Sarah Baio
Digital Essay
Sarah Baio
Kyle Labe
ENGL-1007
29 November 2022
Digital Essay
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Dana Guirguis, a student at the University of Connecticut today, describes her educational journey thus far as one of privilege and sacrifice. Just last week, I asked Dana where she was heading when I saw her leaving her dorm room. She told me that she was heading to church. I told her to enjoy Mass and that I wished I could have gone with her, which she appreciated. She smiled back at me and said that she was “Egyptian and proud,” with a little fist pump; in my periphery, I saw one of our hallmates disapprove of this statement by rolling her eyes and exhaling a sigh of distaste to Dana’s comment. While disappearing down the stairs before I could fully acknowledge and understand what I saw, I let Dana go and pondered to myself as to why this happened and why my eyes only followed the commenter, versus actually educating her on why her gesture was hostile and impertinent. As someone who preaches the idea of giving people the benefit of the doubt, I tried to do the same for my hallmate. While I may never know, I am holding on to the fact that she may have never had any sort of critical conversations regarding race in the classroom in her twelve plus years of schooling. These thinly veiled, everyday instances of racism are seen more often than not in our homes, the workplace, and on campus. Although prevalent in recent discourses, affirmative action has slipped under the radar. This paper borrows the theoretical definition in the vein of Bettina Love as the active practice of pursuing educational freedom for all students, promoting sustainable change. This simple practice, while still severely absent in the lives of many today, is crucial towards engaging with the superstructural concern of racial inequality in education. Individuals from all sectors of society, specifically those who are white, have failed to demonstrate the urgency for altering the way our societies and school curriculums currently operate. Most of our time spent in the classroom is learning how to interact, work, and coincide with one another. If our educators fail to educate us on these manners, our time outside of the classroom is spent treating others with an ignorant sense of disrespect. Globally, members of the majority pay little to no attention to the microaggressions, wealth disparities, rates of underemployment, discrimination, school-to-prison pipeline, and the overall aura of inferiority that inhabits members of the minority (any person who is not white).
Nicole McZeal Walters, EdD, at the University of St. Thomas illustrates how even one conversation can make a difference in the way you treat the next person. Walters is consistently questioned as a leader, scholar, and colleague despite holding the same level of education as her colleagues, if not higher. Walters preaches how microaggressions can “come in the form of ‘saviors’ who feel pity for the mistreatment of faculty members of color, who say condescending things, and speak in hushed tones; those who want to show that not all nonblack people feel the way that others do about your presence on campus, yet do nothing about the mistreatment,” contributing to the purpose of taking action (Walters 63). Affirmative action. It is extremely unfortunate that white saviorism exists, but it is even more terrible that it happens in the classroom. More often than not, we see white teachers looking to “save” their students, when in reality, they cling to colorblindness. While they may recognize their students’ backgrounds and stories, they fail to have meaningful discussions about such matters. Our similarities and differences are what make the world unique, and understanding that no matter the color of our skin, our successes in life are generally dictated by our educational and occupational lives. Similar to what I observed in my conversation with Dana and our hallmate, microaggressions in the form of commentary govern a vast part of societal interactions and how we engage in conversation with others. Our hallmate’s barely noticeable reaction is a prime example of how many white people unconsciously reverse previous racial progress. Understanding how our unnoticed prejudices and biases affect the livelihoods of those around us is a crucial yet disregarded step in the lives of so many.
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As I previously mentioned, University of Connecticut student, Dana Guirguis, is a prime representation of Bettina Love’s concept of mattering in society, along with Nicole McZeal Walters’ experience with microaggressions . As an immigrant from Egypt, Dana has found the United States a place she will forever be thankful for, but a place reeking of ignorance and inequity. Bettina Love states how she is “certain that dark people have never truly mattered in this country except as property and labor. However, we have mattered to our communities, to our families, and to ourselves. Our impact on this country, whether it is recognized or not, is where mattering rests; it is where thriving rests,” alluding to the fact that the “practice of abolitionist teaching rooted in the internal desire desire we all have for freedom, joy, [and] restorative justice” (Love 7). Dana recalls how it was not just at university level where she first experienced some form of microaggressions. Not only did Dana’s “Egyptian and proud” comment irritate our college hallmate, but she explains how immediately upon moving to her new high school, her lab partner asked to scrunch her curly hair. Still, while a senior in high school, her lab partner, with the complimentary intentions, unknowingly exhibited a microaggression on Dana. As someone who is white with fine, pin-straight hair, I will never fully know or understand the mental toll of microaggressions and the way that they make individuals of color feel even more ostracized. The complete and utter ostracism that Love, Walter’s and Dana have felt in the workplace, on campus, and in everyday life is astonishing. Change has to be made, and can only be made if we as a society can grapple with each other and relinquish our own desires for power. While progress is not always linear, it takes groups of individuals that share the same ideals to actually provoke any sort of change.
