Rodriguez: Aria

In the article "Aria", Rodriguez tells his story about how he was socially disadvantaged. He talks about how he was scared to use the english language because he felt like it wasn't his language to use. He wanted teachers to address him in Spanish, a language he felt comfortable using. His teachers always viewed him as shy but this is because he didn't like being called on because he didn't really know the english language. Eventually the school saw that Rodriguez and his brother and sister were all really shy. So the school sent people to Rodriguez's house to talk to his parents. After the people from his school left, his parents told him and his siblings they should start to talk at home in english and no more Spanish. So doing as his parents told him, he went on to learn english in school well, long with his siblings. But since he stopped using Spanish, he basically couldn't speak it anymore. His parents on the other hand had no real way of truly learning english so they knew very little english, and they still talked mostly Spanish. This was bad because Rodriguez and his siblings could no longer really communicate with there parents. And there house was always semi quiet.

I argue that this was a bad idea for the school to tell the parents to have the kids speak english all the time at home, and for the parents to make there kids speak only english at home. Rodriguez tells a story about one time he walks into the kitchen while his parents were speaking Spanish, but when they saw him walk in they switched the conversation to english. What they should have done was still speak Spanish and english so there kids would be able to speak both languages. Also the school should of helped Rodriguez and his siblings learn english while still knowing the words in Spanish.

If only Rodriguez could of had this to help.

McIntosh: White Privilege

While reading this piece I really realized that I had been taught that my life was normal. Being a white male, I think back to when I was younger and I was ignoring the idea of privilege without even realizing it.

When talking about white privilege in this article by McIntosh, it also compares to another article called "On Racism and White Privilege". In this article it compares to McIntosh's article because there are a lot of similar facts about white privilege. Also in this second article, the author makes a couple of lists like McIntosh about the perks, advantages, and the world view of white power. These lists are very interesting because they have some really big things such as money having white people on it, and thats a big white privilege. But they also have smaller things like color of band aids as a sign of white privilege.

Now in both these articles the authors have similar thoughts and both agree that white people grow up and usually are taught to ignore white privilege.

Another thing that both articles point out that I found interesting was how little things like band aids and hair products are favored to the white community. I find it interesting because as they point out, band aids are usually one color and it is a color that matches the "white peoples" skin. Also a lot of hotels and grocery stores give out or sell hair products that favor a more white persons hair styles. These little things are crazy to think about because until I read this article I would have never realized that these things favored white people.