Conference Proceedings 2010 [pdf] - Art & Design Symposium ...

great divide to experience our interconnectedness, interdependency and even perhaps for an elusive second—
our oneness. In this realm, there is of course no question or issue of social justice, for we understand that we
are profoundly each other and each other’s keeper.
Breaking the Social Comfort Zone and Facilitating Positive Interethnic Relations through the
Arts among Pre-service Art Teachers
Ryan Shin, University of Arizona
Ryan Shin
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I will describe a diversity project I designed to
facilitate ethnic interaction for pre-service art
teachers and to engage them with members of
other ethnic or racial groups and backgrounds. In
this endeavor, my students were asked to explore
an ethnic object and to conduct an in-depth
interview with a person or group of people
ethnically and culturally associated with the object.
In so doing, they located and explored an ethnic
object found in their own local community and then
conducted an in-depth interview with a person, or
persons, who owned, used, wore, or displayed it.
A list of ethnic object examples will be shared in this paper in order to demonstrate the variety of cultural
objects to be found in the Tucson community. After that, I will share what my students have learned from this
object-study project and by participating in interethnic or intercultural communication. This is summarized as
follows: they learned how to overcome their psychological fears, how to self-correct misunderstandings and
their own ignorance of the studied people and culture, gained an appreciation and awareness of the role
played by the generational gap in placing value on their ethnic culture, and they came to a realization of the
abundant cultural resources available to them as future educators.
Introduction
Many of us grew up in neighborhoods that offered limited opportunities to meet, talk, and share with people
different from our own ethnic or racial background (Tatum, 2000). Even though there has been a great
improvement in the area of desegregation among groups of people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds
since the onset of the Civil Rights Movement in America, we still see the prevalence of residentially segregated
neighborhoods where Whites and Blacks choose to live separate from each other, reflecting social and
economic stratification based upon race and class (Massey, 2004). A recent newspaper article reporting on the
subject of divided proms between Whites and Blacks in a small town in Georgia in 2009 indicates that there is
still a significant racial barrier between these racial groups. Parents in the town refused to support one prom
and have actively discouraged their children to mix and develop social relationships with those of another race,
which makes me wonder which prom an Asian, Hispanic, or Indigenous high school senior would be able to
attend without the danger of social unrest, or worse.
Often this social segregation and related lack of interaction among groups of people who live in ethnically and
culturally isolated enclaves is the primary cause of prejudice and misunderstanding among the youth of our
nation, eventually leading to the perpetuation of the visible and invisible forms of discrimination that many
minority groups of people have experienced. We often hear about and witness, in daily newspapers and other
visual and audio media, widespread examples of individual and institutional discriminatory events, hate crimes,
and behavior based in the culture of racial and ethnic stereotypes. In particular, popular culture—as
represented by TV, films, and literature for young children—has continued to make a huge impact on the
stereotyping of races and ethnic groups (Cortes, 2000), along with early socialization learned from parents or
other significant family members and conservative social institutions (Harro, 2000).