For the following activity, use your learning journal area of your ePortfolio to keep your reflections all in one place. These do not need to be released publicly, but can be if you’d like to treat it like a blog post.

In 200-250 words, choose one question to reflect on. These reflections will be brought to the next class to discuss in small groups with classmates. 

• What misconceptions did you have about race before today’s class?
• How do you feel when you think about race as a social construction?
• How has your own racial narrative affected how much or how little you think about race?

Option One: This reflection invites students to reflect on their own racial experiences, their own racial history, their own “racial narrative”. Students are asked to answer the following questions:

What did you learn about race when you were younger?

Where did those messages come from?

What kind of impact did those messages have on you?

Have your views about race changed over time? If so, what has caused that change?

What things do you want to learn more about?

Adapted from Dr. Aisha White, Positive Racial Identity Development in Early Education (P.R.I.D.E.) University of Pittsburgh.

Option Two: This reflection is meant for students to critically evaluate their own social location and racial socialization. In so doing, students are invited to expand awareness of racial biases and examine the ways internal perspectives about race influence our relationships and experiences. Students are encouraged to grapple with discomfort, not as a means to an end, but to further their intellectual growth and understand their own emotional responses. Students can choose one (1) of any of the following questions:

• What/how did you first learn about race?
• How do race, ethnicity, and culture intersect for you? How are they different? How are they similar? How do you know?
• When do you first learn that you were a member of a racial group? What/how did you learn about your racial group?
• When did you first learn that there were racial groups other than your own? What/how did you learn about this/these groups?
• How do you perceive your own race, and how is your race is perceived by others?
• Select a significant institution in your life (ie. educational, religious, media/cultural, etc.). What have you learned from this institution about race? How might this have impacted relationships and identity?
• Scan your relationships with people who have been socialized into a different racial group than yourself. Thinking back to your childhood, what have been the nature of these relationships (i.e. friends, family, teachers, service providers, mentors/coaches, charity recipients, etc.)? Have the types of relationships changed over time? What do you notice about the relationships in your life today?

Please Note: Students are encouraged to be creative. You have a variety of options for how you choose to complete your racial narratives. A written reflection should be approximately 600-800 words. If you choose a creative output (image, video, poem, artwork, or something else you choose to create), you should provide a brief statement contextualizing the creative piece; what does it mean to you? How does it relate to your racial narrative? Contextualization statements should be 150-200 words.

Some members of the course development team have created their own racial narratives as examples for your reference, and as a practice of situating themselves within this course.