Unpacking “I’m Afraid”: Confronting Colleagues Who Avoid Teaching & Talking About Race
How many times has a white colleague confessed that they’re “afraid” to teach texts like Toni Morrison’s Beloved or Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis? I don’t mean just admitting their fear, but rather, invoking it as the legitimate reason for inaction. In the past few years, I’ve come to recognize such admissions as an excuse — one that, for too long, has allowed our colleagues to remain in place, teaching the texts with which they’re comfortable.
In DEI workshops, we’re taught that questions are powerful. Asking the open-ended and nonjudgmental “what do you mean by that?” or “why is that funny?” can successfully interrupt biased comments by helping the speaker identify the racist or other assumptions underlying their words. Similarly, I suggest that we start responding to the fear defense with the question, “afraid of what?” By doing so, we’re calling the other person to examine the beliefs at the root of their justification and the privilege inherent in their defense.
In what follows, I offer some of the answers you might receive, along with my thoughts and responses.
“I’m afraid that the material is just too heavy for my students.”
In any given year we discuss texts and show films that include sexual assault, drug abuse, racism, and murder. No one worried about whether our freshmen were traumatized by Sunny the prostitute when we read The Catcher in the Rye. We currently teach Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, and no one has objected on the basis that Jimmy Cross’s pseudo-rape fantasy is too controversial. I like to point out that if we avoid “heavy” subjects, our much-beloved Shakespeare won’t make the cut!
“I’m afraid I won’t do the material justice because it’s not my experience.”
Well, I’m not part of the landed gentry in Regency England, but I successfully taught Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. At the core of this answer is often a colleague’s fear that they’ll unintentionally offend a student through their own ignorance. It’s a valid concern and a reality that even conscientious DEI practitioners can’t always avoid. For that reason, I offer students opportunities for anonymous feedback so that I can improve. Other teachers may implement the strategy in which any student may say “ouch!” to signal that a comment offended them. In any case, the solution to potential mistakes isn’t avoidance; it’s setting up classroom practices for voicing, acknowledging, and processing the impact of our words.
“I’m afraid that it’ll make my white students uncomfortable.”
Without a doubt, our students’ emotional welfare is an important part of our job, but I’m only halfway joking when I ask, what happened to the growth mindset?! Weren’t “grit” and “resilience” all the rage just a few years ago? As Lucas Jacob notes in an earlier Teaching While White post, “feeling uncomfortable is not the same as feeling unsafe.”
Furthermore, this particular excuse reveals an underlying misconception: that the purpose of a book like Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me is to condemn white America. On the contrary, like many works of art, it’s Coates’ attempt to make sense of the world in which he lives. And in so doing, he exposes conflicts, inequities, and personal truths that resonate in different ways for readers. More importantly though, it’s worth asking whether we express as much concern for the comfort of our students of color. How often have we worried about their feelings when reading Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, reciting Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden,” or watching 12 Years a Slave?
“I’m afraid it’ll get political.”
When I ask for clarification on “political,” what often emerges is “potential for disagreement.” Digging deeper, it’s the issue of disagreement rooted in students’ lived experiences. In other words, it’s going to get personal.
Let’s back up for a moment: it’s not our job to tell students what to think. We examine complicated topics to help students develop their critical thinking and communication skills — asking questions, testing assumptions, engaging multiple viewpoints. But it is our responsibility to keep discussion from becoming a referendum on the value of any individual or group of students. In my classroom that means several small discussion circles of three to five students rather than the whole class. I also embed debriefing exercises and constantly remind students that our goal is not to declare a “winner.” The bottom line: student passion isn’t a problem to solve, it’s an opportunity to engage.
Moving Beyond “I’m Afraid”
Ultimately, if the statement “I’m afraid” isn’t followed by “but I’m going to do it anyway,” it isn’t honesty: it’s an excuse to do nothing. And that’s unacceptable because inaction reinforces whiteness as the norm, sending the message that people of color — our stories, our perspectives — don’t have value. To be clear, simply including a book with a nonwhite protagonist isn’t enough. We should implement norms for respectful discussion and productive disagreement. We must include practices that enable students to process their discomfort. And we have to consider how our racialized experiences impact our teaching — from feedback and grading to discussion prompts and assignment design. None of this is “extra”; it’s part of culturally competent instruction.
In the discipline of English, we talk about “windows and mirrors.” Windows are texts that allow a student to view the world through someone else’s cultural perspective while mirrors are texts that reflect a student’s own perspective. Imperfect as it may be, when I open those windows — which are mirrors for some students who’ve never seen themselves in the literature curriculum — what I see are curious students eager for honest discussion. It’s time to call out our colleagues on the windows they’ve been too afraid to open.
Don’t accept the excuse, and stop wasting energy on trying to convince. Instead, expose the willful misconceptions and the culturally conditioned thinking. Asking “afraid of what?” is how we start dismantling fear as a shield of privilege. In “Mississippi Goddam,” Nina Simone famously lists the broken promises made to Black Americans, punctuated by the familiar admonition that, when it comes to racial equality, we have to “GO SLOW.” She brilliantly arranges the song so that the lie exposes itself.
I used to think that if I just explained it well enough, if I found the right combination of fact, persuasion, and encouragement, my colleagues would rise to the challenge. I’m done with that. Let’s be like Nina. Ask your colleagues “afraid of what?” and let their own words undermine their defense. Or, it might just set them free.
Reanna Ursin is a diversity practitioner and high school English instructor at the Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Georgia. A version of this essay was first delivered as a PechaKucha presentation at the 2021 NAIS Annual Conference.