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 and SocialEquity 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 atrixCenter 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.

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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

ournalT of training and collegial conversations about teaching develop a

Understanding & Dismantling Privilege Dismantling & Understanding sophisticated approach to interrogating the intersection of teacher ethos and race.

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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. Similar to Kirkland, I relate “Difference” (in this case racial and to my subject matter and students in visceral ethnic) in the development of curricular or and real ways that traditional academic ISSN 2152-1875 Volume IV, Issue 2, August 2014 263 Understanding and Dismantling Privilege Green: Notes of a Native Son analysis cannot wholly capture. In fact, the assistant professor of English at a southern title of the essay comes from a James HBCU. Following Gilyard’s (1996) Baldwin essay that notes a similar visceral assertion that personal narrative may serve connection to the concept of a “Native Son,” as an adequate form of data for critical Richard Wright’s powerful novel of the inquiry, I try to move through my own same name. As a graduate of the HBCU narrative with an eye toward the intellectual experience, a second-generation college mixtape or collage of texts that at once student, and graduate of the same urban and shaped my immediate feelings about a cultural experiences that shape many of my particular experience and my subsequent students, my concern for their interests and analysis of that event. experience is connected to an understanding that benefits of the doubt are rarely accorded Teaching Moments to students of color and the consequences of teachers’ decisions are rarely considered for Homegirl must have thought grade- the way they maintain certain troubling changing powers extended from the office “habits of thought.” walls, or she really needed to vent her frustration about the failing grade she My narrative reflections and analysis received on a crucial assignment for her represent attempts to expose the habits of ethnic literature course. She would tell her thought rooted in a system that supports tale of woe, asking for advice on how to white privilege. By habits of thought, I mean handle the grade she felt (like many students the ways we teachers and academics come before her) was given unjustly. Tissue would to decisions about assignments and policies. be offered, followed by a suggestion that Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2006) identifies sometimes life is not fair and the hope that color-blind frames as fixed methods of she would pull herself together and move interpreting information and as ways of forward with her goals as she finished up presenting discriminatory beliefs about a the semester and prepared for a new one. group’s character or behavior as the natural She performed admirably in the Research consequence of actions, not personal intent. Writing and Methods course, a course In particular, he discusses abstract graded more on effort and processes than liberalism, naturalization, and cultural performance and interpretive ability. She racism as the main frames through which would use her past success to suggest that people tend to justify and explain the her trouble in Ethnic Literatures was a inequities produced by seemingly impartial mistake. decisions. He suggests that the specific approaches to reasoning, which we often The confessional would be take for granted, cloak the discriminatory entertained for a few more minutes, as she assumptions and troubling logics that provided the assignment sheet and the maintain racism through practice. To written portion of her assignment with counter such an embedded system of habit, comments. The assignment would read those invested in antiracist teaching must rather straightforwardly, and the reasons develop approaches to inquiry that focus on for the teacher’s grade would become rather moments and effects, rather than intentions. obvious, although trouble could be found in the assumptions embedded in the assignment I begin each section of this article itself. The student had not followed the with a brief narrated experience I had directions provided. Replicating the type of working as a writing coordinator and troubling exploration of so many other

