2000 version

Sr. Inquiry
Diversity Assessment
3/4 Paris, Straton, Whittlesey
5/6 Straton, Traver, Whittlesey
Since this is a culminating project/assignment, you must show understanding of the materials read, seen, and acted in the past month. Regardless of choice, you must include a before, during and after. You may do this singly or in a group, understanding that the group must represent all members equally. Groups can be divided by a) religious group, b) one representative from each group, c) lineage.
1. Write a reflective narrative that shows your internal and/or external shift in how you see yourself and/or society. You may either “show” or “tell” the story.
2. Write and illustrate a children’s book.
3. Visual representation. (See below!)
4. Poetry (à la Girl)

Grading will be based on understanding, depth of analysis and connections made among the readings, films, and simulation.
Readings: A Different Mirror Ronald Takaki
Racial Formation Michael Omi and Howard Winant
From a Native Daughter Haunani-Kay Trask
“Indian”: Textualism, Morality, and the Problem of History Jane Tompkins
Films: Color of Fear
Double Happiness
Hawaii’s Last Queen - Queen Liliuokalani
Simulation: Tribus

1997 version

Values in Conflict: Knowledge, Power and Politics
Assignment #3: Diversity and multiculturalism
Goals: To analyze and incorporate academic prose in an essay
To become aware of the ethnic and cultural diversity in the United States and to place this awareness in the context of the existence of a dominant culture
To use the medium of film as a springboard for critical thinking
To work collaboratively in peer writing groups
To explore and analyze how knowledge is created
Readings: Jane Tompkins, “‘Indians’: Textualism, Morality and the Problem of History”
Haunani-Kay Trask, “From a Native Daughter”
Double Happiness, a film
Elbow, Chapter 4, pps. 177-235
Third Draft Due: October 29/30
Final Draft Due: November 6
In our recent reading assignments on Tompkins and Trask we have seen some of the ways in which history is written. Jane Tompkins calls history a “problem” and Haunani-Kay Trask regards history as, among other things, a tool of oppression and more about the culture that writes it than about who it is written about. In the film, Double Happiness, we have the opportunity to look into the daily lives of a family of Chinese-Americans and experience in a small way another angle of vision of life in the United States.
There are at least two facets to multicultural awareness. One is the fascinating and intriguing process of learning about many cultures, and the other may be described as discovering and taking some responsibility for the ways in which dominant American culture has dealt oppressively with ethnic groups over time, such as in biased history books and texts of limited vision. Is it possible to have one facet without the other? Discuss at length in a 4-5 page, typed, double-spaced essay.
Possible discussion points to include in your essay:
• How do the characters in the film reconcile the differences between their cultural backgrounds and traditions with life in the United States? Do the problems and issues presented by Trask and Tompkins regarding the way in which histories and stereotypes are represented affect the way you view Double Happiness and the ways they live within and interact with traditional American culture without abandoning their own cultural and family traditions? How can we interpret their actions and perceptions?
• Using the readings and the film as a framework for your discussion, give an example of a time when you had to confront and discard a stereotype or assumption you held about a group besides the ones to which you belong?
• In the film what aspects of the family’s life is like your own family life? What aspects are unlike your own background? What position do individual stories have in the academic discipline of history?
• Trask and Tompkins come from two different cultural/ethnic backgrounds, yet the both confront the problems and issues of cultural representation. How have images and stereotypes affected the authors/characters and the way in which they perceive others and themselves?

 

