Transformed Courses Within the Discipline
"Introduction to Racism:" My Introduction to Student Resistance

By Jack Meacham
State University of New York at Buffalo

"You wouldn't believe how relieved I am that this class is over. For the past month I've been totally offended and disgusted at what we, as a class, were asked to read and learn."

Late one evening, too tired to read and correct more term papers, I sat at my home computer reading through the day's accumulated e-mail. Earlier that day I had met the 200 students in my developmental psychology course for our last class. I was pleased with how the course had progressed during the term. During the past two years I had been working to transform this course on developmental psychology, striving to give greater attention to issues of race, ethnicity, gender, social class, and religious sectarianism along with the more traditional topics of child and adolescent development. I felt that I had accomplished this, largely through the addition to the course materials of five autobiographies in which individuals of contrasting races, genders, and ethnicities described their experiences of growing up in different contexts. Click here to read more about transforming a Developmental Psychology Course. One of the five autobiographies was Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s (1994) Colored People, the memoir of his growing up in a small town in West Virginia in the 1950s and an account of the impact of desegregation upon his family and community (Meacham, 1996). Another required text was Jonathan Kozol's (1991) Savage Inequalities, a wrenching comparison of the quality of public schooling for children in wealthy and white versus poor and largely Black communities in the United States. In addition, I had been encouraging the students to discuss both the course materials and their own experiences outside of class on an electronic listserv discussion list through which students could send messages simultaneously to all of the other students and to me. Many of the students had taken advantage of this opportunity and at times the e-mail discussions had been lively, and so I felt that I had a good understanding of how the students were responding to my course (Meacham, 1994).

Thus I was at first startled and then increasingly hurt by what this student was saying on e-mail, under the subject heading "Introduction to Racism," not only to me but to all the other students in my course. The student continued: "We were forced to read and learn about Gates despising and literally hating Caucasians, putting them down and critizing their cooking, appearance, hair texture, and even intellect and about Kozol blaming racism and blaming whites for the way impoverished schools are today. Someone else in our class said that her mother taught her there were things people just shouldn't talk about. I remember one was religion and the other was race. I could sit at my desk for only so long reading that white people have it better. Why couldn't Kozol spend more time discussing what the parents of these Black children should be doing to help their children and their schools? Why blame race?"

Reacting to Student Challenges
I quickly composed in my mind how I would respond to this student: "You seem to be saying that in this course on children in America there should be only course materials that represent your experiences as a white person and that merely reinforce what you already believed before you enrolled in this course. But isn't one of the purposes of a college education to learn about and consider a variety of perspectives? You should expect to have to become informed about and to understand different perspectives on significant issues, although of course you shouldn't be required to agree with ideas or values that differ from your own. Do you realize that in blaming the parents for the poor condition of their neighborhood schools and thus deflecting blame from how wealthy whites in America have structured the financing of public education to benefit themselves, you are engaging in the classic tactic that Ryan (1971, 1998) has so aptly described as 'blaming the victim?'"

Then I considered what would follow if I sent my response by e-mail to this student and to the other students in my course. Surely we would get into a debate over matters of race and racism. Perhaps many other students would take this student's side. Yet most of the students would now be preparing for their final exams and so it was unclear who would be checking e-mail and perhaps participate in the debate. And race and racism weren't the themes on which I had wanted to conclude this course on developmental psychology. Creating opportunities for e-mail discussion outside of the classroom meant that I had lost control of how my course would be framed and how the course and I would be remembered by my students.

Furthermore, if I had not been able to reach this student--and perhaps many others--with the assigned readings and several hours of lecture and discussion in the classroom (had the student come to class regularly?), then what more could I possibly say by e-mail that would be persuasive to this student and perhaps to others? And on the other hand, the student deserved some credit for composing and sharing publicly some reactions to the materials in my course, and the student had even acknowledged that in the e-mail discussions "very knowledgeable and interesting topics were discussed and I have learned more than I had expected." And the student was aware of how others might react to this criticism of the course materials: "I do apologize to those of you I've offended, but that's the way I read those two books. I read them as if they said ALL white people think they're better and that ALL minorities, especially African-Americans, have it bad." And perhaps the student had shown courage in expressing his views, as I had not yet turned in the grades for the course: "I can only take hearing about how bad white people are for so long. My grade is not as important as my beliefs which include not being racist myself. So why should I spend hours reading someone who is?" I wished that the student had shared these views about the course materials earlier in the term, so that we could have discussed these perspectives in class or in person outside of class. Frustrated and believing that the student had won and I had lost, I decided to not reply at all to the student's message, and I went to bed.

