Wahutu, via Robin

its been an interesting week since we talked about essay writing. I still feel that essay writing is important for students as it helps them to learn how to sustain an argument and make a point by coming with authoritative support for their arguments. A student in my class threw a conniption last Thursday upon receiving an essay prompt in our American Race Relations class. The student was mad since according to him we "hadn't discussed race and race relations since all we had talked about was Whiteness for the past three weeks."  As evident from this he views 'White' as not being a racial group. Upon scheduling an appointment with him i asked to make his case in his essay and come up with a convincing one. In his opinion, asking him to  do this in an essay didn't not make sense. The irony is that on our facebook group, he has been talking about dealing with White priviledge and the idea of whiteness and what it means to be white. Yet last week, talking about Whiteness did not constitute talking about race relations in America. While I do not say this to highlight my bias for essays, I'm baffled at why his argument would be different on Facebook and why he can't write an essay as to why whiteness is not a topic to write about in an essay. perhaps most frustrating, he emailed the grad instructor saying she was not 'qualified' to be teaching the class and i wasn't 'qualified' to be the TA for this class. Since the former is interested in intersectionality of race class gender on the GLBT community and I'm interested in ethnicity and race and how conflicts in Africa are talked about in the West.