What We're Not Supposed to Know

Looking back on the reading I have done this week for my classes and for personal pleasure, one theme from both areas surprisingly popped out. Go with me here, let me give you the back story and I promise you it will come full circle. After watching Tim Wise's video on white privilege in class, I had to have more. I was intrigued with his points and his overall delivery that he made. I needed to know more about this guy so I could figure out what I thought about him. I believe that you can't just take one thing you read or watch of a person and support or reject him. What if the one thing you read was a great piece of perspective and insight, yet everything else they wrote was a bunch of mumbo jumbo? So after getting on YouTube and watching a couple of his videos, and researching his biography, I started exploring. Another video that popped up that YouTube connected with the theme of the other videos I was watching was a video called "Killing Us Softly: Advertising's Image of Women".

 After struggling and wrestling with what this video was talking about for awhile, my mind jumped to a section in Howard's Zinn book, A People's History of the United States. Zinn talks about how historical events are portrayed and the level of perception and understanding people have about them. He states that "these atrocities" (major historical events) are still present today because "we have learned to bury then in a mass of other facts" (Zinn, 9). He continues to explain his point saying that a lot of the past is told from the viewpoint of governments, politicians, conquerors, diplomats, leaders and upper-class, leaving us with skewed and misrepresented tellings of what really happened. His point of when "the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is accepted more easily than when it comes from politicians at press conferences" is deadly, is a great point. The level of questioning and objection that we have with society, scholars, politicians, historians, advertising, and the media, in my opinion is not enough. I feel like things aren't challenged or questioned often times because they have been around for so long.

For example, I now know that I was ignorant to the facts surrounding Christopher Columbus's discovery of Cuba and Hispaniola. Unfortunately, in my mind I had the cookie cutter "great discoverer" image of him ingrained in my brain. Not the murdering, greedy, ravenous, oppressor that he was.

This leads me back to the video I watched this week. We are aware of the digitally enhanced and altered methods of advertising and the media, but I don't think we necessarily realize the great extents made to change our perceptions and feed us what "beauty" and "perfection" is. My point is, while I have always thought I examine things with a critical lens, I don't think I do to the level I should. Like Zinn suggests, we often times miss the point of something because of the large amount of facts and details thrown at us. Our focus of what to pay attention to, what is important, what should and shouldn't matter is given to us by others.  I want to encourage you readers to take some time and be more critical of the messages and views being thrown at you. Historically, socially, intellectually, whatever, be a free thinker and try to get all the facts.

Looking at this with a social justice perspective reminds me even more that a critical view is necessary and important.