Special Guest Post by Ginelle Wolfe ’16 I knew work would be tough the day after the election because I work with kids at an elementary school. Each teacher I talked to said they were not going to discuss the election, as the assumption is that most students would not even understand what happened. While I understand that approach, my situation is a little bit different. I teach English Language Development classes, so the majority of my students are not …
I learned last week that we had an incident at our school with someone writing an anti-Semitic and sexist comment in one of our dorms. I had a conversation with the Dean of Student Life about it. The RA and Head Resident Assistant were apparently alerted that the comment that was written on or near the door of a student. The comment was taken down within four to five hours after being written. Campus Safety has been unable to identify who wrote this …
David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the KKK, narrowly reached the 5% voting support he needed to be considered a legitimate candidate for Senator of Louisiana. Although according to his numbers he doesn’t actually stand a chance in winning the seat, it’s horrifying to realize that a substantial number of people are voting for him. What’s even more disturbing is that he was now allowed to participate in the November 2nd debate which was to be hosted by Dillard …
Recently I was listening to an episode of the podcast About Race, a podcast where 3 hosts discuss current race issues in an open way. One of the hosts mentioned that black assimilation to white culture as a solution to race disparity is problematic. They looked at a specific study that showed that black people who moved to white middle-class neighborhoods before they were twelve had a “compound interest of awesomeness” where they were more likely to succeed academically and …
My first interaction with the concept of segregated housing came in my freshman year from a friend of color on campus. They confided to me once, while discussing the topic of race, “Sometimes I wish there was housing just for the students of color…it’d be so nice to just have a place where you could chill with your people.” I was pretty taken aback with this concept, as the idea of outright segregation was something of the Jim Crow era. …
I grew up in a mostly-white suburban town. However, I was a part of the musical Once On This Island multiple times. The premise of this musical is that there is a peasant girl (who was traditionally played by a black, female actor) who falls in love with a rich man (traditionally played by a white, male actor). The entire show centers around how these two very different worlds are not allowed to associate and talk to each other, and definitely not …
Although I come from a privileged background and went to a “good school”, what I really learned by entering college is how to un-learn my past teachings. Even the myth of meritocracy that provides a foundation for our mandatory history classes in the primary and secondary curriculum is a form of mis-education. The mis-education of all people feeds into the existing system of white supremacy because it does not provide the skills or critical thinking lens that is needed for …