Day 23 November 14, 2002
1. Names. Everybody put your box number on papers/journals, then I’ll collect them. No class Tuesday.
Poster sessions: groups A and B Thursday the 21st,
C and D Tuesday the 26th. As the syllabus states, you’re also
responsible to come on the other day, wander around and check out what your
classmates have done, do brief responses to three of their displays. Handouts.
2. On with Honky.
Ch.
5: fear. Ends with Rahim the karate
instructor shot, either random or drug-related.
Class issues, ch. 6, 66 ff.
ch. 7: the neighborhood when
someone else is coming home with him. Michael and class in
his family, 86 ff.
Ch.
8: getting paid. Stealing, then earning some money,
getting hooked into the cash economy.
Ch. 9 and 10: Pennsylvania
as cross-cultural experience. End of that chapter, 114 ff., the fight with Sean
over the glove, knife at the throat. 118-19 on cause and effects: this fight
was “the best thing that could have happened to me,” says Conley.
Ch.
10: racism in the countryside, of a different sort: casual use of “nigger” and
the teacher’s joke about a billion Chinese.
Ch.
11: junior high, sort of integrated, but divisions persist, and so does racism.
Ch.
12: mom sells her novel, travel to Colombia, dad gets a job, which he sort of resents. Tension between social class and economic class here, education and
income. In grad school we used to talk about “genteel poverty.”
Ch.
13: Jerome his new friend, and the “disco sucks” episode. Differences
in dress and style at the assembly, 159.
Queen from the boom box (cf. Radio Rahim). What is
Queen, anyway? What kind of music? They are
white, and gay . . . but Conley feels that at least
he’s part of some group.
14, addiction to video game; 15, Jerome gets shot, and
Conley develops some obsessions.
16: Raphael and the fire. 198-201, the aftermath: they’re
allowed to work things out informally, cf. the neighbor who gets 25 years for
possession.
Ch.
17: high school—was his social awkwardness race, class, or me? (214).
The conclusion, 225-27: his commute, and questions of
freedom and agency. How does it all add up? The anecdotal and
the generalizable.
Perhaps one instance of generalizing: re larger issues and
black/white differences:
The
web site I found was http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/04/05/black_wealth/
This web page is an article written by Dalton Conley
about estate tax and how eliminating it would widen the gap between white and
black wealth. He talks of assets and net worth, much that I have heard in
social science class, but has some great ideas on how to decrease the financial
gap between the races.
Quote from Conley on “equity inequity”: “This equity inequity is, in
part, the result of the head start that whites have enjoyed in accumulating and
passing on assets. Simply put, it takes money to make money. Whites not only
earn more now, they have always earned more than African-Americans -- a lot
more. Wealth differences, in turn, feed upon these long-term income
differences. Some researchers estimate that up to 80 percent of lifetime wealth
accumulation results from family gifts in one form or another passed down from
generation to generation.
“These gifts range from a down payment on a first home to a free college
education to a bequest upon the death of a parent. Over the long run, small
initial differences in wealth holdings spin out of control. Estate and gift
taxes are about the only social policies left that act as a small restraint on
the runaway train of wealth inequality. Doing away with the estate tax would
widen, not narrow, the gap between blacks and whites.”
This seems crucial to me: How much “equity inequity” have many of us
inherited? I know that my parents made sure I got through school, helped us buy
cars and houses, made loans that they later forgave.
They’re still healthy, but I stand to inherit good farmland someday . . .
Some of these inheritances are tangible, some intangible. My kids have grown
up with a sense that many things are available to them. They could choose to
play sports, take music lessons, play instruments, go
to camp. They could wander the town without much sense of danger. They had
access to books and computers and libraries, and help when they needed to find
or make something. . . . we worry about them getting
into car crashes or making bad decisions, but we don’t worry about them
catching stray bullets on the street.
The address to the website I
found is:
http://www.yale.edu/opa/v28.n5/story11.html
This article is found on Yale
University's Homepage. It talks a
little about Conley, who is now assistant professor of sociology and
African-American studies at Yale. It mainly talks about his latest book,
"Being Black, Living in the Red", which deals with the power of
accumulated
wealth, which is the single most powerful determinant of class-based racial
inequality in America.
I looked up this article because I was interested in what the author was
currently doing.
-Brian Steiner
http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_3_29_02jm.html
The link above leads to an
interesting article (on reparations for slavery) that I found online that I'm
sure would cause a lot of controversy in class. It is kind of interesting and I
can see arguments in both ways for it.
-Erin Wahl
Student Journals on Honky:
The
story of Dalton represents to me a story of the child who is
continually uprooted through repeated moving throughout different regions of
the country. Yet, for Dalton, the moves come with changes in school, and not in a
complete relocation of his family. Every
time Dalton seems to find his place, he is forced on to some new
place, complete with a new set of diverse people. At times, Dalton is able to “fake” his way into friendships, but I
don’t really know that he has been able, thus far, to really find a place where
he truly fits in.
When
first encountering a middle class white school, Dalton begins to feel his own home is inadequate, even
becoming ashamed. For example, when he
takes Michael to his home, and the trash is lined up along the street, Dalton begins to blame the tenants of the buildings, rather
than the company that was to remove the garbage from the neighborhood. “It was their fault that this place was a
mess, I decided. And then, as if it were
the next logical step, I concluded that it was even their fault that they were
poor” (Conley 87). It is frightening how
easily one is able to lose sight of blatant injustices. Poverty certainly is not a way of life that
is sought out by persons. Yet, how does
one explain the need for such a living status in the world’s wealthiest nation?
