Teaching about Race and Racism Across the Disciplines

Content Objectives:

“The future of the country will be determined by what happens in the schools.”¹² To build a unit that justifies this quote, we have to remember a goal of education. One goal of education is transformation; to help cultivate and develop an environment of challenge, change and hope. We must challenge dominant and neutral narratives by understanding racial recognition vs racial rule.¹³ Racial recognition is recognizing race, while neglecting to realize and address racial rule. Racial rule is the power and authority of whiteness and oppression.¹⁴ This is all known as colorblindness. Essentially colorblindness is saying that one doesn’t see color and sees everyone as equal. It negates the fact that we are all different and our differences should be noticed, accepted, learned and taught, yet not discriminated against. Colorblindness does not embrace difference, rather it dismisses it. The objective is not to be found in colorblind ideology, or African American exceptionality, saying that Johnathon is an African American boy who somehow is better than others and is the only person of color to succeed. The goal is to recognize the more dominant narratives and display counter narratives and show the importance of community and unity with each life. Dr. Felice Blake said it well, it isn’t enough to include texts by historically aggrieved populations in the curriculum and classroom without producing new approaches to reading.”¹⁵

With the help of Blake and other scholars, we can directly engage race conscious pedagogy to reveal colorblindness and race neutrality, while transforming the false narrative of racial rule within education and curriculum. Another goal is for students to see themselves in Johnathon. A scholar and African American teacher, Lamar Johnson, wrote, ”I was not a neglected or unloved child, but there was something that made me connect with Johnathon.”¹⁶ With the help of incorporating history with ELA, cross disciplinary engagement will allow students to see the direct relationship between both subjects. Students will:

• Identify the dominant narrative and provide the counter narrative
• Draw conclusions and make inferences with support (5.5j)
• Identify cause and effect relationships & Compare/contrast details in literary and informational nonfiction texts (5.5kl)
• Use reading strategies throughout the reading process to monitor comprehension. (5.5m)
• Use context clues to clarify meaning of unfamiliar words and phrases
• Identify the author’s use of figurative language (5.4d)
• Describe character development (5.5d)
• g) Write a clear topic sentence focusing on the main idea. and i) Write multi paragraph compositions.
• Organize information to convey a central idea (5.7e)
• Edit for fragments and run-on sentence (5.8j)
• Present higher level of Blooms Taxonomy