When I opened my mouth to offer an opinion of the implementation of guilt in teaching children about slavery and racism, I was attacked both times by some gangly white girl who works at the coffee shop and dresses like a hipster. What her beef with me was, I'll never quite know.
After reading Joe Feagin's book The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing, our class was discussing counter-frames and news ways to counter the white racial frame -- the way American society rationalizes the systemic racism against black people.
I offered up my opinion that in teaching children about slavery and racism, invoking guilt can sometimes lead to resentment. Every year in school I learned about slavery and racism and every year I was made to feel like it was my fault an entire group of people had been oppressed for centuries prior to my birth. Over time, this has led to my feeling resentful. Why should I feel guilty for something I, nor my ancestors, had any part of? Furthermore, where was Feagin's mention of reverse prejudice, which I've seen in action.
Gangly Girl with her shorn black hair and blue leggings-as-pants attacked me for my mention of reverse prejudice. Then the conversation moved on.
Later, it returned to me and I attempted to further justify my answer. My argument, which I stand by, was (1) the kids who can be made to feel guilty about systemic racism are not the ones who would perpetuate it, and (2) African Americans have been made to feel guilty for the color of their skin for centuries. What would transposition of that guilt solve?
"But whites benefit from the system!" screamed Gangly Girl. She certainly seemed hell bent on making me out to be a racist asshole.
Of course they do. We're in a 2000-level sociology class; clearly, I've learned that by now. But I did not learn about the current methods of oppression until I made it to college. While more people are being educated in college than ever before, not everyone makes it there. I never learned about the white-focused system in middle school or high school.
Avoiding the subject of racism's current implications but making students feel guilty about racism in the past will not put an end to the present-day injustices. Guilt does not have to go along with education about racism, despite my classmates' attempts to argue that guilt can turn to responsibility.
Even if in some students, the feeling of guilt can turn into the taking of responsibility, if in even one student feelings of guilt turn to feelings of resentment or even to inaction in the face of prejudice, isn't there good cause to seek out a new way to teach students to feel empathy for black Americans?
I'm not a racist, despite Gangly Girl's attempts to turn me into one. I hope that someday people will be ignorant of color like Dick in "3rd Rock From the Sun."
In the first season, he's talking to Mary and Nina, when Nina says she's black. "I'm sorry. All you people look alike to me."
Both Mary and Nina protest and Dick replies, "I just don't see why people have to divide up into these arbitrary subsets. I mean, skin color? Pleeeeease. You may see color but I see people."
Until the response of people to statements like these is not a sarcasm-filled, "Aren't we fortunate to have someone so enlightened? Oh, pious one, show us the way!" I'll continue to say the unpopular thing if I feel it's right.
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