“It can be hard to stand up
straight in a crooked room.” This sentence from Sister Citizen
by Melissa Harris-Perry really helped me see how a person
can be influenced and shaped by
their surroundings.
The visual of telling a person to sit up straight while they are in a
crooked
chair in a crooked room seems simple, but it’s really difficult
because they determine if they are
sitting up straight by looking at their surroundings. Some people
will figure it out and sit up
straight, while others will end up sitting crooked even when
they think they are straight.
Even if I can’t imagine myself as a minority due to gender,
race or culture in a certain situation,
I can easily image myself trying to sit up straight in a
crooked chair in a crooked room. It
would
be difficult because I am looking at everything around me to
make my decisions. Our
surroundings influence our actions
and behaviors, intentionally or
unintentionally, and we don’t even realize it is happening.
In addition, people need to be
aware that what they communicate about
something because it is creating or contributing to the
environment of others. In one of our
last readings “Between Speech and Silence: Reflections on
Accountability”, Ann Russo tells
about a white feminist standing up and speaking out about
minority rights, but she learned
she was undermining the situation and reinforcing the environment
of stereotype of minority
women instead of helping the situation. It is important to remember, we can influence
an environment just as easily as being influenced by the
environment. According to an article
in Mutual Responsibility, scientific research has shown that
if genes predispose a certain
behavior, but the environment doesn’t support it, the
behavior usually won’t manifest just like
the person trying to sit straight in a crooked chair. Another reading in the Law Library Journal,
has psychologists and other social scientists agreeing that
people are not always consciously
aware of what they are doing and why they are do things
because their environment is
influencing their behavior, just like the crooked chair in
the crooked room.
Links
http://www.mutualresponsiblity.org/science/3-ways-the-environment-shapes-
human-behavior
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