When first opening up the quiz, I was prepared to answer questions that pertained to chapter 3's reading assignment. I was blown to bits when I realized that it was a drill on what I knew about the history of different historical figures from different races. I felt stupid. As an advocate for "non-butterfly" diversity action, I felt as though I had failed. I had gone out of my way to crunch jargon of sociological concepts and theories without carrying one of the core necessities of understanding what it means to be socially aware. I had skimped on the history, the history of my foreign humanity.
My boyfriend nervously watched as I swore under my breath. I was embarrassed. This assignment has taught me to look at the surface as well as the depth. I began a full blown spree of researching who's who. I first got a list for the white men, piece of cake. I went onto the white women, which posed some sort of challenge. The black men were known from my bringing up as a black female, easy as pie! It wasn't until I ended my spree with the black females did all the rest of the races become difficult. Not only were my panicky research abilities lacking but the internet was full of irrelevant information of the cultures.
Not only have my googling skills taken a shot, but so had my dignity. After this experience I thought a little bit. My knowledge of other people was lacking because I simply hadn't had any experiences that had exposed me to such knowledge. Coming from a more individualistic society, the history stuff taught to the "average" students primarily consisted of white men, successful battles, and the beginning of America's greatness.
Still, this is no excuse. I have a duty to be an ethical citizen. I now have the privilege and the access to a world of information and resources. This assignment worked as reminder of how much I actually know and need to find out. A new flame for history has indeed been discovered.
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When I realized what the quiz was about, I knew my knowledge was lacking, and I knew that I would not be able to name many famous people of ethnicities other than white. After my first, and depressing quiz, I also hit google. I wasn't shocked at my own lack of knowledge, but I was shocked at the lack of information on google. It was incredibly difficult to find information on some ethnicites, especially historical information. I could barely find any information about famous middle eastern females, which really depressed me! Like you, I am definitely more interested in history after this quiz.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. This was indeed a very difficult and disapointing quiz. I had the same luck with google and the information that I was quality of the information. I thought that there was a lack of information on the Asian men and women and also the Middle Eastern men and women. It shocks me how much I didn't know about those ethnicities.
ReplyDeleteLauren, did you feel the same way for both the first and second quiz? Were you able to recover some of your dignity in the second quiz or did you feel just as challenged? I know I went out and trolled the internet to come up with more information on my second attempt and even then I couldn't assign a name to every century for some groups.
ReplyDeleteNo, all it did was feed those nasty chemicals that somehow get fueled to my already overly passionate emotionals. I had done even worse than the quiz before. :'C (sad face)
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