Deconstructing Privilege

Teaching and Learning as Allies in the Classroom

Kim Case

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415641463
• eBook ISBN: 9781136176166
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Although scholarly examinations of privilege have increased in recent decades, an emphasis on privilege studies pedagogy remains lacking within institutions. This edited collection explores best practices for effective teaching and learning about various forms of systemic group privilege such as that based on race, gender, sexuality, religion, and class. Formatted in three easy-to-follow sections, Deconstructing Privilege charts the history of privilege studies and provides intersectional approaches to the topic.

Drawing on a wealth of research and real-life accounts, this book gives educators both the theoretical foundations they need to address issues of privilege in the classroom and practical ways to forge new paths for critical dialogues in educational settings. Combining interdisciplinary contributions from leading experts in the field-- such as Tim Wise and Abby Ferber-- with pedagogical strategies and tips for teaching about privilege, Deconstructing Privilege is an essential book for any educator who wants to address what privilege really means in the classroom.

1

BEYOND DIVERSITY AND WHITENESS

Developing a Transformative and Intersectional Model of Privilege Studies Pedagogy

Kim A. Case

I relive the spring 2001 semester quite often in my mind, when I taught my very own Women's Studies course for the first time at the University of Cincinnati. In April of that term, a White¹ Cincinnati police officer shot and killed an unarmed African American young man who had misdemeanor warrants. The city-wide civil unrest, riots, and white panic that followed coincided with my Psychology of Women class periods devoted specifically to white privilege and intersections of race and gender. Needless to say, as a naïve and inexperienced White instructor, my bag of pedagogical tools came up empty when a White female student yelled out to the class of 70 students that people of color are “all animals.” Despite this pedagogical failure, I continued to incorporate white privilege and critical race theory into my gender-focused courses, earning the label of “racist against Whites” on my student evaluations. Similarly, an intersectional focus on heterosexual privilege in my women's studies courses met student resistance. One White woman made it clear to me that she had to drop my course due to her father's religious concerns about the abundance of “lesbian authors.”

Each of these instructional experiences propelled me to search and search for resources to inform and expand my own strategies for facilitating student learning about privilege. However, years of less than fruitful searching made it clear to me that the resource I yearned for was yet to be created. When I first began my privilege studies journey in 1998 as a brand new graduate student, my thesis chair unapologetically advised me to drop this interest because he predicted no one would be interested in privilege as a research focus. Despite this discouragement from a mentor I still deeply admire to this day, and potentially directly due to the discouragement, I designed my first research project to develop a scale assessing white privilege awareness and began including privilege content in my teaching. To me, I was obligated to present a model of an ally in the classroom, presumably aiding the learning of both privileged and marginalized students. Washington and Evans (1991) define an ally as a dominant group member “who works to end oppression in his or her personal or professional life through support of, and as an advocate with and for, the oppressed population” (p. 195). Neumann (2009) outlines the need for allies in the classroom as part of the professional life aspect of ally actions for social justice. Students encountering faculty allies in the classroom and taking social justice action on campus may feel less isolated, ultimately leading to greater academic success (Neumann, 2009). This book developed from that place of constant exploring for a resource I knew I desperately needed to develop my own identity as an ally in the classroom. Now, 15 years later, my research and teaching led me to take the leap and create the book I wanted to read when I first began developing my own pedagogical philosophy and classroom strategies so many years ago.

Defining Privilege as Distinct from Discrimination

Case, Iuzzini, and Hopkins (2012) describe privilege and discrimination as “divergent outcomes created by … institutionalized oppression” and “inseparable as codependent structural forces” (p. 4). Privilege refers to automatic unearned benefits bestowed upon perceived members of dominant groups based on social identity (Case, Iuzzini, et al., 2012; McIntosh, 1988, 2012). As described by McIntosh (1988), privilege functions as “an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank checks” (pp. 1–2). Discussions of privilege and research about privilege often shift to discrimination, disadvantage, and oppression (Case, Iuzzini, et al., 2012; Wise & Case, this volume). In order to raise awareness of unearned social group advantages, the conversation must stay tuned in to privilege itself as a concept and tangible benefits in the daily lives of dominant group members. As McIntosh (2012) argues, there are distinct challenges to the development of a focus on privilege studies:

Many people who think they are writing about privilege are in fact writing about deficits, barriers, and discrimination, and cannot yet see exemptions, assumptions, and permissions granted by privilege. I am convinced that studies of oppression will not go anywhere toward ending oppression unless they are accompanied by understanding of the systems of privilege that cause systems of oppression.

