First Blog Reflection for TLS 412

• The question is how have I used terms describing the diversity of people in the United States. This is an interesting question because this is not something that is considered often, because i believe that it is hard to self reflect about the certain words we use. This is a difficult task because the vocabulary we use is not always a conscious decision, unless the language is prepared or written. But in general, thinking about the way I talk, it is mostly hard to hear the terms we use as we describe people of diversity because we are not the ones listening to the words we are saying. As I have personally grown in the college setting, I believe I now am more aware of things of this sort. To compare our adult vocabulary to children, it can be interesting because children are very unaware of the vocabulary they use to describe people. I am saying all this in the point that, our language and terms in our vocabulary is very much, a socialized thing. The terms I have used to describe people of diversity come from the exposure of my teachers and parents. These terms can be sad to admit, because now taking a specific look at the words, I realize that these words are stereotypes of people. Some terms that I have been exposed to and have used previously are;  retard and those people. The problem with the word retard is I think in my parent's generation, that was the word that was used for a person with a disability before we came up with the term disabled. I still hear my parents say that term to refer to people with a disability and I politely remind them that that word has been turned into a bad term and offensive term and the better way to refer to someone is a person with a disability. Then we have "those people". By using that term, is unfortunately draws a clear line between someone and yourself. This is wrong because people in a minority often are categorized as this. I try to not use this term because it is automatically assuming that one group is better than another. 

• The following question is what terminology best reflects your racial or ethnic self, and explain why this represents you. This is a tough question for me because I am white, and before I challenged my thinking to consider who I identify as, I really did not know. I do not mind being called White, after all, that is what I look like to people. In reality I am a very mixed ethnicity. The ethnicities I know are in my ancestors for sure are German, Native American, and Filipino. To be honest, the closest ethnicity I can identify with is Filipino. My great grandparent is full, my grandpa is half, and my mother is a fourth. We always will celebrate certain life events with cooking Filipino food, which is so delicious. I would identify as white and any other ethnicity I listed.

• The last question is what would you like to be called, and why. I already answered that in a way above, but I would have to say that i would want to be known as white, European, Native American, or Filipino. I would not want to be called a white girl. People might look at me and then just assume i am white, and then I think that all the bad stereotypes that go along with white people, like we are stuck up or very wealthy, then they would think that about I and I don’t want people to know me as just a white girl. I want to be more than that. And that is why I have worked on not referring to people as just by the way they look, because that would be a poor judgement of someone's personality. I think we should get to know someone, and learn about their backgrounds, and personality, and what they want to be known as. All people are important and not all stereotypes for ethnicities are accurate or can represent a whole group, so we all need to be careful when our thoughts are assuming a stereotype about someone because all people are unique. If we all followed that rule that was taught to us a long time ago, “we should not judge a book by its cover” I believe we would be a better society that does not judge people on appearance as much.