Deadpool1986
Cook with a Mouth
The long history of racism and bigotry in the United States has produced a system which puts any minority at an immediate disadvantage. In any form of mass communications education, this systemic racism needs to be understood due to the demands of marketing and outreach to the largest audience available. This study of systemic racism went poorly for Shannon Gibney, an instructor at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. In the middle of a class on systemic racism in mass communications, she was interrupted by a white student, and what happened then demonstrates why racism remains a problem in the United States. Gibney talks about it in the following video.
“Why do we have to talk about this?” — a white student in response to Gibney’s lesson on racism.
Racism Is Allowed To Flourish When It Lives In Shadow.
He demonstrated specifically why we have to talk about this. What happened to Shannon Gibney, getting penalized for doing her job, is precisely why we have to talk about this. That the student was uncomfortable is actually part of the problem.
Racism impacts everybody, not just those discriminated against. This student got hit with it, and responded. Was he experiencing racism? No. But it impacted him. He felt guilty, because he is benefiting from racism. All people of pale skin are given preferential treatment in this country, that is a fact. People of darker skin are the victims of profiling, harassment, and worse. This is racism, this is the United States.
Learning About Racism Is Necessary Sometimes.
Mass communications are effected by this, so the need to understand the system already in place is quite important for the class. A student felt dirty for it. That is because he knows the reality of life in America, with its systemic racism and widespread oppression of minorities. Is it right? No. However instead of learning from the class, he chose to take the path of covering up, to ignore the problem in the hopes it goes away.
Ms. Gibney was reprimanded for the lesson, one required for complete understanding of the broader subject of the class, due to a select group of students who did not want to admit the reality of racism in the United States. This is not the first time there was a complaint about this class either. The previous complaint was over a similar set of circumstances. Yet the school is still not addressing the issue that some critical subjects can, and will, make people uncomfortable.
Going Forward And Lessons Learned.
Many people in the majority go through life without understanding racism and harassment. When they are faced with it for the first time, they get uncomfortable. It makes them question things. This is a necessary part of learning about racism in general. For how can you understand racism if you don’t understand the discomfort, that rot-like feeling in your stomach when you witness it.
What the students experienced was not racism, or discrimination, it was humanity. That feeling of disgust, it tells us that they are decent human beings. Let us hope that they have learned a real lesson from the class.
If they truly did not enjoy the subject, then they should have, instead of complaining about the class, gone out and do something about it. Lobby their congressman, help out in a homeless shelter, donate time stuffing envelopes for the NAACP, something productive. Instead, they complained, and in so doing they become part of the problem instead of part of the solution.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/12/03/racism-lesson-teacher-reprimand/
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