Preconceived Notions

1/21/14

Today has been one of the most emotional days of the trip. However, I also think it was the most informative. It started with a movie we watched on the bus last night on the way to Mississippi called “Crash,” which was all about the stereotypes and preconceived notions we have about people of other ethnicities. Another key theme was about how these preconceived notions affect everyone. The movie tells the story of five different people in a city of all different ethnicities entangled in a web of socioeconomic discrepancy, discrimination, and fear of the unknown.  All of their actions affect the other characters in the movie.  I had trouble believing some of the movie, but it really made me consider the people in my life and our connections.

            Today we visited Simmons high school in Hollandale, Mississippi. This is one of the poorest counties in the nation, and the school has an entirely black population. This was an eye-opening experience in a few ways. Firstly, it made me appreciate the support I have at home from my entire community because not all of the kids at this school have a safety net to fall back on. Similarly, it changed my view of the United States. I was astonished with the fact that, in terms of backgrounds, these kids did not have very much in common with me, however the amount of similarities we shared was shocking. I had no trouble having conversations with these kids because we are concerned about the same things: what we’re going to do after high school, how much we don’t like doing homework, and our favorite sports teams.        

            After Simmons we travelled to Sunflower County to visit the Sunflower County Freedom Project. Starting with Brown V Board in 1954, schools were required to integrate. In this county as well as many others in the United States, the white families didn’t want to integrate so they created cheap private schools that could reject whatever students they chose. Those schools dictate the culture in Sunflower today. There is still segregation in Sunflower. The public school is 100% black. There is a private school that is 100% white except for the football team. The public school has very little funding, and one student told me directly that his school offers “a horrible education.” This system makes interracial interactions very difficult, and it is a very hard system to break because voting is not always promoted, so people who support this segregated system remain in power in the state legislation.  Furthermore, because Sunflower is such a poor and rural county, there are not very many extracurriculars offered by the school. The Sunflower County Freedom Project is an organization that meets everyday after school and gives extra help to students. They promote reading, education, and healthy eating. 100% of their graduates have gone on to study at a 4-year college.

            Today was a very humbling day. From the movie to meeting the students, I realized that I have many preconceived notions that I am not proud of. I don’t even know where most of them come from. I’ve re-thought a lot of my life today because previously I had considered myself a progressive and tolerant person, and now I’m not totally sure if that’s true. A main message conveyed to us by the Sunflower County Freedom Project is that change comes from us as students. Most of my preconceived notions come from my education and from my family and are engrained in myself. This probably makes it difficult to change them significantly, but it’s a very big step to now be able to acknowledge when I am having these notions because now I am able to think about what to do about it From this trip, I hope I am able to go home, re-evaluate my society and life, and make this world better than how I found it.

-Micah, the Park School of Love