In
response to his own poverty and familial values, Dalton begins to spend his “mugging” and “emergency
transportation” funds on candy and comic books that were previously unavailable
to him. These forbidden treasures
exposed him to the power of the dollar.
After his stealing escapade, it is interesting to find that Dalton does not learn that stealing is wrong, per se. Instead, he finds that “I could have just as
easily have lied about the Reggie Bars
as I had about the comic book” and more crucially that he would have been
successful in his lie (Conley 97).
Thankfully, Dalton finds gainful employment instead of pursuing a
lifestyle of deceit. Yet, even this is
ripped away from the boy, leaving him even more disgruntled with a world that
puts value on worldly goods but does not allow a person to rightfully earn
these items through honest work. (This
is not meant to imply that child labor laws are horrible. In fact, they are quite admirable. However, this event doesn’t help Dalton out much in his quest to belong.) Its just odd how
some programs end up harming those that were originally expected to reap the
benefits...
Some interesting facts/photos of places of
child labor in the early 1900’s may be found at the following site: http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor/
Amy Simon
I really have enjoyed the readings for this class. I found Honky to be
a very gripping read, possibly because i felt a real connection
with Dalton. Like Dalton,
i was raised in an inner city, where my family was
the only white family on the block. But unlike Dalton,
my family moved, not just out of the city, but half-way across the
country. I could write a book myself on the culture shock a third-grade
girl experiences moving from inner city philadelphia
to a town of 1100 in southeast iowa
(interesting tid-bit. My school in philly had as many students as my new home had
residents). Since that move, i have rarely had
to feel like a minority again. But that 8 years
or so had a profound impact on the way i view the
world.
In some class i had last year, we were discussing
the "diverse-ness" of bluffton. A
girl sitting near me said that she thought bluffton
was a diverse place, because there were no black people in her town or school
at all. Though i must admit that bluffton is probably more diverse that my town, because of
my experience in the city i knew that bluffton is anything but the epitome of diverse.
anyway, the book. his
book made me wonder a lot about what would have happened to me had we not
moved. Would i have been like Dalton
and "escaped?" Or would i have been
sucked into the "dark side" of the city. Some of his questions
were about the impact his race had on his making it through school, or having
opportunities in general. They're such a
fascinating questions, probably because they're unanswerable,
though i would speculate that race plays a larger
part in getting out of poverty than most people want to admit. My parents
were like Dalton's -- They kind-of (i say
"kind-of" because money, jobs, etc played a large role, but still,
both Dalton's parents and mine could have probably managed to live elsewhere)
chose to live in a rough area of the city. Most people who live in rough
areas of cities don't chose to live there. Most are born into poverty and
have no chance to get out of it. Attending crappy public schools
that the government ignores, and having no basic job skills makes it
practically impossible to get out of poverty. Both Dalton
and myself were lucky in that we didn't have to attend the local, run-down,
ignored public schools. I was sent to a Magnet school that, oddly enough,
i was accepted into because they needed to meet their
quota of white girl kindergartners. My race definetly
played a factor in which school i attended.
I could also identify with the conflict that Dalton
faced of not fitting in. It's quite a paradox -- Dalton
didn't fit in at home because he was white, but when among whites, he didn't
fit in because of where he lived. Even now, after not living in the city
for 12 years i find that people don't understand what
i'm talking about when i
talk of my time in philly.
in sum, i found Dalton's
analysis of his situation quite fascinating because of the parallels i could see in my own life. Though he was never quite
sure if his race was what gave him an advantage in life, he at least knew
enough to question if it was. That's something many who do not ever find
themselves in the minority fail to ask of themselves. Many just ignore
the racial divide all around them. How can people not wonder why there
are no (or very few) blacks in bluffton? or in any small town in the midwest?
What i appreciated most about honky was Dalton's
questioning of society around him. Though he could not answer
conclusively any of these questions, he at least knew how important they
were/are to ask.
my website is http://www.censusscope.org/us/m4320/chart_exposure.html.
it shows the racial make-up of neighborhoods in cities
all over the U.S.
Lima, OH is
in it. The "black" neighborhoods of lima still have more whites than
blacks.
-erin
miller
I have been impressed by the book Honky. It deals with some of the very
subject matter that I plan to address in my final paper on the Worth
Center. It deals with issues of
race and class exclusively. Dalton
is white and living in New York city,
where he is the minority. I find the principal of his school to be very
interesting. He asks Daltons mother
what class she would like him to be a part of. All they have is a black,
Chinese and Hispanic classes. This is a public school
and the principal seems shocked that they have a white child wanting to attend.
Another aspect of Dalton’s class is
that all the other black kids in his class are smacked on the knuckles for very
small infractions of the rules. Dalton
however does not receive this treatment. I think this reflects the issue of
race. A black teacher does not feel comfortable hitting a white child, and so
she doesn’t. I was also surprised by the fact that Dalton’s
parents are so educated and live in the class t! hey
do. It is usually associated education with class; the higher education the high
class, but not in this case.
