the not-so-diverse diversity group; also, another day of prenatal zen
we met our randomly-drawn groupmates tonight in my race and gender class. these people are the ones with whom i will work the entire semester. out of the 60 people in my class, roughly half are black, a third are white, and the remainder are latino. we are practically evenly divided between males and females.
my group: the five whitest people in the class. i drew four. white. men. okay, one of them identified himself as mexican-american, but he was born much further north than i was, and is at least as pale as i am. we're gonna have us some good and hot diversity discussion. mmm-hmmm. barrels of diversilicious goodness.
tonight was our third session. at the first session, we were given an assignment for tonight - write a one page paper about how we identified racially, our formative racial experiences, what ethnic traditions we hope to continue. this paper was also to serve as our introduction to our small group. two of the four rocket scientists with which i am grouped didn't write the paper. neither of those two have gotten their textbook yet. of the other two who wrote their papers, one of them wrote it by hand - he's a computer technician, so don't tell me he doesn't have access to a computer, and yes, everything is required to be typed.
the best part: all four of them said something like, "i don't think race matters." they all think personality and effort are what count. four white men all made that statement with a straight face. in the spirit of discussion (!) i asked if anyone had done the reading for tonight (answer: no), which was about how the dominant power group self-preserves by training its members to be oblivious to its unearned privilege. that group can be taught to recognize the disadvantage of others, but it cannot recognize its own advantage. i summarized the paper and asked if anyone thought that it was easier for them to think that "race doesn't matter" because it didn't affect them because they were white (nevermind male). i got four blank stares.
it's going to be a long semester.
*****
justin and i had another spirited discussion, this time via e-mail. things were said. but on the other side of our exchange, we came out on at least roughly the same page. and that was the worst of today. i had no pregnancy freakouts, maybe because, boy, did i feel pregnant today. my grapefruit-plus uterus (hey, even my ute is pretty plus these days!) is pushing everything else up, which is giving me quite the dinosaur egg belly profile. honestly, if it turns out my body is making a fool of me again - well, no one could blame me for thinking i was still pregnant, with a ballooning belly like this one. i'm sure every female i've encountered at work this week (and some of the males) think i'm pregnant, if the eyeballs i'm getting are any indication.
when i get the eyeball, i give them a startled look, like, "what? are you looking at my fat???" you wouldn't believe how much snarky satisfaction i get out of it.
and on that thought of peace and love, i'm going to go do my yoga now.
my group: the five whitest people in the class. i drew four. white. men. okay, one of them identified himself as mexican-american, but he was born much further north than i was, and is at least as pale as i am. we're gonna have us some good and hot diversity discussion. mmm-hmmm. barrels of diversilicious goodness.
tonight was our third session. at the first session, we were given an assignment for tonight - write a one page paper about how we identified racially, our formative racial experiences, what ethnic traditions we hope to continue. this paper was also to serve as our introduction to our small group. two of the four rocket scientists with which i am grouped didn't write the paper. neither of those two have gotten their textbook yet. of the other two who wrote their papers, one of them wrote it by hand - he's a computer technician, so don't tell me he doesn't have access to a computer, and yes, everything is required to be typed.
the best part: all four of them said something like, "i don't think race matters." they all think personality and effort are what count. four white men all made that statement with a straight face. in the spirit of discussion (!) i asked if anyone had done the reading for tonight (answer: no), which was about how the dominant power group self-preserves by training its members to be oblivious to its unearned privilege. that group can be taught to recognize the disadvantage of others, but it cannot recognize its own advantage. i summarized the paper and asked if anyone thought that it was easier for them to think that "race doesn't matter" because it didn't affect them because they were white (nevermind male). i got four blank stares.
it's going to be a long semester.
*****
justin and i had another spirited discussion, this time via e-mail. things were said. but on the other side of our exchange, we came out on at least roughly the same page. and that was the worst of today. i had no pregnancy freakouts, maybe because, boy, did i feel pregnant today. my grapefruit-plus uterus (hey, even my ute is pretty plus these days!) is pushing everything else up, which is giving me quite the dinosaur egg belly profile. honestly, if it turns out my body is making a fool of me again - well, no one could blame me for thinking i was still pregnant, with a ballooning belly like this one. i'm sure every female i've encountered at work this week (and some of the males) think i'm pregnant, if the eyeballs i'm getting are any indication.
when i get the eyeball, i give them a startled look, like, "what? are you looking at my fat???" you wouldn't believe how much snarky satisfaction i get out of it.
and on that thought of peace and love, i'm going to go do my yoga now.
posted by laura at 9:16 PM
6 Comments:
How old are these fellas? Can anyone say "dominant paradigm"??
The course sounds fascinating and that paper that only you read seems like it was a case study of your little mates in class:)
BTW, is the yoga doing anything useful for you? I'm feeling a need to do some kind of health type thingy and yoga seems a good option. I think. Were you into yoga before now?
Well done on growing your own grapefruit too:)
An spirited discussion eh? An exchange? Was their specialized vocabulary involved?
On the college front: welcome to my world. It might make you feel better to know that there are people of colour in the room who feel exactly the same way as the white guys and dealing with them is even weirder. That's how hegemony works, and boy does it work!
If you really feel like throwing your ute-weight around approach the instructor and tell her/him that you are concerned about being stuck in a group where no one does the work. Tell them you are serious about your studies and these people don't seem to be and were wondering if you could shuffle off to a group that seems, as we say in the business, engaged.
clare, see my post of 6 november for a ramble about going back to school, or why i want to be my own therapist.
jill, prenatal yoga helps work out the little aches and pains of pregnancy. a good full session keeps me feeling limber for a solid day and a half. and the meditation portion keeps me calm for, well, maybe half a day. but that's one less half day i'm spazzing out, at least.
dbm, there are clueless people of color in my class, too (the very youngest ones), but i won't even get to engage in any meaningful conversation with any of them in this set up. i plan to devote all my group energies to poking sticks at the four white men. maybe they gave me blank stares last night, but by the end of the semester, maybe they'll at least think about it.
also, jill - my groupmates are 19, 21, 21 and 34, with the cluelessness being pretty evenly spread between the younger ones and the older one.
and i started doing yoga last spring, post-hans and post-anti-depressants. i'm not die-hard; i do it when i feel desperate. i'm sure i'd get more out of it if i did it regularly.
Gah!! Groupwork! I'm the oldest one in all my classes - frequently even older than the professors. They don't even know how lucky they are to have someone with perspective in their group. Wish I could watch you poke sticks at them.
I would also enjoy the stick-poking, and if I were your instructor I would encourage you at every opportunity. It struck me on the way to school today how absurd it is - here you are in a class called, I think "Race and Gender" and yet these guys still don't see an issue. Hilarious!
I also do yoga fairly frequently, not so much now that I'm huge and ungainly but it really helped me with depression and anxiety even before deadbaby. Doing it regularly is the best thing, but I'm not that consistent with it myself and it still helps. So does meditation, which I basically do when I'm desperate.
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