Beyond Equity at Community Colleges

Bringing Theory into Practice for Justice and Liberation

Sobia Azhar Khan, Kendra Unruh, Sobia Azhar Khan, Kendra Unruh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781032016979
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000590685
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This volume proposes that the work of community colleges has expanded beyond equity into providing a true barrier-free learning environment for students, one that is attuned to justice. The essays included here serve as evidence and examples of the productive ways in which educators may bring theory and practice to bear on each other, which in turn may allow community college faculty, staff, and administrators to reexamine the role of a community college as a space for justice. Topics explored with this volume include liberatory educational practices in and out of the classroom, transforming classrooms into the site of collaboration and contestation, and unique visions of how to promote opportunity for marginalized students. Ultimately, the goal of this edited volume is to explore and encourage community college educators to understand the integral role they play in bringing transformative justice to their students and their communities.

1The Myth of “Diversity Training” at the Community CollegeTen Practical Strategies for Antiracist Instruction and Making Whiteness Visible

Allison A. Parker

DOI: 10.4324/9781003179665-2

In Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's 1987 Broadway musical masterpiece, Into the Woods, the witch laments the fact that she lives in a world where everyone is far more concerned with being nice than doing what is right: “You're so nice. You're not good, You're not bad, You're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right. I'm the witch. You're the world” (1989, p. 121). Because she is alone in her search for justice, she is an outsider—the witch, and she is against “the world.” Currently, we are experiencing a cultural shift where corporations and public figures are preemptively “cancelling” themselves before anyone can accuse them of being racially insensitive. This shift has encompassed many aspects of the media from the bands Dixie Chicks and Lady Antebellum changing their names to “The Chicks” and “Lady A,” respectively; to Tina Fey removing episodes of her satirical television show, 30 Rock, where characters were wearing blackface; to Disney removing and updating of one of the most popular rides in their theme parks: Song of the South (based on the movie from 1946 that many have criticized for being racist and perpetuating negative stereotypes of Black people); to several voice actors who identify as White removing themselves from projects where they had been cast as characters of different races. Some of these changes are absolutely needed and long overdue. However, instead of interrogating assumptions about race and culture that would lead to uncomfortable (but desperately needed) conversations, these moves seem to be made out of a need to make everyone, but mainly the people who are responsible for these choices, comfortable as quickly as possible. When it comes to people in the public eye and their reputations (but more importantly, their incomes) they represent the witch's definition of “the world,” a group of people who are much more interested in appearing to be nice than doing what is right. Or as bell hooks states in Teaching to Transgress (1994), these are people who are interested and invested in change only as “opportunistic concerns” (p. 12).

On the other side of the issue, as recently as September 5, 2020, a White House memo was sent to the head of federal agencies stating that President Donald Trump was directing them to end all diversity training programs (Beggin, 2020). The main objective of the Trump administration was to argue against the idea that people are affected by institutional racism. This way of thinking is a form of “abstract liberalism,” and it is representative of one of the “Four Frames of Color-Blindness” that Eduardo Bonilla-Silva writes about in his book, Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America (2005). Bonilla-Silva argues that central to the concept of abstract liberalism is the idea that institutional racism does not exist and fierce individualism is crucial to a person's success (p. 28). This is another way to move away from the discussion of systematic racism and to put the focus on individual achievement, and it does not allow for the examination and critique of social institutions in order to challenge systems of racism.

Traditional Diversity Training Begins and Ends with Comfort

The concept of comfort applies to traditional diversity training at community colleges. On most college campuses, there is a desire to promote positive relations, but teachers themselves are reluctant to openly discuss power, racism, and White privilege with colleagues. bell hooks describes this as, “… watching white folks play at unlearning racism but walking away when they encountered obstacles, rejection, conflict, pain” (1994, p. 25). These are issues that affect every teacher and student in every classroom. Educators are quick to use terms like “diversity” and “multicultural education,” but they often avoid issues of power and racism to focus on “the more positive and less volatile aspects of difference, such as valuing varying forms of expression and exploring different points of view” (Henze et al., 1998, p. 189).

