should ethnicity matter when teaching about ‘race’ and racism in the...
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Should ethnicity matter when teachingabout ‘race’ and racism in theclassroom?Shirin Housee aa Department of Sociology , University of Wolverhampton ,Wolverhampton, UKPublished online: 24 Nov 2008.
To cite this article: Shirin Housee (2008) Should ethnicity matter when teaching about‘race’ and racism in the classroom?, Race Ethnicity and Education, 11:4, 415-428, DOI:10.1080/13613320802478960
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Race Ethnicity and EducationVol. 11, No. 4, December 2008, 415–428
ISSN 1361-3324 print/ISSN 1470-109X online© 2008 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/13613320802478960http://www.informaworld.com
Should ethnicity matter when teaching about ‘race’ and racism in the classroom?
Shirin Housee*
Department of Sociology, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UKTaylor and FrancisCREE_A_348064.sgm10.1080/13613320802478960Race Ethnicity and Education1361-3324 (print)/1470-109X (online)Original Article2008Taylor & Francis114000000December [email protected]
Teaching about ‘race’ and racism to a diverse student group can lead to some veryinteresting exchanges. Some of these moments are much to do with the subject content.Learning about racism often pulls on our emotional strings: black students sometimesexpress their hurt and anger, while white students sometimes remain silent or expresstheir hurt, shame and discomfort. The lecturer’s racialised identity is an important factorin these emotional exchanges. Black lecturers are sometimes judged for their ‘loyaltiesand sensibilities’ with the black community, while white lecturers are questioned fortheir understanding and sympathies with ‘race’/racism issues. This paper considers howsocial identities and physical appearances impact on the teaching and learning processand issues of student and lecturer positionalities and identities in the Higher Educationcontext. In particular, it examines how much being white or black can matter in teachingand learning about race and racism, and the importance of critical pedagogy. Theoreticalreflections on identity construction and management are themed through thesediscussions. The conclusion argues that the teaching of ‘race’ and racism is not onlyabout identity or ethnicity, but the development of teaching strategies that are inclusiveof black experiences; and questions power structures and relations found in whitearchyand patriarchy.
Keywords: Critical Race Theory; student centred learning; black experience; racialisedidentities; counter-narrative
Introduction
This article draws from a C-SAP funded research project in 2001–2003 on ‘Pedagogies ofTeaching Race’ by Susie Jacobs, John Gabriel, Shirin Housee and Sami Ramadani. Itfollows up some of the more ‘race’-specific issues of identities in the classroom, and indi-cates the impact of racialised identities on the teaching and learning experience. It beginswith my own perceptions and experiences of teaching ‘race’ and racism, and then comparesthese with those of six other Higher Education lecturers who teach or have taught on similarmodules/courses.
The project consisted of three main strands:
(1) Collecting the material and setting up a database of sociology courses on ‘race’ andracism/ethnicity and nationalism in 2001–2002;
(2) Carrying out interviews with 34 lecturers in mainland UK concerning their experi-ences of teaching specialist ‘race’ modules;
(3) Eight student focus group interviews with students enrolled on ‘race’/ethnicityoptions, all conducted in new universities across England.
*Email: [email protected]
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I was responsible for the interviews in the Midlands region. I interviewed six lecturers: twoAsian (1)1 female lecturers, two white (2) female lecturers, one white male lecturer and oneAfrican-Caribbean (3) male lecturer. The discussions in this paper refer only to these sixspecific interviews.
Lecturers interviewed were asked the same questions. As most of these were open-ended, they had opportunity to elaborate. All interviews in the Pedagogies project weretape-recorded. Lecturers were asked about their ethnic/racialised identities; the subjectcontent of courses taught; and personal experiences of teaching in this field. The followingare a selection of the 31 questions asked within the project:
● In your opinion, what are the needs and expectations of your students on the ‘race’/ethnicity courses/options (curriculum and content)?
● Would you say that the expectations of teaching race and racism are similar to thoserelating to other topics?
● Do you perceive the various ethnic groups of students to experience the coursedifferently?
● In your particular courses, do issues of who has the right to speak arise at certain timesin race teaching?
● Teachers of race sometimes face complex situations. Does conflict occur in yourclass?
● Have you experienced overt racism in your class?
Interviews lasted approximately one and a half hours.This article follows the ‘race’-specific issues of identities in the classroom and ques-
tions whether racialised identities have an impact on the teaching and learning experience.The research focus in this paper evolves from my own experiences of teaching thesesubjects. The author, being of South Asian origin, has been teaching ‘race and racism’modules for over 20 years; during this time, it has been apparent that the issues of racial-ised identities have been a point of debate or of silence. Here, I examine whether racialisedsocial identities matter or indeed make a difference to the student learning experience. Ibegin with my own perceptions and experiences of teaching ‘race’ and racism in HigherEducation. The author’s experience is then compared with six other Higher Educationlecturers (as described above) who teach or have taught on modules/courses about ‘race’and racism.
