Critical consciousness is something that is relatively unfamiliar to

almost every student beginning to study intercultural communication. The

idea behind Critical consciousness is easy to understand at first glance, but
the more you begin to study intercultural communication the more the idea
of having a critical consciousness becomes important to your overall
success. Having a critical conscious means having the ability to look at
yourself objectively and examine your views and their effects on your ability
to communicate between cultures. At the start of this course I as many
other white Americans thought that I was not susceptible to any racism or
barriers that would prevent me from communicating with a person from a
different culture. Reading the chapters in Sues book Race talk I began to
see that this in itself is something that most majority Americans feel. I
began to understand that prior to actually defining critical consciousness and
understanding what it meant I was somewhat arrogant and played into much
of what the scholars who study intercultural communication say is true about
white Americans.
One big idea that stood out to me was discussed in Race Talk chapter
3. Sue gives an example of a two students having a discussion about race
that turns into a slight argument. The two students, one white and one
black, discuss race in a way that was very familiar to me. The white student
gives varying arguments that Sue later discusses. One of the arguments the
boy makes is that racism is mostly dead and that the only thing preventing
Black Americans from growing in society and moving up is this commonly
held belief of racism and that if they would just get over it they would be
able to adjust to society much better. After reading this I had to step back
and realize that I agreed with what he was saying and it was not because I
was racist but more so because I was not using my critical conscious to
examine the issue fully. Sue later goes on to demolish this argument, but for
me the real lesson wasnt in what Sue said but more so at the fact that I was
beginning to look at things in a different way.
The textbook readings up until this time had also made me think about
how I approach things. Another example of something that helped expand
my critical conscious and help me look at intercultural communication more
objectively was discussed in both Sue and the textbook. The idea of a Grand
narrative and white and back talk stunned me. Growing up I lived in a very
small town and racism still to this day is a problem that is recognized by very
few. Most of the stories and histories told by the town support and efforts of
a huge divide in the town itself. Grants, New Mexico the name of the town, is
a small mining town supported almost entirely off of uranium and coal mine
production. The problem that exist today is that most of the stories and
history of the town is supported by the notion that minorities work the so

called blue collar jobs on the mines and the whites run almost all of the
management positions. Before understanding critical consciousness and
being able to look at this objectively and understanding the oppression that
the minority workers feel and have to overcome I just took this for what
history was and in actuality it was just a larger support of the white
narratives and histories surrounding the community stuck back in time.
In closing I think that having a critical conscious is something that has
become ever more important in todays society. We suffer from almost a
blind racism that has plagued this nation since after the civil rights acts.
Most white Americans are unaware or simply too afraid to look at what is
right in front of them and instead would rather listen to the histories that
support them the best and make their minds to not see the racism that
exists to this day. I also feel that critical conscious is something that changes
and as I read more and study more about different cultures I will be able to
understand and think critically about what is actually going on and how it
effects intercultural communication.