Assignment #4
The Color of Fear
Texts: Takaki, “A Different Mirror” (RRA 332)
Hughes, “Let America be America Again” (RRA 756)
Omi and Winant, “Racial Formation” (RRA 356)
“The Color of Fear” (movie)
Goals: To analyze some of the aspects of racism in America
To analyze how visual media construct and present information
To re-reflect on how knowledge is created and used
To work in small groups
Over the course of this term we have been exploring different aspects of the nature of knowledge, how it is defined and who determines what it is. Freire discussed the educational process and the construction of knowledge, while Tompkins and Trask investigated the interpretation and construction of history. In tandem with this, we have also investigated issues of multi-culturalism and race relations. This next assignment will have you combine both of these pursuits.
The Color of Fear addresses a serious conflict in society and does so using a rather unique format. We would like you to examine the verbal content of this film as well as the visual images present in the film.
For this assignment you will work in groups of 6-8, using the collective recall of the group to try to piece together and analyze what you saw last Wednesday. Together your group will write the transcript of a hypothetical broadcast panel discussion for which participants have come together to analyze The Color of Fear. The program also includes a moderator/interviewer who will ask questions, keep panelists on track, ask for clarification, etc. Each member of your group will assume the persona of one (or more) of the writers we have read up to this point (Freire, Tompkins, Trask, Morales, Takaki, Hughes, Omi and Winant), and present what you think their ideas about the film might be. The moderator will have the option of bringing up statements made by participants in the Color of Fear to stimulate discussion.
The program will start with a statement of question at issue and then proceed with each panelist presenting an opening statement about their position on the issue. Panelists will need to use direct quotes from their published work and in most instances, interpret and further clarify their statements for the listening and viewing audience. You must use footnoted quotes from their writings along with your interpretations. While each of you is responsible for at least one participant in the discussion, the group as a whole is responsible for the finished project, which should read like a panel discussion and not like a sequence of independent quotes.
The panel discussion will address both the content of the film and the evaluate the film as a source of knowledge. Below are questions and issues you must raise in your discussion, in some manner. You should come up with follow-up questions and develop other relevant questions on your own.
Overall Questions:
• Is racism in North American society due to a conflict in knowledge, values, a combination of the two, or something else? Are there ways in which this conflict could be resolved on a societal and individual basis?
• As you have discovered through your readings and through some of your peer mentor activities, personal perspectives and values seriously affect how you view things and how you explain that experience. The Color of Fear shares with Double Happiness an exploration of the immigrant experience and racism in the United States. However, The Color of Fear is presented as a documentary rather than a narrative, as truth rather than fiction. But how true is it? In what ways were Lee Mun Wah’s “ways of seeing the world” present in this film? In what ways did they affect your viewing and interpretation of the film?
Specific Questions:
• Gordon: “I’m here because I’m a racist, and I’ve been working at . . . unlearning that since ‘76. And I’ve still got it, and there’s a lot of pain around that.”
Is it true that anyone growing up in a racist society, no matter how well-meaning, automatically picks up some of those values from society?
• Roberto: “America is not the United States, America is the entire continent. But we think here, or Americans here think, that America means just this country. My people, the people I come, from have been robbed of that term. We are not considered American but we are!”
What is going on here?
• Loren: “I worked in Corporate America for a while. I look at the African-American men in business suites and I say to myself, ‘I bet you can’t wait to go home and become a black man again.’ Because in Corporate America, you are not allowed to be a black man. In the corporate world, walk down the hall with some pride, you scare people. Show some intelligence, you scare people. You got to shuffle. Its a 1993 shuffle, but its still a shuffle.”
What is going on here?
• David Christensen: “So I see an attitude expressed by Yukata and by Roberto that says, ‘How can I be an American - I can’t, and so I won’t; I’m going to cling to my heritage’. Is this clinging the problem?”
• Victor: You think you can survive without me, but you can’t man.
Is he right?
• Victor: You give up who you are to become an American. And you can pretend that it’s okay because you’re White. When we give up who we are we know that we’re dying from it. You’re dying from it too, but you don’t know it, necessarily.”
Is he right?
• Loren: “I think [David] did answer the question: as a White person, he doesn’t have to think about his position in life, his place in the world; history books tell him, as they are written, that the world is his. He doesn’t have to think where he goes, what he does; he doesn’t have to think like a White person. The way the world has been set up, White is human; that’s what a human being is. He doesn’t have to worry about ‘how do I think as a White person’. I don’t know, but I would assume that doesn’t enter a White person’s mind, because they don’t have to deal with that from day 1; they step into a world that is theirs.”
Is he right?
• David Christensen: “... You block your progress by allowing your attitude toward the White man to limit you.”
Is he right?
• Victor: “The most of the lethal, toxic, deadly racism that African Americans experience and that other people of color experience in America does not come from them, it comes from moral, fair-minded people who believe that they are lovers of justice; church-goers, people who experience themselves as decent, and actually very nice folks, and it is there that I find my fear.”
Is he saying that the devout church-women and men are the source of his fear? How can that be?
• Victor: “We spend a lot of time being nice and conciliatory and careful. I don’t want to be excitable. I become excitable if there is no way for my humanity to be affirmed. If I can’t say ‘No’ with my whole aliveness, then I’m as good as dead.”
What does he mean?
• Yukata: “One night I was going home from work and walked into a crowd of blacks at a bus stop, and I was afraid. I thought to myself, ‘These people are just going home from work.’ And as I released myself from the fear, I was OK.”
What is going on here?
• Victor: “I have been a little nervous about getting into this and just lay our junk out onto the table without acknowledging the context of White Supremacy that separates us.”
What does he mean?
• Roberto: “I mean, talking about [racism] helps. Bringing it out into the light helps. It loses some of its mystery, some of its power.”
Some would say talking about racism is the cause of racial tension. Which is true?
• Loren: “You leave home everyday, and your parents instill in you that you’re a good person, you’re a moral person. Yet when you go out in the world, just because of the color of your skin, people avoid you; they look at you as if you’re a potential killer; they don’t think that you’re as smart as they are. You watch the news: who do you see being taken away in handcuffs all the time? It’s people who look like you, somebody that could be you. You’re always under suspicion, so you so at times you do wonder if it is you.”
What does he mean?
• Victor: “If you are lighter, there is often less trust. You might use your lightness to get more goodies from White-folks. . . . My experience is that I have an easier time putting White-folks at ease because I’m not Loren’s complexion, and that can be a cause of conflict between us.”
In what ways does colorism differ from racism? How are they alike?
• Victor: “The ‘model minority,’ what a set up! ‘Why can’t you people be more like those people. And then you wouldn’t have the problems that you have!’”
What does the model minority have to face because of their success?
David Lee: “We are dealing with internalized racism.”
What is internalized racism?
• Victor: “It feels strange to have white men bearing witness to this discussion. I’ve been nervous getting into this discussion with white folks listening in. I want a higher level of trust before I do that. I am really fearful that you will nod your heads and say, ‘Aha, they’re just as racist as we are!’
Are people of color just as racist as “white” folks are? Talk about the context and power.
• Victor: “It’s not the same thing. Because what we do to each other pushes us down and lifts you up, and what you do to us, or what white folks do to us, pushes us down and pushes you up.”
Is it the same thing?
• David Christensen: “I’ve never felt that I’ve had any power.”
How does one reconcile the real sense of powerlessness many individual “whites” have and the racial makeup of powerful institutions?
• Hugh: “I am disturbed that anyone is not getting into college, not being hired for jobs, including white women and white men. But what I get back is pointing the finger at women and people of color and not at the corporate heads that are sending jobs to Mexico, to Indonesia, to make more money.”
How does classism function in the service of racism? How does racism function in the service of classism ?
• David Christensen: “This will probably be difficult for me — but so that you understand — I was raised by a father that was very much opinionated and racist, I would say. My father would tell jokes about Blacks that would put them down. . . . And he implanted in me that they are undesirable people. And if I ever disagreed with him he beat me. I learned to do what he said to keep protect myself from abuse. I turned this into a pattern of working in order to avoid dealing with reality.”
This is a graphic example of child abuse used in the service of racism. Are there milder ways in which we are taught to conform to the status quo?
• Roberto: “Stretch out your arms
and take hold of the cloth with both hands.
The cure for the pain is in the pain.
Good and bad are mixed.
If you do not have both, you do not belong with us.
What does he mean?
• David Lee: “Over this weekend it was important to see people express their anger about racism. I’ve always wanted to express it because keeping it inside, its killing me, as it killed my father.”
Isn’t anger was always bad?
Loren: “If ever somebody makes a remark about a Latino, Hugh’s face will be there for me.”
How does friendship with people of other races change one’s commitment to intervention?
• David Christensen: “I want to appreciate that I was here. It will have an impact on me throughout the remainder of my life. And I will be your ally. And do everything I can to stop racism where I find it.”
How can he respond this way when he was the focus of so much anger?
• Mun Wah: “I wanted to make a film for my father to see, because he thought that white people wouldn’t listen or would get angry if they saw a film on racism. I really thought white people would listen.
Is he right?
All: [Singing] “May the work that I’ve done speak for me.
May the work that I’ve done speak for me.
And if I fall short of my goal, some one else come take a hold.
May the work that I’ve done speak for me.
May the truth that I’ve told speak for me.
May the love that I’ve shared speak for me.”
Is there a difference between “not being a racist” and being an “anti-racist”?
In the course of this assignment, some differences of opinion and conflict might arise: it is part of the assignment to resolve those conflicts, and to come to some sort of consensus of opinion that everyone in the group is happy with. Since you are working in groups, the finished project will be slightly longer than the previous assignments, 6-8 pages. Your grade will be based on the quality of the entire project as well as your own particular input.
Due dates: Nov. 4: Form groups; begin work
Nov. 12: Submit list of group members and personae; continue work
Nov. 19: Finished product due

