Evolving Our Narratives About Race in Schools
Teachers around the country are looking for ways to improve the dialogue and learning in their classrooms about race and racism. As we have noted in previous posts, students need to engage in these conversations and lessons so they can develop a strong understanding of their own racial identity and the identities of others. When they do this, they are in a position to analyze how racism operates as a system and to develop their skills to both interrupt bias and support racial justice.
Currently, too many conversations about race with students remain simplistic and often follow familiar and unhelpful themes. Students of Color — which include Native, Black/African American, Latinx, Asian American/Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, and multiracial people — tend only to see themselves represented in the curriculum via racial oppression, positioned as victims of White oppressors. At the same time, resistance movements are glossed over and often told through the lens of “exception” — the story, say, of the one Black person who made it to freedom or who fought segregation to play major league baseball. Conversely, Whiteness continues to be presented as the norm in most curricula. Indeed, the assumption tends to be that the person we are reading, studying, or talking about in school is White — unless stated otherwise. Typically, the only time Whiteness is named explicitly is in the context of racist White people, the active oppressors. Students don’t often learn about those White people who have stood or stand in solidarity with People of Color to challenge racism.
The goal in teaching about race and racism is certainly not to whitewash the history of racial terror in this country, but to offer a more complex narrative in which White students can see a different way forward other than being either silent or oppressive, and Students of Color can see themselves outside of the relentless stereotypes that continue to pervade the curricula in U.S. education. It is not an either/or world. So we need to stop offering students simplistic and inaccurate versions of history and racial identity, often relying on myths and stereotypes as the frame for conversations on race in school. We need teachers, in other words, to develop more critical and accurate narratives, nuanced portraits that embrace racial identity and challenge racism.
This moment in our nation’s history feels like an opportune time to reassess the ways we teach and learn about race in the classroom and to reflect on how students see themselves racially. Rudine Sims Bishop and Emily Style introduced us to the concepts of “mirrors and windows.” In their paradigm, mirrors provide students with the opportunity to benefit from having the histories, perspectives, experiences, interests, identities, and contributions of those who share their identities reflected back to them in learning environments and experiences. Windows, meanwhile, provide students with the opportunity to learn about and value the histories, perspectives, experiences, interests, identities, and contributions of people whose identities differ from their own. The problem we currently face is that White students tend to have far too many mirrors, or foggy mirrors, which tend to be inaccurate and simplistic. Our job as educators is to increase the number of windows for White students while increasing the number of mirrors for Students of Color so that all students have a clearer understanding of themselves and the world they are learning to navigate.
More Expansive Windows
Prior to the beginning of K-12 learning experiences, children are inundated with the message that Whiteness is the dominant culture. Whiteness is never explicitly named, of course, but it’s deeply infused. This extends from the images in the media and children’s books to the content with which we engage students in schools. To counter these images, teachers need to provide all students with regular opportunities to engage with an accurate and inclusive account of history as well as with content representing the lives, interests, contributions, experiences, and perspectives of all races of people — and not just during designated history/heritage months. Teachers need to teach students to ask questions instead of making assumptions about social issues, engage in productive struggle as they challenge false narratives about people from marginalized groups, and develop their ability to continue this learning.
To this end, we encourage teachers to do the following to add more windows into their curricula:
Feature the contributions of people from marginalized groups who are not typically featured, and in fields where they are not usually celebrated (i.e., profiling Black and Brown mathematicians, scientists, engineers, and politicians without tokenizing or focusing on typical fields such as acting, music, and sports).
When teaching history, have students explore the point of view (Who is telling this story? How might their perspective impact the telling of the story?) and agency of all involved stakeholders to avoid the negative impact of telling a single story (i.e., How did enslaved people resist enslavement? How did the Indigenous respond to the Indian Removal Act?).
Incorporate literature from multiple genres featuring people from marginalized groups doing everyday activities, and not only focusing on struggles, challenges, and injustices (i.e., Black and Brown characters in fantasy and science fiction stories, playing in the snow, knowing their own worth, having fun with a pet, playing an instrument, bonding with their dad, and trying to run from the moon). You can find these books and more in resources such as Social Justice Books, Disrupt Texts Disrupting Genre list, the School Library Journal’s List of Middle Grade and Young Adult Books Spotlighting #BlackJoy, and the National Network of State Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY) Social Justice Book List (broken down by grade level).
Incorporate Literature Circles where students can research and discuss short texts about historical and current events from multiple perspectives (i.e., Zinn Education Project’s Standing with Standing Rock which includes the perspectives of Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Members).
Facilitate Café Conversations where students, in small-group discussions, represent the perspectives of people with critically conscious points of view about a particular issue.
