Wiggan and Guifridda

Guifridda’s article talks about an interesting cultural aspect of African Americans, which is othermothering. The author argues that the relationship between African American students and professors are patterns that come from the history of othermothering. It is obvious that race plays an important role in US society, and therefore, its education. Hence, only 7.5% of that university’s students were African American. The conclusion of this article shows that race is still a barrier for relationships even at the university level. On one hand I think it is good that a 7.5% of African American students cannot be isolated from faculty, that they can find support on the people from their own race; on the other, I find sad that there are faculty members who may have prejudices on students for their skin color, but I understand that’s part of the society where they live. My reaction question to this article was: How can American education change the stereotyped actions of their faculty and students?

The answer to this question was in a sense given by Wiggan: to have a school finance reform. In his article he described how students were challenged to study more during high school, so they would have more chances to attend college. These students also mentioned the importance of “caring teachers”, however, if this caring is going to be driven only by race factors –as it was the case in Guifridda’s research, the problem would remain there. One way to break that race barrier would be giving more opportunities to black students to go to college. Therefore, when they represent the 20 or 30% instead of the 7.5%, and they demonstrate their professors that they can have high grades, the white community would start seeing in a different way. But in order for black students to have access to higher education, they need federal support. That is my suggestion for the macro level. Another point mentioned in Wiggan’s article was the participation of students in extracurricular activities. In the micro or meso level, students could engage activities or clubs that integrate black and white communities, and thus, be active agents of the change in their society and education.