Race and Racism Workshop Reflection

With our project, I felt that the most eye-opening and important part was our activity.  We did have videos of how people tend to unconsciously, racially profile people, but the activity is what showed everyone that we are all a little racist.  The stickers had no indication of what race the student was portraying, yet when walking around I heard some very interesting remarks for guesses.  For example, my sticker read "Bad Driver", so people began saying things like, "You must be very good with computers" and "I really love your people's buffets."  They automatically thought I was Asian.  This activity really made the class realize that even if they do not see themselves as prejudice or racist, the world we live in puts certain stereotypes upon different races and we naturally accept that.  I'm sure I've mentioned this before in class, but racism and prejudice always stems from ignorance.  Ignorance to how different people live.  We love to live inside our little bubble and not always look outside of it to see how the rest of the world lives.  It may not be to your liking, but that doesn't mean you should automatically feel anger towards it.  Hopefully the workshop opened a few classmates eyes on how everyone is unfortunately stereotyped against, but how we can choose to not accept those stereotypes ourselves.