Our ignorance is reasonable
As I read through the transcripts, I began to see similarities between how I understood race and racism and how the participants were making sense of race and racism in our community. It seemed that our “sense making” relied on three underlying assumptions:
While we recognized we had a race (i.e., white), we saw people of Color as those who experienced racism. Thus, our ignorance about race and racism was reasonable, since for all intents and purposes, we had never personally experienced the problematic aspects of race, e.g., racial microaggressions and institutional racism.
Since our ignorance makes sense given our lack of first-hand experience, we need experts -- namely, people of Color -- to help us to see/confirm subtle manifestations of racism (e.g., racial microaggressions) and to teach us how to counteract the manifestations of racism in our community.
Given the insidious nature of racism and income inequality in the United States, the effectiveness of collective action to disrupt the status quo depended on our community reaching a shared understanding regarding both the “situation” at hand and the #endgame.
These underlying assumptions often lead to synchronized handwringing and this old saw: Of course, we believe #blacklivesmatter! We’re just not sure why Black students seem to experience academic struggle more than their peers. We can only imagine how hard it must be to move through a racist world as a Black person. We think it might have something to do with the fact that many of our Black students might not have access to the same cultural and financial resources as our other (read: white) students. Of course, this sounds a little racist and so we’re not sure. But given the racialized economic history of the United States and the manifestations of extreme income inequality this seems like a reasonable assumption. But we really need to do something because this is not okay.
Although I understood I was white, I believed that people of Color were the ones who experienced racism. I essentially believed my privileged status as a white person protected me from the effects of racism -- both at the policy and interpersonal level (Rothstein, 2017). This understanding can be seen in this participant’s response explaining why he doesn’t require his Black students to participate in conversations about the relationship between the “legacy of racism” in the United States and an individual’s self-image:
If they don’t want to jump in, that’s totally fine with me. So I think it’s more difficult for them-- and for very, very understandable ways. / I mean, you have a fourteen-year-old and we’re talking about a legacy of racism that transforms not only sort of your position in the world, but the way you think about yourself. I mean that’s hard to process. And that’s hard to say, “Ew, ew [laughter]. Let me be the one to address that.” So yeah, I definitely notice that. (Cornelius 16:47, Phase One Interview, 06/12/18)
Absent from the above excerpt, and from the rest of the transcript for this conversation, is a concern for how the “legacy of racism” in the United States transforms the way white students think about themselves relative to others in the world (Thandeka, 2013; Morrison, 2019).
The idea that the privileged position of white people protects us from the distorting effects of racist policy and ideas was reinforced for me -- perhaps unintentionally -- by a metaphor offered by a facilitator of a “diversity training” I attended: Imagine that racism is a boot stepping on a mouse. In the metaphor, who is the mouse and who is wearing the boot? Within the context of our discussion, the “correct answer” that we were to “discover” after reflecting on this metaphor was that the mouse represented people of Color and white people were wearing the boot. This interpretation was further reinforced by the facilitator’s follow up questions: If white people are wearing the boot, who needs to change what they are doing? Does it make sense to ask the “mouse” to just “stop squealing” and try harder? And finally, instead of trying to ignore the “squeals” of the “mouse,” what if we paid attention to what the “mouse” is “squealing” about?
While writing about this experience, I decided to do a Google Image search for a boot stepping on a mouse. I figured there would be lots of images to choose from because I’ve heard versions of this metaphor referenced in numerous diversity training workshops. Turns out… not so much. What I was able to find was a quote credited to Desmond Tutu,
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
As I understand it, the message above about the problematic nature of “neutrality” in the face of injustice is important. It is our silence/indifference as white people when confronted gross racial inequity and injustice that allows for the generational and state-sanctioned violence to continue. That said, this is not how I initially (mis)understood the metaphor: White people had unintentionally oppressed communities of Color and now we, white people, simply need to “lift our foot” so that “the mouse” has an opportunity to escape their unintentional oppression. To be sure, this (mis)understanding is problematic for a number of reasons -- not the least of which is that it reinforces (rather than challenges) a toxic racial hierarchy by positioning white people as superior/in control of all other races.
