Ch. 12 Literacy and Difference

What caught my attention right away in the chapter was the first sentence; "The Other is teacher before partner" (209).  That jumped out to me right away because it's very true!  Someone who is different from myself will teach me certain things that I've never experienced before.  The teaching by the Other will cling on to me as I travel through what life has to offer, and many times, the Other has become a partner (friend, aquaintance, coworker) and the partnership has become advantageous to me.  Another quote I liked was, "First, cease using ethics as a weapon; disagreement should not immediately move us into referring to an opponent as unethical. Second, embrace the necessity of learning as we meet diverse ethical positions contrary to our own with the assumption that learning does not necessarily suggest agreement."  I think that as human beings we fall into the trap of thinking that if people don't have the same values as us, we are better than them and they are unethical.  We try to use our morals as weapons... we shouldn't do that.  Rather, we should seek to understand why their ethics are different than ours, and then we will be left with the decision of compromising something in our lives from that experience.
There were 3 metaphors that were omnipresent throughout the reading:
1) Pragmatic:  the need for practical engagement of ideas responsive to a particular historical moment.  I think that we are going through this right now as gays/lesbians fight for their rights.  Now I'd be lying to you if I told you I never used the word faggot... But now I choose not to use that type of wording to describe homosexuals.  Through working and interacting with gay men at my restaurant job, I've found them to be brave in a world where they are looked down upon and simultaneously normal people.  They too just want to be financially stable, and happy.  We will look upon this time in America 30 years from now and say, "this is when America started standing up for the gay population".  I'm proud to say that I've had a paradigm shift on this particular topic.
2) Crisis communication— an increasingly relevant metaphor for today’s postmodern moment of virtue contention; the unexpected emerges and requires discernment and action as we encounter differing particular “ goods” in the public domain.  I have a good example of this.  I was with some people who were talking negatively about Somalians... I had to make a choice of wiping this under the rug or making it loud and clear to these people that it's not ok to do this.  I felt that it was critical to make a decision.  It's one thing to think something, but another to act upon it.
3) Communication ethics literacy— identifies the good in the interplay of self and Other and the particular historical moment, attending to what is protected and promoted.  This metaphor made me reflect on the generation that I grew up in.  I believe that now more than ever, race/ class are irrelevant to building relationships.  We haven't been able to say this ever in our country.  We still have a lot of work to do, but it's important that we truly grasp the progress that our generation has embarked on.