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COPYRIGHT 2004 International Reading Association Inc.
I'm not sure there is any other subject that makes students in my classes more uncomfortable than race. Sex, social class, or other concerns might bother them, but nothing seems to shut down genuine conversation among students (of any color) as quickly as issues of race. Regardless of what we're talking about, whether it is overtly concerned with racial issues or emerges from a different topic, conversations about race often make students defensive, polarized, and wary. As Fox (2001) noted, in such situations, "All of us fear saying the wrong thing, or not being understood, or not grasping the experience of others, especially once we begin to see how different that experience can be from our own" (p. 4).
Rather than listen to one another, students seem to retreat into protective statements that begin with "I'm not a racist, but ..." or inoffensive platitudes advocating "tolerance" and "colorblindness," or they simply offer frustration and resignation that students from the other side of the racial divide "just can't understand." I've seen this happen in a northern New England university in the United States with classrooms of only white students, and I've seen it happen at the urban and more diverse Southern university where I teach now. In recent years, there have been several campus-wide incidents in which race was the central and visible issue.
I empathize with these students. I remember my adolescent discomfort with issues of race. In any conversation about race that came up, I knew that the first thing I wanted everyone to know was that I wasn't a racist and that I treated every person I met on her or his merits as an individual. I remember my frustration and confusion when adolescent relationships with African American friends and acquaintances ran suddenly aground for reasons that I could not comprehend at the time, but that I now see as connected to larger issues of race and power. I also sympathize with my students because we have not provided most of them with the discourse or approaches to get beyond fear and defensiveness to engage the more substantive issues about race.
Narratives of individualism and whiteness
The complexity of race and its effects on students--and teachers--in and out of school make it so difficult to address that many of us avoid it at all costs. Yet, as troubling as that may be, race is a pervasive and powerful force that organizes culture and society, and we do our students no favors by pretending it doesn't affect our lives, including our perceptions and uses of literacy.
There are, of course, more aspects to race that influence our teaching than can be covered in a single column. What I want to focus on here, however, is the way that our students' responses are bounded by the narratives about race that dominate the culture yet...
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