Activists, allies, and racists: Helping teachers address racism

Lazar, Althier M., & Offenburg, Robert M. (2011). Activists, allies, and racists: Helping teachers address racism. Journal of Literacy Research, 43(3), 275-313.

Racism has to be one of the most difficult things to talk about in a classroom. Talking about reproduction and sexual issues is also tough, but probably not as tough as talking about racism. I’d bet money that if you made a group of elementary school teachers decide whether to discuss racism or sex with a group of children, they’d almost all choose sex. Race is such an uncomfortable topic for us, because we’d like to say that racism is a thing of the past, or at least that schools and classrooms are places where racism is combated. We’d like to think that the elementary students we work with will grow up into a world where they will never experience racism, and will never themselves exhibit racist attitudes and behavior. We know those things are not true, though, and so do the children of color in our elementary schools. Racism is the “elephant in the room” in many of the urban classrooms where I have worked with teachers over the past several years. In most of those cases, the children were largely African American, largely from families with financial struggles who had experienced firsthand the structural racism that Lazar and Offenburg write about here. Structural racism is a deeper, more insidious problem than mere “meanness” toward those of racial groups different from one’s own. Lazar and Offenburg state that structural racism “often operates tacitly and is generally measured in differential access to resources and opportunities for advancement” (p. 276). When hate crimes are exposed, they are condemned in today’s society, but structural racism rages unabated in our country and even is often aided and abetted in the schools, which are all about issues of power and social control and making everyone conform to one group’s notion of what is good.

One of the things that makes racism doubly difficult to address is that in the urban classrooms where I have lately spent time, while the children were mostly urban children of color from families with financial challenges, the teachers were mostly suburban Caucasian women from at least middle class families. I myself was raised in a small town, but otherwise my demographic profile is similar to that of the majority of teachers. Of course, those teachers cannot help being who they are any more than the children in their urban classrooms can. Still, the thing that makes the elephant in the room so unspeakable is that we as white teachers know we are in positions of privilege and power. It is not just because we are teachers; it is because we are white. The students in my own preservice courses resist talking about white complicity in structural racism. I had one student tell me I was expressing racist views when I told them I believed they would face challenges working with urban children who were so different from themselves. She wanted to believe that all of us have equal opportunities in this country, and DO have the same potential to succeed in society. She did not want to hear that she was part of structural racism simply due to the color of her skin, and that the things that she accepted as “the way things should be” might not be the same as everyone else’s views of the way things should be. Lazar and Offenburg would say she espoused “conservative multiculturalism” (p. 281), which essentially is the old melting pot idea where differences are erased. “Liberal multiculturalism”, which celebrates diversity but does not look into deeper issues like structural racism, takes a different tack but really doesn’t help to effect change, any more than conservative multiculturalism does. Both perspectives salve the consciences of white teachers, “sanitize” racial issues, deny culpability, and generally work to make us feel good. The authors recommend rather a stance they name as “critical multiculturalism”, which faces these issues head-on and interrogates them. Difficult as such a stance may be, it may be the only way that we can combat the insidious racism that pervades our culture, the “shame of the nation” that Jonathan Kozol wrote about. Only if we confront our shame do we have any hope of conquering it, or of helping children conquer it in the future.

To this end, the authors here studied how a group of teachers in a graduate clinical course conducted discussions of children’s literature that dealt with the theme of racism. These teachers were working with small groups of diverse urban elementary-grade children in a summer literacy program that was part of a graduate program the teachers were enrolled in. They were required to engage children with books about a difficult issue, something many of them would probably have avoided if they had been given a choice. The authors collected and analyzed artifacts, including the teachers’ lesson plans, and audiotaped discussions conducted by five of the teachers. The researchers were interested in whether a course that some of the students had taken with the first author made any differences in how the teachers addressed racism with children, but they found that except for some increased emphasis on activism for teachers who had had the course, there wasn’t much difference. In general, these teachers found it difficult to go very deeply into discussions of racism. They tended largely to stick with questions about character traits and the sort of question like “How would you feel if you were Ruby Bridges?” Strategies like speaking of racism as a thing only of the past, or “glossing over” comments from children that might have led to deeper but more uncomfortable discussion, were observed.

It is perhaps the natural desire of elementary school teachers to want everyone, including themselves, to feel comfortable and good and certain and safe. Unfortunately, if we always avoid anything that might be uncomfortable or negative or uncertain or risky, we avoid asking questions or making any changes. If schools are truly to become change agents instead of just perpetuating the status quo, we have to start doing what is uncomfortable. As a teacher educator, my challenge is first to face and confront my own discomfort, and then to figure out how best to support and mentor teachers as they learn to do the same.