After reading the article on White Privilege, I immediately thought of examples from my own life, especially because my family originates from Mexico and New Mexico. My brothers and sisters have darker skin than I do and when they would go by make-up, for example, I remember thinking that there were so many selections for different variations of colors for people with "fair, beige, pearl" skin. However, it was so much harder to find darker colors and when you could find darker colors, there were never any pictures to help a person make a better choice. Another example was flesh-colored crayons. Most of the people in my family never matched the color of the peach-colored crayons, and when I was younger, I always would wonder why peach was the color "flesh". In addition, I remember being one of the only children in many of my classes in the city where I grew up with a Hispanic background; sometimes I felt like I stuck out because of my appearance. In light of all this, and many other examples of what the prevailing culture is "supposed to be", I really feel it is extremely important as teachers to do our best to understand where different people are coming from, and why they might be doing what they are doing. We can never assume a similar background, similar family, or the same values. Furthermore, I feel that it is an important job of any teacher to make his/her students feel welcomed and special no matter who they are, even if we may not necessarily agree with them.

I read a great children's story once about a boy who had come to a new school from another culture only to find out they were going to be having "All American" day. He was stressing over it until he learned it was really a celebration of diversity in ethnicity and background. How hard would it be for kids in social studies classes to do a little research on what their surnames mean and where their ancestors originally came from, and to share with their classmates some of the cultural customs they have? Even bring foods from their individual backgrounds. I think so many kids feel like they are "normal" and don't realize what they see around them is "culture"--like my students who start dipping tobacco at age 10 and don't ever think that not everyone does that, or wants to drive a pickup, or hunt and fish. I think we are helping them to see that they are special in what they do and unique in the world in many ways--not to put anyone down but to celebrate all their cultural heritages.

I also read this article for another class. It really made me think. Sometimes I am so unaware of all the things that are easier for me because of my skin color. I take it so for granted. It would be a lot more obvious to me if I had colored skin. I think that is so sad, that race, which is not something we have much control over, is used to determine whether or not we have privilege. I thought this article was very interesting and informative. I think we all need to be more aware of how others are treated regardless of their color and work towards equality for everyone.

The article really made me think too. It is so easy to turn into one of those people that says that minorities are disadvantaged, but then not be willing to see that they themselves are advantaged. It really surprised me how familiar the list of "unearned privileges" was without even hardly thinking about it ever before.

As a kid from NYC I grew up pretty well interracial. All my firends and family were of different ethnic backgrounds so I never really saw a problem with it, I think I have always assumed that people were treated the same because I grew up treating people they way I wanted to be treated. It was not until I moved up state to Onandawga County just outside of the Onadagwa Indian Res. that I noticed how much race played a big role. Being the only white kid in a school of Native Americans can have a big impact on how you are looked at. Not that it was a bad situation, I had some assimilating to do, so did the other children with me, but all in all I think I turned out quite well, and learned alot from being there.