How we see is not only determined by the visual organ, but also by what we have learned about what we see. A white woman who grew up in a small village in Germany once said, she did not see race. She did not mean color of skin. She was a lover of great visual art, so she was quite skilled at seeing different colors and tones. Physical features associated with race were not part of her upbringing. Race is an abstraction; cannot be seen, but it can be perceived. While walking throughout Harlem, she made a few remarks about black Americans’ behaviors, including the use of the “n” word. She did not see race, yet, it was obvious that her perception had been shaped by ideas on a particular “race” in a specific context.
Grete Stern, another German woman, a photographer that documented visually the indigenous peoples living in the Chaco region of Argentina was not recording race as such, but the daily -often pedestrian- lives of those rural communities: going to school, working in the fields, a smile, an angry face. Intentionally or not, she engaged the viewer, decolonizing their perceptions, how the others might view those peoples living outside of the metropolitan areas; their humanity.
At the once marvelous, later on dismantled, CCNY School of Education Workshop Center for Open Education, one of the activities implemented had to do with plantains, a common staple in the Caribbean, brought into the Americas by the African peoples. Given the imposed euro-centric perceptions and related contents of their histories, quite a few of the “latino” students, when seeing the vegetables (not all bananas are fruits) on top of the tables, would let out some nervous laughs. The “plátanos” are not only eaten in their homes, but in a strange form, represent a negative perception. The word can be used to denigrate the other. A “plátano” is not necessarily a bright person. After engaging in direct discussion on those issues -including their reactions, the absence of tropical produce from the nutritional tables used in schools, their histories and its relation, in many instances, to self hate-, the students would then, as the Center allowed it, to make “mofongo, fufú, mangú and tostones”. Do not let the names of some of those dishes be overlooked, they do not sound as if they come from Indo-European languages. From self hate to a good meal with plátanos.
At the once marvelous, later on dismantled, CCNY School of Education Workshop Center for Open Education, one of the activities implemented had to do with plantains, a common staple in the Caribbean, brought into the Americas by the African peoples. Given the imposed euro-centric perceptions and related contents of their histories, quite a few of the “latino” students, when seeing the vegetables (not all bananas are fruits) on top of the tables, would let out some nervous laughs. The “plátanos” are not only eaten in their homes, but in a strange form, represent a negative perception. The word can be used to denigrate the other. A “plátano” is not necessarily a bright person. After engaging in direct discussion on those issues -including their reactions, the absence of tropical produce from the nutritional tables used in schools, their histories and its relation, in many instances, to self hate-, the students would then, as the Center allowed it, to make “mofongo, fufú, mangú and tostones”. Do not let the names of some of those dishes be overlooked, they do not sound as if they come from Indo-European languages. From self hate to a good meal with plátanos.
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