Common Ground

What's next?

Are we at the end or the beginning of our minorities project?

By Marie Novakova 
Prague 2007: Common Ground

I tried not to think anything about Native Americans before I came to United States. I was trying not to have any preconceptions, or prejudice. I was hoping that I could make my own opinion, my own image of Native Americans, based on what I will see and hear during our project – in the country, where Native Americans live daily life. So far for me, the only “Indians” I had seen were the skillful musicians playing beautiful music on crowded streets in Prague, with tourists buying their CDs, or the mysterious notions from books and articles I have read to prepare for the Media and Minorities project.

Clashing Cultures

Romas feel blindfolded, trying to make sense of the majority‘s conflicting social attitudes

By Ashley McKee
Prague 2007: Common Ground

I had no expectations before I came to Prague. I knew very little about the Czech Republic, and much less about Prague, but I was excited by the prospect of exploring a new city, meeting new people, and studying a new culture.  Our instructor urged us to have an open mind, and I didn’t see that as a difficult task. I would like to think I have an open mind.

But, I now know what I thought seemed like a very small statement at the time was actually quite large.  I had to really open my mind.  I felt like I had traveled backward to the 1960s when blacks were fighting tooth and nail for their civil rights.  We five American students had no clue what we were getting into: two peoples fighting for their way of life.  One culture, a minority, fighting to preserve the little tradition they still have left and another, the majority, out to justify hard work and what it means to have to live in the modern day.