Fear Keeps Us at Bay

It is amazing how time flies so quickly. I can’t believe that the semester is ending already and it’s crazy how much we have learned in such a short amount of time. There are so many moments where I have been mind blown by the professor.

 I can’t believe some of the things I have learned and how out of the box it is. This class really pushes you to not think like the norm and to expand your views. It is crazy and mind blowing how narrow minded we have been taught to be. This class is truly riveting.

Over the past month or so we have been learning about invisible narratives and boy has that got me truly mind blown. I cannot believe how in depth invisible narratives could be. It made me question everything I have ever known to be true. We unintentionally hurt people with the language we are accustomed to.

The whole lesson on SRTOL really proved how narrow minded we are. The lesson was on whether or not people should be allowed to express themselves through their preferred discourse in class. I would say that we should be able to write in our own discourse but only when it is appropriate. However my preferred discourse to follow the rule of the English language because that is the type of discourse that has been drilled into my head. All I know about writing is what the people in power want me to learn. I have to be a proper American by learning the correct way of conforming.

All this time I thought that I was totally different from other people but this in-depth discussion on SRTOL has really opened my eyes to reality. I have been living in an illusion and I will never escape conformity because anywhere I go, I must conform to their way of living and speaking. English 214 has really changed my views.

For a long time we have been allowing the white community to reign over our education and careers. We have given them the power to dictate our life. We have only seen white people as our superiors because of the past and how they have constantly strived for power while other submitted. For a long time white society has thought highly of themselves, so they did something to give themselves the power they have over society. They took charge of how they wanted to be seen and in doing so they gained power that has been feared for centuries. The white supremacy has long been out numbered and yet we still submit to their will. We have become too accustomed to have someone else dictate our lives, so it is difficult to change back to the culture we were born with.

Language is a part of our culture but in America, it is slowly stripped away. I speak a different dialect at home but since schools only teach American English, it is hard for me to maintain the knowledge of how to speak my dialect. School takes up a lot of my day, so I am too accustomed to speaking English. There is no room for me to practice speaking my dialect at school, so I am not able to fluently speak my native tongue. I am gradually becoming the American norm.