Reflection on the findings

Sometimes I worry we think the problem is “The Struggle” of students of Color who attend predominantly white independent schools. Consider a common critique of the English department: Many people -- both inside and outside predominantly white independent school communities -- believe faculty who teach courses referred to as “English” are dismissive of calls to diversify the curriculum because “these teachers” uncritically prioritize Canonical texts -- that is, what is understood to be the privileging of white male coming of age stories and the framing of these narratives as universal (Personal correspondence). However, when I spoke directly with many of the faculty members who teach these courses, the tension -- from their perspective -- resulted from the temporal aspects of the academic school year, i.e., the relatively new department policy to limit the book list of each year-long course to six texts total. This policy was the English department’s response to a recommendation borne of a comprehensive, two-year inquiry into student well-being led by the institution. As I understood it, many faculty found it difficult to incorporate more than one “diversity text” into their course despite having the relative freedom to choose the texts around which they build their curriculum. This then is not an “awareness” issue, but rather one of priority: faculty who teach “English” can be both aware of systemic oppression, racial inequity, and interpersonal racism, and believe close study of the writings of white male Canonical authors is superior to other pedagogies (Bloom, 2014). 

The prioritization of and preference for “academically rigorous” study of Canonical authors and texts is not unique to faculty members of the English Department. In fact, many of us Diversity Coordinators were at a loss for words during a Diversity Steering Committee meeting when a parent of Color explained he did not see the need to diversify the curriculum, especially if the linchpin of our rationale was that it would specifically benefit his children because they are students of Color. As this parent explained, he specifically chose this particular independent school for his children because he believed in the value of a traditional, Canonical curriculum. For me, his critique illuminated what seemed like our (often unarticulated) assumption that our community needs to update and standardize our curricula because it would benefit the students of Color. 

This parent’s critique is consistent with many of the participant’s responses, which suggest our language and curricula were policed by well-meaning, but short-sighted (and therefore problematic), part-time social justice activists who understood their work as protecting students of Color from the “colorblind” pedagogies and curricula taught by our predominantly white faculty. Many of the participant responses suggested this leaves white faculty members feeling like they necessarily need to be “walking on eggshells” (Robert 44:47, Phase One Interview, 06/11/18). For example, Alex stopped mid-sentence after hearing herself use the word “articulate” to describe a Black student in her class. As she explained, the word articulate “now is coded in some way that I don’t mean it to be coded” (Emphasis added, Alex 13:10, Phase One Interview, 05/30/18). Part of her frustration seemed to be that she no longer felt in control over the meaning of the language she chose to communicate admiration for her students. 

The connection between expressing our thoughts and our concern (read: fear/anxiety) about being understood as a racist was also suggested by other participants. Consider this participant’s response when asked why he thinks more Black students seem to struggle academically:

I also am somewhat nervous in that I feel like there’s potentially this side of me that is being racist and ignorant about languages other people-- in particularly, the way Black Americans might use language differently than I do. And my own thought, potentially racist thought, that it might be [a] less structured use of language. All because it’s a structure I don’t understand. (Participant E, Phase Two Booklet, p.2)

We -- white faculty -- want to be recognized by others in our community as “good” people who are “doing our best” to support all students to experience academic success and “feel welcome” at this predominantly white independent school (Personal correspondence). One way we perform “doing our best” is by readily acknowledging and explaining our own ignorance about race and racism in our school community: 1) there are many things that affect a students experience that occur outside of our classrooms and 2) they (the students) seem committed to “performing” for us and their peers when they are in our classrooms. Taken together, these two pieces of commonly accepted knowledge work together to justify our limited awareness about problematic patterns of racial inequity and interpersonal racism in our community.  

Not only is our disconnection discursively understood as reasonable, but some of us use it to frame ourselves as “objective” and “neutral” observers who -- because of our distance from “the situation” -- feel entitled to question the intentions of those who report experiencing interpersonal racism and/or wonder to what extent students are having “these types” of experiences. By erroneously positioning students of Color as the subjects of racial inequity and the targets of interpersonal racism, we also shield the institution from potential accusations of not doing enough (Ahmed, 2012). That is, because there are so few students of color who we teach, we presume we are not knowledgeable and therefore cannot comment on patterns of racial inequity and interpersonal racism in our community because our “opinion” is based on a “small sample” of students: Could this all be an innocent misunderstanding? While I have occasionally shared these observations and the trappings of this “race-neutral perspective” with my colleagues who work directly with the Learning Support Department, many of these conversations with white colleagues have been unproductive -- my concern eclipsed by what I experience as choreographed defensive posturing consistent with “white fragility” (DiAngelo, 2018). 

