Understanding & Dism Antling Privilege

Notes of a Native Son: Considerations when Discussing . Race and Privilege in the Teacher's Lounge David Frank Green Jr. Inclusion Howard University Abstract Issues of race, literacy, and self-disclosure link to a long-running debate about the types of assignments and texts used to engage student thought. At the heart of this debate are teachers who view writing and teaching as a performance that is deeply personal and linked to social consequences Social Equity andSocial Equity resonating beyond the first-year writing experience (Bizzell, “Composition Studies Saves the World;” hooks, Teaching to Transgress; Prendergast, Literacy and Racial Justice), and those who see teaching and writing as the acquisition of discrete skills that prepare students to participate in academic discourse (Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally). Yet, most teaching often takes place somewhere in between these rationales. It is the teacher’s views about race, class, and gender informed by their experiences and shaped by their own educational background that continue to serve as a backdrop for their own resistance to anti-racist teaching. For me, race represents an under examined, yet salient component of one’s teachings, the saturating force that influences the way one chooses to read and respond to particular educative moments. It is in those moments one should ask how does atrix Center for the of the Advancement for atrix Center race shape, complicate or silence the interactions of others? This study uses autoethnography and critical analysis of recent research on race to he M he propose a framework for thinking through attitudes toward student T writing, toward the selection of texts, and toward teacher disclosures which are always already gendered, racialized, and classed. and In this article I examine my experiences as a writing program administrator at an historically black university and moments of resistance from faculty members who wished to avoid particular conversations about assignments, texts, and student performance that acknowledged the role of race and privilege in those contexts. The purpose of this reflection is to connect it to recent work in educational research and critical race studies and begin to stitch a tighter rubric for reflexively analyzing one’s teaching decisions to ensure that they consider the complex way discussions of race marks one’s teaching identity, shape’s student interest, and enhances student literacies. As the work of Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (Racism Without Racists) and Imani he White Privilege Conference Privilege White he Perry (More Beautiful and More Terrible) note, intention has become an obsolete mechanism for understanding and addressing racist assumptions and stereotypes that shape individual choices and reasoning processes. Given this understanding it becomes imperative that teacher ournal of T training and collegial conversations about teaching develop a Understanding & Dismantling Privilege sophisticated approach to interrogating the intersection of teacher ethos and race. Official J Official The David Frank Green, Jr., is Assistant Professor of English & Director of First-Year Writing at Howard University. Understanding and Dismantling Privilege Green: Notes of a Native Son Mother would tell stories of no- and chimed in with ideas about the article nonsense teachers and professors who they were composing. would push her to go to college and get a degree. In graduate school, he would continue to read Baldwin, and Bernstein, Father would tell similar stories as and hooks, and Freire, and Mahiri, and mother, though less specific about the others. He would grow concerned about course work, more general and focused on student reactions to his teaching style and the philosophies, or lack thereof, that challenges to his grades. He would develop shaped teacher and coach responses to his rubrics and point systems, and still they work. would challenge. He would observe the students who came into the writing center In all of their stories, bitterness seeking help, he would notice the treatment hovered about—a stinging remembering of those of color received, kid gloves for the the subtle and sometimes not so subtle most part, subdued conversations about racism they experienced: questions about their aptitude would take place among other their intelligence, anger about their TAs following their departure. He would presence at institutions of higher education. gather experience with time and changing While education would remain important in job titles, experience in pushing students to their lives and the lives of their children, the think differently about their writing and suspicion and bitterness would remain. their education. He would observe more and more the way commonsense stories about Decades later, their son would read what one can and can’t say in academic James Baldwin’s (2012) Notes of a Native writing or on grammar quizzes would reign Son and come to understand some of the over student education. He would even bitterness and suspicion that would witness bitter students, students in tears over characterize their view of education. He failing freshman English due to two would reflect on his own experiences in grammar tests. He would note their skin Catholic schools under mostly white female color and language, and would see their teachers. Pink slips and detentions would bitterness grow. accompany “A’s” and “B’s,” and pretty good aptitude test scores. The bitterness Critical approaches to addressing would not come, just some suspicion of racial inequity require a sustained inquiry grade calculations and group assignment into the ways that white privilege normalizes grades. Mild anger would come from and homogenizes teaching perspectives. receiving a “B+” while his partner received Such perspectives allow troubling an “A,” as the teacher would let him know institutional logics to remain invisible and in private he believed his partner had done ever present in the way teachers assess the bulk of the work. He would smile and students. fume privately as he reflected on his partner’s struggles with expressing his ideas In many ways, these invisible logics about the interview they did together. With a produce contradictory responses to race. On knack for language, he had written the one hand, students are expected to be treated entire project as his partner reminded him the same, taught the same, and learn from of points he had forgotten from the interview the same curriculum. On the other hand, ISSN 2152-1875 Volume IV, Issue 2, August 2014 262 Understanding and Dismantling Privilege Green: Notes of a Native Son students are also expected to distinguish classroom goals remains undertheorized and themselves from other students by underexamined by teachers and displaying creativity, originality, and self- administrators such as myself. What is awareness. However, there is no clear sense produced as a result is a way of engaging of the ways it is acceptable to be different, difference that moves away from critical especially as a minority. As recent research literacy and toward technocratic teaching has shown (Haddix & Price-Dennis, 2013), that, despite several decades of research, cultural gaps among teachers and students maintains a troubling “playing field” for continue to grow. While desire may be teachers and students. This remains a central present, many new teachers do not receive concern for anyone advocating antiracist adequate training for addressing the realities teaching or any type of proactive of difference in the contemporary classroom. intervention in institutional or classroom Since much of education is about distinction policies. My modest goal is to reflect on my achieved through homogeneity—a troubling own experiences as a teacher and writing enigma in itself—difference remains an program administrator (WPA) invested in oddly visible and invisible concept, tolerated antiracist teaching, but very aware of the under the guise of core standards but not institutional constraints and habits of embraced as central to addressing the thought that push against critical teaching. I inequalities present in education and rely heavily on teacher narrative and assessment. analytical reflection as a way of thinking through problems and contradictions I have My struggles with the high school encountered in my role as a teacher and English teacher in the narrative above, for WPA at an historically black university example, poke fun at the ways institutional (HBCU). logic uses race to shape assessments of students. A member of the basketball team As an approach to this form of and fairly popular in my class, I was often inquiry, I draw on the work of Joy Ritchie quiet and unassuming at that time. Thus, and David E. Wilson (2000), as I try to many teachers viewed me as a slacker; that develop the critical language to articulate grade discrepancy wasn’t the first assault on what I find suspicious, troubling, and my abilities, but it was perhaps the most educational about my experience. As they damaging, because there was no real note, experience is not about the provocation for responding to it. A B+ was representation of truth but the interrogation considered an acceptable grade, and I would of experiences that can be read against the not find out that my partner received an A critical discourses of others and the until months later. It is moments such as “conflicting theories that created them” (p. these that are difficult to discuss because 17). I also draw from Keith Gilyard (1996), they do not indicate a clear form of racism, Derrick Bell (Delgado & Stefanic, 2005), or that race was even involved in the and, perhaps most recently, David Kirkland decision to lower my grade. It was my (2013) who have demonstrated narrative and ability to be marked both different (varsity experience as a potent way of creatively basketball player) and inconspicuous (quiet thinking through intellectual and social student in the back of the class) that adds to problems plaguing individuals of color and the ambiguity of the situation. others that are often hidden by the processes of everyday life.

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