Thesocial interwebs are a great resource when the right question isasked in the appropriate forum.
Thequestion was posed by Dr. Eddie Moore Jr., Director of Diversity atBrooklyn Friends School asking for resources on racism and sexismthat would be accessible to high school students, especially forEuropean American males.
I'llshare something that (seems to) work (relatively) well for me with myundergrads. I've used this strategy at a local area high school with15 year olds too. I call it the "tracking racism historically inmedia". It's all pop culture stuff which gets their attention. Iuse representations of indigenous people as my "group to track."But this could obviously be adapted for other groups. I've done itwith "genies" and representations of veils and Muslims.
Istart with an old, "obviously" racist clip/ song. Disney'sPEter Pan "What makes the red man red" is a good one forthis:
Afterwatching the clip together, we generate a list of all the"problematic" representation elements (chanting, campfires, interchangeable "red men", drumming, nondescriptdance, White characters finding the red men "interesting",Indian princess, etc etc.). Write this list on the board.
ThenI move historically into the present time. I often use Seinfeld'sCigar Store Indian clip:
Outkast's"Hey Ya" grammy performance from 2004
SandraBullock movie clip with Betty White:
SoYou Think You can Dance Warrior number:
Andof course Pirates of the Caribbean:
Youcan add many others... I'll change stuff up every time. I askstudents to keep track "how many elements from the Peter Panproblematic representations do you STILL see in the contemporaryexamples?" After watching the "old" example, studentswill often say "but it's different now". And so theactivity is powerful because it shows that it is not that differentnow.
Ithen add concepts from media literacy like the commodification ofcultural artifacts (we talk about bindis and yoga, and Madonna's"geisha" phase). Then I ask them if "outsiders"to a particular race/culture can "be inspired" by a cultureand its cultural practices without reproducing stereotypes.
Finally,we talk about another concept that many scholars write about in medialiteracy around the importance of groups telling their own stories.In Canada we have the Aboriginal People's Television Network. I havestudents watch programming on that network and we discuss thedifferences between those representations and the patterns we saw inour historical viewing.
Thisis a looooong write up, but hopefully it will be something useful toyou. I'd love to know how it works out with the students! -Ozlem Sensoy
Republished with permission from Ozlem Sensoy
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