so lately in class we've been on the discussion of racism. which is a touchy subject in general. so we had this guest speaker on monday that recalled her experiences from her hometown of Mart, TX. Hearing what she had to put things into a different perspective seeing as though it was her point of view. I never knew that Mart was that bad until hearing her speak and professor G's experiences as well. i'm from waco, tx which is about 20 min away and to be honest, never really heard anything bad about it. all i knew about mart was that it had a good football team and that were many african american people there. and the only reason i knew that was because how the media (the news stations) portrayed it to be. so to hear what was really going was a shocker. but i mean there all places like that all over america so it to me just seemed as another city that was overturn by racism.
then came the discussion after our guest speaker was done. alot of issues were brought up. it was made out be that certain people were being singled out, because of their skin color and experiences, which made people uncomfortable including myself. i was thinking to myself, "did she really just ask her that?" but in return we got to hear what their reactions were to certain questions and it opened my eyes to realize that it was true and why it was. someone said "why did it take a white women to have to go back to that city to try and make things better?" which was exactly true. why did it? why did it take a white women to come to that city to make a change? that got me thinking. you would think someone of your own race would want to go back a make a difference and show them whats going on. but then again maybe they felt so much resentment towards the city and those people of the city that they wanted nothing to do with them anymore. which is understandable. but in general it just makes you think..
racism will always be alive in this country. it's just up to those who will chose to make a difference.
Desiree -
ReplyDeleteI understand the reason for the question about why a white woman is the one trying to make a positive difference in Mart, TX. But, maybe it's just that whoever wants to tackle the problem is doing just that. Since there are whites and blacks living in Mart, anyone from either side could've taken it upon him/herself to take action. But, when Prof. G. was asked about why she's doing the Mart project, she said something to the effect that her children weren't allowed to visit there when they were younger like their cousins from other cities/states were and they also need to be able to experience their roots. I agree that it's never too late to experience more of your life (past and present).