One half of seventonine is fond of boiling things down to their essence, really getting at the core of a situation and summing up complex information and experiences in as few words as possible. To that end, we’ll be offering an occasional series of quotes or brief summations that we think captures what we try to do or teach on a daily basis. This series will be called “One Thing.”
If I could only teach my students one thing about race and ethnicity it would be the following quote from Thomas Shapiro’s book, “The Hidden Cost of Being African American,”
Advantaged groups not only control important resources and institutions, they attempt to make their advantages appear legitimate in their own eyes, as well as in the eyes of the disadvantaged.
That about sums up what I just spent 3 hours a week over the course of 3 months trying to get my students to understand.
I agree with the idea, but I’m not sure how much the advantaged–as a group of groups–are really attempting this. I think the elite are attempting it, always have, and continue to convince us that their history is our history (the history of the advantaged). Over time, the need for the elite to convince us that our privileges/advantages are legitimate has lessened as we have internalized that message, so that it’s no longer very difficult to convince most of us that this is really true. Ie, most of us advantaged folks aren’t attempting anything, we’re just not challenging the constant reinforcing of these notions that our parents and their parents and their parents bought into…
Not that I’m published or anything, but that’s my thinking….