Teaching about Race and Racism Across the Disciplines

Countering Colorblindness

This idea of being “blind” to the color of a person’s skin and to the racial meaning it confers sounds, at first, like an even and equitable approach to thinking about others and how we treat others. We are all just people, so we are all the same. No one is more entitled than another so simply by saying “I don’t see color” sounds honorable and a balanced view of how teachers can approach subjects, content, or discourse in the classroom. In an ideal world, students are treated fairly, regardless of race, ethnicity, and social position. “Even without deliberate malice or forethought on the part of those in power within the educational system, ‘treating others all the same because we are all the same’ is often the attitude adopted by educators who believe strongly that by simply ignoring racial group membership or skin color, all resulting decisions and practices will be fair.¹ That is all we are trying to do here. Be fair.  But this attitude is just the opposite of fair.

Mae Chaplin’s article, Reclaiming Multicultural Education: Course Redesign as a Tool for Transformation, encouraged me to think about the changes to the approach I’ll make in presenting Ringgold’s books and work and the manner in which I introduce and discuss her life and work. This statement stood out to me:

“To counter such silencing, educators who believe in the transformative nature of multicultural education must not shy away from critically analyzing their own multicultural courses and their proposed outcomes to ensure that such coursework will allow students to develop the ability to name social problems and take subsequent action to address such issues.”²

A good starting point for organizing this unit is to apply the findings in the transformative rubric in Chaplin’s study. Thinking about the indicators of perspectives represented, student engagement and critical thinking and aiming for the goal of moving my standards of teaching multicultural concepts from a narrow and minimal purpose to an approach more aligned with transformative level is the manner in which this unit will be designed and taught.

To shift away from the “flavor of the month” approach to multicultural literature, the categories of teaching and learning could include: (1) Culture, multiculturalism, and social justice (2) Analyzing literature for biases and stereotypes (3) Ethnic and linguistic diversity (4) Culture and religion (5) Media analysis (6) Defining gender (7) Queer perspectives (8) Mental and physical ability. Reorganizing the way we think about presenting content to students can build a sense of continuity with the material covered. These topics can provide students with the means of considering the role their own identities and social status plays when reading and analyzing literature.³