My Thoughts on new times...

In his article, “Teenagers in new times: A new literacy studies perspective” James Paul Gee highlights “the ways that teenagers use distinctive social languages [which will] have consequences for changing nature of school, literacy, and society” (412). In a study conducted with middle school teenagers from different socioeconomic classes, Gee analyzed literacy discussion of upper-middle class teens compared to those that come from working class family teens. His findings were that very often the discussion of upper-middle class teens’ appears “elaborated” because they use a “distinctive social language” to “distance themselves from everyday social interaction to mediate what they say through their relationship to achievement and success, and sometimes to cloak or defer their material interests with abstract arguments” (418). He found that these teens generally distance themselves from issues like racism neglect its existence even when visibly present. A student went on by saying that racism, “it’s not that big of a problem anymore, it’s not like it’s real big….I think [African Americans have a fair chance” (419). In reality, we would like to think it’s not a big issue and everyone has a “fair chance”.

Amanda Lewis in her article “Even Sweet, Gentle Larry?” provides the readers with some glimpse that EVERYONE sees racism. So why might people especially these upper middle class teens, tend to turn their heads and keep their mouth shut when racism is present? In a utopia society, everyone would probably be colorblind. But, race is a way we read the world around us and as stated by Lewis we “make decisions on how to act, react, and interact [...] all of us 'see' race, we aren’t colorblind and neutral 'we are all the same' isnt an effective way to avoid racial conflict." Schools are responsible in adding to this effect of denying the realities of race. The upper-middle class teens in Gees study, by their responses in the interviews, demonstrated “distanc[ing] themselves from issues like racism even when it is the overt content of their course work”. Although they state that our society shouldn’t stereotype people, when asked about racism, they were blind to its presences and state that “not a lot of racism around here[…]”(419). Racism is everywhere, that is why it is important for us to stop conditioning ourselves but in fact be critical thinkers as to why question or speak out against it when witnessing it.