I intended to write about teenage mental health this week. Recent events and several conversations about teaching white students about oppression and white supremacy have altered those plans.
“...the approach has been to help outsiders develop characteristics that will make them more acceptable to the insiders. I am suggesting something different: The group must change its attitudes and expectations towards those who, for whatever reason, are not yet part of the system.” (Paley, 1992)
In my dreams last night, I wrote a powerful article on the topic. Unfortunately I remember little about the details of my imaginary genius. The only thing I do remember is that my dream involved the book We Can’t Teach What We Don’t Know (Howard, 1999). From that book I paraphrase a question that I often ask my classes before we begin discussing power and privilege, “Do fish consider the water they’re swimming in.” No doubt some of you made the same WTF face as my students do when I ask the question. This text examines the fears white teachers have when asked to work with students of color or address issues within multicultural education. Too often those fears prevent these teachers from meeting the needs of students of color or facilitating changes in their classroom or school communities. Reluctance and uncertainty among teachers often perpetuates emerging systems of oppression and white supremacy in schools. There are, however, ways to make teaching against these poisons more accessible for teachers and students.
Oppression and white supremacy are intertwined with racism in this country. At the core of oppression and white supremacy lies power, exclusion and dominance. These practices emerge early in schooling. If the seeds of oppression germinate in kindergarten classrooms, by high school such practices become standard operating procedure. Students and teachers tend to ignore the subtle sprinkling of power and exclusion that emerges when innocuous social domination takes root in everyday interactions. Like the fish in the question above, those who have power and privilege rarely consider let alone question the power they swim in everyday. In order to change, white teachers and students have to examine their role in maintaining and supporting the systems of exclusion and dominance at the core of oppression, racism, and white supremacy.
Until the events of the last two weeks addressing systemic racism and oppression within the fabric of our communities have often been marginalized in our schools and in our country. Since most institutions benefit from white supremacy, those who question the hand that feeds them are kept in their lane until they can be ushered to the nearest off ramp. Hopefully, in the near future, meaningful and dramatic changes will replace hashtags and hope so we can transform the dynamics of power and privilege in our country. To do this, schools will have to assume a more effective role in dismantling systems of oppression and confront the inherent bias within their curricula and community. However, many individuals struggle with where to begin or how to effectively handle the inevitable pushback from those resisting their perceived loss of privilege.
Schools can no longer ignore the cancerous impact of white supremacy and oppression in the curricula, their teaching practices, or the hallways.. Teachers will have to confront these and many other interconnected issues. White teachers and students will have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. While students of color have been ready and waiting for these conversations and changes, many of their white peers don’t know what they don’t know. Many teachers discuss racism and the institutions that reinforce power and privilege in a theoretical manner. Unfortunately, that aligns these problems with a disconnected ‘other’ and fails to address issues in their classroom, school and community. To effectively dismantle these systems each of us has to look inward first and then begin by addressing the world just beyond our shoes.
In her text White Fragility (2018) Dr. DiAngelo eloquently explores and describes the experience of having conversations that confront white supremacy in various institutions. The defensiveness, outrage, and tears from the white members of these communities she explains reflects a power play that stymies change by taking the focus off of racism and oppression. If you have ever had such discussions in a classroom of predominantly white students the reactions she describes also ring true. Unfortunately, as the song says, most people are more concerned about being called racist than they are with ending racism. So how do we get beyond the defense mechanisms of white students and teachers to change things?
Getting started usually trips people up. Others rush to solve the problem and create a solution to a problem they don’t fully understand. If you are game, here are three possible ways to begin as you move into the conversation:
Change the teacher/student dynamic.
Map power in the community.
Don’t start off mentioning racism, oppression, etc.
Wait what?!? I will try to explain my reasoning. We have to change our mindset and approach to ensure that meaningful change happens. These suggestions propose more of a ground up approach to transforming schools into equitable and supportive learning environments. Mistakes will be made. We will learn and grow. Listen for the little it is worth, I am a white man with a PhD in Multicultural Education. My preference when addressing topics such as these is to jump in and speak truth to power. Yet, that is not always the most effective strategy. The conversation often gets bogged down by the defensive outbursts of some of my white students. While I deal with those tantrums, my students of color just feel like they’re better off banging their heads against their tables. Little progress is made and the status quo remains unchanged. So instead, perhaps we can sow the seeds of change by addressing the underlying issues of oppression and white supremacy (such as exclusion and dominance) before examining the issue in a more direct and lengthy manner.
Many teachers are reluctant to teach subjects in which they are not experts. Others do not want to open themselves up to getting called racist or having to deal with the considerable pushback. All valid concerns. Consider reframing the relationship between individuals and the information. Remove yourself from a position of expertise or even take a ‘one down’ approach. Allow students to explore ideas with you. If you are a white teacher, recasting this as a shared learning experience in which teacher and students move towards a new understanding together can soothe, if not remove, much of the anxiety. Repositioning yourself can help diffuse power struggles that can emerge. When you reframe your relationship with students and these topics, you diminish your role as an agent of the oppressive system for students of color. Doing this also decreases the criticism you get from white students who might think you are forcing your ideas on them. Reframing the teacher/student dynamic sets this up as a shared journey to understanding and not a top down mandate.
