Revisiting bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress’, I found this quote that highlights for me potential reasons for reluctance to talk about race. This is something I want to explore as I think that in order to empower and unlearn biases, we need to talk about them. This is the quote:
‘The unwillingness to approach teaching from a standpoint that includes awareness of race, sex and class is often rooted in the fear that classrooms will be uncontrollable, that emotions and passions will not be contained. To some extent, we all know that whenever we address in the classroom subjects that students are passionate about there I always a possibility of confrontation, forceful expression of ideas or even conflict. In much of my writing about pedagogy… I have talked about the need to examine critically the way we as teachers conceptualise what the space of learning should be like.
bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 1994, p39
Remembering my own experience as a student during my Masters, I remember moments in which peers made racist statements during crits which went, I thought, comparatively unchallenged by teachers in the room. This led me to being so upset I couldn’t participate in the next part of the session. Some years later, as a teacher, I took part in a diversity training session, in which participants were encouraged to weigh in on instances of racism in the university. This also led to some participants inadvertedly voicing racist views, which the facilitator challenged. While this might have been a teachable moment for those teachers, I and other participants of colour left feeling depressed and disengaged from their peers and the university as a whole. hooks goes on to describe how ‘many students, especially students of colour, may not feel at all “safe” in what appears to be a neutral setting. It is the absence of a feeling of safety that often promotes prolonged silence or lack of student engagement.’ This chimes with my own personal experience, in these instances.
It is experiences like this that now lead me as a tutor to have anxiety about allowing any space for racist statements in the classroom. This might go without saying, but actually, sessions that talk about race are often framed as a point for racist views, or ‘unconscious bias’ as its often termed by the university, to be aired so that they can be challenged. This approach does not center care for persons of colour present. The burden is put on students/teachers of colour to fortify themselves to expect and to be able to handle racism during these classes for the greater good of teaching and learning. I’m not sure if this is really possible or sustainable.
When working with children in my own practice outside of the university, I enjoy the process of loosing control and allowing for ’emotion, forceful expression of ideas or even conflict’ (as hooks articulates in that first quote), that often arises when bringing race to their attention. Loosing control pushes my thinking further, allows for us to play with serious concepts, these moments allow for greater creativity. In university loosing control in conversations around race feels more risky, perhaps because we are all adults, perhaps because I am more of a minority at UAL, than I am outside of it so I feel more vulnerable to attack, perhaps because of the pressure of assessment and time, that makes there less space for play.
I plan to continue to take this prompt from bell hooks to ‘examine critically the way we as teachers conceptualise what the space of learning should be like.‘ What type of space of learning am I tying to create? Should it be defined by me? I wish to create a non-hierarchical environment through encouraging everyone is treated with respect, including me.