I teach at one of Britain’s newer universities, the University of Wolverhampton in theWest Midlands. This university is one of the highest recruiters of people from disadvan-taged backgrounds and has a strong record in recruiting women and ethnic minoritystudents. Teaching in a university where over 30% of our students are from minority ethnicbackgrounds can be challenging. Such cultural diversity in Higher Education is posing ques-tions about identities and their significance to teaching on particular modules such as ‘race’and racism.
‘Only those who feel it can teach it’
During my early years of teaching on a second-level undergraduate course on racism in theBritish context, I often heard black students question the idea of white lecturers teaching onmodules about ‘race’ and racism. These criticisms focused less on the academic abilities ofthese lecturers than on their capacity to ‘really understand’ the lived experiences and issuesof black (4) communities. For these students, the teaching of ‘race’ and racism was more
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than the textbook stuff; cultural and racialised empathy, for them, meant that ‘only thosewho are “black” can feel it and can teach it’. In other words, black lecturers have a livedexperience of ‘race’ and racism, and it was this connection that allowed for empathy withblack students. These students conflated issues of pedagogy and academic expertise withracialised identities, and made it clear on a number of occasions that they believed livedexperience to be a necessary qualification for understanding and teaching about ‘race’ andracism (Housee 2006).
The following is an account of a specific moment where a group of black students sharedtheir objection to white lecturers teaching ‘race’ and racism modules. My white colleagueand I delivered the module in two parts, each taking a separate block. From the start, it wasclear that some of the group (comprising a varied black group, including Asian, African-Caribbean, and multiple religious backgrounds) responded differently to the lecturer’sethnicity and attended lectures selectively. More bluntly, these students absented them-selves from the sessions delivered by my white colleague. When challenged, they drew onessentialist discourses to argue that only blacks can teach ‘race’ and racism and that whitefolks cannot sincerely teach race/ethnicity/racism issues because they do not understand and‘feel’ the issues in the same way.
I argued that the teaching of any academic subject – be it around ‘race’/racism or gender/women – should never be the preserve of particular gendered or ‘racialised’ people. For mypart, the only qualification for this post was academic: an understanding of the sociology of‘race’ and racism. I argued that any lecturer, white or black, should have the opportunity toteach this module.
The students were unconvinced and insisted that teaching about racism required culturaland ‘racialised’ affinities between lecturer and student. They suggested that I, because ofmy ethnic (minority) background, would have a greater understanding of, and a greaterempathy with, ‘their’ experiences of racism. Whilst I assured the students that affinitybetween lecturer and student was of great value and that I appreciated a multi-ethnic pres-ence in my classroom, it became clear that they had conflated the academic understandingof the subject of ‘race’/racism with the experience of racism. Their understanding of whohad the right to teach ‘race’ and racism was based on essentialist notions of black experienceas opposed to academic experience.
I acknowledged that we all come from a certain cultural space and history that informsour teaching. I also agreed that black experience is very valuable in empowering allstudents, black and white. However, as I argue now, the experience of racism should not bea necessary requirement for the teaching of ‘race’/racism. For me, the challenge was tobreak down these barriers and open teaching to those best qualified in terms of knowledge,skills and passion rather than ethnic background. I wanted to see white lecturers teaching‘race’ and racism issues, and black lecturers teaching mainstream topics to white majorityclasses.
These students who helped me clarify these ideas were not hostile. To them, the questionwas simple: ‘Can subjects around race/racism be properly taught by white folks?’ – because‘if they really don’t feel it, can they really teach it’. I understood then, and appreciate evenmore today, that these students were referring to a particular experience of racism: anti-black racism. They assumed that I shared a collective memory of postcolonial black migrantexperience that connected me to other (black) ethnic minorities. This memory created ‘raci-alised’/cultural affinities between black lecturer and black students. Without these affinities,there could be no real understanding of racism, and certainly no authentic teaching around‘race’ and racism; only the stuff of books that might or might not take black people seriouslyas subjects rather than objects of study (Housee 2001).
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The teaching of ‘race’ and racism, and perhaps of other subjects, such as gender, cannotescape personal exposure and experience. When I teach about, say, school exclusions, Idraw on OFSTED reports and the debates on institutional racism. This, I argue, anyonewith the necessary academic/sociological background can teach. However, when I draw onmy own experiences of racist schooling to illustrate and challenge the literature, I shareparticular moments that may connect with my black students through a complex process ofidentification. In this, I can teach the former (institutional racism) and empathise withthe latter (black experience) and share this with them. This is a good learning moment forblack students; it legitimises their experiences and allows them the space and confidence totalk about their own experiences of racism in ways that contribute to a sociological under-standing and response to the issues. It is also a good learning moment for white students: itmay be their only window to race/racism as lived experience rather than sociologicaldiscourse.
