by Stephanie Waterman, Associate Professor at the University of Rochester
Don’t
shoot
On my way to teach class on November 11, 2014, I passed a group
of students protesting the grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer who
shot and killed Michael Brown on August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri. I was
concerned for the students’ safety on a wet, very dark, and cold evening. I
went to class with worry.
Tuesday nights last fall semester I taught College Access
and (In)equity for graduate students in our higher education program. This
class was a mix of master’s and doctoral students, with one teaching and
curriculum doctoral student. On this night, I devoted the entire class time to
discuss “Ferguson.” I felt the class would need to process the grand jury’s
decision and its implications. Students were troubled, the room somber. As we
all work with college students, and higher education administration and staff,
I felt it absolutely necessary to discuss what happened. We cannot ignore
what’s happening outside the ivory tower. To do so ignores populations of
students and communities that most of our institutions claim to support. Our
higher education students work with the college population who were outside
protesting. Their students will have questions; they may want to process with
us. Their colleagues in offices such as residence life, Greek life, and in
academic support may also want to process. I felt it would have been a
disservice not to address the issues. If our mission is social justice,
equality, and other high moral values, then we absolutely have to address
issues of race and injustice.
Over the course of the semester in this class we discussed
communities like Ferguson with regard to educational access, resources, and
college attendance. We viewed a video produced by Rochester City School
District students that depicts a community very similar to that described in And Still We Rise: The Trials and Triumphs
of Twelve Gifted Inner-City Students, a distressed community near Los
Angeles. These very similar communities are thousands of miles apart, yet, one
is in the neighborhood of our institution. What happened in Ferguson very much
impacts college access.
I took the theory-as-tool approach as a framework for our
discussion. To prepare for our discussion I constructed a PowerPoint to
introduce Critical Race Theory (Tate, 1997), and the concepts of privilege and
power by Allan Johnson (2005). I
also introduced the intentional stereotyping and image management of African
Americans as noted in the film, Ethnic
Notions. As conveyed in the film after emancipation when freed Blacks began
to compete for jobs, Black Face, Vaudeville, and comics were ways to enforce
stereotypes to prevent integration into communities and the economy. Shown as
feeble or dangerous, these images infused stereotypes into the common knowledge
of society. We then explored websites that provided background information. For
example, the Mapping Decline website (mappingdecline.lib.uiowa.edu/map), school
district data, and social disparity maps (see www.vox.com).
Racial issues are complex; they do not happen overnight and are connected with
troubling policies that encouraged White flight. In addition, I shared counterstories
of Native American men who are no longer with us because they were “killed
while brown.” I shared the Missing or Murdered Indigenous Women website (www.itstartswithus-mmiw.com/background).
These counterstories were not shared to compete for which group
suffers the most, but to underscore the endemic racism in the United States
that affects all of us.
In the 1990s there was a tense political situation in New
York State over Native American land claims. A vigilante group had formed who expressed
an intent to burn down the homes of Oneidas. If someone was going to join the
vigilante group, they were unlikely to first ask which homes were Oneida homes.
I have had many a Black male student (professional, graduate student, or both)
tell me they were stopped “while driving Black” to and from my class. Or
stopped in the library when they were not professionally dressed. Or both Black men
and women asked for help in the cafeteria because non-Black students thought
they were cafeteria workers and not students. When stereotypes frame action,
credentials and details (like race) are ignored.
The conversation on November 11th was not easy;
it should not have been—it was absolutely necessary and necessary to discuss
for however long it took. The point was not to determine who was right or
wrong, who-said-what-and-why, but to use information and tools to help us process,
to use theory to help that process, and to model and practice discussing a
timely and difficult topic. Students commented that we have issues because we
do not talk about race, and that in a class earlier in the evening the jury’s
decision was not discussed. They termed it the “elephant in the room.”
I
can’t breathe
On December 3, 2014, a decision was made not to indict the
officer who killed Eric Gardner.
We devote time and resources to issues that matter, to
issues that we value. When these issues are not discussed in the classroom
messages are conveyed that certain topics—and the people connected to those
topics—are not valued. As a faculty of color it is not my sole responsibility
to address issues of race. Did I do a good job with our discussion on November
11th? I don’t really know. All I know is that I had to, because it matters.
Black
lives matter
Oppressed
lives matter
All
lives matter
References:
Corwin, M. (2001). And still we rise: The trials and triumphs of twelve gifted inner-city students. New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers.
Johnson, A. G. (2005). Privilege, power, and difference (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Riggs, M. (Director) (1987). Ethnic notions. Berkeley, CA: California Newsreel.
Tate IV, W. F. (1997). Critical race theory and education: History, theory, and implications. Review of Research in Education, 22, 195-247.
