Nicholas Jennings
Coach Clark’s 9th Grade Humanities
5/8/16
Courageous Conversation Paper
The setting is World War Two, an American ship has been sent halfway around the globe to fight the Nazis and save the world as we know it. On the eve of battle, an officer is sitting on the deck, eating and talking to a crewmate. Mid conversation, a superior officer arrives, and appears flustered at the current conversation. With all the authority he can muster the superior officer walks up to the others and says to the officer, “Why are you talking with this crewmate? He’s black.” The officer turns and retorts “He’s a sailor”.
Throughout history, people have been trying to force on society that one group of people is better than another. Whether it be segregation, slavery, or genocide, telling someone they mean more to you than someone else is an easy way to snag their support for you or your organization. The problem is that humans don’t naturally think themselves better or worse based on looks, and any open discussion about discrimination will eventually reach the conclusion that race does not exist, so the people rising to power did something very clever. Under the current societal laws, race is considered too taboo of a subject to be discussed seriously and so should be talked about in a joking, lighthearted manner. Discussing race in such a childish way only helps those trying to keep the current separations in place, and discussing issues in a serious manner is the only way to bring about change.
Throughout my experience in this project I’ve noticed many commonalities. For one, people do not generally think about race. During our interview with the students at CSUSM, our interviewees often answered our questions in short sentences, all of which centered around the theme of “I haven’t really noticed anything”. As soon as one student answered (there were three) the other two would quickly agree with the answer of the first. One student was from Saudi Arabia and had only been in America for a couple months, so I could understand his lack of information, but the other two students had lived in America most of their lives, and should’ve had more information on the issue. I realized that what was likely happening was that they didn’t have answers prepared. They weren’t thinking about their experiences with race before the interview. Due to the nature of the interview they may have felt they needed to respond quickly, and when nothing came to mind, they decided they had nothing to say. There’s nothing inherently wrong with not thinking about race, but not knowing what you feel about something causes disinterest in a topic, which easily stops any possible conversations about race (also known as Courageous Conversations) from occurring.
Another occurrence that has been detrimental to many courageous conversations is that even the most open minded people become defensive when you bring their personal experience into the conversation. Our interviewee from Brookdale, for example, usually had a lot to say when answering our questions, he believed that everyone is equal and that discrimination and bias were the roots of society's problems. He knew that organizations practicing racism (also known as Institutionalized Racism) was a problem and even admitted that, at least during his time as a sailor, the Navy was one such organization that practiced institutionalized racism. However, when I asked him if he thought he had gained an advantage in life by being white (commonly known as ‘White Privilege’; one of the logical and inevitable effects caused by institutionalized racism) he adamantly denied it and mentioned a latino friend who had gotten a higher post in the navy than he had. Our interviewee was happy to call society racially biased, but denied that it had ever affected him positively. I believe this sudden defensiveness might have been caused by a suspicion that he hadn’t earned his path in the world. Every Courageous Conversation that I have had thus far has eventually reached the topic of personal experiences, so this unwillingness to talk about that subject has shown itself to be a major problem.
The good news is that, following a Courageous Conversation, even if the conversation didn’t get anywhere, people will still begin to think about race. This I can only show from personal experience, but after the first conversation with our partner, I started to remember times in my life when race played a role. The lack of racial diversity in my current group of close friends could be explained by the lack of racial diversity in HTHNC, but why is our school so racially un-diverse, even when the acceptance procedure is entirely random? And isn’t it strange that the student government of my elementary school was 90% white, even though the total school population was 60-70% latino? These questions, and many more like them, started to pop up in my mind, and I assume this experience cannot be unique to me. Even though I couldn’t answer the questions on the spot, thinking about them caused me to realize how race played a role in my life. Although my conversation was not initially successful in getting me to think about these ideas, in the long term it achieved it’s goal; And once you become conscious, it’s difficult to become unconscious.
Thinking about race can help us grow as a people through understanding how race affects our lives. When our class did research about the race gap I was shocked to find just how big of an impact race has. Non-white students are 2 times as likely to drop out of school as white students; 1 in 3 black men are put in jail at some point during their lives, while this statistic drops to 1 in 17 for white men; and black men make less than 75% of the money white men do for doing the same jobs. Saying “there is a race gap” is one thing, but discussing it and looking at data is something else. Through this discussion I was able to realize just how large a role race was playing in my life, and how monumental a problem the race gap is.
Thinking about race can also help you realize the stereotypes you and others have about other people. I remember that after our class took the IAT (Implicit Association Test), a test designed by Harvard students to tell if someone unconsciously prefers one race over another, someone remarked that he was probably only stereotyping african americans because he didn’t know very many african americans. A lot of people agreed, and while to my knowledge nothing more was said of the matter, at least we all admitted that we were stereotyping african americans. Having courageous conversations is a good way to learn where you and others stand on issues, and that is the first step towards solving them.