The Little Rock Nine of Little Rock Central High School, Arkansas. Ernest Green. After the Supreme Court finally declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional, a momentous feat that was Black joy to some was overpowered by white hatred. While only one of nine members of the Arkansas Little Rock Nine, Ernest Green’s narrative reflects the criminality of Blackness seen sixty-five years ago and today. A seemingly simple task of opening their doors to teach students of a different skin color was more than a nuisance to some. Integrating a mere nine Black students into the formerly all-white high school provoked an uproar, one the nine students chronicle the transition as a type of warfare. Green recalls, “‘What it was like was rejection I had never experienced like that before. It seemed to me that if they were going to all this trouble to keep me out, it was something bigger than my simply going to class.’” What Green gestures toward is how something so effortless as attending class was a considerable feat for many Black people (“60 Years On” 0:55– 1:06). Unwelcomed not for their level of education, personalities, or aspirations, but for the color of their skin is a tragic and horrying notion that continues to be generationally-persistent. Essentialist notions of Blackness are associated with profiling stereotypes of lesser intelligence, baser personalities and cheap aspirations that are directly linked to the sight of skin color.
USC Rossier School of Education’s Classroom Conversations expands on the impressionability and unseen intelligence in infants and school-aged children. While homing in on how and when our differences become biased, the article explains how Julie Olsen Edwards, coauthor of Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves, has heard a plethora of excuses as to why worthwhile conversations of race do not belong in school settings. All in all, educators have claimed that it is not their place, that they don’t have the space in their curriculum, that their students are too young, and that talking about injustices will only upset kids, while in reality, the opposite is quite true. Implementing conversations of race that are deemed “uncomfortable” into the classroom, as early as daycare, is pivotal in altering the ways we as people identify others. Edwards claims how “young children need educators who can help them navigate and thrive in a world of great diversity, educators who can give them and their families the tools to make the world a more fair place for themselves and for each other” (Edwards). While much research explains the “pros and cons” of racial discussion and affirmative action, none seems to delineate how curriculum can change. Whether it is having baby dolls of color for play time, making monthly heritage bulletin boards, or even reading books by authors of color and women authors; the way teachers teach, has to change. If our educators are incapable of providing us with the necessary apparatuses to become better and kinder humans, we are then made unable to do the same, creating a world spewing with inequities.
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The Unequal Opportunity Race video illustrates the metaphorical “chase” that individuals of color endure on a daily basis. Opportunities are enormously restricted to these individuals, and director, Erica Pinto, illustrates the barriers that are nearly invisible to white people, white privilege being the most prevalent barrier. Using animated clips of traffic lights, sinkholes, cinder blocks, cages, and boobie traps as African American individuals race white people, it is nearly impossible to argue that white privilege does not prevail. Blackness has no opportunity to win. Blackness cannot win when white saviorism hurts more than it helps. The Unequal Opportunity Race video depicts, similar to Ernest Green and The Arkansas Little Rock Nine, that the darker the pigment in your skin, the less opportunities and more prejudice you receive. Sadly, in this video and in the real world, the more melanin one has, the much less likely they are to succeed. White people are shown hundreds of kilometers ahead with no blockades while light skinned individuals trail behind, and darker skinned individuals trail even further behind, leaving them with absolutely no chance to win, let alone be in equal competition with them. White people are given more than what is considered a “head start,” as they do multiple laps of the course before any person of color can even start. They are shown gleaming with joy, trophy in hand, before the runners of color even step a foot off the starting line. Bettina Love, in her We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom book, she expresses how “In every state in America, Black girls are more than twice as likely to be suspended from school as white girls. And darker-skinned Black girls are suspended at a rate that is three times greater than those with lighter skin,” adding to the fact that discrimination is still a widespread epidemic” (Love 5). If individuals of color are suspended from the school by their white counterparts, they most definitely would form feelings of ill will, or animosity towards white people as a whole. If white individuals are the ones creating these statistics, there is no chance for white students to engage in critical conversations, let alone learn how to work with their peers. It is a vicious cycle that continues to ruin the livelihoods of others. Bettina Love and Dana Guirguis preach the same message that “We who are dark are complex– we are more than our skin hues of Blacks and Browns,” Regardless of age, viewers are able to comprehend the alarming amount of inequalities and unconscious biases that affect people of color on a day-to-day basis. In order to alleviate these “barriers,” affirmative action is imperative from both the majority and the minority at making every and all aspects of life more equitable. Collectively, white people and individuals of color must adapt and coexist with each other to form a better functioning society that provides everyone with the same opportunities.
Works Cited
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AssociatedPress, director. 60 Years On, A Look Back at the Little Rock Nine. YouTube, YouTube, 24 Sept. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym8rdtq-KBE.
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Epintoanimation, Erica Pinto, director. The Unequal Opportunity Race. YouTube, YouTube, 14 Nov. 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX_Vzl-r8NY.
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Nicole McZeal Walters. “Trump’s America Is Making Microaggressions an Even Greater Reality for Women Faculty of Color: An African American Faculty Member’s Lived Experiences.” Women, Gender, and Families of Color, vol. 6, no. 1, 2018, pp. 63–68. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5406/womgenfamcol.6.1.0063. Accessed 4 Nov. 2022.
USC Rossier’s online master’s in school counseling program. “WHY CONVERSATIONS ABOUT RACISM BELONG IN THE CLASSROOM.” Why Conversations about Racism Belong in the Classroom, rossieronline.usc.edu/youth-and-racism/racism-in-the-classroom.