Addressing Racism in the Classroom
We live in a society where students of color remain seriously underserved by institutions of higher education. Racism within higher education manifests in a myriad of ways including structural discrimination (e.g., admissions, loans, and grades), microaggressions, and overt acts of racial violence. And, the ways that people, and particularly white people, talk about race makes it harder to address it as a problem. Currently, the dominant way of talking about race is to engage in what I call race-evasive rhetoric, which is predicated upon the belief that people can look past racial categorization. There are two ways that it manifests: “normative” and “idealistic.” Normative race-evasive rhetoric refers to the idea that racism no longer exists. This notion perpetuates the belief that claims of racial discrimination or violence are unsubstantiated illusions that people of color use to gain unearned advantages (e.g., pulling the race card). Idealistic race-evasive rhetoric, on the other hand, refers to the notion that people can look “past” or “beyond” race to see a person as “just” human.
The idealistic race-evasive rhetoric discourse is perhaps the most used racial frame in contemporary U.S. society. For some people, this type of discourse may manifest in the notion that parents should not teach their children to see racial difference in the hope of creating a race-unconscious generation. For others, it might mean that commenting on racial difference in any way is racist and that people should just act as if a person is raceless. Regardless of its particular manifestations, idealistic race-evasive rhetoric has at its root the liberal humanist ideal that there is a common essential quality in all humans that, if we try hard enough, can be uncovered to unite all people as one.
Although the idea that the concept of “race” could be removed from the public imagination and that society could return (or has returned) to a time when race was not a factor might be appealing to some, there are compelling reasons suggesting that this way of thinking is problematic. First, if we believe that racism is truly over and that race plays no part in organizing peoples’ experiences or their economic circumstances, what other reasons can be offered for the vast disparities of wealth and access along racial lines in contemporary U.S. society? The answer to this is often an unreflective racism that asserts there are deep-seated genetic and/or cultural traits that can account for these disparities.
Second, the idea that people should stop seeing race relies on the idea that they can stop seeing race. However, as Leonardo (2009) points out, “trying to recapture a time before race after centuries of racialization is like trying to remember how a conversation in medias res got started in the first place. Too much has been said and too much has been done” (p. 35). In other words, the historical weight of hundreds of years of racism can be neither ignored nor overlooked. The colorblind discourse assumes a blind utopianism that suggests that not only can people (as individuals) stop seeing race, but that collectively the entire population can stop seeing race all at the same time. Due to the impossibility of “not” seeing race, many scholars argue that the colorblind discourse is a way to perpetuate racism in the post-Civil Rights era. As Giroux (2003) states: “[Race evasion] is a convenient ideology for enabling Whites to ignore the degree to which race is tangled up with asymmetrical relations of power, functioning as a potent force for patterns of exclusion and discrimination, including, but not limited to, housing, mortgage loans, healthcare, schools, and the criminal justice system” (p. 199). As a system of thinking and talking about race, people who engage in the race-evasive discourse obfuscate the ways that power and privilege are mobilized in U.S. society and, therefore, privilege white people as the dominant racial group.
As a teacher, it is your job to confront, rather than evade, talk about race and racism. You cannot ask students to bravely and boldly confront the issues that face them if you are unwilling to name the systems that shape and constrain students’ everyday lives. Saying the word “dog” does not magically produce a four-legged, furry animal just like saying “race” does not produce racism. Adopting a social justice stance toward racism is essential to addressing its harms. Instead of seeking to eliminate or downplay the differences in culture, taste, attitudes, or norms that are linked to our racial histories, a social justice perspective values and affirms those difference as a potential site of dialogue, growth, and change. So, there are three things you can do in the classroom to help make this happen:
1) Classroom Discussion: When you talk with students about racism, what are you doing to ensure that students of color are not having to endure trauma in the form of racist attacks, ignorance, or pressure to make them teach the other students about their group or systemic racism? Make sure that you are stepping into conversations to both model best practices for handling discussion about weighty topics while also pushing students to learn to become more empathetic about experiences from other racial/ethnic groups.
2) Temperature Check: Are all of your students feeling included and affirmed in the class? How would you know? Often teachers think that if students are not verbal about their issues, then there must not be any problems to address. However, students may hold back their feedback for a variety of reasons: politeness, respect, or fear of reprisal. Make sure you are giving students frequent opportunities to discuss how they are feeling in the class. Minimally, it may reveal more effective ways you can teach. Maximally, it might identify racist (or sexist, cissexist, etc.) actions going on in the class that you were unaware of that you can now address.
3) Be Humble: Instructors, particularly white instructors, may fall into the trap of surety when they teach. They forget how much work they had to do to develop a social justice consciousness toward race and become impatient or unforgiving to students struggling to make the same connections. Remember the first time you really put your foot in your mouth about race—keep that image in your head as you work with a student through their own racist ideologies. This is not to say we should let students off the hook for racism, but humility comes from a respect for the struggle to unlearn the centuries of sedimented histories of racism in students’ (and our own) consciousness.
As you move forward, remember that our team, and those others in our community, are always here for you.
C. Kyle Rudick
The Engage and Activate Team
