The Connections with Race, Class, and Disabilities

No parent wants to hear that their child has a Learning disorder, since many teachers in the elementary schools are diagnosing students with learning disabilities. Could a child who was said to have a learning disability by one of the teachers be misdiagnosed? People often use past life experiences to help guide them with decisions, where race and class have a major impact on how the diagnosing may work. Say a teacher who grew up in a high class family and may have grown up seeing lower class students being diagnosed with LD's, and as a teacher she could possibly jump the ,gun and diagnose a lower income student with a LD if he or she is not performing as well as the other kids, while a middle-to-higher class student who is performing the same as the lower class student is not diagnosed with the same learning disability. A person's class is almost like a handicap in life, high-class being beneficial and low-class not so beneficial. Race plays a factor similar to class, in people's life experience, growing up they have viewed certain races as "better" scholars than other races. For instance, A Latino teacher grew up always seeing Asian students performing better in school, as a teacher he may skip over an Asian student who could possibly have a learning disorder, but since he always seen Asian students excel he could deny to himself that the student suffers from any LD. Race and Class alone cannot make a teacher misdiagnose students, there is a certain bar people use to judge a persons abilities, it is the Social-standard people have for each other.
The social-standard creates misinterpretations of what people are really like. In a society where people view White people as the top of the chain and people of color as the bottom of the chain makes it hard to really diagnose anyone as having a "learning disability". The normalcy people try to achieve keeps rising higher and higher because some people can not handle the fact that no matter what race or class you come from you have an equal chance at education, and being successful in life. There needs to be an understanding among all the different ID's people have in order to make successful diagnoses of student's with LD's. It is surprising that students around the world could be effected by the misinterpretation and misdiagnosing of a learning disorder.

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Intersectionality and You

The way people can tell differences within peoples' identity would simply describe the intersectionality theory, but there is so much more to it than the differences and similarities of individual's race, gender, ability, etc. The history of this theory makes it hard to tell if this theory should be looked upon by everyone to solve problems of human inequality or not. I believe the Intersectional Theory is necessary to helping the many identities of this world come together as one and to progressively stop the hate within the communities of the different identities. What separates this theory from other methods of dealing with the differences in identities of people, is it looks at the pattern and history of growth, change, and development in human's identities. Many of the different approaches tend to stay away from the history of the identity sub categories. For example, when talking about the gay rights movement, many people tend to generalize it as white gay men achieving equality, when in fact there were gay African Americans, lesbians, and "two-spirits" or bisexuals looking to achieve the same goal. How it looks at the dynamics is what makes the understanding of differences and similarities a lot easier for people to comprehend.
Audre Lorde has a quote where she basically says that it is not the differences of woman that separate them, but the ability to not recognize and deal efficiently with the differences. Audre is imposing that people need to stop ignoring the facts that people are different and that no matter what you will have to work with these differences whether you want to or not. In order to maintain social justice people need to stop generalizing or judging other people due to race, gender, class, etc, because the differences are what makes us smart, and intellectual humans.
Although the intersectional theory revolves around woman of color, it can help people understand the lives of men too. It can relate and connect different races of men, such as white man who brought segregation laws in Post-Civil War days, while there were some white men who tried to bring together whites and poor-blacks. At the same time there were African Americans who were trying to go back to there homeland while others were trying to adapt to the racism in America. The lives of many have many different aspects as woman do. Intersectionality is many times overlooked.

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Color Blind Racism in America

In such a politically correct nation like the United States, it is hard to justify if you are being racist whether you mean it or not. Color blind racism is something people do not overlook, even though it is still a type of racism. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva described color blind racism as being "racism lite". What he means is that people have worded a sentence to not sound racist but it still targets certain groups or people. A parent could tell there children to be open to different ethnic groups at school, but may not "approve" of certain "parents/students" due to the color of ones skin or the beliefs one may have. In a video titled "Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls" a black female imitates what a white girl would be saying to a black girl and it may seem racist but there is a bigger picture behind what some may find ignorant. In the video it indicates how whites sometimes use color blind racism to try and connect with  different racial or ethnic groups. The white girl would always say "not to sound racist" to try and cover up a racist statement or fact, thinking that it would eliminate the idea of the statement being racist when in fact it still discriminating to one race/ethnicity.
 There are multiple ways for different people to stand and gain from color blind racism. For instance, if someone is trying to gain public favor for an election, one might use racially neutral tactics to make a racially unequal fact seem equal. Although color blind racism can be used in a way to gain, many people would not admit to using CBR. People may rebuttle and say they are only being "politically correct" or "respectful". No matter how they put it they are still being slightly racist, but in such a diverse country it would be almost impossible not to be considered racist. Color blind racism causes tension since CBR is borderline racism.
A scenario in which a modeling campaign advertises the phrase, "Seek the Exotic" over an African-American woman is obviously showing signs of color blind racism. Labeling the African-America model as "exotic" would infer to most people that the clothing is from a distant country but to some it may be stating that African-Americans are different than what society has labeled as normal, thus creating tension. As I get deeper and deeper into the meaning of racism and all the types of racism there are it becomes very overwhelming. It is almost as if people have taken the meaning of race and ethnicity and used it as leverage points throughout history and has become misinterpreted to this day. As the topics continue to become more challenging, my interest becomes more complex.

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