ISSN 2152-1875 Volume IV, Issue 2, August 2014 264 Understanding and Dismantling Privilege Green: Notes of a Native Son multicultural pedagogies, the students were the messiness of categories about identity. asked to research and report on a non- Could one really understand difference as African American culture or ethnic group. constructed, malleable, and porous without While culture and ethnicity seemed a difficult conversation about race and conflated and uncomplicated in some identity? Could one really engage an troubling ways, the student still chose to go assignment that asked one to avoid this “off-book,” to interview an estranged parent messy conversation? Silence would be about the parent’s Muslim faith, even solidarity, no snitching here. Questions and though Islam was not listed as an acceptable concerns developing out of the event would group to “research.” The groups listed, reverberate throughout the office in which such as Caribbean and Native American, the student shed her tears, shaping thoughts and corresponding “cultural” events to about colorblindness, institutional attend on campus or in the community to reasoning, and teacher conversations. enhance one’s presentation provided a Conversations with the professor in question rather straightforward path to a passing about the messiness of race and difference grade. She produced a rather intriguing would never happen, only silence, lunch presentation that integrated portions of her time jokes about poor-performing students, parent’s interview with interesting research and narratives of laziness surrounding on Muslim culture, but the assignment was criticisms of student work. ceremonially failed, perhaps rightly so, yet the commentary and assignment sheet As Perry (2011) notes, although remained troubling. The comments structural racism remains an area of preceding the “F” on her presentation academic interest, it is wrong to relieve criticized it for not distinguishing between individuals of their roles in the maintenance religion and culture, ethnicity was presented of racist practices. “The academic tendency as something consumable and obvious. to look at structures rather than at individual will is rooted in the profound influence of Concerns would not be voiced to the Marxist modes of analysis. But even Karl student, only the recommendation that if she Marx understood the importance of felt passionate enough she should ask for a individual consciousness in producing or grade review with the professor and the sustaining these structures” (p. 34). Thus, department chair. And even in this multicultural pedagogies such as the one recommendation, feelings would remain described in the narrative above may be conflicted. Imani Perry (2011) would frame intended to respond to the realities of these feelings by explaining that difference and culture, but in many ways can discriminatory logic often remains hidden be bent, often unintentionally, to maintain and disconnected from the actions of the very tenets of white privilege it seeks to individuals. Was the grade a reflection of undo. In their study of multicultural text student laziness or lack of a critical selection and preservice teacher training, imagination on her teacher’s part? In many Marcelle Haddix and Detra Price-Dennis ways, the handling of the assignment was (2013) explain it this way: “[A]dding correct. The student had not followed multicultural content to the curriculum of directions. Her failure to select one of the field experiences in diverse settings may be six ethnic groups listed on the assignment viewed as progressive, yet these efforts sheet, despite the assignment’s explicit call often fail to uncover issues of racism, for the investigation of these “cultures,” power, and whiteness” (p. 251). While violated expectations. But it also revealed teaching multicultural texts is viewed as ISSN 2152-1875 Volume IV, Issue 2, August 2014 265 Understanding and Dismantling Privilege Green: Notes of a Native Son progressive, it may produce a false comfort between religion and ethnicity. Similar to zone for teachers, giving the appearance of my experience in high school, all I could do critical teaching without requiring was conjecture about the motivations for the considerable changes in one’s response to teacher’s assessment. students. What was obvious, and what became These perspectives were a major a major source of my concern was not the influence shaping my thoughts about the student’s grade, but rather the ways that students I was teaching and the department multiculturalism and ethnicity had become curriculum that was being redesigned at the oversimplified and consumable subjects. time to more accurately reflect “changes in And to be perhaps even more honest, the the discipline” of English, as the student source of concern was not with the teacher, came to my office in tears. While I learned but with the professional constraints and to develop, sadly, a wall of skepticism about assumptions about student ability that had students who turned on the waterworks led to the draining of theory from practice, before bursting into my office, this student, led to an unwillingness to expand the as mentioned, had developed a rapport with parameters of the assignment in ways that me in the research and methods class a recognized the complicated relationship semester earlier. One of the more persistent between theory and practice. I was students willing to work through comments concerned about this because I was and revisions with some care, she had experiencing similar concessions in my own distinguished herself as a potentially strong teaching. Similar to the teacher in question, I student in the major. Yet I know that was teaching far too many students, who teaching styles differ and that students do were in many ways “unprepared” or perhaps not always respond to challenges or unaware of the rigors of college English assignments in the same way. The syllabus courses. Although aware of critical theories and assignment that were the source of her about race and difference in the classroom, I consternation both outlined a fairly clear found myself reducing the complexity of rationale about what the student should get assignments and avoiding difficult reading out of the course, as well as what was material in an effort to artificially reduce my expected for the presentation. “workload.”

Still, ethnicity and race were used We teachers would not, neither synonymously in the descriptions and privately nor collectively, discuss such a remained uncomplicated. This was a situation beyond the veiled complaints about moment of pause for me, a moment of pause workload and student laziness. We would heightened by commentary on the never reason together about the implications assignment in question that forwarded an for our students—many of whom are black uncomplicated critique of the student’s American or international students—or for failure to distinguish between religion and our pedagogies. Reasoning together about ethnicity. To be honest, I had no proof that difficult subjects has become something for the student had not ignored clarifying conference presentations, something done in remarks given in class or that the student private with critical texts. In many ways had not performed poorly on the other theories of social justice, critical race, and assignments that would reinforce the critical pedagogy suffer because the art of comments. But I would wonder aloud about conversation suffers. To reason in the way I the professor’s awareness of the relationship am suggesting would require comfort with