It is my opinion that, as stated earlier, making jokes about race is a practice that only widens racial gaps and causes more problems to occur. In an effort to be topical, let’s use Donald Trump as an example. When Trump first announced he was running for president, most people thought he was a joke, the only one who seemed to take Trump seriously was Trump. Once it became clear that Trump might have a chance, the jokes about him became more aggressive but still no one questioned him in a serious manner. By the time people eventually did begin to talk about him non-jokingly, he was ahead in the polls and was able to play the “I’m a winner” card until he won the nomination. Essentially, nobody talked about him seriously, so nobody really provided an obstacle to his goal. The same is true about race. If nobody talks about race seriously, there won’t be anything stopping the race gap from becoming a larger problem.
The good news is that this problem has an obvious solution, just talk about race more seriously. The bad news is that making a joke about race is a really easy thing to do in the middle of a serious conversation, especially one where you already feel uncomfortable. The real problem, then, is creating an environment where joking about race is not tolerated. One solution to this problem is to not provide people with source material. Our interviewee from Brookdale was brought up in an environment where the need for establishing a racial hierarchy was dwarfed by the need to stop the Nazis, so he didn’t realize racism was even a problem until after the war ended, when he was about 30. He didn’t understand racist jokes and didn’t think they were funny, mostly because he never had the time to learn about racial stereotypes. If we stop talking about racial stereotypes now, the next generation won’t have any material to make jokes about. This is clearly a long-term solution, but I think it’s the best way to permanently solve the problem.
A more short-term solution is to simply not laugh at racist jokes. It’s difficult, especially because racism tends to make people uncomfortable, which makes many people laugh, but it’s very effective. Once during my elective, someone made a racist joke about themselves. Nobody laughed, mostly because the joke wasn’t very funny, so the person who had made the joke simply moved on to talk about another subject. Most of the time, people making racist jokes aren’t actually racist, they just want to make people laugh. If nobody laughs at a joke, the person who made the joke will probably try a different type of joke, or stop altogether.
Joking about race denies it the weight that it truly caries, addressing race as the serious topic that it is is the only way to make anything change. Everyone is affected by the race gap, and helping to stop racism should be somewhere on any self respecting persons bucket list. Unfortunately there isn’t a middle ground. You’re either helping to solve the problem by spreading awareness, or you’re hindering the solution by either not talking about the problem, or joking about it. Knowing how few people actively think about race; Knowing how far we have to go before we truly admit how we have been affected; Knowing how much our lives can be bettered, socially and practically, just by starting to think about the subject; And knowing that, by not being a part of the solution we become part of the problem, I implore someone to think of one good reason to not talk about race. Americans love to talk about problems with our society, and here we have a problem that can be solved just by talking about it in the right way. It takes a long time to make a permanent change in how society functions, but when bringing about change can be done so simply, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t start now.
Coach Clark’s 9th Grade Humanities
5/8/16
Courageous Conversation Paper
The setting is World War Two, an American ship has been sent halfway around the globe to fight the Nazis and save the world as we know it. On the eve of battle, an officer is sitting on the deck, eating and talking to a crewmate. Mid conversation, a superior officer arrives, and appears flustered at the current conversation. With all the authority he can muster the superior officer walks up to the others and says to the officer, “Why are you talking with this crewmate? He’s black.” The officer turns and retorts “He’s a sailor”.
Throughout history, people have been trying to force on society that one group of people is better than another. Whether it be segregation, slavery, or genocide, telling someone they mean more to you than someone else is an easy way to snag their support for you or your organization. The problem is that humans don’t naturally think themselves better or worse based on looks, and any open discussion about discrimination will eventually reach the conclusion that race does not exist, so the people rising to power did something very clever. Under the current societal laws, race is considered too taboo of a subject to be discussed seriously and so should be talked about in a joking, lighthearted manner. Discussing race in such a childish way only helps those trying to keep the current separations in place, and discussing issues in a serious manner is the only way to bring about change.
Throughout my experience in this project I’ve noticed many commonalities. For one, people do not generally think about race. During our interview with the students at CSUSM, our interviewees often answered our questions in short sentences, all of which centered around the theme of “I haven’t really noticed anything”. As soon as one student answered (there were three) the other two would quickly agree with the answer of the first. One student was from Saudi Arabia and had only been in America for a couple months, so I could understand his lack of information, but the other two students had lived in America most of their lives, and should’ve had more information on the issue. I realized that what was likely happening was that they didn’t have answers prepared. They weren’t thinking about their experiences with race before the interview. Due to the nature of the interview they may have felt they needed to respond quickly, and when nothing came to mind, they decided they had nothing to say. There’s nothing inherently wrong with not thinking about race, but not knowing what you feel about something causes disinterest in a topic, which easily stops any possible conversations about race (also known as Courageous Conversations) from occurring.
Another occurrence that has been detrimental to many courageous conversations is that even the most open minded people become defensive when you bring their personal experience into the conversation. Our interviewee from Brookdale, for example, usually had a lot to say when answering our questions, he believed that everyone is equal and that discrimination and bias were the roots of society's problems. He knew that organizations practicing racism (also known as Institutionalized Racism) was a problem and even admitted that, at least during his time as a sailor, the Navy was one such organization that practiced institutionalized racism. However, when I asked him if he thought he had gained an advantage in life by being white (commonly known as ‘White Privilege’; one of the logical and inevitable effects caused by institutionalized racism) he adamantly denied it and mentioned a latino friend who had gotten a higher post in the navy than he had. Our interviewee was happy to call society racially biased, but denied that it had ever affected him positively. I believe this sudden defensiveness might have been caused by a suspicion that he hadn’t earned his path in the world. Every Courageous Conversation that I have had thus far has eventually reached the topic of personal experiences, so this unwillingness to talk about that subject has shown itself to be a major problem.
