In this post I will be discussing the similarities and differences in the stories we shared of our earliest or most profound memory of racism.
i) Normative narratives
After lots of consideration I found three stories that portrayed some normative narratives quite well.
In Jorah’s blog story titled “Volumes” Jorah notices that there is a little girl that looks like no one she has ever seen before. “She looked so different from my sister, but yet they had arrived at the bin with the same goal.” This shows that while the girl had the same goal as Jorah’s sister there was still something different about her that set her apart from everyone else. “I began to rack my memory for something familiar and wound up empty. None of my classmates looked like them, no one at church, no one I had ever seen.” Jorah’s thought process is the same as many young minds in their first instance of seeing difference. This brings up a very important normative narrative that come up throughout the stories I have chosen to write about. This normative narrative is that people only see color.
The normative narrative of people only see color is furthered in my own story “Racialization in the Classroom,” while this memory is not a fond one as I fell into the acting force of the narrative, I must say there is a lot wrong with how this moment in my life unfolded. For one my classmates chose to use someone’s race and skin color as the premise of a racial joke. This was in no way acceptable however I passively laughed it off with one of my best friends who just happened to be the person of color that the joke targeted. This also brought out another normative narrative that I grew up with. The narrative is that it is okay to make racist jokes. While I avoid racist jokes like the plague it took this joke to realize that they where horrible and this narrative had to be busted.
Francois’ blog story titled “My Brother, You Look Different Today” a different normative narrative displays itself the narrative in question would be that white privilege does not exist. Now before I continue I should say I relate really well to this story in the sense that I am of Indigenous decent but have white skin. While my friends know of my Indigenous decent and have made fun of it I am often saved the immediate discrimination Francois describes in this quote. “I may get catcalled and bullied for a part of my history that I cannot change but I was not met with immediate discrimination just for looking Native.” It is because of white privilege that we do not face the immediate discrimination that Francois’ friend and many other Indigenous people face.
ii) Creating counter-stories
In Meg’s blog story “Prince Eric” she approaches the idea and the normative narratives completely different then the other stories did. She breaks the narrative of white privilege by allowing herself to become the princess no matter who played the role. “After all, he was going to be my prince no matter what, and I was going to be his princess.” This quote shows that Meg did not have a second thought about who was going to play the prince thus busting the normative narrative that a white person should play the role just because them they match the screen version. She also busted the narrative that people only see color because she did not care who was in the role as long as she got to play the princess.
“Power from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate.” This quote from the Peggy McIntosh article titled “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” shows that the boy as described in Meg’s story is breaking the boundaries of white privilege by playing a part that may have been traditionally set aside for a boy with white skin tone. So, while he does not have the privilege or power described in the quote he has his own resilience and got the part.
I chose to disrupt or bust these normative narratives because I see these narratives in my everyday life. These narratives, especially the one presented in my story resonate heavily with me because they are things I have gone through and had to learn from. Learning from the minor or large mistakes we make and teaching the next generation not to make the same mistakes will help our world immensely in the long run.