade, our French teacher came from the Democratic Republic of Congo, he is black, and many people in my class thought that he would be a dummy just because of his skin color; however though out the year we learned that he was the smartest person we had ever met. He spoke 10 languages, and was an electrical engineer that knew about every single topic you asked him! I guess that after that incident many people learned that it is not right to judge others based on stereotypes... (engr 103)
ReplyDeleteYeah you definitely hit that one right on! We aren't the direct victims so we don't see it to be much of a problem. Just like your situation, I learned not to judge people before I get a chance to know them, because more often than not your initial opinion of someone is wrong.
ReplyDelete(engr103)
You have written it so well, specially the last line which says "So I guess these "barriers" and discrimination are real, but majority of us are too comfortable in our lives to open our eyes and see the truth in the issue".
ReplyDeleteI believe that we should overlook the social norms and barriers instead of wasting time on them. :p
(engr 103)