My Prior Knowledge

       Growing up in a small southwestern community in Ontario I was very sheltered from the realities of the real world. The community that I grew up in was predominantly white and the majority of the community was upper middle class. This experience led me to be extremely ignorant of diversity and in fact, if I had been asked previous to the beginning of this course what diversity meant to me I would have responded with an answer regarding culture and race. Never would I have taken into account other issues, such as faith, ability, gender, sexuality or social class.

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       In this community I was also never exposed to anything related towards First Nations, Metis or Inuit people. In fact, one of the few times that I was, was when watching sports on TV and would see the Cleveland Indians, Chicago Blackhawks, Atlanta Braves or Washington Redskins playing (which at the time did not understand as cultural appropriation and extremely racist). I saw nothing wrong with these team names and was ignorant to how these teams appropriate an entire culture within a name and a mascot. Apart from this exposure, the only other time that I was exposed to First Nation's culture was when playing lacrosse on the reserve that was just south of my hometown. Even when we played teams on the reserve, some teammates would not make the trip and many of the parents were very critical of the way that these teams played the game, often stating that they were "too rough" or did not "play the game correctly". As a child I once again did not understand just how incredibly racist these statements were and how the phobia of other cultures kept members of my own community from making the trip to play a friendly game. 

      It was only once I began this class that I started to realize that these tendencies displayed to me from members of my community were not only racist and blatantly discriminatory but also used to further isolate these communities from the "dominant" class in my town of upper middle class white people.