-David McMillen
I liked this book. I liked how Dalton
explained his views while still letting the reader see issues from the
majorities view as well. I found similarities in our personalities and in
the way we were raised by our parents. I can also relate to some of the
feelings of inadequacy that Dalton
felt. I think that everyone goes through a stage in school when they
are embarrassed by their parents or by where they live. They think that
everyone else's families and houses are great. I never let anyone stay at
my house until I was in the fourth grade. I don't necessarily like the
way that Michael's family felt about rearing their children. I guess I
saw the methods as uninformed. I just don't think that Michael and his
brother really respected their parents. They knew that if they did
something bad, all they had to do was confess to it and get a punishment.
After a while they are going to get to the point where they will do anything
they want because they know that they will only be grounded or have their
allowance taken away. But Daltons
mother never acted uninformed...she wanted to be aware of her children at all
times. She encouraged them to try new things, but made sure that they
knew if they did something wrong they would get into trouble. When he
stole the candy bars, she made him take responsibility for his
actions. Like Dalton I
was very confused by the owners story. I decided
that she believed that if someone were raised Jewish then they would not do anything
against their religion. I even thought that maybe she felt that since
he came back to the store to admit his guilt, she would spare him from the law
like she was spared by the Nazi's. But I still do not truly
understand her point. However, I do think that his little act of theft
taught him the importance being honest and hard work which led him to
get a job. His mother reemphasized these ideals by helping him find
another job. I think that she was always proud of her son no matter what
he did.
I think that Dalton
and his father shared a very unique friendship. They loved each other,
but they seemed more like friends than father and son. He and his father
went to the track together. His father did not ever really discipline Dalton
either. I know from one passage that when their father was forced to be
the bad guy, he really smacked them. But he was always the one they could
"play with." I will not say that he was a bad parent, but I
don't think that he wanted to be involved the actual adult side of being a
parent. His father never let the neighborhood get to him. Even when it
was really bad and scary, he never let it bother him. He would focus on
something else and let all the bad just kind of roll off him.
He knew that he could not change the chain of events so he learned to
live with them. I think that Dalton
was like that as well. On the bus, he didn't ignore the other kids when
they started making jokes about his mother, but he did just watch them.
He said that he learned the power of silence. He learned to let
everything that was intimidating just fall away. He figured that it was
his turn on an unspoken list to be made fun of on that particular day. I
think that Dalton's quiet
personality helped him get through life in the projects like it did for
his father. They saw the situation for what it was and just dealt
with it. They both knew that they would miss it when they
left.
http://www.kidsource.com/better.world.press/parenting/html
This website talks about types of parenting. It
applies to my response because it describes the types of parents that both
Michael's parents and Dalton's
parents are and how they treat the children.
-Amy Parks
I must say
that this is an interesting book. I’m
glad that no one is around when I’m reading it because there are moments when I
burst out laughing. I especially like
all of the “yo momma” jokes. It’s been a long time since I have heard many
of those. I think that was something we
did in junior high.
A couple of
the things that stuck out to me, was the part where he
talks about money and what he had to do to buy some candy. I thought it was cute the way his mom would
give him mugger money. Part of this is
because of the time period, but I can’t even imagine a mugger accepting ten
dollars and just leaving you alone.
Nowadays they’d take everything that you own and probably would end up
with a cell phone, some credit cards and cash.
Another
thing I thought was neat was when he was talking about Pennsylvania
and the family summer trips they would make.
Back then, the region of northeastern PA was known for factory
outlets. My sister attends Grove
City College in
GC, PA which is located in northeastern PA, just on the other side of the state
from Youngstown approximately. My parents and I just drove the three hours
up there to visit her this past weekend.
One of the reasons my mom really likes to visit her, even though it’s
farther than driving to Bluffton, is because they have a HUGE outlet mall right
by the college. It’s also nice because
you don’t have to pay sales taxes there.
My aunt attended college there years ago and I know the outlet mall was
there back then. Of course, it’s a
little updated now. I wonder if the rest
of northeastern PA is still the same way.
It’s interesting that it hasn’t changed much.
The other
part that stuck out to me is when he talked about his sister, Alexandra
attending summer school in Pennsylvania. The professor is talking about other
countries and where people come from. I
have to admit that at first I laughed at the part when he said, China
has one billion people. You know what
that means he asked them. He told them
that meant that there are two billion armpits and one billion assholes. I thought that was really funny but then I
felt badly because that’s a horrible thing to say. I can’t even imagine what I would do or think
if I had a professor that said that in class.
I can’t believe he was allowed to say those kinds of things. And then the whole comment about everybody
coming from Europe and even “spics” coming from Europe
because they were from Spain
was horrible too. That’s definitely not
something that you would hear today. I
don’t think many people would be able to get away with that without some
consequences.
