Month: April 2023

I set a goal for improving my critical thinking skills so that I could evaluate what I read more effectively. I would say I only partially achieved this goal. I chose blog post prompts that most reflected visual learning as that Is my strong suit. Therefore, while reading the assigned material throughout the course I was able to improve my critical thinking skills slightly by relating it to the material I was interested in, I did choose assignments that geared more towards my strength in visual learning.

While I didn’t add my own thoughts to the discussions on my peer’s posts, I did read through their blogs frequently to receive inspiration and gain insight into how they were approaching the course material. When forming my posts, I found this to be a useful guide. I also liked reading through the prompts that I did not choose and how my peers interpreted them. It helped me fully embrace and understand each and every module that we went through in this course.

When it came to writing blog posts, I had a hard time giving myself deadlines. The goal of this assignment was to demonstrate my ability to integrate the course material fully into my writing. Thus, one thing that helped me was to begin posts frequently but complete them slowly. Start writing, keep writing, revise, and publish. This allowed me some leeway, but more importantly, it offered me time to consider additional content for my writing. For example, in some of my posts where I included movies, these were movies that I have watched over the semester where I was able to pick out certain things that I could relate to the material. Such as the movie Grown Ups and how it contributed to our masculinity module.

I created this meme as I believe it reflects the ongoing crisis happening in North America to African American men and, in some cases, Indigenous men. As stated in our module, “one of the most significant features of white privilege is that those who experience it do not have to think about it.” This is clear in the United States. Epistemic privilege, the inability to perceive one’s privilege produced due to racial inequality, is evident in traffic stops across North America. As white people, we do not need to fear law enforcement and what happens to us when we are pulled over; the same cannot be said for every race.

While looking for a meme to create, I looked at specific news articles that inspired my interest. While it is most known for happening in the United States, it does happen in Canada. The City of Montreal commission released a report in 2019 that looked into traffic stops. Indigenous people and black people were four to five times more likely than white people to be stopped by police (Apollonio 2021). Also stated in a CBC article by Desmond Cole, a black activist, “White folks are benefiting from this violence because the police are here to protect white people and their property” (CBC Radio 2020). It is evident that there are significant issues with white privilege when it comes to law enforcement.

References

Apollonio, Mark.  (2021). I’m scared every day,” says Montreal driver stopped by police dozens of times. CBC Radio. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/docproject/i-m-scared-every-day-says-montreal-driver-stopped-by-police-dozens-of-times-1.5861706

CBC Radio. (2021). Police brutality continually treated like a “one-off” in Canada, says Desmond Cole.  CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-june-1-2020-1.5592953/police-brutality-continually-treated-like-a-one-off-in-canada-says-desmond-cole-1.5592954