Although it was towards the end of English class, I thought the best conversation occurred when there was an argument about whether the final piece of writing that we read was considered to be racist. I was intrigued by this part because during the class, we were discussing social identity and the way that some people are constantly looked at in a negative connotation just because of their attributes. Due to this conversation, the last couple of paragraphs that we read were very interesting. For those of you who do not know what I am talking about, I am discussing the story of the therapist that specializes in trauma counseling who yelled uncontrollably when her new patient arrived at her front door. In class, some people immediately got the sense that she was being racist. Although I do agree in a sense, there is no proof. There is no way to tell if she was being racist by this small piece of writing since the two characters were not described in detail. Maybe the therapist was just really scared about a stranger coming up to her door. I know that I would be quite frightened if a stranger came up to my door in the middle of the day! Although I know that the author was probably trying to convey the idea of racism, I think that people should not be so quick to judge something or someone. Rather, they should instead look at the facts that will in turn, lead them to their conclusions.
What do you think?
I agree. I think that while it may appear to be racism, in which case it would be wise to look at the motivations of the therapist, it is not good to jump to conclusions about other's opinions. This basically just leads to finger pointing and gets us nowhere.
ReplyDeleteI think it is interesting analyzing the possible intents of the author. They could have been trying to subtly convey to white readers the feeling of being in the shoes of a black person. Another possibility is that they were trying to point out the assumptions that the reader has to make in reading the essay that they are black. It is impossible to live in the world without categorizing people and drawing quick conclusions and this essay definitely points to that. This undefined intention is what i found most interesting and curious about this piece of writing.
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