Hugh O’Donnell tagged me for this meme.
Because many of the blogs I read by educators have already been tagged, I am going to tag the following educators: Mark Elrod, Bald Blogger, JRB, Tenured Radical and Dave’s Internet Lounge.
THE RULES:
Post a picture or make/take/create your own that captures what YOU are most passionate for students to learn about.
Give your picture a short title.
Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt.”
Link back to this blog entry.
Include links to 5 (or more) educators.
My Title: I am Still an Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison’s classic novel, Invisible Man, highlights the challenges many blacks felt in white America:
I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids — and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination — indeed, everything and anything except me.
8 Comments
March 17, 2008 at 9:12 pm
[...] Link back to this blog entry. [...]
March 17, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Thanks, Eddie.
I’ve passed it on.
March 17, 2008 at 9:28 pm
That is a moving picture. I am always moved by Ellison’s intro piece to that book.
March 18, 2008 at 8:24 am
I love the way the world has changed. I suspect many students see what Ellison addressed and the art piece as being in another world. I fear this.
Are you watching Black Magic on ESPN? Do you think your black student athletes understand the importance of race and sports?
March 20, 2008 at 10:54 pm
I am building a virtual quilt from these passion posts, using your images as blocks, with link-backs to your original posts. You can see the passion quilt article here.
And the link to the quilt is here.
March 21, 2008 at 11:41 am
Thank you, Edward. I’ll never get over the irony of how visibility contributes to invisibility.
March 24, 2008 at 8:46 pm
saintreester,
I love what you have done. Wow!!!
March 28, 2008 at 8:36 am
I wish I could influence some of the young African-American men I see at the high school I work at to read Ellison’s novel. The passage you quoted (first page?) is as accurate now as it was in the early ’50’s. Maybe this generation is different. I have yet to meet young folks, black or white, who are reflective enough to answer the question for me.