Lived experience of racism has become an important issue in the teaching of race andracism. Critical Race Theory (CRT) has provided me with some of the foundations fromwhich to explore the use of black experience as a teaching tool for race and ethnicity. Itsthree main tenets are: ‘centring race’; emphasising the importance of black voices andexperiences in the classroom, and questioning ostensible neutrality. CRT originates as acounter-discourse generated by black legal scholars in the USA. Amongst its originators areD. Bell, who defined CRT as ‘a body of legal scholarship a majority of whose members areboth existentially people of colour and ideologically committed to the struggle againstracism’ (Bell 1995, 888).
More recently, CRT scholars such as Tate (1997), Ladson-Billings (2005) and Dixonand Rousseau (2005) have applied critical race analyses to educational issues around curric-ulum, instruction and assessment. CRT specifically calls for recognition of the experientialknowledge of ‘people of colour’. Personal experiences are explored to make sense of thewider public world and stories are used to counteract and to subvert the reality of the domi-nant voice. These previously marginalised voices, Dixon and Rousseau observe (2005, 11),can provide ‘a counterstory – a means to counteract or challenge the dominant story …[and] can be used as a tool for exposing, analyzing and challenging the majoritarian storiesof racial privilege’.
My students’ objection to white lecturers teaching ‘race’, then, was based on the notionthat these teachers, by definition, could not bring lived experience to the classroom. Forthese students, lived experience was paramount to understanding the racism/racial discrim-ination in the text. For them, if white lecturers could not empathise with the real world ofracism, then they cannot teach it. More importantly, these black students felt that they,in turn, could not easily share their specific experience of racism in a class led by whiteteachers. As Catherine Sleeter (1993, 169) concludes:
Educators of colour are much more likely to bring life experiences and viewpoints that critiquewhite supremacy than are white teachers and to engage in activities that challenges variousforms of racism. They are also less likely to ‘marginalise minority intellectual discourse’. Thelife experiences of people of colour can be politicised to challenge racism in education morereadily than can those of white people.
When I use my own experiences in class, it opens the space for black students to telltheir own stories. My black presence creates an ease that it would be difficult for a whitelecturer to replicate. Students often talk about their silence and/or their refusal to talk insuch classes. Rather than an indicator of sullenness or ‘attitude’, Wagner (2005, 265) saysthat it
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…is not uncommon for marginalised students to adopt silence as a strategy of resistance,thereby refusing to provide the point of view of the ‘other’ for the benefit of the White studentor teacher.
‘It isn’t ‘cos you’re white – but what whiteness has come to mean’
If the first reason why the black students believed that white lecturers were ill-equipped toteach ‘race’ and racism focused on the lecturers’ perceived lack of experience and empathy,the second concerned the social significance of their ‘whiteness’. The students resisted mywhite colleague teaching race and racism because they could not trust the power and privi-lege of her whiteness. As minority students in a white HE institution, with experiences ofthat institution’s racist action and inactions towards them, the students identified my whitecolleague with the power represented by whiteness. Their politics were both personalisedand generalised at the same time: a simple matter of black and white. This position leftunanalysed the more complex questions around whiteness as an ideological discourse andsystem of political power. There was no need to engage with them, because as Sleeter(1993, 166–7) continues:
Whiteness was taken as the norm, as natural … [meaning] power and taken-for-grantedsuperiority.
Whiteness, as with other racialised categories, is not simply about physical attributes or skincolour, but the relationships between those things and the social, political and historicalcontexts that give them significance. Whiteness, in this context, is premised upon powerrelationships born out of slavery and colonialism and racism, a complex network of struc-tures that marginalise and racialise others and privilege whites economically, politically andpsychologically at their expense. As Levine-Rasky (2000, 277) notes:
Whiteness as an identity has assumed dominance through the same process in which blacknesshas become a subordinate identity; white privilege therefore should be understood as a rela-tional phenomenon to blackness.
I often reflect on these earlier days, wondering what we could have done to build trust withthese students. Their experiences at university had confirmed their understanding of therelationships between whiteness and privilege and blackness and exclusion. However, tome, their objection was misplaced: they had conflated my colleague’s whiteness with herinstitution and the broader whitearchy (my preferred term drawn from patriarchy andhierarchy). To move beyond simple essentialism, whitearchy and whiteness need to beproblematised, interrogated and separated from white people themselves. Individuals arestill accountable and responsible for their actions, but it is useful to make a distinctionbetween whiteness expressed as individual prejudice and whiteness expressed as institution-alised racism. In both cases, though, whiteness is a marker of power in relationship toblackness.
