We All Score for ISCORE

At ISCORE, I attended two events. One of the events was “Dumb Things We Need to Stop Saying.” One important thing I learned from this was the difference between intent and impact. Even if you have good intentions, you can still cause harm in what you say or do. Another important thing I learned was that when you do offend someone (it’s bound to happen sooner or later), you should not be defensive. Instead, you should just apologize and accept responsibility for the offensive thing you said. One of the dumb things that we should stop saying was “Some of my best friends are (insert group here).” This is dumb because it seems like someone is trying to cover up their mistake or racism with an attempt to prove that they are accepting of a certain group. Instead of saying this, they should just note that they are aware of the issues that bother a certain group and make note that they are empathetic towards that group. Another dumb thing that we say is “It was only a joke, don’t take it so seriously.” This is dumb because it is an attempt to cover up racism. The problem is that if something is truly offensive to someone, then they are going to take it seriously even if you claim it is a joke. All of this is important to remember because next fall we will be interacting with students who come from different areas of life. Knowing the dumb things we say will allow us to say the better alternatives. It will also help us in our personal lives when we try to have conversations with people from cultures different than our own.

Another event I attended was “What are you.” This even talked a lot about racial identity and our obsession with it. One thing I was surprised to learn about during this event is that an increasing number of people are identifying as mixed race. This went against my beliefs because I’ve always identified with my whiteness meaning I only classify myself as white. I’ve always thought that a lot of other people did the same.  However, this event taught me that a lot of people identify as mixed race, and historically, others have tried to identify people as only one race. The Dawes Rolls for Indians and the One Drop Rule for blacks have been instances where the federal government tried to force a group of people to identify in only one way. However, this has been problematic for people who do not identify in just one way. This could even hurt people who feel like they belong to one group but are classified as belonging to another. The good thing here is that the United States is slowly changing this policy, but progress still needs to be made in our society. We have to get past the issue of race before we can fully advance as a society. This is important to know next Fall because, even as peer mentors, we are still going to classify students by race unconsciously. It would be wise to understand this, so we can make the conscious decision to note that we should allow the students to define themselves rather than have us define who they are.