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Black Like Me, Just Like Me: Enhancing Response to Literature Through Student-Generated Cases Jennifer Haberling Hudsonville Public Schools, Hudsonville, MI

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Black Like Me, Just Like Me: Enhancing Response to Literature Through Student-Generated Cases Jennifer Haberling Hudsonville Public Schools, Hudsonville, MI Language Arts Journal of Michigan Volume 24 Article 9 Issue 2 Perspective 2009 Black Like Me, Just Like Me: Enhancing Response to Literature through Student-Generated Cases Jennifer Haberling Hudsonville Public Schools, Hudsonville, MI Brian White Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/lajm Recommended Citation Haberling, Jennifer and White, Brian (2009) "Black Like Me, Just Like Me: Enhancing Response to Literature through Student- Generated Cases," Language Arts Journal of Michigan: Vol. 24: Iss. 2, Article 9. Available at: https://doi.org/10.9707/2168-149X.1055 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@GVSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Language Arts Journal of Michigan by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@GVSU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Black Like Me, Just Like Me: "This Dude is a Phony" We recently had the opportunity to team-teach in a Enhancing Response to highly homogeneous, rural community (see Haberling Literature through and White 54-61)-Hudsonville High School's student body is nearly 100 percent White. However, Student-Generated Cases when we surveyed the students in our junior-level literature course, we found that over ninety-five Jennifer Haberling percent of them either agreed or strongly agreed Hudonsville Public Schools Hudsonville, Ml with this statement, "Hudsonville is a very diverse community." Unfortunately, many of our students Brian White fit the profile Tatum describes. During discussions Grand Valley State University of literature and current events, they frequently Allendale, Ml expressed their belief that "color shouldn't matter In Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin, a White man, any more." Although they acknowledged the United tells the story of his attempt to understand the lives States' painful, racist past, they were convinced that and experiences of African Americans in the late "that's over now." Like many of us, they found it 1950s and early 1960s by having his skin chemically difficult to "get behind the eyes" of people who might darkened and living as a Black man. Griffin's be different from themselves in important ways; they account of the oppression, danger, and prejudice he struggled to understand the experiences of people experienced while disguised as an African American of color and of other victims of oppression and helped to open the eyes of the nation to the plight of discrimination. people ofcolor in the United States. Nearly fifty years We thought that reading Black Like Me with after its initial publication, Black Like Me remains an the students might help them to understand more of the important book, especially because so many in our impetus behind the Civil Rights movement and might also society seem to be convinced that the struggle for open a discussion about instances of oppression, racial Civil Rights is over, that segregation and oppression and otherwise, in modem society-even in Hudsonville. are words reserved for museum exhibits. As Tatum Unfortunately, our team-teaching arrangement came to has argued, many White students in this country an end just before it was time to teach Black Like Me; believe that race should no longer be considered so Jennifer, with Brian serving as a collegial sounding an important factor in human relationships and that board and planning partner, introduced the book by racial oppression is a thing of the past. We have providing some extensive frontloading activities certainly found such attitudes to be prevalent among focusing on intolerance and the plight ofpeople ofcolor our own White students. Indeed, the belief that there in the middle of the twentieth century. Before we began are no more wrongs to right-Michigan's constitution to read Black Like Me, we explored historical instances was recently amended to render Affirmative Action of intolerance through poetry like "We Wear the Mask" illegal-has been a serious impediment to students' by Paul Laurence Dunbar and through non-fictional understanding of Griffin's important work. texts like Lawrence Otis Graham's "The Black Table In this article, we tell the story ofhow creating is Still There" and "I Have a Dream" by Martin Luther and discussing their own case studies focusing on King, Jr. We also looked at and discussed the labels discrimination helped our students to reconsider and stereotypes that many students in Hudsonville use their previously-held beliefs about oppression and to draw distinctions between cliques and groups within enhanced their understanding ofBlack Like Me. their own student body. Spring/Summer 2009 44 As we discussed and analyzed these works, her insightful, independent thinking, but Jennifer certainly students began to relate historical instances of intolerance didn't want