Levine-Rasky (2000, 272) notes that this kind of understanding of whiteness as a ‘socialmarker of power’ has begun to
…make inroads in the literature for educational equity and pedagogy. Writings are emergingthat refocus discussions from the ‘them and us’ to whiteness itself. From this perspective thetask involves a rigorous, critical problematisation of whiteness as the active participant insystems of domination.
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Marking whitearchy is about recognising its ideological, socio-economic and politicalhistory; it is about acknowledging Eurocentric racisms and their role in framing the acqui-sition and use of ‘knowledge’. The knowledge gained through the biographies and socialexperiences of staff and students informs teaching and learning relationships. Current anti-racist thinking, as outlined by CRT, argues that neither teachers nor students can claim tobe neutral in the acquisition of knowledge. White lecturers are often seen as being on theother side, the holders of privilege, status and power. Often black students have only thisone reading of their white lecturers. The question here is, how can white lecturers work withmarginalised groups in a way that shifts the power relationships that privilege whiteness?
A suggestion by Anne Wagner (2005, 269–270) is that:
We dominant group members must work to overcome our unearned privilege bestowed uponus, simply because of the colour of our ‘White’ skin, and educate ourselves about the realityand prevalence of racism.
This, suggests Back (2004) should not be seen in terms of white folk’s inability to shed theracist resentment and thinking that supports whitearchy. The challenge for white intellectu-als is to engage with their own racism and that of their colleagues and institutions. Hedeclares:
What I want is to acknowledge that racism has damaged reason, damaged academic and civicfreedoms and damaged the project of education itself. Admitting this means pursuing a kind ofresolute and ongoing reckoning with whiteness … it is an ongoing questioning that strives tostep out of whiteness’ brilliant shadow. (Back 2004, 5)
He adds that this kind of questioning, this reflexivity, ‘should be troublesome and uncom-fortable’ and driven by shame rather than guilt. I believe that the black students were search-ing for this form of authenticity and identification when they interrogated my whitecolleague’s entitlement to be heard on matters of ‘race’ and racism. They were very clearabout the academic messages that whiteness brings to the class. They also raised issues ofpositionalities in academia by questioning who teaches what to whom and how. The keyhere is not the colour of the lecturer’s skin but the politics of their pedagogy. What mattersshould be on the use of critical pedagogical teaching strategies that question patriarchy andwhitearchy, rather than the gendered and racialised identities of teachers, despite the factthat they may matter to students.
At this point it became clear that both White lecturers and Black lecturers have an impor-tant job within the academy. Teaching ‘race’ and racism is about examining racial inequality,discrimination, and institutional racism, which deals with evidence and argument, andapplies critical anti-racist thinking to the teaching. I argue that anyone, black or white, withthe relevant academic/sociological background should be able to teach this. I would like toenvisage universities where lecturers from diverse ethnic backgrounds teach ‘race’ andracism, and do so with an anti-racist perspective and strategy. The importance of anti-racistpractice is for me the yardstick by which one should be judged. Of course black experienceis important, and an added bonus; but I also argue here that white lecturers can bring impor-tant anti-racist experience to class, as suggested by Anne Wagner (2005, 271–272):
[T]here are benefits in White lecturers teaching ‘race’ and racism: … from an anti-racistperspective [because] … students … will be exposed to a White antiracist individual, who maychallenge White students to take the issue of racism seriously, reinforcing that the issue is notsolely a concern for people of colour.
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The question of what matters to students is very important. Too often, even whenconstructed as customers in cultures of negotiation, black students’ views are often disre-garded unless they fit in with what the institution is already doing. In matters of ‘race’,racism, exclusion and diversity, these tendencies are compounded. The aim is not simply todismiss student concerns about staff entitlement to teach. Clearly, whiteness representspower in the real world, and to disregard this is pedagogically and politically inappropriateand disempowering for black students. Instead, whiteness can be deconstructed and re-worked through anti-racist teaching practices to allow for analyses that are more sophisti-cated and grounded. This challenging of whitearchy also raises questions for the re-workingof blackness in the classroom. Appeals to blackness can be empowering for black studentsand encourage greater student participation and more engaged academic writing. However,black cultural affinity and experience should not be a qualification for teaching around‘race’ and racism (Fishman and McCarthy 2005).
Today, I am the only lecturer on the ‘race’ module; this is regrettable, for a number ofreasons. I work with colleagues who sometimes resist teaching about ‘race’ or racism ontheir modules and often ask me to take particular lectures for them. Despite this unease, Ibelieve that if white folks do not teach ‘race’/racism issues, then whiteness becomes asso-ciated with mainstream sociology, and blackness with ‘race’ and racism. As a result, ourstudents’ learning experience is limited and their perceptions confused, as whitenessremains at the centre of sociology, and blackness at the margins.
