Teaching Racial Optimism

When I was working on my teaching degree, I observed a classroom in an Ypsilanti high school once a week. The majority of the students were black, and the teacher was white. The class had been reading Richard Wright’s novel Black Boy and they were asked to write an impromptu essay based on the following prompt: “Write about a time when racism impacted your life.” The students grumbled, but pondered the prompt and began to busy themselves writing. One student raised his hand and politely asked the teacher “What if racism has never affected our life?” The teacher quickly responded “Well, how about a time when someone you know was affected by racism?” This student was drawing a blank. Other students began to ask questions like “Why do we always have to talk about racism?”

It’s hard not to be skeptical of the notion that this student has never been affected by racism, but it’s easy to understand why the topic didn’t arrest the class’ interest: They’re tired of talking about it.

Our classroom discourse on race has become exclusively a discourse on racism, and this negativity encourages social reproduction. Our students are being taught that racism is an inescapable reality of life, and that racial diversity necessarily causes racial tension. (When do we talk about tolerance? When someone has been intolerant.) Because our curriculum automatically links race and racism, positive aspects of racial diversity are rarely discussed, except as a contrast to the norm of (usually white-against-black) racism. I am not proposing that racism be ignored in the classroom. Rather, I am suggesting that a new approach to race be developed for our classrooms, one which doesn’t focus solely on the negative and which celebrates racial diversity through more than tokenism. Our teachers must avoid two traps; ignoring race altogether and discussing it only in a negative context.

According to Lee Anne Bell's "Sincere Fictions: The Pedagogical Challenges of Preparing White Teachers for Multicultural Classrooms", pretending to be unable to see race causes white teachers to shirk their responsibility to challenge racial stratification and teach racial issues. It is a way to proclaim one’s innocence. This “colorblindness” does students a great disservice. Students recognize their racial differences even if we refuse to. They aren’t given any positive platforms to discuss them, however, and that’s where a new, positive, discourse must begin.

Bell is right to discourage “colorblindness,” but attacks the problem from a standpoint that is too negative. She suggests that white teachers must learn to “understand themselves as racial beings” by acknowledging the privileges available to them and recognizing their assumptions. As a racial being, however, a person is more than just a figure trapped in a struggle between warring groups. Possessing racial identity is also about being connected to your heritage and understanding what your unique background has taught you. White teachers need to become racial beings in a way that doesn’t make them shameful, or else students, who will perceive that shame, will interpret it as an admission of guilt, one that confirms a suspicious and defensive worldview.

Shortly after the writing prompt on racism, the teacher in this class asked me to stand in the back of the room during a test to discourage cheating. My presence made one student defensive. “I can’t take the test with you standing there, that’s intimidating,” she said. Other students chimed in; agreeing. One boy stood up and said “I see what’s going on”. He pointed to the six or seven students closest to me. “Black kid, black kid, black kid. This is racism.” I told him that such an accusation was ridiculous, that I wasn’t a racist and the assumption that I was actually exposed prejudice on his part. He brushed it off and told me he had just been joking. The girl sitting next to him, however, looked me square in the eye and asked me, sincerely, “Are you a racist?” I assured her I wasn’t; I just wanted to diminish the temptation to cheat.

This incident gave me a lot to think about. Did this student really believe he was the target or racial profiling? Has he learned that playing the race card is a way to manipulate authority figures even when there has been no demonstration of racial prejudice? Perhaps many of his teachers, feeling insecure in their own tolerance, are so worried about being perceived as racists that they will cave in at the very suggestion that what they are doing could be seen as a racist act. In this way, attempts to acknowledge and discuss racial tensions and issues in the classroom, however well-intentioned, have backfired. Because the only meaning assigned to racial difference is that of a potential source of animosity, many students feel racially estranged from their teacher. They are acutely aware of a racial division, real or imagined, between their teacher and themselves. White students feel alienated and accused. Black students feel either patronized or subjugated. Teachers are often too uncomfortable with racial issues to discuss anything frankly, and revert to “colorblindness” as a defense mechanism.

Bell talks about racial consciousness and being aware of one’s “racial location in the social order.” Too often, however, a focus on our racial location can create a feeling of inevitability and a self-fulfilling prophecy. And while our racial location can’t be ignored, it is far more productive to emphasize the ideal of racial equality than the problem of racial stratification.

If equality seems too distant an ideal, there is always diversity. The positive components of diversity should be emphasized so students can see the advantages of living in a multi-ethnic society. I can’t emphasize enough that the tensions that have resulted from our racial climate can not be ignored, but they must be tempered with hope. High school students are in the process of developing their worldview, and this worldview will color their actions. Many of the subtler forms of institutionalized racism are perhaps better taught at a college level. At the high school level, students should develop an outlook that will equip them to use information in a positive manner. If taught to expect a racial climate bordering on warfare, students will become paranoid and defensive, and, like the student who accused me of profiling, more susceptible to stereotype-vulnerability.

Our students are very fortunate to live in a country where countless ethnicities coexist peacefully. While far from utopian, America's racial climate is the product of years of hard work. America has shown a tremendous willingness to recognize its own injustices and then change accordingly. The contrast between the rights and circumstances of African-Americans fifty years ago and the rights and circumstances of African-Americans today aptly demonstrates this. Too often, however, our history classes are tainted with a bleak worldview that emphasizes the injustices of the past and not the progress that was made in response.

I read something by James A. Banks (and I'm looking for that resource again, if anyone knows what it was...) in which he describes a democratic classroom as a place where all cultural perspectives are valued. He suggests that teachers not ignore their own personal/cultural knowledge. Just as Bell wants white teachers to see themselves as racial beings, Banks suggests that the often-ignored diversity within European Americans needs to be examined in the classroom. When teachers use their background and experiences to critically analyze knowledge, they are encouraging students to do the same with their own backgrounds. With this kind of discourse, students can simultaneously address inequalities and celebrate their diverse backgrounds by placing value on those backgrounds and emphasizing the importance of diverse backgrounds to the process of interpreting and understanding events and ideas. If students aren’t singled out in a tokenist manner, but encouraged to take the initiative to speak from their experiences, they can develop a sense of racial optimism which will curb social reproduction. Teaching our culture’s struggle to overcome racism must be tempered with this lesson that racial diversity is advantageous.

Our classroom discourse on race must emphasize how lucky we are to live in a multi-cultural country. Cynicism and hopelessness will serve only to preserve and reproduce racial tensions.