Social Justice Event

On Easter Sunday I took part in my diversity event. I watch a family of 5 kids every Saturday and they are all wonderful. There is a 13 year old names Anthony, a 10 year old Jacee, an 8 year old Isis, a 6 year old Jawarie, and a 3 year old names Romello(Mello). The father Mike is African-American and the mother Rana is Latina. The kids as well as both parents speak both English and Spanish. I was invited to their home for an Easter celebration. After I went to church with my family, I went to their house and there were so many people there. Both family and friends were there and there were about 20 kids there. I spent half the time with the adult and half the time with the children. I had an awesome experience and really loved being part of a different cultures traditions. They had certain ways and orders of doing things through out the day. There were some similarities to my families Easter celebrations, but many differences as well. A huge difference was the types of foods they were serving and when they were serving them. With my family we eat a lunch and a dinner, at their home the food was all put out at noon and was out all day. You could eat as much as you wanted and there was such a variety of foods that people brought. I have traveled to many different Spanish countries and have experienced some different foods. One of my favorite snacks are plantains. They had fresh plantains that Rana's mother had brought and they were so good.
At around 1, we had an Easter egg hunt with 100 eggs and it was crazy! Kids were everywhere and it was very hectic but very fun. I was on the porch with Rana and some other women and we were all talking about the kids and how cute they all were when all of a sudden Rana started yelling at Jawarie in Spanish. He was too close to the road and she was telling him to get away. As soon as this happened i thought about the code-switching that Collier talks about in her article. Like she says "when bilingual people use both languages in speech, alternating the two, they code-switch." In the chart that is found in the article about code-switching, i feel like my example would fall under the situational switches pattern. This is because we were all talking in English and as soon as she went to yell, Rana yelled Spanish.
My second example is from McIntosh's article. I went to play with Isis and some other girls her age and they were playing a Barbie game on their WII. While picking what their Barbie looked like I noticed that there were only white Barbies to choose. When McIntosh lists all the things that he never has to worry about I saw number 20. This states, " I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines featuring people of my race." I couldn't help but wonder if the girls really think about the fact that none of the dolls are the same color as them, and if they even care, because I didn't notice anything. I never thought about this before taking this class and now I feel like it bothers me more than them.
My third example is from Linda Christensen. Now that I am aware of all the amounts of secret educations in cartoons and kids shows I notice it. As the night was starting to wind down, the kids who were still there were watching Spongebob Square Pants. I have heard many things about the content in this show and even the names of things in the show. The place where all the characters live is called Bikini Bottom. This is a very inappropriate name for a children's show. Also there are many things about the roles of women and people who are different then the norm. All the parents were with the kids while they were watching this show and as Christensen says "young people, unprotected by any intellectual armor, hear or watch these stories again and again, often from the warmth of their mother or father's lap." All these readings really have effected my thinking and its so interesting in how i notice everything.