If faculty were listening to you just now.
My goodness, am I doing these things? How could they work towards awareness?
I think that it's really important when we're thinking about how we find ourselves and how we situate ourselves in this conversation about racism
or anti-racism to start with the fact that all of us are socialized or educated and in a higher education system that is inherently racist.
So it's very possible or it is the fact that all of us have been trained and indoctrinated in some ways to to produce scholarship research,
to set up classrooms in ways that are not necessarily favoring students of color.
Right. And they are intentionally favoring white students.
So to start there with the acknowledgment that this is a part of the system that we all work in is really important.
The other piece that I think becomes really important is to lots of people say
you want to check your privilege or you want to try to get rid of your biases.
What I actually said of people is that, no, you may not be able to get rid of them.
What becomes really important is for you to accept that you have them and try to work to
mitigate the impact that those biases might have on students who are in your classroom.
Right. The self-awareness is really key. Whether or not that is about doing the reading or doing conversations with other people,
whatever it is you need to do to be able to enhance your self awareness to becomes really important,
because the first step in moving towards anti-racism practice is to be able to name that racism as occurring.
And so we start with ourselves. How is it occurring at us? But then also how might it be occurring in the classroom?
The other piece is to really understand those dynamics, how they function, whether or not it is about saying that,
well, I wasn't meaning to be racist to this student or these students are just being really sensitive to the topic,
or I'm actually just sticking with the fidelity of what these original authors were saying in this piece about race or racism.
Right. So I can disprove and present the N-word in class because it's a part of this this original writing.
If we if we begin to understand really that racism has a really negative impact on students of color in the classroom,
then we would also be working to remedy that. Right. We would be working to rid the classroom or what's making it difficult for the students to learn.
And some ways that moves into the next piece of this. How do you be accountable for racism?
What is it that you need to do in order to be able to remove the racist elements from the classroom,
from the curriculum, from your pedagogical approach? How do you remove those things that it's so that it's not setting up barriers for students
of color who are sitting in the classroom and then in some ways to also be thinking,
what do I need to do to actually provide remedies for that?
Here in the classroom, which is a little bit harder to do, certainly if there are ways that if something racist occurs,
how do I apologize to students, that that's certainly a really important part of this conversation.
But also, if I recognize that I have done something racist in the classroom and it has disrupted the classroom, what do I need to be considering?
With regards to the well-being of my black students or my Latino students in the classroom?
Right. Have a really good colleague, Della, mostly, who was at the University of Florida,
who has really given me a beautiful question that we should be using instead of
how is it that we're preventing racism or how is it that we are navigating bias?
We should be asking, what am I doing to protect the black students in my classroom?
What am I doing to protect the Latino students in my classroom? Right.
We should be thinking about how is it that we are going the extra step to make sure
that we are doing things to make sure that students are protected in that classroom?
Because we know that racism has a really, really damaging effects on not only that the learning capacities for students, but on their psyche,
on their emotional, on their emotional selves, on their social selves, on their physical well-being, as well as on their racial well-being.
And for a lot of students of color, they come to the classroom with this racial aspect to themselves as a real source of pride.
Right. And when you show up in the classroom, you need your whole self.
You need all of the tools that you have in your toolbag to be able to navigate the classroom.
And if a part of that is wounded. Right.
So your racial self, if your racial pride gets wounded, you're not able to show up is your whole self student.
You might actually not be able to perform to the best of your ability.
And what we want is for students to have a really positive academic self concept.
And all of those pieces go into having that positive active academic self concept.
So what is it that we're doing to make sure that we're protecting them so they can show up as our whole selves?
And so those that's how I'd be thinking about the anti-racism anti-racism approach to the classroom.
You want to be able to name it, understand it. Be accountable for it.
And then provide remedies for whatever it is that has disfavoring students of color or favorite
white students or provided more opportunity for white students or taken away opportunity.
Thompson. I think that you're making so many crucial points.
One in particular, when you talk about well-being as it relates to that whole self that students should be able to bring to the table.
And that's, of course, some students are not implicitly able to do that because the system is against them,
maybe even the course design is against them.
And I think that that's so interesting because we know that there's so much research about belongingness,
classroom and how that relates to the students ability to perform and feel confident to speak up.
It she's like you mentioned or speak up about the content. Share their opinion.
Be an active participant in group work.
And so we we design our classes of all these great things in mind of conversation and discussion and groups and teamwork.
But if these systemic elements, this awareness and encouraged at the beginning,
that's just going to be another source of different gucky, different obstacles for students being able to be their whole selves.
So thank you for sharing that point.
One of the other things that becomes really important for academics to understand about how racism functions in the
classroom or the manifestation of how racism functions in the classroom is how students cognitive capacities are affected.
That's one of the things that I don't think that we actually give a lot of credence to.
If a student is being affected negatively by racism,
it's very likely that because of the wound that they're experiencing to their racial self pride or some aspect of their racialized selves,
it's quite possible that they may have intrusive thoughts about when the incidents occurred in the classroom
or they might actually replay those instances in their in their mind that happened in the classroom.
They might actually be hyper vigilant about showing up to spaces where some type of racist event occurred.
And what we know is if you're a student and you are dealing with so intrusive thoughts or these ruminations,
so like it's just playing over and over in your head, what's quite possible is that you won't be able to focus.
You won't be able to concentrate. You actually won't be able to remember things because your memory.
Your brain function and your cognitive functioning is not at its optimal best.
Right.
If we can begin to understand that racism has serious effects on students of color in the classroom to the degree that they actually can't learn,
they actually can't show up and do their best work. They can't communicate in ways that are indicative of what they actually know in the classroom.
Then what we have is students who are actually being really disfavored again and faculty members
not even paying attention to the fact that there was a wounded student in the classroom.
Right. And if we don't recognize it, there are wounded students in our classrooms.
We just keep teaching without any regard for those people.
And what I know is or what I would like to believe is, is that most faculty members are actually concerned about their students.
Right. But what we haven't done in the history of this country or even current day is to help people to
understand that racism has really injurious effects on the on students who are marginalized by racism.
So that point becomes really important for people to remember.
Remember, there is real serious and negative psychological academic effects for students who are marginalized by racism.
I think that that's a pivotal point for our faculty and me as a faculty member to bear in mind,
because your obligation when you go into the classroom is making sure that you set your students up for success or at the very least,
they understand the cost of success. But additionally, every syllabus begins with learning objectives.
So your primary goal is to ensure student learning. And so if you are not considering these cognitive effects,
you might not be actively not be facilitating optimal learning for every student in your classroom.
And it brings back to that idea of this systemic point at the beginning.
And I think I think it's just crucial for faculty to understand it's not about just delivering the content.
You're delivering the content to people.
And that personal experience can be a huge part of whether the students feel that they can go into your classroom,
their whole selves contributing, or like you said, whether they go in with a memory or an instant in mind that has happened in that classroom,
that already triggers that difficulty for them in progressing with their learning.
And it's our responsibility. And so I think that that's a really important thing that you've shared with us.
Thank you.