For decades, college campuses have focused on a cultural pluralism approach to address race relations. This approach begins with the concept that everyone has equal access to success regardless of his or her background. The problem is constructed as being one of the students not having the opportunity to understand each other, and if students can just learn about each other's cultures, they will come to appreciate and respect all aspects of each other's identities (Henze et al., 1998, p. 188). This is what makes cultural pluralism so attractive to educators. It moves the focus away from the instructor's own experiences and complicity with Whiteness and racism, and puts the focus on students' lives and relationships with each other. Rosemary Henze et al. outline the problems with cultural pluralism in their article, “Dancing with the Monster: Teachers Discuss Racism, Power, and White Privilege in Education” (1998). They state that this cultural pluralism perspective does not acknowledge the inequity and biases present throughout history and that are based in power relations. The authors argue that “[c]ultural pluralism as a panacea is ‘nice,’”(p. 188) but this reduces complex issues of race to the idea that if people can just learn strategies to understand and cooperate with each other, they can end, or at least alleviate, racism. The authors go on to emphasize that cultural pluralism does not interrogate the fact that White males have more privilege than minority groups, including women—especially in terms of education and employment. In addition, “this approach does not equip students or adults to challenge the unequal practices, policies, and structures they will undoubtedly encounter” (p. 188). All of these failures have indelible effects on students.

There is no neutral choice for a teacher in a classroom. The texts that teachers select, the questions that teachers create, and the choices that teachers make in responding to students' comments send a strong and direct message to students, but so do the texts teachers leave out, the questions they do not ask, and the comments that they do not address. When “unequal practices, polices, and structures” (Henze et al., 1998, p. 188) are not addressed in the classroom, teachers are sending the very clear message that dismantling those structures are not crucial to a democratic education, and it also teaches students of color that those issues only need to be addressed when someone actively points them out. This type of teaching has infected the classroom for decades and continues to do so. Ochoa and Pineda, in their article, “Deconstructing Power, Privilege, and Silence in the Classroom” (2008), discuss the current area where “ideologies of power evasion prevail,” and they explain that it is now commonplace for students from all backgrounds to come into a classroom “articulating dominant perspectives of equality, meritocracy, and individualism” (p. 46). The authors argue that these perspectives originate from the concept that everyone has the opportunity to succeed, and any limitations to success come from deficiencies within groups or individuals, not systems of inequality (p. 46). Continuing beyond the classroom, teachers are sending students the message that the issues they are experiencing are their problems and not part of a system of institutional racism that needs to be learned, challenged, and abolished. These messages have been repeated over and over in the educational system for students from the time they enter that system, and it is part of the formulation of their identities. Whenever discussions around race and ethnicity happen, the conversations center on people of color. In order to truly examine privilege, the discussion needs to focus on Whiteness. By the time students complete a college education, “their considerable academic awareness of inequality is grounded in others' experiences of discrimination and not their own experiences of privilege” (Pence & Fields, 1999, p. 150). It is crucial for teachers to reevaluate the way they address racism in their classes, especially since teachers have been indoctrinated into the same oppressive system.

This celebratory multiculturalism has been popular in diversity training since the 1970s and is still influential both in classrooms and in teacher trainings at all levels of education. In contrast, critical multiculturalism is a perspective that analyzes the inequalities of power. It can obviously be very effective in both teacher trainings and college classrooms to explore expression and different points of view, but this becomes problematic when these ideas are used as comfortable ways to avoid more challenging questions like, “How do teachers, administrators, school practices, policies and structures (intentionally or not) perpetuate inequitable treatment based on race?” (Jay, 2005, p. 100). So, the driving force behind most of the discussion about race has been grounded in the need for the teachers to remain comfortable, and this is evidenced by the way the concept of the “safe space” has shifted to the idea of everyone feeling comfortable and “safe” in the classroom. Traditionally, the idea of a “safe space” in a classroom was for teachers to create an environment that encourages participation and the sharing of ideas. This idea was crucial to the feminist classroom and the Civil Rights movement—it was a revolutionary idea to have an academic space where marginalized people could freely share ideas without the threat of physical harm or intimidation. However, more recently, there has been much feminist scholarship criticizing the safe space. Jeannie Ludlow, in her article, “From Safe Space to Contested Space in the Feminist Classroom” (2004) states, “The problem with ‘safety’ in the feminist classroom is that it is often proclaimed from a position of innocence regarding the ways cultural spaces are inflected by power and privilege” (p. 44). The concept of a safe space has dangerously become tied to the idea of comfort, and this usually means comfort for the teacher and allowing the teacher to avoid situations that cause discomfort in the classroom. Similarly, many teachers have co-opted the concept of tolerance in the classroom as a way to interact with others without engaging—a “do what you like” attitude. Instead, the concept of tolerance in the classroom should be thought of as the ability to be able to press through those feelings of discomfort because it is important to have honest discussions about race and privilege in the classroom. These types of discussions are a “liberatory practice” for both teachers and students (Borsheim-Black & Sarigianides, 2019, p. 10). Racism is a painful topic, and everyone should expect to experience pain, sadness, anger, loss, and discomfort.

