In contrast to last week’s class, tonight the class was rather timid and didn’t talk a lot. Although there were the occasional few that always seem to contribute, I know that I for one, didn’t have a whole lot to add to the conversation and did really effectively participate. At one point professor pulled up a picture of two and and asked the class if they could discern which of the men was Chinese and which one was Japanese. At some stages it seemed to bring the class to laughter because there was one student, who I believe is Japanese (actually it really bad because I don’t remember exactly) and he knew right away which one was Japanese and which was Chinese. There were also a couple of other students who could tell, one was a man with an Asian wife and the other was a kid who who seemed to have some oriental background and he too spotted them out right away. I felt like raising my hand a couple of times and expressing my thoughts, but figured I had better keep my comments to myself because I wasn’t sure whether I was basing my thoughts and judgments as stereotypes. And being as though the last couple classes have kind of been on stereotypes and stuff, and especially the blog post, I felt tonight would have been a particularly bad time to make such remarks especially if someone perceived them as being based on stereotypes. I believe that may have been the reason for my lack of contribution on the large scale as well, for some reason, I always pulled out back making any statements because again I didn’t want to make any comments that might have offended anyone even though I wouldn’t have meant to at all. I know professor says don’t be afraid to say something wrong, but I think he means that in the context of being correct and incorrect on the facts of a topic, and in this case I didn’t wan to say something wrong that might potentially rub someone the wrong way. Before these past few classes though, I would have openly commented on the topics brought up in class, but since discussing them in the class it has kind of made me think before I act.
