Priya Parmer & Shirley Steinberg - Locating Yourself for Your Students

Sometimes the most obvious thing goes unnoticed.  Often the most obvious and unspoken is gender and first language, as well as dis/ability, but also race. In this article, the students were quoted as saying, "they knew at every moment of their lives that they were not White, but they felt White people did not know they were White."

"When an educator's whiteness is unnamed, it remains in a dominant position, reinforcing that it is the non-color color by which all other colors are measured." 

Not only name the race of people of color, but also name the race of the white author, inventor, etc., to normalize the language and not point out just the people of color or women as the "other" or add-ons to the [white] curriculum.

Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson - How Racial Identity Affects Performance

Steele and Aronson explain the concept of “stereotype threat” and how a  teacher’s low academic expectations for students of color is often born out when students believe that the work they are doing in the classroom will confirm a negative stereotype about them.  The chapter goes on to suggest that teachers can counter the pervasive negative images by creating classrooms where students are inundated with the images and achievements of people who look like them.

When we model "self-talk," we “teach students to reconsider the nature of intelligence.”  

Teachers can not allow stereotypes get in the way of teaching kids.  We need to know our students so we can help them grow and implement techniques that put them on a rigorous educational path. 

Beverly Daniels Tatum - Cultivating the Trust of Black Parents and How Racial Identity Affects Performance

Beverly Daniels Tatum says we need to “put our values on our wall."  Putting up posters and having books with people of color or multiracial or both go a long way to showing care and understanding of differences so a child will feel comfortable in the classroom. 

We need to locate ourselves for students and parents by honestly and openly carrying “ . . . the weight of the history of interracial relations” and acknowledging the possibility that our judgment may be biased (naming the elephant in the room).

Research has shown that how you think about your race (in developing your racial identity) impacts your perspective on your ability to be successful in school and in life.  Also, students of color are more likely to be engaged in the exploration of their racial identity than their white counterparts.  In addition, teachers are going through their own stages of RCID and, therefore, need to be cognizant of how that affects their learning and teaching pedagogy, as well as how they respond to students of color who are trying to cope with issues encountered in their own RCID process.  The potential disconnect is obvious.  It’s even a bit scary; in terms of the potentially crucial role they play in helping a student achieve.

Rachel Dolezal

Perspectives:
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/6/17/watch_four_perspectives_on_race_and

Why Rachel Dolezal's story is one of deception, and trans folks, coming out as trans is about truth.
http://www.upworthy.com/a-black-trans-woman-explains-changing-gender-vs-changing-race?c=ufb1

When the story of Rachel Dolezal (the white NAACP chapter president who has been masquerading as a black woman) went viral, the Internet exploded with countless memes and even more think pieces.

Rachel Dolezal and the surprisingly common practice of ‘racial shifting’
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/06/15/what-rachel-dolezal-has-in-common-with-half-a-million-americans/  (watch both videos in succession)

In fact, between 2000 and 2010 (the nation’s two most recent Census counts) the share of people who identified themselves as part Native American grew by a whopping 39 percent in a single decade, nearly four times faster than the nation's population as a whole. That’s nearly 650,000 people who were multi-racial in 2012 who did not consider themselves thus in 2000. Racial shifting is real.

And just to be clear, we aren't talking about a Native American baby boom or surge in people who identified as being of multiracial heritage because of changes made to Census forms. The latter happened for the first time in 2000, not 2010.

The vast majority of this change – according to U.S. Census staff and population experts around the country – happened as a result of shifting racial identification among adults. We're talking about 644,986 people who, for the most part, described themselves as white on the 2000 Census and then described themselves as white and Native American in 2010.

Rachel Dolezal a lesson in how racism works
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/06/13/rachel-dolezal-story-lesson-how-racism-works/J8R27qgq2YfDRUuOVhpYGI/story.html?event=event25

But that’s not how racial identity and racism work. The racial categories inherent to institutional racism are the product of law and social custom, but they are not randomly generated or freely chosen. They are informed by and inscribed in our legislative history, and they are violently policed by civilians and stewards of the state such that white people benefit at nonwhites’ expense.

