Emotioned Education Infrastructures Cause Racism???

Are You Serious??

The Trainor article was a really interesting and very different approach at getting to the origins of recent generations ideas about race and stereotypes.  However, this article does not fit within the discourse that my thesis prospectus will hope to address.  I am investigating correlations between minority community college students who have the ability to rap and how that ability informs their writing in the academic setting.  I wasn’t particularly convinced that she answered her question.  Everyone or most educated people understand and acknowledge that there is institutional racism in education.  The author didn’t convince me that the student’s racist responses were the fault of the school.  As a black man reading the student responses and interviews, I was pissed that they constantly said why is the author whining about race.  The student’s attitudes and stereotypes were not a surprise to me though.  I firmly believe that being black or darker skinned is often equated unjustly, unfairly, and absolutely wrong to not being able “to understand the connection between hard work and a good attitude, and a hopeful, successful future” (Trainor 97).  These students only added more confirmation that these ideas and beliefs about blacks are still rampant in society today.  The idea that they are more oppressed or have suffered the same as blacks was the moment where I had to put it down and take a break from the comedy I was reading.  Overall, there is nothing that is written that would get me to see that racism is emotioned and stems from infrastructure within the school system.  What I found useful is the researchers data collection methods.  I would imitate the researcher’s method of using interviews as well as student writing projects to come up with the data to answer my question.   Similar to the author, I would record the sessions with the students and then have transcripts made.  The transcriptions are important because that will allow me to come back to students and probe their previous responses to get to the core of the issue or problem.  Other than that, I found this article lacking in anything substantive to be used for my own future prospectus.