Sociology Week 17

This week in sociology we talked more about race. We watched the movie Crash which dealt with many different types of racism. For example, in the movie a white woman was walking to her car with her white husband and they were carjacked by two black men who had guns. Later that night when the woman was at home, she said some nasty things about the guy who was changing her locks in the other room because he was Mexican. She assumed he was part of her gang and demanded that the locks be changed again the next morning by someone else. Later this week we also had a race panel in class. Students from our school of different races- white, black, mexican, indian, chinese- spoke about their experiences with race.

I'm Indian so I feel like I can relate as I've inevitably been stereotyped. I'm stereotyped as being really smart. Although I do like to think I am smart, I don't get straight As in math. I have my good subjects, and bad ones. Just last period I walked into my Econ class late, and we had a test today. They hadn't started the test but since I was late, everybody was already paired up in partners. The second I walked in, so many people started asking "Can Leah be in our group???" Many of these people don't even know me or the kinds of grades I get in that class- they just assume that I do well. Although it is annoying, this type of stereotyping isn't that harmful to me, but I have been teased a little bit. When I was out with friends other teenagers who were trying to be funny would walk by and just comment on me being Indian, like -"Oh you're hanging out with an Indian???" It just doesn't make sense because no one comments on white people. No one would ask me why I am hanging out with a white person. When people on the panel were talking about skin color and how it's good that they turned out to be lighter, I could relate. I'm pretty light skinned for an Indian, and as sad as it is to say, I've always been thankful for that because it really does make things easier as far as being accepted goes. I do think we have come a long long way with racism but there still really needs to be change. I think if more people took a sociology class and learned that race is just a social construction, or even saw something like the race panel, that they would be more sensitive. I had more problems when I was younger but I'm way more comfortable in my skin now.