These benefits are manifold. White households have far more wealth than black and Hispanic households, as economic class privilege has been generated, passed down, and protected through slavery, Jim Crow, and continued discrimination in housing, banking, and the labor market. Whites are presumed innocent and nonthreatening, and are allowed to assemble freely and move through all sorts of public spaces without being labeled deviants or “thugs.” Racial identity is always linked to privilege.

So the problem is not simply that Dolezal lied. Her choice to give up whiteness was a privilege enabled by a racial logic that allows for the possibility of a light-skinned black person, as centuries of racist legislation mandated that “one drop” of nonwhite blood resulted in racial categorization in the lower status group. This same enduring racial logic categorically denies the possibility of a brown-skinned white person, and it does so in order to restrict and protect whiteness as exclusive, “pure,” and the basis for full citizenship and respect.

About Rachel Dolezal the Undercover Sista and Performing Blackness 
http://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/2015/06/about-rachel-dolezal-blackness.html

I was more amused than anything until I kept finding out about all the lies that Rachel has piled up over the years to make this fantasy work. She’s told people her father is a Black man, even taking Fake Black Daddy to some event. She’s reported that she’s been a victim of several hate crimes, even going as far as placing this in her bio. She says she has a Black son but he is actually her adopted brother from her real WHITE parents. At best, she’s a pathological liar and at worst, she might be suffering from delusions of grandeur, which means she might need to be on meds because isn’t that one of many symptoms of schizophrenia? Except she actually isn’t because her brother Ezra said she told him not to blow her cover. Rachel ain’t curling all the way over, like many of her weaves.

What's Wrong with Cultural Appropriation?
http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/06/cultural-appropriation-wrong/

In short: Cultural appropriation is when somebody adopts aspects of a culture that’s not their own.

But that’s only the most basic definition.

A deeper understanding of cultural appropriation also refers to a particular power dynamic in which members of a dominant culture take elements from a culture of people who have been systematically oppressed by that dominant group.

That’s why cultural appropriation is not the same as cultural exchange, when people share mutually with each other – because cultural exchange lacks that systemic power dynamic.

It’s also not the same as assimilation, when marginalized people adopt elements of the dominant culture in order to survive conditions that make life more of a struggle if they don’t.

Some say, for instance, that non-Western people who wear jeans and Indigenous people who speak English are taking from dominant cultures, too.

But marginalized groups don’t have the power to decide if they’d prefer to stick with their customs or try on the dominant culture’s traditions just for fun. 

When the last living survivors of massacred Indigenous tribes are fighting to save their language before it dies when they do, and Native students are suspended for speaking in their own Indigenous languages, mirroring the abusive US boarding schools that tried to wipe out Native American cultures up until the 1980s, it’s clear that not every person who speaks English does so by choice.

In other words, context matters.

Which means it’s not about saying that you, as an individual, are a bad person if you appropriate someone else’s culture.

It’s a complicated issue that includes our histories, our current state of affairs, and our future, as we act to eliminate oppression, instead of perpetuating it.

So if you’re still baffled about why people would get upset about this issue, consider the following contexts.

1. It Trivializes Violent Historical Oppression
2. It Lets People Show Love for the Culture, But Remain Prejudiced Against Its People
3. It Makes Things ‘Cool’ for White People – But ‘Too Ethnic’ for People of Color
4. It Lets Privileged People Profit from Oppressed People’s Labor
5. It Lets Some People Get Rewarded for Things the Creators Never Got Credit For
6. It Spreads Mass Lies About Marginalized Cultures
7. It Perpetuates Racist Stereotypes
8. White People Can Freely Do What People of Color Were Actively Punished for Doing
9. It Prioritizes the Feelings of Privileged People Over Justice for Marginalized People

The Truth About Rachel Dolezal That You Won't See on T.V.
http://mic.com/articles/120784/rachel-dolezal-interview-matt-lauer

While Dolezal said her story raises the question of what it means to be "human," her philosophical statement misses the point that not all human beings are treated equally in a society that privileges some because of the color of their skin. Dolezal is fighting to humanize her journey so that the public can better understand her move from whiteness to aspirational blackness, but her notion of what it means to strive towards a shared humanity just obscures the particularities of black peoples' lived experiences in this country as they continue to fight to be seen as worthy of being alive in the first place.  

