Should We Talk About This?

Ideas are dynamic.  “Simple” brain-children can be powerful enough to form nations, to harness electricity, to cure illness, to destroy a people, to corrupt reasoning. These ideas, born from the complex minds of humans, encompass not only the explicit information they present, but also the identities of those who generate them.  When I consider the ideologies that whirl around in minds and express themselves in actions today, I cannot help but wonder about the people who construct them, affirm them, oppose them, cling to them.  I cannot help but believe that our ideas and our identities are intricately woven together.  So perhaps a lot of who you are is because of what you believe, and much of who you are tends to inform what you believe.  In some ways, that seems kind of scary or intimidating, because it almost puts a consequence on the worldview I choose, the opinions I validate, the judgments I make.  Am I blinded by what my past has been or what my parents have taught me?  Are the principles I’m claiming right?  Is my conviction narrow-minded and exclusive?  Is it too open-minded and so has no impact on anything? 

These questions and worries are a huge part of the reason I decided that I did want to attend college.  I knew the small Texas town in which I was raised could not even hope to hold all the worldviews I wanted to encounter, couldn’t challenge and distress my ideals enough to determine their validity or what I truly thought of them.  Since I had the opportunity, I figured I would take it.  Being in college has shaken my first impressions, my philosophies, my standards, strengthening some and breaking down others.  For example, I am half Asian and half white.  I’ve been referred to as many different races throughout my life, and thus personally became confused as to what to “identify as.”  I felt weird saying I was white to the white people who asked, and weird saying Asian to the Asians who asked, because if they saw me as like them they wouldn’t have asked.  And I thought I had to be like them.  Because of this, I had the incredibly ignorant and hurtful belief that people shouldn’t get too upset about race because it didn’t matter anyway.  Since I pushed away trying to figure out my minor racial issue, I figure others ought to as well.  Gosh, am I so thankful that idea was disturbed, not only through classes but through true relationships and meaningful dialogue as well.  Some people thankfully realized the deficiencies in my understanding and the faults in my assumptions, and then compassionately dialoged with me. 

Jonathan Jenson, in a speech concerning racial reconciliation in post-apartheid South Africa, presents the idea that people can “carry within them the seeds of bitter knowledge that, left unchallenged, can easily germinate into the most vile and vicious racial attacks on and outside the university campus,” (1).  Many of us contain these seeds of prejudice that have been passed down from generations of prejudice, perpetuated by our government, our homes, our education system, our churches, our friends, our families, our experiences.  Though it is not our fault that these seeds are within us, we do have the significantly important responsibility to determine what we choose to believe and identify with.  But we cannot do this alone.  Classes, and seminars are incredibly beneficial to challenge preconceived judgments some hold.  However, it seems the best way to bounce around ideas, to weigh beliefs, to uproot these seeds is through conversation.  Can we know what harmful seeds we have within us if nobody is willing to point them out?  If nobody is willing to talk with us about our ideologies and help us?  If nobody is willing to listen to us, discourse and expose to us how our ideas can be morally questionable or ill-conceived?  I, at least, have benefitted from others being willing to bear my shortcomings in order that I may develop my ideologies, so I’m prone to believe that others might be able to profit from the same kind of discourse and kindness. 

WC: 688

Pledge: Katie Imperial 

1. Jansen, Professor Jonathan D. “Bearing Whiteness: A Pedagogy of Compassion in a Time of Troubles.” Education as Change 12, no. 2 (December 1, 2008): 59–75.