ISSN 2152-1875 Volume IV, Issue 2, August 2014 266 Understanding and Dismantling Privilege Green: Notes of a Native Son impolite conversations about our teaching, without more evidence, her decision was our assumptions, our reasoning. For connected to a systematic approach to minority-serving institutions, this approach teaching that ignores the legacies connected to difference would seem crucial to to the bodies in the course. Students become addressing how students of color are workers to whom knowledge is imparted assessed. with the expectation that it be demonstrated back to teachers as given. The fact that In the absence of conversations bound within these bodies are complicated about teaching approaches and teacher legacies and intriguing narratives holds little assumptions, intent becomes the primary value when imparting wisdom is the goal. means of rationalizing particular teaching decisions. Yet, intent is an inadequate The student in my narrative would method given that most decisions elide or go on to recover and continue in her studies, sublimate specific views on race. Perry yet who knows where and how such a grade (2011) explains: or such a moment will affect future experiences? Moreover, such a missed We should no longer frame our teachable moment undermines the spirit of understanding of racially discriminatory courses about race and identity, leaving behavior in terms of intentionality. It is students to understand race and racism as too unsophisticated a conception of visible, consumable, and easily identifiable discriminatory sentiment and behavior. occurrences. It reproduces the same frame of It doesn’t capture all or most interpretation that led to the initial conflict discrimination, and it creates a line of in practicing the assignment. distinction between “racist” and “acceptable” that is deceptively clear in Teachers bear a special responsibility the midst of a landscape that is, to address racial, social, and gendered generally speaking, quite unclear about inequality given their roles as experts in what racism and racial bias are, who is particular areas of thought and in developing engaging in racist behaviors, and how the democratic sensibilities of students. In they are doing so. ... So rather than say particular, teachers represent the frontline, that racism is now unintentional, I am the agents who have the most direct contact saying intentionality isn’t a good with students and thus in many ways measure any longer, in part because the exercise the most influence over student notion of intentional racism truncates experience. However, a variety of factors the realm of intent. (p. 21) beyond a course design shape that course’s function and quality. While I was upset that Given this understanding it becomes the teacher in the narrative did not extend imperative that teachers develop robust the parameters of the assignment in ways approaches to questioning teaching that would prove valuable and educative to practices. Teachers wield a limited form of the students (such as requiring a more power and in doing so produce intensive essay on the function of Islam for consequences that have serious material imprisoned African Americans), I am effects on students, effects that perhaps equally uncomfortable with laying sole double or triple in effect for students of blame at her shoes. When teaching 80, 90, color. While it would be hard to call my or 100 students in a semester, as we were colleague’s decision to give a failing grade sometimes expected to do, it becomes a to the student a form of color-blind racism strain to think creatively about pedagogical

ISSN 2152-1875 Volume IV, Issue 2, August 2014 267 Understanding and Dismantling Privilege Green: Notes of a Native Son choices. More importantly, with numbers young people as “snitching.” While that high, is the university not suggesting there are many cultural and social that knowledge about ethnic groups is reasons for remaining silent, such as the something consumable and testable? fear others will shun or disassociate themselves from individuals they fear What’s There to Talk About? may someday “snitch” on them, this silence allows many culprits to get away The meeting would begin with the with unjust behavior. Take a position usual discussions of life and teaching. No and explain whether it is the one had commented on the writing prompts responsibility of witnesses to for the upcoming writing exams prior to the wrongdoing to ensure that justice meeting as asked. My assumption was that prevails. they barely had time to read them, and time would need to be allotted during the meeting Admittedly, the rationale came from for reading and discussing the prompts. As a cultural understanding that serving as a the unspoken rule went, the composition witness is not always applauded within director would develop the prompts and the certain communities. Specifically, among committee would discuss them before black youth there are a variety of reasons sending them out to the rest of the writing one may not wish to serve as a witness, a instructors to use for their final exams. The practice often exploited to resolve cases with conversations were surprisingly brief as the no consideration of extant circumstances. committee quickly dismissed two of the prompts, both of which had been composed Two concerns would be raised about and submitted by two other writing the prompt, the first would question the instructors in the program. Admittedly, the complexity of the prompt. One professor was ideas of the late submissions were not sure students would grasp the nuance of interesting but underdeveloped and would the prompt and proposed simplifying the need further revision, something I expected prompt to ask students whether they agreed the committee members to avoid. My or disagreed that testifying as a witness was primary interest was in the discussions that a civic duty. After some discussion, the would develop around a prompt that drew initial suggestion was deflected by a senior on the recent shooting of Jordan Davis. faculty member and it was agreed that the Davis, a black teenager shot to death after a complexity was a goal toward which verbal altercation with a white male, was a students should be pushed. After an uneasy story lost in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s silence, another faculty member would recent trial. The prompt asked students to claim, “I think the Jordan Davis stuff will consider the difference between snitching only rile students up and cause them to and civic responsibility. The original read: ignore the main point of the prompt. I do not wish to read 20 essays about the Davis The murder of 17-year-old Jordan Davis shooting.” Other members of the committee has many people upset over the death of would quickly concur, and the passage another black youth. Unlike the killing of would be edited to omit Davis. Trayvon Martin, Jordan’s murder had several eyewitnesses who are helping the Frustration would remain subdued, police. However, in many situations as my feelings were sorted about his aiding the police or anyone capable of exclusion. Davis would represent much penalizing a culprit is frowned upon by more than a catchy reference to current

