Professor Jackson is a Racist
(Alison’s Truth)
A former student and one of his classmates wandered into my classroom in the first week of the semester, excited about their instructor, Professor Jackson, a recognized expert in the field and a highly respected instructor on campus. We chatted for a bit before my next class started. As they walked away, I smiled to see students moving toward their academic goals and embracing new experiences.
Two days later, I bumped into the same students in the hall.
“Hey,” I said amid the clatter and whir of the nearby elevator. “How are classes going?”
My former student replied. “Professor Jackson is mean.”
Mean it turned out because the professor required students to outline texts they read for class and to submit outlines of their formal writing. Mean because Professor Jackson held students to high academic standards.
“Yeah,” his friend piped in. “And a racist.” My former student nodded.
Oh boy. White woman moment here.
How was I going to handle this? A crowded hallway was hardly the optimal space to engage students who had just accused a colleague of being a racist. Additionally complicated however, was the fact that the accused racist was Black.
“Wow.” I said. “What makes you say that? What happened?”
According to the students, the choice to assign texts written by and about BLACK people constituted the primary evidence of Professor Jackson’s racism. As my former student’s friend explained, “Professor Jackson’s all about this Black power stuff. And there aren’t any Black students in the room. So why push all of this on us? Professor Jackson is just a racist.”
My former student identifies as White and male. I did not know the identification of his friend. But clearly, neither identified as Black or as an ally.
I groaned inwardly at the Whiteness of their dialogue. Watching the students swirling around us, I imagined the textbooks they carried in their backpacks – likely written by predominantly White experts in the field. Mostly White faculty passed us on the way to their next classes; undoubtedly, most of the teachers who had stood before these two students had been White. Texts by and about White people (with a smattering of representative texts by and about Latinx, Black, or Asian people) had most likely made up the weight of their’ reading, watching, and listening in school. However, I was willing to bet that these students had never recognized or acknowledged the role race played in their educational experiences.
For these students, a professor’s choice to use texts by and about Black people constituted racism. But I would be surprised if they had ever labeled a White teacher “racist” for assigning texts by and about White people.
I resisted the urge to jump in and correct their language, to erase their words with academic explanation: “Racism involves ‘power over,’ and since White has held and continues to hold power in the U.S., Black people might be prejudiced, might feel antagonism toward non-Black others, but as the oppressed and not the oppressors, Black people cannot actually be racist.” Instead, I asked them to come to my office because I wanted to know more about their experiences. They agreed to do so later in the week and moved down the hall.
While I was disturbed by the Whiteness of their responses, I also felt the need engage appropriately and productively with these students, to address the issues behind their words. I wanted to use these students’ experience and reaction to it as a learning opportunity – to help them understand why this professor is not a racist … to help them examine their reactions to their instructors’ text selections, expectations, and power. But as I walked back to my office, I first had to examine my own responses to them and my hesitancy to address the issue in the moment. Was I really just avoiding a difficult conversation?
“I would be surprised if they had ever labeled a White teacher “racist” for assigning texts by and about White people.”
Was my urge to correct them just an urge to “save” Professor Jackson? Who was I to intercede on my colleague’s behalf? How would I react if a colleague felt the need to explain my instructional decisions to my students?
I believed that Professor Jackson was perfectly capable of fielding reactions such as these. But I was also aware of the “racial battle fatique” (Smith et al., 2006, p. 299) and the impact of microaggressions (Harlow, 2003; Ladson-Billings, 1996) on Black educators, and I felt the need to do my part – to recognize and address the racism inherent in the students’ responses. I also doubted that these or other such students would ever share such questioning and accusations directly. Instead, I imagined students either refusing to read the texts or reading through a veil of resistance and suspicion, mentally and emotionally withdrawing from the course content and, as a result, missing the opportunity to chip away at the wall between them and their Black professor.
Were the students’ reactions racist? Of course. These two college freshmen reflected assumptions that “the dominance and overrepresentation of certain people in college, in leadership, and among the ranks of the wealthy and envied is natural and optimal” (Stewart, 2017). By elevating the voices and experiences of Black people, Professor Jackson had challenged this “natural and optimal” hierarchy and thus challenged the safety and predictability of the world view in which these students had been educated. In their anger over this disruption of “normalcy,” they consciously or unconsciously were working to protect the whiteness of their culture (Hytten & Warren, 2003). They also mirrored the current political climate, repeating anti-antiracist language and complaints that had become a regular part of the media cycle. Backed by generations of White dominant education and by years of anti-CRT rhetoric, these students felt empowered to share their reactions to the startling new experience of a Black professor introducing Black experts and experiences into the curriculum.
Professor Jackson would probably not be surprised by their reactions or their accusations.
I, in my own Whiteness, was both surprised and horrified. However, I began to see that chastising the students for their reactions would not address the problem or promote their intellectual development. Instead, correcting their language would only teach them to keep their “incorrect” reactions private and to monitor their speech more carefully around me.
In sharing their reactions with me, these students stepped into a dialogue about race, racism, and the power of the voices we elevate in the classroom. In sharing their assessment that “Professor Jackson is a racist,” they had given me an opportunity to help them think critically about their expectations and their discomfort. Equally as important, I realized that as a White educator taking responsibility for equity, my responsibility in this situation was not to save Professor Jackson or to report the students’ predictable reaction to Professor Jackson, but to hold space for these and other students to examine and learn more about their reactions to these new perspectives.
References
Harlow, R. (2003). “Race doesn’t matter, but…”: The effect of race on professors’ experiences and emotion management in the undergraduate college classroom. Social Psychology Quarterly 66(4): 348-363.
Hytten, K. & Warren, J. (2003). Engaging whiteness: How racial power gets reified in education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 16(1): 7-29.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1996) Silences as weapons: challenges of a Black professor teaching white students. Theory into Practice, 35(2): 79-85.
Smith, W.A., Yosso, T.J. and D.G. Solorzano. (2006). Challenging racial battle fatique on historically white campuses: A critical race examination of race-related stress. In Stanley, Christine A. (Ed.) Faculty of color: Teaching in predominantly white colleges and universities (pp. 211-238). Jossey-Bass.
Stewart, D. (2017) Language of appeasement. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2017/03/30/colleges-need-language-shift-not-one-you-think-essay#.WOcb_5QtE4p.twitter
