equality | Rhanna's Eportfolio

When asked last week what I thought race and ethnicity meant, my answer was that they were individual traits that make each of us unique to one another. Everyone’s race is different depending on your place of birth or skin colour and people’s ethnicities depend on their religious beliefs, history or culture. I realised that when talking about race and ethnicity we were almost dividing and categorising people into groups. I didn’t see an issue in these terms as it showed that although people have differences to one another, others have commonalities e.g. same skin colour or beliefs.

When then asked what my understanding of prejudice and discrimination was, I explained that it was a person or people’s negative opinions and views towards an individual or group. Discrimination was when those negative views became negative behaviours and potentially harmful actions. I also thought that these attitudes were a thing of the past. The stories of Rosa Parks or the killing of Emmett Till, were part of our high school history lessons. The parts Martin Luther king played in the civil rights movement and the various others who fought for their right for equality, were all parts of events in the past, which I thought we, as a society today, had learnt and moved on from. I was shocked after our lecture about how wrong I was.

The video above was filmed at the time of the recent Charlottesville attacks on August 12th 2017. It highlights the mind sets of those part of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups, and how these racist attitudes, of white American’s being the superior race, still exist today.

I never quite realised how today when any form of uprising occurs we are quick to focus on the terms race and ethnicity. We use these words in a negative way to almost give a reason why everyone of that race or ethnicity should be blamed. We oppress these people by pointing out the fact they have differences and we still hold outdated prejudice views towards those who are out with the ‘normal’.

Many of those, such as black African Americans, have fought for their right to equality in the past and are yet still being discriminated against. In our lecture I was made aware of the amount of unarmed black Americans who have recently been shot due to prejudice and white superior mind sets of those in the police. It amazed me to find out that black African Americans are 11 times more likely to be shot by police, and after watching a TED talk video from Clint Smith about how to raise a black son in America, I would never before, have thought that these serious life lesson would still be needed today.

To find out that issues from the past still haven’t been resolved today, and if anything are getting worst, was a shocking realisation of what a privileged life I live. I could never imagine the uncertainty a black African American must face when approached by those in society employed to protect us and make us feel safe, not more fearful. But not only Blacks, today prejudice views and acts of discrimination effects a wide spread of people. Race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality are just some of the few reasons people face oppression in their everyday life . The new American president, Donald trump uses his position of power to reveal his hate for Mexicans, Jews and Muslims and many others. Almost encouraging these acts of discrimination against them. Attitudes like these will not help move forward and will instead hold us back in becoming a society with equality for all.

On Tuesdays values seminar, we were split into 5 groups and given a task to come up with, and then create, something that we thought would help a new student starting university. Each group was given a packet of stationary and arts and crafts supplies to help make and present their idea. My groups packet contained various coloured paper, pens and post-its, as well as Sellotape, scissors, paper clips, rubber bands, blue tack and pencils. We initially struggled with understanding the tasks requests but after receiving plenty of support and help from the lecturer, we decided to use some of our materials to make a colour co-ordinated personalised timetable. We felt this would help stop the difficulty of trying to spot your personal classes in a mass of module codes and make the confusion of varying weeks, when only certain groups are needed, simpler.

After presenting our idea to the others I noticed that certain group weren’t treated how we were. We received praise for our idea while others were almost passed over quickly with little attention or else were interrogated by the lecturer, as if she didn’t believe their idea was possible or any good. After listening to one group in particular, I realised what little materials they were given. I didn’t think anything of it, just that it was part of the tasks challenge to be resourceful with what you had.

While making our colourful timetables the amount of support we received from the lecturer continued, to the stage that her caring check-ups became slightly annoying to us. I noticed when presenting our final idea that the same attention and attitude was given to certain groups who were again not treated as well as we were. At this point I fully believed the lecturer had complete dislike for either them or their product.

The final scoring was when I eventually realised there had to be something wrong. Our group was given an 8 out of 10, the second highest score in the class. This was a shock to us all, as although we were happy with our achievement we felt our idea was the simplest, easily done and required much support from the lecturer. However, the group, who I’d originally noticed had very little materials, only received a 2. Yet they had been more inventive with the use of their minimal supplies and would have taken much more effort and imagination to achieve their final product, unlike ours, which had basically been spoon fed to us. After all the confusion and disappointment with scorings we realised that those groups who received less materials were scored lower and given less attention than those of us with more.

The lecturer finished by asking how we could relate the task to society. That’s when I finally understood the purpose of this challenge. It wasn’t to build on our team-working skills or about getting to know new people, it was about showing us some of the harsh realities in society today.

Not everyone today is treated fairly and seen as equals, as the task showed, those who have more in society, for example money, are treated better or seen as more important and worthy of peoples time and attention. As being part of one of the better off groups it also made me realise how blind we can be to those needing help. Our group used very little of our materials given and yet even though I knew one group had basically nothing, it didn’t occur to me to offer any of our unused supplies to help. Instead I let them struggle, knowing the extra amount of effort they would have to put in to finish with a similar final product to ours. This task also made me realise how unappreciative we can be at times. At the end of the task, while listening to the other groups complain about the lack of attention and support they received, I thought about how, at times, our group began to find the lecturers caring annoying.

I feel this task has made me realise how easily we can become unaware of people and their situations around us. It’s taught me, when teaching, just how observant you need to be in order to provide the right amount of support and guidance to each individual child.