The web site I found has to do with
antidisestablishmentarianism. I really wanted to know a good definition for
it. The first web site that I looked at
simply said. Antidisestablishmentarianism, if you can’t spell it you’re a twit. I’m
still not sure what that had to do with anything. But this web site provided some clue as to
what the word meant.
http://www.marlboro.edu/~jfarber/sta/antidisestablishmentarianism.html
-Sarah Parker
I am enjoying this book, it speaks volumes of what life is like in the inner
city and the projects. I dont think some people
really know how tough life can get for the poor and this book describes
violence, poverty, and racism. It also describes not an adults view but a child's view of how life is while growing
up in the face of poverty and violence. I'm sure most of us at Bluffton
have lived a more priviliged life then Dalton
so reading his feelings and thoughts will hopefully help others and myself to not take for granted the lifestyle we all grew up
in. That's one of the important aspects of this book that I am
grasping is just the way he is coping in the environment and making the most of
everything. I know that I haven't had to experience being afraid to walk
in my own home or walk down the street let alone afraid to go to the bathroom
at my school. I know there are many kids out there that endure a tougher life
then i have experienced in my 21 years of
living. We sometimes think it is easy to break out of such a place but
life in the lower half isn't as easy to break out of then what we think it
is. Dalton also has the privilige that at the time he doesn't really understand
either and that is his race. This is very evident at the first school he
attends and isn't punished because of the race division. He encounters also the
difference in fitting in with his white peers and minority peers. He has
to change his style and act like "whites" do when he goes to his new
school but while in his first school he got to be more of himself and not have
to impress people as much as he does with the new school. The one part
that jumped out at me was when they were on the playground and they were making
a stand for which President they would vote for and for Ozan
he made his stance and never backed down even in the face of getting free
doughnuts - food. For being an elementary school
child that must have been hard for first not going with the crowd and second
for turning down food. I know it was in a young stage of his life
but I think it really defined that child and his character, something Dalton
didn't have. Dalton all along wanting to fit in but never really because of his race
and his class. He also hits another cross-roads
when he invites his friend Michael over and all along he is embarrassed of his
home and where he lives. When they first arrive Dalton wants to usher him
quickly to his apartment but can't and this brings out more people from the
projects who he doesn't want Michael to encounter and when they do encounter
them it is Michael that outshows Dalton in his own
territory. It breaks down Dalton's
own thinking about the people around him and this I think is another turning
point in his life.
http://www.ollin.net/ghettosoul/
-Jeremy Nussbaum
Hi Jeff,
I wanted to begin my e-mail
with this form of salutation because it is unheard of for students at home to
simply address their professors with the fisrt name.
This is forbidden even when American profesors or
teachers encourage us to call them by their first name.
Why did i
start with this statement? Society has certain aspect that we all hold precious
whether we are white,yellow
or black or any ohter call that we
use to differenciate
our color.In this case we learnt to refer to our
professors as " Professor or Dr".so and so
regardless of their color.Here social hierarchy and
the boundaries between students and instructor are difficult and hard to cross.
This is without a doubt what Conley was experiencing as he moved from one
school to another.Evenn though he was white in a
black, hispanic, chinese
community there was a thread that held them together yet apart.As
noted by this quote, " Each tag or piece of graffiti is either a welcome
or a warning, spelling out messages of idnetity that
were legible only to those in the know" ( Page 22)Living in one community
brought him to see the difference that he had with the other whom were regarded
as inferior yet he felt part of them ( the "know" especially with the
Hawk incidence and the vist that Michael had in his
neighborhood)and yet different when he related with the other white rich and kid.He was a minority yet superior in one community, but at
the same time he was white like Michael and the other white kids in the
Greenwich Village yet class differences did not spear him. Either ways the
social network was not on his end of the spectrum. Every where he went, the
differences between him and project children as well as other Greenwich friends
he had were very profound.He may never harbor the
notion of race, but his paradigm of the world was shaped by the fact that there
is always a "us" and "them". People will aways try to put racial ideals behind them and forgive and
forget racism, but there are still black and white aspect of certain places
that reveal that this is still there, time is what will tell what will become
of this, it may heal wounds or coat them with more germs unless they are
attended to.( This is Africa rhetorics,
i hope it makes sense). In this book what i enjoyed most is the tone used by the author, he is very
realistic about the situation since he has interacted with both minority and
white and experiencing the pros and cons of both, he is very optimistic about
racial and so AMI but, i wonder how many Americas
still belief that there are hard questions about racism that need to be
addressed and will remain as wounds as long as they are ignored.Many
may want to belief that racism and other social disorder are well old-fashioned
but being a person from a different culture, as much as i
harbor no notions of racism, each day, i have become
conscious of the fact that I am black, something that is novel to me.What made me realize this, the way ( Americans) relate
with each other.I hold no grudge with ( Americans or
for this matter, any other person with a color different from me, for i have never, experience racial differences until i left Africa.( There maybe racial differences but I never
experienced them even when i crossed borders into
Kenya, a new culture).When i went to Asia once again,
i was made conscious about my color during numerous
occasions, and this has made me view racism and social networks from a different
perspective.I have no problem with all people
regardless of their color but i have learnt to
understand that differencies in color run deep,in this society and I am conscious of who I am each
day and this is what sets me apart from others.I
never wanted to be cautious and feel different from others,but
social networks spells that i be aware of this.Sad as it may appear, this is the reality we must live
with, we want to belief that we are all the same, yet there is always something
that sets us apart. Racism as well as other forms or differences are here to
stay it is how we held them that really matter.We can
learn from them and be aware of who we are but we cah
hold on to them an be bitter ( which is a phenomenon
harbor by most African Americans) or deny it as most well Bluffton students
want to. The choice we make determines our reaction to this and other social
moral values that hold the society together or tear it apart.
The Webpage that i chose is based on a life interview with Dalton Conley
concerning this book and how he viewed racial as well as other aspect of
American society as written in this book.His response
to this questions are very realistic,which
make a difference as I read the book.Especially the
tone which I found interesting to detect and describe.
http://www.freshangles.com/xpressions/litbitz/articles/98.html
I am sorry that this was a
rather long response,I had
personal experiences with what Conley went though and this made it easier from
me to see the two world that he was torn was living in.
