Seletha Head Tucker

Shared publicly  -  Jun 24, 2013

Blog: Welcoming Families From Around the World

My country of choice for the family is Cambodia and I will use a healthcare setting or hospital for my place of employment.  I would begin by researching the country itself along with the history, languages of that country. I would then try to find out as much information about the family.  Is there any history of the family in this country before?  Is there a chance the children or members of the family have attended school in this country.  If not, I would begin to call the different schools in that area that can give me any information on how I would be able to speak with these people in case they do not speak my language. I would also try to find out if there were things I could do to make them feel comfortable in our country.  I would work on the things that I would say to them and how I would address them.  If the male is the head of the household and the spokesperson for the family, I would begin speaking with him and allow him to answer questions until he permitted me to do otherwise. I think going back to look over my notes and my assignments on ethnicity would also better prepare me to do the job to the best of my ability.
By doing these things, I allow myself a chance to be more calm about meeting people from another country and would feel better about communicating with them. This would also put the family more at ease, knowing that I took the time to research information about them and their culture.

Blog: Professional Hopes and Goals

I have truly enjoyed this class about diversity and my hope is that I become the teacher all children will be able to come to when they are having trouble and believe I want the best for them. I want them to know that I care about them and their families and my only desire is that they succeed.

My goal is to educate as many children as possible and give them a burning desire to learn all they can possibly learn and to realize the sky is the limit.

I would like to thank my instructor, Professor Tuthill, and my colleagues for making this such as enjoyable class and for allowing me to be a part of their lives for this brief period. I wish them all the best of luck in the future. I am positive all of them will be an asset to any teaching environment they come in contact with. God Bless.

Blog: The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

I remember watching the movie "Glory Road" with my daughter. The movie is about the first black college basketball players to play on a white team and all the prejudices they endured while being on the team. It was awesome the way the coach stuck up for the kids and encouraged the kids to be their best in spite of adversity. They had to endure not being able to sleep in the same hotel rooms and not being able to participate in ceremonies for the players because of their race. 

So many things really hurt to see these young men being beaten in bathrooms simply because they played on the white college basketball team. Hearing all of the racial slurs and the constant condescending remarks and belittling really allowed me to see how ugly racism really is. They simply wanted to get an education and be able to play a sport they loved and they were good at it.  It did bring up other incidences in my own life when we lived in Seattle and my son got into a fight because of being called the "N"word. He was in elementary school.  This was ten years ago.  We were also called out of our names because we lived in the Suburbs of the State of Washington.

This hurt but I realized that those people are not all people and do not express the thoughts of everyone. I have never treated anybody differently because they were not the same race.  I believe in order for the world to change, we have to change one by one, seeing the good in people and accepting them for who they are not for what color they are.

Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

Blog: Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

One example I had this week of microaggression was when I made a comment in a meeting and my boss repeated what I said and said you have to do the head and neck rolling to know exactly what I said. Meaning, black women make comments the expressions of rolling there eyes , head and neck in an attitudinal method. I have noticed this before with another black female at the job and was very much offended by this. Realizing the type of person she is after working there for almost a year, I was not as offended this time as I was the first time she did it with a coworker.  I believe she is quite aware of what she is doing but feels we don’t realize it.  It is hurtful to see that people in this day in time still harbor prejudices against other races.

This week has enlightened me on microaggresssions and I have really been more aware and more cautious of the things I allow to come out of my mouth.  I don’t want to offend anybody in any way and want to always be aware of how words can hurt.  I also have noticed things that have probably been said around me all along that are microaggressions.  I now realize what they are and have brought these things to the attention of others.

Blog Assignment: Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

The people I spoke with about diversity and culture all seem to agree that culture is how you grew up and the things you did when you grew up. They felt that culture was the way you celebrated things such as Christmas and Thanksgiving. One particular friend thought of culture as how they celebrated their daughter's 16th birthday with a huge celebration. She would dress up in a beautiful gown and they would consider this her coming out party or becoming a woman. They all felt religion was a part of culture also believing that most believed in God and even the differences in how they worship.

Also, there was some commonality on believing diversity was defined as the different races working together for one purpose. They believed having all types of people that included African-Americans, Latinos, Chinese, Japanese, and Caucasian and the like going to school or working together made things diverse.

Before starting this class I believed the same about culture and diversity. Reading all the information that describes culture as being more than just religion or dress or celebrations but also the things around you that helped to mold you into the person you are. Learning that the different classes of people, employed and unemployed, married and unmarried, even widowed persons could be considered diverse groups. Also, finding out about the dominant culture and how we may relate or even begin to change the things we learned to fit into that dominant culture may cause other problems in you being the person you were born to be.

MY FAMILY CULTURE

Imagine the following:

A major catastrophe has almost completely devastated the infrastructure of your country. The emergency government has decided that the surviving citizens will be best served if they are evacuated to other countries willing to take refugees. You and your immediate family are among the survivors of this catastrophic event. However, you have absolutely no input into the final destination or in any other evacuation details. You are told that your host country’s culture is completely different from your own, and that you might have to stay there permanently. You are further told that, in addition to one change of clothes, you can only take 3 small items with you. You decide to take three items that you hold dear and that represent your family culture.

 

The three things that I would take with me would be pictures I have of my family in a globe, my cell phone and my bible.  I chose these three items because with the family globe of pictures, it gives me joy to remember how things were; my children when they were born and some of the birthdays and other celebrations that have occurred over time.  I would take my cell phone to possibly be able to communicate with other family members and friends to find out how and if they are surviving and how things are working in our country and other parts of the globe. Also, with the phone, the world wide web is everywhere and I may be able to communicate via email, facebook or twitter with others. Also, I can pull up information, games, phone numbers and other things on my phone to help keep abreast of what’s going in on the world and also it would allow me to look up information about the country I will be living in and their culture. I chose my bible because my God is very important to me and also to continue to keep the faith and believe all things are possible even through tragedies. There may be a different religion there and it may not be possible to get a bible but I can always read it whenever I am discouraged or down because of what’s going on.  If I could only keep one thing, it would be the phone. My phone would enable me to communicate with people all over the world and find out how they are living and what’s going on in other parts of the world.

This was very interesting because I had to really think about what things I would chose and also about culture. Because my ancestors were brought to this country from Africa, my culture has basically become the dominant culture in America.