Teaching about Race and Racism Across the Disciplines

Teacher Background Knowledge

Colorblindness and Race Neutrality

Teachers who adopt CBRI are likely to avoid racial questions or comments from students because they are “uncomfortable” or “sensitive” and because they believe in emphasizing “sameness” over difference. However, teachers who dismiss students’ questions or comments about race, fearing that they will introduce prejudice into the child’s life or assuming that differences do not matter, thwart the child’s ability to engage in constructive discourse and to develop critical thinking on the subject.¹

When you hear “colorblind” or “race neutrality” what do you think? For most, you assume that this is a good practice. Colorblindness and race neutrality indicate that race is not explicitly named and has little to no impact on society. The true problem with these words is that they are actively dismissing the differences of race and the outcomes that will continue to perpetuate segregation and hierarchy. The terms create segregation under the guise of the language of neutrality. In the classroom, bringing awareness to racism or a consciousness to racism is to engage students to question and evaluate power and our society. It is important to know that neutrality does not equal justice and treating unequal conditions equally will only reproduce inequality. Lifting the veil of colorblindness allows you to examine the impact and not just the intent. Ultimately, this allows the focus to move from being on the process but allowing you to examine the power.

We must examine power in all disciplines, however, in this unit I will address it through the humanities. Felice Blake speaks of this very idea in her article, “Why Black Lives Matter in the Humanities” from the book Seeing Race Again. Blake explains it is not enough to just include populations that have been excluded but also change our approach to reading. She uses the example of The Color Purple written by Alice Walker asking, “did we think critically about the novel’s profound concern with the vulnerability and the complexities of poor black community’s even as we championed Black creativity?”² It is with this question I see the change to my own thinking. One way to change our approach is to acknowledge when something was not right and using the statement, “The United States was wrong about…” or substituting a person’s name for the United States. Even admitting that I was wrong about… allows students to see that it is ok to be imperfect, vulnerable and that no one is infallible. We teach our students that it is ok to question whether something is appropriate or just or moral, then we provide the students to use the analyzation skills to seek the truth about different subjects. In this ELA unit, my focus must be on the telling and retelling of stories that give some insight into where the author has been as well as where they are going.

We read not simply to marvel at the creativity of literariness, but to do so in ways to acknowledge that power as it articulates new ways of being, knowing and engaging. Race -conscious reading practices point us toward a reorientation and transformation of the humanities and of the university itself. A revitalized humanities studying & documenting how people process human experience would be poised to set forth a new vision of possibility.³

Blake understood exactly what reading should look like in the classroom. She references the university but the same is true on every level of education and the importance of acknowledging the power each book we read has over us. It reminds me of the telling of the story of the three little pigs. In the many versions of the book, each pig makes a house, one of sticks, one of straw and the other of bricks. The story continues with the villain, “The Big, Bad Wolf” coming to get the little pigs. Ultimately, the story is about the outsmarting of the wolf. However, in The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka, the story is told from the point of view of the wolf. (Spoiler alert: the wolf had allergies and although the pigs thought he was after them, he was just looking to make some friends.) When I use these stories to teach sequence of events, I also teach the students that sometimes what appears to be the truth in one story is only the truth of the storyteller. I am sure that many stories shared with our students have different points of view and it is complicated to show our students how one’s point of view can change their interpretation of events. This is essential to helping our students learn that we need to not only include different points of view, but we need to see how important these points of view are to the community.

Schools

Grace Lee Boggs described the dominant model of schools as a “factory model of education”⁴ in which schools served as a pipeline from the classroom to the factory. Students would sit through hours of lecture where they would be given all the information, they needed to be successful. Teachers would stand at the front of the room and provided students with all the material they would need as they moved forward in their lives. The problem arose that this version of school was not beneficial for the students to learn and grow. Freedom Schooling however is offering up many sites of learning and engagement that go beyond the classroom. The focus is that students and teachers are exchanging knowledge on a horizontal axis. Allowing students to be active makers of knowledge and shaper of social life.

Curriculum

The very nature of our current curriculum design makes it impossible to value and honour the rich culture, tradition, and familial experience each child brings with them in the classroom.⁵

Much of modern history curriculum is about the United States, it around colonialism and the establishment of this country through the eyes of those in power. Although most history books mention slavery and the civil war, they leave out the fact that all slaves were not free until June 19, 1865 which was two years following Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and 5 months after the passing of the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution. The Civil Rights Movement is introduced, what is left out is that the fight for Civil Rights did not end with the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In fact, many of the rights that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and so many others fought for are still being fought for by many groups including the Black Lives Matter Movement. If we look at any of the creative arts curriculum, there is still a focus around a “whiteness” or the thought that the products created by people of color are not as crucial to our society because it is not the “norm”. As we look at curriculum, we must analyze it for what it is trying to tell us and not what it is simply written. In the article, Teaching K-8 Students about Race, it points out that “…what makes the history curriculum a central space for debating issues of representation, national history, and race is that most if not all U.S. citizens are expected at one time or another to read, sing, and learn a common narrative of American history in school.”⁶ We expect all citizens to know that basics of American History but leave out the impact that some of the citizens had on the country. It is our job as teachers to expand our knowledge and challenge the curriculum to present all sides of history as one cohesive history. Not one of the different sides of history happen independent of the others. In fact, when we review most of history, we will see how they work together to show the whole picture of history.

An obstacle in our approach to teaching about race and racism is that it can be extremely uncomfortable to have open discussions about these topics. Do not get me wrong, I know how uncomfortable it is to have these discussions, but it is our obligation to our students to learn and grow as they are learning and growing. Not only must we go looking for this information, we must bring it back to our schools and districts to assist in the change throughout the system. I know that teaching race and racism may seem like a difficult subject especially for our younger learners, however, it is possible that this may not only assist with the students interactions with each other but extend into their homes where they will be share what they are learning. Teaching social justice requires that we change how we teach so that we can create an environment that produces active and engaged learners. Using different mediums (newspapers, magazines, online journals, blogs, etc.), also will allow the student to become more engaged in the learning because they will see how history or racism affects them in their world.