i was facing your direction yesterday, south
learning about racism in ms. sutton like a button's class started out with the realization that i'm soooo naïve. i was interested at first, but after the dissection of the opening scene of aladdin, i would rather be unaware. its too late now. i went to see a movie with zach, aron, noah, and aron's dad last night and during the opening advertisements i was bombarded with blatant/hidden racism. fandango commercials are pretty bad...but i still laugh at them, i can't help it. i get frustrated in class because everyone keeps saying how chock-full disney movies are with stereotypes, but i love disney movies and even though they never will have the most accurate depictions of a culture, thats how i learned about stuff when i was little. and honestly, the color of the character's skin or the surroundings never even fazed me. i hadn't learned about hate and racism yet. but maybe thats because i'm whitey; however, i'd hate to think of myself as being a terrible person because of it. i always wanted to be jasmine, or pocahontas, or snow white (is that racist?) and i will always cheer for simba instead of scar, even though the evil scar has darker skin. i'm afraid of the dark, but i'm not afraid of people who are dark. i never even made the connection before i learned about it in this past week. she is teaching me how to be racist!! accidently of course, but i think i might tell her the consequences her lessons are having on me, even though its too late to take it back, so that she knows that learning how to notice even the most veiled racism is not far off from teaching people how to do it themselves, to use it to hate people. i will never stop loving disney movies, i won't ever stop laughing at comedians, and ads that are racially or culturally prejudiced. i'll just notice i'm doing it and wish i didn't think it was funny, if that. sorry for being white, i didn't realize i was so hated and racist and fucking dumb.