During this semester, in the class called Sociology of Education, we read many valuable and informative at the same time literally tasteful books. In this paper I will share some of my ideas about the books by giving some samples from the books and try to synthesize them with my own experiences, some parts of my educational autobiography. Addition to these I will try to use some information that we learned during the class from various articles and discussions to create a wider and academic perspective.
When I was Puerto Rican
In the book called “When I was Puerto Rican,” in my opinion the boldest idea behind the text was assimilation. At the end, we have learned that the main character who was also the author of the book was able to manage to be accepted by Harvard. It might seem like a success story, but in my opinion this part is heavily an example for Tokenistic fallacy. When I compare the author’s educational autobiography with mine, I feel a little angry about the contrast. Until, I kicked out from high school that I was studying because of the scarf ban, my GPA was 4.86. Right now, as an international student who learn English for a while ago, my Sociology major university GPA is so far 4.0, but I could not find any scholarship as an immigrant. I feel like invisible, unrecognized and unsupported from all sides from the academy, from the family and etc. Since the last semester, I am almost dropping out after all many struggles because of extreme tuition for international students. Also, this is not only about me, the book’s end is so rare for common people’s lives. In addition, the book help us a lot to improve our sociological imagination. The working conditions of Puerto Rican women, the society’s impressions and discriminations against women who work outside of their home, Capitalism and Imperialism issues were explained well. By many specific examples, we have opportunities to understand gender roles, structural violence and individual bigotries and how they work together in the society. For instance, if the big companies were not abusing Puerto Rican’s economy, the main character and her family did not need to come to the U.S. to seek a better life. They could find these in their own countries without facing systematic assimilation and having homesickness here.
Overall, the book was very useful to learn many specific things about Puerto Rican culture and familism characters. It made me to understand how the neighborhood culture, working conditions, people’s reactions’ to working women, and educational system is different in Puerto Rico. In addition to this, the book’s language has some poetic taste in some parts which was also making the reading more joyful. After I finished reading the book, the first thing I remember from the chapters was something like: If you do not like their foods more than our foods, you will not forget your identity and your culture. This was the most impactful aspect of this book and it will escort my mind in the future and probably, I will give this sentence as an example to people and hopefully my students to explain assimilation and possible peaceful resistance against it.
The Long Shadow of Little Rock
Moreover, when I read the book “Lock Down” I was extremely surprised to learn that when the Elizabeth Eckford was entering the all-white school, she was not supposed to be alone and in the plan they were more people was going to enter that school to break that cruel oppression and bigotry against African Americans. At first, until the author forgot to inform her about the changed plan, I was surprised that if these protesters brave girls were nine why we all know only Elizabeth Eckford in Turkey as a symbol of this movement. She was one of my idol during our high school protests. I have created many flyers and protests signs that carried her name to emphasize that we are the blacks of Turkey. The book reminded me many personal sad stories. My friend and I and thousands of other students who were resisting the freedom limitations against scarf in public schools have been experiencing many kinds of mobbing, physical and psychological, systemic insult and torture. One of my friends whose name is Dilek lost one of her legs because of cruel police attacks while the students were waiting and protesting the scarf ban in front of the high school. The police made the trained dogs attacked to the students. My friend; Dilek was so frightened from dogs attacks and while she was trying to escape them, a car hit her and this caused her to lose her legs. But, who can frame this accident as a simple traffic accident! Unfortunately, her inhumane experience and also ours was not worthy to be published on the first pages of the newspaper, but only in a small place on the third page. After eight years later, I visited her in Bosnia where she moved to continue her educational life in dental school freely same as I have been doing it here. While we were praying, I remember her with taking off her prostheses leg and sat down on the floor. Our tragic social movements were not able to catch enough attention even when we went to the capital city of Turkey on bare foot from another city. This made me think that how selective news report and framing conflict with humanistic ethic. We study Elizabeth Eckford in some of our books, hopefully in the future the books and history will talk about us, too.
Moreover, when I read that Ms. Bates forgot to inform Elizabeth Eckford about the change of the plan after postponing to the early morning, I was so mad. How come a person can forgot this kind of thing and also I think she was so late to get out from her house for that kind of a day. I am thankful to her for many reasons that I learned from this book, but still these incidents made me amazed. Overall, I think one of the interesting parts from the book that I read was the steps of the integration process in the schools. We learned that the integration plan was like: First, the integration should begin at the senior high school level and then second, it should be started in the junior high school and finally it should be started in elementary schools. This made me think for a while about the possible reasons of this order. (p. 49) This specific order was official, but I think it is all problematic. Why, because if the political dominant power was too willing to have this integration quickly, I believe that they must have started from the elementary schools. The youngest children of the society were probably the less discriminative, less violent and less oppressive to the possible African American classmates. They could probably adjust to this new more humanistic way than high school students, so the steps of the integration could be easier and faster to spread out to the upper level of education. Based on my observation and critical thinking, I thought this part was very interesting in the book. I will seek more information about it.