The good news is that, following a Courageous Conversation, even if the conversation didn’t get anywhere, people will still begin to think about race. This I can only show from personal experience, but after the first conversation with our partner, I started to remember times in my life when race played a role. The lack of racial diversity in my current group of close friends could be explained by the lack of racial diversity in HTHNC, but why is our school so racially un-diverse, even when the acceptance procedure is entirely random? And isn’t it strange that the student government of my elementary school was 90% white, even though the total school population was 60-70% latino? These questions, and many more like them, started to pop up in my mind, and I assume this experience cannot be unique to me. Even though I couldn’t answer the questions on the spot, thinking about them caused me to realize how race played a role in my life. Although my conversation was not initially successful in getting me to think about these ideas, in the long term it achieved it’s goal; And once you become conscious, it’s difficult to become unconscious.
Thinking about race can help us grow as a people through understanding how race affects our lives. When our class did research about the race gap I was shocked to find just how big of an impact race has. Non-white students are 2 times as likely to drop out of school as white students; 1 in 3 black men are put in jail at some point during their lives, while this statistic drops to 1 in 17 for white men; and black men make less than 75% of the money white men do for doing the same jobs. Saying “there is a race gap” is one thing, but discussing it and looking at data is something else. Through this discussion I was able to realize just how large a role race was playing in my life, and how monumental a problem the race gap is.
Thinking about race can also help you realize the stereotypes you and others have about other people. I remember that after our class took the IAT (Implicit Association Test), a test designed by Harvard students to tell if someone unconsciously prefers one race over another, someone remarked that he was probably only stereotyping african americans because he didn’t know very many african americans. A lot of people agreed, and while to my knowledge nothing more was said of the matter, at least we all admitted that we were stereotyping african americans. Having courageous conversations is a good way to learn where you and others stand on issues, and that is the first step towards solving them.
It is my opinion that, as stated earlier, making jokes about race is a practice that only widens racial gaps and causes more problems to occur. In an effort to be topical, let’s use Donald Trump as an example. When Trump first announced he was running for president, most people thought he was a joke, the only one who seemed to take Trump seriously was Trump. Once it became clear that Trump might have a chance, the jokes about him became more aggressive but still no one questioned him in a serious manner. By the time people eventually did begin to talk about him non-jokingly, he was ahead in the polls and was able to play the “I’m a winner” card until he won the nomination. Essentially, nobody talked about him seriously, so nobody really provided an obstacle to his goal. The same is true about race. If nobody talks about race seriously, there won’t be anything stopping the race gap from becoming a larger problem.
The good news is that this problem has an obvious solution, just talk about race more seriously. The bad news is that making a joke about race is a really easy thing to do in the middle of a serious conversation, especially one where you already feel uncomfortable. The real problem, then, is creating an environment where joking about race is not tolerated. One solution to this problem is to not provide people with source material. Our interviewee from Brookdale was brought up in an environment where the need for establishing a racial hierarchy was dwarfed by the need to stop the Nazis, so he didn’t realize racism was even a problem until after the war ended, when he was about 30. He didn’t understand racist jokes and didn’t think they were funny, mostly because he never had the time to learn about racial stereotypes. If we stop talking about racial stereotypes now, the next generation won’t have any material to make jokes about. This is clearly a long-term solution, but I think it’s the best way to permanently solve the problem.
A more short-term solution is to simply not laugh at racist jokes. It’s difficult, especially because racism tends to make people uncomfortable, which makes many people laugh, but it’s very effective. Once during my elective, someone made a racist joke about themselves. Nobody laughed, mostly because the joke wasn’t very funny, so the person who had made the joke simply moved on to talk about another subject. Most of the time, people making racist jokes aren’t actually racist, they just want to make people laugh. If nobody laughs at a joke, the person who made the joke will probably try a different type of joke, or stop altogether.
Joking about race denies it the weight that it truly caries, addressing race as the serious topic that it is is the only way to make anything change. Everyone is affected by the race gap, and helping to stop racism should be somewhere on any self respecting persons bucket list. Unfortunately there isn’t a middle ground. You’re either helping to solve the problem by spreading awareness, or you’re hindering the solution by either not talking about the problem, or joking about it. Knowing how few people actively think about race; Knowing how far we have to go before we truly admit how we have been affected; Knowing how much our lives can be bettered, socially and practically, just by starting to think about the subject; And knowing that, by not being a part of the solution we become part of the problem, I implore someone to think of one good reason to not talk about race. Americans love to talk about problems with our society, and here we have a problem that can be solved just by talking about it in the right way. It takes a long time to make a permanent change in how society functions, but when bringing about change can be done so simply, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t start now.