The following morning I was able to view the student's message about my course from some new perspectives. Although I was still troubled by the message, I felt good that I had not reacted hastily and sent a hostile or defensive message that I would now be regretting for all the students in the course to read. One positive outcome that I hoped for was that the other students might read this first student's message for what it was, a racist message sent by someone unable to acknowledge personal racist beliefs and feelings. I remembered that for many students the most important part of courses on multiculturalism and diversity can be hearing what their peers have to say about these issues. As one faculty colleague put it: "The students can't believe the idiocy that comes out of each other's mouths."

Yet clearly I was now blaming the student. Instead, I needed to examine what I had done as a teacher in this course. I have been teaching SUNY at Buffalo's "American Pluralism" course, required for all students majoring in Arts and Sciences, for almost a decade. This American Pluralism course focuses on the changing nature of American society, introduces students to five significant areas of American experience and culture-- race, gender, ethnicity, class, and religious sectarianism--, and provides an examination of historical and contemporary issues associated with diversity (Meacham, 1993). I had taught this course several times previously as primarily a discussion course in sections of approximately 40 students (Meacham, 1995). Perhaps I had overreached in attempting to transform this course on developmental psychology and teach the same topics with primarily lectures and only occasional discussion in a class of 200 students. But was the solution to teach about issues of multiculturalism and diversity only in small classes? Or--because almost all of my teaching at SUNY at Buffalo is with large classes--was my mistake in presenting too much material on race and racism and moving too quickly without sufficient discussion by the students, or was my mistake that I didn't emphasize these issues sufficiently and argue forcefully in the classroom for what I thought students needed to hear and know? What should I do differently, if anything, the next time I teach this course?

Learning to Trust My Students
On campus the following morning, I turned on my office computer and with some trepidation--would many other students be agreeing with the first student?--looked for new e-mail. One of the attractive features of e-mail discussion outside of class is that students whose best time for thinking and writing is late at night or very early in the morning can also participate in our class discussions, and so I had learned that e-mail messages were often waiting for me in the morning. Another student had already read "Introduction to Racism" and had replied: "If all that you took from these two books was a hatred for Caucasians then you missed the point. Minorities in this country feel disconnected to the larger society and often to their own group. These books, and Gates' in particular, are examples of people's experiences trying to make their way through this disconnection. I think the point of Kozol's book is that we have a public education system and some schools are not meeting mimimum standards. If this is truly a public education system, then children should receive educations of equal quality regardless of the income of their parents." I was pleased with and learned from what this student had written. In contrast to what I might have done, she did not lecture the first student about the purposes of a liberal education, nor did she attack or label the other student's personal beliefs and attitudes. Instead, her message in reply was a gentle effort to remind the other student of what Gates and Kozol were striving to say. She replied from the standpoint of her personal experience in reading the books, telling what she understood the authors to be saying. Implicit within her message was that she had listened to and considered what the first student had said, and now the first student should also listen to and respect her views on the textbooks.

A few minutes later this message arrived: "I think that the books that we read in this class were very mind-opening. You say that Henry Louis Gates hated white people. But he's married to a white woman, so how much could he hate white people if he lives with and provides for one every day of his life until death do them part? His views on what was going on when he was growing up are legitimate because of the times in which he was growing up--when the Ku Klux Klan was lynching Black men because white women were claiming to have been raped, when Henry Louis Gates and other Blacks were told that they couldn't be doctors or lawyers because of their skin color, when Blacks had to be escorted by the National Guard in order to attend school in Little Rock, when during the non-violent movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr. Black adults and children were brought down with water hoses and dogs, and when outstanding Black leaders in this country were gunned down, including John F. Kennedy, because they wanted to make a difference for Blacks in America. You have a right to your own opinion, but first consider what events led Henry Louis Gates and his family to have such animosity towards whites."

"As for Kozol's book, I think that poor families do need to take part in their children's educational lives. But I believe that the media always try to portray, incorrectly, the largest group on welfare as Black people and portray all Blacks as lazy. Whenever something is shown on television about welfare, there are almost always faces of Black people. If the state gave the urban schools the extra money that is given to suburban schools, a lot would be different. I think that people need to start looking at reality and stop living in a dream world thinking that there are equal opportunities for Blacks and whites. The only difference between 1957 and 1997 is that the racism today is institutionalized."