In addition, in the book we had a lot of chance to understand the mentality of South of the country, the impact of racism and the bills of fighting back. I think, the title of the book tells a lot of things about Social Movements and Structural Violence in our societies. On little rock can create a lot of bigger racist acts like a stone creates spirals on the water, but at the same time fighting back to eliminate oppression are something that creates spirals, too. Throwing stone into Bates’ family's house has a symbolic meaning addition to its physical violence. However, Bates couples newspaper can be accepted as a peaceful reflection of this stone. We can create good spirals from hurtful stones that were thrown to us.
Lock Down
After reading the book called Lock Down, I thought that if we did not have this much labels, stereotypes that works same as the old Berlin Walls, the life could be better for all of us. I think, I will send this book to my prisoner pen pals with some of others. One of my pen pals told me at the beginning of our friendship that if I wanted to send her some books, I should not send that are related to teach the prisoners how to be a better person, how the black people struggle, etc. This made me think about her old experiences. I thought that she must be tired of lectures and societies, individual people’s virtue lessons.
In the book, I found Reeds’ dialog with Mr. Hooft very interesting. Mr. Hooft’s dialog or loud stereotypes very identical with many white people have learned cliches and labels. He was so sure about his ideas about people of colors and all minorities, so he did not feel bad when he was too loud and say them to people’s face directly. He was the product of this sick society that shape people’s mind systematically to make them match with the mentality of dominant power. He was racist, classicist when he was speaking with Reeds. He was also enjoying to have more power compare to a child who has to live in Progress and cannot respond him as free as himself. However, he was talking about his situation similar to Reeds spontaneously. He was feeling like locked down in Evergreen. By this similarity and his experience about being a war captive in Japan when he was a child was helping them have some commonness and have empathy about each other. This made me to think that if we emphasize our commonness more than our differences, we can have more friendly society than today.
In addition, I realized that dialog can be an antidote for many poisonous racist, sexist, religious, ideological doctrines that society teaches us from the beginning of our lives. By touching to each other's lives and unique stories, we can alter our current realities. Moreover, when I was reading the last chapters, one of the court members was asking Reeds some questions about his final mentality after his punishment. The person told him that how come you grew up a family with a drag abuse and involves something similar. This made me really sad and mad. This is exactly a type of blaming the victim. There are a lot of fallacies that we need to alter. If a person has a bad environment because of individual and structural problems, their chance to make mistakes are more than others and when we need to deal with them we need to consider these as extenuating circumstances.
Muchacho
Ultimately, in all four books that I have read, I like the book called Muchacho the most because of its fluent, tasteful language and its many embedded small stories and hidden messages about various topics. I strongly understood the importance of the society’s support to make people reach a better future and choose their way in the life. I cannot imagine Eddie without the support of Beecher, female police officer, Lupe, his mother and all other role models like his uncle and book cafe members and so forth. We have lack of good, intellectual role models to shape our goals in the society. Pop culture and capitalistic mechanism, television gave us many unhealthy ideas about ourselves and our future plans.
In addition, the book made me to think that a lot of people who manage to avoid partially the bad impacts of the society can still have hard time to find good models for themselves. In this situation, we need to increase people and especially young people’s chance to reach the books that can change their missions and visions. Teachers and schooling system need to create better environments, lighting systems, etc. to make reading more joyful. We need to alter the image of the book lovers in the student environment.
Moreover, Eddie’s birthday gift for her mother was so unique. This gift became a symbolic foundation for him to do better than his regular actions. In addition, the image of Eddie’s mother was so sad and at the same time still powerful. If she did not put Eddie’s promise on the refrigerator, Eddie could be more passive to reach her goals about education. When Eddie’s uncle talked about his mother’s younger times, Eddie was remembering some silent moments of her in their house. This reminded me my mother. I remember my mother as person who was in a place (home) that she does not feel she belongs to. She wanted to be a doctor, but because of the scarf ban in Turkey she became a housewife. Her image made me work harder to reach my goals and places that I feel attached and do something that I love. In Eddie’s mother case, it was her marriage that passivized her. She could continue her education, but familism, social codes about married women and probably the mentality of her husband created barriers for her. We came across these kinds of samples of gender issues in the book a lot when we read about people reactions against intelligent and hard worker Lupe. Eddie’s friends were criticizing her for not fitting to the common female image. They were also criticizing Eddie to accept this misfit lady as a girlfriend. These parts were very useful to analyze the society’s reactions and norms about gender roles.
I think one of my favorite parts of the book was the sentence about the borders, the mentality about labeling all Latinos as undocumented. Eddie was saying that they did not pass the border, but the border crossed us. If we give chance to people, they can change our perspective sometimes very quickly with these kinds of unique explanations.
In addition, in page 82, the sentences about people’s reactions against different Gods who do not speak English were very meaningful and deserve to catch a lot of attention. The metaphor for Gods who speak English or others and double standards for their followers were very unique. At the end, I am glad that Eddie found his own path by writing poems and improving his intellectual world by writing and reading. Overall, I love the book that gave us countless samples of social problems and unique explanations about them by many monologues.
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