10/16/17 - Racism in the Classroom

The article I chose to use for our Social Justice discourse was “Combating Racism in a Multicultural World: Classroom Ideas”. In this article, the authors write about teachers using other peoples’ cultures to combat the racism that teachers see in certain students. In a history lesson, for example, the class might look at how the Mexican people saw the Mexican-American war develop (among others) and use the war as a means to understand how and why some Mexicans are bitter toward the United States and its citizens. Another way might be to travel to a local museum to learn about the experiences some groups had to go through to get where they are today, such as the Native Americans. Books are also useful tools to discuss past and present racism in the United States, such as ­­To Kill a Mockingbird or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The reason I chose this article above some of the others I found was because the authors had an inherent assumption about students: that only a few students outright desire to be racist or think that racism is an acceptable expression in civil society. Some want to be racist for the sake of being contrarian and edgy, but neither the authors nor I think that is the case for most students – instead, racism tends to be born of ignorance, of a lack of interaction with people of other culture groups.

This is not to say that simple interactions will solve all issues of racism in society, just that it is a good start. What the authors definitely want to avoid is a message which is feel-good, but empty – that “all cultures are interesting and fun, everyone gets along”.  All cultures truly are interesting, but they almost always clash with each other. So instead of pretending all cultures are equally valid and there aren’t any problems between various cultures, just dive right into why certain cultures clash with one another. Try discussing the dichotomy between undocumented Mexican workers and the white working poor, or how urban African Americans are viewed by the media and contemporary society, or even how certain American companies and politicians cultivate and exploit racism for their own benefit. In order to truly combat racism in American classrooms, we need our students to understand why people are racist in the first place, only then can our student move beyond these notions of racism and become better members of society.

Link to article: http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/combating-racism-multicultural-classroom.shtml