This reply, like the first, was better than what I would have and could have written. This student had also been careful not to attack the first student's personal beliefs and attitudes, instead acknowledging at one point that "you have a right to your own opinion." And this student had constructed a reply that was strong in describing the historical context for Gates' book--perhaps I had not done this sufficiently in the course--and in arguing primarily from the standpoint of historical and contemporary facts. Furthermore, it seemed likely that both replies were constructed so as to engage not only the first student but perhaps other students in a continued discussion, if the term had not been ending. As it happened, however, the term was indeed coming to a close, and so I don't know whether the first student ever read these replies or whether the replies led to any change in this student's views of the texts and of the course.

The e-mail discussion, however, did continue for another week past the last class of the course, drifting across a number of course- related topics. Only three other students responded directly to the initial "Introduction to Racism" message, one student agreeing that Kozol had written a racist book: "Kozol is very racist. I am not racist, and I don't like to hear all the time that whatever goes wrong in society is the fault of white people." The remaining students appeared to support both Gates and Kozol. For example: "Interracial marriage probably offends a lot of people, but there are very few things in life more beautiful than two people from different backgrounds joining cultures and ignoring differences." "I would like to think that I am not racist, but realistically we all are." "From what Kozol states, it does appear that wealthy white people are to blame for what is happening in public education, but that is no reason for us to close the book and refuse to read it." "The basic idea I got from Kozol's book is that no child deserves to have to go to school in such an environment. It's appalling and it's simply not right. I don't think blame needs to be put on whites or anyone else. Blaming doesn't fix anything. I think Kozol is just saying this is how it is and it needs to stop." And so by the end of this last week of the term I was thankful that I had not responded hastily and with hostility or defensiveness to the initial "Introduction to Racism" message. If I had done so, it is likely that I would have foreclosed the possibility for myself and others to learn from the extended discussion that took place among these articulate students who were still engaged with my course through our electronic discussions, even though our classes had formally ended. From these student messages I acquired a renewed and enriched understanding of what Gates and Kozol are striving to communicate as well as some ideas for how I might better engage my students in the classroom with these texts. More important, I gained a new respect for my students' efforts to avoid being drawn into interpersonal conflicts while at the same time pursuing reasoned discussion and debate grounded in evidence from the course materials, concrete historical facts, and additional arguments and evidence from the students' own experiences.

Anticipating Student Resistance
Several months have now passed, enough time to move forward a bit from merely "reacting" and "learning." Although the discussion that I have described was initiated by only a single student, as a teacher I should anticipate that several and perhaps many other students will react to "Colored People," "Savage Inequalities," and related texts similarly. On my campus the courses that fullfill our general education multiculturalism and diversity requirement are identified in the catalog, so that students who might be resistant to learning more about race and gender can avoid enrolling in more than one such course. Some students will be surprised to find these topics in a transformed disciplinary or majors course and so they might question the appropriateness of particular readings or lecture and discussion topics. I can easily provide a more explicit description of and rationale for the themes of my transformed course both on the syllabus and in the opening classes. And I should anticipate that the implications of current scholarship on race, gender, and sexual orientation will cause trouble for my students' still-developing beliefs, values, attitudes, interpersonal behaviors, and identities. I can easily alert students to this possibility and strive to convey that I intend my classes and our e-mail discussion list to be places where they can discuss freely discuss these themes and their implications. I can also point out that students might well respond to the course materials differently depending on their own backgrounds and experiences. Chan and Treacy (1996) point out that student resistance in multicultural courses can take a variety of forms, including not only active disagreement with and criticism of the course materials but also passive resistance such as coming to class late or skipping class, turning in assignments late and only partially completed, and pretending to be favorable towards the ideas advanced in the course yet failing to actively engage with and question those ideas. These and other forms of student resistance to issues of multiculturalism and diversity each call for anticipation and differential response by teachers.

