Anti-Racist Teaching

Robert P. Amico

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781612058825
• eBook ISBN: 9781317263630
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

"Antiracist Teaching" is about awakening students to their own humanity. In order to teach about this awakening one must be in the process of awakening oneself. The author shares personal anecdotes to illustrate the kinds of changes he experienced as a result of his antiracist teaching. His book explores the questions, Why is teaching about racism and white privilege to white students so difficult? and What can educators do to become more effective antiracist teachers for all of their students? Amico examines the cognitive and emotive obstacles that students experience in the classroom and argues that understanding these difficulties can lead to their resolution. He considers a variety of different approaches to antiracist teaching and endorses a dialogic approach. Dialogue is the centerpiece of students classroom experiences; students engage in dialogue at nearly every class meeting. The dialogic approach is effective in a variety of different learning settings from K 12 classrooms, trainings, retreats, workshops, and community organizations to the college classroom. Further, the book discusses how to bring antiracist teaching into the core of university curricula."

Chapter One

What Is White Privilege?

White privilege is a form of domination, hence it is a relational concept.¹ It positions one person or group over another person or group. It is a concept of racial domination that enables us to see this relationship from the perspective of those who benefit from such domination. Traditionally in the United States, racial domination has been portrayed as discrimination against people of color—that is, from the perspective of those who are disadvantaged by such domination. But you can’t have one without the other—you can’t have racial domination and disadvantage without racial dominators who are advantaged. This is the insight of Peggy McIntosh’s seminal paper “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies”: “As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.”²

As a white male, I know what Peggy McIntosh is talking about. What we are taught to see and not see shapes our view of the world—of what is real. My education through high school, college, and graduate school never included any discussion of white privilege and only discussed racism as a historical phenomenon, something that happened to people of color centuries ago.

Personal Anecdote

I remember watching television with my family in September 1957. I was ten years old and in the fifth grade. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had ordered the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce the integration of Central High School and protect the nine black students enrolled that fall. My parents, like many whites at that time, thought that these black students were “troublemakers” who were trying to force themselves on people who didn’t want to associate with them. They saw these black students as encroachers on “regular” people’s freedom of association. I remember seeing the faces of all the angry white parents standing behind the line of troops and shouting racial epithets at these nine black children. I remember my parents making derogatory comments about African Americans that day and for many years after and telling me that people should “stick to their own kind.” They made it clear to me that they did not approve of integration and wanted me to keep my distance from blacks. Three years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, “separate but equal” was the prevailing norm in the world I inhabited. I believed my parents and parroted their views throughout my childhood—their view was my view. And white privilege was not even on the radar.

The natural question that arises from the introduction of the concept of white privilege is, What exactly are these advantages that white people enjoy at the expense and to the detriment of people of color? Since we whites have not been taught to see such advantages, we generally do not. Peggy McIntosh came to see some of her advantages as a white person through first understanding some of her disadvantages as a woman and observing men’s inability or unwillingness to recognize their advantages as men: “I have often noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are over-privileged in the curriculum, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. Denials, which amount to taboos, surround the subject of advantages, which men gain from women’s disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully recognized, acknowledged, lessened, or ended.”³

Again, as a male I know what Peggy McIntosh is talking about. For much of my life I believed that “it’s a man’s world” because we men deserve to be on top. We are simply better at certain things than women. The idea that we men are privileged was, in my view, “sour grapes” from women who couldn’t make the grade. This unwillingness to acknowledge any male privilege is deeply connected to the American myth of meritocracy, which maintains that all advantage in society is based on merit. Some have more than others because they have earned it through hard work, perseverance, and right living. And conversely, those who have less have only themselves to blame. The idea that even some of my advantages are unearned and undeserved and are a function of my status as a male was in my mind, for many years, preposterous and unfounded. But the idea that we live in a meritocracy in the United States is a myth because it has proven to be inconsistent with sociological fact. Structured inequality would be impossible in a meritocracy. Those of every “race,” ethnicity, and gender who worked hard, persevered, and lived right would excel in a meritocracy. Yet we have serious structured inequalities along racial, ethnic, and gender lines.⁴

White privilege and male privilege have the common feature that, in both cases, those who are advantaged cannot see their own advantage, although they can see that others are disadvantaged, and those who are privileged tend to fault those who are disadvantaged for their disadvantage. Conversely, those who are disadvantaged can see that they are disadvantaged and that some are advantaged, and they can see that both their disadvantage and the advantages of those who are privileged are unearned and undeserved. Ironically, then, those who enjoy privileges are epistemically disadvantaged, while those who are disadvantaged are epistemically advantaged! Hence, listening to someone who is epistemically advantaged due to her social disadvantage makes sense. The following anecdote illustrates my point.

Personal Anecdote

Many years ago I was settling down with my partner to enjoy a TV movie at home. It was an action-adventure film, and I was excited to watch it. As we began to watch, my partner started to get agitated and said to me, “I am so sick and tired of watching television! Every time I turn it on, all I see is women being victimized, women being brutalized, women being assaulted sexually, women portrayed as stupid, helpless bimbos, as sexual objects! I can’t watch another minute!” With that, she left the room. A lot of thoughts went through my mind all at once, and they were all dismissive and condescending: What’s the matter with her? Is she having her period? Did she have a bad day? Something must have happened because this is a really good movie. I am embarrassed to reveal those thoughts even now. But although I discounted everything she said, I started to click the remote control (of course, I was always the one to hold the remote, to control the TV) to see what was on other channels. To my surprise I found quite a few programs showing women just the way my partner had described! At that point I could not have admitted this to her, but I did let it sink in. I wondered why I had never noticed it before. I am an educated, observant person; yet I was oblivious to what was obvious to her. That is how I understand epistemic disadvantage and advantage now.

