CHAPTER+1+-+Introduction

Introduction The Myth of Diversity

This chapter spoke of the American myth. It approached the topic in a intriguing way. When we compare a complex topic like multicultural history in America. And the myth of diversity in our country it is a great way to get a reader to pay attention. This spent a lot of time with Star Trek and then moved though other movies and pop culture references. Though they used creative topics the wording was a bit hard to wrap your head around, I had to read some of the parts over again to really see what the writer wanted us to glean from the passage. There were some really good points made, and the connections did clarify some of the topics for me. The message is clear, we are based in a world where diversity is an ideal but not a reality. The examples that the section founded its argument on were American Thanksgiving stories and Star Trek. In these fictional stories, the participants only succeed though working in a society that is diverse. More so than just being diverse they had to embrace the qualities of the different cultures present. We did not really celebrate the native cultures we found when arriving in this new land, we enslaved and displaced them. The other argument is more of a reflection of what is believed to be the result of our diverse culture. This is attempting to get the message across that unless we actually become a diversity celebrating culture we will never achieve the lofty and idealistic society. Its a good chapter to start on, it really does make you as a reader connect to the message. We see some great ways to look at myths, this is an interesting way to get the reader to think about the world in a different light. We need to look at the reason for things. Why is it that men are mostly one political view and women more likely to be another. Why is it that things are done a particular way in our country, schools, and society. The text effectively got me thinking about what myths I see in my world.

Linking this to a classroom can be difficult, we need to address the why of things. This is not easy to do, we talked about this issue in class, when do we tell the students that we were killing native cultures. When do we call these questions to order? We can try to keep the idea that we are diverse but we need to push it further. Most of this is in the teachers hands, we need to create a reality. As the text says myths are based in reality, so we are a diverse society, but we don't really live by the message we send with our stories.

How would you attempt to create a reality of diversity in your chosen profession. Is it as simple as celebrating Kwanzaa or Chines New Year and other cultural specific holidays? I think not, it has to run deeper than one day in the year.

Timothy Ames