The student who wrote "Introduction to Racism," as many readers of this essay will have assumed, was indeed white and male. It would be too easy and wrong, however, to understand what this student felt and wrote merely in terms of his reactions as a white male to the issues of Black identity and of racism in American society raised by Gates' and Kozol's texts. I must also consider what role my own status as a white male may play in the dynamics of student resistance to issues of multiculturalism and diversity. Higginbotham (1996) notes that the major dimensions of structured inequality in American society are reproduced within our educational institutions and even within the structure and dynamics of our classrooms. It is white and male students, accustomed to their privileged place within American society, who are most likely to feel entitled to interject into the time that other students and the teacher have together in the classroom their criticisms and challenges of course materials that raise questions that they find troubling yet don't want to address. And--here is where I play a role in the analysis--it is likely the white and male students in my courses who likely feel most comfortable expressing their resistance because they perceive that they and I share much in common, in particular this position of privilege within the hierarchy of inequalities in American society.

In short, the distance of inequality between myself and my white, male students is less than the distance between myself and my other students. My white, male students may find me easier to approach than do my other students and thus they may be more comfortable in expressing their resistance to what I am doing as a teacher. I am now forced to reflect upon my role in the apparent lack of resistance--or my inability to recognize and to understand it--from the many women and minority students who have been in my classes, particularly during those decades in which I was teaching traditional courses that I had not attempted to transform so as to be more inclusive of their perspectives and interests. Would minority and women students have been more likely to have expressed their resistance and challenged my course materials as representing only white and male perspectives and interests if I had been more open to soliciting their reactions? One simple procedure would have been to solicit anonymous course evaluations once or twice during the term. Yet clearly the relationships between structured inequalities in society, the characteristics of the teacher, and expressions of student resistance are far more complex than this. For example, white and male students may also find it easier to express their dissatisfaction with course topics taught by women and minority teachers whom they might regard as having lesser status within the hierarchy of inequalities. [Yet in a recent research study no support was found for the hypothesis that students will give low evaluations of teaching effectiveness for women and minority teachers who present controversial material in their courses (Ludwig and Meacham, 1997).] Perhaps there can be no general rules here, other than to consider carefully the potential dynamics involving particular teachers and particular students.

I am intrigued by the fact that some of the peers of the student who wrote the "Introduction to Racism" message were quickly able to compose replies that were well-grounded in the course materials, in historical facts, and in their own experiences and that enriched and sustained the discussion. While of course my students do differ along all the dimensions of structured inequality that exist in American society, nevertheless they do not have the differences from each other that my increasing age and my status as a teacher create between myself and my students. Furthermore, at least in the students' e-mail messages to each other their race and perhaps their gender are far less visible than in the classroom. Perhaps the fewer and less visible structural differences among my students mean that in discussion and debate they are able to attend less to who is speaking and instead attend more to the merits of what is being said. If so, then as a teacher concerned about student resistance to course materials on multiculturalism and diversity a positive direction for the development of my teaching skills should be to strive for less discussion between myself and my students and far more active engagement of my students with each other.

References

Chan, C. S., & Treacy, M. J. (1996). Resistance in multicultural courses: Student, faculty, and classroom dynamics. American Behavioral Scientist, 40(2), 212-221.
Gates, H. L., Jr. (1994). Colored people: A memoir. New York: Knopf.
Higginbotham, E. (1996). Getting all students to listen: Analyzing and coping with student resistance. American Behavioral Scientist, 40(2), 203-211.
Kozol, J. (1991). Savage inequalities: Children in America's schools.
New York: HarperPerennial.
Ludwig, J. L., & Meacham, J. A. (1997). Teaching controversial courses: Student evaluations of instructors and content. Educational Research Quarterly, 21, 27-37.
Meacham, J. A. (1993). Guiding principles for development and implementation of multicultural courses. Journal of General Education, 42(4), 301-315.
Meacham, J. A. (1994). Discussions by e-mail: Experiences from a large class on multiculturalism. Liberal Education, 80(4), 36- 39.
Meacham, J. A. (1995). Conflict in multiculturalism classes: Too much heat or too little? Liberal Education, 81(4), 24-29.
Meacham, J. A. (1996). Review of H. L. Gates, Jr., Colored people: A memoir. Multicultural Education, 3(3, Spring), 26.
Ryan, W. (1971). Blaming the victim. New York: Vintage.
Ryan, W. (1998). "Blaming the victim." In Paula S. Rothenberg (Ed.), Race, class, and gender in the United States: An integrated study (pp. 519-528). New York: St. Martin's Press.