RACE

To watch and discuss the movie “The Help” I recruited my mom Dayle, my sisters Alex and Taylor and my best friend Jordanne who are white females age 46, 20, 16 and 19, respectively. I would describe all of their master statuses as white, straight, females, who are of the middle class and abled. There was little diversity in our group discussion besides my mother being out of the norm age group. Our group discussion lasted for about one hour. I felt it was very productive because no one was shy or held back their thoughts, which lead to everyone being able to expressing their opinion freely.

When discussing focusing questions one question in particular stood out because of the variation in responses it received. The question was, “How do you define race?” My mother’s answer was “Heritage”, Alex answered “Where people come from and their skin color”, Taylor answered, “Skin color,” and Jordanne answered, “How people think of themselves.” All of these responses were what I expected because they are similar to my response when defining race before taking this course. I was able to explain that race is a social phenomenon where people and others perceive themselves as from a certain heritage or of having biological traits.

When discussing comprehension questions one of the questions discussed for the longest amount of time was, “Should a person who has an active racist attitude…be excused because of the time they lived in?” My mother was the only one with a different opinion than the rest of the group; however, she did go last in the discussion so her opinion did not influence anyone else before they spoke. Her response was, “No because you look up to your elders and you want to make them proud so you carry on social norms to not disa...

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... of race or racism. My sister who is still in the high school we all attended is not getting race and racism education either, clearly. I also learned that I am very comfortable talking about race within my family circle, but I do not think I would be as open if addressing peers of mine I was not as close with. Race is a hard subject to talk about because people have many views and are sometimes sensitive to the topic of race. I feel that young individuals only have knowledge about race and racism from their parents and the parts of society they are exposed to but, their minds are more open compared to older individuals who are set in their ways where it is harder to mold their minds. In conclusion, I do think that I would do this experience again but I would challenge myself by doing it with peers and or with people of different ages from across the United States.