Whenever I enter a classroom at UM I gaze around the room looking for people of color, people that look like me or people with similarly divergent cultural backgrounds. My father’s first question is almost inevitably “Are there any other Asians?” which he has modified since I came to Montana to “Are there any other not-white people?” I realize that this intentional first impression doesn’t take into account the sometimes invisible differences in class and upbringing often present in UM classrooms. Differences in class are significant and worth being discussed (as bell hooks does in her chapter “Confronting Class in the Classroom”), but let’s talk about race here.
How do we bring questions of race into our classrooms wherein the majority of students represent one, historically privileged racial group? How do we avoid making the lone student of color a representative of her racial group (the “native informant”)? How do we examine the hierarchies of power embedded in our classroom? bell hooks would argue that we need to find (to use Friere’s term) praxis – a union of our beliefs and actions. I am assuming here that we do not fall into the category of the conservative “old guard” of academia. We are new to this teaching situation and therefore we are not attached to this identity of “professor” which hooks and Scapp identify as being so problematic (see pg 140-1). I believe the struggle that we face is in acting upon our liberal ideas. hooks articulates what I believe to be our position: “I want to reiterate that many teachers who do not have difficulty releasing old ideas, embracing new ways of thinking, may still be as resolutely attached to old ways of practicing teaching Even though we strive towards a more respectful and just ideal, we are still at risk of unconsciously reinforcing unjust hierarchies of power. The very institution we teach and study in is structured on these hierarchies of power. bell hooks writes of institutions: “knowledge was shared in ways that re-inscribed colonialism and domination” and that “our ways of knowing are forged in history and relations of power” (30). as their more conservative colleagues” (hooks 142).
Perhaps it would be good to clarify this point now, when I say “hierarchies of power,” I mean men over women, white people over people of color (and I would argue that there is a hierarchy within this term as well) and rich over poor. It is uncomfortable for me to be this explicit, I would much prefer to hide behind bell hooks’s ideas. It is difficult for me to write this because it implicates me in challenging and complex ways. I can pass for white in many situations and therefore I am implicated in these hierarchies and the privileges that these hierarchies afford (well, perhaps not gender privilege). It also implicates you in a similar privilege and responsibility. I am not sure how you will react when you read this post. Will you be upset? Will you want to discuss it in class? Will I be ready to speak eloquently and passionately about my beliefs and bell hooks’s ideas? These are some of the reasons that I have not brought up the issue of hierarchy and inequality in my classroom - I don’t want to rock the boat and I am not sure of how to deal with my students’ reactions. Roskelly addresses this sentiment in the introduction to her book: “Teachers and students have to be ready to break the circle of sameness that prevents voices from being heard and ideas being questioned, to spoil the “good party” where lines are clearly drawn between an A and a B, between what counts as knowledge and what doesn’t” (Roskelly xii).
I also feel similar to bell hooks in her first years of teaching: “I had absolutely no model, no example of what it would mean to enter the classroom and teach in a different way” (142). So how do we proceed in enacting praxis with our ideas and action?
In a recent conversation, a fellow TA suggested that we incorporate readings from various authors who are unrepresented in the academy and cannon (i.e. women, people of color, people from the working class). I think this is a great idea that warrants some deep thought on how to frame the readings and classroom discussions. As Scapp points out in his conversation with hooks, “It seems safer to present very radical texts as just so many other books to be added to the traditional lists – the already-existing canon” (141). Presenting texts in this way acts as an erasure of difference, which both Scapp and hooks point out as a dangerous move. Scapp says, “Many of us want to act as though race doesn’t matter, that we are here for what’s interesting in the mind, that history doesn’t matter even if you’ve been screwed over, or your parents were immigrants or the children of immigrants who have labored for forty years and have nothing to show for it” (140). bell hooks argues that this erasure of history also allows for “the erasure of the role of university setting as sites for the reproduction of a privileged class of values, or elitism” (140). If we include diverse texts yet refuse to discuss the diversity and history framing these texts it is just another form of tokenism that reinvests power in traditional institutional hierarchies.
So how do we incorporate these texts in our class? My fellow TA also suggested that we begin by acknowledging that every reader and writer is coming from a specific cultural, racial, gendered, sexual location. We must study the context of the writer and acknowledge their history, and we must study our context and position as readers. Perhaps we could begin by discussing student histories and cultures. We could look into white privilege and male privilege and the ways it affects the way one acts and sees the world. We could have conversation about who we are and look deeply into the people and institutions that have formed our world-view. If we know ourselves we will be able to listen to others in the class, if we accomplish this, then we can begin to acknowledge and listen to the authors and thinkers in our readings. With this radical listening we could be a force in changing our educational institution.