(p. 204)

Her statement highlights the frequent tendency for conversations about privilege to break down because discrimination seems less abstract and more visible, and, therefore, easier to identify.

Bringing Privilege Studies Pedagogy into Focus

Although the scholarship on privilege increased in recent decades since the original McIntosh (1988) paper on white, male, and heterosexual privilege (McIntosh, 2012), privilege studies pedagogy remains neglected. While courses focusing on prejudice currently receive more programmatic support than in the past, classroom discussions of privilege consistently meet with student resistance and a variety of additional pedagogical challenges (Case & Hemmings, 2005; Lawrence & Bunche, 1996; Tatum, 1994). As instructors struggle to navigate the taboo subject of privilege in high school and college-level courses, helpful pedagogical resources remain scarce and scattered. Currently, there exists a clear and distinct need for a book that focuses on privilege studies pedagogy across a variety of domains recognizing privilege based on sex, religion, race, class, and more.

This book explores best practices for teaching and learning about various forms of systemic group privilege by laying the theoretical foundation for a model of privilege studies pedagogy and provides scholarship and practical applications to aid faculty in becoming effective allies to students in the classroom. The three sections of the volume address:

1. transformation privilege studies pedagogy;
2. intersectional approaches to teaching and learning about privilege; and
3. classroom strategies and applications for teaching about privilege.

This innovative collection emphasizes intersections of identity as an essential aspect of faculty development as pedagogical allies and of student ally identity development. In addition, interdisciplinary contributions from various academic fields such as psychology, sociology, women's studies, ethnic studies, social work, education, family therapy, and law provide multiple perspectives for instructors. The main goals of this collection are to:

• provide a model of privilege studies pedagogy for effective teaching and learning about privilege;
• develop an inclusive privilege studies that incorporates multiple forms of privilege (rather than only white privilege);
• encourage an intersectional approach to teaching and learning about privilege; and
• promote an interdisciplinary privilege studies that calls for “privilege studies across the curriculum.”

Developing a Model of Privilege Studies Pedagogy

Given that faculty teaching about privilege often search unsuccessfully for scholarship that informs their instructional approaches and classroom strategies, a coherent model for effective privilege studies pedagogy is needed to support faculty allies. Incorporating the following ten aspects of this model of privilege studies pedagogy will maximize student learning and raise awareness of privilege across disciplines. This volume calls for allies in the classroom to engage in a model of privilege studies pedagogy that:

• analyzes privilege and power in teaching about privilege, pushing the boundaries of teaching multiculturalism, diversity, or oppression and discrimination. We must extend learning goals to consistently include privileged identities and how privilege operates to maintain oppression;
• emphasizes the definition of privilege (unearned group advantage) and how it affects lived experiences and dominant group psychology while also allowing for co-constructed knowledge to expand and improve the definition;
• focuses on the invisibility of privilege, the consequences of that invisibility for the privileged and the oppressed, and lifting the veil to make privilege more visible;
• teaches privilege across a wide variety of oppressions, including not only white privilege, but also the long list of privileges (e.g., male, heterosexual, ablebodied) that are often neglected in the curriculum;
• frames learning about privilege through an intersectional theory perspective for deeper understanding of the matrix of oppression and privilege;
• involves educator personal reflection on privilege, biases, assumptions, and the ways in which instructor social identity may impact the learning community;
• encourages critical analysis through student reflection and writing about their own privileged identities and careful consideration of how those identities shape their own lives, psychology, perceptions, and behaviors;
• promotes social action to dismantle privilege through student learning that extends beyond the classroom walls in the form of service learning, community research projects, public education projects, community engagement assignments, and ally action for social change;
• values the voices of the marginalized and oppressed by avoiding claims of equal validity awarded to all perspectives. Pedagogical approaches calling for equal validation of all students' lived experiences may in fact lead to further marginalization of the oppressed in the classroom. If privileged voices and experiences are used to deny the existence of oppression and privilege, then effective privilege studies pedagogy must call for student reflection on the invisibility of privilege. In other words, the lived experiences of the privileged may work to maintain invisibility of privilege and work against learning without critical analysis or reflection; and
• infuses learning about privilege across the curriculum, including core liberal arts courses not traditionally associated with diversity content (e.g., biology, introduction to psychology, economics, marketing, and math). Writing and critical thinking “across the curriculum” became common phrases in higher education over the last two decades. We need a movement to infuse privilege studies across the curriculum as a common higher education practice and as a potential innovative initiative to be adopted across universities (e.g., as a quality enhancement program).