Of course, this is both not about race and it is about race. Many of us who have been socialized in the United States reflexively look to the actions and choices of the individual to help us make sense of exemplars of success and failure. As educators, we often conceptualize a student’s struggle as a reflection of a deficit unique to the individual student (Lewis & Diamond, 2015). Nevertheless, I have noticed many of the “observations” teachers offer about students of Color often reflect racial and ethnic stereotypes (Ramsey, 2015). However, when I shared this with the advisor of one of the students I worked with, he pushed back. From his perspective as a man of Color, his advisee needed to simply accept “the fact” that he will need to work twice as hard to achieve half as much in relation to his white peers.

According to Wikipedia, respectability politics

refers to attempts by marginalized groups to police their own members and show their social values as being continuous and compatible with dominant values rather than challenging the mainstream for what they see as its failure to accept difference. The concept was first articulated in 1993 by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham in her book Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920. (“Respectability politics,” n.d.)

The idea that in order to be successful in life a person of Color needs to conduct themselves in a way that is deemed deserving by white people is toxic. The dangers and ineffectiveness of adhering to this ideology are well-documented (Thornton, 2016; Young, 2016). As my racial literacy increased, I recognized people of Color and white people were both socialized in the same toxic culture of white supremacy (e.g., Appendix F). I also wondered if the combination of our collective racial illiteracy and the larger societal discourse around “the rugged individual” worked in tandem to reinforce and embolden our discursive framing of struggle as tethered to the individual student.

One personal challenge I have is knowing how much support and #lifeadvice to provide students of Color. I feel like I am constantly fending off my white savior complex. The problem is that both the savior and white complex are so socially acceptable, at least in predominantly white spaces, they are hard to escape. Upon reflection, I realized the way I initially understood my role as a Learning Specialist in this predominantly white school might also be akin to respectability politics: I wanted to help students learn how to be seen and understood as someone who takes their education seriously. Although this desire might seem more benign than insisting students work “twice as hard” as their white peers, over time I began to notice that I uncritically defaulted to encouraging the students I worked with, many who were students of Color, to “perform” in a particular way to gain acceptance from their teachers because I struggled to articulate to teachers their “observations” about these students reflected racist stereotypes and/or served to justify the curricular and pedagogical choices of the teacher.

Our understanding of struggle as something unique to an individual student informs the way we conceptualized the type of support needed by students of Color attending predominantly white independent schools. As I learned more about how white people engage with other white people in what scholars (e.g., Picca & Feagin, 2007) refer to as the “backstage” area, I realized the perception of ourselves as “good white teachers” often depends on -- at least in part -- the presumed innocence of our (white) students (Yancy, 2017). In fact, the language used by participants suggested we leverage what we understand as our position as objective observers to judge student transgressions as unintentional to downplay both their problematic behavior and the impact of what we believe is their naivete. Thus, the discursive framing of our (white) students as innocent, our classrooms as safe, ourselves as the protectors of this space (read: our students), and our students as bringing their struggle with them as they cross the boundary of our classrooms, locates us on a trajectory problematically close to what Ladson-Billings (2016) suggested is a “never-ending quest for ‘the right strategy or technique’ to deal with (read: control) ‘at-risk’ (read: African American) students” (p.25). 

Whether or not this assertion gives other white educators reason to pause, after three years of intentional, systematic, and critical self-reflection, I believe our default narratives work in concert with our anxiety about our own racial illiteracy to hold in place the current inequitable, anti-Black status quo (Appendix H). To be clear, I am not suggesting we should totally abandon exploring ways to support students at the individual level. This is one of those “both/and” situations. The point I wish to make is the way we frame “the problem” is limited by what many in our community understand as “perfectly logical” explanations for why some students thrive and some students struggle to experience academic and social success within the context of this predominantly white independent school community (Michael, 2015, p.31). As a result, the “solutions” we propose and enact will necessarily be bound by our discursive understanding of ourselves, our classrooms, and our students (read: our imaginations). #GraceLeeBoggs

