Reflexive Sketchbook

After reading and reflecting on the materials for this week’s module, I am sitting even more deeply into the uncomfortable truth that I have privilege. It is not something I asked for, and I of course did not earn all of it, but I definitely benefit from it. Johnson’s point about the “luxury of obliviousness” really hit me. For so long, I lived an oblivious life. The idea of privilege in the sense that we are discussing had never crossed my mind, especially because so many of my peers had so much “more” than I did (another paradox of privilege: I had it without feeling it because I compared myself to other white people). It’s so easy to miss when the system is designed to make it invisible to the people who have it. I’ve moved through life without having to think too deeply about my race, religion, education, or even safety, and that is privilege.  What is even harder to sit with, though, is the idea that, like two sides of the same coin, my privilege exists because someone else do...

After reflecting on this week’s materials, I keep coming back to the concept of power: power in the system, power in certain individuals, and the lack of power that so many feel every single day. The systemic racism embedded in American institutions continues to exert a chokehold on nearly every facet of society, from education to healthcare to the justice system. The Brookings research summary by Dhaliwal et al. (2020) illustrates how even unconscious educator bias can contribute to racial disparities in student achievement and discipline. What is striking to me is not that such bias exists (because we have learned that we are all victims of implicit bias), but that it compounds over time, creating a cyclical disadvantage for younger generations who then carry those inequities into their adulthood. A teacher’s low expectations or biased disciplinary practices may seem small by itself, but the compounded effect is powerful enough to shape academic trajectories, limit opportunities, and...