The Black Man
I've been working with my form 1 students to design their own super heroes. It originally was just an exercise to use the present tense (it's really easy to find something that uses the present tense). I asked the students to write down their daily routine, and then to tell me the routine of their superhero alter-ego.
As you can imagine, praying came up a lot. And interestingly enough, one of my students created his hero, Super Pious Man. It is worth noting that SPM and the student who made him \do pretty much the same things everyday, with the exception that SPM studies the Qu'ran once more, and also plays badminton. Badminton might just be the most pious sport, which came as news to me.
Another student filled this out:
Secret Identity: My sister
That's sweet, I thought. This girl thinks her sister is like a super hero. I read on:
Super powers: My brother
She also might've been unclear on the exercise.
Lastly there was a boy who under enemies listed:
The Black Man.
I've heard of The White Man, as used with a definite article in the singular, but The Black Man? I wish I had asked him to clarify if he meant one particular man who wore all black, one particular man who might be described as a person of color, or perhaps the platonic form of a race of people, embodied in one symbolic individual. I still don't know if the boy was racist or not. I've heard whispers of racism here, although it's yet to be blatantly confirmed by my own experience. I can, however, safely say that this country does not especially know or care about political correctness.
Going off of the High School Musical activity, I decided to make it HSM vs. Nirvana and played Smells Like Teen Spirit, to see if the students could talk about what made one song good and one song bad. First I had them list qualities of good and bad songs with examples. Under the bad song example? Black people music. Hard to say if the kid meant Gospel, Jazz, young Michael Jackson, or rap, but when I asked the group of boys about it, they said only one of them felt that way. Although I'm pretty sure it's still offensive to say "most of us like black people music."
Malaysia as a country is racially diverse, yet severely separated. And where I am right now it's almost entirely homogeneous. Sarah and I probably changed the racial demographic around our school's area pretty radically by our arrival.
Since at my school there's just me and my Jordanian friend and the rest are Malay (teachers and students alike), I haven't gotten a chance to talk about some of the things I've read about, but there are some interesting affirmative action laws in place here (although according to a non-Malay one of the ETAs talked to, they're annoying sometimes, but they don't stop him from being successful). These might've been the sensitive and divisive issues that I referenced earlier.
I will say this though, about my encounters with Malays and race: everyone loves the crap out of Obama. No doubt even Super Pious Man would take a break from his badminton game to treat his chronic Obama-mania and Barack-itis.
As you can imagine, praying came up a lot. And interestingly enough, one of my students created his hero, Super Pious Man. It is worth noting that SPM and the student who made him \do pretty much the same things everyday, with the exception that SPM studies the Qu'ran once more, and also plays badminton. Badminton might just be the most pious sport, which came as news to me.
Another student filled this out:
Secret Identity: My sister
That's sweet, I thought. This girl thinks her sister is like a super hero. I read on:
Super powers: My brother
She also might've been unclear on the exercise.
Lastly there was a boy who under enemies listed:
The Black Man.
I've heard of The White Man, as used with a definite article in the singular, but The Black Man? I wish I had asked him to clarify if he meant one particular man who wore all black, one particular man who might be described as a person of color, or perhaps the platonic form of a race of people, embodied in one symbolic individual. I still don't know if the boy was racist or not. I've heard whispers of racism here, although it's yet to be blatantly confirmed by my own experience. I can, however, safely say that this country does not especially know or care about political correctness.
Going off of the High School Musical activity, I decided to make it HSM vs. Nirvana and played Smells Like Teen Spirit, to see if the students could talk about what made one song good and one song bad. First I had them list qualities of good and bad songs with examples. Under the bad song example? Black people music. Hard to say if the kid meant Gospel, Jazz, young Michael Jackson, or rap, but when I asked the group of boys about it, they said only one of them felt that way. Although I'm pretty sure it's still offensive to say "most of us like black people music."
Malaysia as a country is racially diverse, yet severely separated. And where I am right now it's almost entirely homogeneous. Sarah and I probably changed the racial demographic around our school's area pretty radically by our arrival.
Since at my school there's just me and my Jordanian friend and the rest are Malay (teachers and students alike), I haven't gotten a chance to talk about some of the things I've read about, but there are some interesting affirmative action laws in place here (although according to a non-Malay one of the ETAs talked to, they're annoying sometimes, but they don't stop him from being successful). These might've been the sensitive and divisive issues that I referenced earlier.
I will say this though, about my encounters with Malays and race: everyone loves the crap out of Obama. No doubt even Super Pious Man would take a break from his badminton game to treat his chronic Obama-mania and Barack-itis.
Comments
I also want to see the girl's sister using the brother as a super power.
I made this for my gay friend Chris back in the day when I was bored at work. He came up with the slogan.
That was a really dorky joke, and I apologize.