Nakkula Chapter 8

       Again, throughout this entire reading, I had trouble connecting this to my current teaching practice.  Ethnicity does not play a huge role with the students I currently have in class.  Most are white and rarely bring up their ancestry, unless St. Patrick’s Day is near.  I did find this chapter to be more interesting than the last and, luckily, I was able to connect this to my own life experiences. 

My two closest friends in high school had unique ethnicities for my very white hometown.  One of my friends, E, was adopted from Vietnam when he was two or three years old.  My other friend, K, was part of the second-generation of Chinese immigrants.  Both faced tremendous challenges in high school. 

K turned out to be a successful adult.  He is currently working a steady job and I’m still in touch with him.  On the other hand, E has faced many troubles with the law in his young life.  I wonder if the lack of sensitivity to his ethnicity hurt his formative years, and played a part with the troubles he’s been having.  From what I understand, from other friends, was that he was much more self-conscious about his ethnicity than he ever let on to me. 

I went back through my notes and read what I had written through the lens of my two friends.  This made the reading resonate with me much more than I previously thought.  I hope these comparisons will help me with any students I have in the future that face these kinds of obstacles.

From what information I can recall from high school, we had very little educational perspectives on ethnicity.  Nakkula points out that “as educators, we hope to grapple with these questions at a level commensurate with their complexity, we must look carefully at the many intersections of race and ethnicity, and the multiple identity options these intersections provide” (151).  Like I said in last week’s post, even though ethnicity wasn’t a huge part of my high school, those who did have a unique ethnicity felt even more isolated.  I think my friends did feel outcast and didn’t have anyone to talk to about their situations.

Nakkula cites a study done by Martinez and Dukes that states “a stronger ethnic identity lessens the impact of negative stereotypes and social denigration in the individual by providing a broader frame of reference for the self that includes additional sources of identity” (153).  My friends faced negative stereotypes from our peers.  I remember hearing a story about a group of kids throwing Chinese food at K’s front door.  Other times pretty terrible racial slurs were said to both E and K. 

K would typically hold in his emotions when he was picked on or make jokes about it.  "That's racist!" he would say, half-hardheartedly joking.
E would fight back.  I remember one instance when he was called a racial slur in gym class and he punched a kid out.  Perhaps, as Nakkula points out via Erickson, K implicitly understood he was in a tough situation, but also figured out how “to express his identity in socially acceptable ways” (154).  I do recall him celebrating Chinese New Year and bringing in food that everyone thought was strange.  E seemed to lash out much more and had trouble working the system in a socially acceptable way.   

Why was this?  I don’t want to play armchair psychologist here, but through the lens of this chapter I can at least make a guess at what helped K along.  I think K fit more into a primordial model of his ethnic identity, meaning he had more of an emotional attachment to his cultural heritage.  His parents ate ethnic food, celebrated traditional holidays, and spoke Chinese at home.  E, on the other hand, were raised by his adoptive parents, who were white.  Let me be clear: they are very nice people.  But, they must’ve struggled with raising E, especially when he had questions about his ethnicity.  He had to lose his ethnicity and, inevitably, may have lost part of his own identity.  This seemed to be something he struggled with mightily.  

As Nakkula points out, “the resolution of a person’s ethnic identity naturally follows the decisions they make…and the energies they devote to it” (162).  Did my friends devote energy to their ethnicity?  I certainly think K did, since he lived with it.  E had to push his identity underground.  I spent more time with these two dudes than anyone else in high school and we mostly had inside jokes about their ethnicity.  They never spoke about it seriously or revealingly with me. 
While I was finished up my blog post, I was sitting at my parents house and my dad was watching Two Broke Girls.  I didn't think the show was particulary funny, which is fine, but the show really leaned on completely idiotic stereotypical humor.  They especially poked fun at the Asian character on the show.  He has an accent, can't drive, is high-strung, and has a demanding mother.  I was wondering if the show had attracted any controversy with this style of humor, and I found a ton of articles online that were unhappy with the show's clumsy stupidity.

Exhibit A: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yQULP-P5q8

On the other side, there's Dave Chappelle. 
I can't believe I didn't think of posting this last week.  The older I get, the more I'm aware of how sharp Dave Chappelle's social satire truly was.

This is The Racial Draft, one of the funniest sketches from his show:

http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/b224ei/chappelle-s-show-the-racial-draft