Teaching after Brown v Board of Education: Between Barack and a Hard Place: Challenging Racism, Privilege and Denial in the Age of Obama

The speech by Tim Wise was very powerful and made me think about things in a whole new way. In my life, I had never truly thought about indirect racism, but only focused on the overt racism from others and how awful that is. I never thought that the indirect racism I was exposed to was racism at all or horrible but looking back on it, I am shocked to see how much I have been exposed to it in my own lifetime. When discussing his schooling and the tracks that he went through versus his colored peers, I instantly thought of my own high school. Looking back on it, the kids that were in honors and AP classes were mostly white, with only a slight percentage being black or hispanic. In the "average" classes you would see the complete opposite with the slight percentage being white students. I never thought about how this could be institutionalized racism until Wise spoke about his own experience. I certainly thought something was strange when there was a clear division of race within my high school, but never questioned it until now. One reference he made within the speech was the quote of "I don't see color" which is another version of institutionalized racism. I firmly agree with Wise's argument that by saying phrases such as this, it does not help anyone out and only promotes the idea of inadvertent racism. In order for a person to say they don't see color would mean they have to see differences that deal with race in the first place. If a person was truly not racist, they would never see a problem and would view a person as a human being rather than a color.

The article above is a cartoon depicting the same idea mentioned previously. By comparing a person who "doesn't see color" to a KKK member, it shows that both are parts of racism and it is a huge problem within our society, not only because it promotes racist behavior, but mostly because many people that this is the right thing to say and is an indirect form of discrimination due to skin color. 

Wise also went on to discuss job applications, loans and other important steps of life that people of color are discriminated against. He used the example that those people with white sounding names were more likely to be called in for an interview than those with black sounding names. In this video by BuzzFeed it shows this in a real life example. A man named Jose had to change his name to Joe on job applications in order to get an email back for an interview. He would apply for the same exact jobs and used the same resume, but would only get a reply back for Joe. After watching this video it is very evident that what Wise said within his speech is true and continues to this day. BuzzFeed also made another video named "Little Things you can do to Combat Racism" and interviews more people and their personal experiences with racism and how important it is to start a dialogue about the issue.

I was also able to relate to the Christiansen piece about being exposed to racism and not realizing it from the time we are children. He discusses that after being exposed to an advertisement 12 times he is more likely to buy the product within the advertisement and exemplifies how the same goes for racist remarks. How we think and act as adults is directly correlated with what we are exposed to as children, and if the remarks we make now could be considered racist, it is evident that we had to be exposed to that thinking in some way as a child for us to believe that it is okay to make such remarks. It really makes you think about your past and how, you want to raise your own kids so they are not exposed to the things we were exposed to. It may take time for each generation to eliminate racism, but with understanding it and combating it, it can be possible for the future.