I love the power of story. By simply listening to someone else's story, you are better able to understand. As I get older and hear more and more stories, I have learned to humble myself because a lot of times I can't even seem to understand how they feel.
Reading Ta-Nehisi Coates story, I am feeling very humbled in the fact that there are a lot of things that go on that are bigger than I am. As a white person, I may not have actively discriminated or intentionally put down those of color, but even being unaware of it happening all around me makes me feel guilty. I went through history classes all throughout my life learning about these figures not even giving a thought to how it made people of color feel that all these figures were all white. I haven't really thought either of Coates opinion of his way being paved by a white person.
How can we change that? Is the teaching of history in schools a part of where this stems from? Despite all of these things happening around us, how do we as Christians rise above and choose to love?
School being part of the problem is something I never thought about before. I was a lot like the people that Coates was talking about where the mindset was "Stay in school, and you'll stay out of trouble". However, Coates was saying that school was the problem, and I have never felt that way from my perspective. This is why I love hearing from different people's experiences.
ReplyDeleteI think your questions about where these ideologies stem from are very important. To solve a problem, it is necessary to find the root of the problem. I think the biggest problem is that those in power are the ones that get to write history. As the oppressive race, portraying the white race as destructive and obtuse would be rather unexpected. This is the problem. Now at this time, the white race needs to be introspective of what their legacy truly is and how this will be taught in schools.
ReplyDeleteyes good connection to how school shapes ideologies and worldviews and the children are the innocent recipients of the agenda decided by those in power. I think we as Christians have a lot of work to do when addressing institutional racism/discrimination when it comes to school systems and functions. This is where change begins for kids and future generations...
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