From Writing for Social Justice Blog (Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?)

One-drop Rule

I kind of wish that Tatum had gone more into the Japanese and Black mixing, since it is one that kind of interests me more and I know less about. I know I heard that Asian races are supposed to be more concerned with the purity of their races, and less accepting of mixed children. I have found that interesting since there is/was supposed to be a new trend in the Chinese people working in Africa causing more multiracial pairings than before. You can read about it here. One reason I find it interesting is because I have a lot of friends who self-identify with parts of Asian culture like Buddhism, martial arts, foods, music, and clothing--and absolutely love the Wu-Tang--but have never been successful in having a relationship or been totally accepted by the Asian community. On the other hand, I have also just finished reading a series about a young Sudanese boy who met and married a young Japanese girl, and went halfway around the world to get her back from her father after he had her kidnapped. Pretty interesting story...

Anyway, I have looked more into the White/Black racial mixing before. Mostly, because of my niece's identity crisis when she was a toddler. With all the psychological studies done on this very subject that I read through, I still couldn't find a way to help her make sense of who she was. I eventually realized that it was just something she was going to have to figure our for herself, and all I could do was be there as an example. While she still tends to "favor" her whiteness, at least she isn't as negative about her blackness as she used to be.

The book also made think about how racial classification mattered in other countries as well. The one-drop rule may have been specific to Americans, but it is no different than what was done under the Apartheid system in South Africa--probably because they based their system off of Jim Crow, etc. here in America. The 1983 case reminds me of this book called When She Was White by Judith Stone. I didn't know it was supposed to be a movie too. Here is the trailer:

For Computers and Writing Blog (Literacy in the New Media Age)

Rethinking Reading

I'm sort of getting into the idea of literacy being multimodal. This form of literacy does require rethinking what reading is, and how we do it. At some point, reading will include other forms of 'writing/text', such as images, music, hyperlinks, etc. We have to learn how to read and understand something that is not written only alphanumerically. As Kress puts it, "either we treat 'reading' as a process which extends beyond (alphabetic) writing, and includes images for instance; or we restrict 'reading' to the mode of alphabetic writing quite strictly, and attend separately to how meaning is derived from images" (141).

The way that we read images are different from the way that we read alphabetic letters. When I think about graphics in texts there are words or directions that you follow to make sense of the story. For example, in an article or book where the text is the focus, the images are used as illustrations of the text. Sometimes the text makes references to the images (i.e. Figure 1.1), the image has a textual caption, or the text is wrapped around the image itself. In comics/graphic novels, the images are the focus and the text is used to help explain what is going on. In comics there is a sort of "reading path" that guides you from one panel to another which makes the reading fairly easy (156).

It confuses me when I try to read my friend's Manga novels, or any visual/graphic poetry. My brain doesn't want to change the way it is used to reading. The Manga novels are read right to left, and back to front. When I first opened one I was completely thrown off by the arrangement. The visual/graphic poems still throw me if they are too abstract. I can understand writing a poem about a tree in the shape of a tree, but to write something in a way that plays with negative space and the direction of the reading path. This made me think about what I wanted to do for my next essay. I was thinking of showing how images and text can combine to show the meaning of song lyrics. We'll see how it works out.

From Writing for Social Justice Blog (Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?)

Can You "Spot That Stuff"?

It's funny, I think I've seen this book at least a dozen times and never wanted to pick it up. I'm glad I finally did because I really like this book. There were so many areas that hit me I'm not sure where to begin...

While reading chapter three, I was really focused on how children really do notice skin color very early--even if they know better than to say so in public. The whole time my mind kept floating back to when my niece was about three years old. She is half white, and lives with the white side of her family (some of whom are racist or children of racists). She was having something of an identity crises, partly due to one of her "friends" picking on her about her skin color and curly hair. There were times when she wanted my mother to put makeup on her so she could look like us, and times when she wanted to run inside from the parking lot because she didn't want to "get dark" from being out in the sun.

My mother, brother, and I wondered where this could be coming from. What were they saying "over there"? Why didn't she want to be Black, or have anything related to Blackness (skin, hair, etc.)? I know there was more than one thing affecting her and her sense of self, and the white side of her life wasn't the only source. Then I started thinking about what racial images we see on television. Then I hit YouTube...That's where I found this:

Of course, these things aren't really on the mind of a three year old. They are looking at cartoons, right? Well, that's when I found a clip on racist cartoons. While I could think of a few more examples that could be added to this, I found myself a little confused about the racism in the Jungle Book clip. Maybe someone else can catch it...

Now, the one that really hurt my feelings was Dumbo. I used to watch that movie all the time, and never thought about the crows being racist. I just remember never really liking them...On the other hand, I can remember being slightly offended when cartoon characters would be covered in soot or gun powder with only their eyes and lips showing, but never connecting it to Blackface. To me, this is where Tatum's point about "learning to spot 'that stuff'--whether it is racist, or sexist, or classist--is an important skill for children to develop", and I couldn't agree more (47). It frustrates me to know that I was so oblivious to some of these things, and they were right in my face. Then I think about my niece. What does she see that I am missing? What opportunities to talk am I letting pass by the both of us?

From Computers and Writing Blog (Hypertext 3.0)

Internet Censorship

I was thinking about the ways that politics control the ways citizens use the internet, or media in general. The example of Singapore's government blocking internet access made me think about what is going on in Syria today. There is an article in BBC about how internet hackers found that the Syrian government was using American technology to block internet access. You can read about it here.

This is nothing new. It also happened in Egypt as well. I found a short video about the government's blocking of internet sites there as well.

I find it interesting that when governments want to keep their political affairs "private" they try to cut off people's access to the world. I don't think that we would have as much information about what is going on in Syria without the journalists on both sides providing the media with the photos, videos, articles, etc. The same goes for areas like the DR of Congo, and how the war that is being waged there is virtually going unnoticed. Which is not unlike what is going on in Zimbabwe. I am rethinking my long-held belief in how it is the media that spins stories. Maybe the government has more of a hand in what is shown to the public than I realized.