Kristiana to shut down the discussion or to that they were familiar with from history classes to the provoke her classmates to dismiss the book out ofhand. She themes of racial intolerance evident in the texts. They also didn't want anybody to miss the truths Griffin had talked about the Japanese internment camps in the North observed from his camouflaged position. American West during World War II, discrimination against As discussion proceeded that day, however, Jews throughout history, and the "Trail of Tears." Because Kristiana gained an audience and a following. Other students were making these important connections, students chimed in to say that the book was okay so far Jennifer thought that the pre-reading exercises had done a as history goes, but that racial discrimination had been good job of helping the students to retrieve the background "solved" when the Civil Rights Bill was signed. The more knowledge they would need to understand Griffin's story. the students talked, the more confident Jennifer was that But when the class was about halfway through Black the kids were missing a very important piece ofthe puzzle: Like Me, Kristiana, one of the students, walked into class the connections between the kinds ofoppression detailed in and announced, "This JHG dude doesn't know what he's Griffin's story and the kinds ofoppression found in modem talking about. He's a fake and a phony. He can't possibly society. But how can these connections be illuminated? know what it is like to be Black. He's just pretending." One way is to do student-generated case studies. Although there is truth in Kristiana's assessment­ Jennifer had been careful to explain to the class that Griffin, Taking a Chance on Student-Generated Case Studies a White man "in disguise," could at best approximate the In order to help the students see the relationships between experiences of people of color. Jennifer was shocked by the instances ofdiscrimination and oppression in Black Like Kristiana's blunt and harsh analysis of Griffin and his Me and the lives ofmodem-day citizens ofHudsonville, we account. After all, even if we discount Griffin's personal decided to use case studies. Teachers in many disciplines, experiences because of the "phoniness" of his disguise, from law and medicine (e.g. Tomey) to information can we discount the experiences of others, the instances of systems management (e.g. Sirias) to teacher education hatred and oppression he observed first hand? Didn't his (e.g. Campbell; Griffith and Laframboise; Johannessen experiences in disguise give him (at least) a somewhat more and McCann; Roeser; Shapiro and Stefkovich; Shulman; realistic view of the day-to-day lives of people of color Strike and Soltis) have found that discipline-specific case in the South? Until Kristiana's emphatic announcement analysis, "facilitates problem solving, decision-making, halfway through the text, she had seemed empathetic to critical thinking, self-directed learning, self-evaluation, the plight of the people Griffin highlighted in his account. and interpersonal communications as well as the retrieval, When Jennifer asked her to explain what she meant, access, and use of information" (Tomey 34). Kristiana indicated that, because of his disguise, Griffin Johannessen and Kahn note that case studies can was an unreliable reporter. She felt that because Griffin be especially helpful for students of literature because a was really a white man in disguise, she could not trust that carefully crafted literary case: his report was typical of the kinds of discrimination that provides data to help them connect with [the character's] problem in the text and activates were reality to many people during that time. Evidently, their prior knowledge so that they develop she saw no connection between Griffin's account and real a deeper understanding of the issue the ... life, either the real life of the '60s or the real life of the character confronts. It is designed to prepare students to think hard about the moral choices twenty-first century. the [character] has to make in the novel and to Emergency measures were in order. Kristiana get them to consider some ofthe consequences was an influential student who had rightly emphasized a of having to make such a moral choice. potential problem with Griffin's account. Jennifer wanted (109; see also White and Haberling) Kristiana to be free to speak her mind and to encourage 45 Language Arts Journal of Michigan Johannessen and Kahn present some excellent examples situations and to write their own parallel case studies which of cases used to enhance students' responses to difficult included a similar type of intolerance, but in a setting more literary texts; but like others who have taught us how to closely related to the students' own experiences. use teacher-created case studies in the literature classroom (e.g. Smagorinsky; Smagorinsky, McCann, and Kern), they Using Student-Generated Cases emphasize the importance ofusing cases at the pre-reading to Enhance Understanding stage. The students in Jennifer's classroom were already Preparing students to craft case studies halfway through the text-way past pre-reading.
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