ISSN 2152-1875 Volume IV, Issue 2, August 2014 268 Understanding and Dismantling Privilege Green: Notes of a Native Son events. His experience as a profiled teen— student emotion one member would say. For perhaps too loud-mouthed, perhaps only in the committee members at the table, the wrong place—would mimic many of the controversy was to be avoided; the situation experiences of the students. If I were honest, of Davis was unclear and therefore not it would call up familiar experiences of my useful. Moreover it was potentially volatile own as an urban youth. Yet there was no in the hands of 18-year-old students. conversation about this. Yes, Davis would Frustration would remain subdued, complicate the prompt, he would also frame reflection would remind me that the decision what was at stake. Given the significant was unanimous, evidence of my number of witnesses in the Davis case and acquiescence. My thoughts would betray me. their role in securing a felony charge, the “Why make waves over such a minor edit?” topic seemed important to how the students The meeting would continue with polite in first-year writing, many of whom are conversation about the ending semester. African American, might rethink concepts Subdued frustration would remain. Davis such as “snitching” and civic duty. Within would disappear. African American culture, snitching represents an alignment with a legal system Reflecting on the rationale, I would that has a long history of unjust lynching, wonder, was student performance the shooting, and jailing of African American central concern? Was there a conversation bodies. Within this history, there has been a available that we were afraid of having? long and painful tradition of African Where did my discomfort come from? Where Americans reporting on other African did it go? Americans for personal gain. Suspicion of law enforcement has become a default logic As evident in the narrative, my within many African American communities, investment in the prompt was more than I and given the pervasiveness of racial initially wanted to admit to myself, therefore profiling efforts like “stop and frisk,” the third-person narrative voice did not seem snitching has become a default label for any appropriate. While I revised and developed cooperation with law enforcement, greatly all four prompts with the understanding that impeding the willingness of some to testify the top two would make up the final exam, I about legitimate crimes. had hoped the “civic duty” prompt (as I came to call it) would be the notable lead With Davis’s death already prompt. As I will explain, the prompt overshadowed by the force of Trayvon’s provided a cultural context for students to narrative and the ensuing Zimmerman think through racialized violence from a media circus, the prompt would serve as a material perspective. Resistance to the critical memorial to both figures. Karla prompt was anticipated because of what was Holloway’s (2002) Passed On would ring in viewed as its “controversial” subject matter. the back of my mind, yet it would be a Most of the past writing prompts from the different ritual other than those connected to department avoided controversy. It was a death that would add to the conflicting tradition that exposed a departmental feelings in my chest. No conversation. Ritual predisposition to “apolitical” teaching assumptions would take precedence over (something I do not believe is possible). Yet, critical consideration. The mood in the its approval did not bring the delight I had meeting would suggest that teaching is envisioned, instead it would become a great always apolitical. A fact that would be source of conflict. The prompt’s approval stated in a later meeting. No need to charge ISSN 2152-1875 Volume IV, Issue 2, August 2014 269 Understanding and Dismantling Privilege Green: Notes of a Native Son surprised me, while the muting of the racial conversation about snitching and civic duty, component did not. he was another potent reminder of the potential for injustice to prevail. I was as The other prompt selected focused complicit in the procedural nature of the on the use of technology in developing conversation as the other members, professional profiles, the students were accepting many of the implied assumptions asked to think about the role of Twitter and about apolitical teaching and neutral writing Facebook as not merely newer and troubling prompts. representations of one’s professional credibility, but as spaces that create newer The Holloway (2002) text forms of professional networking as well. mentioned, Passed On, and her article This was a prompt I thought more complex “Cultural Narratives Passed On: African and “troublesome” than the civic duty American Mourning Narratives” (1997), prompt. Yet it was accepted rather easily sprung to mind as a result of the ritual and with only minor editing. In fact, one manner that Davis was excised from the argument for the omission of Davis was that prompt. Another way of thinking about the the two prompts did not read the same, as ways that the interpretive process is as much the other prompt did not lead with a a manner of rote as it is of meaning making. reference to an individual figure. I was not For Holloway, there are ritual processes sure at the time why there should be any attached to the way African Americans similarity, other than asking the students to mourn death that in some instances think through a stated problem. reproduce a cyclical frame of interpretation that simultaneously maintains narrow ways Admittedly, perhaps more than I let of reading death and expansive ways of on in the narrative, I had not considered the reading African American meaning making exclusion of Davis from the prompt as a practices. One could compare the possibility. My quick acquiescence stemmed contradictory impulses of these rituals to the as much from the excitement that such a contradictory frames of color-blind racism. prompt topic was accepted, as from the The conversation taking place in the meeting implied understanding that a racialized represented a naturalized way of thinking subject in the prompt created visible about teaching, one that compartmentalized discomfort for many of the instructors, who and separated social politics from were African American and Caucasian educational etiquette without consideration respectively. Many would make faces or to student experience. In my mind, the noises that indicated an uneasy ambivalence revision of the prompt presented a way of about the prompt. However, much of my absorbing an uncomfortable racialized frustration did not come from the way the subject into an easily consumable and discussion unfolded, but from my silence abstract discussion of civic duty. Here again about the work the Jordan Davis reference was another micro-moment in which race was designed to do. I was the committee’s would become a “present absence” and our chair and the coordinator of the writing consideration of it as a critical subject would exam. In the meeting, I was free to speak be displaced by specific choices. and to interject, guiding the conversation in ways I saw important, yet I did not press this bell hooks’s (1994) statement, “It is matter. As a real and not hypothetical black difficult for many educators in the United body attached to the prompt, Davis was used States to conceptualize how the classroom to situate what was at stake in the will look when they are confronted with the

