Racist School Project

My boyfriend is currently attending an online college, and for the purposes of this blog entry I am not going to specify which. If you know based off the project, please do not mention it.

This college requires him to take a course that is an interdisciplinary study of the 60s. He is a nutritional science major. I know it doesn't make sense, but it's required based off the nature of his course--one of those bullshit classes you just have to have to pass college. For whatever reason, this is the required one and he couldn't change it to something else in the same category. He's not too pleased about it, but at least he'll never have to take it again. And even more thankfully, semesters here are 10 weeks of intense study, one week off, repeat. So he only has to deal with this for about two months.

Unfortunately the professor has gotten off on a very bad foot with both my boyfriend, and myself.

The first project they are to complete requires them to go out and take a photo of a minority (I can't remember if it specified black or not, but I think it did. I'll ask tomorrow) being treated in a racist manor by a white person, then come back, share the photo and write a report on it.

This irritates me on so many levels.

First and foremost, taking a photo of that nature is illegal unless you're covering a news story, in which case it falls under documentary photography. Even for school, it's an invasion of privacy and you do have to ask permission. I went to school for photography, and they pounded these things into my head.

Second, as backed up by a friend of ours who is a lawyer, not only is the photography technically illegal, but if the school weren't a private institution, the project probably would be too. He said that if they pushed the limits much further, it would be, it's that borderline.

But my biggest gripe is definitely that they're singling out white people as some sort of suppressor, and forcing people to look for racism.

I have said for a long time that affirmative action is a step backwards. Affirmative action just makes us all look at people as different, and tread on eggshells.

I live in an area full of people who don't give a damn about affirmative action, and I'd like to tell you that we have little to no racism here. It doesn't matter what color your skin is or where you came from, here you're judged on your actions and not your ancestry. And we do not call the black people "African American", they're black. We're white, not "Caucasian". Actually, many of us just consider ourselves American, and that's that.

It's definitely different in cities, especially the bigger ones. But we live an hour from any major city, making it so we're not exposed to that sort of stuff often.

But I am a firm believer that affirmative action drives us apart. The more you make people have to be careful of differences, the more it will stay in their minds that we are somehow different. We're not! We're all human beings. We all bleed red blood, we all cry salty tears, and every one of us is made from the same number of chromosomes (usually).

I really think racism would disappear a lot faster if affirmative action went away. If the fear of calling someone black weren't there, if people just blended together and didn't care that someone was a little darker than them.

And I can't claim that I'm totally above racism either, which brings me to my second point.

Racism is never going to totally go away, so stop making it worse than it has to be by focusing on it.

I was young when 9-11 happened, about 12 years old to be exact. I was a very impressionable child, and the thing that we learned at that age very fast was that the Muslims were very bad people. Particularly the men.

I'm 21 now at the time of writing this, and I will admit that I do not like Muslim men to this day. I have no foundation as to why not, except for what happened on 9-11, and just how much it really affected myself because I live in the state of New York. Knowing that I have a fairly unfounded prejudice though makes me stop and think before I just act unfairly towards someone, and if at all possible I simply try to avoid them.

Having a prejudice isn't something you can just toss aside at any time. And in times of war and hardship, those who are young and impressionable, and those who are angry, will develop unfounded prejudices and racism. It's just how the human mind works.

It happened in WWII. It happened in the Cold War. It happened during Vietnam. And it's happening now.

And people need to realize that sometimes their hatred has no foundation, and try to control it. No one is perfect, and you can't please everyone. We are all never going to get along. But causing more friction then necessary doesn't help either.

This project I think simply exemplifies a very bad train of thought in this country--white people are always the bad guys, and we're very racist.

It just brings to light that affirmative action still has us sectioning ourselves into categories, instead of melting and working together.

It shows that there is some seriously flawed ideas out there.

So my boyfriend did contact his professor and let her know that:
A) He doesn't own a digital camera, and even if he did, he probably couldn't operate it well enough for the project in time.
B) We don't live in that kind of area
C) He doesn't agree with the idea of the project.

The professor told him that he had to do the project anyways, but since he did not own a digital camera, nor did he live in an area with racism, to simply take an image off google and use that.

So now he's taking someone else's work, that may not have been trying to state such a message, and making it say that.

I'm just disgusted with the whole thing.

It's shit like this that causes more racism than necessary, and it needs to stop.

And furthermore, white people are discriminated against too!