Although I cannot be sure if I’m misremembering how the facilitator presented this metaphor, I am certain that I missed the nuance of this metaphor. While it was a helpful way for me to conceptualize that white have the power (and therefore the responsibility) to #dosomething to change hegemonic systems of oppression, this metaphor -- when interpreted through my #whiteracialframe -- also reinforced a problematic, unproductive, and common (mis)understanding of racism as an isolated act -- assumed to be performed by a racist bigot -- and was therefore an exception, rather than the rule (Bonilla-Silva, 2018). My half-baked interpretation of the squealing mouse also reinforced for me what I know understand as the #whitenonsense narrative that the primary reason we -- predominantly white institutions -- need to hire people of Color is because they have likely had personal experience(s) with race and racism and can therefore serve as support for students and families of Color in our community.
Consider the following given in response to being asked if this participant thought teachers can play a role in disrupting patterns of racism in our community:
Sure. I mean, we have to recognize-- I think we have to recognize what those patterns are. Realize when we see them, maybe, collectively-- I mean, this kind of conversation-- when you ask, “What patterns of racial inequity do I see in the school community?” and I see very few, there may be teachers and students who see more of them. [...] But those patterns that I may not see-- should be pointed out to me. / For my good, and for the good of the school and all that. And so once we can sort of agree on what we’re looking at, then we can certainly work to disrupt those patterns. Yeah. (Participant L, Phase Two Booklet, p.8)
This participant’s response is an example of how we understand our ignorance as reasonable in relation to other people who have more knowledge about race and racism -- namely, people of Color. This (mis)understanding functions to shield ourselves and the institution from potential accusations of not doing enough because it is generally accepted that we cannot disrupt the inequitable, anti-Black status quo until a consensus is reached regarding “what we’re looking at” in terms of how racism manifests within our predominantly white private school. Although the quote above refers to seeing larger patterns of interpersonal racism in our community, other participants spoke about the need for experts to help white teachers learn about how to recognize and address the “more subtle” forms of racism within our classrooms. When asked if there are ways that the Office of Diversity and Community could support her and other white teachers, this participant explained,
Because the challenge is that you don’t want to have just a little seminar for white teachers and be like, “Hey, the students of color in your classroom might be feeling this, this, and this. Here are the things to watch out for,” because it almost pathologizes in a way: ‘Here are the things that students of color might suffer from, and here is preventative work that you can do.’ Which is not to say that that’s not important information. I struggle, too, with the idea of how to-- most of the things that as a teacher I experience in the classroom, they are not overt [laughter]. They are much more subtle. They are more about interpersonal dynamics more than they are about overt acts of racism. (Participant A, Phase Two Booklet, p.2)
This excerpt is consistent with the responses from other participants. In fact, during a Phase Two small group conversation, one participant pointed out that she wrote next to this excerpt, “this speaks to me” and explained she felt she would really benefit from having a seminar like the one described by Participant A (Clare, Phase Two Small Group 2, 10/16/18).
While the participants had varying levels of knowledge, confidence, and experience with regard to talking about race and/or disrupting patterns of racial inequity and interpersonal racism in our community, they consistently framed their ignorance as reasonable. While a number of participants suggested our white racial identity was the primary reason for our ignorance, discourse analysis of the data as a whole suggests it is the combination of how we understand our white racial identity and positionality as teachers within the institution that prevents us from seeing and interrupting patterns of inequity and interpersonal racism. For example, the quote above suggests how Participant A understands the discursive boundary that envelops the classroom space: “the students in your classroom might be feeling this” and “most of the things as a teacher I experience in the classroom.” This language suggests the classroom space is understood as distinct from the space/experiences outside the classroom (Figure 2).