ISSN 2152-1875 Volume IV, Issue 2, August 2014 270 Understanding and Dismantling Privilege Green: Notes of a Native Son demographics which indicate that Many of the writing instructors ‘whiteness’ may cease to be the norm would come to praise the “civic duty” ethnicity in classroom settings on all levels” prompt for pushing the students in a (p. 41), provides a language for the struggle language that was familiar to them. For all I am trying to articulate. White privilege intents and purposes, the prompt was a hit. represents a skewed way of reasoning, but In fact, it was mentioned a few times at later one that has become embedded in the departmental faculty meetings. “I really procedural approaches to academic enjoyed the prompt, it made a difficult decisions. However, if I look at the narrative subject relatable to the students.” Yet, for all honestly, I was much more deeply the praise, it still troubled some faculty implicated in this difficulty to members as it produced a different type of “conceptualize” than my committee essay than expected, an essay that did not members. How easy was it for me to “cling produce the typical “agree or disagree” to old patterns?” Despite my desires and responses. As one faculty member intellectual understanding of the way race is mentioned, “Constructing prompts that interpolated and subsumed in uncritical allow students to produce ‘yes or no’ ways into the educational system, my responses would greatly ease the difficulty moment of democratic intervention through of grading their essays.” Still, the racial dialogue and reasoning was conceded, rather component of the prompt, even the hip-hop easily. In what ways did I direct the term of “snitching” often associated with conversation to the conclusion that took African American male drug culture remains place? As an administrator, I saw my duty in unaddressed to this day. My ambivalence that meeting as facilitator and leader, bound about the prompt’s success would heighten. by particular rules of academic decorum, yet my strongest weapon, conversation, was A Critique and Recommendation never fully utilized. She would make a passing joke about As Gilyard (2004) eloquently notes, the preparedness of the students she was at a conceptual level discussions of race and teaching and their ability to grasp the ethnicity serve a valuable function in tracing material and complete assignments. They the slippery way troubling and unquestioned would laugh and contribute their own assumptions about custom and acceptance narratives of student struggle. When asked are maintained. If we can agree that race and about the course, she would provide a the related concept of ethnicity are social detailed account of the course reading list constructions, we must also acknowledge and the rationale behind it. The variety of their value for shaping the social narratives texts selected would be praised as a good used to reason through experience. Thus, in multicultural buffet of interesting texts, a many ways, to talk about race plainly or feast that now incorporated globalism as a rather race-related phenomena is to pull featured item. We all would applaud her back the edifice on the particular systems of work. With such a strong list of readings reasoning being deployed at any given time. and interesting assignments, they would use As hooks’s (1994) statement also implies, that as informal evidence that the problem moments like those in the meeting exposed was with the students. All would mention in our discomfort in discussing race and racism their own time their struggles with as part of our teaching agenda. underprepared students. Stories about spending months on grammar only to have more than two-thirds of the students fail the

