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MICHEL DEGRAFF: So at
the end of the course,

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what I've been wanting--

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and I think that was achieved
for the greater part-- is

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to have students become very
analytical when it comes

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to the use of language,
race, religion,

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gender, as technologies,
technologies

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to create hierarchies of power.

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But if you think of something
that Steven Biko once said,

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Biko once said that the most
efficient tool of the opressor

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is the mind of the oppressed.

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So after the students to
understand how when you grow up

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in a society where there
are various hierarchies that

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are imposed on that
society based on tools,

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like how we perceive race, how
we perceive language varieties,

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how we perceive gender,
how we perceive religion,

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and we ourselves--

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both myself as a faculty of
MIT, but also the students,

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are students coming from
different social groupings--

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we bring those
hierarchies with us.

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And often, it's implicit--
not aware of that.

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So at the end of the course, one
thing which became clear to me

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is that the students
became more aware of how

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these cultural phenomena
and the use of them

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and the position of them are
used as tools to maintain

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those hierarchies.

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So what became
clear to me is that

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towards the end of the
course, the students

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were indeed very self-conscious
of the uses of culture,

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of race, of religion, of
issues about migration

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in creating those walls.

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And I think now they
have tools that they

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can use to break those walls
within themselves, but also

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within the social groups.