For all of the discourse on race and "transracialism" seemingly spurred by Dolezal, there is comparatively little focus on the material effects of racism in actual black people's lives right now. Dolezal might receive attention because she is a white woman identifying as a black woman fighting for black issues, but that won't prevent black people from being twice as likely as white people to be killed by police when unarmed, disproportionately imprisoned, overwhelmingly impacted by income equality, affected by health disparities and beset by unemployment.

Cultural Appropriation vs. Cultural Exchange

 

More examples of cultural appropriation:

http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/07/cultural-appropriating-outfits/?utm_content=bufferdd75c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Ethnic Identity

Great article about the importance of racial and ethnic identity:  http://www.education.com/reference/article/ethnic-identity-and-academic-achievement/
 

Excerpts: 
During adolescence, individuals begin to construct a general sense of their identity, or their personal definitions of who they are, what is important to them, and appropriate ways to think and behave. During this period, youth also differentiate their various social identities, the self-constructed definitions of who they are in relation to the social groups to which they belong. A sense of ethnic identity becomes salient for many ethnic minority adolescents as they explore the significance of their ethnic group membership in defining who they are (Spencer & Markstrom-Adams, 1990; Phinney, 1990). Ethnic identity has multiple components, including individuals' views of the importance of their ethnic group to their self-definitions, the meanings they attach to their ethnic group, and their thinking about how their ethnic group affects their position in society. Thus, ethnic identities are descriptive (e.g., “I am a Mexican American”; “I am an African American”), affective (“I feel positively about being an African American”; “I think others regard my ethnic group positively”), as well as prescriptive (“I know how Chinese Americans act”; “I know how African Americans act”). Adolescents' understandings of the meanings of their social identities influence their adaptations and responses within domains in which those identities are salient. Because race and ethnicity often are salient in the domain of education, adolescents' ethnic identities may be particularly relevant in shaping how youth interpret and respond to their social and classroom contexts at school.

Relative to younger children, adolescents have more highly developed cognitive abilities related to understanding themselves and their experiences in more complex, abstract, and indirect ways, and this period also involves intensification of particular social-cognitive attributes, e.g., heightened awareness of how they are viewed by others. Thus, they become more cognizant of the relevance of race and ethnicity in society and have a higher likelihood of perceiving experiences in terms of race and ethnicity (Spencer, Dupree, & Hartmann, 1997).

Academic engagement requires linking one's personal identity to the roles of student and learner (Garcia & Pintrich, 1994), showing sustained curiosity and interest in class, and displaying intense efforts in learning tasks (Connell, Spencer, & Aber, 1994; Skinner & Belmont, 1993). Adolescents' academic engagement has been linked to social identities that are made salient in the academic domain (Garcia & Pintrich, 1994). The academic domain is one in which race often is salient for many ethnic minority adolescents. For instance, entry into secondary schools is associated with increased racial cleavage, social comparison, and heightened salience of racial and ethnic stereotypes (Fisher, Wallace, & Fenton, 2000). Thus, it is likely that minority adolescents' levels of academic engagement are influenced, in part, by their ethnic identity beliefs. Theory and research suggests that ethnic identity may serve as a risk factor for lower academic motivation and achievement as well as promote academic motivation and achievement. The risk and promotion approaches are described below.

Also, there is growing evidence that having a strong, positive sense of ethnic identity may protect minority adolescents from the negative psychological and academic impacts of perceiving ethnic group barriers or experiencing interpersonal discrimination based on their ethnic group. For instance, in a 2006 study, Sellers and colleagues found that Black youth having an ethnic identity characterized by feelings of strong group connection and group pride showed more positive psychological well being when experiencing racial discrimination compared to those adolescents with less strong feelings of connection to and positive attitudes about their ethnic group. Wong and colleagues in their 2003 study found that African American adolescents who held a strong connection to and pride in being Blacks were protected from the negative impact on academic attitudes and performance of experiencing racial discrimination at school relative to those with less of a strong, positive connection with their ethnic group.