According to Michael A. Messner in his article, “The Privilege of Teaching about Privilege” (2011), another barrier for teachers to engage in antiracist teaching is the “Sincere Fiction of Individual Merit.” Messner argues that people need to feel that they can view themselves as fair and kind in the way they treat other people. He states that these “sincere fictions” are grounded in “shared ideologies” (p. 6). Similarly, Kevin K. Kumashiro, in his article, “Toward a Theory of Anti-Oppressive Education” (2000), argues that people only want to learn things that confirm to themselves that they are inherently good people, and they “resist learning anything that reveals [their] complicity with racism, homophobia, and other forms of oppression” (p. 43). In other words, it is difficult for us to learn things that conflict with the positive image that we have of ourselves. How can people be the heroes of their own stories if they discover that they have villainous traits? Kumashiro goes on to state that it is very “labor intensive” for students to “unlearn old habits of thought” (p. 8). This process takes an extensive amount of work and training as well as painful self-reflection, and without the proper tools or guidance, it can seem like an insurmountable task. Transformative spaces are spaces of risk, disruption, resistance, and discomfort—often for the teacher. “It is an exhausting process, this moving from the experience of the ‘unknowing majority’ (as Maya Angelou called it) into consciousness. It would be a lie to say the process is comforting” (Lucal, 1996, p. 251). Teachers and administrators cannot begin this process if their main focus is maintaining their own comfort within a racist system, and if they are not examining the ways that they are complicit in upholding White supremacy.

What Is Whiteness?

Another issue in teaching about racism is that it can be complicated and overwhelming—especially for people who have a monolithic view of race, and unlearning this is the first step toward a liberatory practice in the classroom. Race is a socially constructed ideology that changes and shifts through performativity, repetition with alterity, and cultural markers, and it is largely based on perception. People in American culture are defined racially, not by any kind of biological meaning, but by the way racial categories are commonly understood, or as Ta-Nahisi Coates states, “Race, is the child of racism, not the father” (2015, p. 7). In addition, it can be difficult to work with Whiteness, when most people come from the same systems that have ensured that Whiteness remains invisible and White supremacy unchallenged. To begin making Whiteness visible, it must be clearly defined. According to Carlin Borsheim-Black and Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides in their book, Letting Go of Literary Whiteness: Antiracist Literature Instruction for White Students (2019), “Whiteness, like race generally, is a social construct. Whiteness is neither objective nor biological but arbitrary and malleable. What it means to be White has...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Journey Toward Justice: A Call to Action for Community Colleges
• 1 The Myth of “Diversity Training” at the Community College: Ten Practical Strategies for Antiracist Instruction and Making Whiteness Visible
• 2 Laying Bare the Foundations: Examining and Confronting Language Expectations in a College Syllabus
• 3 Toward an Equitable Pedagogy: Invitational Education in the Community College Classroom
• 4 Relational Poverty Theory in Praxis at San Antonio College
• 5 Integrating Racial Justice Theory into Writing Center Practice
• 6 Centering from the Margins: The Standpoint of Women of Color STEM Majors in the Community College
• 7 Beyond the Language Barrier: Just Approaches to Teaching Literacy in Community Colleges
• 8 “Those Particular Pleasant Hours”: How Community College Choirs Can Transform Equity into Liberation
• 9 Collaboration, Sustained Inquiry, and Epistemic Justice: Worldbuilding in the Community College Research Writing Classroom
• 10 Moving the Classroom to the Field: Creating Opportunities of Equity and Justice for New York City Community College Students
• 11 One Step Closer to Freedom: How a Trauma-Informed Writing Center Staff Supports Students Upon Reentry
• 12 Justice through History, Writing, and Art: The Poorhouse Rag Project
• 13 “We Went from Listening to Authority to Becoming the Authority”: Privileging the Voices of Students through Participatory Action Research
• 14 Beyond the Talk: Lived Experience as a Catalyst to Taking Action
• Index