Reflection

Looking back, my thoughts surprise and re-invigorate my interest in many of the themes and conflicts we explored earlier in the course. But I think my favorite posts were the post from Du Bois to Chestnutt about the color line and the post from the Hemingses girls to their father Thomas Jefferson. I liked being able to tease out the conflicts in intersectionality. I was the summarizer of powerful arguments and the debator at once, which was a great experience. It became challenging at times because I, of course, am not the author but their pieces were a helpful roadmap in creative composition.

My most passionate posts were about mixed race identity and color-blindness in white America. I still find these topics most riling for me, scholastically and colloquially. The mixed-race conflicts are interesting to me because when I observe America as it changes, the definitions of one race pluralize yet look even narrower. When I think about my very own family, half of my siblings are fair skinned, almost pale, while I have brown skin, but none of us are immediately mixed-race. My siblings could possibly pass, but they choose to be black. I wonder if they would have done so in 18th and 19th century.

I cannot justify the whiteness studies and post-racialism with something personal, but I can still say it highly interests me. My remaining questions lie around this topic: Would white studies ever reach the high school classroom? Does this count as ethnic studies? Will the loss of white hegemony and simply put numerical dominance puncture a new hole in who counts as “white”? I might continue this exploration. Thanks for a great class!