Teaching about Race and Racism Across the Disciplines

Strategies: Holding space for anti-racist discussions in an art classroom

Center student voice

The repetitive nature of the discussions present in this curriculum unit are to allow a multitude of entry ways for students to share stories. If discussion is not a staple in your art classroom already, it should be, as well as the understanding that “curricular knowledge should be an interdisciplinary product of heterogeneous sources, and pedagogy should be organized around the thesis of the constructed nature of all knowledge… best facilitated by an open practice of knowledge production rooted in a plurality of methodologies and strategies of inquiry.”⁶¹ In a truly democratic classroom, the art teacher should acknowledge that they are not the sole disseminator of knowledge and students are not blank slates to their own culture.

When student voices are centered, the classroom might not look like a traditional hand-raising and cold-calling type classroom anymore, where one answer is “correct.” That upholds the notion that the teacher is all-knowing and students need to earn that information from them. Instead, ask open ended questions and allow students to pose questions to the group. Don’t make judgements, especially with your facial expression, if answers seem off topic. Aim to “develop tactics that foste[r] greater affective and intellectual receptivity to learning… respecting students’ widely divergent points of entry into race-gender sexuality-conscious knowledge.”⁶²

Recognizing racial biases in your identity and how you ask questions

No amount of social justice work can completely undo our own personal histories which shape our biases and perceptions. “Teachers need to be aware that in spite of their efforts to be culturally responsive in their classrooms, the dynamic and pervasive economic and political dimensions of the dominant culture will have considerable impact on what occurs. This is because the school reflects the division and discontinuity that exists in American society as a whole.”⁶³ Avoid dominant the conversation or starting statements with “as a white person…” because that’s obvious to students as they have been watching you longer than you have been watching them. Realize you are part of a centuries-old tradition where the teacher’s sole job is to educate the unknowing masses and there is power inequality in every student-teacher dynamic.

Deconstructing biases in what is considered fine art

Art consumption and participation outside of the classroom may be “visible in the physical infrastructure of institutions, such as the intimidating grand staircases at the entrances of major museums” or the unintentional employment of monolingualism at art galleries and of the crowd that frequent a gallery opening. Challenge those ideals and what narrative of subordination they uphold. Decolonize the dominant discourse: a field trip to a marble-lined downtown fine arts museum may be exclusionary. Lauding the same museum as an elusive exhibition venue for career-seeking artists to aspire may also downplay societal factors that keep artists of color out of such institutions.

Students are already interested in art: fashion, video game, music, personal decoration, crafts, personal expression. “What children have learned, and the ways in which they learned, from their own ethnic and sociocultural group must be valued, respected, and utilized by the culturally responsive teacher. Children are learning in many other ways; schooling is merely a part of this larger educational process.”⁶⁴ Let children be the experts of the art they know best. At the very least, acknowledge that their interests count as art worth learning more about and make a conscious decision to design curriculum around them. “If art education continues to be offered as a highly defensive reaction to dominant culture, it is precluded from making positive contributions. But to seek an insider's experience, with a collaborative model of production, to respect students for how they cope with the conditions imposed upon them, to acknowledge the perennial nature of dominant-culture content, and to recognize the changing political and social contexts in which cultural standards are established, maintained, and revised are first principles for a socially relevant art education. Such an art education would both earn the right and possess the potential to contribute critically to the meaning beliefs students form with dominant culture.”⁶⁵

Recognize that not all labor experiences are the same

While this curriculum highlights the identity of Mexican-Americans rooted in labor, it is not to say that Mexican-Americans are only domestic and farm workers. Students within your classroom may have a completely different family history or experience and do not see mirrors in labor at all. Some may be ashamed and do not want to share. Some may want to take the two projects a different direction. Students may take away a completely different intended message. Your role is to honor their narratives even if it doesn’t match your unit intention.

By asking students to openly discuss and create artwork, your curriculum “asks students to reflect on their emotional attachment to particular values, principles, and ways of being. It invites advantaged and disadvantaged students to openly scrutinize fears of losing friendships and familial bonds, chances toward economic and professional mobility, and a physical safety as a result of aligning with antiracist feminist praxis. Although the pedagogy of emotional engagement has no hard and fast rules, it is rooted in the counterintuitive proposal that the more educators foster emotional openness and relinquish affective rigidity, the more students will adopt self-reflective attitudes.”⁶⁶ Teaching Gomez, Alicia, Baca, and reflecting through artwork creation is a radical act.

Surround students with their own artwork in the classroom and around the school

Many art classrooms feature works of professional artists or canonical artists on the walls. Maybe the artwork is outdated and feature students from years past or only exemplary students. Include everyone, even if that means changing the décor often. The understanding is that it is not only the masters that are worth learning from, but that students can learn from each other. Art education has historically presented adult models as the only exemplars worth learning from and discouraged child art, equating children’s artwork to that of “early races” – African and Asian people. Twentieth century scholarship on primitivism and expressionism compare African and Asian art to that of children’s – both “delight in bright glistening things… in strong contrasts of color, as well as in certain forms of movement, as that of feathers… sentiment of the child for the beauty of flowers.”⁶⁷ Be anti-racist by placing children’s artwork on the wall, and refer to them often, in examples, in discussion, in appreciation, in instruction.