Oppression represents an expression of power. At the core of power sits exclusion and dominance. Thus, oppression impacts almost every interaction in school. Since schools stand as a microcosm of society, if we address and change the hierarchy of power in schools, this will set the stage for change in how power shapes society at large. In schools power takes numerous forms: who controls resources, whose voices dominate conversations, popular vs unpopular, etc. Understanding power and how it alters relationships and involvement in learning can help a community reshape the distribution of power and improve the learning experience for more students. Mapping out the distribution of power in class draws attention to what most students already know or feel, but students or adults rarely address it. Ask your students to create a visual representation of power (in their class, grade, or school.). One way is to draw this like the food pyramid of old. Those with power sit on top of those with less, little, or no real power. However, if you ask them to position those with the most power in the center of the paper; those without power along the edges of the paper (the marginalized); and others in between they can represent the relationships or dynamics of power with greater specificity. Doing this enables you to have conversations about intent versus impact and how power impedes access for some students to all the class has to offer. You can also create a goal for what the hierarchy could look like and revisit the mapping throughout the school year.
Another way to start these conversations without setting off defensive positioning or to establish a foundation for change involves emphasizing the components of oppression and white supremacy, but from the flip side. The concepts that follow provide a foundation and a jumping off point to address issues of oppression and white supremacy. Introduce students to these six topics:
Democratic Interactions
Equality and Equity
Empowered Voices
Diverse Perspectives
Critical Thinking
Collaboration
These six concepts (or practices) represent what is possible in a place of inclusion, diversity, and positive engagement. These concepts borrow from multicultural education and impact the quality of students’ learning experiences. Attention to these topics and how they operate in school can occur several ways. Explore with your students what these concepts are and examine how they play out in their day to day interactions. If your school uses experiential learning the facilitators can use these concepts as anchor points for the different activities. Other school activities (drama, dance, etc.) can create a framework of best practices around these terms. Finally, classroom work could also draw on these concepts to guide and foster success for more students. The key is for these concepts to serve as more than an idea. Use them as an objective, or an ongoing practice to measure against and always work towards.
These concepts represent skills that will set the foundation for students to understand oppression and white supremacy in future activities. What follows is a brief description of each concept. They are not presented in order of importance. Feel free to begin in whatever order is appropriate for the needs of your students.
Critical Thinking encourages students and teachers to analyze information as well as their actions and attitudes in classroom interactions. Thinking critically can also focus on assessment of individual actions and of group interactions. One goal of Critical Thinking is for students to reflect and change to become more self aware and to promote intellectual or social growth.
Collaboration enables teachers and students to build a safe and supportive environment in which each person could succeed. Collaboration emphasizes students working with a partner, in small groups, and as a whole class. This allows students to focus on the skills involved in completing activities instead of competing against one another. By emphasizing collaboration over competition teachers can highlight interactions during activities instead of focusing on the outcomes. Some themes to consider within Collaboration are how to work effectively and efficiently together, as well as group versus individual rewards or consequences.
Empowered Voices means that classrooms or groups move beyond being dominated by the ideas of high status individuals and towards including multiple voices. It involves instances when students feel or do not feel comfortable in expressing their true feelings or speaking honestly with their peers. Ideally the community enables students to speak their minds and push back on the dominant narrative without consequences. Creating a safe classroom in which students developed can develop trust and compassion so that individuals can connect with one another and be valued for who they are not for what they are.
Diverse Perspectives focuses attention on understanding and using the diversity of skills and abilities of all students so the learning community could be more successful. Building off of Empowered Voices, students can explore a range of ideas or opinions to move their work towards specific inclusive goals. Students can also learn to merge multiple ideas into one strategy or find common ground between their perspectives. Students can be encouraged to explore the benefits of using diverse approaches to problem solving and decision-making in order to understand the strengths, opinions, and learning styles of their peers.
Democratic Interactions represents group decision making beyond a simple vote and the tyranny of the majority. Specifically, this examines how students discuss problems, devised strategies, and made decisions as a group. Teachers can emphasize the development of student leadership, but perhaps focus more on shared decision making in the community while also linking back to Empowered Voices and Diverse Perspectives so that myriad students have a voice when devising strategies to solve problems and understand how all individuals benefit when groups benefit in the classroom. Teachers can also explore conflict resolution within a lens of Diverse Perspectives or Democrat Interactions, or Equality & Equity.
Equality & Equity represented both a starting place and a goal for all interactions during the school and classroom experiences of students. First students need to understand the difference between these two ideas as well as when to apply each. Teachers must also ensure that all members of the learning community have equal rights and equal status socially and academically. This way they create a place where diversity is valued, and individual differences can be used to help everyone succeed. Like in several other concepts, if all students have equal status they are more likely to blend ideas and strategies. Equality & Equity should also involve reducing differences in status and power among classmates while providing opportunities for students to realize what they all had in common.
By engaging in practices antithetical to the invidious concepts within oppression and white supremacy, students will begin to understand how such constructs take root in seemingly innocuous ways. When you move to address racism, oppression, and white supremacy, students (white students in particular perhaps) will have a foundation of experiences on which to connect and process these difficult topics.
For many these ideas neither go far enough nor fast enough. I get it and agree on several levels. A big part of this work involves dismantling systems of exclusion and dominance while exposing white folks to the power they swim in but also putting new water in their tank. These ideas represent the first steps on a journey to undo 400 years of systematic oppression and white supremacy in America. The path will be long and frustrating. Let us operationalize inclusion and equity while using diversity and differences to power learning. If students learn what is possible when we remove layers of oppression, they can then move beyond schools to reshape their community and country so that our social, economic, and political system include and benefit every American.