What I learned

This week in my college and career class “thinking outside the box” we’ve been talking about racism. Basically the topic was about how racism is still in America today. We looked at documentaries that also talked about racism. My teacher Ms. Deloney read a Langston Hughes poem that I felt was about racism and then she had us listen to an Erykah Badu song. After that we compared the two both were about racism but in different ways. For example Langston Hughes was talking about racism back in the days and Erykah Badu was talking about racism nowadays.
Another thing were talking about was the word “Nigger”. We watched a small video that explained how a lot of rappers use the word “Nigger”. Then we had a discussion that my teacher called the fish bowl. It was about if my classmates and I felt that Nigga differed from Nigger. Even though Nigga came from Nigger, young kids/teens today have different meanings for the two words. Sometimes depending on where you live, using the word Nigga is like saying what’s up to your friends. Also rappers use it the same way so technically we get it from the media.
In class we also read some of a story called “Rectatif” by Toni Morrison. It was about two girls names Twyla and Roberta and they were in a group home. They had these older girls that used to tease the lady that worked in the kitchen who was Maggie. The author didn’t tell us which race the girls were but he was sending us different signs that kind of gave us thoughts but not really. I say this because according to stereotypes both girls didn’t fit any of the requirements. No matter how much of the story we read we couldn’t figure out who was what race. I think my teacher was trying to show us that by using stereotypes we would never be able to figure out who a person really is.

By: Tieshema Gordon