"Reframing: A group that plays together stays together: Tracing a story of racial violence." Revisiting the great white north? Reframing whiteness, privilege, and identity in education (second edition) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Pulling Back the ‘Post-Racial’ Curtain: Critical Pedagogical Lessons from Both Sides of the Desk
Teaching Race and Anti-Racism in Contemporary America, edited by K. Haltinner. New York: Springer , 2014
Though popular belief and social science analyses often assert the racial tolerance and liberality of institutions of higher education and the white students who attend them, our research reveals young, educated white students’ everyday lives are anything but racially neutral. We pull back the curtain on these “post-racial” assumptions by presenting journal data collected from white students around the U.S. over many years now. Our data documents that racist performances are a normal, habituated part of most white students’ social worlds. Nonetheless, we also find that asking students to research and write about their own lives in the context of instruction that addresses the critical realities of systemic racism can be a powerful educational tool. We explore the limits of mainstream educational and multiculturalism approaches in probing the deep realities of systemic racism; address the challenges of confronting our white students’ deeply embedded racial framing; and characterize strategies progressive, antiracist educators should consider in developing a race critical pedagogy for white students.
Literacy in Composition Studies, 2015
The late Critical Race Theorist, Derrick Bell, argued that we must see racial progress as cyclical, sometimes regressing in catastrophic ways and, at other times, incrementally moving forward (Bell, Delgado). He called this position Racial Realism and saw it as the most hopeful and pragmatic theoretical lens and praxis to do anti-racist work. His reminder of the importance of Racial Realism seems all the more portent today given the brutal murder of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, the treatment of Rachel Jeantel’s court testimony about Trayvon’s murder, the nationwide protests that have animated young activists, the discursive somersaults that law enforcement and state institutions continually maneuver to justify racial profiling, and the obvious and constant reminder that to be black in the United States is to be the target of a ruthless racial violence. Most days, it feels like I am still an undergraduate during the 1992 rebellions in South Central Los Angeles when the acquittal of the police officers who beat Rodney King got us to our feet. Sylvia Wynter reminded us, as best captured in her writing called “‘No Humans Involved’: An Open Letter to My Colleagues,” as we protested on our campuses, that we be sure to keep the epistemological frameworks and knowledge systems of our disciplines in focus. She passionately urged us to decode the symbolic violence that was encoded into our disciplinary sense-making that was ideologically wedded to the very same violence waged against Rodney King and South Central Los Angeles. I propose to take up Wynter’s charge here: 1) that, we begin to notice the violence in the classrooms and research that we sustain, and; 2) that, we question the disciplinary apparatus that makes it possible that racially subordinated students of color will experience racial violence at the site where they are supposed to be democratically educated: the composition classroom. I’m talking about the kind of social and political processes that we need in order to prevent racist logics as viable membership in this community that we call composition-rhetoric and I am calling these racist logics of the same order of violence as the murder of Trayvon Martin and dismissal of Rachel Jeantel. Wynter was always sure that undoing racial violence is an intellectual and epistemological task, but only if we see the work in front of us. I am not interested here in general discussions about moral and philosophical principles of equity, equality, or diversity. I am offering my own personal experiences and stance of bearing-witness as more than just one individual’s observations but an indication of the levels of systemic racism that we do not address. I take up the tools that Allan Luke privileges: the tools of “story, metaphor, history, and philosophy, leavened with empirical claims,” all of which Luke argues are as integral to truth-telling and policymaking as field experiments and meta-analyses (368). I take up these tools in the context of myself as a writer and researcher of black language, education, and literacies as well as an educator of future compositionists. I use two main-frame narratives to offer stories of institutional racism that compositionists--- and thereby, our field--- have maintained. These frames offer a place to decode the symbolic violence that is encoded into our disciplinary sense-making and move towards what a theory of Racial Realism might entail for our classrooms and discipline.
Engaging whiteness: How racial power gets reified in education
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 2003
The central question addressed in this essay is how students engage in a class that focuses on the political and social power of whiteness. Specifically, it looks at how whiteness gets inscribed and reified in our education practices, even as we try to disrupt its normative influence. The essay is based upon an in-depth qualitative study of a graduate seminar dedicated to addressing diversity issues critically. We conclude that despite students' expressed intentions and efforts at disrupting whiteness, they draw upon a variety of discourses that actually serve to protect and secure whiteness's dominant position. Twelve different discourses that students cite are described, grouped into four broad appeals: to self, to progress, to authenticity, and to extremes. Understanding how students invoke these discourses as an implicit way of resisting critical engagements with whiteness can help us to problematize these practices as well as cultivate more productive and enabling interactions.
Historically, definitions of race have tended to move back and forth from humanistic description of a singular, unique personage to the individual as the metaphoric and iconic representative of a group, nation, culture, principle, or ideology. The mobility of racial designations emphasizes to what extent race and raciality-the state of being raced from without-are unstable. Racial designation from without and its internalization underscore the process as a persistent myth. Smalls, 1998:2 By and large, the discussion and definitions used when examining race and racism in academic research settings versus less formal, public settings can vary significantly. Even academic content that is embedded in social experience can remain -esoteric, seemingly inapplicable, remote, and elitist‖ (Cushman, 1999:335) if it is not tightly bound to local ideologies, value systems and lived experiences of those whom the knowledge is ultimately intended to serve 1 . Moreover, specialized nomenclature, theoretical modeling, and high priced registration fees for conferences or workshops concerning race and racism further ostracize the public from this conversation. In most academic disciplines a general lack of understanding amongst lay persons is acceptable, if not entirely expected; however the ramifications for racial discourse are exceedingly relevant to every individual, irrespective of their geographic location, gender, age, ethnicity or class. Therefore the academician studying race and racism carries a 1 Here, we assume that research on race and racism generally aims at serving the public good through increased understanding although we recognize that researchers themselves benefit from the accrual of publications, conference participation, etc. on personal and professional levels as well (e.g. gaining tenure and therefore increased autonomy).
Beyond the breach: transforming White identities in the classroom
Race Ethnicity and Education, 2004
Efforts aimed at promoting multiculturalism in the classroom are often pedestrian and ineffectual. When instructors do succeed at facilitating honest discourse, they frequently fail to anticipate the great deal of pain, frustration and anger that is invoked. Rather than sustain a false sense of community, we argue that a dialogic, multicultural community can only be achieved by fostering breach of mainstream norms. Using cultural anthropologist Victor Turner's notion of social drama as a theoretical framework, we document the intense con¯ict that erupted in our classroom when students were pressed to engage one another regarding issues of race. In order to both acknowledge and make public our students' emotional responses to the dialogue, we implemented a`recursive loop', a pedagogical strategy designed to provide immediate feedback and enable students to come to a richer understanding of how their experiences of race are inextricably linked. By analyzing the students' discourse, we demonstrate how these voices do not occur in a vacuum; to the contrary, they are articulated in response to one another and to grand narratives used to make years of oppression appear invisible. Ultimately, we contend that White Identity Transformation is necessary for a multicultural community and that such transformation is facilitated, ironically enough, by con¯ict.