What harm are we doing?
Because my life allows for wonderful things, I recently read bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress for the third time. Although published in 1994, the wisdom in her work still rings true. Her timeless observations about liberatory critical pedagogies highlighted that little has shifted. As I was reading, one passage inspired my thoughts below about race-silent inclusion, teaching about culture, and teaching about racial “differences,” none of which could be described as anti-racist pedagogy. These avoidant strategies applied by educators (white and Educators of Color) distract from deep systems critique required for anti-racist pedagogy (ARP).
Avoidant Strategy 1: Race-Silent Inclusion
My gratitude to bell hooks for her honest writing. On page 141 of Teaching to Transgress, she described an archetype of a white professor, although this may be a literal description of someone in her life:
“The example that comes to mind is that of a white female English professor who is more than happy to include Toni Morrison on her syllabus but who does not want to discuss race when talking about the book. For she sees this as a much more threatening interrogation of what it means to be a professor than the call to change the curriculum.”
I mean, whoah. This passage struck me. Imagine sprinkling in Scholars of Color and then pretending race and racism and all their intersections are not at play in the critical analysis and learning process. Yet this is likely still quite common across a wide variety of disciplines. Within our decades of calling for diversity and inclusion, many of us have point blank encouraged faculty to include more course materials (writings, essays, articles, books) by Scholars of Color. Rightly so as representation matters.
But we failed to then properly address, teach, train, and offer stronger pedagogical skills and tools to move beyond race-silent inclusion. If we want to move anti-racist pedagogy forward, race-silent inclusion is not the path. We must raise the bar from “add and stir” to critically analyzing systemic racism in connection with course concepts, course materials, course design, and disrupting the major questions of each discipline.
Anti-Racist Pedagogy Requires Systems Critique
One fundamental requirement for ARP is a core focus on critiquing systems. Not just individual bias, not just individual prejudice, not just individual acts of racial discrimination, definitely not just individual racist extremists. SYSTEMS.
That means committing to our own intentional and persistent critique of how social constructions of race, institutional and structural racism, and systemic white supremacy impact policies and procedures. You know, the stuff that seems super abstract but is in fact concretely delivering system-wide disparities that harm Communities of Color.
Without a consistent and open critique of systemic racism, we do harm.
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