two quotes - talking about race

Here are a couple of quotes by Mica Pollock from Colormute, Race Talk Dilemmas in an American School

"Indeed, race talk about any 'group' in isolation always risked blaming 'problems' on that group alone, forgetting the various other players involved in creating orders that were racial." p.212

"People connected to U.S. schools often do not say things 'about race' very loudly, out of fear--a fear that is partly exaggerated and partly very important. It is regularly unclear when talking about people racially makes things better and when doing so makes things worse--particularly because our race talk so often places blame for 'problems' reductively on isolated 'races,' or reveals assumptions that racial inequality is either natural or someone else's problem. the solution is thus not that we simply start talking together more about race, but rather that we talk about it more skillfully. We can begin to do so, I think, by talking together with critical consciousness about race talk itself." p.214

She advocates "talking about how we talk about race" rather than simply talking about race. Metapragmatics. Talking about race can feel dangerous for all those involved, though - both those who have had traumatic experiences with racism and with talk about race. It isn't always done right.

I think these quotes really highlight how problematic talking about race can be.

studying and eating candy canes

Here I am in the library, totally exhausted. My eyes keep crossing, I'm literally having trouble focusing. I'm trying to take notes in order to write a paper. Then I remembered that I have a candy cane in my bag. I'm not a huge candy cane fan (except in peppermint chocolate bark) but this is the best candy cane ever. It is totally reviving me. Back to work.

1, 2, 3 articles to ponder

As you know, I've been thinking a lot about race talk... Here are some interesting articles on the topic that I heard about in my class. The first two have to do with our reluctance to speak about race even though our culture is highly racialized... And the third is pertaining to a school system that does talk about race, and includes it in its admissions policy.

Here's a poll from CNN:

Most Americans See Lingering Racism -- In Others

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/US/12/12/racism.poll/

Also, an article from Tufts:

Efforts for Whites to Appear Colorblind May Backfire

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-12/tu-efw120106.php

And from the NYTimes

A school in Hawaii where it is deemed constitutional for only native Hawaiians to attend:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/06/us/06hawaii.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Food for thought... Any reactions?

reading race

I really wish I had read all these books a few years ago when I was teaching at my other school. I often had kids say to me things like "I don't want some White teacher telling me what to do." Or "you just telling me to do that because I'm Black" or things like that... I used to say things like "race has nothing to do with it - I'm your teacher." But race would come up daily, even if it wasn't spoken out loud. Simply because I'm White and all of my students were Black or Hispanic. Race was there, even when we didn't talk about it.

Right now I'm reading Colormute: Race Talk Dilemmas in an American School by Mica Pollock. Fascinating. I need to finish it tonight, because I have to write a book review about it this week. It is about a high school in CA, and the author taught at this high school for a year and then becomes a researcher there, working on her doctorate. Instead of focusing on the existence of racial inequalities or race as a category, she focuses on how teachers and students talk about race. Her thesis seems to be that people experience a lot of anxiety around talking about race, but it is precisely by deleting race talk from our vocabularies that we exacerbate the problems associated with race. How does one grasp the complexity of racial inequality without using racial terms. We belong to racial categories at the same time as we don't.