The topic of race, white privilege and racism is something that feels like it is never taught. From a young age, we immediately are able to compare those of us with white skin to those with darker skin. In some areas, we are so sheltered that some of us rarely meet and engage with any variety of races until we are teenagers like I was in my story. I had always gone to school with kids who looked like me but on that first day of high school that changed. 

In Khol’s story, he went through a similar thing. That is, he got to ninth grade and met the first classmate who was a different race than he was. He talks about that feeling of shock when he first met her. Something that a lot of us who are white and grew up in certain areas know too well. He discussed that feeling of confusion “why I hadn’t seen something like her before, where did she come from, why weren’t there more people like her? It had my mind racing with so many unanswered questions”. These thoughts are something I, and lots of people can relate to. This story brings out the normative narrative that we who are white feel we have the right to, mentally and sometimes physically, point fingers at those we encounter in life, who have different coloured skin and actively have thoughts about how their race might affect us. 

In Halle’s story, we again see how white people are in a sense, amazed when we meet a person of colour. Especially when we are kids. When we are younger, we have that realization that there are people with all types of skin but seeing them up close is this amazing thing. I relate to Halle’s story because I grew up in a similar way, where it was all white children, but as you got older you were exposed to all types of people and that can be a strange thing. Halle, Khol, and I’s experiences are ones that happens consistently when in reality it shouldn’t. People are people and we shouldn’t be amazed or confused when we see someone who looks different than us but it has been taught to us that these types of things are the norm.

Part Two. 

These normative narratives can be disrupted by learning about any person of colour’s experiences in a mostly white society. When we take a look at the other side it’s hard for us as white people to grasp that in times we see people of colour, they, as people of colour understand what is happening and have to live through those moments where white people are weirdly amazed and/or confused by them or their culture. 

In Jerico’s story, we see what it’s like to be that child on the playground who looks different. He talks about the school feeling that he needed speech classes, for the language he grew up speaking. He talks about things he heard on the playground from other kids, things such as “These weeds are the same colour as your skin!”. The feeling he felt when his skin colour was being compared to weeds and the feeling of being singled out because of his skin disrupts the normative narrative that is okay for white people to point out those we see as different from us. Instead, doing so can be harmful to people of colour as they grow up in a mostly white society. 

An article that we read earlier this semester that really stuck with me was one through CBC: “Parents angry Montreal teachers wore headdresses on 1st day of school”. This article shows how white people take the things they find interesting about culture to use them without considering the harm it may do to those they are stealing from. What these teachers did by wearing headdresses was extremely disrespectful to the culture, yet they saw it as acceptable and well-intentioned as they saw what they were doing as celebrating culture and not disrespecting it. It is important to disrupt the narrative that is okay for white people to point out things they find amazing about culture and using it without real consideration about what you are doing, potentially damaging to the people within that culture while simultaneously teaching other children it is okay to pick out what you like from these cultures because you are white and your “celebrating” it. This reason is why I chose this topic. Seeing how other cultures are affected when white people use it for their own and seeing how wrong it is for us to pick out those we see as different was something I wanted to educate myself more on. Disrupting these normative narratives is important because cultural respect and respect for those who are different from us needs to be taught, to children and adults, so that we do not continue to point fingers at those we see as different. 

References:
Enos, Elysha. (2016, August 29). Parents angry Montreal teachers wore headdresses on 1st day of school. CBC.   https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/outremont-headdresses-racism-quebec-school-1.3739916