ISSN 2152-1875 Volume IV, Issue 2, August 2014 271 Understanding and Dismantling Privilege Green: Notes of a Native Son test would become familiar discussions lunches and after-work gatherings. Class about how black children do not read sizes continued to grow and the concept of anymore. Discussions about how black race would take a disconcerting move into children do not read anymore would become the background of our concerns. He/I would stories about suspicions of plagiarism. continue conversations about race with Suspicions of plagiarism would reinforce colleagues at other universities, he/I would assumptions about student abilities. continue to read Richard Delgado, Imani Perry, Michelle Alexander, Keith Miller, From time to time, he would ask and Manning Marable and wonder how they troubling questions about the value of an could penetrate his/my teaching, courses, ethnic literature course without a critical administrative duties in ways more ethnic studies course. He/I would suggest substantive and imaginative than what was that given the complexity of American occurring. English’s grammar system it was unlikely anyone new to college-level writing could Given that students have little say apply the rules with excellent proficiency in over the “color-blind” assessment practices a month’s time. Sometimes explanations and of the teachers, impetus for change must rebuttals would follow, other times awkward come from a willingness on the part of silence would prevail until subjects were administrators and teachers to develop a changed. In time, he/I would begin to tell critical ethnic literacy that places antiracism, his/my own stories of the “underprepared antifeminism, and antidiscriminatory student.” Like most of them at the table, he/I practices at the forefront of discussions would work to help as many students pass about curriculum design and intellectual and achieve as he/I could: extended office goals for students. The discussions must hours, increasingly more time planning for become more complicated and more class, reminder emails, and conversations invested in understanding the roles about expectations. In many ways one could individuals play in maintaining institutional describe their teaching as antiracist, racism. With that in mind, I would like to engaged, and invested in providing strong make a few humble and contingent models of academic excellence. In other recommendations. ways it seemed too systematic, too cliché, a reproduction of best practices and rather 1. Teachers should begin to talk traditional ways of teaching. across subjects and courses about their understanding of race, ethnicity, and He/I would see the contradiction difference in formal and informal take root in administrative choices that settings in order to become more required deference to tradition: “We’ve comfortable with ways of deliberating always done it this way.” At times he/I about these subjects. would push for newer ways of thinking about courses, assignments, and texts. At 2. Teachers and scholars should other times he/I would develop rubrics and consider ways that the messiness of race guidelines that imitated efficient programs and identity conflict with the orderly at other universities. Part of the problems approaches to teaching and measuring encountered were beyond our control. student performance, specifically in Impossible demands on time and courses designated to address identity performance meant there was little time to and difference. Although desirable for do more than complain during our short maintaining traditional views on

