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Old 05-03-2012, 07:16 PM   #175
AshleyO
 
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Join Date: Jun 2011
Posts: 1,700
Quote:
Originally Posted by Saya View Post
I meant like talking to the teacher in private, but I get what you mean.

At Rebelles last year I felt terrible after a debate on prostitution literally boiled down to women of colour vs white women, and the white women were accusing the women of colour of oppressing them, the white academics felt oppressed by the First Nations woman. SERIOUSLY. We had to line up to add our input or ask the panel a question, and a lot of white women got ahead first and those in the back didn't have time to get input in, and I feel like in that instance we really should abandon our value of the line up in favour of not hearing the same thing over and over. And honestly, I felt so bad about it but its taken me a year to articulate why, and I still feel bad I never said anything.
It goes deeper and I'm bothered by it. I'm not a guy who likes to try to take a leadership role. It's not my style. But the past few semesters, I've felt like I had to step up and get discussions in all my classes going. Now this is predominantly a school of people of color. And from what I've seen, there's almost this hesitation in the classes for people to speak up. Now granted, there are a lot of white people too and they also don't speak up very often. The thing is, I have to wonder if perhaps some of the reasons they don't talk is because I get excited and start discussing things. I can't know for sure. I almost want to take a vow of silence because I'm not sure if I'm just steam rolling people or what.

Another thing that's starting to bother me is that most of the people in my creative writing class are women. At least 65% women. And what's just god damned weird is how rare it is that they ever say anything. I really wonder if there's something going on that we're not really aware of.
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