Laurel,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your candid thoughts and reflections on your personal experiences as they inform your reading of hooks. First, I must say that I share—and I venture, many of us share—your reluctance to rock the boat when it comes to asking critical, unsettling questions about hierarchy and power.
I think that, to get over my reluctance to rock the boat, I have to get over my fear of doing it wrong. I have to start, simply, by starting. hooks writes, “If we fear mistakes, doing things wrongly, constantly evaluating ourselves, we will never make the academy a culturally diverse place where scholars and the curricula address every dimension of that difference” (33). I had a first-year undergrad class where incorporation of challenging texts—about white privilege, being the “poor kid” in the dorm, and the fact that, as gametes go, eggs are really the aggressors (sorry, sperm)—made for some downright uncomfortable discussion moments in our racially and economically diverse classroom. I remember the tension today, and my stomach still turns. I did not like that class at the time, but I remembered it. It didn’t answer all the questions, but it made me aware of them. I’m glad our professor didn’t let that boat-rockin’ scare her from using those texts. “The presence of tension—and at times even conflict—often meant that students did not enjoy my classes or love me, their professor, as I secretly wanted them to do,” hooks writes (42).
But we have to take the risk. We will be uncomfortable. Students will be uncomfortable. It will be important to acknowledge moments of mutual discomfort, to make ourselves vulnerable, as Carl values from hooks, and to confess our positionality, as Adrianna gets at above. But isn’t discomfort the first step? To acknowledging our complicity and our privileges in the hierarchies? To challenging ourselves square between the eyes? I know discomfort won’t answer all the questions we need to responsibly ask about privilege and hierarchy, but it presents a step toward bringing us, and our students, to awareness of them.
Laurel, though I can’t totally empathize with you in terms of my own race, I did feel a cultural shock when I arrived in Montana. I think during TA training Kate said something to the effect of “When they come to UM, many kids will be encountering other races for the first time in their lives,” a statement that shocked me. Not that Missouri is a cultural Mecca or anything, but at my alma mater there was an array of cultures and races. The lack of cultural diversity was new to me, too, and I had absolutely NO idea how I would address it in my curriculum. I told myself I’d only do so “if I needed to”—if the cultural, racial, and social diversity in my classroom was so obvious that not addressing it seemed unusual. I now realize that this assumption I made—that I should only address gender, race, and other diversities only if the “need” arose—is so simpled-minded. By ignoring these issues I’ve implied that they don’t matter—that there’s no problem, no hierarchy, no imbalance unless an unequivocal imbalance emerges in class (i.e. unless there is a direct conflict relating to race, gender, sexuality, religion, etc.) This does implicate me in the hierarchies, as you suggest in your post.
ReplyDeleteI’ve struggled with all of the questions you bring up in your second paragraph—and I don’t think I’ve done a good job of addressing them in my curriculum—in my praxis--as of now. However, reading hooks and Plevin, as well as your excellent synthesis of the texts, should help me with this! I already plan on better integrating a more diverse range of texts in my course next semester (I would really appreciate any suggestions you all have!) and am eager for today’s discussion, as I anticipate hearing other suggestions for promoting cultural/social awareness.
Your post does not upset me, as you suggest it might with your questions in paragraph three—rather, it (and hooks’ text) challenges me to work harder at tackling issues of dominance and hierarchy in my classroom. As a student of multicultural and liberal arts studies, I’ve always felt most empowered when my classwork involved disputing traditional roles (whether gender-based in my “Feminist Folklore” course, culturally-based in my “Native American Religions” course, social-based in my “The Other in Folklore” course, or race-based in my “Racial Inequalities” course). Why shouldn’t I extend the same empowerment to my Writ 101 students, even if the curriculum doesn’t seem (at first glance) as “apt” to this sort of work?
Plevin’s text reassures me that this work can grow organically in the Writ 101 classroom. In her epigraph (a selection from student work) and introduction, she shows that her emphasis on place in her composition classroom stems naturally from her students’ writings. It’s not a transplanted idea, a concept that would fit more logically in another discipline; it’s embedded in her students’ ideas, their collective consciousness. She uses place as an entry point for activism in the course, not by just “smuggling in an essay about trees” but by making a “more radical move…that is able to reduce, even critically disrupt, the archetypal binaries of culture/nature, male/female, and even human/nonhuman” (148). Plevin’s article is about embedding activism in the composition course (something I know you, Laurel, have excelled at), which connects to the overall goals of ecocomposition that we’ve discussed and praised time and time again. We want our students to view the knowledge they gain in Writ 101 as important beyond our classroom—we want them to grow as writers and as thinkers. Part of this growth should come from challenging them to critically view their placement in our cultural hierarchies. We can’t force a view on our students or make them fully realize their biases, but we can sure as hell try!