-Mary Akuch Riak
This is not only a book
about race and class, but also about what it means to fit in and how children
find acceptance. Conley does a find job
of showing how the different subcultures, whether at his new or old school,
have different requisites for being accepted by peers.
To tell you the truth,
reading the first two-thirds of "Honky" really brought back a lot of
memories for me. My first memories are
from living in Mexicali as a kid. My sister and I would intermingle with the
other kids without much care for distinctions of class or race, much like Dalton at an early age. When we moved back to the states and I
eventually returned to Mexicali for multiple summers, I
easily detected the distinctions I had missed as a child. The poverty in Mexico is immense. The culture is a lot different too. I found that being a white American in my
returning trips made me appear different in the eyes of the Mexicans
there. People presumed I had money, and that I was gullible and unknowledgable
about the culture, even though I knew quite a bit and am lowerclass
by American standards (I'm here at BC on scholarship and grace, not my
parents). However, in the Mexican church
services a miraculous thing would happen.
The petty distinctions of class and race and culture seemed to be
overshadowed by the brotherhood of Christ.
Among the Mexican Christians, though we were still different, there was
an intense unity that linked us. I
wonder if Dalton had grown up in a religious community he
might have still felt such a misfit all the time. After all, in Christ there is neither slave
nor free, neither Jew nor gentile (See Romans).
Dalton's duality I found
particularly interesting when he began at school 41 with the preppies. He would have to adjust his speech and
attitudes every time he switched between the two areas. My friend Joe used to live in a black
suburban area in Toledo. It would always amaze me that whenever Joe's
African American friend, Josh, came over.
Joe would suddenly start speaking and acting differently. I observed that much of Joe and Josh's
friendship was based on competition, "snaps", and sports while our
friendship was centered around nerdy hobbies and
religion. When Josh left, Joe would
become 'white' again in his mannerism so to speak. I think that when you live as a minority in
an area, you must learn both your ethnic and geographic subculture in order to
find acceptance. I think this is what
both Dalton and Joe had to do.
The story about the karate
expert also interested me. As a kid, I
would take karate lessons in a group called "Karate for Christ" in
downtown Toledo. The
point was to evangelize by breaking boards and blocks at shows as well as to
learn to defend yourself. One day some of the upper level students were
attacked by some hoods just because they knew they were karate students. I think that in underdeveloped places,
attempting to define yourself as 'tough' or even able
to defend yourself marks yourself for a challenge. However, violence is not always the best
resort. When I was mugged once while
walking back from the mall in Toledo, I pondered using my skills
to fight back, but instinctively gave up the money instead for fear of
firearms. I think that like in the
"knife incident" that Dalton faces, he learns that the
best way to escape an attack is simply to not to let the situation become
anymore of 'challenge' to the goons than it already is. Oh, and I think I
could've taken 'em. :)
I also had a friend who
lived on the east side of town. He would
tell me stories about gangs and 'the way things were' in the inner city. Unlike my friend Joe, he lived in a mixed
community, but the rules were still the
same: life is a competition and
you have to be quick and smart to survive. When I came to Bowling
Green, fitting in changed much more to what you know and
what you can do than being the biggest or the baddest
or the most street-wise. Similarly for Dalton when he changes schools, he
must learn to find new ways of being accepted, not by sharp tongue and wits,
but by feigning intellectual equality.
That's enough about me. In any case, I think that Honky is a long
search for Dalton to find himself in a culture
of distinct subcultures. It is his
search to find a balance between where he lives and where he goes to school and
where he has friends. At times he enjoys
a paradox of being both rejected and priviledged for
being white. I think he also feels
rejected and accepted for being poor by the different competing subcultures in
his life, though for him there is a way out to overcome his class if he
chooses. All in all this is a good read.
Cheers!
Samuel Shepard
Some pretty good advice
here: http://www.thewindjammer.com/nefarious/html/muggee.html
I
am very embarrassed to have to read a book with the title Honky. I was in a hospital waiting room and was
reading it while sitting next to two black women. When I turned the book over for a second and
revealed the cover they looked at it and then looked at me. They didn’t know I was reading it for class
and probably thought that I was racist.
I was really embarrassed and hurriedly turned the book over again and
started reading it.
It was interesting to read about the
different schools throughout Dalton’s
life. Starting off at elementary school
where the principal didn’t have a class to put him in because no other white
people went to that school. When he then commuted to the Village with the other white people
and his experiences with class. How all of the
children there where rich and once again he had to change and try to fit in. And then finally in junior high when they
both combined and Dalton really
found out who he was because he hung out with the black people instead of the
whites. http://eserver.org/race/fight-against-racism-today.html
It amazed me at how much racism was shown back then but then
I realized that things really haven’t changed all that much. The laws have but people’s characteristics
have not. For example in the book how
the students are supposed to gather in the auditorium to vote on music and how
they black people sat on one side of the room and the white people on the
other. This is still usually true
today. If you look in Marbeck at lunch you will see all of the black people
sitting together mostly. This was also
true in my high school. Racism is still
very prevalent today even in jobs such as policemen and judges in which there
should be no prejudices. I also thought
that it was ironic that the black people accepted Dalton. If you think of it the other way and if one black
family lived in your neighborhood their children would never have friends. White people are more evil than black people
when it comes to that. Black people are
more accepting it seems. The website
talks about still today how much racism there still is. Just because there are laws in place now it
does not mean that people’s attitudes have changed, that will take a long
time.
