ANT 101 Ashford University Week 2 Nonsegregation and Racial Integration Discussion
Each response to a peer should be a minimum of 75 words. Be sure to relate your discussion back to the course materials and move the conversation forward by asking a question, raising a new point, or elaborating more thoroughly upon a point already raised.
Response number 1
I want to clarify some points you have made. First, are you suggesting that Mrs. Elliot’s classroom was like a microcosm of the larger society, in the sense that the students took advantage of the position of dominance when they were assigned to the superior group? Is that the nature of humankind? If so, how can we ever eliminate prejudice?
I think that there a distinction to be made, and I think you are pointing this out, between nonsegregation and racial integration. Our schools are not segregated. They are racially diverse, but the different groups tend to segregate themselves from one another. What kind of policies do you think stakeholders could implement that would improve this situation?
Response number 2
I opted to go with the dialect quiz prompt for this week’s discussion. My quiz results demonstrated that I use words, phrases, and pronunciations most aligned geographically with the New Jersey area. I have lived in New Jersey my whole life. I have moved a lot but never left the state. One thing I found most interesting was the names we have for the night before Halloween. My friends and family have always called it “Mischief Night” which apparently is a term that comes from Newark, NJ (Katz, J., & Andrews, W., 2013, December). I would have otherwised thought it was a fairly universal term.
A question I did not feel I had a specific word for was “What do you call the grass between the road and the sidewalk?” I never really contemplated that area of land before, but I will forever now.
A lot of the possible terms were alien to me. I have never heard anyone refer to soda as “dope”. I thought the term “kitty wampus” to describe a property diagonally across from you quite entertaining. My use of the term “Rolly Polly” when talking about the little gray bugs that curl up when you touch them, has confused some of my friends. I came to find out from the quiz that this is more of a southern phrase. I am not sure where I picked it up, but I think it’s an adorable term.
This quiz helped me to understand the mild and more severe variations in the terms we use for everyday items and events. Language is constantly evolving, and geographical differences are partially responsible for this. “The meanings of symbols are a matter of social convention or consensus rather than something inherent in their nature, they can change quite readily within the lifetimes of their users”(Crapo, R. H 2013, ch. 4.2). To me this means that people can define things whenever they find relationships between symbols and objects. This also dismissed the idea that my own, or any other language is more right or normal than others. Language is simply interpretations of the things around us to better help us communicate with others.