No formal academic space/teaching forum should be exclusionary. It needs to be reaf-firmed that black only spaces tend to be ghettoised, associated only with black folks andmarginal to the real central concerns of the discipline. The ‘real’ danger in seeing black-onlyspaces, where only black lecturers teach ‘race’/racism, is those students’ ideas that ‘onlyblacks should teach it’ are fully confirmed. More importantly, if blacks alone teach around‘race’/racism, the implication is that this is all we can teach.
Thinking about our differences and identities – in the classroom
As teachers, we are required to think about our identities and how we present ourselves.Lecturers’ identities are constructed, not only by ourselves, but also by our interactions withothers. I used to refer to myself as a black woman, but have noticed this becoming moredifficult over the last decade. Most students either correct me or ask me to explain myself.Today, my South Asian-ness and my Muslim name seem to be of interest to students, as oldcoalitions fall apart and the ‘war on terror’ throws up new ones.
In higher education classrooms, as elsewhere in the new times, our identities are anissue, if not the issue. I know that the moment I walk into a classroom, the students ‘read’certain messages about my ‘self’ as a black/Asian woman. Of course, there are multiplereadings centring on affinity, cultural identity and differences and power relations and posi-tions. For example, black students might read me as being on their side as black students.My blackness is enough to establish a non-hierarchical affinity; despite my being on theother side of the desk, I am still seen (on one level) as one of them, the black students. Atanother level, black students say they like to see black lecturers teaching, being in a positionof power (at least to them we are!). They say they gain confidence by our black and oftengendered presence. I have had black students say, ‘You give us hope, because you are likeus. We think, if you can do it, so can we’. For these black students, our representation offersa role model for their empowerment.
Our identities can be used more broadly as a teaching tool. Ropers-Huilman (1997, 342)suggests that:
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Teachers’ identities and the experiences that shaped those identities can be used in variousways as teaching tools, both to make explicit power relations within certain sociallyconstructed identities and to teach students different perspectives based on events or situationsthat class participants had not experienced.
The social construction of identities is important for students to grasp. Contemporary iden-tity argues that identities are not unified around a coherent ‘self’, although they representthemselves as complete. Hall (1990) argued that what we call our ‘self’ is made up of multi-ple selves, with the possibility of multiple identities. The selection of these multiples thatwe come to identify as our self is not a solitary activity, but defined in relation to others,and acquires its meaning from what one is not. For example, it would not make sense to sayone is black, if white was not identified and signified; and vice-versa. Our sense and expe-riences of ourselves are directly linked to the specific historical, social and political contextin which we find ourselves, and to the nature (often oppositional) of the interactions weencounter (Hall, 1990).
Student perceptions of our identities as lecturers are mediated by the messages they readfrom our outer self. African-Caribbean students often read me ‘politically’, as someone whounderstands and feels about racism in the wider context of discrimination and injustices. Tothese students, my (perceived) similarities of blackness with them are measured by ourdifference from (skin-deep) whiteness. To Asian students, and particularly Muslim students,my identity is read and affinities assumed in cultural and religious terms. Our cultural,ethnic, and racialised identities are, it seems to me, always mediated by our students’perceptions of us. In these terms, identities matter very much when lecturers teach on issuesabout ‘race’, racism and ethnicity. In my own experiences, there is no escaping the impactof our identities on our teaching and their learning.
Given this, I was interested to see whether colleagues teaching on ‘race’ and racismmodules at other institutions had similar experiences. I interviewed six higher educationlecturers who teach or have taught on ‘race’ and racism courses, to explore whether socialidentities mattered in their teaching. The sample consisted of four females, two Asian andtwo white; and two males, one African-Caribbean and the other white. The interviewsexplored three broad issues: their experiences of teaching ‘race’ and racism, and whetherthese differed from their other classes; the effects, if any, of ethnicity on the teaching andlearning experience; and students’ perceptions of the teaching of ‘race’ and racism.
To the question of whether teaching about ‘race’ and racism was different from othersubjects, this Asian female lecturer said:
Teaching race is different to other subjects, because other than the black students, there is a lotof resistance to the subject. Also it can be emotional for both black and white students. It doesget to the heart of their identity. Sometimes you don’t know what to say when they hear horrorstories – say about slavery. I don’t want to come across as a female Malcolm X. I am aware ofthis. I do the conventional stuff of lecturer professionalism. I don’t want to make ‘race’ andracism the only important subject.
In terms of her identity, she said:
I came out of an age where Asians, along with most ethnic minorities, saw each other as black.Being black for me means, I look at Africa and other black experience with equal importancein my teaching.