Toward an Inclusive Privilege Studies: White Privilege and Beyond

In her influential paper on the interlocking structures of male, white, and heterosexual privilege, Peggy McIntosh (1988) described her realization that she “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” (p. 1) which grants her automatic unearned benefits. During graduate school, this essay was introduced to me in the White Women Against Racism (WWAR) discussion groups that I joined and later facilitated. In the WWAR group, we utilized this list to reflect on our own white privilege and grapple with personal definitions of “ally” as we searched for meaningful ways to take action to dismantle racism (Case, 2012). McIntosh's (1988) analysis provided a lens for complex considerations of privilege that had never occurred to me before. Of course, McIntosh's arguments about white, male, and heterosexual privilege parallel additional forms of privilege bestowed on dominant group members. In other words, individuals perceived to be middle or upper class, gender-conforming, or able-bodied, for example, also encounter benefits directly associated with that group membership (whether they identify with the group or not). However, most existing books, anthologies, and articles about privilege, including those on teaching, focus on white privilege (Aveling, 2002; Case, 2007a, 2012; Case & Hemmings, 2005; Frankenberg, 1993; Lawrence & Bunche, 1996; McIntyre, 1997; Rothenberg, 2008; Stewart, Lanu, Branscombe, Phillips, & Denny, 2012; Tatum, 1994) while neglecting additional forms of privilege. In fact, although McIntosh's famous 1988 paper integrates male, white, and heterosexual privilege, references to the work rarely acknowledge male or heterosexual privilege, emphasizing her points about white privilege while rendering her discussion of two other forms of privilege invisible.

Recently, scholars have begun turning their attention to a broader range of privilege systems to expand the literature within privilege studies beyond its racial focus (Case, 2007b; Case & Stewart, 2010; Kimmel, 2008; Kimmel & Ferber, 2009). A special issue on privilege of the Journal of Social Issues, which I guest edited, emphasized an inclusive approach to privilege studies, with articles addressing not only white privilege (Case, 2012; Cole, Avery, Dodson, & Goodman, 2012; Pratto & Stewart, 2012; Stewart et al., 2012; Stoudt, Fox, & Fine, 2012), but also gender-conforming privilege (Case, Kanenberg, Erich, & Tittsworth, 2012), heterosexual privilege (Cole et al., 2012; Montgomery & Stewart, 2012), male privilege (Coston & Kimmel, 2012), socioeconomic privilege (Sanders & Mahalingam, 2012; Stoudt et al., 2012), and Christian privilege (Blumenfeld & Jaekel, 2012). In that issue, we purposely emphasized multiple forms of privilege to widen the scope beyond the current research focus on white privilege. In addition, ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword Teaching about Privilege: Transforming Learned Ignorance into Usable Knowledge
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Beyond Diversity and Whiteness: Developing a Transformative and Intersectional Model of Privilege Studies Pedagogy
• Part I Transformative Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning about Privilege
• Part II Intersectional Privilege Studies Pedagogy
• Part III Privilege in the Classroom: Strategies and Applications
• List of Contributors
• Index