Blog Post #5

 Ethnic Studies by Christine E. Sleeter

Quotes

"While content related to African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans has been added, deeper patterns and narratives that reflect Euro-American experiences and worldviews, and that have traditionally structured K–12 textbooks—particularly history and social studies texts—remain intact." (Sleeter, 2). 

This quote is one of the first major introductions in Ethnic Studies by Sleeter, and it jumps straight in. It highlights the fact that despite different groups being added to historical textbooks the focus still remains on white americans. Despite these other groups having just as much importance. While these other groups are also introduced, they are introduced in specific areas. For example the chapters that focus on slavery or the civil rights movement, will mention African Americans, but beyond these select chapters the mention of African Americans is very limited. 

"As Hughes (2007) explains, the result of continuing to minimize attention to rac-

ism and White complicity is that students perceive racism as a tragedy of the past divorced from other historical issues...and the contemporary realities of power in American society." (Sleeter, 3)

This quote highlights a current issue that plagues america itself, alot of individuals dont realize that racism is ever present and only refer to extreme actions as 'racism'. Racism being framed to be in the past tense in history classes prevents students from realizing just how racist some things are, and bars students from making these realizations themselves. 

"found that the students felt marginalized and “angry that African American history was

rarely discussed outside Black History Month and was almost always portrayed in terms

of victimization.” Students" (Sleeter, 4)

This quote is very powerful, and made me myself realize something that when we learn about African Americans in middle and highschool it was always in terms of victimization, as i previously mentioned, i can scarcely recall ever learning or reading about african americans outside of the civil rights movement, and when discussing slavery. This creates a dynamic of victimization, and lacks focus on the achievements of African Americans.

 

'The Fight for Social Justice' 'The Fight for image illustrates that our history lacks pieces of the puzzle

Reflection:

I think that Sleeter raises numerous points throughout their article, that really made me sit back and think on my own education, and what I learned growing up. Prior to reading Sleeters piece I never really sat down and thought about who we learned about, and that when we did learn about people from other cultures, and backgrounds it was always very selective.