These types of learning experiences can help White students to build the understanding of and empathy for others that comes with having more windows, and ensure that students can critically analyze the impact of historical and current events, giving them the tools needed to move from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence. By ensuring that clear mirrors are a regular part of the learning for Students of Color, educators ensure that Students of Color experience accurate historical content, and see representation in the curriculum of their full, joyful, brilliant, creative, talented, insightful selves. It’s important for White students to experience this perspective about People of Color as well.
But I Teach Math and Science . . .
These challenges are more nuanced when engaging students in critical consciousness development practices in content areas such as middle/high school math and science, but it’s possible. Math teachers can follow Ms. Toliver’s example and explore math in the neighborhood, or incorporate content such as graphing, probability, statistics, and computing averages, fractions, percentages, and rates into the exploration of social issues such as wages/employment, policing/incarceration, poverty, racial profiling, wealth gaps, housing disparities, voting rights, affirmative action, and educational access. Science, technology, and engineering teachers can use the concepts of inductive and deductive reasoning as well as the scientific method and design principles to explore issues such as access to food and water resources, public health, and environmental challenges. Two valuable curriculum resources are Radical Math and The Underrepresentation Curriculum Project.
Clearer Reflections
By offering students windows through which they can examine race, teachers can provide opportunities for all students to learn about the impact of racialization and about people from other racial backgrounds. This, in turn, enables them to identify and address false narratives about marginalized groups that tend to proliferate when segregation keeps us from truly knowing one another.
However, it’s also important for the school community to present Students of Color with more mirrors — with positive, affirming images of racial identity — that reflect the diversity and expansiveness of their identities. This in turn supports them as they counter any kind of deficit thinking or internalized oppression that can come from the relentless effects of misrepresentation, tokenism, and white supremacy.
Previously in the Teaching While White blog, we have discussed how many White students are unable to engage effectively in conversations around race, and when they do, how they exhibit many of the same behaviors of White adults: defensiveness, tears, stress, shame, and denial. More often than not, we hear White students complain, “You’re just trying to make me feel guilty!” or “I feel unsafe”— the latter which usually means they are simply uncomfortable.
In an effort to help White students understand that they can engage productively in conversations about race, educators need to provide them with more antiracist mirrors — the work of White activists committed to challenging racial injustice in solidarity with People of Color. There is a wide range of examples of how White people, in the past and present, have worked to end racism. They represent many generations and life experiences — artists, clergy, journalists, teachers, students, athletes, and concerned citizens — all working to dismantle racist systems from their own sphere of influence.
As a means of studying and learning from these activists, we offer these critical questions for consideration:
In considering the activists’ lives, what were the significant moments that led to their activism? What motivated them to work for change?
What skills do/did they need to challenge racial injustice?
What blindspots might these activists have?
How can White people work effectively in solidarity with People of Color? How do they keep from replicating the very system they are trying to challenge?
What is the value of a multiracial coalition?
What actions might you take to work for racial justice?
Break Glass in Case of Emergency
How can we shatter prior ways of engaging around race in favor of conversations that offer more opportunities for reflection, understanding, and action? We know that, for many White educators, the desire to be an effective antiracist teacher and citizen is strong. We know, too, that doing this work can be a struggle at the start — given that shifting one’s teaching and learning new skills are never easy. But we hope it is clear that we encourage and support you in this work. Without doubt, engaging in antiracist education means you will serve all of your students better, feel more fulfilled in your professional lives, and help shape a world that is more in line with the one in which we all want to live.
Afrika Afeni Mills is the Senior Manager of Inclusive and Responsive Educational Practices and Instructional Coach for BetterLesson, an education organization designed to support teachers in developing the next generation of compassionate, resourceful, and iterative learners. She facilitates conference sessions frequently around the country.
Jenna Chandler-Ward and Elizabeth Denevi are the co-founders of Teaching While White.
A Note from Teaching While White:
White teachers who take on this work can still cause harm if they continue to see themselves as centered outside the issues of race and remain unaware of their own racial identity. If White teachers truly want to support students in developing their racial identity and help them become active antiracists, they must first develop their own racial consciousness so they can model for their students what it means to be a White and antiracist. Following this prerequisite work, teachers can then engage in meaningful, truthful, and more nuanced conversations with students so that this rising generation has the critical consciousness required to dismantle racism. Here are links to some earlier blogs that can help White teachers develop their antiracist knowledge and skills:
“A Letter to White Teachers of My Black Children,” By Afrika Afeni Mills
“The Things They Made Me Carry,” by Thu Anh Nguyen
“What’s Your Pledge?” by Melinda Tsapatsaris
“Getting Names Right,” by Ali Michael
“Dear Student, You’re White,” by Julia Donnelly Spiegelman