A note about how I think about and use language
The writings of Toni Morrison and bell hooks inspire the way I think about and make sense of the words I’ve written here -- that is, as an act of storytelling that is both reflective and generative. If this last sentence gives you pause and/or you’re curious for an example of this by a skilled writer, I highly recommend reading or listening to Toni Morrison’s 1993 Nobel lecture -- a story anchored by a wise, old, blind woman who is visited by a group of children curious to know if the bird they hold in their hands is alive or dead.
The story of the old woman and her young visitors serves as both the foundation and a touchstone for Morrison’s extended reflection on language and personal agency:
Speculation on what (other than its own frail body) that bird-in-the-hand might signify has always been attractive to me, but especially so now thinking, as I have been, about the work I do that has brought me to this company. So I choose to read the bird as language and the woman as a practiced writer. She is worried about how the language she dreams in, given to her at birth, is handled, put into service, even withheld from her for certain nefarious purposes. Being a writer she thinks of language partly as a system, partly as a living thing over which one has control, but mostly as agency – as an act with consequences. So the question the children put to her: “Is it living or dead?” is not unreal because she thinks of language as susceptible to death, erasure; certainly imperiled and salvageable only by an effort of the will. She believes that if the bird in the hands of her visitors is dead the custodians are responsible for the corpse. For her a dead language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis. (Morrison, 2011)
My attempt to reclaim agency over the stories I use to make sense of the world — stories I once considered benign — is an ongoing process and lifelong journey. While the stories I chose to share here will likely reveal something about my subconscious to the reader, I take full responsibility for the impact of my words.
This website (and my work, in general) is an extension of my doctoral research: How do white folks navigate and negotiation conversations about race and racism in their predominantly white communities? The title of my dissertation -- "Walking on eggshells": A Critical Reflection on Racial Tension at a Predominantly White Independent High School -- was taken from something a participant said to me during the first phase of this study: "We're walking on eggshells, white teachers, as we should be." This phrase -- “as we should be” -- has intermittently haunted me ever since.
bell hooks (1994) asserts, "Like desire, language disrupts, refuses to be contained within boundaries. It speaks itself against our will in words and thoughts that intrude, even violate the most private spaces of mind and body" (p.167). In retrospect, and after reading the above assertion, I now see how these four words — “as we should be” — goaded me through the labyrinth of data generated through conversation with colleagues, and myself:
I get what he means. We need to be thoughtful about the words we use because, regardless of our intent, they may negatively impact others. But we also think being overly self-conscious about our language is unnecessarily restrictive and stands in the way of being our authentic selves. But what is it that we want to say but feel we can’t?
I use the word we throughout my dissertation. My intention was to be specific, not exclusive. This choice was initially my attempt to avoid the trap of academic research -- that is, I did not want to distance myself from the participants as an “objective observer” who was simply relaying how “these white people” navigated and negotiated conversations about race and racism in “their” community. I, too, am a white educator who (necessarily) participated in this critical inquiry with other white educators. It is our story. And while it was my perspective/interpretation of our conversations that was captured and shared text, our shared assumptions about “how things should be” can draw attention to unspoken norms and values of our distinct discourse community — that is, white educators working for predominantly white institutions.
Nevertheless, there are times when my use of the word “we” might provide readers who do not identify as white educators with an opportunity for self-reflection: Do you see yourself reflected in the “we” I refer to? For example, when Grace Lee Boggs cautioned against the temptation to valorize individuals as the leaders of a movement and asserts, “We are the leaders we've been looking for” (Lee, 2014). Can you, as a reader, decipher the “invisible ink” (Morrison, 2019, p.348)?
The embedding of hashtags within and alongside prose is my attempt to capture the nuanced complexity and generative power of language. I want to challenge the conventional understanding of the hashtag in educational research as simply a way to categorize and track topic-specific conversations and resources -- as if Twitter was some sort of #digitalcatalog. Hashtags allow us to acknowledge and embrace the glorious messiness and intertwined nature of life (Robinson, 2018). I understand hashtags as portals between and through discourses. Consider #thoughtsandprayers: what discourse(s) does this invoke? What purpose does this hashtag serve for those who use it? Is it literal? Is it sarcastic? Is it antagonistic or dismissive? Regardless how we interpret this particular hashtag, #thoughtsandprayers sits at the intersection of a number of discourses and invites us to come in contact with communities of people with whom we may have little to no exposure.
It is in this spirit I invite you -- the reader -- to wander with me. Allow me the pleasure of sharing my journey to acquire the skills necessary to critically reflect on racial tension within one predominantly white independent school community. As you read, see if you can decipher what it is I love about both practitioner inquiry and this particular community.