One of the little girls was then taken away to talk to the social worker. Her father passed away about four years ago. In South Africa, if you are together for a certain amount of years but not married then you are considered common law married so you share and get everything if they pass away. But her mother had no paperwork to prove that, so she did not get the estate. Instead the property went to Masters, which is where it goes in cases like this. Masters decided to sell the house and so on Friday when this little girl came home from school she was forced to move out of her house. Masters did not even tell her mother anytime in advance just kicked her out right then and there. Currently the girl’s mother is going through chaos. They are staying with the girl’s older sister. It’s just a really sad story and she is going through so much already at such a young age. I couldn’t believe it.
In the classroom at circle time today we went over the date, weather, and yesterday and tomorrow. Miss Loren also taught them about big and small by giving examples. She used two of the students and showed that one boy was the biggest in the class and was taller than another. She also taught them about patterns. She drew an example of patterns on the board. One example was a big circle, little circle, big circle. Then she would ask them what would come next so they would get the concept. To make it even more difficult she put three different shapes pattern some of the kids got it others struggled.
While the kids were napping today I had a very interesting conversation with my teacher. First of all I love my teacher and we have a very good connection. She is amazing with the kids, passionate about her job and overall just a very funny and great person. She speaks fluent Afrikaans and is classified as coloured.
She said that all of the teachers at Christel House are coloured and all of the assistants are black. I thought this was interesting and wonder if it was done on purpose or by accident. Then we started to talk about race and she said that she thinks that Cape Town has gotten a lot better over the years. But the assistant said that it has stayed the same (the assistant is black and is fluent in Xhosa).
Miss Loren was talking about one story. This little 5-year old girl in the class was one day talking to her friend during snack time. Then she started saying that she wasn’t a ______ (a derogatory term) and she kept on repeating it. This shocked me that a 5-year old would know such an awful term at this age and know the meaning of it and use it! I could not believe it. It’s very sad. My teacher was going on saying that she was also very shocked. She said that she sees everyone as the same and does not treat one person differently from another based on race. She said that her parents had to deal with that in the past through Apartheid and wish that on no one else. She told me that South Africa is now trying to be united and not look so much at race because of what happened during the Apartheid. That’s why they have so many official languages and their flag also represents every race. My conversation unfortunately got cut short because the bus was there. It was very nice to talk to her and I can’t wait to talk to her even more and learn more.
We had class today from 6pm-9pm. We talked about all of our privileges and that list can just go on and on. Chantelle came into our class and presented us with a trip where we can go to the township called Ocean View for a weekend. It’s a homestay so you are paired up with one other person and stay in a home together and get to know the family, eat meals with them, and help out with household chores. While there you also get to work on one of the projects whether it is a children’s after school program or technology club. I just think this is a real life changing experience that I would not want to pass up. When she was talking about it I got more and more excited about it. I can’t wait to go there and really experience a different side of South Africa.
To finish up the night we watched episode III of the PBS series Race the Power of an Illusion: The House We Live In . It shocked me. First they started the film by talking about immigration. They said how some people saw immigrants as a racial invasion. They talked about how the what was referred to as the Melting Pot did not actually include Asians, African Americans and other “races,” it was mostly just whites and Europeans. The film also went into a case that really shocked me, it was about a Japanese man. He did everything right in order to become an American citizen he raised his kids like Americans and believed strongly in the American government. But when he was trying to become an American citizen he argued two main points. The first was that race shouldn’t matter for citizenship and beliefs and wanting to be an American should matter. The Supreme Court told him that he wasn’t white enough to become an American. They used “scientific evidence” to “prove” he was not white enough. Three months later man from India tried to become an American citizen and used science to say that he was Caucasian. The Supreme Court then told him he could not become an American because they said that science does not matter and that being white is understood by the “common man.” According to the common man he was not white.
This really got me mad because our very own country and Supreme Court weren’t letting these two hard working well deserving people become American citizens just because of their race. They first used science as an excuse then once a man backs up being Caucasian with science they reject him as well. I just can’t believe that I did not learn these facts in my U.S History class. Nicole was saying that many classes are required for everyone to take at UConn such as Psychology, US History, English but the one class that matters the most is this class on the social construction of Race.
Everyone at UConn should be required to take this class because everyone should be informed about these issues that we had in the US. Everyone should be aware and educated about race. Especially people who are going into Education and Business. We should be teaching everyone about the things I am learning about now. All of things I have learned in the past about my history have been about wars and basically made me think that after the Civil War was over race was fine and everything is good. We need to teach our children more about this and make them aware.
We learned about the Alien Act as well where Asians were not allowed to purchase or lease land because they were too different and couldn’t become like the rest of us. This just made me think about my grandfather and how he was in the farming business. I wonder when he came over to the U.S if any of this affected him and how he felt about it. I wish I would have been able to talk to him about it before he passed. But this class is making me very interested in the American Asian culture as well and during the summer I’m going to try to learn more about it.
When the soldiers came home from World War II the federal government provided federal housing communities so that they could afford to purchase a home and pay 10 or 20% down and then the bank would finance the rest. One of these communities was called Levittown. One of the black soldiers was interviewed in the film and talked about being interested in one of the houses in Levittown and wanting to buy one but the salesman told him he couldn’t sell the house to him because he was not sure whether the owners of the development wanted to sell to blacks or not.
I just could not believe how awful that must have felt. He fought for our country and could have sacrificed his life but his own country would not let him live in certain areas. I had no idea that racism was so strong back then. It just gets me so mad when I learn about things like this. It makes me wonder what was going through everyone’s head and how could people let racism in the US get this bad. It makes me wonder how much better it has really gotten. Most people have just put a blind eye to race in the US I know myself included. I know that when I get home it will be a culture shock for me. I am interested to see what changes I see and what I can do to try to fix the way we think.
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