I chose the topic of race for this blog entry because it is so interesting to see how my students react to me when they first meet me. On the first day I got everything from stares, to students touching my skin, to students wondering where the heck I was from. Korea is such a homogeneous culture that something as simple as hair texture baffles my students. Many of them have asked to touch my hair. Others have asked can they get a machine to make their hair like this. Koreans have a shared history that they can trace. Though they too have been victims of slavery many of them were able to stay in their own land and maintain their culture and traditions. Whereas many of the Afrikan people were forced into a foreign land and stripped of their culture and traditions. So it baffles my students when I tell them I was born in America but I do not know where my ancestors come from.
Unfortunately, in our world today race has played a major role in shaping peoples attitudes towards different groups of people. I'm inclined to argue that race is merely a socially constructed tool that has been used to divide groups of people. Nonetheless, the idea of race tends to dictate peoples attitudes toward other groups/cultures. Which in turn causes stereotypes to be formed. We all know that each culture has stereotypes. {Example Black people are ghetto or Asian people are smart} These are stereotypes that exist about each of these groups. Furthermore, how each group is portrayed in the media also has a large effect of the formation of stereotypes. And in my opinion Blacks are often misrepresented or portrayed negatively in media outlets such as: movies and television.
Well I have said all of this to say that one of my goals is to travel the world and expose different cultures to Black people {for the purposes of this blog entry Black refers to people of color across the African diaspora} and Black culture. I firmly believe that if a group of people have never met or encountered a Black person then they may believe all of the negative portrayals of Black people they have been exposed to via the media {television/movies}.Thus, one of my goals during my hiatus in Korea, is to expose Korean peoples to Black culture. I realize that Black people are not monolithic and that we have many sub-cultures, but people tend to lump us all in one category and think we are lazy, ignorant or uneducated. Thus, I want to counter all of these negative stereotypes and demonstrate that we {Blacks} are educated, intelligent and hard workers.
Furthermore, it is my hope to travel the world and expose different cultures to the beauty of black people and to educate them about who we are and our contributions to the free world. Many of my students are surprised when I share different aspects of my rich culture. Educating people does not validate who I am and the contributions my ancestors made, but it does provide an opportunity for exploration, understanding and insight.
*~I'm just a Black girl trying to show the world my beauty, history and culture in the process of exploring the world one country as a time. My Black does not define me, but it inspires me*~