Stephanie Rush
Honky is a very easy book to
read not unlike The Color Purple. Both
books
deal with race issues which I have
become rather intrigued by in my time in
this class. I can see a lot of parallels between this
book and my own life.
My parents also made bad choices which caused
me to have to grow up in a
black neighborhood. Before anything else the part that made me
cry was on
page 33. Being an artist I appreciate art of all
sorts. When this young
man’s dad had to tear off
paintings of Korean impressions of WW2 because the
canvas underneath was more
valuable touched me deeply. Other
parallels are
that I am an artist and my
girlfriend is a writer. I hope that we
don’t end
up in the projects of some
large city. But an artist and a writer
can
easily end up in the
poorhouse. The fact that they had the
opportunity to
live in SoHo at its heyday of artistic
expression and did not choose this
amazes me. Another part of the book that I found
fascinating was how
children and adults view race. Because the young man in this story was
unaware of race as a child it is
easily seen that racism is a learned trait.
This book kind of turns our popular view of
how the world is on its ear.
It is showing that in the
land of white majority there are often times when
white people end up being the
minority in a small pond. This book
deals
well with how white majority
people have to deal with being the minorities.
They have to try and fit in
and assimilate into the community. I
love how
this book shows the follies of
the white family. This book can be
turned
around and made to look at
different views. The black minority in
the
United States is often criticized for not
assimilating. This can be seen as
no easier of a task than the
white family assimilating into the smaller
black community. I also thought that this book showed that
even with the
saturation of the black culture on a
small white family they still kept many
of the traditional white
ideas. Thus, I think this book just
being written
shows that white people, even
growing up impoverished; still have a step
above their black counterparts.
Tim Boldman
This by far is my favorite book we have read this semester, but I am glad to
say it is the last one. It was hard to find time to do all the extra
reading, but without taking this class I would have never read some of the most
educational books I have ever read my whole life so far.
I liked that this book, during the whole book, there was a since of clearity and understanding that he was trying to define how
he felt and learned about race. At the beginning of the book I thought is
was so funny that he didn't understand that he was different, that he was white
not black. He had never seen any other type of neighborhood that had
people his color living there. That just seemed so bizarre to me.
But then I had went home last weekend and was reading
this book saturday morning, my mom asked me what I
was reading probably wondering by the title. I explained to her what the
book was about. And she said that when my brother and I were little, just
after we moved back from California
had asked her why there weren't any squinty eyed people at our new
school. She said that was when she first realized how innocent a child's
beliefs are. They believe what they see and have a strong feeling that
what they see in life is the same in every place. I
don't not remember asking her that question, but I do remember the first
time I was aloud to ride my bike around the block, and that was when we moved
to my hometown from California.
In California my mom wouldn't
even allow us to walk to the bus stop at the end of the street, she would drive
us and we would wait in the car, and our grandmother would be there to pick us
up when the bus dropped us off. That is something I vaguely
remember. So I could relate with how Dalton
felt as a child growing up in a confined apartment building. What I
didn't find a little upsetting was the fact that as a little boy he would see
used syringes and condoms. Even if he wasn't quite sure what it was, it's
the fact that children that age are exposed to those kind
of things. But again I come from a small town, and had no clue what a
syringe or a condom was until I was 14 or 15 years old. That is when my
Health class teacher informed us what a condom was and how to use
one. Most of us girls were so grosed out and
the boys were totally embarrased. It wasn't
until then that I even got the sex talk from my parents. A lot of people
wonder why teens are so sexually active and why they are so well educated in
that area, if things like that were being showed back then, it is scary to
think about what young kids are finding in today's society.
Another part that touched me, was when he was
cleaning his neighborhood up when he would walk to and from the bus stop.
It is so weird that a kid his age would noticed how dirty his neighborhood
is. I was to busy playing and riding my bike to be ashamed of my
neighborhood, but yet I never liked in a neighborhood that poor. I just
think it is so amazing that people who grow up in different regions and
different neighborhoods experience their childhood so differently. I
thought the fact that at the end of his book his best friend was black,
Jerome. He wanted to be white so bad and belong to the white class so
bad, but at the end of the book he is best friends with a black kid. They
get very close spending many nights together, buying a sweatshirt together, and Jerome even lies to Sean, the bully, for Dalton.
When he doesn't want to ride on the back of the bus because he made an
agreement with his mother and she said she would pay him if he didn't ride the
back of the bus. When Sean asked them why they didn't, Jerome came up
with the quick excuse that they took off because the bus driver said he was
going to have them arrested. That saved Dalton
from getting made fun of even more. This Sean kid had already attempted
to kill Dalton with a switch
blade.
I really enjoyed this book better than the rest. Here is a website I found
interesting being a social worker and being concerned about minorities and
people who need help finding affordable housing. http://www.hud.gov/ . This website explains
Bush's promise to make more affordable housing to minorities.
-Melissa VanAusdal
One thing that is apparant in the book,
which is basically one of the themes, is the social inequalities. I guess i know that this type of stuff goes on, but it still makes
me sad, because we are American's and we are supposed to be striving for
equality. Every man/woman despite race and class, are supposed to be equal and
have the same rights as everybody else. I guess the event where it really
became apparant was when Raphael's house was burned.
