I read last night after class an article in the "NEA today". I will bring it to class next week. But the article that hit me was the last one titled "Let's Talk About Skin" p. 64. The teacher's name is Rita Tenorio. This article was touching on the same ideas that we discussed in class. That students of color are thought of as dumb or lacking the ability to understand, work or comprehend a subject.
One thing that this teacher does to get her students to believe that they should be proud of their color. Is to ask them how they got their name? About their anscestry. She says that they overcome racial barriors by eleminating the idea of who is "better" or who is "like us" and who isn't. She also has the students to find different colors that match their own. She points out that the color brown is the whole range of colors. They take red, yellow, black, and white paint and mix them together to make the different shades. What alot of white students come to find out is they to are not white as the color white is. Then students have to go home and find something that is the same color as them and bring it to school. I could just see a white boy bringing a pair of granny panties to school.
You can get the article off the web at www.rethinkingschools.com/archive/18_03/club183.shtml

It is important that we all realize that skin is just that; skin. The interior is what actually counts. We must diffuse racism before it begins by having more conversations about these types of discrimination. Neat article, good find!

This article makes me think of a video, which at present I can not think of the name, about skin color, stereotypes, and DNA. To make a long story short, it was amazing how much the video revealed about what race really means, we think people that are black or white, have relatively the same DNA, because their skin pigments reflect light in the same way. In all actuality students in a science classroom tested the strans of their DNA make-up using their Salva, and the suprising thing they found is that DNA, does not have pattern or sequence for certain races. Therefore the only conclusion that we come to is that their is basically, their are several difference in genetic make-up but no one thing that makes us all the same. Therefore; we must celebrate the uniqueness each one of us has, and celebrating skin color is only one way of celebrating our uniqueness.

I agree Paula. I strongly fell that our skin color is not something that should be focused on to seperate us, however, it should be something that each of us cherish and and are proud of. I think that it is important that people realize that it is OK for us to be different, but not for us to feel that one "difference" is higher or better than any other.