1995 version

Values in Conflict: Knowledge, Power and Politics
Assignment #4: Cultural Conflicts: Racism in AmericaGoals: To analyze some of the aspects of racism in America
To reflect on how knowledge is created and used
To view some aspects of conflict resolution in film
To connect sociological and theoretical concepts to actual people and their experiences
Readings: Takaki, “A Different Mirror”
Hughes, “Let America be America Again”
Omi and Winant, “Racial Formation
Due Date: November 9
We have spent a great deal of time this term exploring different aspects of the nature of knowledge, how it is defined and who determines what it is. Much of your reading has dealt with academic analyses of knowledge and its connection to education (Freire) and on the writing and interpretation of history (Tompkins and Trask). The previous assignments dealing with your ideas on education, and your autobiography and cultural heritage and your opinions on diversity and multiculturalism have been opportunities to examine the sources of your own values. It should be clear by now that knowledge and values are inextricably linked and intertwined. What we feel we know to be true is controlled to a large extent by the values we hold.
The film The Color of Fear centered on an example of a serious conflict in society--racism in America. Your assignment is to write an essay of 3-4 typed, double-spaced pages discussing this conflict. Is this conflict due to a conflict in knowledge, values, a combination of the two, or something else? Ground your essay around the work of Omi and Winant, Takaki, and Hughes, but feel free to draw on Morales, Tompkins, Trask or Freire in this essay. Use the texts to back up your thesis. This first section of your essay should be about two pages long. In the final section of your paper, 1-2 pages, suggest ways in which this conflict could be resolved on a societal and individual basis. This resolution should be consistent with your analysis of the problem.
You need to use and cite references to at least two of the sources mentioned above in your essay. Be sure to cite your sources properly. Consult your handbook if you have any questions about citing sources.

 

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