Cultural Dissonance & Other People's Children

In The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People's' Children by author Lisa Delpit, Delpit argues that within education circles, the voices of the marginalized and their lived experiences are often silenced when attempting to critique progressive pedagogies set forth by well-intentioned liberal whites as they fail to understand the culture of power and the necessity for preparing students to face said culture whilst encouraging students to critique it.

Key Quotes: 

"When you're talking to white people, they still want it to be their way. You can try to talk to them and give them examples, but they're so headstrong, they think they know what's best for everybody, for everybody's children" (Delpit 21).

"If you try to suggest that's not quite the way it is, they get defensive, then you get defensive, then they'll start reciting research...they only want to go on research they've read that other white people have written" (Delpit 22) 

"I believe that the actual practice of good teachers of all colors typically incorporates a range of pedagogical orientations" (Delpit 24).

"The culture of school is based on the culture of the upper and middle classes - of those in power" (Delpit 25).

"Members of any culture transmit information implicitly to co-members. However, when implicit codes are attempted across cultures, communication frequently breaks down" (Delpit 25)

"When acknowledging and expressing power, one tends towards explicitness...when deemphasizing power, there is a move toward indirect communication" (Delpit 27).

"In this country, students will be judged on their product regardless of the process they utilized to achieve it. And that product, based as it is on the specific codes of a particular culture, is more readily produced when the directives of how to produce it are made explicit. If such explicitness is not provided to students, what it feels like to people who are old enough to judge is that there are secrets being kept, that time is being wasted, that the teacher is abdicating his or her duty to teach" (Delpit 31).

Perhaps because white culture is the dominant hegemonic structure in our society, white people do not feel the need to explain the ins and outs and cultural nuisances of conduct as it is second nature. In thinking about liberal white educators and their discomfort with being explicit, maybe this discomfort stems from the awareness and guilt that forcing students and individuals to adhere to white cultural expectations is counterproductive to co-creating a reimagined society that uplifts diversity of culture and promotes equity. While I have often questioned why non-white people have to adapt to and play by the rules of the dominant culture, considering it's rooted in racism, I understand the necessity of doing so for the sake of personal well-being and social mobility. Failure to adequately prepare students for this reality would be a disservice to them.

Colorblindness as the New Racism & Color Insight as the Potential Solution

In the reading Colorblindness is the New Racism: Raising Awareness About Color Privilege Using Color Insight, authors Margalynne J. Armstrong and Stephanie M. Wildman argue that failure to examine the function of whiteness and white privilege in our society aids in the ongoing subjugation and discrimination of non-white people (64). The pair discusses this issue in the context of higher education, particularly within a law school setting, highlighting how, more often than not, U.S. jurisprudence and politics rely on perspectivelessness, a framework that upholds Colorblindness and race neutrality as the standard by which American legal affairs should be deciphered and determined, arguing that "[t]his incomplete understanding of the nature of white privilege, coupled with the modern move toward colorblindness, conceals the nature of much law and power" (65). As someone interested in studying law one day, I have many friends who, much to their frustration as desired agents of productive and positive change, can attest to having experienced the perspectivelessness framework firsthand in their law school classes. 

Authors Armstrong and Wildman propose color insight as a potential solution to our society's current and frankly longstanding obsession with Colorblindness as a means of overcoming racial inequality. The duo defines color insight as "an appropriate antidote to colorblindness, one that remedies the omission of context in racial discourse," requiring four steps: 

1. consideration for context in discussions regarding race
2. examination of systemic & systematic privilege
3. unpacking perspectivelessness and white normativeness
4. combating stereotypes by exercising empathy
   
   

Color Insight aims to celebrate and explain the importance of acknowledging racial differences, as it requires individuals to analyze the operation of race and privilege within our society (68). The authors suggest implementing a Power Line Chart as a means of helping individuals come to terms with their privilege or lack thereof. The powerline exercise discussed within the reading as an example of a way in which to go about promoting color insight and proverbially breaking the ice within education settings where some may feel uncomfortable discussing race and privilege reminded me of the "Take A Stand" activity and how that was an excellent jumping off point for this course that highlighted different perspectives on particular issues based on our individual lived experiences and the intersections of our various identities prompting introspection.

While reading this piece, a couple questions emerged for me:

1. When has the concept of whiteness, white people, and the idea of white privilege as it functions globally ever willingly been examined as the subject for authentic critique on a broad scale, and will it ever be?

2. "...how can they be discriminating if they do not think about non-Whites in a derogatory manner, especially when they are not thinking about race at all?" (63) Perhaps this line of thinking highlights the frustration some people experience with concepts like DEI, critical race theory, etc. If you don't see the problem, why discuss it?

"...white privileged as a knapsack of benefits of which the holder could remain oblivious. Yet the possessor of the knapsack of privilege could reliably depend on the advantages they provide, even though she or he remained unaware of them." (63)

                                 

This discussion on colorblind racism and white privilege also brought to mind similar ideas espoused by two other academics, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Robin DiAngelo, authors of Racism without Racists and White Fragility, respectively. 

                                       

A video of Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, speaking at Brown University 10 years ago in a lecture titled "Why Can't We Just Get Along?: Race Matters in The Color-Blind Racial Moment"

A clip of author Robin DiAngelo explaining the concept of White Fragility on Amanpour & Co.:

Regarding the Vox article, Why you should stop saying "all lives matter," explained in 9 different ways, I felt validated as the arguments and examples presented all spoke to the frustration I had during 2020 when online trolls would retort the phrase, "all lives matter" as a counter to me a Black woman advocating on behalf of her community that continues to face undue violence due to the pervasive nature of white supremacy and racial bias within the United States.

Meet Your Destiny

 Hi Everyone!

I'm Destiny, a twenty-something first-year 5th-grade ELA teacher at RISE Prep Mayoral Academy out in Woonsocket, RI. I'm originally from Gainesville, Florida, and spent my adolescent years in Houston, Texas, before migrating north for undergrad. I graduated from Brown University in Fall 2023 with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Africana Studies. 

In my free time, I enjoy crocheting, reading, traveling, brunch/happy hour with friends, the beach, cozy gaming on my sunflower yellow Nintendo Switch, and watching various movies and TV shows. I have a huge passion for social justice and strive to make a positive difference in the world. I am excited to take this course and learn more about how I can become a more socially just educator.

                                                 

    

                                             

       

   

     

Privilege, Power, Difference & Teaching for Social Justice

In Privilege, Power, and Difference, sociologist Allan G. Johnson argues that the ongoing issue of difference and inequity in our society is due to society's inability to confront them both individually and collectively. Some of the key quotes that stood out to me in this reading are: 

• "The purpose is to change how we think so we can change how we act, and by changing how we participate in the world, become part of the complex dynamic through which the world itself will change" (Johnson, Introduction).

Shifting one's mindset is the first step in bringing about impactful change on an individual level to inspire societal change.

• "...if we dispense with the words [racism, white, white racism] we make it impossible to talk about what's really going on and what it has to do with us. And if we can't do that, then we can't see what the problems are or how we might make ourselves part of the solution to them..." (Johnson 2).

Our society consistently fails to address the elephants in the room. We act as if we do not speak about specific issues; they will simply disappear, which, as time tells us, is not the case. In the rare instances in which issues of inequality are discussed, we beat around the bush, acting as though terms like sexism, transphobia, and racism are akin to how characters in the Harry Potter series behave about who that shall not be named.

• "...you can't deal with a problem if you don't name it; once you name it, you can think, talk, and write about it. You can make sense of it by seeing how it's connected to other things that explain it and point toward solutions," (Johnson 11).

This quote is reminiscent of the Take a Stand activity we engaged in during Tuesday's class. During the activity, there were several moments where we, as a collective and as individuals, were forced to engage in difficult conversations where we had to sit with and name what we were feeling and why exactly we felt uncomfortable or defensive. Naming our discomfort and identifying why we felt the way we did was powerful and an excellent opportunity for self-reflection and communal understanding.

The article titled Teaching for Social Justice argues that "schools and classrooms should be laboratories for a more just society than the one we currently live in." Some of the key quotes that stood out to me in this reading are:

• "Too many schools fail to confront the racial, class, and gender inequities woven into our social fabric. Teachers are simultaneously perpetrators and victims, with little control over planning time, class size, or broader school policies," (Teaching for Social Justice).

• "...for too long teachers have been preached at by theoreticians, well removed from classrooms, who are short on jargon and short on specific examples...critical teaching requires vision, support, and resources, not magic" (Teaching for Social Justice).

• "...a social justice curriculum must strive to include the lives of all those in our society, especially the marginalized and dominated" (Teaching for Social Justice).