Knowledge Practice/Outcome: understand how and why some individuals or groups of individuals may be underrepresented or systematically marginalized within the systems that produce and disseminate information;
Historically, Palestinians have been maligned and disparaged as "other" and the media has created a narrative that enabled the normalization of brutality against them. Critical Cultural Literacy asks us to examine this history and our own information privilege to understand and to start to disentangle misleading, false, and harmful information.
Read "Sweet Little Lies" and watch The Riz Test: how Muslims are misrepresented in TV and film. Then discuss why Muslim stereotypes are so ubiquitous and difficult to dispel. Then, steer the conversation to how this impacts our thinking when it comes to reading about and thinking critically about the current Israel-Hamas conflict using the following as a framing for the discussion:
Dr. Cooke sums up the current crisis: “We are bombarded with racist/racialized malinformation and conditioned to think that it’s normal and acceptable.”
- What steps are you taking to address your exposure to racist malinformation?
- Are there information sources you avoid?
- Are there sources you seek out?
- Are there ways we can push back against the systems of publishing and disseminating information that make malinformation so pervasive?