As you may be able to see, the title of this page is "Realistic Interpretations of NAS 5". Now that seems obvious, why would I write about unrealistic ideas of NAS 5? Well it goes a little further than that. I would describe myself as a realist, not an idealist. I can see what "should" be, but I also what is realistically plausible. This also means I may not always be perfectly politically correct, but accurate to my knowledge. And that is what can be difficult for our society at times. Reality, at times, directly conflicts with morality. This does not mean I am trying to be disrespectful, nor negativly judgemental of what I am reading. I strive to find truth without the shadow of what I should or should not be saying based on cultural demands. This also means I welcome criticism. If I am wrong, tell me so and tell me why. If my thinking can be disproved, then it wouldn't real now would it? I make mistakes all the time, so in order to keep up to my title, I welcome contradictions to my statements in order to find truth.
To start off, I found both texts by Miranda and Smith very interesting. They have been a real eye opener. I had no idea the issues of Native Americans in academia today. In fact, I find it hard to believe there are STILL discriminatory issues with Native Americans with the amount of diversity in the US. To be honest, when I do see a Native American, I don't even notice, so personally I CANT discriminate (nor would I if I could). I wasn't around before much of the 80's, so I don't know how it was back then, but these days I don't see how such discriminatory issues could be prevalent in academia with the amount of forced political correctness. If were to mutter one slightly racial comment, my peers would chastise me for it and thus, racism is not tolerated. But this is ONLY my thinking. If I saw Miranda debating passionately, in the class she wrote about, about Native American issues, I wouldn't think "oh, a savage. Obviously she is just speaking passionately and not intellectually". She made it feel like if she made any attempt to be passionate, it would be written off like that. If she had good arguments, I would simply believe she knew what she was talking about. If what you say is logical, adding passion to it only makes it more convincing because people tend to listen more to the confident one. I felt she was almost taking a victimizing approach. I'm not saying she isn't a victim, heck, I have only read a few pages of her life, I have no idea. However, she appears to talk a lot about being wronged. She does make a very interesting point about the white male talking about scholarships. She states that he has had more opportunity than she has just because of his appearance, so how could he even complain? That he has not lived her life and would not know the disadvantages. Well, we all haven't lived a second life like that, so how can she make assumptions on him? Cultural struggles are unanimous to ALL cultures, its just which ones we wish to talk about. Do I have a point to all this? No. Because if I did, I would offend someone. If I come to ANY conclusion, I guarantee someone out there will be offended. So make your own conclusion :) Is she victimizing herself? Or are her issues very real? I'm just thinking out loud. I am very critical of writings that talk about issues of people getting wronged, because there is usually much more too it that one view. I don't think what Miranda is saying is wrong, nor incorrect, it is just astonishing to me that such issues exist to this day. I do not deny the hardships of the native americans in the very recent past, but to this very day? I guess I have been ignorant for awhile...
I feel like one thing that would have to be considered is that Miranda is a Native American studying Native American literatures. If she was trying to study something else, say, engineering or psychology, adding passion to her arguments when teaching her subject of study would certainly come off as more confident and more likely to be listened to. Thus her background would not have a detrimental affect against her. However, her studying Native American literatures puts her more into a political stance rather than simply academic due to her background. Although she may not have experienced first hand all of the wrongdoings that has happened to her people, she still has that memory, so these experiences are very real to her. Discussing Native American literatures has the tendency to open people's eyes and make them very much aware of what the colonizing forces have done to these indigenous peoples. It's an enlightenment that can make people feel very uncomfortable and also feel guilty, due to their realization that the government hasn't done much, if at all, to apologize and correct their wrongdoings to these peoples. This makes it more attractive for people to just ignore these issues, so Miranda coming off as passionate rather than purely academic makes it easier for her to be disregarded in the academic world. I'm not saying that everyone would ignore her or that I am ignoring her (because I'm not), but that some people will be more likely to ignore her as a defense mechanism due to their discomfort with the knowledge that they have gained.
ReplyDeleteVery good points. It does seem to be that her field of study would be more difficult than say science to persue based on these issues.
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