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Reflection Precis 4: The Land Of Opportunity And Other Myths

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Reflection Precis 4, The Land of Opportunity and Other Myths (March 6-8, 2018) 108788 Part I: During these two sessions, Dr. Jendian spoke about the ideology of Faith in Progress which is when we trust that everything will get better with the time. However, this idea leads individuals to ignore significant problems such as racism and discrimination. Loewen (284) argues that, “…Americans could be persuaded to ignore the injustice of social class if they thought the economic pie kept getting bigger for all.” Perhaps this is one the reason why we ignore these injustices. Furthermore, Dr. Jendian explained that Americans believe they are becoming more tolerant and that everything has gotten better, but that is not true. Instead, we …show more content…

However, these “steps” depend on the involvement of people. For example, the documentary on Martin Luther King discloses the agony of African Americans while trying to resolve the problem of discrimination and racism. Although many years have passed since this outcome, we continue to see discrimination, racism, and disadvantages against people of color and people with disabilities. To show the effects of discrimination and racism, Dr. Jendian introduced to us the activity “By My Bootstraps.” To begin this activity, we formed a line side by side, and we hold hands. Then Dr. Jendian continued by calling some categories such as age, studies, socioeconomic background, skin color, disabilities, and religion. Students who identified with a category took one step forward (an advantage in society) or one step back (a disadvantage in society). At the end of this activity, the “privileged” ethnicity was on the front, and the people of color were on the back. From this activity, we learned to recognize how privileges can affect our lives, even though many of us don’t notice it. However, Dr. Jendian explained that these questions were not personal. Before concluding this activity, Dr. Jendian told us that he was going to give extra credit to the ten students who could

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