Teaching about Race and Racism Across the Disciplines

Learning Activity #3: Contextualize the Struggle

“In Critical Ethnic Studies in High School Classrooms: Academic Achievement via Social Action,” the authors “argue that a critical approach to the teaching of race not only has the potential to make curricula more relevant and engaging, but such an approach also has the potential to foster standards-based academic development across the disciplines.” ³⁰

Race-conscious reporting, like the assignments mentioned in this article, can “attempt to counter that inequality by tapping into the untold and untapped knowledge production of communities of color that is often absent from mainstream curricula.”³¹

Skeptics might think it too drastic to have high-school students write about people’s experiences with deportation, miscarriages, eating disorders, or other difficult life experiences. But, it turns out, having students recognize and communicate difficult experiences can help develp their own agency in life and fight against helicopter parenting--and teaching. 

In the Atlantic’s May 2020 issue, Kate Julian explains in the “The Anxious Child and the Crisis of Modern Parenting” how she was “struck by how many of [the clinicians she spoke with] talked about the importance of learning to endure emotional upset.”  Furthermore, “If we want to prepare our kids for difficult times, we should let them . . . talk candidly about worrisome topics.”  In the closing section of the article, Julian discusses a study done after California’s 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.  The researchers, who by chance were studying the relationship between stress and illness when the earthquake occurred, asked children to “draw the earthquake.”  Some drawings proved to be “cheerful pictures--homes with minor damage, happy families, and smiling yellow suns.”  Others, however, presented “destruction and injury, fear and sadness.”  In the following weeks, the researchers found that “children who drew darker scenes tended to stay healthy . . . while those who drew sunny pictures were more likely to come down with infections and ilnesses.”

While fiction has been highlighted for years as the main entry point into building empathy and developing reading and writing skills, we must remember the power of non-fiction.  Learning about others’ real-life experiences with difficult situations, therefore, helps students prepare for life’s unpredicatable challenges and increases their sensitivity to other’s struggles.

Students gather research that provides context for the person’s experience and use that to expand the profile into a five-page research paper. The articles included in this unit can serve as mentor texts.  As they research, students look for answers to these questions:

• Why is this issue a problem or cause for debate?
• Who is affected by it? How and why?
• Who else is working to address this? How?
• What are other views people ignore, forget, or might be unaware of?
• Who or what is preventing the social issue from being resolved?
• What are the benefits of addressing this issue?

These questions can be written at the top of loose leaf paper (I prefer having students write out this info for easier review by me and doing all of this on one screen proves confusing).  Each question should go on a different sheet of paper.  To decrease the chances of them quoting sources that sensationalize the topic, students use databases (see school’s or city library’s options) and sources with credibility (such as the search option at the Atlantic and National Public Radio). They document the answers to the questions in 4 columns under each question: answer to the question, who provided that answer, the titles of the publication and article, the date of publication.  They should not write on the back of the sheet.

When they have quite a few answers from a variety of sources, they cut each piece of information into strips (why they should not write on the back). Then they tape the information to the section of the profile where it fits to create an outline or sorts. 

Then students merge the person’s experience with the research. Sometimes the information complements each other, sometimes not. The student’s responsibility is to create links for the reader between the profile and the research by adding commentary that explains the significance of the experience or the research when these two are juxtaposed.  Or organizing the person’s experience with the research in a way that helps the article flow also proves valuable. While their commentary might express a bias, they cannot indoctrinate or lecture the audience or sensationalize the situation. They must let the information reveal truths to the reader.

One way to test for inappropriate bias is to have peer reviews where other students look for writing that is dictating what to do, overusing adjectives and adverbs, or language that is focusing more on the writer’s instead of addressing the situation.  Again, the articles included in this unit can serve as mentor texts.

Another way students can assess if their bias is overpowering the reporting is to ask themselves, “Why do I care about this?”  This will help them flesh out the “believing is seeing” ideology mentioned in Ioanide’s article.  Students should submit this reflection with any drafts of the article so the teacher or peers can look to see if the student journalist is simply reporting information that validates their bias.

The most important question I have students ask is one mentioned earlier: What are the implications of the bias?  If the bias in the writing encourages a more race- and socially conscious world, that’s not a bad thing.

In a 2016 Code Switch conversation, Pulitzer-Prize-Winner Wesley Lowery, who covered racial justice and politics for the Washington Post discussed the concept of objectivity, along with Pilar Marrero is a political reporter for the Spanish language daily La Opinión.³²

“I don't even like the word objectivity,” Lowery said.  “When we talk about trying to be objective, we begin the conversation with a lie. Like, we begin the conversation with the lie that we don't have biases and that we don't perceive the world certain ways, right?”  He explained his efforts “to be fair. And that fairness means that [he has] to interrogate [his] own biases.”³³

Marrero challenged media organizations to question themselves when they avoid reporting “issues from the point of view of immigrants . . . by not having Latinos and other minorities in their newsroom, by prioritizing stories that cater to their particular audience that doesn't look like [her] audience.”  She argued, and I agree, “it's all relative.”³⁴

In a June 1A conversation titled, “When Journalists Say They’re Objective — What Does That Even Mean?,” PBS Public Editor Ricardo Sandoval-Palos explained that “objectivity really doesn’t exist.  It’s a word that’s been overused by our industry in an attempt to portray us playing both sides or trying to reflect all sides of an issue equally. You can’t do that,” he said.  “And the main reason you can’t do that is we’re human.  As humans we have subjective impulses.  We make subjective decisions.  We make subjective decisions about how we’re going to write the story.”³⁵