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Consider the following. A Physics teacher reads in one of their professional publications about the problematic underrepresentation of women and Black men working in STEM-related fields. Imagine this teacher -- who is white -- decides, after reading this article, they want to do their part to support the academic success of students in their Physics course, particularly those who identify as young women and young Black men. Now imagine this teacher attends a voluntary professional development session hosted by the Office of Diversity and Community. During this session, the group discusses Style’s (1988) Curriculum as Window and Mirror. This confirms for this particular teacher the importance of students “seeing” themselves represented in mainstream media and in the curriculum. Although the teacher agrees there should be a diversity of identities represented in the media and in the curriculum, they wonder (privately) how this strategy will help individual students perform better on their assessments in his Physics course. After spending time reflecting on how to “diversify” their curriculum, the teacher enters into a dialogue with a colleague, which sounds something similar to this exchange between two participants:

Sam (16:32) — Ninth grade. Which is-- I know I don't need to say it. It's a disproportionate-- And you know… [ROBERT: Right.] It's extremely disproportionate into the racial make-up of those sections. [ROBERT: Right.] So, some things I'm, I’m like, I don't mean to put it all on me, like, “I'm failing these kids.” I know they walk in with all these experiences that...also shaped the outcome. And maybe I'm letting myself too much off the hook, but we've been told...maybe incorporating more stories about the achievements of underrepresented groups in [STEM-related] disciplines will help students see themselves succeed in the disciplines. But it feels very contrived.

Robert (17:19) — That feels like bullshit to me.

Sam (17:21) — You know, especially if our starting topic is like [Crosstalk, ROBERT to DAN: I mean it’s not, it’s just…] constant velocity and what is a force? I don't talk about Newton. [ROBERT: Right.] I don't talk about Galileo. So, um, that doesn't feel like the right answer...uh, [ROBERT: Right.] The right way to address it.

(Sam & Robert, Phase Two Small Group 3, 10/17/18)

The discursive framing of our classrooms as racially neutral -- “I don’t talk about Galileo” -- and tethering the reason for struggle to the individual -- “I know they walk in with all these experiences” -- suggests a reason faculty often seem resistant to strategies they understand as deliberately racialized and not centered around the individual, i.e., “it feels very contrived.” In other words, if an individual student is the one who needs help, how does supplementing the science curriculum with “stories about the achievements of underrepresented groups” in STEM-related fields help students perform better on an assessment that requires them to understand constant velocity and force? That said, both Sam and Robert backpedaled a bit: Robert said to Dan, “I mean it’s not, it’s just” (17:21) and later, after Robert inquired about who gave Sam this advice, Sam said to Robert, “Maybe I’m putting words in peoples’ mouths” (Sam 17:43, Phase Two Small Group 3, 10/17/18). Nevertheless, both the message Sam received and this exchange between the participants are consistent with many of my conversations about the conflicting realities of faculty and diversity practitioners who facilitate faculty professional development workshops (Personal correspondence). 

From my perspective as a white, cisgender male Diversity Coordinator, many in our community often interpret this type of critique from faculty -- particularly, white faculty with a “history of being resistant” to “diversity” work -- as defensively questioning the legitimacy of strategies intended to support the well-being of students. For example, consider how this participant understands one of the challenges associated with disrupting the status quo:

There’s the idea that there’s people who are really into this and then there’s the people who are just sort of, whatever, complacent, or disinterested, or they don’t get it, or whatever. But then I think there’s this more pernicious thing of the person who is not only progressive, yet feels cynical when an institution -- when a school -- tries to take on these enterprises in good faith, tries to do things like have [professional development], tries to do things like have roundtables, role playing. Some people just get really put off by this, and people who are just-- they can have worked on these issues academically, they can say they’re committed to this and that, but there’s a sort of skepticism when it becomes institutionalized, I think. Like, oh this is some kind of new wave sensitivity training, and people just get annoyed. They’re like, “I already know this. I already know this.” And it’s like, okay, but we all already know a lot of things.” (Participant H, Phase Two Booklet, p.5)

This response suggests a reason for palpable tension in our community around “diversity-related” faculty professional development: “there’s this more pernicious thing of the person who is not only progressive, yet feels cynical when an institution -- when a school -- tries to take on these enterprises in good faith” (Participant H, Phase Two Booklet, p.5). During one of the Phase Two small group conversations, one participant explained that she recognized herself as likely the cynical self-identified progressive described in this excerpt: “It seems to be critical of people like myself who are skeptical of the kind of institutionalized professional development version of these issues” (Alex 02:13, Phase Two Small Group 5, 10/19/18). However, the exchange between Alex and Alice about this particular excerpt adds nuance to the assertion, “They’re like, I already know this. I already know this” (Participant H, Phase Two Booklet, p.5). Here’s the exchange between Alex and Alice after they were asked if any of the excerpts in the booklet resonated with them:

ALEX (01:54) — I thought it was-- okay, I have to say I thought it was interesting. I don't know if this is all that-- but I wrote the most on it. On page five. "Problems with the programming."

