Thomas Builds-the-Fire: Hey Victor! I remember the time your father took me to Denny's, and I had the Grand Slam Breakfast. Two eggs, two pancakes, a glass of milk, and of course my favorite, the bacon. Some days, it's a good day to die. And some days, it's a good day to have breakfast.
I haven’t even gotten half way through this book when the inspiration for this week’s blog hit me in the face. It hit me so hard that I had to put down the book and immediately begin writing before this awesome idea escaped me.
As the title for this blog points out I am never sure what I am supposed to get out of learning about multicultural education.
Multicultural education classes do two things really well:
1) They make white people feel horrible.
2) They make people who aren’t from Alpharetta feel awkward.
The first one of these points is pretty self-explanatory. The multicultural education class at UGA is often referred to as the white guilt class. Basically what happens during the class is white males learn how they have had everything handed to them on a silver platter and they have oppressed all the other people in the world and are racists and bigots and simply horrible.
The second thing that happens in these multicultural education classes is people who did not grow up in a white-washed, white-flight suburb feel out of place. While all the white affluent people are gawking at the horrible way their relatives have treated all people of color and shrieking in astonishment to find out that some schools in Athens have no white kids and almost 100% free and reduced lunch this second group of people is shocked that a person could actually grow up in such a protective bubble.
Multicultural classes do not seem to be made to change people to be more accepting and open-minded because that would be indoctrination and Americans shy away from that, except in some forms (watch the documentary Jesus Camp on HULU). Multicultural education classes seem to focus more on awareness, awareness that there are lots of different types of people who are living in lots of different ways and for lots of different reasons.
I was already aware.
So it bothered me when I had to sit through a multicultural education class and read a book about Jewish immigrants and their struggles with assimilation.
I was already aware.
It bothered me to sit in that class because when I was in elementary school I asked my parents why I couldn’t be like some of my friends and get free breakfast in the cafeteria before school and they had to explain to me how some people get breakfast because they can’t afford it without some assistance.
I was already aware.
It bothered me to see classmates shocked at the demographics of schools that I went to.
I guess my point is that maybe some people need to learn about what exists outside of John’s Creek. I could have just signed a form at the beginning of my multicultural education class affirming that I understood that diversity existed.
If you want to expose me to a culture unlike my own take me to an all-white suburb school where teenagers drive BMWs and play lacrosse.
As for the movie Smoke Signals, I remember watching it when I was a kid. I thought it was great. But I didn’t think of it as being a story about some Indians in a coming of age tale, I thought of it as a good movie with likable and relatable characters.
So when I’m reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian I’m not thinking of this as a funny book about an Indian kid, I’m thinking of it as a funny book about a kid.
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