She added that her Asian female identity had made a difference to the teaching and learningexperience, and that student responses seemed to differ according to their ethnicity. She
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made it clear that Asian students, particularly women, saw her as a role model and theirreading of her cultural identity formed the basis for their affinity:
Female Asian students do connect with me and they really like seeing an Asian woman teach-ing. It somehow empowers them; it gives authority to their identity. I legitimate their being, bysaying what they would like to say.
She connected with the African-Caribbean students on a broader ‘black’ identity level. Here,she argued, students identified her with their political blackness and the professionalism thatencourages:
Vocal black/Afro-Caribbean students know that the black lecturer will not look down on them.They recognise that they are sharing the same space, so when they are angry, they feel you’llunderstand and they can talk about their experiences confidently. For black students, racemodules are life-affirming. Feelings they had to hold in, they could now let rip a bit. It’s alanguage that makes sense to them.
This illustrates the broad range of empathies that black students draw on to sustain them-selves and each other. They found the lecturer’s presence empowering in that it created aclassroom space that validated their experiences where they free and safe(r) in sharing theirblack experiences. This mirrored my own experiences, as did her description of whitestudent responses, where:
White students, on the other hand, are often silent, but you know they take the subject seri-ously, because they often produce very good work, with good political understanding of‘race’.
The challenge was to ensure that the classroom was also a safe environment for thesestudents. She wanted to be able to examine whiteness without making white students feelguilty about racism:
For white students, I hope I am not just doing the guilt tripping, but that they realise the racia-lised nature of the world and whiteness is not the ‘norm’ or ‘neutral’. They need to be madeaware of this as a ‘privilege’. I think it is difficult to see ‘race’ if you are white. Hopefully, myteaching about whiteness makes this visible.
The topics of whiteness and grasping the racialised nature of the world ran through my inter-views with the two white female lecturers. Both of them said that they had chosen to teachon the subject ‘race’ and racism partly because of their anti-racist family backgrounds. Thefirst said:
My political background brought me to teaching this subject. My parents were very political,and were involved in socialist and anti-colonial struggles, and active in anti-racist struggles.
The second offered similar sentiments:
My involvement in teaching the sociology of ‘race’ was related to my background. In the ‘60s,I was involved with anti-racist struggle, socialist and anti-immigration issues, and I wasinvolved with the Indian Workers’ Association. All this informed and led me to teaching aboutracism.
She continued:
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Teaching ‘race’ was very rewarding: it was a personal, political as well as an academic journeyfor me.
As to whether being white and female mattered to these two lecturers, the first said:
As a white lecturer, teaching about ‘race’ has not been easy. You enter the class looking forways to be accepted and, sometimes, this requires that you look to your own identity andoppressed past, as you search for empathy. I am of Irish and Jewish descent; I teach otherracisms, such as anti-Irish and anti-Semitic racism, because I want students to be aware of otherexperiences of racism.
Whereas the first lecturer attempted to make connections between her own ethnic histories,the second recognised that she cannot have complete empathy with the black students.However, she argued that this does not affect her teaching about racism:
As a white lecturer, I do not know how it feels to be discriminated against, but I can teachabout the practice. I tell students about how racism discriminates, using examples of, say, theImmigration Act.
She continues:
As a white person, I have a different perspective to black experience. My whiteness does notcreate any difficulties. I need to remember that whites also are heroes of anti-racist struggles;this is important for us to remember. I feel passionately about issues of ‘race’ and racism, andI recognise that as a white, middle-class person, I am protected. But [as] Nelson Mandela oncesaid, ‘Unless we are all secure, nobody is’.
However, the first lecturer made it clear that, despite these credentials and principles:
Some [black] students felt that white lecturers were their enemies. My presence tremendouslychallenges them. I would enter the classroom for a battle and often won. Sometimes blackstudents don’t like the idea of a white lecturer teaching about ‘race’ and racism. It was chal-lenging. I have to draw from my own background – an anti-Semitic experience – to legitimisemy teaching. Black student experience on the module has been enlightened. They tell me thatthey had not realised that other ethnic minority groups are also subject to racism. In the main,my students want to learn about racism, about multicultural society. They want to becomegood anti-racists, and many students are surprised by the knowledge of other experiences ofracism.
This also illustrates her commitment that all her students, black and white, become open toanti-racist politics, even though white students still tended toward silence:
White students sometimes do not feel they can speak about racism, and they let the Asian andAfrican-Caribbean students speak. I do think we should create a safe environment for all tospeak. I remember one occasion when a white student said to me, ‘Every time I come to yourlectures, you make me feel like a racist’. I said, ‘This is not my aim. You need to explore thatfor yourself’.
