Our class session on Thursday was a necessary start but insufficient conversation in our class about racialized experiences and locations in society. There is much, much, much to be discussed, deliberated, acted upon, reconsidered, and changed up. Who is afforded opportunities; who is not? How do circuits of opportunities and dispossession operate? Why in teacher education programs are we so focused on only the at-riskness of black and brown populations (see criticism of KONY 2012 for parallels) and largely silent on the challenge embedded in White middle and upper middle class teachers going into contexts which they may not know and perhaps even fear? How do we tackle knowing our own racialized identities and how they shape our work as educators? Who are allies in doing this work?
We will continue this conversation next week by breaking the black/white binary and considering how this process of racialization works across other populations.
Use this space to post up thoughts, comments, and relevant links.
Here's an article that unpacks a lot of the context in the Trayvon Martin shooting. He does a really good job of explaining how privilege is operating in the assumptions around and reactions to Martin's murder. I think there are some parallels to the KONY2012 campaign as well; specifically, the sympathetic response to the shooting rather than the empathetic response.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.timwise.org/2012/03/trayvon-martin-white-denial-and-the-unacceptable-burden-of-blackness-in-america/