content analysis

Yesterday, a friend sent me a link to a very funny blog called Stuff White People Like. Then, this morning, on under the apt title, “whiteness studies,” Jeremy Freese of scatterplot linked to soaring reviews of a gallon of milk on Amazon.com. All this thinking about white people made me consider an issue of ethics and pedagogy related to race.

At my institution, we have a much beloved instructor who teaches a somewhat “edgy” courses about race. He’s fond of blowing apart racial myths and exploring racial inequities in manner that students can easily relate to. He manages to push our largely white and conservative pool of students and still get the best teaching evaluations bar none. He’s cool; he gets it. Virtually every minority student at the institution takes his courses. He’s white, but much like Bill Clinton, he’s completely accepted by minority students.

Recently, he offered a new course exploring white culture restricted to only white students. He was able to get away with that stipulation by only admitting white students who had taken his race class and keeping it under the radar, not letting senior faculty, the chair, or any university officials know about it. Upon learning about this, two opposing thoughts occurred to me: a) how dare he impose a race restriction that return us to segregated classes?, and b) my God, just imagine how productive that class could be, if it gave white students a chance to honestly explore race.

To address point b first, the course covered the history of racism among whites, stereotypes of whites (and their functions), and tried to develop ways to have more equitable and honest multi-racial interactions. By all accounts, students left the course with a far more nuanced notion of race, greater sensitivity to non-whites, and a few became radicalized on the issue of race.

At the same time, to do this under the radar without approval from the department, the institution, or the community seems unethical. Moreover, regardless of whether the community would have consented, the entire notion of barring non-white students is unjust. And that’s to say nothing of how white was even defined for the purposes of admission to the class.

While there is much to be concerned with in this particular example, it does raise the broader question of how we can teach race to white students (and really get through to them!) without them feeling fearful of saying the wrong thing? How can we teach it in a context where white students quietly nod and jot down whatever the instructor says?

Clearly, not all institutions are the same. Some faculty maybe lucky enough to teach at a school rich with Lefty undergrads all too willing to approach race critically. But, perhaps, that situation makes it even more difficult to really challenge students’ thinking.

I’d be interested to hear my reader(s) comments. What do you think?