ALICE (02:12) — Which one was that?

ALEX (02:13) — The very bottom of the page. It seems to be critical of people like myself who are skeptical of the kind of institutionalized professional development version of these issues. I always feel like I am being slightly infantilized because of the way they are done. And I just wonder-- I sort of feel like, "Is this what a college-- is this the same programming that we would bring to a college faculty?" And I think that's what we want, is something-- because colleges are dealing with these issues too, all the time. But I feel like for [high school] teachers, when we're using markers and role-playing and doing all that stuff, it just-- instantly I get my hackles up a little bit. So I do think you have to be really thoughtful about the programming. Now, I realize there are other people on the faculty that are in a different place, but I think for some of us, we feel like, "I talk about this stuff, think about this stuff in my classes all the time." So it's hard not to feel a little--

DAN (03:41) — You're not alone.

ALEX (03:41) — Yeah, I don't think I am alone. I don't think I am alone on that. But I don't think-- I guess the description here made it sound like we're all real jerks who are like this. I don't think it's that. I think it's the sense of feeling talked down to, feeling like there are intellectual issues here - interesting intellectual issues here - that are not solved by some sort of like, "just use the right language" kind of thing. And so sometimes the programming feels-- it just feels a little dumb.

(Emphasis added, Alex & Alice, Phase Two Small Group 5, 10/19/18)

This exchange suggests one of Alex’s “problems with programming” is that she feels “slightly infantilized because of the way they are done” (Alex 2:13, Phase Two Small Group 5, 10/19/18). As such, Alex’s skepticism of institutional “diversity” initiatives is more nuanced than straight forward suspicion of the school trying to “take on these enterprises in good faith” (Participant H, Phase Two Booklet, p.5). It is also more than the logistics and timing of the professional development opportunities, e.g., my attempt to host a Phase Two “Talk Back” session (Chapter 3). 

As Alex explained, “the description here made it sound like we're all real jerks who are like this. I don't think it's that. I think it's the sense of feeling talked down to” (Alex 03:41, Phase Two Small Group 5, 10/19/18). This is consistent with an assertion from McIntosh and Style (1994): 

In all the attention being paid to the need for the school curriculum to have more multicultural accuracy, integrity, and balance, thoughtful teachers are often made to feel deeply inadequate, aware of all we don’t know and were never taught about “others.” (p.1)

This sense of feeling “deeply inadequate” was expressed by many of the white faculty participants when I asked about the role teachers can play in disrupting patterns of racial inequity and interpersonal racism in our community. Like Alex, when I think about the phrase “teacher learning” I cannot help but think about all the horrible professional development workshops I’ve had to endure over the years. In some ways, these experiences have taught me what not to do.

One of the things that frustrates me the most about professional development for teachers is that the “facilitators” rarely ever differentiate their instruction or structure the group discussions to take advantage of the rich knowledge and experience in the room. To make matters worse, most workshops I’ve been to start at what the presenter has determined to be “the beginning” in an attempt to “onboard” everyone in the room. As a result, most presentations tend to end right around the time that the content begins to reveal itself as more complex and/or interesting than suggested by the overgeneralized summary slide. That said, like Alex, I am aware there’s a lot of variability in terms of the racialized identity of people in the room: “I realize there are other people on the faculty that are in a different place” (Alex 02:13, Phase Two Small Group 5, 10/19/18). And like Alex’s response suggests, productive conversations about how to disrupt patterns of racial inequity and interpersonal racism in our community are #notprobable if we kill all the energy of the people in the room by glossing over the concerns of the faculty: “I think it's the sense of feeling talked down to, feeling like there are intellectual issues here...that are not solved by some sort of like, ‘just use the right language’ kind of thing” (Alex 03:41, Phase Two Small Group 5, 10/19/18). The need to address the concerns and anxiety of the faculty has been well-documented in educational research (Stevenson, 2014; hooks, 1994). As hooks (1994) reminds us, “it is difficult for individuals to shift paradigms and...there must be a setting for folks to voice fears, to talk about what they are doing, how they are doing it, and why” (p.38).

