What in your growing up affected your learning about the world? What major influences/events shaped how you understand the world?

Barb Thomas, “Learning from Discomfort: A Letter to My Daughters”
I included this article in order to have us think about our own defensiveness, resistances, discomfort and hopefully to provide some insights and tools to help us not get stuck in a negative place.
1. Does this article help you see/understand your reactions to any of the preceding articles in this chapter differently? How?
2. What in your growing up affected your learning about the world? What major influences/events shaped how you understand the world?
3. Where does your understanding of racism? Sexism? Ablism? Class? Heterosexism and homophobia? Gender identity? come from?
4. Do you find Thomas’s five ideas at the end of the article useful?
Martha Minow – Sources of Difference
1. What is the dilemma of difference that Minow talks about? What is the catch 22 that it presents? Can you give an example? How does this dilemma relate to the critiques that Matsuda, Williams and Razack raise?
2. Explain in your own words the five assumptions that Minow describes as underlying the dilemma of difference. What examples does Minow give of each? Can you think of additional examples of these assumptions? Which of these assumptions do you hold?
3. What does it mean to say that we are each equally different from each other? What is the impact of such a statement?
4. What are your unstated norms?
5. What is the effect of these unstated assumptions? Why does it matter that they are unstated?