Through comparative analysis with male privilege, Peggy McIntosh reached the following explanation of white privilege: “I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets, which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless backpack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.”⁵ After months of reflection McIntosh was able to list forty-six such advantages she enjoys as a white person. They include items like the following:

#13. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.

#15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.

#21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

#25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.⁶

For those of us who enjoy one form of privilege or another (e.g., race, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, ability, age, religion), why don’t we feel privileged? As sociologist Allan Johnson explains, privilege attaches itself to social categories, not individuals.⁷ So society values whiteness, not a particular person who is white; it values maleness, not a particular person who is male; it values heterosexuality, not any particular person who is heterosexual, and so forth. Hence, the perception that someone is white or male or heterosexual may be sufficient for that person to receive the privilege attached to that social category. And conversely, the perception that someone belongs to a social category that is disvalued in society may cause that person to receive the disadvantages attached to that category. So paradoxically, perception is more important than truth when it comes to who is advantaged and who is disadvantaged in society. How others perceive me may determine whether I am stopped by the police while driving my car, whether I am hired for a job, or whether I am followed in a department store by security. Because privilege does not attach itself to individuals for who they are, I may be privileged without feeling privileged. If I were a king, I would be privileged and feel privileged for who I was. But the kind of privilege we are talking about here is not like that. And the same holds true for disadvantage. Society disvalues certain social categories, and disadvantage attaches to them. Hence, it is possible to be disadvantaged without feeling disadvantaged.

Perception and Truth

Earlier I said that perception is more important than truth, and that may have given the impression that there is a truth to the matter of whether the social category actually applies to a particular individual. Is the individual actually white? Well, the question itself presupposes that there is such a thing as actual whiteness, and there is not. We have learned from biology and history that “race” is a social construction; it is not a biologically real category. There is as much or more genetic variation between any two individuals of the same so-called race as there is between two individuals of two different so-called races.⁸ In the late seventeenth century, wealthy, landowning, Christian men who invaded this land created the category of “race” based on superficial differences in skin tone and hair texture for the purpose of exploitation and permanent domination.⁹ These men created social systems and institutions (e.g., laws, rules, practices, value systems) to reify “racial” difference and continually empower some and disempower others on the basis of this constructed “difference.” Hence “race” is a social rather than a biological reality. Many of the social categories surrounding privilege and oppression—gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, ability, and disability—are largely social constructions.

To be sure, there are real differences between people, but we define the social categories, and we assign meaning to those differences. For example, on the face of it, it would seem that nothing is more clear-cut than whether a person is male or female, whether a baby is born a boy or a girl. After all, that is the first question most ask when a baby is born: Is it a boy or a girl? But the experiences of many people born intersexed have led us to understand that whether someone is born a boy or a girl is a matter of definition. Some are born neither. Some are born both. Some simply defy such categorization and force us to realize that this scheme of categorization is a human invention. Some cultures recognize that a binary system of categorization is inadequate and have multiple categories within which to understand gender. Both sex and gender are more complicated than our binary categories allow.¹⁰

Systemic Privilege: What Does It Look Like?

Understanding the relational nature of white privilege helps us see that white racism and white privilege are two sides of the same coin. Whereas some are undeservedly disadvantaged because they are perceived to be of color, others are undeservedly advantaged because they are perceived to be white. Here are a few examples to illustrate the ubiquity and systemic nature of white privilege.¹¹

The Job Market

Tim Wise writes that a 2003 Milwaukee study

had young black and white male job testers who were otherwise equally qualified apply for jobs in the metropolitan area. Some of the whites and some of the blacks claimed to have criminal records and to have served eighteen months in prison for possession of drugs with intent to distribute, while other whites and blacks presented themselves as having no prior criminal convictions. Whites without records received callbacks for interviews thirty-four percent of the time, compared to only fourteen percent for blacks, and whites with criminal records received callbacks seventeen percent of the time, compared to only five percent for blacks with records. So whites without records were 2.4 times more likely than comparable blacks to receive an interview, and whites with criminal records were 3.4 times more likely to receive a callback than similar blacks. So, at seventeen percent, whites with prior drug convictions were more likely than blacks without records (at fourteen percent) to be called back for an interview, even when all other credentials were equal.¹²

This study reveals the systemic nature of white privilege and white racism. Without the study a person looking for a job would only know that he either did or did not get a callback. From his experience alone, he would have no evidence that he was either privileged or disadvantaged because of his perceived race. The systemic nature of white privilege and white racism explains, in part, why those who receive such privilege are not aware of it and why those who are disadvantaged may not know it. From the outside it simply looks like one person got a callback and another did not. White privilege is embedded in the values, beliefs, and practices of those who are hiring. Even though it is illegal to discriminate in employment on the basis of perceived race, the practice is alive and well, but hidden. Only those explicitly looking for evidence of white privilege will find it.

Housing

In December 2011 Bank of America’s Countrywide Financial agreed to pay $335 million to settle a lawsuit claiming it discriminated against black and Latino borrowers. The Justice Department alleged that Countrywide charged a higher interest rate on the mortgages of more than two hundred tho...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter One: What Is White Privilege?
• Chapter Two: Why Is Teaching about White Privilege to White Students So Difficult?
• Chapter Three: The Class Setting, Pedagogical Goals, and Theoretical Frames
• Chapter Four: Applying the Dialogic Approach
• Chapter Five: Assessment
• Chapter Six: Conclusion
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author