Weekly Response

This week’s readings and in class discussions were some very interesting ones. They really made me reconsider some things that I had never looked at in my life before this week. I had never really questioned anything such as bible verses being translated in the eyes of only Eurocentric males to display a message that benefits them or anything of that nature. Although I do not think the way the bible verses were translated have really had any great effect on how people perceive whites or blacks like the book may have suggested that it did, it was still very interesting to read about. It would be interesting to see other areas of the bible that may have been translated to benefit a Eurocentric perspective. This subject also made me consider a few other things about biblical translations. It spurred thoughts about if all modern different language bibles were translated from the former Latin Roman Catholic bible that was universal before the Reformation, and if they are generally all the same messages in them because of that. I think it would be interesting to see if you translated a Spanish or some other language bible into English if the messages you see in them would still be the same or if they would be slightly altered to potentially benefit the dominant culture like this biblical example we looked at.

                One of the most interesting things that came up in class this week was when Jacob brought up his belief about how women being able to bear children still directly affects their worth in our modern society.  When he said this, I was in absolute shock and just waiting to see the reactions of the women in the classroom to his statement. Unsurprisingly, no one else in the class really supported this belief. Although I in no way shape or form agree with his belief about women’s value in society being related to their ability to produce children anymore, I can somewhat understand his reasoning for his personal beliefs although I still believe you cannot make sweeping generalizations based off of a few personal experiences like that.

                Another thing that really made me reconsider some of my perspective from class this week was when I said that I believed that the first article we read may have been out of date and that I personally never really saw any issues like this growing up in the 21^st century. When I said this, Dr. Stein questioned me from the author’s perspective and said that the author would argue that I was so used to growing up in the social location that I was raised in that I would be blind to things like that and never even look for them in my day to day life. Although I can not one hundred percent confirm or deny whether or not I was actually totally blind to these occurrences in my childhood, I can say that after that I will try and see how something would feel from someone else’s social location while judging a situation after that.