Saturday, April 11, 2009
Is multi-cultural only about race?
I started reading our next book, Boy Meets Boy, this week for our next class. I like to discuss the books/subjects we are discussing in TE 448 with friends and family on occasion but I was surprised that everyone I talked to didn't seem to agree that a book like this belonged in a multicultural class. Is this just a sign of multicultural not really being quite the right word to use to encompass everything we discuss, perhaps if I said diversity like the class title does I would have gotten a different result. I like to think of multicultural as encompassing themes and ideas that typically do not crop up in mainstream children's literature. With this definition, I think Boy Meets Boy fits in nicely. Perhaps because this topic is such a hot button in the news right now people are just less comfortable with talking about it than with various racial issues.
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Very interesting. Wikipedia defines multiculturasim as referring to a "theory of racial, cultural and ethnic diversity that applies to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the scale of an organization such as a school, business, neighborhood, city or nation." I guess according to this definition, Boy meets Boy would fit in this course because it deals with cultural diversity. Then again, is sexuality an aspect of our culture? Or is it part of your identity. It seems in our society that the media plays up sexuality all the time so much that it has become a culture of its own, but then again I am an outsider. I wonder whether an insider to the gay community would believe that their sexuality is their "culture." I highly doubt it.
ReplyDeleteI've never really thought about it like that, because I certainly don't consider my sexuality my culture, although it is a part of who I am within my culture. In the McLean article, she argues that homosexuality is a culture because in order to define the term we need to look beyond just race and ethnicity. She includes a quote that claims that a culture is "the totality of the mental and physical reactions and activities that characterize the behavior of the individuals composing a social group." Also, she compares the LGBTQ population with other minority groups by stating that they too have a history that can be celebrated. I just thought that this was really interesting because I never considered it in this way. Even today, identifying yourself as gay or lesbian unfortunately comes with the possibility of negative reactions, and I definitely agree with McLean that these reactions are something that is shared within the GLBTQ population, giving them a common experience that can certainly play a role in defining them among everyone else.
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