However, she did note that there has been a shift of this dynamic, as classrooms becomemore diverse and multi-ethnic:
White students are more confident now. They are comfortable in speaking about racism. Also,there are much more diverse views amongst black students now. At one time, I found that a
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black student would not contradict another black student. Now, all students are more comfort-able to talk amongst students.
This lecturer was comfortable being white and teaching ‘race’ and racism based on non-essentialist principles. She said:
Just like I don’t agree that male lecturers cannot teach about gender, I believe that whitesshould and can teach ‘race’ and racism very effectively. Yes, ethnic minorities do have adeeper meaning with the group that is oppressed, but, we can still provide a good learningexperience.
The African-Caribbean male lecturer wanted to distinguish between teaching about ‘race’and teaching about racism. He argued that his course was not about discussing black people,but the racism in society. In this, like the other interviewees, he felt a responsibility to createa safe environment:
Racism is an emotive issue – we don’t teach in a style where we are navel-gazing, we do notput the black students under such exposure.
Beyond this, he felt that his identity informed his teaching in the sense that:
Being black can help. I can say what a white lecturer cannot. I remember saying to blackstudents, ‘Let’s talk about racism’, and suggesting how racism has caused problems for us andmesses us up: talking about conceptions of beauty, for example. This is easy for me to do; I amnot sure a white lecturer would be at ease with asking such question.
In terms of student identities and the degree to which white students and black studentsexperienced ‘race’ and racism courses differently, he said:
I welcome black voice – I try to make sure that black students work with the whites in class. Ithink it is also important to ask white students what it is like to be white. This is just as valuableas knowing what it is like to be Asian and African-Caribbean. I have seen moments in my classwhere the students have separated themselves by friendships, and the class is clearly dividedinto black and white on opposite sides.
He added that it was important to address issues around white identity in teaching. It wasnecessary to bring out whiteness to expose the racialised and class issues associated withwhitearchy. This was especially the case at ‘old’ universities, such as his, where blackstudent experience was marginal and there was a need to dispel any creeping negativity orracism against black experience:
Lots of our students are from white middle-class areas of Britain. For many, this is the firsttime they have come to a multi-racial city – they are shocked. For a lot of these students,this course educates them to a kind of Britain that they don’t know about. It gets rid of their‘Little England’ hang-up. It is an eye opener: they come with a negative image of a large innercity.
The white male lecturer said that he too taught about racism rather than ‘race’. He arguedthat his role was not simply to promote an understanding of different experiences, but toteach in ways that challenge ‘race’ thinking and ‘open out’ the classroom, so all students –black and white – have the confidence to speak to and learn from each other:
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As the centre for ‘race’ teaching and research, we are a department very committed to the issue.Teaching ‘race’ is difficult. You don’t just talk about your experience; you need to talk aboutthe students’ preconceptions and misconceptions, and stereotypes. Pedagogically, this is quitedifficult to do. These courses never work if people can’t say what they think because they areterrified of being accused of being a racist.
In terms of the impact of his own identity on his teaching, this lecturer refused to categorisehimself. He said that people can make what they want of his identity, but he does not liketo label himself or anyone else. This is a familiar and attractive argument, but despite hisrefusal to categorise, students will ‘read’ him through the values placed on whiteness andmaleness. These labels are often associated with power and privilege, and need to be recog-nised if the power relations between lecturer and students are to be acknowledged and theclassroom opened to student engagement (Back 2004).
This lecturer also recognised issues in his classrooms around the right to speak. Therewere often silences, but he aimed to create a space conducive to white students feelingcomfortable enough to speak and where black students’ views and experiences were notseen as the sole sources of authority. Central to this was student participation and interac-tion; however, there were often very difficult moments, when students’ identities werebrought to the fore and challenged.
It is important to make students feel secure enough, all, black and white, so they can speak inclass. Last year, a black British woman, a fierce advocate of Afro-centricism, enormouslyirritated two Indian women in class. It was the one time that the dynamics of the group brokeup. I could not negotiate this at all. The seminars became polarised very quickly and studentssided with one or the other – this was quite hard.
He said that, even without such difficult moments, white students often needed encourage-ment to break their silence, because:
White students do not presume they know about racism in the same way, but their voices aremore confident when they are in a majority.
It was important for white students to feel confident enough to use their right to speak, andto challenge the racism that appeared in class, the lecturer continued:
There was an incident once when this black student spoke out in class and said all whites arethe same. This white student spoke out furiously and said that is not the case; she was takennote of by all students.
Throughout this research, there have been references to points of conflict that centre aroundracialised or ethnicised readings of identities – black, white, Asian, Muslim or Hindu – andthe right to speak and to be heard. The lecturer underlines the importance of a pedagogy thatallows these to be unpacked and questioned:
My understanding of any good teaching on issues of racism is that it enhances the students’own understanding of racism in the context of a broadly political progressive framework.And I see the purpose of this course is to be anti-racist. To me, good teaching is always anemergent outcome between the student and the teachers; it’s never one-way. You cannot herdpeople into a room to change them. It is really about how you are going to maximise thepotential for the students who do respond within the teaching context. For these students,you’ll make a difference; and it is partly because of what they bring to class. Good teachingis the coming together of these things: what they bring to class, and how they respond toteaching.
