Blog #4 Reaching Others

Every week I am moved by the honesty of my classmate's stories shared either through their blogs or "share outs" in class. I mentioned last week how I really haven't had many moments in my life where I felt singled out negatively for who I am, and that the few times I have really sucked. Those moments made me feel small or angry. Being looked at, judged, valued or not, based on one's race or ethnicity day in and day out, and to constantly feel that small or angry feeling that I have felt only a few times in my life, must be challenging. Sharing is powerful. It creates awareness and knowledge. I'm sure there are many people in our school community who would want to share their stories and bring about awareness to the important issues we have been discussing. Is there a way for us to create a safe place for people to do so????

We are definitely not alone. There are other classrooms on many other college campuses where important conversations like ours are taking place. There is advocacy happening. How can we join in the conversation is the question? How do we get our voices heard? One way can be through the use of social media. Social media is lie a living-breathing entity. Everybody uses it. Think about all of the resources we have been finding and sharing in class. How can we open this up so more people are aware of our work?

  One really cool place in the cyber-world I stumbled across was a Facebook page that is raising awareness about microaggressions in our society: The Microaggressions Project  https://www.facebook.com/microaggressions (check it out). This made me think that maybe we could create our own group page and share it out to all of our FB friends and watch it explode. We can update items that we find even after our semester is over. It is an easy and connected way to allow us to keep doing this work and get our voices heard even when we are no longer together on a regular weekly basis.