Rama Kadri

Professor Recendez

UCLA-X 426

18 July 2018

Reflection on Colorblindness

The world is a kaleidoscope of colors—an array of shades, pigments, tints, and nuances

that are all aspects, and individual, unique fragments of a larger piece of art. Thus, when we

engage in what Marie-Anne Suizzo deems “colorblind socialization,” in her Washington Post

article, “The Danger of Teaching Children To Be Colorblind,” we negate the beauty, and the

complexity of the world around us, instead muting the tones of color, and the languages,

experiences, traditions, and lives of marginalized groups, especially.

Growing up, I stuck out like a sore thumb. I was quite literally the only Middle Eastern

girl in my small town, and though it was the elephant in the room, I do not recall any of my

teachers ever addressing my race explicitly in class, until I was in high school. My high school

history teachers, especially, treated me as a “token” Middle Eastern young woman, and seemed

to assume that my experiences spoke for everyone from my background. This, of course, is

certainly not the case.

I was stuck in a perpetual state of confusion, surrounded by a culture of colorblindness,

but by the persistent pride of my parents. I was very non-accepting of my heritage, despite the

fact that my parents very much strived to establish cultural honor in me, taught me Arabic, and

upheld a number of traditions. They had numerous conversations with me with regard to my

shame, and very much aimed to racially socialize me, or, as Suizzo puts it, “preparing them to
live in a world where people will treat them differently and sometimes unfairly because of their

skin color.”

I was very much in the in the encounter stage of understanding and accepting my culture

that Alex Kajitani describes. I knew that my family and I were me were met with awkward and

even outright stares; we were different, and those around us very much knew it. I sought to hide

it like a cow seeking to hide her spots. It was an inevitable failure. I learned to appreciate my

spots—through the immersion and internalization stages—only years later.

In high school, after moving from Southern Illinois to Southeast Michigan, I immersed

myself with other Middle Eastern peers, and began to identify with them. I began to internalize

and view myself this aspect of my identity as an essential, but not entire aspect of myself in

college, and learned to consider how this impacts each and every individual through my

literature and teacher education courses.

Particularly as a result of my own experiences growing up, I truly know the value of what

it means to meaningfully acknowledge and uphold students’ funds of knowledge in the

classroom. I believe firmly in the values outlined by the Teaching Tolerance organization,

especially in that, “when race and ethnicity are ignored, teachers miss opportunities to help

students connect with what is being taught.” I often felt disengaged with the learning I was doing

in class, and my spark and excitement for learning did not truly come to life until I was in

college, and until I learned to truly identify with the material I was unraveling with my peers in a

classroom setting.

Thus, it is for this reason, along with many others, that I quite intentionally craft my

curriculum in ways that invite voices from multiple perspectives, and from various backgrounds
in subsequently encouraging my students to share their own stories, and seek connections with

and deeper understandings of the world around them.

My students read slam poems, perform creatively written music, and lead lectures on

issues of race as part of what we have come to call the “Race Relaters” project. They write letters

regarding social justice issues in the local, state, and federal sphere and send them to the

appropriate representatives in the hope that they can shed light on topics that mean a great deal to

them. My students—and their individual voices, interests, and backgrounds—are, and will

continue to be, for as long as I have the opportunity to take part in this incredible profession, the

center and crux of my curriculum. They bring the pizzazz, the power, the passion, and the color

to the kaleidoscope of my classroom, thereby bringing the art of learning to life.