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For this lecturer, good progressive teaching methods are at the centre of the unlearning ofracism, and fundamental to anti-racist and critical ‘race’ pedagogy and politics.
Concluding points
This article has explored the importance of ethnic background and racialised experiences aspedagogical issues. The vehicle for this has been a discussion around how much our iden-tities matter when teaching on ‘race’ and racism issues. My own experiences suggested thatthey matter a great deal. Interviews with six colleagues across the West Midlands confirmedthat lecturer and student identities do shape classroom dynamics and impact on the teachingand learning experience. Issues of identity and affinity were underlined by the black inter-viewees, who pointed to the importance of racialised identities in building the trust andconfidence necessary for black ethnic minority students to survive in hostile environments.For the black lecturers, their presence was important for black and white students, as ithelped to dispel the idea that universities are white places.
Racialised identities were also important for the white lecturers. They also noted thedegree to which students, black and white, responded differently to their presence. Theydiscussed how black students often challenged their right to speak on ‘race’ and racismissues, and the particular importance of an anti-racist strategy at such points. Concernsaround anti-racism and the examination of whiteness brought to the fore discussions aboutthe politics and the pedagogy of ‘race’/racism in the classroom. Here, all the lecturersagreed that the teaching of ‘race’ and racism does not necessarily require the social andcultural experience of blackness.
It is politically important for the student body to see white lecturers leading anti-racistcritiques in education. Furthermore, whiteness seems to matter less if the lecturer interro-gates the power issues associated with whitearchy. Even so, all three white lecturers werecommitted anti-racist thinkers, but had experienced difficulties in the classroom. Theywere clear about their political commitments and did not feel ‘guilty’ about racism, butsaw it as their job to provide an educational experience that challenged students andhelped them to untangle and unlearn this racism. For black students, this might meanmarking whitearchy; for white students, it might entail making whitearchy and whitenessvisible.
The teaching of politically sensitive issues like ‘race’ and racism seems to requirechecks and balances that are unnecessary in other subjects. This is to do with the increasedinterpersonal and political dynamics of the class setting, where students and lecturers canfind it difficult to separate the everyday reality of living in a racist and racialised worldfrom the world of academia. This blurring of worlds and words can generate an emotionalcharge that powers a focus on ethnicity. For black students, ethnicity matters, becausewithout the experience of racism, white lecturers have to teach from ‘outside’ the subject.How, then, can they teach about it in a way that respects black students’ experience of the‘inside’?
However, it is clear that the experience of racism alone does not guarantee academic orpedagogic capacity to deliver material inclusively and effectively. Personal experience canallow for deeper rapport, but should not be seen as the only necessary skill that is offered inthe class that teaches ‘race’ and racism.
To me, what counts in the classroom is less how one’s identity or ethnicity are read bystudents than how one’s teaching strategy is inclusive of black experiences and uses themto question the structures, relations and processes of power found in whitearchy and patri-archy. The application of critical pedagogical teaching methods that centre ‘whitearchy’, is
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inclusive of marginalised voice, listens to their counter-stories, and promotes broader criti-cal race thinking and engagement are the markers of effective teaching around ‘race’ andracism. These are what really matter in our work as lecturers.
AcknowledgementsThanks to the C-SAP (Centre for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics within the Higher EducationAcademy) and to Manchester Metropolitan University, and London Metropolitan University, forfunding this project. Thanks as well to my co-researchers for permission to publish this paper. Bigthanks to Paul Grant, whose critical political mind and meticulous editing eye has helped to sharpenmy analysis.
Note1. The research used more than one consideration in assigning ethnic categorisation to lecturers and
students, as outlined below: (1) ‘South Asian’ is used to refer to those who define their ethnic origin as the South Asian
subcontinent, which includes Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.(2) ‘White’ refers to folks of European descent. Whiteness, like any other racialised category, is
not about physical attributes or skin colour, but refers to the debate that acknowledges thesocial, political and historical contexts of colonialism and European dominance.
(3) ‘African-Caribbean’ is used to refer to those who define their origin as the African continent.(4) ‘Black’ is used to refer to those people of South Asian and African/Caribbean decent. The
term ‘black’ is a political reference to the recognition of a common history of colonialism andcontemporary racism that is experienced in the diasporas. It is accepted that the term ‘black’is not used to negate difference or to imply homogeneity; indeed, it is a term that is oftencontested.
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