Gonclaves Chapter 7: Notes

The article On Being Visible and Passing through Walls: Towards a Pedagogy of Seeing and Being Seen shows me the multiracial problems in our society. When it comes to the marriage story, I have to admit that we still need to check boxes in paperworks to show our races. I am an Asian although my ancestors may come from different places (most Chinese people are actually hybrids of Chinese, Mongolians and people from western Asia). I know that in the United States, actually many people are not monoracial, and I have never considered the multiracial people’s identity problem before. This article gave me a chance to think about it. Here are the notes I made while reading.

“One’s social reality is constructed by the formulation and exchange of stories, which have historically been a kind of medicine that heals the wound caused by racial oppression.”

“For thousands of years groups of humans have enslaved other groups based on visible and cultural differences… Wealthy Arabs enslaved other Arabs and people of color… Today reports of various forms of slavery still persist in Asia, Africa and South America… they mirror social constructs and the needs of the people who work for and against racism.”

“Fifty years ago… ‘one drop’ classification… if a person had even the smallest trace of nonwhite ancestry she or he was considered nonwhite regardless of how their facial features or cultural practices might otherwise qualify them as white.”

“Education is one area where ‘the practice of freedom’ to transform one’s situation and one’s world can challenge racial constructs formally and informally… important for marginalized individuals who are rendered biracial or multiracial… education systems need to provide opportunities for students to be border crossers so they might go between and among social contexts defined by race and ethnicity and rely on their own comfort in self identification.”

“… ethnic identity defines a segment of larger society whose members have a common origin, share segments of a common culture and participate in shared activities in which the common origin and culture are significant ingredients. Ethnic identity development focuses on what people learn about themselves from shared religion, languages and geographies, but failed to capture the complexities of multiracialism.”

“… in 1991, over one third of the responders identified themselves as a different ethnicity. Multiracial students are often likely to embrace one culture and reject the other.”

“… bi and multiracial people can and often do assume different identities depending on the social and cultural context.”

“The exchange of stories from tellers to listeners can help overcome ethnocentrism and dysconscious conviction of viewing the world in only one way. As the story is consumed, the immediate reactor is heartfelt and then as it proceeds to one’s intellect, self-reflexive engagement occurs, which can lead to rethinking relations of power… there are several power components to consider in relation to external and internal positioning: power-over, power-with and power-within.”

“A person’s existence and participation within these groups is often the basis for positions of power and acts of discrimination.”

“The more one learns about the narratives of various members of a particular group and its history, heritage, traditions and cultural interactions, the more one comes to understand its richness and complexity.”