The statement that Dalton says
really struck me and made me think. He says, "The fire taught me one of
the most subtle but powerful privileges of middle-class status: the chance to
work problems out informally, without the interference of the authorities. Poor
minorities get no such allowances. But we were lucky-for Raphael's family
represented the right class and I the right
race." This unfortunately seems to be true, even in today's society. It
seems to me that as far as we've come from slavery and other things, we should
really treat everybody with the same standards. But people still get more suspicious when
African-Americans are involved in something, then if it were just whites. And alot of the times different races and lower class
American's don't get the opportunities that other do. I also thought it was
interesting that even with this difference, that Dalton
apparantly recognized at his young age, he still hung
out with people of different race then him. He knew he was different but he
said that he desperately wanted to fit in with the black people, or their
group. Maybe he really liked hanging out with those guys, or maybe he just
needed somewhere to fit in, with people that accepted him.
http://www.trinity.edu/mkearl/strat.html
My first response to this reading is that I found it kind of surprising how
much the father resisted moving out of the old neighborhood. My initial thought
was that he'd agree with his wife and want to move to a safer neighborhood for
the good of the family. But I guess you really do get
somewhat attached to a place if you've lived there for a long time. Even in an
old, worn down neighborhood that isn't the safest, it can still be hard to
leave a place if that's all you've ever known.
Another thing I found interesting was what Dalton
said on pages 192-193, about how at least in his old neighborhood he had his
skin color to blame for not fitting in. He finally realizes, or at least
accepts, that maybe the problem isn't his own skin color but that the real
problem lies
within himself. I think that is sometimes the problem
with many people. People often will use some sort of excuse when they don't fit
in, such as skin color, instead of accepting that maybe the real problem is
their own attitude and pre-conceived ideas.
The address to the website I found is:
http://www.yale.edu/opa/v28.n5/story11.html
This article is found on Yale
University's Homepage. It talks a
little about Conley, who is now assistant professor of sociology and African-American
studies at Yale. It mainly talks about his latest book, "Being Black,
Living in the Red", which deals with the power of accumulated
wealth, which is the single most powerful determinant of class-based racial
inequality in America.
I looked up this article because I was interested in what the author was
currently doing.
-Brian Steiner
http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_3_29_02jm.html
The link above leads to an
interesting article (on reparations for slavery) that I found online that I'm
sure would cause a lot of controversy in class. It is kind of interesting and I
can see arguments in both ways for it.
As for Honky, it got better
as it went on. I wasn't too impressed at the beginning but needless to say that
changed. I had never thought about how it would feel to be a white minority in
a neighborhood consisting mainly of hispanic
and african American individuals, it certainly
illustrated an interesting perspective. Also, knowing little of the "big
city" life it was nice to get a slice of that in with the book. I still
wonder exactly WHY it took them so long to move out of the neighborhood when
they realized it was getting worse. If it had been me I would've had my family
out of there as quick as possible. I really don't know exactly what I want to
say about this book, especially trying to send this in as fast as I can. I
guess maybe I was just so amazed to find out what his life was actually like.
If it was me I would never have been as mean as the other children were to him
as a minority, but then I do come from a town only slightly bigger than
Bluffton so I am used to making friends with lots of people. But if a town is
bigger or smaller does that make it more or less tolerant? I think that is a
good question.
-Erin Wahl
Chapter nine, “Sesame Street,” was an interesting
one. The setting is
Hamilton Fish Park, behind
the building where Dalton lived. Dalton joined a
game of pickup baseball, and
some of the guys formed a gang, whose leader
was Sean (a boy who had
appeared on Sesame Street).
I enjoyed Dalton’s style of writing. First he told a story about
his past, and then he analyzed
the experience in retrospect. It is in
this
analysis where interesting points
are made. The following is one.
Dalton wrote, “Only later would I
realize that, given the racial
geography of my childhood, it is
surprising how little actual violence I
encountered. I can’t imagine that a black kid growing up
in a poor white
neighborhood would have gotten off so
lightly” (109-110). It seems Dalton
speculates about the power of lighter
skin. Sean let him go at the mere
sound of a cop siren; maybe if Dalton were a poor black kid
having been
threatened by poor white kids in their
neighborhood, would he have been
killed. This is very possible because policemen in
cars were (or maybe are
still) often assumed to be
white. In a racist society, that
assumption upon
hearing a cop siren could deter a
black kid’s lethal hand, but the same
assumption could make a white kid’s
lethal hand simply hesitate while the
owner thinks, “The cops will
think I was defending myself.” Dalton
continued with thankfulness he had
not been accepted by Sean and his group
because he may have missed out on
the life he now has. Though he is unsure
about the exact causes of his
life-path, he claims he can believe what he
wants because of the advantage of
being middle class. Specifically, Dalton
wrote, “This is the privilege of
the middle and upper classes in America—the
right to make up the reasons
things turn out the way they do, to construct
our own narratives rather than
having the media and society do it for us”
(110).