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accuracy and efficiency in grading, rigid Students will undoubtedly learn and stable boundaries about identity are through assignments, discussions, and always difficult to maintain. lectures how their teachers identify as gendered and raced bodies; how they 3. Teachers should recognize negotiate their geographical roots and the that by creating assignments that address economics of their upbringing; how their race, one is inviting emotional and perspectives on language, literacies, and opinion-driven responses by students social values shape the way they teach their and perhaps creating an uncomfortable content and subject matter. While the degree environment for others, yet such may differ across content and course goals, assignments can develop habits of mind these things form impressions about how that produce student comfort with race can and should be discussed and difference and change. concepts understood. In the same breath, it would be silly, I believe, and problematic to 4. Conversations about race, pretend that teaching does not require a difference, and teaching are necessary careful negotiation of one’s fiduciary and troubling, but can produce important responsibilities: to teach the beliefs and insight into the habits of mind that theories related to a particular area of study; maintain troubling discriminatory to aid and measure student intellectual practices. Moreover they can encourage growth. further scrutiny of micro-moments that have damaging or liberating effects on Thus, I want to make two students. recommendations for thinking through the micro-moments of discriminatory practices The list is not meant to be exhaustive that shape much of the function and or even an explanation of how teachers outcomes of contemporary education. I want think. It is an attempt to place a magnifying to suggest that approaches to antiracist glass on the unstated and unspoken teaching can be improved by making plain assumptions floating between teacher our commitments and assumptions shaping explanations for poor student performance, our curriculum and assignments and by assignment choices, and curricular improving the quality of our conversations approaches so that pedagogies and (our rhetoric) about race and ethnicity. curriculums can be sharpened in ways that acknowledge antiracism as a laudable and By making plain our commitments intended goal. and assumptions, we can begin to think through the consequences and value of our Teaching, for all of the popular decisions. In retrospect, my unwillingness to stereotypes and embarrassing public address the teacher who failed the student in opinions, is undoubtedly a personal and the second narrative stemmed from a fear of political enterprise. While it need not be an the discomfort that comes from enterprise that privileges the whims of every disagreement. Default modes of academic teacher with a chip on his or her shoulder, it practice rely on consensus as an indicator of is one burdened with choices that reveal efficiency and effectiveness, thus my particular assumptions about what is best for compliance in all of the narratives stemmed students. from the belief that agreement or pseudo- consensus was the best outcome for everyone. Kurt Spellmeyer (2014) presents a

ISSN 2152-1875 Volume IV, Issue 2, August 2014 273 Understanding and Dismantling Privilege Green: Notes of a Native Son rather interesting and provocative argument (together ideally) to make meaningful about this, namely that a managerial view of changes to how race, gender, and other education seeks consensus rather than differences are discussed and addressed. Let dialogue, and that the intellectual enterprise, me phrase this differently: When teachers do and our students, are weakened because of not question or revisit their motivations for it. In my case, the teachers and I decided omitting or discouraging topics, approaches, whether the civic duty prompt was best for or points of view that engage controversial the students in private and devised ways of subjects, they run the risk of ignoring the achieving that desired outcome independent rhetorical value of their assignments. of reasoned debate. Moreover, when they do not do this together through timely (and I hope civil) For me, race represents an conversations that ignore comfort as a underexamined, yet saturating, force that guiding threshold, our ability to address influences the way one chooses to read and embedded discriminatory logic is respond to particular educative moments. It diminished. is in those moments one should ask, how does race shape, complicate, or silence the Thus, if the work of antiracist interactions of others? The conversations teaching is to create reflexive strategies for that evolve out of these questions will acknowledging that power and difference strengthen our ability to understand the inform our choices in ways that remain evolving and complicated way our choices hidden in everyday educational practices, and systems disadvantage particular then openness and conversation must find individuals while providing an advantage for their way into our everyday critical practices others. In doing this we may begin to work and into our ways of reasoning together.

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References

Baldwin, James (2012) Notes of a native son. Boston: Beacon Press. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2006). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. New York: Rowman and Littlefield. Delgado, R., & Stefanic, J. (Eds.). (2005). The Derrick Bell reader. New York: New York University Press. Gilyard, K. (1996). Let’s flip the script: An African American discourse on language, literature, and learning. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Gilyard, K. (2004). Preface. In K. Gilyard & V. Nunley (Eds.), Rhetoric and ethnicity (pp. v-x). Portsmouth, NH: Boyton/Cook Heinemann. Haddix, M., &, Price-Dennis, D. (2013). Urban fiction and multicultural literature as transformative tools for preparing English teachers for diverse classrooms. English Education, 45(3), 247-282. Holloway, K. (1997). Cultural narratives passed on: African American mourning stories. College English, 59(1), 32-40. Holloway, K. (2002). Passed on: African American mourning stories. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge. Kirkland, D. (2013). A search past silence: Literacy of young black men. New York: Teacher’s College Press. Perry, I. (2011). More beautiful and more terrible: The embrace and transcendence of racial inequality in the United States. New York: New York University Press. Ritchie, J., & Wilson, D. (2000). Teacher narrative as critical inquiry: Rewriting the script. New York: Teacher’s College Press. Spellmeyer, K. (2014). Fighting words: Instrumentalism, pragmatism, and the necessity of politics in composition. Pedagogy, 14(1), 1-25. .

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