Jessica Fox
Professor Quijada
Ethnic Studies
March 6, 2012
Steps to a Better Future
Why is race an issue in today’s society? Why is it a big deal that people have different color skin from each other? I look at people like we are all the same because I have never been taught anything different than these beliefs.
Growing up in San Jose, one would think that I would be an individual that knew a lot about different races and ethnicities. To be honest, that is not true. I have attended private Catholic schools all of my life. My kindergarten to eighth grade school had a majority of white students. There were a couple of Asians and
Latinos, and there were about three African American students in the whole school. Growing up in an atmosphere like this, I was not taught that there are difference races or that it was a major concern that people were different ethnicities. It wasn’t until I got to high school is when I realized that people have racial prejudices towards each other and it affects a lot of people. I was ignorant and thought that what I learned about segregation between the whites and minorities was totally over with and was not happening in modern day. I have recently discovered that I could not be more wrong.
Historically, white people have a legacy to be the majority race and the group of people with the power. For example, there are manifestations of racial domination: institutio nal racism and interpersonal racism. “Institutional racism is

systemic white domination of people of color, embedded and operation in corporations, universities, legal systems, political bodies and cultural life”
(Desmond 30). This “domination” that has been around for so long has morphed the way that people think. It has made the white Americans think that they are better than the immigrants who have come to the United States. There has been political power throughout America’s history that withheld basic rights from groups of people of color and that classified groups as “normal” and abnormal”.
Learning this really made me realize that I do not know a lot about the connections between America’s history of racial problems and today’s racial problems. This affects how I look at race because it is opening my eyes so that I can see that there are different people and every ethnic group that is in America today had to go through some kind of racial put downs from the privileged people who think that they can rule the country. The idea of race has been around for a while and has had a lot of time to develop into how it is defined today. “Race is a metaphor that is necessary to the construction of Americaness; in the creation of our national identity, ‘American’ has been defined as white” (2 Takaki). This is an interesting idea because it is very blunt and true of Takaki to say. When people in other countries think of America, they think of a white race. It is not apparent that there are multiple races all put together here to create one big nation. I think that in order to move on from this idea, people need to look at America as a melting pot of cultures and together we work together to make a unified nation. In the readings, “Racial Domination, Racial Progress” and “A Different Mirror” my privilege and experiences with race and ethnicity are constructed. It is weird to

me to think that I am a part of the privileged group of people because I still feel like sometimes I am put down by others. I think everyone goes through racial profiling throughout their lifetime, but it is up to the individual to decide whether or not they are going to let that affect them.
Not being told about how race still is integrated into our society today made me think that racial profiling did not exist anymore. I did not think about putting these ideas together to make the connection that racism still happens today. My parents and grandparents never talk about other races in either a positive or negative way. I grew up oblivious to racial and ethnic differences.
When I was little I might have asked questions about race and why some people look different than others but there are no memories that I can remember that trigger how I looked at race when I was younger. I just thought that everyone was the same and that everyone else thought that way too. This contributes to the fact that I do not know much about modern day feelings that racial groups have towards each other. As a college student today, I can look around my classes and see that a ma jority of students that go to Saint Mary’s College are white.
However, there are a good number of minority students as well. Before this ethnic studies class, I would have never looked at my classes and notice that there are different races all sitting together in one atmosphere. Being able to sit with a group of people that is so diverse really makes me feel good to be a part of this day and age where we all can sit together and have equal rights to learning what we are learning.

I was not talked to at home about race, and I was not talked to at school about race either. The only way that I learned about race was through my social interactions with my friends and through the media. I think that learning about race through the media is one of the worst ways to learn about this issue because it is not the right kind of education. Most of the time, it is a one sided and narrow-minded way to look at the big topic of race. When I think of race and the media, the first show that comes to mind is a television show called Tosh.O.
In this comedy show, Daniel Tosh, the comedian, takes short videos that he finds on the internet and makes jokes about them after they are shown on the screen.
A lot of his jokes are inappropriate and dedicated towards making fun of a specific group of people. He does not just stick to one group of people to mock; he does it to every gender, race, ethnicity, class and sexuality. It is a show dedicated to showing videos that are funny, but Tosh takes it too far when he brings in racial slurs and inappropriate punch lines to his jokes. I find it offensive that there is a show that is allowed to be like this on air because it is not teaching humanity to get over this racial profiling and inequality, it is provoking it and making it seem like it is socially acceptable to make it into a joke.
The ways that people are socialized plays a huge role in how they look at race and ethnicity. When analyzing myself, I realized that the fact that my family does not talk about race has made me ignorant to the fact that it is still a controversial issue today. I learned about racial inequality in school, but I never made the strong connection to the issue because I had nothing to compare it to in my life. Now that I am in this ethnic studies class, I am learning more than I

ever knew existed and being able to reflect about my upbringing and socialization plays a huge role in figuring out how race and ethnicity are important to my life. I am interested in taking this class and figuring this out because I do not know much about other cultures. I am studying to become a teacher and really want to teach in inner city schools. I feel like in order to be a great teacher in an atmosphere like that, I am going to need to learn to sympathize and understand where different families are coming from and how they feel about certain issues.
Also, I would not be a good teacher if I did not know things that my students grow up knowing such as ethnic inequality. I am becoming educated in these different areas that I did not know much about before and I am proud of myself for realizing that and taking the step to becoming more aware with different issues that have to deal with class, gender, race and sexuality.