Riley Douglas

Some of the major topics touched during the seminar were racism, sexism, literature banishment from school, and culture. We talked about a lot of the main topics of the book, in my opinion, were touched during the discussion. It wasn't one of the best Socratic seminars I was ever in but, the conversation mostly stuck to the topics that I thought were pretty important. I actually thought it was a very in-depth discussion.

 

The most interesting part of the conversation, in my opinion, was when we compared ‘Mexican White’ Boy to ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, I thought the connection we made was phenomenal. It was a part of the seminar, I truly enjoyed and thought to be highly insightful. The racism in both books took a great role and was a leading aspect of both books. “As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it—whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash”.

 

I thought I was somewhat prepared, I finished the book. My annotations where not the greatest and I couldn’t really quote things as easily. The hardest thing about the seminar for me was speaking up, but my favorite part was when we compared the book to ‘Mexican White Boy’. Next time I would like to speak up more and have better annotations.

 

I believe this book matters and does not matter at the same time. It influences use and educates us against and for certain things. At the same time, it is somewhat pointless anymore. We have to look at this in the sense that it is important to show but it doesn't and it’s quite unpopular to the peers that are my age. My evidence from this is the reaction I saw from my peers and how much they put into it.