Westheimer (1999) asserts it’s important and beneficial to complicate our understanding of what “strong” teacher communities with “shared beliefs” look like in practice. I find it helpful to understand our faculty as a “liberal professional community” -- a community in which “teachers function autonomously with different goals, strategies, and practices, coming together primarily for support” (Westheimer, 1999, p.92). From this vantage point, perhaps we were erroneously attempting to fundamentally shift the way that faculty members interact so that they could work in uniform solidarity with each other. As Westheimer (1999) explains, “By making these distinctions [between types of teacher communities] clearer, the paths to creating and maintaining teacher professional communities in schools becomes easier to follow and the obstacles easier to avoid” (p.100). Through this lens, perhaps some of the resistance we (the Office of Diversity and Community) feel from families, faculty, and administration might stem from our team’s uncritical (and perhaps judgmental) dismissal of the norms, values, and participatory expectations of an ideological choice the school made and consistently remakes every time we hire a new faculty member. Recognizing this allows us an opportunity to (re)imagine meaningful professional development experiences for (and with!) the faculty that both critically interrogate and work with the norms, values, and participatory expectations unique to our school culture.

After much critical reflection and systematic inquiry, I have found it more productive to conceptualize the tension/conflict between our faculty and diversity practitioners as competing D/discourses. This conceptualization offers a more nuanced and generative approach to making sense of our predominantly white faculty’s skepticism toward “diversity-related” professional development and “community-building” initiatives led by the institution (read: administration). While we “do our best” to guard against racist transgressions and consider each student as an individual entity, relying on default narratives about our students and ourselves has both not led to shared understandings and partnerships amongst stakeholders and allowed the status quo to remain intact.

Our reliance on the five default narratives discussed in Chapter 4 influence how we understand “diversity-related” topics/issues. Consider this excerpt from my conversation with a participant about Diversity-initiatives at the school:

There’s a lot of issues that we have to deal with. I do sometimes worry that from a diversity standpoint and whatever, we’re doing too many different things. So do we want to deal with a gender issue? Do we want to deal with that trans issue? Do we want to deal with the race issue? Do we want to deal with the-- if we’re doing all that at once it just gets a little-- it’s great to be intersectional, but we don’t have the time just in terms of energy and priority. Not that we want to say one is more important… (Participant C, Phase Two Booklet, p.3)

The type of isolated and in-depth focus on “diversity-related” topics referred to in this response often appear “perfectly logical,” but expecting faculty to learn the “facts” and strategies in isolation for each “issue” or “topic” is analogous to teaching a unit on the history of trade in the Islamic World and/or “The Crusades” without discussing the influence of organized religion (Pollard et al., 2015). Paradoxically, it also seems to reinforce the discursive narrative that these initiatives are supplemental to the “core academic curriculum” and are primarily intended to “keep students safe” -- rather than raise the critical consciousness and engagement of the faculty and students (hooks, 1994). 

It is my hope that this practitioner inquiry will inspire and serve as a template for others to illuminate and interrogate the cultural conditioning that inform the (potentially unique) beliefs and behaviors of their community. As the above reflection suggests, I have found that the language I once considered “benign” actually functioned to protect my own financial and emotional investment in whiteness and an anti-Black racial hierarchy (Anderson, 2016; Bonilla-Silva, 2018).

To be clear, this is both about us white people and not just us white people (Leonardo, 2009). McIntosh and Style (1994) point out, “Those of us teaching today are “products” of schooling which embedded in us deep imbalances or obliviousness in regard to matters of cultural positioning and power” (p.127). This assertion is consistent with the numerous conversations I have had with students and colleagues who often express their frustration with “certain faculty members” who they perceive as resistant to teaching anything “outside” of their content area of expertise (Personal correspondence). Although these “certain faculty members” are predominantly white, I am not interested in making a generalized claim about “other” white people. That said, as I reflected on the transcripts from my conversations with my white colleagues who volunteered to participate in this practitioner inquiry, it seemed as though vague and ambiguous language sat at the intersection of the way we define “the problem” and offer “practical” solutions, e.g., suggestions that maybe we need to collectively agree on the “end-game” here or review the difference between a debate and a discussion.

Illuminating and naming these five default narratives provides an alternative for our community and does not require the circumstances to be “ideal” -- that is, having the resources to pay for a critical mass of teachers to voluntarily attend a series of professional development workshops. That said, our community has the resources (e.g., personnel and money) to invest in faculty as they grapple with and critically reframe their own default narratives. What if we collectively understood these default narratives as potential “red flags” -- warnings that we are headed down a problematic and unproductive path toward a “perfectly logical explanation” (Michael, 2015, p.31)? Would this create an opportunity to explore “solutions” outside our discursive constraints (Appendix H)? 

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