Friends Reactions

I have talked to many of my friends about this class and the white nationalist movement and have had mixed reactions. The reaction I usually get when I tell people that I am in a class that is about discusses the ideals and beliefs behind the white supremacy movement they typically respond with "are you serious?!" and there faces typically look like this 
All joking aside when I explain to them what the class is about they typically calm down and listen to what we are discussing in our course. I still feel a little awkward when talking about this class and the judgements that people make about you for taking such a controversial class. The high school I went to was much more diverse then any of the classes I have taken at this University and by taking this class I didn't want people to think that I was a racist or that I believe in any of the same ideas as the ones we discuss in class and I think that I'm not the only one that felt that way. But after awhile this class has opened my eyes a little to the history and the present standing of racial equality. Having said that I feel that my roommates have gotten the majority of the conversations as I obviously see them the most and they have to listen to me blabber about what we talked about in class each day. I have talked to them about terms we have learned and I think for the most part they kind of tuned those out as it wasn't and isn't relevant to their daily lives. However at the end of this course we watched American History X and that caught their attention however because it is a major Hollywood film and they have all seen it at one time or another. One of them happens to be a little more interested in social issues and continued to listen. I think this fits well with my blog's focus as well as it shows how powerful media is, especially movies. In addition to our talks about American History X and with one of my roommates showing a little more interest at least enough to listen I would share with him the book Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead by Frank Meeink. We talked about how different Frank's life was from ours and how we were lucky to have been raised in a place that didn't seem to have as many race based problems although we have learned that maybe we have been a little blind in noticing it. Even though this was not something our professor wanted to get into for a lack of discussion time I brought it up to my roommates as we were randomly watching the "Blind Side" which is a "true" story about an underprivileged black teen who was basically homeless and taken in by a white family. The point I made to my friends which we briefly discussed in class was that these feel good stories make the black population look like they are incapable of taking care of themselves and that they need to rely on a white person to take care of them. I have heard that this movie was fairly controversial with the real-life people involved at least the main character and with organizations that felt the message was to make African Americans look weak. I'm sure we could debate this but I thought it was a good way to bring this class into a real life situation with a friend. I feel that I got more out of this class because of the willingness of a few of my friends a few of whom are in the class to discuss and continue to view debates from different angles. While a lot of people may not understand what this classes intended purpose is (myself included before I took it) I think that it is beneficial to explore this topic as it is important in our everyday lives and for the pursuit of racial equality.