The following website is the
homepage of World Conference Against Racism,
and one proposal they make is
that racism is on the rise, one place being
the United States:
http://www.racism.gov.za/
Sincerely,
Jacob Goin
At first I
thought that it was unfair that my group always got to write responses on the
whole book. I di not think that as I read
"Honky", my opinion will change. I came to believe that to really
understand this book, you have to read all of it word after word without
skipping anything. Almost every sentence seems to be important, seems to hold
some sense and some meaning.
The biggest
thing that I noticed this book talking about was people from different races
and how a person comes to understanding races and to ignoring different skin
colors. Think about it, at first he was in school where he was a minority, but
he was treated better, than he was in another school where he was a minority.
He got so used to that feeling that it was strange for him
to be in school where whites were a majority.
It is imprtant how Dalton makes friends in all those schools
and how only after he looses them he realises how
important it is to have them.
I think, his mother was a very important person in his life. her strategies were very interesting. I think I also believe
in them. If Dalton did something wrong, she didn't
yell at himm, she didn't hit him, she just asked:
"Why?" I don't think any person would be able to feel comfortable
after such question. I don't think that anyone would do again whatever he/she's
done. At the same time it seems that at the end his mother became more distant.
He calls her Ellen more and more often instead of using the word
"mother".
Interesting
part was the story about closes and labels. I can relate to that story. I
understand how important it is to have nice cloth when you are 12-18. You just
feel better about yourself, you feel mmore confident.
There was
one sentense that, I think, I will remember for the
rest of my life: "Many different races don't always mean diversity".
This is so true!
I was very
happy that finally he got to the stage where the races and social classes did
not matter. That's teh way the society should
be. It is like author is saying that no matter what is our color of the skin,
no matter if we are rich and poor, we can all live in peace and we can all be
friends, because we are all PEOPLE!
http://tour.stuy.edu/building/index.html
-Galina
Terbova
Hey Jeff, from my section I
feel the two most important aspects of what I read actually occured
about 8 pages from each other.
First, on pages 95-98, as he tells the
story of his theft, to quench his thirst for status, I thought that was
interesting, but what I found most fascinating was that on page 98, when he
said, "they were only trying to coax out the goodness at my moral core,
but the truth was I continued to lie, at least withholding information about an
item I stole that was more valuable than the Reggie bars. I really feel this
can be applied tomany different aspects of American
life. Many times in human nature when we feel power, we may spare our ethical
feelings, or in the very least just pick up the line we cannot cross, and move
it further left or right.
The other portion of this story I found
interesting occured when Dalton was talking about how
interaction on his Little League and sports activities in general had reduced
the racial and at times "status" barriers. And of course I cannot
remember the philosopher who said you can "learn more about a man in a hour of play than a life-time of watching him." Quite
simply many times in play time or sports racism can vanish because while out on
the playing field, everybody is united in the same goals, to win. These are
central desires that cannot only be defined but ethnicity. http://racerelations.about.com/
Well, thats all I got, see you tomorrow.
Garrett Skare
The process that Dalton takes to
to seeing and understanding what racism is and how it
applys to him is interesting to me. It
seems to be a long process for him. I've always been facinated
by the city and the whole book is about how Dalton
learns to survive in the city- in an all black part of town. Kids have to
develop survival skills that I would never have thought of- for example hitting
the ground when you hear a gun shot and hiding some muggers cash in your
shoes. I think I would probably be much like his mother if I were raising
kids in a part of the city like that. She was strict and she taught them
to be wise about things. Living in the city is like living in a whole different
part of the world. When I imagine going to the city, I imagine going to
the main streets, the shops, the restaurants, and the theaters. And even
that part of the city is completely different that what Dalton
lived in. Dalton and his
sister didn't like going to the country because they didn't know how to live
there. It also struck me when Dalton
talked about the sign in PA that says "Welcome to PA, Where America
Starts." Dalton said
that living in PA was like no America
that he knew of.
Throughout the book Dalton
develops these tics. It is his body's way of coping the the stress that he is under. They start in Mini
School when he isn't fitting into a
particular class and then he develops them after Jerome is shot. It seems
to me that he after the Jerome incident he develops obsessive compulsive
disorder. It is something that you are fanatic about doing- it becomes a
necessity of life and consumes more than an hour of your day http://www.ocdresource.com/ .
Dalton has to do everything
equally- a sign of this disorder.
Another thing that struck me was how the black kids could call themselves
"nigga" but if Dalton
said it to his friends he would suffer some sort of repercussion. I don't
understand why the black kids would call themselves that anyway because it
seems to be such a negative word to me- but maybe it isn't only if they use it.
It seems like many times in this book there is racism towards Dalton-
probably because he is the minority. I get so frustrated when talking
about racism because it always seems to be present even when you don't think
about or when you try not to be racist. Sometimes I wonder if we just
take it too far. And sometimes I wonder if we dwell on it too much.
I don't think it is good to not talk about it, because you don't want to be
completely uninformed. But sometimes I think simple little situations can
get turned completely into big ones because someone understands it to be
racist. I could see myself in that situation where I did something
completely innocent, but someone takes it the wrong way. I'd feel aweful about it because I don't think that I am racist at
all...and I definately don't want to be. Some
people say that you are racist even when you don't think that you are, and that
bothers me. All of this happens when people segregate themselves into the
groups that they feel most comfortable hanging out with- nobody takes the time
to get to know the other group. If you set yourself apart and want to be
seen as a particular group, then how can you expect yourself to be automatically
part of another group? This is all confusing and frustrating to me.
Rebecca Yoder