Thus, school practitioners must receive training about the development of youth from multicultural backgrounds. This training should not only acknowledge the unique risks associated with membership in ethnic minority groups in the United States but also consider how youths' ethnic identities can serve as cultural assets in relation to their achievement and how to use this information to create inclusive classroom contexts for all students. Without such training, it is likely that teaching approaches and practices will be based on popular views of common sense approaches not supported by empirical research. Additionally teachers should be mindful of endorsing their own ethnic identity beliefs in the class contexts they create.

SPECIFIC ETHNIC IDENTITIES

Asian American Identity Development

http://prezi.com/jdsct8dwpzvt/asian-american-identity-development/

The Micro-Aggressions / Microaggressions Project

The Micro-Aggressions / Microaggressions Project http://www.microaggressions.com/about/
Click on "see posts by TAG" - here are posts about race http://www.microaggressions.com/context/race/

This blog seeks to provide a visual representation of the everyday of “microaggressions.” Each event, observation and experience posted is not necessarily particularly striking in and of themselves. Often, they are never meant to hurt – acts done with little conscious awareness of their meanings and effects. Instead, their slow accumulation during a childhood and over a lifetime is in part what defines a marginalized experience, making explanation and communication with someone who does not share this identity particularly difficult. Social others are microaggressed hourly, daily, weekly, monthly.
This project is NOT about showing how ignorant people can be in order to simply dismiss their ignorance. Instead, it is about showing how these comments create and enforce uncomfortable, violent and unsafe realities onto peoples’ workplace, home, school, childhood/adolescence/adulthood, and public transportation/space environments.
The term “microaggressions” was originally coined to speak particularly to racialized experiences.

“Racial microaggressions are brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color.” – Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life

This blog, however, is a space to extend this concept to different socially constructed identities that embody privilege in different ways – sexuality, class, religion, education level, to name a few – in hopes of making visible the ways in which social difference is produced and policed in everyday lives through comments of people around you.

LBGTQ Asian American Research at UMass Boston

Students: Racial Healing/Talking about Race

A diverse group of Boston High School students explore racism and how it affects their lives.

A group of METCO students from Boston, attending CCHS, talk about their experience at Concord-Carlisle Regional High School.

Racial Identity Development (RCID)

Sue and Sue's model of Racial Identity Development for people of color.  Examples from TV show, Saved by the Bell.

 

More examples from Speaking Truth 2 Power. Understanding that race is socially constructed.

 

 

Katie Brennan did a nice job on her project, pulling together important points about Bi/Multi Racial Identity Development:

Part 1

Part 2

Race Awareness

Race Awareness http://download.cnet.com/Who-Am-I-Race-Awareness-Game/3000-20415_4-11497678.html:  Fun to play two-player game that teaches kids to think responsibly about race and diversity! Check out the great review on Slate.com titled Apps, Afros and Handcuffs: Talking to Kids About Race Developed by Dr. Michael Baran, cultural anthropologist at Harvard University, Who Am I? is a game designed to open a dialogue about human physical diversity and racial identification. In this game, one player selects a target picture and the other player asks yes or no questions to try and figure out who was picked.

White Privilege

Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible http://world-trust.org/mirrors-of-privilege-making-whiteness-visible/: This film features the experiences of white men and women who have worked to gain insight into what it means to challenge notions of racism and white supremacy. Participants talk about their learned and internalized sense of privilege. Their stories reveal what is often required to move through the stages of denial, defensiveness, guilt, fear, and shame into making a solid commitment to ending racial injustice. This film catalyzes powerful dialogue to support the learning, change and healing of all people who want to undo race-based oppression. Featuring: Tim Wise, Joe Fahey, Peggy V. MacIntosh, Marguerite Parks, Gary Howard and many more.

Links to many, many on line articles:  http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/white-privilege

These are the categories (GO TO THE TUMBLR PAGE, it is great!)

On White Privilege
aka don’t blame me just because I’m white:

On Reverse Racism
aka you are being racist against white people:

On Cultural Appropriation
aka I’m just appreciating your culture:

Assorted Vials of White Tears and Miscellaneous Antidotes
aka I can’t change that I’m white/not all whites are racist/we are all humans:

Okay. I agree. I’ve been socially conditioned not to notice racism and recognize my privilege. What can I do?

I don’t care about this bullshit; you’re making a big deal out of nothing, go home and delete your blog: