Educating for Critical Consciousness 1138363359, 9781138363359

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This is an outstanding collection of essays, broad in scope and granular in detail. Yancy has assembled leading scholars and public intellectuals as a full-​throated and courageous challenge to today’s proliferation of neo-​ identitarian movements, rationalization of the warfare state, militarization of the police, atomization of the public sphere, steady expansion of the surveillance state, defense of US superpower hegemony and militarized state-​capitalism augmented by the increasing power of the transnational corporate sector.This book stands as a white rose bursting through the fortress of despair, a gavel thundering through the hallways of history, waking the conscience of the living dead. Peter McLaren, Distinguished Professor in Critical Studies, Chapman University, and Chair Professor, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China Educating for Critical Consciousness is an important and necessary response to the intellectual and psychological erosion of American discourse, politics and moral standing in the world. A cultural therapeutic for the return of the repressed. David Polizzi, Professor of Criminology & Criminal Justice at Indiana State University, USA

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EDUCATING FOR CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

In this politically and democratically urgent collection, George Yancy and contributors argue that more than ever, we are in need of classrooms that function “dangerously”—​that is, classrooms where people are not afraid to engage in critical discussions that call into question difficult political times. Collectively they demonstrate the ways activist authors and scholars must be prepared to engage in risk and vulnerability as a defense of our democratic right to practice forms of pedagogical transgression. Ideal for scholars and students of critical pedagogy, philosophy of education, and political theory, this collection delineates the necessity of critical consciousness through education, and provides ways of speaking back against authoritarian control of imaginative and critical capacities. George Yancy is Professor of Philosophy at Emory University and Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College. He is the author, editor, and co-​editor of over 20 books and is known for his influential essays and interviews in the New York Times philosophy column “The Stone.”

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CRITICAL SOCIAL THOUGHT SERIES Series Editor: Michael W. Apple, University of Wisconsin—​Madison

Mapping Corporate Education Reform Power and Policy Networks in the Neoliberal State Ed. by Wayne Au and Joseph J. Ferrare The End of Public Schools The Corporate Reform Agenda to Privatize Education David Hursh The Critical Turn in Education From Marxist Critique to Poststructuralist Feminism to Critical Theories of Race Isaac Gottesman The Struggle for the Soul of Teacher Education Kenneth M. Zeichner College Curriculum and the Crossroads Women of Color Reflect and Resist Ed. by Kirsten T. Edwards and Maria del Guadalupe Davidson Educating for Critical Consciousness Ed. by George Yancy For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/​ Critical-​Social-​Thought/​book-​series/​SE0807

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EDUCATING FOR CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS Edited by George Yancy

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First published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of George Yancy to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names:Yancy, George, editor. Title: Educating for critical consciousness / edited by George Yancy. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018060730 | ISBN 9781138363359 (hbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781138363366 (pbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780429431654 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Critical pedagogy—United States. | Education—Social aspects—United States. | Educational equalization—United States. | Discrimination in education—United States. Classification: LCC LC196.5.U6 E35 2019 | DDC 370.11/5—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018060730 ISBN: 978-​1-​138-​36335-​9  (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​138-​36336-​6  (pbk) ISBN: 978-​0-​429-​43165-​4  (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Newgen Publishing UK

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This book is dedicated to all of those who refuse to be adjusted to injustice, hatred, and bigotry.

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CONTENTS

About the Contributors  Acknowledgments  Series Editor Introduction  Introduction: The Urgency of Refusing Adjustment  George Yancy 1 Uncovering and Challenging White Supremacy  Stephen Brookfield 2 White Ignorance, Epistemic Injustice and the Challenges of Teaching for Critical Social Consciousness  Barbara Applebaum

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3 Higher Education and Pedagogy in the Age of Trump  Henry A. Giroux

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4 The Worry Well: Teaching in These Ignominious Times  Becky Thompson

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5 Teaching Students Systemic Racism Theory and Autopathy: The Age of White Nationalism  Kimberley Ducey and Joe R. Feagin

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6 Education and the International Division of Labor, Power, and Prestige  William David Hart

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7 A Season of Light and Darkness: On Education and President Donald J. Trump  Josiah Ulysses Young III

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8 Complicating Resistance: Intersectionality, Liberation, and Democracy  Jennifer Gale de Saxe

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9 Educating for Democracy: Lessons from the Life of Myles Horton  Stephen Preskill

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10 The Beast Behind the Wall: Critical Teaching in Terrible Times  Ira Shor

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11 “Do Something Ethical”: Critical Thinking, Theorizing, and Political Will  Joy James 12 Education for Democracy: The Daunting Task Before Us  Bill Bywater 13 Truth and (Trump’s) Method: The Instability of Critical Thinking in Education  Kal Alston

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14 Teaching in Times of Anti-​Academic Provocation  Cris Mayo

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Index 

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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Kal Alston is a professor of Cultural Foundations of Education and Women’s

and Gender Studies at Syracuse University. Her various administrative jobs have given her insights into how higher education supports and erodes other cultural institutions. Her work in cultural and media criticism gives her insight into how the romance of education persists in the face of seismic social change. Her students teach her every day. Barbara Applebaum, Professor in Cultural Foundations of Education at

Syracuse University, is trained in philosophy of education. Her research is heavily informed by feminist ethics, feminist philosophy, critical race theory, and critical whiteness studies. Her book, Being White, Being Good: White Complicity, White Moral Responsibility, and Social Justice Pedagogy (Lexington, 2010) complicates the pedagogical challenges of teaching about white complicity. Applebaum’s published papers have appeared in such journals as Educational Theory, Hypatia, Philosophy of Education, Teachers College Record, and Educational Foundations. Stephen Brookfield is a white man who was born in Liverpool, England. He

has spent his professional life trying to understand how to help adults think critically about their learned ideologies and how to create collaborative yet critical learning spaces. He has done this with multiple organizations, sectors, and groups, including community organizations, non-​profits, corporations, media companies, the military, hospitals, and numerous schools, colleges, and universities. As part of this journey he has written, co-​authored and edited 18 books on adult learning, teaching, and critical thinking, six of which have won the Cyril O. Houle World Award for Literature in Adult Education (in 1986, 1989, 1996, 2005, 2011, and 2012). He currently holds the title of Distinguished University Professor and John

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Ireland Endowed Chair at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis-​St. Paul. Previously he has been a professor at Teachers College (Columbia University), Harvard University, and the University of British Columbia. Bill Bywater is Professor Emeritus at Allegheny College. He received his BA

in Philosophy from Lehigh University, and his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Michigan. Kimberley Ducey, an associate professor at the University of Winnipeg and a

recent graduate of Canada’s esteemed Université McGill, does research on racism, sexism, and classism issues and the oppression of non-​human animals. Dr Ducey is a Québec Forces AVENIR recipient—​an award which aims to recognize, honor, and promote involvement in projects that contribute to the formation of conscious citizens. Joe R. Feagin, Ella McFadden Professor and University Distinguished Professor

at Texas A&M University, does research on racism, sexism, and classism issues. He has served as Scholar-​in-​Residence at the US Commission on Civil Rights and is the recipient of the American Sociological Association’s W. E. B. Du Bois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award. He was the 1999–​2000 president of the American Sociological Association. Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship

in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include:  America’s Addiction to Terrorism (Monthly Review Press, 2016); America at War with Itself (City Lights, 2017); The Public in Peril: Trump and the Menace of American Authoritarianism (Routledge, 2018); and American Nightmare:  Facing the Challenge of Fascism (City Lights, 2018). William David Hart (PhD Princeton, 1994)  is the Margaret W.  Harmon

Professor of Religious Studies at Macalester College. He is the author of three monographs:  Edward Said and the Religious Effects of Culture (Cambridge, 2000); Black Religion:  Malcolm X, Julius Lester, and Jan Willis (Palgrave, 2008); and Afro-​ Eccentricity: Beyond the Standard Narrative of Black Religion (Palgrave, 2011). Hart is currently working on a short monograph titled: Antiblackness: A Theoretical Inquiry. His research interests include antiblackness and the theoretical discourse of black studies; relations among slavery, race, animality, and criminality within ethical rhetoric; and a comparative exploration of human sacrifice as a religious and political practice. Joy James is F. C. Oakley 3rd Century Professor at Williams College. She is the

author of “The Womb of Western Theory: Trauma, Time Theft and the Captive

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Maternal” and Seeking the Beloved Community:  A Feminist Race Reader and the editor of several anthologies on radical politics and incarceration:  The Angela Y.  Davis Reader; The New Abolitionists:  (Neo) Slave Narratives and Contemporary Prison Writings; and Imprisoned Intellectuals: America’s Political Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and Rebellion. Cris Mayo is Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Director of the

LGBTQ+ Center at West Virginia University. Mayo’s publications include: Gay Straight Alliances and Associations among Youth in Schools (Palgrave, 2017), LGBTQ Youth and Schools: Policies and Practice (Teachers College Press), and Disputing the Subject of Sex: Sexuality and School Policy (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004), as well as articles in Educational Researcher, Review of Research in Education, Educational Theory, and Sexuality Research and Social Policy, among others. Stephen Preskill was born in Highland Park, Illinois and now lives in New York

City. He has taught at all educational levels and has devoted most of his professional energy to using discussion to make classrooms more inclusive and participatory. Most of his writing reflects these commitments, and includes these co-​authored books: Learning as a Way of Leading: Lessons from the Struggle for Social Justice, Discussion as a Way of Teaching: Tools and Techniques for Democratic Classrooms, and The Discussion Book: 50 Great Ways to Get People Talking—​all with Stephen Brookfield; as well as Stories of Teaching: A Foundation for Educational Renewal—​with Robin Smith Jacobvitz. He retired from Wagner College as a distinguished professor of Civic Engagement and Leadership in 2014 and is currently a Teaching Fellow in Columbia University’s Writing Program. He is working on a biography of Myles Horton. Jennifer Gale de Saxe is presently a Lecturer in the Social and Cultural

Studies Department at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her teaching and research explore the dynamics of knowledge production, inequality, and power relations within both schools and society. The lenses in which she examines such issues are embedded within a critical feminist perspective, paying close attention to the intersections of gender, race, class, sexuality, among others, and the interconnectedness of these identifiers as they relate to the many facets of analyzing and critiquing society writ large. Prior to teaching at the University level, she spent five years as a public school educator in California, Washington, and Illinois. Ira Shor is joint Professor of English and Urban Education at the City University

of New  York Graduate School where he directs dissertations in composition/​ rhetoric and critical pedagogy, and where he teaches first-​year writing at the College of Staten Island. He wrote the first book-​length treatment of Freire-​ based approaches, Critical Teaching and Everyday Life (1980) and co-​authored with

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Paulo Freire the first “talking-​book” Freire did with a collaborator, A Pedagogy for Liberation (1986), among other books. Becky Thompson, PhD, is a scholar, poet, activist, and yoga teacher. She is the

author of Teaching with Tenderness, Survivors on the Yoga Mat, When the Center Is on Fire (co-​author, Diane Harriford), A Promise and a Way of Life:  White Antiracist Activism, and several other books on social justice and healing. Becky is Professor of Sociology at Simmons College and has held appointments at Duke University, the University of Colorado, Princeton University, Wesleyan University, and Bowdoin College. Her honors and awards include Rockefeller and Ford Fellowships, the Gustavus Myers Award for Outstanding Books on Human Rights, the Mosaic Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Creative Justice Poetry Prize. Her current activism includes working in solidarity with refugees and in support of #BlackLivesMatter. She teaches yoga (RYT-​500) at the Dorchester YMCA in Boston and internationally (Thailand, China). George Yancy is Professor of Philosophy at Emory University and a distinguished

Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College. He has authored, edited, and co-​ edited over 20 books. He has written numerous scholarly articles and chapters. He is known for his provocative and influential articles and interviews in the New York Times’ philosophy column “The Stone.” Josiah Ulysses Young III is Professor of Systematic Theology at Wesley Theological

Seminary in Washington, DC. He is the author of numerous books, including No Difference in the Fare: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Problem of Racism. His latest book is James Baldwin’s Understanding of God: Overwhelming Desire and Joy. He is currently working on a book-​length manuscript entitled Confessions of an Afro-​Protestant: A Faith Journey.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank the courageous scholars who without any hesitation agreed to contribute to this important and urgent text. Each of us is cognizant of the profoundly anti-​ democratic zeitgeist within which we find ourselves globally. Within the context of the US, we are painfully aware of just how the demos and the earth itself will continue to suffer as long as neo-​fascist, authoritarian figures of Donald Trump’s ilk remain in power.What he is attempting to do—​through his antagonistic ideas, rejection of democratic expression and informed and critical discourse, myopia, unabashed racism, mean-​ spiritedness, cold and revengeful disposition, anti-​ critical thought, anti-​democratic and anti-​humanist policies, divisiveness, and his penchant for “alternative facts” and blatant lies—​is to negatively impact and undermine what it means to value and create spaces of community, compassion, belonging, and solidarity, especially within the context of diversity and difference, where both of these values make for an ethically fecund sense of shared and living community. However, given the historically grounded consciousness of each of the contributors, there is the realization that this book project, and the various ways of thinking about, embodying, and practicing educating for critical consciousness, transcends any single despotic populist. So, it is with tremendous appreciation and honor that I thank each of the scholars who agreed to engage the theme of educating for critical consciousness within this moment of moral and political crisis. It is within this context that I thank our Critical Social Thought Series Editor Michael W. Apple for his engaged educational theory and praxis that has had and continues to have a global impact. Apple’s work is rigorous, critically engaging, and in dialogue with a vast range of important liberatory thinkers, ideas, and practices. Mike, it is such a pleasure and honor to once again work with you.

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I also thank Catherine Bernard and Rachel Dugan at Routledge/​Taylor & Francis for their logistical help and for keeping me on schedule. Thanks for your commitment to excellence and to this project. I would also like to give a special thanks to Michael A. Elliot, who is Professor and Dean of Emory College of Arts and Sciences. Michael, thank you for your support during those times when I was the target of so much anti-​Black racism, racist epithets, and threats of physical violence. Even as of this acknowledgment, the nasty and vile comments continue. Yet, your support endures. Thanks for the institutional support and for understanding the significance and integrity of my public intellectual engagement. Thanks also to my colleagues in the philosophy department, especially for your scholarly productivity. Thanks for leading the way in so many diverse philosophical areas of concern and value. Thanks to editor Peter Catapano and philosopher Simon Critchley for their continued support of my work at the New York Times’ philosophy column “The Stone.” It is such an honor to work with the two of you. Peter, thanks for your editorial brilliance and insights. Thanks to my undergraduate and graduate students here at Emory for their enthusiasm for studying with me. I believe in making classroom spaces uncomfortable. To leave my classes always feeling “happy” means that I have failed. My aim has been to leave you maladjusted and un-​sutured; to “wound” you with care and passion. I give my love to the Yancy boys. Please stay alive in a world that sees you as a “problem.” I bear witness that you are not problems, but beautiful human beings capable of mistakes. Yet, at the end of the day, you are more than your mistakes, your errors, your misdeeds. And my love has not faltered because of them. Your dad has faith in you. Press on and show all of us a better humanity. And, to Susan, I thank you for your support and for the work that you do to trouble the disciplinary myopia of your own area of inquiry for which you have demonstrated passion and a genuine calling.

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SERIES EDITOR INTRODUCTION

Right before I  began writing my Series Editor Introduction to this fine book, I had just returned from some academic and political work in Brazil. My time there felt all too familiar. The Right has grown increasingly strong there and a hard-​ Right figure—​ Jair Bolsonaro—​ has just been elected president. Racist, homophobic, environmentally destructive, and authoritarian positions and policies are openly expressed and advocated. There are movements to pass legislation that forbids “political” content and teaching in schools and universities. Conservative legislators there have even asked students to use their cell phones to record progressive teachers who dare to continue teaching such “dangerous” content. And many neoliberal and neoconservative people are pressing to have the national awards and recognition given to Paulo Freire rescinded. Of course, there are growing movements within education and the larger society that are mobilizing against such positions and policies. Thus, in the midst of the rightist resurgence signified by Bolsonaro’s victory, there are also visible reasons for hope. The same of course could be and must be said about reasons for hope in the United States and elsewhere. Such hope is clearly visible in this book. One of my major reasons for beginning this Introduction with an example from Brazil is that it is a stark reminder that “the Age of Donald Trump” is not “only” represented by the United States. These movements are worldwide. They document the Right’s understanding of how to build hegemonic relations and, as Antonio Gramsci would call it, to generate “active consent.”  We need to remember that Trump is not only a cause of this, but very much a product of these larger movements. The second reason I  have begun with Brazil is related to a figure who is very prominent in many of the chapters in this book—​Paulo Freire. Freire, the immensely respected Brazilian critical educator, provides many of the foundations

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for, and would have strongly supported the politics and practices represented in, Educating for Critical Consciousness. Along with scholar/​ activists such as bell hooks and others, such figures knew both intellectually and bodily what was at stake in the struggles over consciousness—​over literacy, culture, economy, and power. And Freire, hooks, and others understood that “naming the word and the world” is part of an ongoing and never-​ending struggle in which we could never be satisfied with abstract commitments. They had to be acted upon, embodied, lived. In a time of rightist resurgence, such struggles and the politics and practices they entail are even more necessary. In an entire series of books, I have devoted a good deal of attention to how and why the rightist alliances have been successful1 and as well to how they might be interrupted.2 As the authors included in this book signify, this is both an individual and collective project. Many people are joining together in the task of affirming the possibility of more critically challenging the forces of dominance and in building an education that is worthy of being called truly critical. Many of the chapters included here are grounded in the intense personal and pedagogic efforts to build and defend an education that responds to the realities of dominance and subordination and to the efforts to interrupt these relations. Others are aimed at providing more nuanced and effective tools to better understand what is happening and to identify paths and resources that contribute to creating a society that responds to what Nancy Fraser calls a more critically democratic politics of distribution, recognition, and representation.3 The chapters recognize the multiplicity of power relations that need to be considered, with race, class, and gender/​sex and their complex intersections playing crucial roles. George Yancy’s powerful personal narrative of the politics and experiences of racialized forms and experiences in his own introductory chapter sets the stage in a way that makes it impossible not to understand that even “our” (whose?) supposedly “liberal democracy” is organized around what Charles Mills so correctly calls the racial contract.4 And all of the chapters that follow are responses to crucial questions about engaged pedagogic work. How do we interrupt common sense? How do we create pedagogies that are deeply connected to the daily realities of people’s lives and to struggles to overcome exploitation and domination in a time when the Right has already understood how such connections might be creatively (albeit manipulatively) made? Who is this “we” in the first place? How do we avoid the possible arrogance of a position that assumes that “we” already always know the best and only paths to emancipation and we will bring it to “you”? Thus, this is a book that helps us answer significant questions of not only what it means to be fully committed to a critical and emancipatory education, but just as importantly what the practice of this critical and emancipatory education actually looks like in an age of rightist ascendancy. Educating for Critical Consciousness documents that we need to be involved in a dual project—​both understanding the raced, classed, and gendered/​sexed relations of dominance that are powerfully present and building and engaging in a process

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of education that interrupts these relations. In taking both of these sets of responsibilities so seriously, the book contributes to what Raymond Williams so poetically called the journey of hope that is part of “the long revolution.”5 Michael W. Apple John Bascom Professor Emeritus of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies University of Wisconsin, Madison

Notes 1 See, e.g., Apple, M.  W. (2006). Educating the “Right” Way:  Markets, Standards, God, and Inequality (2nd ed.). New  York:  Routledge; Apple, M.  W. (2014). Official Knowledge: Democratic Education in a Conservative Age (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge. 2 Apple, M. W. (2013). Can Education Change Society? New York: Routledge; Apple, M. W., Gandin, L. A., Liu, S., Meshulam, A., and Schirmer, E. (2018). The Struggle for Democracy in Education: Lessons from Social Realities. New York: Routledge. 3 Fraser, N. (1997). Justice Interruptus. New York: Routledge. 4 Mills, C. (1997). The Racial Contract. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 5 Williams, R.  (1961). The Long Revolution. London:  Chatto and Windus; Williams, R. (1983). The Year 2000. New York: Pantheon.

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INTRODUCTION The Urgency of Refusing Adjustment George Yancy

In the philosophy courses I  teach, both undergraduate and graduate, my aim is to broaden the perception of the students. By “perception,” I  don’t simply mean opening their eyes; this way of thinking about perception is too ocular-​ laden. Pedagogically, my aim is to un-​suture how they have come to be-​in-​the-​ world, which includes critically engaging their taken-​for-​g ranted assumptions, habitual modes of social transaction, rigid affects, procrustean ways of dividing the world into “us” vs. “them” binary categories, and commonsensical ways of thinking about (and living) what it means to be an ethical human being. To un-​suture within a pedagogical context means being open to be touched, to be vulnerable, to be open to be wounded, where that wound functions as a site of growth—​even as that wound is a space for a deeper wounding, a deeper capacity to be touched. In short, in the language of Martin Luther King, Jr, my aim is to encourage my students to feel that something has gone terribly wrong if they feel adjusted, sutured, whole. In the language of Paulo Freire, I seek to inspire them to challenge the idea that they are already “complete,” “finished,” “happily contented.” In the language of Peter Berger, I aim to incite a deep suspicion (a hermeneutic fissure) that the world is not, by any stretch of the imagination, “fine,” “okay.” I must honestly say to you that I never intend to adjust myself to racial segregation and discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few…. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self-​defeating effects of physical violence. Martin Luther King, Jr1

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Problem-​posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming—​as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality. Paulo Freire2 Whatever possibilities of freedom we may have, they cannot be realized if we continue to assume that the “okay world” of society is the only world there is. Peter Berger3 I want the students to un-​suture and feel the weight and pain of just how problematic our world has become, just how brutal it is, just how violent it is, just how fucked-​up it is. That’s right—​fucked-​up. It is important not only to shift my students’ multisensory ways of being-​in-​the-​world, but the medium, in this case the effective and raw deployment of language, must also communicate the direness of our shared social, political, and existential predicament. While Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wasn’t speaking for our contemporary moment, his words are painfully relevant. He writes, “We are a generation that has lost the capacity for outrage.”4 The expression of righteous indignation, outrage, anger, and fury are antithetical to being content with and adjusted to how things are, with the unquestioned hegemonic order of things. The term outrage is relevant as it captures the current nightmare that we face. However, the majority of the students have no idea about the sheer gravity of this nightmare; they have learned to live with masks that they would rather not be told are masks; willed ignorance is “better,” bad faith is easier, deception is digestible. This process of masking has had a specific racial register as I have only taught at predominantly white academic institutions. As such, the mise-​en-​scène—​ the academic white stage—​is set before my arrival. It is a space within which white monochromatic bodies gather, bond, where white gazes fabricate “social reality,” where white epistemological assumptions are taken for granted, and where whiteness functions as the transcendental norm; that is, where whiteness relegates other human beings to the status of racialized others, “deviants,” “pollutants.” It is a place where “white student unions” have no need to name themselves and where curricular material feeds and propitiates the desires and longings of white people. Within such spaces, especially given the repetition of white normativity that has taken on the ontological feature of an unchangeable and “natural substance,” my white students feel at home, they move with ease within academic spaces that were created for them. My objective is to get the students to be in crisis, to undergo forms of disorientation, to embody the urgency of refusing adjustment. My pedagogy aims to disrupt an ontology of supposed impregnability, of self-​possession. The idea is to get the students to embrace their precariousness and embodied porosity. These pedagogical aims are inextricably linked to my own sense of lived suffering,

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which drives how I educate toward critical consciousness. They are grounded in an earlier sense of maladjustment and discontent that I felt as a young child. For example, as a young boy,5 I had an intense affective way of being-​in-​the-​world. I was obsessed with the fact of human death, the fact that our existential facticity is profoundly mysterious and that the cosmos is incredibly silent about why we are here at all. But it wasn’t just about the fact that we all will die someday; it was (and is) about the fact I will die any day. The use of “any day” within this context speaks to the fact that not a single moment is guaranteed. Along with this sense of death, I felt a deep sense of existential dread that we are thrown into existence without any clear sense of why we’re here, whether or not God exists, whether or not the cosmos has any meaning beyond what we give it, whether or not we have immortal souls, whether there is any meaning to be acquired after death or if death is the final absurd moment of our being here. Even before I realized that there was a term called philosophy, I dwelled within this space of existential gravity. For me, philosophy or loving wisdom isn’t simply about abstract wonder, but about grappling passionately (etymologically, suffering) with such haunting questions. For me, I suffer, I agonize, I grieve over the fact that there are no easy answers. I  have compared this suffering to that of an orphan, to an agonizing feeling of forlornness.That is how I often feel; there is a sense of being abandoned within a careless and cold cosmos for which there may be no answer other than the fact of complete chance that we exist. Yet, even as I suffer, there is the absolute beauty of what I call the gift of being. And even if our individual existential duration is less than the blink of an eye relative to cosmic time, perhaps there is profound meaning in that. To get the students to dwell within the space of generative suffering I ask them to look each other in the eyes, to look closely. While looking, I communicate to them that we are all bound for the grave. I communicate to them that each one of them will become rotting corpses. My objective is not to play with some sophomoric sense of nihilism. Rather, my aim is to get them to feel the immediacy, as it were, of their possible death, to be haunted by their finitude; to get them to feel just how little time we have (each has) to learn to be better human beings, to change the world for the better, given such a short period between birth and the grave. There is an audible shift that is heard when I’ve asked them to do this. Having them look at each other generates laughter, a sense of uneasy laughter. Part of this is due to the fact that we don’t really look at each other. In fact, students are often looking at me. It is at the moment when I assert that “In 100 years from now each one of you will be dead,” that a stark silence permeates throughout the classroom; there is no more laughter. If there are any sounds at all they communicate the sigh of disappointment, of being hit with reality. And if there is ever any laughter it functions, I  would assume, to conceal the dread. Some students register the reality on their faces—​looks of horror and disbelief that I would dare “spoil” the moment.Yet, isn’t this part of educating toward critical consciousness, to spoil the moment, to undo the ways in which we have become immune to

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what really matters? The idea, of course, is not to generate a solipsistic self-​pitying, but to get them to realize that the eyes of the other, the face of the other, is utterly irreplaceable. The idea is to pull them out of their neoliberal conceit and to get them to feel the weight of the other, the presence of the other, the humanity of the other—​and, perhaps, for that microsecond, to grieve the ineluctable future absence of the other. There are other ways that I educate toward critical consciousness. My pedagogy is also linked to my writing, how I engage different publics through the use of the quotidian and the use of embodied language. I’ve come to see my writing as moving from an abstract space exemplified by the term logos (word or reason) to a concrete space exemplified by the term sarx (flesh). I engage philosophical ideas within the flesh, which may sound like a truism. However, being around so many philosophers with a penchant for philosophical abstraction, one is led to believe that they think of themselves as residing in a pristine mental bubble, one removed from anything as “cumbersome” as being embodied.Then again, perhaps what I have in mind is closer to the process of giving flesh to reasoned and agonizing ideas, or, more accurately, where reasoned and agonizing ideas are always already enfleshed. After all, I’m always already situated within the all too human reality of dread, suffering, pain, and death. These are all lived experiences in-​the-​ flesh. So, through the process of writing, I bring my full and “impure” humanity and embodied self to the writing, which troubles and mediates logos through the reality of sarx. Then again, is logos ever separated from sarx? Philosophers who treat philosophy as an ahistorical practice, one removed and untouched by the embodied social selves that they are, elide the embodied human face of ideas and thereby attempt to play the role of gods only to deliver philosophical idols, lifeless, and barren. But, unlike Athena, who was born fully whole from the head of Zeus, we are born from the messiness and beauty of interlocking, collective human flesh—​fragile, precarious, porous. So, both through my pedagogy within the classroom and through my writing, my aim is to trouble the lived space that many of us inhabit as individuals who have made peace with being adjusted, attuned, and who are content to wear masks. Yet, it isn’t easy to remove masks. It isn’t easy to undo the sense of “innocence” that so many of us hold onto for dear life. Parrhesia or courageous speech can lead to powerful and dangerous forms of backlash, forms of backlash that are unwanted, vicious, and often, for me, anti-​Black. For example, just a few weeks ago as of this writing, I received a vile message. Actually, the message was copied to a few academic deans and colleagues at my university. The letter writer wrote: This—​George D. Yancy—​racist piece of garbage is the typical (Jim Crow) Democrat. An evil hate-​filled fascist whore. George spews nothing but ignorance like every one of you Leftists. Mr.Yancy is a fascist in the likeness of LEFTISTs such as Hilter [sic], Stalin, Mao, etc. George the whore has called for exterminating an entire group of people (whites). The piss evil

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Introduction  5

shit bag lives in & receives all the luxury of our amazing White Patriarchial [sic] Christian Country but the whore hates the same great country. George Yancy’s ancestors sold slaves to the Arabs in Africa & today calls for extermination thus he deserves stage 4 cancer. FUCK HIM. My assumption is that this person had finally discovered and read my article “Dear White America,” which was published at the New  York Times’ philosophy column “The Stone” in 2015.6 The letter asked with love that white people examine the ways in which they systemically perpetuate racialized forms of injustice and how they harbor, through what I call white opacity, anti-​Black racism.While I’ve read hundreds of racist comments directed at me on white racist websites, and have documented many of them in my book Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America,7 I came across this one just a few weeks before this writing: Caught your propaganda piece on how much you hate white people. Sad. Why don’t you work on a better black America? No need? Better check the stats professor. Oh, I’m sure it’s my fault as an evil whitey for those stats. LMAO! [Laughing My Ass Off] I  am from the deep south. I  am white. I  don’t hate you because you are black. I  hate you because you hate me because I’m white. Let that sink in asshole. Not ONE fact backed up your accusations of white racism growing, or even systematically existing in America. Not one! You got death threats? SO? You know how many conservative whites get death threats in this country? Does that mean black racism is alive and growing? End of the day “professor,” I don’t believe most whites are racist any more than I believe most blacks are racists. You dwell on a small subset of idiots in this country that hate because of the color of someone’s skin … like you do.You use it as ammo to further your leftist agenda of tearing down white people … because you hate them. So, for THAT … and THAT alone … I  hate you back motherfucker. Fuck you and your ignorant views of the world. Racist bitch. BTW, I wiped my ass with that article you wrote. Its covered in white boy shit and in my septic tank right now, where it belongs. I have no desire or space within this introduction to analyze the profound incoherence and vileness of these two responses. My point is to share what is often entailed when we engage in forms of public pedagogy that are designed to challenge adjustment to the status quo. Many of my students often feel discomfort with my pedagogy, with my attempt to get them to remove their masks, but not one of them, to my knowledge, has responded with such vitriol. And while this doesn’t let them off the proverbial hook in terms of how they continue to consciously or unconsciously perpetuate white racism, I have never received such

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unabashedly revolting responses. In fact, at the end of my classes most of my students, especially my white students, have learned how to tarry, to linger, in spaces of maladjustment, spaces of profound estrangement from the familiar, the taken-​for-​granted. And it is within the space of that tarrying that their critical consciousness matures. The book that you hold, Educating for Critical Consciousness, speaks to our contemporary moment, a moment where educating for critical consciousness is desperately needed. We live in a moment where too many individuals, most of whom are white, within North America are becoming adjusted and attuned to neo-​fascist, white nationalist authoritarianism by a populist presidential figure who comes right out of the pages of 1984. We also see this form of xenophobic (white) nationalism in countries like France, Germany, Hungary, and Sweden; this nationalism is metastasizing and consuming our fragile democratic projects. When I conceived of this book project, which had to do with gathering together a critical cadre of scholars who engage in practices of educating for critical ­consciousness, it was Donald Trump and his authoritarian toxicity that I had in mind. It was Trump—​the obsessive liar, the white nationalist, the white racist, the sexist, the bully, the xenophobic populist, the neo-​fascist, the Orwellian nightmare, the rude, revengeful, and foul-​mouthed aspiring dictator—​who instigated my call. However, Trump is symptomatic of a form of white authoritarian power that we have seen before. So, the book that you hold exceeds Trump and speaks to any past, present, and future manifestation of anti-democratic practices and ideologies that commit violence to the humanity and integrity of the demos (the people). When Donald Trump became President-​ Elect, America didn’t suddenly become a nation predicated upon white supremacy. For those of us who have endured the hatred, the noblesse oblige of “good, God-​fearing” white people, we didn’t unexpectedly enter into a new and unforeseen nightmare. We didn’t have the privilege to live in a twilight zone, a world of fantasy where things are unreal, where we get to wallow in what Richard Wright calls a form of white mania for mere trinkets.8 Wright implies that the words of the souls of many white people are “the syllables of popular songs,”9 superficial distractions that speak to non-​racialized suffering and mourning. As a Black male, white America has always been a nightmare to me, a country filled with white terror, brutality, nativism, hubris, paranoia, privilege, and power. So, for most Black people and people of color, the existential malaise that a “Trump victory” produced, is not new. “Gifted with second-​sight,”10 as W.  E. B.  Du Bois says, we have always seen how whiteness operates within this country. For those white people who are disgusted and unhinged by Trump’s election, know that Black people and people of color have been living in the pre-​Trump belly of the beast called white America for centuries. In fact, we suffered and continue to suffer under white liberal “goodness,” tamed and untamed racism, white comfort at our ontological expense. Even when white people suffer, we are marked as the genesis of their pain.

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Introduction  7

I empathize with the pain of working-​class white America, their feelings of exclusion, and their treatment as the “rural other.” However, their vote for Trump has further marked vulnerable bodies in ways that will expose us to deeper forms of social pain and suffering, ostracization and expulsion. Part of the problem is that white people vis-​à-​vis their class suffering was not an isolated metric in their decision to vote for Trump. Even as they suffered, they always knew that they were not Black and thereby assumed that they were entitled to reap the benefits of white America. Part of their frustration is that they are white and that they continue to be treated like “niggers.” That is their shame. Their suffering was never just economic; it was/​is linked to a white vanguard mentality that has not materialized for them. And because it hasn’t, they have blamed “the Other.” This is partly because working-​class white America has not rejected the binary structure of whiteness. Trump has become their “white savior figure.” He has not only sold them a bill of goods, but he has spoken to those implicit and explicit white racist assumptions supporting a white racist metanarrative, which speaks to making America “great again.” As a Black male, Trump’s election denies my humanity. As Audre Lorde writes, “For to survive in the mouth of this dragon we call America, we have had to learn this first and most vital lesson—​that we were never meant to survive.”11 We have always known that America was not meant for us, that our lives were marked for death, that we were, as Lisa Marie Cacho notes, “ineligible for personhood.”12 For me, though, it is more than an unpleasant reality. It is the stuff of Orwellian nightmares, the reality of unadulterated political madness and shameless white nativism that bespeaks white terrorism. What we are witnessing is the democratic birth of a monstrous figure, one who has promised to make America “great again.” There was a time when Germany needed to be made “great again.” Being made “great again” bespeaks the horrors of genocide. And many were, sadly, in the case of Germany, convinced by the messenger. Trump’s presidency is one that we will never forget. Every day, we move closer not to a so-​called new normal, but toward Trumpian moral ineptness, neo-​fascist backlash, and dictatorial aspersions heaped upon democratic, though far from perfect, institutions and practices. After Trump won the presidency, we didn’t witness the peaceful transfer of power. On the contrary, there was a massive rebellion that was fueled by justified anger and fear regarding his election. It is not democracy per se that is at fault. Rather, what we are witnessing is Faustian in nature—​millions of people, predominantly white, who were willing and prepared to “sell their souls” for their own apparent economic interests and their white nationalist identity (and the feeling of loss thereof) at the expense of the vulnerable. Trump, the new “white savior figure,” long ago confirmed their loyalty saying that he could shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose voters. That is the signature of a narcissist, one who is reckless, who can do no wrong in his eyes or in the eyes of his followers. That kind of self-​obsession places ethics and democracy in abeyance—it is quick to lose sight of the entire and collective demos. It is the kind of disposition that is absolutely

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abhorrent. And, yet, we note with profound sadness, though perhaps not disbelief, knowing the historic precedent, that Trump’s base remains strong. And we also note the spinelessness of those in political office who remain silent. Trump’s hyperbolic self-​confidence should have functioned as an affront to the ethical sensibilities of his followers. Their vote indicated a willingness to subordinate their freedom to a political idol regardless of his actions. Political idolatry bespeaks fanaticism. What is this but the semblance of D. W. Griffiths’ The Birth of a Nation (1915), the rise and valorization of the Ku Klux Klan, and the demonization of the Black male as a sexual predator. If the stakes were not so high, I might, as Frantz Fanon said, “laugh myself to tears.”13 But, like with Fanon, “that laughter [has] become impossible.”14 Indeed, it is not a laughing matter when David Duke, once the Grand Wizard of the KKK, tweeted, “Our people played a huge role in electing Trump!”15 It is the “our” that is so frightening. To my knowledge, to this day,Trump has not unequivocally called Duke out as a racist. It is Trump’s reticence and perhaps unwillingness to name racism, sexism, and xenophobia that helps to form the mortar to scaffold the birth of this “new nation.” Furthermore, Trump’s moral equivocation regarding “Some very fine people on both sides”16 sealed his white racist sensibilities. We were asked to believe that the white supremacists in Charlottesville,Virginia, and by implication, their actions and their ideology, were morally equivalent to those who came to resist and protest against those white supremacists. Trump said, “There’s blame on both sides.”17 Or consider Trump’s despicable reference to those in the NFL who decided to kneel to protest against racial injustice as “sons of bitches.”18 Or consider Trump’s racist remarks where he tweeted that California State Representative Maxine Waters is “an extraordinarily low IQ person.”19 All of that, in addition to so much more, speaks to Trump’s moral forfeiture, his cold and calculating racism, and his blatant disrespect and dehumanization of others. Martin Luther King, Jr, said, “The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide.”20 Refusing to acquiesce is exactly what people across this country are doing. They are using their democratic freedom to push against what they perceive as a political and existential threat to their lives in light of Trump’s rise to President of the United States. Again, according to King, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”21 We must remind ourselves repeatedly that what Trump says and does is unacceptable and the nightmarish reality of 1984. There is power in naming. Memory can function as a weapon. Trump’s presidency has called into question the stability of North America’s democracy. His authoritarianism, neo-​ fascism, xenophobia, and white nativism is antithetical to critical and imaginative thought. In short, Trump’s presidential leadership is undergirded by a dangerous form of anti-​intellectualism and a proclivity to ridicule criticism and silence resistance to his dictatorial rhetoric. Trump is a danger to our fragile democratic experiment. He is a danger to critical thought itself. Hence, the question becomes: what ought education (educare) look like in a time like this? The ought points profoundly to the ethicality of the

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Introduction  9

question. I personally felt the sting of Trump’s ethos when I discovered that my name appeared on what is called the Professor Watchlist, which is a conservative website created by a conservative youth group known as Turning Point USA. The structure of the Watchlist feels panoptic; it is a site of surveillance. Indeed, the job of this Watchlist is to monitor (“mark,” “call out,” “shame”) professors who teach so-​called leftist propaganda. There was the feeling of having been marked/​ watched. In response, I decided to write an article entitled, “I Am a Dangerous Professor.”22 The objective of that piece was to make clear my determination to continue to engage my students in practices of critical thought, of challenging white supremacy, white privilege, sexism, and poverty—​to call out and name injustice and oppression when and where they saw it. I concluded that if these pedagogical aims are what placed me on the Professor Watchlist, then I  would continue to be a dangerous professor, continue to engage my students in processes of parrhesia and critically challenging the status quo. More than ever, we are in need of classrooms that function “dangerously,” that is, classrooms where people are not afraid to engage in critical discussions that call into question the horrors of despotic rule, authoritarianism, and neo-​fascism. While we must have safe classrooms, safety must never undermine self-​critique, must never encourage us to blink in the face of hegemonic orders. And we, as educators, must be prepared to engage in risk and vulnerability as we defend our democratic right to practice forms of pedagogical transgression vis-​à-​vis new emergent forms of anti-​democratic power, which lead to forms of democratic powerlessness. This book, then, is conceived at a crucial moment in American history; indeed, world history. The aim of this book is to gather together in a single volume pedagogically critical voices that are unafraid to name our moment as morally inept and authoritarian at the “highest” and most powerful office in the land (conceivably, the world). However, the aim is not to simply rage against the machine. And while this awful moment in American history is our collective point of embarkation, our objective aim is to engage in the process of educating for critical consciousness. “Educating” is a process, a continuous existential project. As a collective voice, we are cognizant that our effort is not simply to preach to the proverbial choir, but to delineate ways in which education must function as an ongoing resistant force that belies forms of obscurantism. As such, this book is dialectically linked to readers of this text. The text is not meant to be exclusionary, but democratic in its discursive invitation. As Freire writes, “A revolutionary leadership must accordingly practice co-​intentional education.”23 We have collectively created a textual space, a discursive space, where scholars have gathered to challenge intellectual apathy and sycophancy under Trump, to delineate the necessity of critical consciousness through education, and to provide ways of speaking back against authoritarian control of our imaginative and critical capacities. Given this, Educating for Critical Consciousness, is a pedagogically, politically, existentially, and democratically fecund and urgent text.

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Notes 1 www.youtube.com/​watch?v=UBOq18yd7Hs 2 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary Edition (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000), 84. 3 Peter L.  Berger, Invitation to Sociology:  A Humanistic Perspective (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company), 149–​150. 4 Abraham Joshua Heschel, Abraham Joshua Heschel:  Essential Writings, ed. Susannah Heschel (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011), 85. 5 I thank philosopher Harry A. Nethery IV, a friend and colleague, for engaging me in a lengthy and generative conversation where I was able to articulate the ideas regarding my early childhood and the affective dimensions of doing philosophy. 6 https://​opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/​2015/​12/​24/​dear-​white-​america/​?_​r=0 7 George Yancy, Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018). 8 Richard Wright, “The Man Who Went to Chicago,” in Eight Men, Introduction by Paul Gilroy (New York: Harper Perennial, 1996), 214. 9 Richard Wright, “The Man Who Went to Chicago,” in Eight Men, Introduction by Paul Gilroy (New York: Harper Perennial, 1996), 214. 10 W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903; reprint, New York: New American Library, 1982), 45. 11 Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider:  Essays and Speeches, New Foreword by Cheryl Clarke (Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press, 1984), 42. 12 Lisa Marie Cacho, Social Death:  Racialized Rightlessness and the Criminalization of the Unprotected (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 6. 13 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin,White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 112. 14 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin,White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 112. 15 www.politico.com/​story/​2016/​11/​david-​duke-​trump-​victory-​2016-​election-​231072 16 www.theatlantic.com/​politics/​archive/​2017/​08/​trump-​defends-​white-​nationalist-​ protesters-​some-​very-​fine-​people-​on-​both-​sides/​537012/​ 17 www.cbsnews.com/​news/​trump-​on-​charlottesville-​i-​think-​theres-​blame-​on-​both-​ sides/​ 18 www.theguardian.com/​sport/​2017/​sep/​22/​donald-​trump-​nfl-​national-​anthem-​ protests 19 www.usatoday.com/​story/​news/​politics/​onpolitics/​2018/​06/​25/​maxine-​waters-​ trump-​exchange/​732505002/​ 20 Martin Luther King, Jr, The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by Clayborne Carson (New York: Warner Books, 1998), 134. 21 James M. Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1986), 231. 22 www.nytimes.com/​2016/​11/​30/​opinion/​i-​am-​a-​dangerous-​professor.html?_​r=0 23 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary Edition (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000), 69, emphasis in original.

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1 UNCOVERING AND CHALLENGING WHITE SUPREMACY Stephen Brookfield

Trump provides an easy target for critical educators in his clear embodiment of four of the dominant ideologies that frame so much of American life. His claim that as a successful businessman he is the one person who can cut through politics, make deals, and fix the system celebrates capitalism. His assertion that there are very fine people on both sides of white nationalist rallies and his railings against Muslims and Mexicans legitimize white supremacy. His sexual harassment of women and subsequent denials of wrongdoing encapsulate patriarchy. And his fascination with military parades, uniforms, medals, the promotion of himself as a tough guy, and his massive increases in military spending show his embrace of militarism. The problem with focusing on Trump as a person, however, is that the political project can too easily become “get rid of Trump.” He is fascinating in his capacity to enrage as I know all too well myself. I play in a punk rock band and in November 2016 we recorded a song entitled, “Trumpland” that was released on inauguration day.1 Toward the end of the track I sing a line “grab him by his genitals and leave a scar” and in my voice I can hear the anger and rage pouring out of me. But removing one figure from office, no matter how bombastic and obnoxious that person might be, will make little or no difference in any sustained attempt to challenge the dominant ideologies of American life. That will require sustained education and massive political detoxification. In this chapter I  focus specifically on teaching against one of these ideologies, that of white supremacy.

Legitimizing White Supremacy One of the most striking elements of Trump’s Presidential campaign and subsequent election has been the normalization and legitimization of white supremacy.

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Critical race theory has long asserted the permanence and centrality of racism in American life.2 But now it has moved out into the open and its proponents speak it loudly and powerfully, without fear or equivocation. I doubt that such blatant public expressions of racial animus have been in our public space so prominently since the birth of the civil rights era. By white supremacy I don’t mean belonging to the KKK, Aryan Nation, or other far right nationalist groups that openly advocate racial exclusion, violence, or repatriation. I mean instead an ideology, a set of ideas that are embedded in social practices and institutional functioning. Dominant ideologies are powerful precisely because they are not officially proclaimed but rather lived as a matter of course. The central idea of white supremacy is that whites need to be in control of ordering the affairs of the nation because of the “inherent intelligence” they possess. Under white supremacy people of color are viewed as animalistic, governed by primal passions and emotions. Depending on the person concerned they are viewed as soulful or violent, athletic or quick to explode, sensual or spontaneous. The kind of thought required to make objective and rational decisions for the good of all is deemed to be located only in whites who are viewed as able to detach emotion from reason, logic from passion, and focus the power of their rationality to decide what is best for the body politic. This is of course close to patriarchy’s (another dominant American ideology) emphasis on men as the source of reason and women as the source of compassion. Just as people of color are publicly celebrated for sensual soulfulness, so women are explicitly praised for their feminine qualities of care and empathy. Both white supremacy and patriarchy retain their prominence through an apparent valuing of the groups they are designed to suppress. This neat ideological trick deflects attention from the idea at their core; that white men, by virtue of their “superior ability” to think logically, rationally, and objectively, deserve the power to make decisions for everyone else. How resources should be allocated, how intelligence is measured, who should be elevated into influential positions—​basically what legitimate authority and leadership look like—​is seen as the exclusive property of whites. People of color know the power of white supremacy all too well. After all, the attempt to constrain, restrict, and funnel opportunities and possibilities, and the overt or implicit diminishment of humanity is felt every day as the constant reality of life. At its most extreme we see it reflected in white police shootings of unarmed black men justified by the defense that the cops felt genuinely in fear of their lives. Under white supremacy, blackness has been ideologically inscribed as equivalent to danger. If you have grown up as a white person thinking of blackness as representing a state of imminent and uncontrollable violence, then any benign behavior by a black person (such as reaching for an ID or cell phone) is immediately interpreted as reaching for a weapon designed to kill. Given the all-​pervasive nature of ideological conditioning, how can whites who breathe in the air of white supremacy every day come to recognize it as the carbon

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Uncovering and Challenging White Supremacy  13

monoxide poison it constitutes? And, once it’s recognized, how can a white person like myself who is still in the grip of learned racism help other whites unmask and challenge its role in their lives? How do we reach all those white Trump voters who think of themselves as humane, good white people3 who assert “I don’t have a racist bone in my body” and start sentences by saying “I’m not racist, but?” And how about the challenges we need to issue to whites like myself to stop us from sliding into smug self-​assurance about our presumed racial cognizance? In a world in which white supremacy is openly enacted, even celebrated, at the highest levels of politics, how can whites wishing to challenge that ideology lead resistant students and colleagues into confronting their own privilege?

The Pedagogy of Self-​Disclosure For me, a major part of answering the questions just posed is developing a pedagogy of disclosure. A  call for such disclosure is made by George Yancy in his book Backlash:  What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America.4 Uncompromisingly, Yancy asks whites to acknowledge being racist as an unvarnished empirical fact. Acknowledging one’s racism means recognizing both how we live within a racist system that we benefit from, and how we have learned racial biases, instincts, and impulses at a deep level. Whether or not we are righteously committed to working in anti-​racist ways is, for him, beside the point. There is no contradiction in whites working as anti-​racist leaders, activists, teachers, or citizens and their being racist. This is because racism is not the process of individually demeaning or diminishing others, “a site of individual acts of meanness,”5 but being “implicated in a complex web of racist power relationships … heteronomous webs of white practices to which you, as a white, are linked both as a beneficiary and as co-​contributor to such practices.”6 Since my Whiteness constantly benefits me, and since that benefit accrues to me because I’m defined in relation to the stigma of blackness, I am a racist. I don’t go about hurling racial epithets but I am “embedded in a pre-​existing social matrix of white power”7 that gives me advantages of which I have only an occasional awareness. To feel safe is my norm, to be “systemically racially marked for death”8 is Yancy’s. Acknowledging my racism is indeed a first step for me when working to uncover and challenge white supremacy with predominantly white audiences. Instead of keeping my own racist actions, impulses, and instincts quiet, I  bring them out for public examination. To me, such self-​disclosure is the necessary opening to engaging learners in recognizing their own biases and identities, even as they consider themselves to be non-​racist. This springs from my pedagogy of critical thinking that is itself grounded in students telling me what most helps them learn to think critically is seeing teachers model the process in front of them.9 Since uncovering and challenging the ideology of how white supremacy lives within us is critical thinking on steroids, modeling my own attempt to do this seems like a good place to start.

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One of the markers of whiteness is being unaware of having a racial identity. Whiteness assumes that only people of color have racial identities. Being white is the de facto un-​raced norm. So, as a way of leading students into considering how whiteness is itself a racial identity, I use myself as a case study. I talk about my seven decades of ideological conditioning into white supremacy and the realization that it will never leave me. Growing up in England, whiteness and all things white were taken as the “natural” order of things. I talk about the attitudes and beliefs I picked up in my childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood; that “black people” were alternatively “lazy,” “cool,” or “violent,” Pakistanis and Indians “smelled” and had no respect for British culture, and Gypsies were “thieves” out to mark your house as an easy target. I suspect that Trump’s life in Queens was not that dissimilar. These stereotypes were learned through jokes with peers, family conversations, and media images. They flourished in the vacuum of no contact with anyone other than whites like myself. I  don’t think I  had a conversation with a black person until I was 18 years old. The ideology of white supremacy rarely named itself as such. Overt declarations of white racial superiority were rare and, even as racist attitudes were being learned, I was engaged in apparently anti-​racist acts. For example, as an undergraduate I participated in demonstrations against the South African Rugby team that represented the then South African apartheid regime. But external behavior often masks learned instincts, and so it was with me. External events sometimes challenged the power of this ideology. One pivotal event in adolescence helped disrupt the way white supremacy moved in me. This happened at the age of seventeen when I was being beaten up by a gang of white youths (they were “rockers,” I was a “mod”) in the main street of my local town one Friday night. A black American GI serviceman from a local US Air Force base crossed the street and broke up the fight telling us “everybody’s got to be cool now.” That man saved me from a potentially severe injury. In my memory I was on the verge of falling to the floor as the GI intervened. Being born in Bootle—​a tough inner city, working class part of Liverpool—​I knew that once you were on the floor things got a lot worse because then people could kick you in the kidneys and head. That event formed what critical race theory calls a counter-​ story that disrupted the white supremacist script lodged in my head that said that black people are violent and start fights and white people are peacemakers who sometimes have to use force to reign in black instigators of violence. Here was a stunning role reversal, one that belied the racial and racist myths that I had internalized.That reversal made a big impression on me. It set up a very productive contradiction that I now had to resolve. At this point in my self-​disclosure I  will often pause and ask students or colleagues (I teach both academic classes and professional development workshops) to reflect on any ideological interruptions to a white supremacist script they have experienced. When did they see friends act in racist ways that left them disturbed, rather than feeling celebratory? What events can they recall when people of color acted in direct opposition to the stereotypical behaviors accorded to them? How

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Uncovering and Challenging White Supremacy  15

did they react when people they loved and admired (parents, teachers, ministers, sports heroes) espoused or enacted racism? There are usually numerous instances recounted of participants being astounded that people whom they considered trusted friends and allies voted for Trump. I ask people to share these ideological interruptions via buzz groups or through a social media tool such as Todays Meet that allows for anonymous posting. After describing this incident that happened in my youth and that seems like far-​distant history (and therefore less threatening for students), I’ll return to my biography and fast-​forward to the present day. Here I talk very deliberately about my instinctive reaction to blackness, especially to black maleness. It’s often quite dramatic for them to hear me talk about the way that “blackness” screams a complex and contradictory mess of signals to me. In my youth, the “coolness” factor was much higher, mostly because of black musicians and cricketers. In my adulthood, it has been “danger” that predominates, blackness as something animalistic, uncontrollable, and hence profoundly threatening. I share with my students how I feel an instinctive tightening of my body when I encounter a group of black men. I  explain that this reaction is beyond reason, deeply sedimented, learned and transmitted over several decades of media and cultural representations of blackness as violence. I explain to them how my physiology changes as I drive through a mostly black area and how I  hear a panicked voice inside my head saying, “whatever happens, please don’t let my car stall.” I  find myself locking the doors, checking my surroundings, and preparing for confrontation. I  make sure that I keep explaining how none of this has any connection to my thinking process. I  can tell myself “there’s your white supremacist conditioning kicking in again” and steel my cognitive warriors to fire their arrows of reason into this oncoming tsunami of emotion. But reasoning doesn’t mean much in the face of white supremacist ideological conditioning. Students or colleagues who hear me talking matter-​of-​factly about my visceral fear of blackness are shocked, at least judging from the anonymous evaluations of my classes or workshops that I conduct. I think most students see me as a “nice” person who listens to them and takes their concerns seriously. My persona in class is pretty low key and laid back. I do the white thing of striving to maintain emotional calm and replay my own family’s horror at dealing with confrontation. I work very conversationally and I can’t ever remember getting angry in class. So, to hear overt white supremacy spilling from my lips is jarring for students. As I’m making these disclosures, I  repeatedly point out that I’m doing this to teach them something very specific; being racist is not a matter of individual choice, of deciding, like Trump, to blame all society’s ills on illegal immigrants, particularly Mexicans and Muslims. Being racist instead is internalizing a worldview that elevates one racial group above all others and then being unaware of how that worldview underpins institutions, systems, and structures as well as one’s own daily behaviors. I like to declare in classes or workshops: “I’m no different to Trump, I’m just as racist. The only difference between us is that he’s more overt and vocal

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about his racism. But I move mostly unquestioningly through my days in a way that accepts as normal massive economic and educational disparity based on race, the criminalization of black people, and appalling incarceration rates for people of color.” I’ll end this brief racial autobiography by talking about where I  am now as a white person, a white male, who’s constantly struggling to understand what whiteness means while still continuing to miss so much of my ideological conditioning. I’m saying that as a white person, and therefore as a representative (in the eyes of people of color) of white supremacy, I must expect to be mistrusted. I also disclose how I must anticipate white colleagues accusing me of politically correct reverse racism. Saying this, for me, is not a sign that somehow I’m failing; it happens to every white person in this work, and so, for different reasons, anti-​racist whites should be prepared to be called a racist both by people of color and by whites. It comes with the territory. As an example of this, I recall a class in which the only student of color, a black man, declared “I will never trust a white person.” My response: “that’s completely understandable, I don’t see why you would.” At the time, the white majority in the group were shocked and demoralized by his comment and tried to convince him that they were humane, enlightened, and worthy of his trust. My sense is that completely valid suspicion, skepticism, and hostility by people of color will inevitably accompany any white person’s attempt to work alongside them in an anti-​racist effort. I tell white people that this is no comment on them personally. It’s a comment on how the history of white supremacy has conditioned people of color to expect whites always to pursue their own racial self-​interest and bolster their own racial power. My last autobiographical disclosure is about how I  negotiate the seductive internal temptation to tell myself I’m one of the good guys—​the militantly moral white exception who has escaped racism and works on the side of light and truth. This temptation is hard to resist and I’ve often failed dismally to heed its siren call. Colleagues of color detect my need for reassuring approval and tell me not to get so hung up on how I’m feeling because, after all, it’s not really about me, is it? I try to take deeply to heart George Yancy’s admonition that “whatever you do, please don’t seek recognition for how sorry you feel.”10 I tell students that I now understand that the judgment of whether or not you are an ally to people of color is completely out of your control.You should never expect to be told that you are one, and shouldn’t get hung up on gauging your anti-​racist virtue by whether or not you receive that designation. Of course, if you do hear that term applied to you by people of color you should take it as a sincere recognition that you’re doing something important and worthwhile. And, for a moment, it’s fine to be proud of yourself.We all need moments of recognition and affirmation to keep our energy up for the tough stuff, for the long haul. And then I ask everyone there to repeat after me; “never declare yourself an ally.” No matter how strongly you are committed to that identity, I say you should keep

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it private. A white person saying “I’m your ally” comes across as condescending and inauthentic.You don’t become an ally by saying you are.You become one by consistently showing up in support of people of color.You become one by losing something. Instead of worrying about getting approval for being heroically anti-​racist, you should be putting yourself on the line for disapproval. You should be risking institutional condemnation by doing and saying the things that people of color will suffer even more harshly for doing and saying.Your job is to lose friends, colleagues, money, employment, perks, and prestige by calling out white supremacy in yourself and other whites, and then not to have anyone notice or thank you for it.

The Ethical Use of Teacher Power: Structuring Racial Discussions When I started teaching, I used to think that the longer I ran discussions the less I would need to have ground rules or structure. I envisaged myself being able to walk into a classroom, take the ideological temperature, and extemporaneously think up relevant yet provocative questions. As people started to speak I saw myself riffing like an improvisational jazz musician—​picking up common themes, introducing interesting counterpoints, changing tempos, and so on. Most fundamentally, I imagined I’d reach a point where I’d never need to take part in discussions at all. I’d pose a question and then sit back like a fly on the wall observing what was going on without the students realizing I was there. Yet the opposite has proven to be the case. True, I still love those days when all I have to do is pose a question and then remain silent for the rest of the time, intervening only to make sure everyone gets a chance to contribute. But those are much rarer occasions than I thought they’d be. The longer I run discussions, the more I believe that in discussions of race, privilege, or white supremacy I need to exercise my power as teacher, facilitator, or meeting leader to set protocols for discussion participation and intervene when these are disregarded. I never prescribe where a discussion will end. But I am quite happy to establish structures for people to guide how people communicate with each other. I regard this as an ethical use of my authority because if I don’t do this one of several things will probably happen. One is that the discussion will remain disconnected from a real engagement with race as people try to keep it at a distance and avoid examining their own collusion in, or enactment of, white supremacy. Alternately, people will be frozen in fear of saying the wrong thing and anxious about being called racist unless some activity deliberately invites participation in a way that feels comfortable. And then there’s the ever-​present danger of egomaniacs running riot and trying to convert everyone else to their agenda unless something is in place to prevent this from happening. Because Trump has made the unabashed display of white supremacy acceptable again, people’s experiences, prejudices, and ideological assumptions can quickly surface and effectively shut down communication. So, I’ll sometimes insist on a

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ground rule that we will not debate whether or not we live in a racist society, but instead accept this as incontrovertible fact. I ask skeptical students to play what Peter Elbow11 calls the believing game. For fifteen or twenty-​minute periods, I want them to think, speak, and act as if they believed that racism is real and pervasive. Whenever I introduce a specific protocol, I lay out for participants what it’s designed to achieve, and how it operates. Of course, community and organizational groups sometimes rebel against my rationale and declare them to be unnecessary. Students rarely do that but can still sabotage protocols by misapplying them, skipping steps, or not following directions. Despite these problems I  still believe that the protocols described below have a good chance of stopping conversations prematurely spiraling out of control or allowing participants to evade the subject. Clear protocols can encourage contributions, equalize participation, acknowledge different learning styles or expressive modes, and keep in check domineering members or confident extroverts. Applying protocols that surface and privilege unacknowledged or excluded perspectives and experiences can help keep people in conversation longer than would be the case if discussions were habitually unstructured and white supremacy was implicitly running the show.

Circle of Voices Circle of Voices is a small group discussion protocol that I use several times at the outset of my time with a group. It is designed to accomplish three specific things: • • •

To give everyone in the room a chance to participate by hearing their opinion spoken without anyone interrupting them. To make sure that participants hear the widest range of perspectives on a topic before deciding what to focus on. To socialize people early on into the idea that listening carefully to what others are saying is the most important habit to learn in discussion.

Circle of Voices begins with a period of mandatory silence. You pose a question to the group and ask for everyone to stay quiet for two minutes as they write down some initial thoughts or responses to the question. Once the two minutes are up, you call time and ask groups of five to form. Each group then engages in two distinct rounds of conversation. In the first round each person shares for about sixty seconds what they were thinking about or wrote down during the initial two-​minute period of silence. The ground rule here is that no interruptions are allowed as each person speaks. Even if extroverts want to jump in and support a speaker by encouraging them or telling them why their comment is so great, this is disallowed. Participants must listen quietly to each person’s contribution. This “no interruptions” rule ensures that everyone in the room hears her or his uninterrupted voice in the air at least once during the class session. The longer

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that introverts stay silent, the harder it is for them to speak. So, if you want to hear from everybody it’s essential that you engineer an early opportunity for that to happen, even if only in a small group.The “no interruptions” rule is also designed to stop an early consensus emerging. Because everyone begins by sharing an unfiltered response to the question, people hear all the perspectives that are held in the group. Once everyone has spoken their initial uninterrupted response to the question, the second round of open conversation begins. Now anyone can speak in any order and interruptions are fine. However, a new ground rule applies in this second round regarding what people can talk about. Basically, participants can only comment on what another person said in the first round. This can include asking questions about someone’s initial contribution, commenting on something that resonated, disagreeing with a comment, or indicating how a first round contribution opened up a new line of thinking. But whatever comments are made in this second round of open conversation they have to link directly and explicitly to something someone said in the first round. This rule is deliberately designed to socialize participants into acquiring the habits of careful listening and attentive responding. Knowing that you can only speak about what someone else said in the initial sharing forces you to listen closely to people’s contributions. Some race-​based questions I typically ask during the Circle of Voices exercise are the following: • What images or actions come to your mind when you hear the term “racism”? This would be a question I’d pose at the start of a session with people who probably hadn’t spent much time thinking about race. The idea would be to get a sense of where everyone is in their understanding. However, I have also used this question with relatively advanced groups composed of people experienced in discussing this issue. • What is the most important point for you in George Yancy’s Dear White America?12 This kind of question would be used when members had studied some specific material before the discussion. The responses help me understand how people are prioritizing elements of this content and provide a sense of which aspects resonate most with them. • What would be an example of white supremacy that you’ve witnessed or experienced in your everyday life? This question is designed to delve more deeply into participants’ lives. I often use the “witnessed or experienced” phrasing because it gives group members the chance to decide how much they wish to reveal.Answering the “witness” part allows people to put some limits on their personal disclosures; responding to the “experience” prompt invites them into direct sharing.

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Chalk Talk: A Visual Discussion I’m a word person. I  make lists, my PowerPoints are typically bullet points of words, and when I explain something, I rarely use visuals or images. So, one of the things I need to do as a teacher is to ensure that I build in plenty of graphics, slides, and videos for those students who think more visually than me. The Chalk Talk exercise, developed by Hilton Smith of the Foxfire Fund,13 is a great way to construct a visual representation of the different ways group members think about a topic. It also allows you to hear from a lot of people in a very short period of time. I mostly use it to unearth the concerns of a wide range of organizational members before building agendas for change. A Chalk Talk dialogue can be an excellent way to kick off an institution wide meeting or workshop on how to combat racism or develop a more diverse, inclusive environment. The process begins with the leader or teacher writing a question in the center of a large black or whiteboard and circling it. If you’re in an online environment, the Zoom platform has a whiteboard function allowing for this activity. In auditoriums or large staff development trainings I sometimes have to cover several walls with blank sheets of newsprint for groups of people to write on. Markers or chalk sticks are placed by the board and, once the question is posted, everyone is invited to come and stand by the board to participate in the activity. There is usually a group of non-​participants whose skepticism or laziness means they refuse to get out of their seats. I typically go over and invite them to move to the board. As facilitator you explain that for about five minutes people should write responses to the question on the board. Whilst this is happening, they should stay silent to allow people to think about the question and process the information going up on the board. As well as responding to the original question, people are encouraged to post new questions as well as responses to what’s going up on the board. I also ask people to look for postings on different parts of the board that seem to connect in some way. When they see connections, I ask them to draw a line connecting the relevant postings and to write a brief remark along that line about why these two comments seem to be similar. I  also ask that they follow the same process—​draw a connecting line with a few words of explanation along the line—​when they see two comments that appear to be contradictory, or to represent significantly different responses. Several people usually start writing immediately on different parts of the board. I  also participate by drawing lines connecting comments, writing questions, adding my own thoughts, and so on. After five or six minutes there’s often a lull in posting, or the board has become so full that there’s no more space for people to write or draw anything else. I’ll then announce that the silent part of the activity is over and that we can now stand back, view the whole board, and start looking for common clusters of responses. I’ll point out all the different handwriting styles that signify how many people have posted. In five minutes or so,

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you typically secure input from 60 to 70 percent of participants who will have posted a comment, drawn an image, or created a line connecting points together. If, in a similar five-​minute period, I had posed a question verbally to the whole group and then asked them to speak their responses, I would have heard from maybe three or four people and felt compelled to earn my wages by responding in some way to each comment. The first couple of times I use Chalk Talk, I’ll do the initial debrief by myself. I keep participants standing by the blackboard as I look first for comments that generate the most lines in and out. I explain that since these have generated the most dialogue, they probably represent issues for further discussion. But I  also look for outliers—​comments that stand alone and generate no lines. I point out that these could represent important blind spots or omissions and that we need to look at them carefully. By the third or fourth time I run a Chalk Talk dialogue I change things up and ask participants to start running the debriefing. Standing by the board they point out common themes, clusters of comments that get lots of attention, and outliers. The final stage is to invite everyone to take pictures of the dialogue on their laptops, smart phones, tablets, and other hand-​held devices. I  do this because I often run a Chalk Talk exercise at the outset of a new unit of study, or as the first activity in a community dialogue. Photographing or videoing the board allows us to return to this dialogue over the coming weeks as we go deeper into the topic. Here are some questions I have used as the focus for Chalk Talk dialogues based around race: • When have you witnessed, experienced, or enacted a racial microaggression? This question offers participants multiple frames for posting on the board. Those who have been on the receiving end of such an action can share how that felt, while others can talk about how they’ve seen microaggressions committed.The term “enacted” invites those with a degree of self-​awareness to share times they’ve committed these kinds of aggressions. This question has been very helpful in generating dialogues that clarify the subtle, slippery nature of such acts. • What does an anti-​racist environment look, sound, or feel like? The “look, sound, or feel like” is a common formulation for a Chalk Talk dialogue. It is designed to free up people’s creativity by encouraging them to draw images that represent feelings and sounds. Interesting variants on this format are: • What does white supremacy look, sound, or feel like? • What does privilege look, sound, or feel like? • What does systemic racism look, sound, or feel like?

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Although I typically use Chalk Talk to communicate early on a sense of the different agendas and experiences that group members hold surrounding race, I  have also used it in a more summative way. It’s interesting to pose the same question you used in an opening session as the final activity a group conducts. Comparing the two graphics presented can indicate how far a group has grown. For example, when I pose the What does an anti-​racist environment look, sound, or feel like? question as the bookend to a group’s time together some very clear differences usually emerge. In the first visual there will be multiple comments about institutional conduct, personal behavior, and organizational policy.The emphasis is all on actions “out there” in the world. In the summative graphic the postings are usually focused much more inwardly as people also emphasize the importance of rooting out racism in themselves.

Circular Response Developed by adult educator Eduard Lindeman,14 this exercise shares the circular seating format of Circle of Voices but is significantly more complex. I would never use this protocol early on in a group’s history but instead hold it in reserve until we’re past the mid-​point of our allotted time together. The process begins with the facilitator, or the group itself, posing a common question. People form themselves in circles of ten to twelve members. They are silent until one person decides to start off the conversation by giving an initial response to the question posed. In this first round of conversation, people are asked to keep their comments to a maximum of two minutes and not to interrupt each other, no matter how enthusiastic they are about a contribution or how much they want to ask questions about it. After the first person has finished speaking, the person to the left goes next. After taking the time silently to process the initial speaker’s comments she also takes two minutes to speak with no interruptions. However, whatever she says must build on, or respond to, the initial speaker’s comments. This response does not have to be an endorsement or paraphrase of the opening contribution. The second speaker can raise a criticism, express a disagreement, extend the first comment in an unpredictable way, or simply say she finds it difficult to come up with a response. In this last case she says something about her source of difficulty; maybe the first speaker used unaccustomed language or was talking about unfamiliar experiences. The third speaker then has up to two minutes of uninterrupted air time to build on or respond to the second speaker’s comments and the process continues around the circle until everyone has spoken. I advocate that the facilitator be a part of the group but that she or he not be the first to speak. It’s important for teachers to show that sometimes they need time to think before speaking, that they too struggle to build on previous comments, and that they’re striving to listen carefully.

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During this first conversational phase, anxiety is usually high as people wait anxiously for their turn, hoping and praying the person before them says something they can make sense of and respond to. I notice people leaning in to follow what people do with their comments and how those frame subsequent contributions. Once everyone has spoken in this first round the group moves into open conversation with no ground rules, time limits, or order of speech. People can introduce completely new topics, express support or disagreement, extend previous contributions, or raise questions about something someone said in the first round. The design of Circular Response is intended to achieve two things. First, to do this well you have to listen carefully. After all, if you don’t attend closely to the person before you then your opportunity to respond appropriately to their comments is significantly reduced. Paying careful attention to an unfamiliar perspective is particularly important where race is concerned since people often bring such entrenched worldviews to this topic. The ground rule disallowing interruptions in the first round of talk means people have to attend to experiences, opinions, and stories very different to their own. Second, as the first round of discussion progresses one or two issues often seem to keep surfacing, albeit with different interpretive frames. So, when people move into the open discussion phase, they’re more primed to see complexities and contradictions. This is very helpful when considering the multi-​layered topic of race. Some typical questions I have used for this protocol are: • What are the most powerful blinkers to whites seeing their own racism? By the time I introduce Circular Response the group has got to know each other fairly well so a potentially threatening or probing question like this is more possible than at earlier stages of the group’s existence. The complexity of the question seems to suit the first round of the protocol, since people often wait and think about their response to the previous speaker’s comment on this topic. • What’s the best way to open someone else’s eyes to a different racial perspective? I like to use action-​oriented questions in Circular Response discussions since these typically occur after people have spent a considerable time becoming acquainted with the building blocks of racial cognizance (white supremacy, white privilege, microaggressions, aversive racism, interest convergence, and so on). By then lots of stories have been shared and experiences analyzed. So, when we get round to doing this protocol people are usually ready to focus on taking action. • How should we respond as outsiders when we witness racism? This question is worded to focus on times when someone with little positional power or authority wishes to take action but is either not used to having

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their voice taken seriously or knows they will suffer serious consequences for speaking up or protesting. The intent of the question is to move people into realizing the need for solidarity, alliances, and networking in any social change effort. Although making an individual stand is important, I  want people to shift their frame toward the crucial dynamic of collective mobilization. Organizations and institutions are far more likely to integrate anti-​racist policies, structures, and practices when people collectively commit to holding them accountable.

Bohmian Dialogue The longest discussion protocol I use is Bohmian Dialogue. Named after theoretical physicist David Bohm,15 this process builds on his attempt to create an open forum to explore intractable problems. The purpose is to build an organic conversation in which participants collectively create meaning by recognizing connections and commonalities and by building on each other’s ideas as freely as possible. The activity is designed for large groups of around forty people, but I have also used it with groups of fifteen, twenty, or twenty-​five. Bohm recommends spending up to two hours in this dialogue but it can also be used for forty-​five-​minute periods. The first stage in a Bohmian Dialogue is for people to study some common resource. When an academic class is engaged in the process you can ask students to read or view some pertinent material beforehand. Because I use this activity mostly in organizational or community settings where I  don’t know who will show up, I usually begin the process with everybody viewing some relevant video. One of my favorites is the New York Times’“Op Doc” A Conversation with My Black Son16 in which black parents recount how they prepare their sons to be pulled over and racially profiled by the police and the different ways they advise them to respond to this event. Another is the “What It Means to Be American” excerpt from the Color of Fear documentary.17 Here a black man (Victor) expresses his pain, anger, and frustration in response to a white man (David) who has told him to stop obsessing on race and just be American. After the videos are over, the group forms the chairs into one large circle and I explain how the process will work. I begin by stating what the conversation is for. I say that there are two primary reasons we’re doing this. First, we want to understand the different experiences of race and racism that are in the room so we can try to identify and develop possible points of common connection. Second, we want to build on the intersections we discover to explore steps we can take to combat racism. We are trying to develop some collective thinking about how we can best make common cause against white supremacy. I remind people that these are both incredibly difficult projects so if we are to have any hope of success we need to listen carefully and intently to each other and spend a lot of time processing the meaning others’ contributions have for us. I predict that there’ll be necessarily long periods of silence in the room as people digest and mull over what others have just said. I urge participants to try and be

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comfortable with the room being quiet and insist that this is an essential part of the process. Then it’s time to explain the specific ground rules that structure Bohmian Dialogue. • • • • • • • • •

There are no winners or losers here so don’t try to overpower or diminish contributions you dislike or take issue with. This is not a debate so try to refrain from creating binary opposites (“he’s racist but she’s anti-​racist,” “that’s liberating but this is oppressive”). Don’t try to convince or persuade; the point is to understand and connect where we can. Only one person speaks at a time. Speak only when you have something to say or you have a response that’s prompted by another person’s remarks. Be comfortable with long silences. If it helps you focus, feel free to close your eyes or look at the floor. Expect radically different opinions and perspectives but express them in just that way, as different “takes” on an issue. Focus on identifying common ground and how to build on this.

I also need to clarify my own role in the dialogue. I let people know that I’ll be both contributor and umpire. If people start to get into a debate, try to convince or rebut each other, or declare another contribution to be wrong, my job is to step in and remind people of the point of the exercise.We are trying to understand the alterity of racial experience and to find points of common connection that can prompt action, not to blame people for their wrong opinions. Some questions suited to this activity are • What would it take for us to trust each other? This question is suited to multiracial groups that include whites whom you feel are too quick to declare themselves allies and assume that, having made this declaration, they will be welcomed and trusted by people of color. • What stops us realizing our common potential? This question works well with groups that are getting frustrated with their inability to progress as fast as they’d like in some kind of anti-​racist work. In groups like this it’s easy for people to slip into race-​based blaming and commit all kinds of unwitting microaggressions. • What do we most miss or misunderstand about how racism works? Here you’re trying to challenge a group to go deeper into analyzing the workings of racism. I use this question if I feel the group is slipping into an easy certainty of assuming that just by citing the clear existence of racism and

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the injuries it inflicts, people will be convinced to give up racist ideas and practices. My hope is that the deeper, visceral, and emotionally sedimented nature of white supremacy will be revealed. • How do we build common cause? This question is project-​focused and one that appeals to many people. It is hopeful and oriented to the future. Of course, once people start responding to it the complexities of how people define common cause, let alone how this is realized, quickly come to the fore.

Appreciative Pause This final activity is used as a coda to intensive discussions on race. One of the behaviors most absent in discussions is that of people giving appreciation for the contributions others have made to their learning. So, after a race-​based discussion, particularly one that has been tense, fraught, and emotional (in other words, after pretty much every discussion on race!) I find it’s helpful to practice the Appreciative Pause. This is a brief period during which only expressions of appreciation are allowed. Appreciations are publicly spoken (in small or large groups) for questions posed that suggested a whole new line of thinking, comments that clarified something that up to then was confusing, connections identified between ideas or contributions, risks that people took in opening themselves up to the group, and examples that were provided that increased understanding of a difficult concept. People also identify tonal contributions, referencing the honesty, supportiveness, and empathy demonstrated by peers.

Final Comment We might replace Trump, but it won’t be so easy to replace white supremacy with an anti-​racist commitment in ourselves to communicate across different racial identities and find our common humanity. That work will require a willingness for whites to be open about their struggle to uncover and challenge the white supremacy that lives within them, and it will also need discussions where people are willing to stay with extended discomfort and to hear each other out. But I  often think that Trump’s unashamed expression of white supremacy has, in a weird way, done us all a favor. Now nobody can assert with a straight face that we live in a post-​racial world in which difference is embraced and systemic racial violence has disappeared. The permanent ugliness of white supremacy is on full display for all to see and we have to find ways to fight it.

Notes 1 https://​the99ers.bandcamp.com/​track/​trumpland

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2 Delgado, R.  and Stephanic, J.  Critical Race Theory:  An Introduction. NYU Press: New York, 2012. 3 Sullivan, S. Good White People: The Problem with Middle-​Class White Anti-​Racism. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2014. 4 Yancy, G.  Backlash:  What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018. 5 Yancy, G.  Backlash:  What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018, p. 74. 6 Yancy, G.  Backlash:  What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018, p. 75. 7 Yancy, G.  Backlash:  What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018, p. 76. 8 Yancy, G.  Backlash:  What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018, p. 102, emphasis in original. 9 Brookfield, S.D. Teaching for Critical Thinking:  Tools and Techniques to Help Students Question Their Assumptions. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass, 2012. 10 Yancy, G.  Backlash:  What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018, p. 118. 11 Elbow, P. Embracing Contraries: Explorations in Teaching and Learning. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. 12 https://​opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/​2015/​12/​24/​dear-​white-​america/​?_​r=0 13 Smith, H.  “The Foxfire Approach to Student and Community Interaction.” In L. Shumow (Ed.), Promising Practices for Family and Community Involvement during High School. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2009. 14 Lindeman, E.C.L. The Meaning of Adult Education. New York: New Republic, 1926. 15 Bohm, D. On Dialogue. London: Routledge, 1996. 16 Ghandbir, G. and Foster, B. A Conversation with My Black Son. New York Times Op Doc. March 17, 2015. www.nytimes.com/​2015/​03/​17/​opinion/​a-​conversation-​with-​ my-​black-​son.html. Retrieved February 6, 2018. 17 Wah, L.M. Color of Fear. Oakland CA: Stir Fry Productions, 1994.

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2 WHITE IGNORANCE, EPISTEMIC INJUSTICE AND THE CHALLENGES OF TEACHING FOR CRITICAL SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS Barbara Applebaum

As I  write this essay, I  am preparing to teach my undergraduate course on schooling and diversity, a required course for a number of the teacher education programs at my university. I am wondering how having a President in the White House who openly mocked a journalist with a disability, characterized Mexican immigrants as rapists, banned Muslims from entering our country, and referred to women he does not like as “fat pigs,” “dogs,” “slobs” and “disgusting animals” (among his many other outrageously offensive speech) will impact what happens in my course. The outrageous things the President does allow others to openly express heinously offensive and oppressive behavior without being held accountable: “I refuse to be politically correct. … I want … to make America great again.”1 Trump’s anti-​PC rhetoric, for example, has emboldened the Alt-​Right to come out of the shadows. The parallel between Trump’s call “to make our country great again” and the Alt-​Right’s call to “take our country back” supports the latter’s visibility and stature. In the wake of a white nationalist hate-​filled protest against the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee that left one woman dead in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump insisted that there were some “very fine people on both sides” of the violent clashes. He equated positions of extreme hate and open bigotry with protesters that were opposing hate and bigotry sanctioning white nationalists as just one side among many. Whether he intends it or not, Trump’s utterance and behaviors endorse the Alt-​Right to parade their beliefs publicly. Trump is certainly not the first US president to hold sexist, racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic views. Yet he is one who explicitly wears his oppressive views as a badge of pride arrogantly pointing to his “courage” to be politically incorrect anytime someone challenges his shockingly offensive behavior and rhetoric. Many of his supporters laud his rejection of political correctness and his ability to say

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what he wants without accountability. Time and time again, Trump claims he is not afraid to say what he thinks and his followers interpret this as a demonstration of strength and invulnerability. He speaks his mind. He is not “politically correct.” Many align with his desire to return the US to a halcyon past before feminism, anti-​racism and other forms of social justice movements became part of mainstream discourse. This yearning for a time when dominant white, middle-​class, masculinist, heteronormative and ablest norms and hierarchical structures were unquestioned is but a new manifestation of an old form of unapologetic injustice. Trump does not have to define what he means by “political correctness.” For his admirers the phrase conjures up powerful forces that silence them by policing language.2 Those who are accustomed to speak in comfortable certainty3 express anger when their political opinions are challenged. They feel they can no longer say what they really think. For the first time, they feel uncomfortable and, consequently, are embittered. No one, however, asks—​What are you afraid to say and, most significantly, why? Trump’s refusal to be politically correct rallied this mostly white base of voters who were resentful of, and consider themselves innocent victims of, shifting cultural and social norms that constrained their way of life. Let me be clear: my focus is not to promote political correctness but rather to critically examine the effects of an arrogant refusal and dismissal of attempts to fight for social justice. At the heart of Trump’s arrogant refusal to be politically correct, I submit, is a reluctance to believe what the marginalized are trying to say about our social world. While many educators have raised alarms about the effects of the President’s racist, sexist, ablest, xenophobic and Islamophobic behavior on children,4 I want to examine the President’s stubborn refusal to believe those who endure the effects of systemic oppression and the challenges this refusal presents for social justice educators. In this chapter, I first discuss systemic ignorance and its management as a way to frame Trump’s policies and discourse. Then, drawing on the scholarship around epistemic injustice, I highlight how refusing to give credence to what marginalized groups are saying about their experiences with systemic injustice impedes learning not only about others but also ourselves. After considering some of the remedies advanced to bring about epistemic justice, I turn to an examination of the #MeToo movement and the reactions it generated. I maintain the movement is a response to epistemic injustice. An examination of the power of, but also the complexities of, being willing to believe elucidates the challenges of disrupting the management of systemic ignorance in the Age of Trump.

The Management of Systemic White Ignorance Imagine an ignorance militant, aggressive, not to be intimidated, an ignorance that is active, dynamic, that refuses to go quietly—​not at all defined to the illiterate and uneducated but propagated at the highest levels of the land, indeed presenting itself unblushingly as knowledge.5

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The study of epistemologies of ignorance exposes the ways that power works through knowing and unknowing to maintain systems of social injustice. In this scholarship, ignorance is not understood as a passive absence of knowledge in isolated individuals that additional facts can remedy. Instead, ignorance is a systemically produced and reproduced process, that is, as Linda Martin Alcoff describes it, “a substantive epistemic practice itself.”6 Charles Mills7 offers an extensive analysis of white ignorance, one form of systemic ignorance, as active adherence to false knowledge about race that is branded as truth. Ignorance, in this sense, functions to maintain racial privilege in ways that are camouflaged so that it does not seem as if that is what it is doing. In an oft-​ cited quote, Mills explains, On matters related to race, the Racial Contract prescribes for its signatories an inverted epistemology, an epistemology of ignorance, a particular pattern of localized and global cognitive dysfunctions (which are psychologically and socially functional), producing the ironic outcome that whites will in general be unable to understand the world they themselves have made.8 Mills underscores that a “vested white group interest in the racial status quo” is a “central causal factor in generating and sustaining white ignorance.”9 Group interest influences how and what is seen, what is contained in collective memory, and which frameworks are accepted. When society is structured by relations of domination, dominant conceptual frameworks will be shaped in disproportionate ways by the interests of those who benefit from domination. Moreover, white ignorance functions to mystify the consequences of unjust systems that systemically marginalized groups endure so that those who benefit from the system do not have to consider their complicity in perpetuating them. Members of the dominant group have a vested interest in not knowing. The insistence that white people are currently victims of affirmative action, targets of censorship or casualties of political correctness, for example, absolves white people from having to contemplate the ways in which they are implicated in the maintenance of unjust systems. This results in safeguarding white moral innocence while at the same time shielding unjust systems from contestation. Building on Mills’ work, Alcoff explains that oppressive societies do not acknowledge themselves as oppressive. The dominant view normalizes and rationalizes injustice so that oppression seems to be “basically just and fair, or at least the best of all possible worlds.”10 “Countervailing evidence” that is potentially available to everyone in that society, however, will be regularly dismissed so that the dominant view is not challenged.11 A number of scholars have underscored the active and willful aspect of systemic ignorance. Nancy Tuana12 addresses a willful ignorance in which one does not know and does not know that one does not know and, in fact, thinks that one knows but most significantly, one does not want to know. Willful ignorance is supported

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by systems of privilege and shields one from having to know certain features of one’s social world that might implicate one in the perpetuation of social injustice. In other words, there is a refusal to know certain forms of knowledge because this knowledge would threaten one’s view of the social world and one’s view of oneself in that social world. Willful ignorance is the way individuals protect the systemic privilege they enjoy but take for granted. Elizabeth Spelman13 expands upon Tuana’s point when she highlights the management of ignorance. Such ignorance must be managed because the risk of exposing unpleasant truths that challenge one’s conceptualization of the social world results in unbearable discomfort. The management of ignorance, according to Spelman, is “an appalling achievement” that requires “grotesquely prodigious effort.”14 This conceptualization of ignorance is underscored by James Baldwin when he writes: “White America remains unable to believe that Black America’s grievances are real; they are unable to believe this because they cannot face what this fact says about themselves and their country.”15 Additionally, they have “immunized themselves from the kind of criticism that might correct their misunderstandings.”16 The fear and discomfort of considering oneself complicit in systemic racism is so great that, as Alison Bailey17 explains, ignorance must be “designed, indeed scripted, for the purposes of evading, rejecting, and remaining ignorant about the injustices that flow from whiteness and its attendant privileges.”18 It takes effort to manage ignorance; that exertion, however, is mystified because the consequences of the truth are too much to bear. Expanding the concept of white ignorance, José Medina19 introduces the concept of “meta-​ignorance” in order to investigate how bodies of ignorance remain resistant to change. Meta-​ignorance is a tenacious form of active ignorance that involves an ignorance of one’s ignorance and, more specifically, an insensitivity to the suffering of others that remains shielded from challenge. Thus, ignorance involves not only first-​order ignorance about the workings of the social world and one’s role in maintaining this perception, as Mills has so brilliantly exposed, but also a meta-​order ignorance that blocks any consideration of one’s complicity. Meta-​ignorance ensures that individuals will be unable to recognize how they are implicated in the perpetuation of unjust systems. According to Ta-​Nehisi Coates,20 Trump is the first white president in that he ran on the premise to protect whiteness (even though many believe he won because of his appeal to the white working class but that is a debate for another paper). The scholarship around epistemologies of ignorance is a useful tool for explaining how Trump’s presidency manages white ignorance as a social norm. On the one hand, for Trump, eradicating social injustice is not only unrelated to but, more significantly, hampers attempts to “making America great again.” As the leader of our country, he not only perpetuates social violence with his practices but he also vilifies any attempt to disrupt systemic ignorance that upholds such violence. On the other hand, as philosopher Miranda Pilipchuk21 contends,Trump is not so much interested in establishing what the truth is but rather in defending

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the right of the epistemically privileged to speak and determine “the truth.” Pilipchuk emphasizes how Trump becomes defensive when his truth claims are challenged and that he not only insists that he is correct but also blames everyone but himself—​his political opponents, the media, anyone he dislikes—​for deliberately misinterpreting his words. The problem with systemic white ignorance is its obstinate arrogance and its capacity to protect white individuals from even considering how they might be implicated in sustaining unjust systems. The first step to counter ignorance is to acknowledge it.Yet, we now have a president who insists that refusal to acknowledge ignorance is a virtue and to be applauded. I turn now to the recent scholarship on epistemic injustice in order to name some of the different epistemic mechanisms that manage meta-​ignorance and about which social justice educators should be attentive.

Epistemic Injustice: Contemporary Critiques, Advances, Remedies Although feminist scholars of color22 have long addressed issues of epistemic injustice, it is Miranda Fricker23 who coined the term to refer to oppression that is epistemic in nature. Epistemic injustice constrains the epistemic agency of certain groups of knowers so that these groups are excluded from knowledge production. Fricker outlines two patterns of epistemic injustice that harm certain people in their capacity as knowers or epistemic agents: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Testimonial injustice occurs when identity prejudice “causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s word.”24 When a speaker is given less credibility than deserved, this is an injustice and an epistemic harm to the speaker in his/​her capacity as a knower. As an illustration of testimonial injustice, Fricker draws from a novel in which a man dismisses a woman’s comments about murder by asserting, “Marge, there’s female intuition, and then there are facts.”25 In virtue of the stereotype that women are overly emotional and irrational, Marge’s input is not perceived as reliable—​it is merely “female intuition.” In doing so, the information that the woman had about the death was written off simply because she is a woman. In her discussion of two types of silencing, Kristie Dotson26 details the reverberating effects of testimonial injustice.The first type of silencing Dotson addresses is “testimonial quieting” which involves the silencing that is occasioned when “an audience fails to identify a speaker as a knower.”27 Dotson explains that when there is a lack of appropriate uptake, it is as if the speaker did not speak at all. In other words, because of identity prejudice the speaker is not properly regarded as a knower or as a source of valuable knowledge to begin with. Additionally, Dotson points to a second type of silencing that she refers to as “testimonial smothering.”When a speaker recognizes that her audience is unwilling to or unable to provide her with the appropriate uptake to her testimony, she might

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truncate and limit what she says to ensure that “the testimony contains only content for which one’s audience demonstrates testimonial competence.”28 Dotson argues that while it appears that the speaker withholds his/​her own testimony, this should still be understood to be “coerced silencing.” This is a reminder that although it seems like self-​censoring, the source of the silencing is an anticipation of other people’s active dismissal. Dotson emphasizes that the silencing practices she describes are a form of epistemic violence. The cumulative effects of such exclusions can lead to self-​doubt, a reticence to speak and can be debilitating.29 For example, one may become angry in the face of being persistently ignored, another effect of epistemic injustice. This anger consequently becomes the justification for being ignored. In her examination of anger, Sara Ahmed30 explains that when women of color are read as being against x because one is angry rather than being angry because one is against x, they become entangled in their anger and angry at not being heard. This then has been used to provide validation for the dismissal by confirming that only anger grounds the truth behind their speech. Two upshots from this scholarship deserve emphasis. First of all, while testimonial injustice harms the speaker in her capacity as a knower, it also affects the silencer. Testimonial injustice blocks what one can hear and evidence; opposing ideas, and new concepts that are conducive to knowledge can be ignored. Ignorance, in other words, thrives as a result of testimonial injustice. Second, by describing the epistemic violence that is an effect of testimonial injustice, Dotson shifts the burden of proof from the target of silencing to “the socio-​epistemic circumstances of the silencing.”31 This leads to the second form of epistemic injustice that Fricker articulates, hermeneutical injustice, which also serves as a tool for the perpetuation of ignorance. While testimonial injustice involves the epistemic effects of identity prejudice on the credibility of the speaker’s word, hermeneutical injustice “occurs at a prior stage, when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage in making sense of their social experiences.”32 Because “the powerful have an unfair advantage in structuring collective social understandings,”33 as Fricker contends, a lacuna in the conceptual or linguistic resources makes it difficult for non-​dominant group members to both understand the wrongful social experience they endure and to articulate it to others. As an example of hermeneutical injustice, Fricker34 offers that before the term sexual harassment entered our public language women were unable to name and, thus, understand their experience of unwanted sexualized attention. Because their experience was rendered unintelligible due to gaps in the shared epistemic resources, behaviors such as groping, leering, making lewd jokes, etc. were dismissed as “harmless flirtations.” However, once the term “sexual harassment” became part of mainstream discourse, Fricker maintains, women were able to understand their own experiences and communicate to others what was happening to them. As Rebecca Mason, José Medina and Kristie Dotson35 each note, Fricker’s construal of hermeneutical injustice assumes that if there are no epistemic resources

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in the dominant framework of intelligibility then the marginalized will lack understanding of their own experience. Marginalized groups, however, have often developed their own epistemic resources, concepts that make their experience intelligible amongst themselves even if these experiences may “still remain systematically misunderstood by others … when they try to communicate about those experiences.”36 This critique is significant because it not only exposes a mistaken assumption that Fricker makes about the marginalized, but, also because it draws attention to how systemically privileged knowers refuse to listen when the concepts necessary to hear what the marginalized are saying are available but repudiated. Dotson37 argues that dominantly situated knowers may have access to marginalized epistemic resources but they pre-​emptively dismiss such resources. Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr38 refers to this as “willful hermeneutical ignorance” which occurs “when dominantly situated knowers refuse to acknowledge epistemic tools developed from the experienced world of those situated marginally.”39 Such concepts as “white privilege,” “date rape” and “heteronormativity” pull together events and behaviors into a pattern that connects to structures of privilege and oppression. Yet, as Pohlhaus persistently maintains, dominantly situated knowers preemptively refuse to acknowledge these tools as valuable. Put differently, the systemically privileged place too much confidence in their own experiences and interpretations of events so they not only cannot “hear” the conflicting testimony provided by the marginalized, they can refuse to hear it.This refusal to know allows the systemically privileged to “misunderstand, misinterpret, and/​or ignore whole parts of the world”40 preserving ignorance.41 Whereas Fricker insists that hermeneutical injustice is structural and that individuals are not responsible when they are vehicles of what they did not cause, Pohlhaus and Dotson are adamant that dominant knowers are responsible when they refuse to take marginalized epistemic resources seriously. This leads Dotson to develop a third type of epistemic injustice (different from testimonial and hermeneutical injustice) which she terms “contributory injustice.” Contributory injustice refers to systemically privileged perceivers’ willful hermeneutical ignorance that allows them to obstinately continue to utilize dominant resources rather than engage with marginalized frameworks. The conceptual tools that the marginalized have to offer are incessantly not given uptake. This serves to obstruct the ability of the marginalized “to contribute to shared epistemic resources within a given epistemic community”42 and is a form of oppressive harm to the epistemic agency of the systemically marginalized. Unlike hermeneutical injustice that Fricker insists involves epistemic resources that have yet to be developed, contributory injustice involves cases where there are resources available and advanced by the systemically marginalized but refused uptake by the systemically privileged. Contributory injustice expands the notion of willful ignorance in that the injustice involves not only the willful dismissal of epistemic resources developed by the marginalized but also the continued insistence on employing dominant

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epistemic resources that distort the experience of the marginalized. On the one hand, the epistemic agency of the marginalized is not respected and, on the other hand, the systemically privileged can continue to remain ignorant as the marginalized experience remains unintelligible to them. Having the privilege to reject epistemic resources that are able to make marginalized experience intelligible to the systemically privileged allows the latter to avoid considering the prevalence of oppression and their role in maintaining. The point is not that epistemic justice requires the uncritical acceptance of the testimony of the marginalized. Rather, the systemically privileged should not preemptively doubt or dismiss the marginalized speaker’s testimony just because it causes discomfort that is a result of having dominant worldviews challenged. In addition, even if one attempts to avoid preemptive doubt, one must also have the tools to understand what the marginalized are saying. This requires a willingness to employ the epistemic resources the marginalized offer to articulate their experiences. I have argued that the President Trump’s refusal to be politically correct is a form of managed systemic ignorance. Trump’s refusal to be politically correct is a manifestation of refusing to believe the marginalized and this refusal to believe is as much about equality as it is about credibility. I close this section by reviewing some of the proposed remedies to counter epistemic injustice. Fricker offers two main strategies for addressing epistemic injustice. As an antidote for testimonial injustice, Fricker advocates the virtue of corrective testimonial justice. Fricker argues that: (w)hat is needed on the part of the hearer in order to avert a testimonial injustice—​and in order to serve his own epistemic interest in the truth—​is a corrective anti-​prejudicial virtue that is distinctively reflexive in structure. Such reflexive critical awareness of the likely presence of prejudice, then, is a prerequisite in the business of correcting for prejudice in one’s credibility judgment.43 This virtue will dispose a person to critically reflect upon his/​her biases as they influence the credibility judgments of others and then to neutralize them. Hermeneutical injustice, according to Fricker, is structural and although she insists agents are not responsible for the lacuna in the dominant epistemic frameworks, she, nevertheless, offers an individual remedy. Fricker advocates for a virtue in which an individual develops an alertness to the difficulty a speaker is having articulating an experience and then acquiring the ability to attribute the struggle to a lacuna in one’s framework of intelligibility rather than some innate epistemic deficiency.44 Both these remedies rely on an assumption of conscious awareness of prejudice and on an individual’s ability to temper their biases. Two key aspects of these proposed remedies warrant critical attention. First, Linda Martin Alcoff notes that prejudice can work effectively “even when it runs

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counter to a person’s own consciously held values and commitments”45 and she emphasizes the need to expose the structural causes of credibility deficits. Alcoff raises the question:  “Will volitional reflexivity … be sufficient to counteract a non-​volitional prejudice?”46 As social science has confirmed, one may not be aware of one’s biases and prejudice can endure even when the hearer has the best of intentions.47 Moreover, even if dominantly situated individuals could cultivate this epistemic virtue, would they necessarily correct for epistemic injustice, especially in a time when the highest authority in the country models otherwise? Fricker’s remedies, I submit, do not take seriously the persistent ways in which dominant knowers refuse to know. Second, Fricker’s antidotes to epistemic injustice ignore the ways in which the system supports and reproduces ignorance. Elizabeth Anderson48 broadens the discussion of remedies by shifting the focus from individuals who are biased to institutions that sustain epistemic injustice on a structural level. Anderson insists that given the cumulative and pervasive nature of epistemic injustice, ending such injustice will require institutional remedies. When the epistemic system itself contains the seeds of its own perpetuation, it will take more than neutralizing prejudice or adding terms to our frameworks of intelligibility to counter the causes of epistemic injustice. Individual reform will not lead to epistemic justice unless structural transformation occurs in tandem. In her examination of the resilience of dominant epistemic frameworks, Dodson49 underscores that those new terms even when available must replace dominant descriptions of behavior. For example, even when the concept of “sexual harassment” exists in mainstream discourse, it must replace concepts such as rape myths and accounts of “boys will be boys.”This will entail deeper revisions within the very structures that dominant knowers rely upon and believe are true. It would require a huge culture shift. Addressing the possibility of epistemic resistance that can undermine and change oppressive normative structures, José Medina50 insists that social transformation depends on collective action, the chained actions of interconnected individuals, that can be instigated by pluralistic friction disrupting deeply embedded habits. Medina explains, “We need disruptions, provocations, and, in short, resistance from others, so that our interactions with significantly different others can trigger productive self-​problematizations and beneficial epistemic friction.”51 Medina finds value in the discomfort created by taking marginalized knowledge seriously because such discomfort has the potential to expose gaps in the dominant social imaginary. Similarly, in the context of whiteness, George Yancy52 exhorts white people to tarry with the critique of whiteness because to stay rather than flee discomfort promises to afford a possibility where whites can learn so much. The value of tarrying with critique, however, is something the Commander-​in-​Chief rebuffs. In the final section, I turn to the recent #MeToo movement to flesh out the impact of attempts to challenge epistemic injustice. I end the chapter by drawing out some implications for social justice pedagogy.

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#MeToo, #BelieveWomen and the Call for Epistemic Justice Whatever controversies revolve around the #MeToo movement, some considerably important and some diversionary, it cannot be denied that this mass mobilization against sexual abuse, harassment and rape is about ending “the disbelief and trivializing dehumanization of its victims.”53 Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg states, “it’s amazing to me that for the first time women are really listened to because sexual harassment was often dismissed as ‘well, she made it up’ or ‘she’s too thin-​skinned.’ ”54 In the terminology of this paper, the #MeToo campaign is a call for epistemic justice and mirrors much of what was addressed in the previous section—​testimonial injustice, hermeneutical injustice, contributory injustice and more. The phrase “me too” originated with social activist Tarana Burke, founder and director of Just Be Inc. and senior director of Girls for Gender Equity, with the aim of helping survivors of sexual assault and harassment, specifically women of color, to realize that they were not alone. As a hashtag, however, the idea went viral when Alyssa Milano encouraged women to tweet about their experiences. Many well-​ known celebrities galvanized the campaign and revealed the magnitude of pervasive abuse by powerful, mostly white, wealthy and famous men. The downfall of Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood mogul accused of sexual misconduct spanning decades, was a watershed moment that helped impel the power of the movement. It was no longer easy to dismiss these accusations as a product of personal deficiencies because the sharp pattern that emerged became shockingly impossible to overlook. While the #MeToo campaign has been constructive in a variety of ways, it also attracted much critique. One of the significantly valuable critiques55 is that it initially centered the voices and experiences of white women and overshadowed those women from low socioeconomic backgrounds whose experiences with the intersection of racism, sexism and classism remain unheard. Many women of color have noted that #MeToo does not represent their experiences with rape, assault and harassment.56 Without dismissing the courage of the white women who have publicly shared their stories, ignoring the lived experience of the diversity of women and men who endure sexual assault, rape and harassment will not contribute to the critical consciousness required for deep and lasting cultural transformation. Even progressive movements such as #MeToo must be vigilant not to reproduce the exclusions they are aiming to eradicate. Recently, Time’s Up57 has been created to support women, men, people of color and the LGBT community to speak up about harassment and a defense fund was set up to protect them from the repercussions. The initiative aims to not only combat sexism through legal recourse but also to increase representation in places of power and to focus on the changing of norms. Although backlash grew from various sources, one critique draws out the complexities of challenging epistemic injustice. I refer to this as the “gone-​too-​ far/​due process” critique. The critique involves the claim that the movement has blurred the distinction between ambiguous, “trivial” cases of flirting and the more

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serious cases of rape and physical assault.58 Some have contended that if “I am not Harvey Weinstein then this is not about me.”59 This critique is intimately related to the charge that accountability is being meted out—​social ostracism and career destruction—​without consideration of the gravity of behavior. In November, 2017, for instance, the New York Times published an editorial piece by journalist Bari Weiss,60 titled “The Limits of Believe All Women,” accusing the movement for overplaying its message and creating an atmosphere of fear for men who worry that false accusations will end their careers or reputations.The question arose whether the accusers should be believed before facts were objectively checked.61 President Trump also picked up the battle cry around the lack of due process when he tweeted about the resignation of his staff secretary, Rob Porter, accused of domestic violence by his former wives:  “People’s lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. … There is no recovery for someone falsely accused—​life and career are gone. Is there no such thing as Due Process?”62 Regardless of his intent,Trump’s rush to defend Porter and the doubt he provoked about the claims of his wives is indicative of a refusal to believe the devastating experiences of targets of assault and an excessive trust and protection of men. While #MeToo involves a call to correct for testimonial injustice and although the terms sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape are available in mainstream discourse, critical analysis of the “gone-​too-​far/​due process” claim demonstrates the resilience of dominant epistemic resources and how they are used to silence women. In other words, the call to believe women can be trumped (pun intended) by the persistence in believing men, even when there were police reports and photographs to back up the allegations, as there was in the Porter case. The cry for “due process” before mere accusations are believed might seem just and reasonable on the surface. This, however, is exactly how epistemic injustice reasserts itself under the guise of something reasonable like due process. Oppressive societies negate countervailing evidence so that dominant views remain unchallenged (see Alcoff in section 2).This is also an illustration of how dominant systems contain the seeds of their own perpetuation (see Anderson in section 2). There is no contesting that false accusations are wrong and indefensibly damaging. Furthermore, false accusations undercut the validity of the movement.Yet to give the appeal to due process priority that far outweighs its reality has the chilling effect of silencing women yet again. According to the US Department of Justice,63 false rape allegations make up 2–​10% of all accusations and even this statistic is skewed too high because of all the cases that go unreported. It is because women were not trusted in the past when they made their experiences public that the #MeToo movement and a similar one, #BelieveWomen, were able to highlight the pervasiveness of sexual harassment, assault and rape and demonstrate that false allegations are less common than true ones. It is against the historical background of dismissiveness and doubt that these movements call for presumptions of innocence and credibility. But this is not to imply that critical investigation should be suspended.

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While the focus on punishment is not unnecessary, it misses the point. The point is not primarily about individual accusers and their punishment but rather about challenging the status quo in which men must acknowledge their power and privilege. Once accusers are believed, deep questions arise such as:  Why is such harassment and violence so pervasive? Why are men overwhelmingly perpetrators? How are men and women complicit in upholding a system that allows such behavior? What is necessary to bring about change? The cure for sexual harassment, assault and rape is not exclusively punishment that leads more to the fear of getting caught (although punishment can have a deterrent effect) but rather about cultural transformation. Rebecca Solnit contends that: Shining light on these crimes, this suffering, is work that must continue until it is not necessary because these things have become rare, and because there is a clear and adequate and immediate process when they do happen. That is when it will have gone far enough.64 By preemptively assuming that assault allegations are lies or by undermining the possibility that they are true, a disturbing message is sent to women that their claims will never be believed except possibly in the most egregiously violent cases, or maybe not even then. The discursive effect of the current appeal to due process functions to protect injustice and halt challenges to the status quo. It is a way to reinforce the threatened institutions of power and to restore the social world to a place where men’s lives take precedence over women’s. In fact, in this context, the call for due process supports the privilege of being white, male and heterosexual in such a way that the norms that ground that privilege are rendered invisible. To make due process the ultimate concern when there is evidence that false accusations are rare is to continue to prioritize the reputations, power and safety of men over the lives of women. The demand for due process in the context of epistemic injustice is grounded in the presumed excessive credibility of men that we know as peers, friends, neighbors, movie stars—​“I can’t imagine he would do it, so it’s can’t be true.” When the highest authority in the country espouses this belief, he exacerbates the problem. In the face of the historical fact that women were traditionally disbelieved when they put forth claims of sexual harassment, assault and rape, the movement is a call for equality not partiality. #MeToo and #BelieveWomen is clearly about testimonial justice, identity prejudice and bias. Yet we miss the bigger picture when we focus on bias alone. Systemic ignorance has built-​in epistemic resources to protect the system that normalizes bias and, even when bias is recognized, it does not necessarily lead to acknowledging the value of marginalized knowledge. In addition, as the reaction to the #MeToo movement makes clear, the issue is not only about having a concept available in dominant epistemic resources. Even when concepts are available, as Dotson notes, dominantly situated knowers continued to rely on dominant

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concepts such as decontextualized understandings of due process and insistence that “he was just flirting,” or “he is a good man and could not have done what you said he did.” While the call for due process appears to be neutral and reasonable and, of course, there is an important role to play about what consequences are appropriate for different offences, in the context of epistemic injustice the call for due process serves to silence women and protect the status quo. This is a moment for profound social reform. The pervasiveness of sexual assault, rape and sexual harassment will remain unseen by dominant knowers when survivors are met with incredulity and, more significantly, when dominant conceptual resources are allowed to overshadow what women are trying to expose. The ubiquity of sexual harassment demonstrates that its foundations are built into deeply entrenched masculinist norms or, in other words, the structural dynamics of gender inequity. When the President refuses and is unwilling to take seriously a survivor’s testimony because he insists on (mis)using seemingly neutral concepts that obstruct what the survivor is trying to say, then power structures are shielded from contestation and ignorance is recuperated. How does the movement that calls for epistemic justice and its critics clarify the challenges of raising critical consciousness in the Age of Trump?

The Challenges of Raising Critical Consciousness in the Age of Trump Critical consciousness, a concept attributed to the educator Paulo Freire,65 involves the ability to know the social world and to take action against the systemic oppression illuminated by that understanding. Developing critical consciousness involves educating for the recognition and understanding of systems of power, privilege and oppression in order to contribute to social change. It is an essential tool for achieving epistemic justice and key to disrupting systemic ignorance. In the best of times, social justice educators face numerous challenges in their attempts to raise critical consciousness in their students. However, when the Commander-​in-​Chief, with his behavior, tweets and statements, arrogantly refuses to listen to marginalized experience then these barriers are intensified. George Yancy66 recounts to his class his experience of entering an elevator and encountering a white woman. The woman sees his Black body and although dressed in formal attire she clutches her purse in fear. Yancy explains that her practice constitutes him as Black. A white student dismissed his description with a confident outburst of “Bullshit!!” It is not only that the white student feels confident to dismiss what Yancy says but also that her “Bullshit!” serves to erase the collective experience that Black men bear and dismisses any attempts they make to describe it. As Yancy explains, There was no suspension of her sense of self-​ certainty regarding the dynamics of race and racism and how Black men struggle daily to deal with

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issue of racism in their lives. She did not listen to me and did not take any steps toward conceding my understanding of the social world as legitimate.67 When the President is setting the tone from the top, such displays of “Bullshit!” in courses that aim to expose and disrupt systems of oppression and privilege will likely be emboldened and increase. Yet we can learn a lot about the management of systemic ignorance and the mechanisms of epistemic injustice by examining the reactions to the #MeToo movement. On the one hand, a variety of silencing, as Dotson reminds us, is the product of an historic pattern of testimonial injustice. It is not surprising that women might find it difficult to proclaim their sexual agency in the same way that men might or they may refuse to report harassment and remain silent. The collective nature of the movement has been empowering. On the other hand, there was a depth of refusal to believe the women and Trump magnified and validated this refusal, as the analysis of his call for due process reveals. Finally, the movement has also been alarming for men pressing them to critically examine their behavior and consider how they might be complicit in a system that promotes inequality and leads to abuse. This is clearly discomforting. The most egregious crimes were almost easy to believe because of the magnitude of the testimonies. The more subtle types of harassment are often shielded from challenge. Men are encountering a call to recognize that you don’t have to do egregious things to make women uncomfortable. Even well-​intentioned men will have to learn to see the consequences of their action on both a micro and macro scale. When men take shelter behind the claim, “I am not Harvey Weinstein” or “I am not Donald Trump,” one must wonder whether the demand for credibility has gone far enough.The assaults and rapes are connected to gender norms deeply embedded in our society. As Alcoff contends, “The problem of sexual violation cannot be treated as distinct from the problematic of sexuality itself. The ubiquity of sexual violations is obviously related to what is taken to be routine, everyday sex, the ‘facts’ of pleasure and desire.”68 Oppression is maintained, moreover, not only by what one does, but also by what one enables.The issue of complicity must not be ignored. The repercussions and recalcitrance of dominant norms will require more than just recognizing bias and adding new concepts to dominant hermeneutical frameworks. What the scholarship around epistemic injustice affords us is the lesson that the cascading reckoning around systemic oppression and privilege will not lead to lasting social and cultural change unless the power dynamics that oppress marginalized groups are transformed. Collective action is a key component for transformation that counters ignorance. Teaching students what it means to believe, and most significantly why, is the first step in countering the arrogant ignorance that the current political administration is validating. In her essay addressed to teachers and teacher educators, Lisa Delpit69 articulates this point powerfully when she writes,

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We must keep the perspective that people are experts on their own lives. … We must not be too quick to deny their interpretations, or accuse them of “false consciousness.” … And finally, we must learn to be vulnerable enough to allow our world to turn upside down in order to allow the realities of others to edge themselves into our consciousness.70 Delpit recommends that teachers learn to give others’ words their complete attention, learn to understand one’s positionality and power, and to “listen, no, hear what they say.”71 Only when dominantly situated knowers understand the dangers of preemptively dismissing what the marginalized are saying about their experience with oppression, when they repudiate what I  have referred to as the refusal to listen, only then does our country have a chance to become great.

Notes 1 Donald Trump, emphasis added. www.politico.com/​story/​2016/​06/​transcript​donald-​trump-​national-​security-​speech-​224273 2 John Taylor,“Are You Politically Correct?” New York Magazine, January 21, 1991: 32–​40. 3 José Medina (2016). “On Refusing to Believe:  Insensitivity and Self-​Ignorance.” In Jose Maria Arison and Astrid Wagner (eds) Rationality Reconsidered: Ortega y Gasset and Witgenstein on Knowledge, Belief, and Practice (Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter): 187–​200. 4 www.rethinkingschools.org/​articles/​teaching-​in-​the-​time-​of-​trump 5 Charles Mills (2007). “White ignorance.” In S. Sullivan and N. Tuana (eds) Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press): 13, original emphasis. 6 Linda Martin Alcoff (2007). “Epistemologies of Ignorance: Three Types,” in Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, 39. 7 Charles Mills (1997). The Racial Contract (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press); Charles Mills, “White Ignorance,” in Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance. 8 Charles Mills, The Racial Contract, 18. 9 Charles Mills, “White Ignorance,” 34. 10 Linda Martin Alcoff, “Epistemologies of Ignorance,” 48. 11 Ibid. 12 Nancy Tuana (2006). “The Speculum of Ignorance: The Women’s Health Movement and Epistemologies of Ignorance,” Hypatia 21/​3: 1–​19. 13 Elizabeth Spelman (2007).“Managing Ignorance,” in Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, 119–​134. 14 Ibid., 120. 15 James Baldwin (1993). The Fire Next Time (New York: Random House): 85. 16 Elizabeth Spelman, “Managing Ignorance,” 119. 17 Alison Bailey (2015). “ ‘White Talk’ as a Barrier to Understanding the Problem with Whiteness.” In George Yancy (ed.) White Self-​Criticality Beyond Anti-​Racism: How Does It Feel to Be a White Problem? (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books): 37–​56. 18 Ibid., 39. 19 José Medina (2013). “Color Blindness, Meta-​Ignorance, and the Racial Imagination,” Critical Philosophy of Race 1/​1: 38–​67.

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20 Ta-​Nehisi Coates (2017). “The First White President.” The Atlantic. www.theatlantic. com/​magazine/​archive/​2017/​10/​the-​first-​white-​president-​ta-​nehisi-​coates/​537909/​ 21 https://​blog.apaonline.org/​2016/​09/​27/​what-​feminist-​epistemology-​would-​say-​to-​ donald-​trump/​ 22 Patricia Hill Collins (1990). Black Feminist Thought:  Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge); Audre Lorde (1984). Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde (Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press). 23 Miranda Fricker (2007). Epistemic Injustice:  Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford: Oxford University Press). 24 Ibid., 1. 25 Ibid., 88. 26 Kristie Dotson (2011). “Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing,” Hypatia, 26/​2: 236–​257. 27 Ibid., 242. 28 Ibid., 244. 29 Linda Martin Alcoff (2010). “Epistemic Identities,” Episteme 7/​2: 128–​137. 30 Sara Ahmed (2010). The Promise of Happiness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press): 68. 31 Kristie Dotson, “Tracking Epistemic Violence,” 251. 32 Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice, 1. 33 Ibid., 147. 34 Ibid., 155. 35 Rebecca Mason (2011). “Two Kinds of Unknowing,” Hypatia 26/​2:  294–​307; José Medina (2013). The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations (Oxford: Oxford University Press); Kristie Dotson (2012). “A Cautionary Tale: On Limiting Epistemic Oppression,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 33/​1: 24–​47. 36 José Medina (2012). “Hermeneutical Injustice and Polyphonic Contextualism: Social Silences and Shared Hermeneutical Responsibilities,” Social Epistemology 26/​2: 207. 37 Kristie Dotson, “A Cautionary Tale.” 38 Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr (2012). “Relational Knowing and Epistemic Injustice:  Toward a Theory of Willful Hermeneutical Ignorance,” Hypatia 27/​4: 715–​735. 39 Ibid., 715 (emphasis mine). 40 Ibid., 716. 41 Because Fricker maintains that hermeneutical injustice is strictly structural and does not necessarily involve an individual perpetrator, she insists that it does not necessarily entail culpability. Therefore, she argues that hermeneutical injustice is not coexistent with white ignorance although they may overlap. (M. Fricker (2016). “Epistemic Injustice and the Preservation of Ignorance.” In R.  Peels and M.  Blaauw (eds) The Epistemic Dimensions of Ignorance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 144–​159.) I find this problematic but do not have the space to address this position here. 42 Kristie Dotson, “A Cautionary Tale,” 32. 43 Miranda Ficker, Epistemic Injustice, 91. 44 Ibid., 169. 45 Linda Martin Alcoff, “Epistemic Identities,” 132. 46 Ibid. 47 John Dovidio and Samual Gaertner (2004).“Aversive Racism,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 39: 1–​52. 48 Elizabeth Anderson (2012). “Epistemic Justice as a Virtue of Social Institutions,” Social Epistemology 26/​2: 163–​173.

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49 Kristie Dotson, “A Cautionary Tale.” 50 José Medina (2013). The Epistemology of Resistance:  Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations (Oxford: Oxford University Press). 51 Ibid., 315. 52 George Yancy (2012). Look, a White! Philosophical Essays on Whiteness (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2012): 155. 53 Catharine A. MacKinnon, “#MeToo and Law’s Limitations.” New York Times, February 5, 2018: A19 (emphasis added). 54 www.nbcnews.com/​ s toryline/​ s exual-​ m isconduct/ ​ r uth- ​ b ader- ​ g insburg-saysmetoo-​has-​staying-​power-​can-​withstand-​n847071 55 www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​post-​nation/​wp/​2017/​11/​09/​the-​waitress-​who-​ works-​in-​the-​diner-​needs-​to-​know-​that-​the-​issue-​of-​sexual-​harassment-​is-​about- ​ her-​too/​?utm_​term=.e574d19d043c 56 w w w. h u f f i n g t o n p o s t . c o m / ​ e n t r y / ​ w o m e n - ​ o f - ​ c o l o r - ​ m e - ​ t o o _ ​ u s _​ 5a442d73e4b0b0e5a7a4992c 57 www.timesupnow.com/​ 58 http://​nymag.com/​daily/​intelligencer/​2018/​01/​andrew-​sullivan-​time-​to-​resist-​excessesof-​metoo.html 59 www.huffingtonpost.in/​2017/​10/​18/​metoo-​made-​us-​realize-​that-​being-​a-​bystander-​ does-​not-​let-​us-​off-​the-​hook_​a_​23246890/​; www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/you-​ might-not-​be-​a-​harvey-​weinstein-​but-​you-​could_​us_​5a5e10cae4b003efadb6b101 60 www.nytimes.com/​2017/​11/​28/​opinion/​metoo-​sexual-​harassment-​believe-​women. html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=A42488DED41C1A3C2D16B1FC5AD5F65 5&gwt=pay&assetType=opinion 61 www.theatlantic.com/​video/​index/​553565/​problem-​with-​me-​too-​agenda/​ 62 https://​twitter.com/​realdonaldtrump/​status/​962348831789797381?lang=en 63 www.nsvrc.org/ ​ s ites/ ​ d efault/ ​ f iles/ ​ P ublications_​ N SVRC_​ O verview_​ F alse-​ Reporting.pdf 64 https://​lithub.com/​rebecca-​solnit-​on-​the-​metoo-​backlash/​ 65 Paulo Freire (1974). Education for Critical Consciousness (London: Continuum). 66 George Yancy (2008). Black Bodies, White Gazes:  The Continuing Significance of Race (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield). 67 Ibid., 228. 68 Linda Martin Alcoff (2018). Rape and Resistance (New York: Polity Press). 69 Lisa Delpit (1988). “The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children,” Harvard Educational Review 58/​3: 280–​298. 70 Ibid., 296. 71 Ibid., original emphasis.

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3 HIGHER EDUCATION AND PEDAGOGY IN THE AGE OF TRUMP Henry A. Giroux

As authoritarianism gains in strength in the United States, the educational cultures that give rise to dissent become more embattled along with the public spaces and institutions that make conscious critical thought possible. Words that speak to the truth, reveal injustices, and provide informed critical analysis begin to disappear making it even more difficult, if not dangerous, to hold dominant power accountable. History is now being rewritten to both eliminate dangerous memories and align the past with narratives that reinforce anti-​democratic ideologies and social relations. Terror becomes the essence of politics reinforced by the denigration and erasure of any viable notion of morality and personal and social responsibility. Notions of virtue, honor, respect, and compassion are policed and those who advocate them are punished. Under the regime of Donald Trump, the role of education in creating the formative cultures necessary to promote critical thinking, civic courage, social responsibility, and the knowledge and values necessary for creating critically engaged citizens, appear to be disappearing. This is especially dangerous at a time in which education has become central to politics, especially in a digital age in which there is an overabundance of information and a proliferation of educational platforms from schools to the social media. But in the age of Trump, education is losing its function as an ethical political vision that takes people beyond the world of common sense, teaches them to be creative, exposes them to a variety of great traditions, and creates the pedagogical conditions for them to become informed and critical citizens capable of actively participating and governing in a democratic society. Under the influence of corporate power and a growing authoritarianism, education increasingly operates in the service of tyranny, lies, racism, unadulterated market values, and a full-​fledged assault on critical consciousness and public value. This is evident in the way in which neoliberalism since the

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1980s has reshaped formal education at all levels into a site for training, inundating market values, and imposing market relations as a template for governing social life. Increasingly aligned with market forces, higher education is largely primed for teaching business principles and corporate values, and university administrators are prized as CEOs or bureaucrats in an audit culture; moreover, students are viewed as clients and customers, and faculty are treated like service workers. Under the Trump administration, the role of pedagogy as a tool of management, conformity, and repression has been intensified as it is legitimated at the highest levels of government and through a range of right-​wing policies. Operating in the service of a strictly instrumental rationality that erodes the boundaries between economic power and politics, enables a culture of racial exclusion, and furthers a politics of repression, higher education empties politics of any substance. In doing so, it accelerates a modern day pandemic of fear, anxiety, anger, and despair. Students are not only inundated with the competitive, privatized, and market-​driven values of neoliberalism, they are also punished by those values in the form of exorbitant tuition rates, astronomical debt to banks and other financial institutions, and lack of meaningful employment.1 Solidarity, critical thought, and shared values are the enemy of Trump’s notion of education and pedagogy and serve largely to disdain public values while canceling out a democratic future for young people, especially those marginalized by race, ethnicity, and class. In the broader social realm of public pedagogy, the educational force of the wider culture functions through a range of cultural apparatuses extending from the mainstream and conservative media to digital and online platforms that largely operate in the service of a commodified and authoritarian political media sphere that has become what Mort Rosenblum calls a “cesspool of misleading babble.”2 Trump has managed to shape the cultural landscape in ways that have unleashed what I  term a poisonous public pedagogy of sensationalism, easy consumption, bigotry, fear, and distraction. For instance, insightful and critical reporting is dismissed as fake news, corporate profiteers accelerate a culture of immediacy and feed off spectacles of violence. All the while, Trump fills the Twitter world with an ongoing bombast of emotional drivel. Simultaneously, he appoints cabinet and other high ranking officials whose chief role is to dismantle those institutions central to a democracy: “its schools, courts, civil liberties, environment, natural wealth, and underlying morality.”3 Former chief strategist Steve Bannon makes visible Trump’s racist politics as he travels the globe proclaiming to his fascist friends that they should not be troubled if called a racist. In fact, he proclaimed to a gathering of the National Front party at their annual congress in France, “Let them call you racists. Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor.”4 Another egregious example can be seen in the appointment of John Bolton as Trump’s National Security Advisor. As many people have pointed out, Bolton is a jingoistic hawk of the first order. Domestic terrorism, defined in part as acts designed by the state to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population”5 now operates unapologetically at the highest

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levels of power as Trump rails against undocumented immigrants, advises police officers to rough up people they are arresting, and relentlessly cultivates “fear and contempt among … white citizens against immigrants, indigenous people and people of color, who are placed on the other side of ‘the law’.”6 In addition,Trump undermines the rule of law by attacking the courts and other legal institutions if they don’t pander to his policies. Moreover, his notion of and implementation of “law and order” is highly selective, depending upon who is the perpetrator of the alleged crime, or who is considered a friend or enemy. If it is “illegals” or anyone in his target audience of “criminals,” they should be roughed up by the police but if it is a friend such as Rob Porter, a former White House senior aide charged with abuse by both of his ex-​wives, such accusations are simply dismissed by Trump. As Chris Hayes observes, law and order for Trump has little to do with justice or the rule of law: If all that matters when it comes to “law and order” is who is a friend and who is an enemy, and if friends are white and enemies are black or Latino or in the wrong party, then the rhetoric around crime and punishment stops being about justice and is merely about power and corruption. And this is what “law and order” means: the preservation of a certain social order, not the rule of law.7 Trump has ushered in a world of pedagogical tyranny, misery, and oppression with his endless lies, spectacles, impetuous outbursts, insults, misrepresentations, corruption, and hucksterism driving the emotional levers dedicated to a pedagogy in the service of mass illiteracy, ethical bankruptcy, and political conformity. As the liar-​in-​chief, Trump collapses the distinction between facts and fiction and in doing so undermines the necessity in a democracy for institutions that enable informed and critical citizens. What we need is to promote shared beliefs in facts, truth, and moral integrity, and hold the common good above narrow self-​interests. Without some allegiance to evidence-​based arguments, informed judgments, and reason, politics and the public spheres that produce informed citizens will begin to disappear. Moreover, morality and the ethical imagination wither as it becomes more and more difficult within Trump’s universe of “fake news” and “alternative facts” to distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, and compassion from cruelty. Americans live in Kafkaesque times—​a time in which the fight for justice has given way at the highest levels of government to the legitimation of injustice. How else to explain Trump’s claim that there are “very fine people on both sides” when referring to the deadly violence perpetrated in Charlottesville, Virginia by white nationalists, neo-​Nazis, and members of the Klu Klux Klan and those protesting such hatred?8 While this false equivalence is another example of Trump’s muddled politics of diversion, it is also testimony to Pierre Bourdieu and Gunter Grass’ insistence that “the most important forms of domination are

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not only economic but also intellectual and pedagogical and lie on the side of belief and persuasion.”9 In this instance, the pedagogical call to think, inspire, and energize has been replaced by a discourse and pedagogical practices designed to misdirect rage, empty meaning of any substance, deaden the ethical imagination, and encourage the collective fog of unchecked nihilism, white nationalism, and a depoliticizing privatism. Trump’s pedagogy is largely fashioned through his use of Twitter, his support by conservative media such as Fox News and the Sinclair Broadcast Group, the aggressive support by tribal social media, and extreme talk radio, all of which function as thinly veiled propaganda and dis-​imagination machines. Trump’s unrelenting pedagogical shocks to the body politics and civic culture have done more than lower the bar of civic discourse and the rules of governing, they have normalized the unimaginable. Conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan captures the damage in the following commentary in which he asserts that Trump: [is] a cult leader of a movement that has taken over a political party [whose] twisted, compulsive insecurity requires him to use his office to attack, delegitimize and weaken every democratic institution that may occasionally operate outside his own delusional narcissism. He cannot help this. His tweets are a function of spasms, not plots. But the wreckage after only one year is extraordinary. The F.B.I. is now widely discredited; the C.I.A. is held in contempt; judges, according to the president, are driven by prejudice and partisanship (when they disagree with him); the media produce fake news; Congress is useless (including both Republicans and Democrats); alliances are essentially rip-​offs; the State Department—​along with the whole idea of a neutral Civil Service—​is unnecessary. And the possibility of reasoned deliberation at the heart of democratic life has been obliterated by the white-​hot racial and cultural hatreds that Trump was able to exploit to get elected and that he constantly fuels.10 Following Arendt’s insight into the dynamics of totalitarianism, education both within and outside of institutionalized schooling becomes a tool to not only instill authoritarian convictions but to destroy the ability of the populace to form any convictions that are on the side of justice, freedom, and thoughtfulness. I think it is fair to argue that the nightmarish vision of an impending American-​style authoritarianism is no longer a product of dystopian fiction—​found in the work of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Margaret Atwood, Ray Bradbury, and others. Under the regime of Donald Trump, the language of “Newspeak” has been normalized, has multiple platforms, and has morphed into a giant dis-​imagination machinery of propaganda, violence, bigotry, hatred, and war. The latter is clearly visible in Trump’s language and politics which in its various forms has a high threshold for disappearance and zones of terminal exclusion, especially for Muslims, undocumented immigrants, and African-​Americans.

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As a form of pedagogical regulation, intelligence is considered a liability and Trump’s White House works hard to eliminate expressions of discontent, resistance, and popular democratic struggles. Ignorance is a virtue under the Trump administration and is on full display in the number of ill-​informed and incompetent officials that Trump has appointed to various levels of government. Under such circumstances, higher education is threatened for its potential role as a public sphere capable of educating students as informed, critical thinkers capable of not only holding power accountable but also fulfilling the role of critical agents who can act against injustice and resist diverse forms of oppression. The criminogenic machinery of power is on full display at the highest levels of politics and is changing the language of educational reform while making it difficult for faculty and students to resist their own erasure from modes of self-​governance and a critical education. New forms of racist discrimination, unbridled commodification, and exclusion rooted in a retreat from ethics, the social imagination, and democracy itself weaken the role higher education might take in an age of increasing tyranny. Against the force of a highly militarized mode of casino capitalism in which violence and a resurgence of white supremacy are at the center of power, higher education is being weakened in its ability to resist the authoritarian machinery of social death now shaping American society.The modern loss of faith in the merging of education and democracy needs to be reclaimed, but that will only happen if the long legacy of struggle over education is once again brought to life as part of a more comprehensive understanding of education being central to politics itself. Such a task is particularly urgent as the United States descends into the abyss of authoritarianism under the regime of Donald Trump. Donald Trump’s ascendancy in American politics has made visible a plague of deep seated civic illiteracy, a corrupt political system, and a contempt for reason that has been decades in the making; it also points to the power of a neoliberal political and economic project that has resulted in the withering of civic attachments, the undoing of civic culture, the decline of public life, and the erosion of any sense of shared citizenship. Under President Trump, the scourge of mid-​20th century authoritarianism has returned not only in the menacing plague of populist rallies, fear-​mongering, hate, and humiliation, but also in an emboldened culture of war, militarization, and violence that looms over society like a rising storm. The reality of Trump’s election may be the most momentous and dangerous development of the 21st century because of its enormity and the shock it has produced. The whole world is pondering how such a dreadful event could have happened. What forces have allowed education to be undermined as a democratic public sphere, capable of producing the formative culture and critical citizens that could have prevented such a catastrophe from happening in an alleged democracy? We get a glimpse of this failure of civic literacy, education, and public values in the willingness and success of the Trump administration to empty language of any meaning, a practice that constitutes a flight from historical memory, ethics, justice, and social responsibility. Under such circumstances and with too little opposition,

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government has taken on the workings of a propaganda machine, characterized by an utter disregard for the truth, and often accompanied, as in Trump’s case, by “primitive schoolyard taunts and threats.”11 In this instance, Orwell’s “Ignorance is Strength” materializes in the Trump administration’s weaponized attempt not only to rewrite history, but also to obliterate it. What we are witnessing is not simply a political project but also a reworking of the very meaning of education both as an institution and as a cultural force. Truth is now viewed as a liability and ignorance a virtue. Under the reign of this normalized architecture of alleged common sense, literacy is now regarded with disdain, words are reduced to data, and science is confused with pseudo-​ science. All traces of critical thought appear only at the margins of the culture, as ignorance becomes the primary organizing principle of American society. For instance, two-​thirds of the American public believe that creationism should be taught in school, a majority of Republicans in Congress believe that climate change is a hoax, and “51% of Republicans believe that Barack Obama was born in Kenya,”12 all of which make the US the object of ridicule and laughter around the world.13 Politicians endlessly lie knowing that the public is addicted to exhortation, emotional outbursts, and sensationalism, all of which mimics celebrity culture. Image selling now entails lying on principle and making it easier for politics to dissolve into entertainment, pathology, and a unique brand of criminality. Any assertion of expertise or professional knowledge is increasingly viewed with skepticism, even disdain, as people turn to self-​help therapies, Internet drivel, and the manufactured witlessness produced in celebrity culture. Education has lost its ties to creating critical citizens necessary to the functioning of a democratic public sphere. In the more general sense, education is now viewed either as a form of consumerism or as a form of training, aligned to market values, and wedded to a technocratic rationality dominated by the imperatives of commercial exchange. Tom Nichols points out that more is at stake here than a rejection of informed judgments and evidence-​based knowledge. He writes: The death of expertise is not just a rejection of existing knowledge. It is fundamentally a rejection of science and dispassionate rationality, which are the foundations of modern civilization. It is a sign, as the art critic Robert Hughes once described late 20th century America, of “a polity obsessed with therapies and filled with distrust of formal politics,” chronically “skeptical of authority” and “prey to superstition.”14 The corruption of both the truth and politics is abetted by the fact that the American public has become habituated to overstimulation and live in an ever-​ accelerating overflow of information and images. Experience no longer has the time to crystalize into mature and informed thought.15 Opinion now trumps reason and evidence-​ based arguments. News has become entertainment and

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echoes reality rather than interrogating it. Popular culture revels in the spectacles of shock and violence.16 Defunded and corporatized, many institutions of higher education have been all too willing to make the culture of business the business of education, and the transformation has corrupted their mission. As a result, many colleges and universities have been McDonaldized as knowledge is increasingly viewed as a commodity resulting in curricula that resemble a fast-​food menu.17 In addition, faculty are subjected increasingly to a Wal-​Mart model of labor relations designed “to reduce labor costs and to increase labor servility.”18 Students fare no better and are now relegated to the status of customers and clients. On a larger scale, the educational force of the wider culture has been transformed into a spectacle for violence, trivialized entertainment, and a tool for legitimating ignorance. As education becomes central to politics itself, it removes democratic values and a compassion for the other from the ideology, policies, and institutions that now control American society. Across the United States, the landscape and mission of higher education is changing so as to adopt the mission of business schools. This was made clear by Pat McCrory, the former governor of North Carolina, who argued in in a barely veiled warning to faculty that higher education needed to adopt a brand that fits “the ever-​changing competitive environment of the twenty first century [while producing] subjects employers need.”19 Other threats to higher education come from conservative think tanks, right-​wing groups, and right-​wing pundits who are monitoring faculty syllabi, calling for universities to teach the Great Books model of humanities education, and eliminating academic institutes that address major social issues such as poverty and voter registration. In some cases, alt-​r ight and neo-​Nazi groups are issuing death threats against faculty who speak out against racism and other volatile social issues.20 Many of these policies are either reminiscent of tactics used by fascist groups in Nazi Germany and Chile under Pinochet21 or mimic a script right out of the Ayn Rand playbook. For instance, as John Allison, the former president of the Cato Institute once put it, educational programs should be funded that “retake the universities [from] statist/​collectivist ideas” in order to align them with an ideology that educates students about the virtues of capitalism, which is “clearly in our shareholders’ long-​term interest.”22 I am not arguing simply about the kind of anti-​intellectualism that theorists such as Richard Hofstadter, Noam Chomsky, and Susan Jacoby have documented, however insightful their analyses might be. Nor am I  refusing to acknowledge the long lineage of anti-​intellectualism in American history. What I am pointing to is a more lethal form of illiteracy coupled with an attack on higher education that has become a scourge and a political tool designed primarily to make war on language, meaning, thinking, and the capacity for critical thought. Under the Trump regime, there has been an intensity and acceleration of this kind of ignorance that makes it distinctive and unique to the current historical moment. Not only is it more widespread, but it has become more expansive and ingrained in the

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popular culture as a tool of oppression. Chris Hedges is right in stating that “the emptiness of language is a gift to demagogues and the corporations that saturate the landscape with manipulated images and the idioms of mass culture.”23 Words such as love, trust, freedom, responsibility, and choice have been deformed by a market logic that narrows their meaning to either a commercial relationship or to a reductive notion of getting ahead. We don’t love each other, we love our new car. Instead of loving with courage, compassion, and desiring a more just society, we love a society saturated in commodities. Freedom now means removing one’s self from any sense of social responsibility so one can retreat into privatized orbits of self-​indulgence and unbridled self-​interest. This new form of illiteracy does more than constitute an absence of learning, ideas, or knowledge. Nor can it be solely attributed to what has been called the “smartphone society.”24 On the contrary, it is a willful practice and goal used to actively depoliticize people and make them complicit with the forces that impose misery and suffering upon their lives. At the same time, this manufactured pedagogy of illiteracy bonds people and offers the pretense of a community bound by a willful denial of facts and its celebration of ignorance. How else to explain the popular support for someone like Donald Trump who boldly proclaims “I love the poorly educated!”25 Or, for that matter, the willingness of his followers to put up with his contemptuous and boisterous claim that science and evidence-​based truths are fake news, his dismissal of journalists who hold power accountable as the opposition party, and his willingness to bombard the American public with an endless proliferation of peddled falsehoods that reveal his contempt for intellect, reason, and truth. What are we to make of the fact that a person who holds the office of the presidency has praised Alex Jones publicly and thanked him for the role he played in his election victory? Jones is a conspiracy trafficker who runs the website Infowars and believes that September 11 was an “inside job” and that the massacre of children at Sandy Hook was faked. How are we to explain that thousands of people who are loyal to Trump are the prime targets for conspiracy theories such as the reprehensible claim that David Hogg, a student and journalist at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was a “crisis actor”—​someone who didn’t even attend the school. Such willed misrepresentations, falsehoods, and cruel lies are at the heart of a culture of conspiracy theories that have been emboldened and legitimated by Donald Trump. Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-​at-​ large, gets it right in stating: Remember that the genesis of Trump’s political relevance can be directly traced to a conspiracy theory:  The disproven idea, relentlessly promoted by Trump earlier this decade, that then-​President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. … Trump’s 2016 presidential candidacy was replete with conspiracy theories. Muslims were celebrating on New Jersey rooftops on 9/​11. Former Clinton aide Vince Foster didn’t actually commit suicide. Ted Cruz’s father may have been involved in the assassination of

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John F. Kennedy.The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died under suspicious circumstances. The infamous “Access Hollywood” tape might be a fake. Several million votes were cast illegally, costing Trump a popular vote victory.You get the idea. Trump is someone who has taken conspiracy theories from the fringe to the center of the national conversation. He has mainstreamed not only specific conspiracies but also conspiratorial thinking.26 What the Trump regime has made clear is that manufactured illiteracy no longer simply marks populations immersed in poverty with little access to quality education; nor does it only suggest the lack of proficient skills enabling people to read and write with a degree of understanding and fluency. Instead it has become central to governmental policy. Illiteracy has become a political weapon and form of political repression that works to render critical agency inoperable and restages power as a mode of domination. Illiteracy functions largely to depoliticize people by making it difficult for individuals to develop informed judgments, analyze complex relationships, and draw upon a range of sources to understand how power works to shape the forces that bear down on their lives. More profoundly, illiteracy is also about creating individuals who refuse to act from a position of thoughtfulness, informed judgment, and critical agency. Illiteracy provides the foundation for being governed rather than learning how to govern. This mode of illiteracy now constitutes the modus operandi of a society that both privatizes and kills the imagination by poisoning it with falsehoods, consumer fantasies, data loops, and the need for instant gratification.This is a mode of illiteracy, pedagogical practice, and education that has no language for relating the self to public life, social responsibility, or the demands of citizenship. It is important to recognize that the prevalence of such manufactured illiteracy is not simply about the failure of colleges and universities to create critical and active citizens; it is about a society that eliminates those public spheres that make thinking possible while imposing a culture of fear in which there is the looming threat that anyone who holds power accountable will be punished.27 Under such circumstances, the attack on education as a public good and literacy as the basis for producing informed citizens is less of a failing on the part of education, as many conservative pundits claim, than a deliberate policy to prevent critical thinking on the part of both teachers and students. At stake here is not only the crisis of a democratic society, but a crisis of education, memory, ethics, and agency.28 What happens to democracy when the President of the United States labels critical media outlets as “enemies of the people” and derides the search for truth by endlessly tweeting lies and misrepresentations? What happens when the American public forgets that the last time the critical media was termed as a threat and enemy it was a charge made by hard core racial segregationist during the early stages of the civil rights movement in the 1960s? What happens to democracy when individuals and groups are demonized on the basis of their religion? What

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happens to a society when critical thinking and facts become objects of contempt and are disdained in favor of raw emotion or undermined by an appeal to what US Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway calls “alternative facts?” What happens to a social order ruled by an “economics of contempt” that blames the poor for their condition and subjects them to a culture of shaming? What happens to a public that retreats into private silos and becomes indifferent to the use of language in the service of a panicked rage that stokes anger but not about issues that matter? What happens to a social order when it treats millions of illegal immigrants as disposable, potential terrorists, and criminals? What happens to a country when the presiding principles of a society are violence and ignorance? What happens is that democracy withers and dies, both as an ideal and as a reality. In the present moment, it becomes particularly urgent for educators and concerned citizens all over the world to protect and enlarge the formative cultures and public spheres that make democracy possible. The attack on the truth, honesty, and the ethical imagination, makes it all the more imperative for educators to think dangerously, especially in societies that appear increasingly amnesiac—​that is, countries where forms of historical, political, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but celebrated. All of which becomes all the more threatening at a time when a country such as the United States has tipped over into a mode of authoritarianism that views critical thought as both a liability and a threat. Not only is manufactured illiteracy obvious in the presence of a celebrity culture that collapses the distinction between the serious and frivolous, but it is also visible in the proliferation of anti-​intellectual discourses and policies among a range of politicians and anti-​public intellectuals who are waging a war on science, reason, and the legacy of the Enlightenment. How else to explain the present historical moment with its collapse of civic culture and the future it cancels out? What is to be made of the undermining of civic literacy and the conditions that produce an active citizenry at a time when massive self-​enrichment and a gangster morality at the highest reaches of the US government undermine the public realm as a space of freedom, liberty, dialogue, and deliberative consensus? Authoritarian societies do more than censor, they punish those who engage in what might be called dangerous thinking. At the core of thinking dangerously is the recognition that education is an organizing principle of politics and that a democracy cannot survive without informed citizens. Critical and dangerous thinking is the precondition for nurturing both the ethical imagination and ­formative culture that enable members of the public to learn how to govern rather than be governed. Thinking with courage is fundamental to a notion of civic literacy that views knowledge as central to the pursuit of economic and political justice. Such thinking incorporates a critical framework and set of values that enables a polity to deal critically with the use and effects of power, particularly through a developed sense of compassion for others and the planet. Thinking dangerously is the basis for a formative and critical culture that expands the social imagination and makes the practice of freedom operational. Thinking dangerously is the cornerstone of

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not only critical agency and engaged citizenship, but the foundation for a democracy that matters. Any viable attempt at developing a democratic politics must begin to address the role of education and civic literacy as central not only to politics itself but also to the creation of individuals capable of becoming critical social agents willing to struggle against injustices and fight to reclaim and develop those institutions crucial to the functioning and promises of a substantive democracy. One place to begin to think through such a project is by addressing the meaning and role of higher education and education in general as part of the broader struggle for and practice of freedom. Across the globe, the forces of free-​market fundamentalism are using the educational forces of the wider culture—​including diverse cultural apparatuses such as the mainstream media, alternative screen cultures, and the expanding digital platforms—​to reproduce a culture of privatization, deregulation, and commercialization. These educational forces are waging an assault on the historically guaranteed social provisions and civil rights provided by the welfare state, higher education, unions, women’s health centers, and the judicial system, among others, all the while undercutting public faith in the defining institutions of democracy. This grim reality has been called by Axel Honneth a “failed sociality” characteristic of an increasing number of societies in which democracy is waning—​a failure in the power of the civic imagination, political will, and open democracy.29 It is also part of a politics that strips the social of any democratic ideals and undermines any understanding of education as a public good and pedagogy as an empowering practice, a practice which acts directly upon the conditions which bear down on our lives in order to change them when necessary. One of the challenges facing the current generation of educators, students, and others is the need to address the question of what education should accomplish in a society at a historical moment when it is about to slip into the dark night of authoritarianism. What work do educators have to do to create the economic, political, and ethical conditions necessary to endow young people and the general public with the capacities to think, question, doubt, imagine the unimaginable, and defend education as essential for inspiring and energizing the citizens necessary for the existence of a robust democracy? In a world in which there is an increasing abandonment of egalitarian and democratic impulses, what will it take to educate young people and the broader polity to challenge authority and hold power accountable? This is a particularly important issue at a time when higher education in the United States and other countries is being defunded and students are being punished with huge tuition hikes and crippling finance debts, all the while being subjected to right-​wing policies and a pedagogy of repression that has taken hold under the banner of reactionary and oppressive educational reforms pushed by right-​wing billionaires and hedge fund managers.30 Given the crisis of education, agency, and memory that haunts the current historical conjuncture, educators need a new language for addressing the changing contexts and issues facing a world in which there is an unprecedented

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convergence of resources—​financial, cultural, political, economic, scientific, military, and technological—​increasingly used to exercise powerful and diverse forms of control and domination. Such a language needs to be self-​reflective and directive without being dogmatic and needs to recognize that pedagogy is always political because it is connected to the acquisition of agency. In this instance, making the pedagogical more political means being vigilant about “that very moment in which identities are being produced and groups are being constituted, or objects are being created.”31 At the same time it means educators need to be attentive to those practices in which critical modes of agency and particular identities are being denied. At the heart of such a challenge is the need to ask what the role is of both formal education and the wider functions of education in a democracy. What pedagogical, political, and ethical responsibilities should educators and other cultural workers take on at a time when there is an increasing abandonment of egalitarian and democratic impulses? How can educational and pedagogical practices be connected to the resurrection of historical memory, new modes of solidarity, a resurgence of the radical imagination, and broad-​based struggles for an insurrectional democracy? In part, this suggests developing educational policies and practices that not only inspire and motivate people but are also capable of challenging the growing number of anti-​democratic practices and policies under the global tyranny of casino capitalism.32 Such a vision suggests resurrecting a democratic project that provides the basis for imagining a life beyond a social order immersed in massive inequality, endless assaults on the environment, and elevates war and militarization to the highest and most sanctified national ideals. Under such circumstances, education becomes more than an obsession with accountability schemes, an audit culture, market values, and an unreflective immersion in the crude empiricism of a data-​obsessed market-​driven society. In addition, it rejects the notion that colleges and universities should be reduced to sites for training students for the workforce—​a reductive vision now being imposed on public education by high-​ tech companies such as Facebook, Netflix, and Google who want to encourage what they call the entrepreneurial mission of education, which is code for collapsing education into training.33 Central here is a notion of pedagogy that should provide the conditions for students to recognize how to use the knowledge they gain both to critique the world in which they live and, when necessary, to intervene in socially responsible ways in order to change it. Critical pedagogy is about more than a struggle over assigned meanings, official knowledge, and established modes of authority:  it is also about encouraging students to take risks, act on their sense of social responsibility, and engage the world as an object of both critical analysis and hopeful transformation. In this paradigm, pedagogy cannot be reduced only to learning critical skills or theoretical traditions but must also be infused with the possibility of using interpretation as a mode of intervention, as a potentially energizing practice that gets students to both think and act differently.

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J.M. Coetzee, the Nobel Prize winner, has argued that with the collapse of higher education into training, education loses its most critical function which is to get students to think critically, embrace civic values, and develop an imaginative grasp of the future. According to Coetzee, governments renege on their commitments to democracy when they: retreat from their traditional duty to foster the common good and reconceive of themselves as mere managers of national economies … [under such circumstances] universities … turn themselves into training schools equipping young people with the skills required by a modern economy.34 Education and pedagogy should be ways of thinking about democracy not simply training students to be workers. What is lost in this instrumentalized view is that students are not just workers but also citizens, and education is about more than training. Learning skills for the workplace is no excuse for purging from education what it means “to teach students how to think critically, embrace the common good, exercise a sense of social responsibility and support a world of values, feelings, and the ethical and political foundation necessary for a democratic society.”35 Yes, we must educate young people with the skills they need to get jobs but as educators we must also teach them to learn “to live with less or no misery [and] to fight against those social sources” that cause war, destruction of the environment, “inequality, unhappiness, and needless human suffering.”36 At issue here is the need for educators to recognize the power of education in creating the formative cultures necessary to both challenge the various threats being mobilized against the ideas of justice and democracy while also fighting for those public spheres, ideals, values, and policies that offer alternative modes of identity, thinking, social relations, and politics. But embracing the dictates of making education meaningful in order to make it critical and transformative also means recognizing that cultural apparatuses such as the mainstream media and Hollywood films are teaching machines and not simply sources of information and entertainment. Such sites should be viewed as spheres of struggle that need to be removed from the control of the financial elite and monopolistic corporations that use them as workstations for propagandizing a culture of vulgarity, self-​ absorption, and commodification while eroding any sense of shared citizenship and civic culture. There is an urgent political need in the United States, among other countries, to understand what it means for an authoritarian society to weaponize and trivialize the discourse, vocabularies, images, and aural means of communication in a variety of education and cultural sites. And also to grasp that a market-​driven discourse does not provide the intellectual, ethical, and political tools for civic education.37 How is such language used to relegate citizenship to the singular pursuit of unbridled self-​interests, legitimate shopping as the ultimate expression of one’s

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identity, portray essential public services as reinforcing and weakening any viable sense of individual responsibility, while using the vocabulary of war, militarization, and violence to address a vast array of problems often faced by citizens and others? I do not believe it is an overstatement to argue that education can all too easily become a form of symbolic and intellectual violence, one that assaults rather than educates. Examples of such violence can be seen in the forms of an audit culture and empirically driven teaching that dominates higher education, especially in the United States, but also increasingly in other countries such as the United Kingdom, Hungary, and Turkey. These educational projects amount to pedagogies of repression and serve primarily to numb the mind and produce what might be called dead zones of the imagination. These are pedagogies that are largely disciplinary and have little regard for contexts, history, making knowledge meaningful, or expanding what it means for students to be critical and engaged agents. Of course, the ongoing corporatization of the university is driven by modes of assessment that often undercut teacher autonomy, treat knowledge as a commodity, students as customers, and impose brutalizing structures of governance on higher education. Under such circumstances, education defaults on its democratic obligations and becomes a tool of corporate interests and market-​driven values, all the while deadening the capacity to think otherwise in order to act otherwise. One of the fundamental challenges facing educators within the current age of an emerging authoritarianism worldwide is to create both safe and brave educational spaces for students to address “how knowledge is related to the power of self-​definition” and social agency.38 Safe spaces provide opportunities for students to talk back and critically engage issues without fear of retribution or humiliation. Brave spaces allow them to engage in pedagogical practices, conversations, and modes of exchange that are unsettling, disturbing, and challenging.39 Such spaces allow students to speak to the truth without fear while learning how to defend, engage, and when necessary alter their views, ideas, and ideologies. Education in this sense speaks to the recognition that any pedagogical practice presupposes some notion of the future, prioritizes some forms of identification over others, upholds selective modes of social relations, and values some modes of knowing over others. Moreover, such an education does not offer guarantees as much as it recognizes that its own visions, policies, and practices are grounded in particular modes of authority, values, and ethical principles that must be constantly debated for the ways in which they both open up and close down democratic relations. The notion of a neutral, objective education is an oxymoron. Education and pedagogy do not exist outside of ideology, values, and politics. Ethics on the pedagogical front demands an openness to the other, a willingness to embrace a culture of questioning, dialogue, and an ongoing critical engagement with texts, images, events, and other registers of meaning as they are transformed into pedagogical practices both within and outside of the classroom. Education is never innocent and is always implicated in relations of power and specific visions of the present and future. This suggests the need for educators to rethink the cultural and

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ideological baggage they bring to each educational encounter; it also highlights the necessity of making educators ethically and politically accountable and self-​ reflective for the stories they produce, the claims they make upon public memory, and the images of the future they deem legitimate. Understood as a form of educated hope, education in this sense is not an antidote to politics, a nostalgic yearning for a better time, or for some “inconceivably alternative future.” Instead, it is an “attempt to find a bridge between the present and future in those forces within the present which are potentially able to transform it.”40 When viewed as an important democratic public sphere, education can provide opportunities for educators, students, and others to redefine and transform the connections among language, desire, meaning, everyday life, and the material relations of power as part of a broader social movement to reclaim the promise and possibilities of an open society. In an age when authoritarianism is spreading across the globe, it should come as no surprise that many governments consider any notion of critical education dangerous because it creates the conditions for students and the wider public to exercise their intellectual capacities, cultivate the ethical imagination, hold power accountable, and embrace a sense of social responsibility. One of the most serious challenges facing administrators, faculty, and students in colleges and universities is the task of developing a discourse of both critique and possibility. This means developing discourses and pedagogical practices that connect reading the word with reading the world and doing so in ways that enhance the capacities of young people to translate their hidden despair and private grievances into public transcripts. At best such transcripts can be transformed into forms of public dissent or what might be called “a moment of ‘rupture,’ ” one that has important implications for public action in a time of impending tyranny and authoritarianism.41 In taking up this project, educators and others should attempt to create the conditions that give students the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and courage necessary to make desolation and cynicism unconvincing and hope practical. Democracy begins to fail and political life becomes impoverished in the absence of those vital public spheres such as public and higher education in which civic values, public scholarship, and social engagement allow for a more imaginative grasp of a future that takes seriously the demands of justice, equity, and civic courage. Democracy should be a way of thinking about education, one that thrives on connecting equity to excellence, learning to ethics, and agency to the imperatives of social responsibility and the public good. The question regarding what role education should play in democracy becomes all the more urgent at a time when the dark forces of authoritarianism are on the march all across the globe. As public values, trust, solidarities, and modes of education are under siege, the discourses of hate, racism, rabid self-​interest, and greed are exercising a poisonous influence in many societies and is most evident in the discourse of Donald Trump and his merry band of anti-​intellectuals and white nationalists. Civic

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illiteracy collapses the distinction between opinion and informed arguments, erases collective memory, and becomes complicit with the growing criminalization of a range of behaviors and the increasing militarization of places such as public schools and society itself. In the age of financial and political zombies, finance capitalism has lost its ability to legitimate itself in a warped discourse of freedom and choice. Its poisonous tentacles have put millions out of work, turned many Black communities into war zones, destroyed public education, undermined the democratic mission of higher education, flagrantly pursued war as the greatest of national ideals, turned the prison system into a default welfare institution for punishing minorities of race and class, produced massive inequities in wealth, income, and power, pillaged the environment, and blatantly imposed a new mode of racism under the silly notion of a post-​racial society.

Reviving the Legacy of Critical Pedagogy I want to go back to a central concern of this essay by raising the question of how as educators we begin a meaningful conversation about how to redefine and reclaim the mission of colleges and universities as democratic public spheres. In doing so, I want to address in general terms the importance of what I have called the need for a new language of governance accompanied by reclaiming the discourse of critical pedagogy and the ethical imagination, which I believe are central to any viable notion of change that I am suggesting. This is especially crucial at a time when higher education in the United States is under attack by a savage form of casino capitalism. Regarding the politics of governance, I  have argued both explicitly and implicitly that educators, students, and others concerned about the fate of higher education need to mount a spirited attack against the managerial takeover of the university that began in the late 1970s with the emergence of a market fundamentalism called neoliberalism, which is an economic system that argues that market principles should govern not just the economy but all of social life including education. This is an ideology that has produced cruel austerity policies, defunded public goods, and created what amounts to a culture of cruelty. Central to such a recognition is the need to struggle against a university system developed around the reduction in faculty power, the replacement of a culture of cooperation and collegiality with a shark-​like culture of competition, the rise of an audit culture that has produced a very limited notion of accountability and evaluation, and the narrow and harmful view that colleges “should operate more like private firms than public institutions, with an onus on income generation.”42 In addition, any movement for reforming colleges and universities must both speak out against modes of governance that have reduced faculty to the status of part-​time employees and join the fight to take back the governing of the university from the new class of managers and bureaucrats that now outnumber faculty, at least in the United States but less so in Canada.

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Regarding the discourse of critical pedagogy and the ethical imagination, I have argued that informed citizens are crucial to a democracy and that the university must play a vital role in creating the formative cultures that make such citizens possible. In part, this would mean creating intellectual spaces free of coercion and censorship and open to multiple sources of knowledge in the pursuit of truth, the development of critical pedagogies that inform, energize, inspire, empower, and promote critical exchanges and dialogue. These should be spaces in which education focuses on “dispositions and qualities, on human flourishing, and on the fulfilment of individual potential.”43 Education and critical pedagogy in the more critical sense aims to overcome the moral blindness and undermining of the social and ethical imagination that accompanies those deadening repressive pedagogies rooted in utterly instrumental approaches to teaching and learning in formal schooling and the toxic propaganda at work in dominant cultural apparatuses. These are educational zones that accelerate the deadening of the mind, social responsibility, and the ability to imagine a future different from the present. Central to such a task is the need to acknowledge pedagogy as fundamental not only to any discourse about academic freedom, but it must also be understood as the most crucial referent we have for understanding politics and defending the university as one of the very few remaining democratic public spheres in the United States today. At the level of public and higher education, conservative notions of teaching and learning, especially those touted by the Trump administration, constitute a kind of anti-​pedagogy, substituting conformity for dialogue and ideological inflexibility for critical engagement. Such attacks should be named for what they are—​an affirmation of thoughtlessness, and an antidote to the difficult process of self and social criticism, and an effort to put in place a formative culture conducive to an emerging authoritarianism.44 But the current assault on the academy is an attack not only on the conditions that make critical pedagogy possible but also on what it might mean to raise questions about the real problems facing a democracy under siege. The current forces attacking higher education, which include the increasing role of adjunct faculty, the instrumentalization of knowledge, the rise of an expanding national security state, the hijacking of the university by corporate interests, and the increasing attempts by right-​wing extremists to turn education into job training or into an extended exercise in patriotic xenophobia, all have a long history in the United States and have gained in momentum since the late 1970s. What is distinct under the fog of authoritarianism that has been put in place by the Trump administration is that there are no apologies for undermining education as the practice of freedom and a crucial sphere for creating critically educated citizens.Trump, Betsy DeVos, and the rest of his wrecking crew will do everything they can to undermine the idea of the university as a place to think, to engage knowledge critically, learn how to make informed judgments, assume responsibility for what it means to know something, and to understand the consequences of such knowledge for the larger world. While Hannah Arendt did not address directly the importance of critical pedagogy, she understood that in its absence

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monstrous deeds often committed on a gigantic scale had less to do with some grand notion of evil than with a “quite authentic inability to think.”45 Crassness, systemic derangement, corruption, and an unapologetic endorsement of civic illiteracy and a disdain for the truth now drive the educational apparatuses that make up the wider culture in America. Electronic guerrilla warfare, a market-​ driven social media, and a debased mainstream conservative media coupled with the transformation of politics into an extension of war now provide the driving pedagogical foundation to shape how people learn, think, and act. For Arendt, the absence of the faculty of thinking, making critical judgments, and assuming responsibility both constituted the conditions for stupidity, and for a type of evil capable of monstrous crimes—surely the precondition for a politics exemplified in old and new forms of totalitarianism. The current right-​wing assault on higher education is in reality an attack on the most rudimentary conditions of democratic politics. Democracy cannot work if citizens are not autonomous, self-​judging, curious, reflective, and independent—​qualities that are indispensable for students if they are going to make vital judgments and choices about participating in and shaping decisions that affect everyday life, institutional reform, and governmental policy. This means that in the age of Trump, we need to reassert pedagogy as the cornerstone of democracy by demonstrating in our classrooms and also to the broader public that it provides the very foundation for students to learn not merely how to be governed but also how to be capable of real leadership. In many parts of the world, democracy is under siege and part of that battle reflects a pedagogical attempt on the part of anti-​democratic regimes to create a new type of collective agent, toxic modes of identification, and a poisonous vision of politics in which the false promises of security and cultural nationalism override the promises of a substantive democracy. Illiberalism in the United States has taken a dangerous turn and is now being promoted at the highest levels of government. Vaclav Havel once argued that politics followed culture. That is, politics is inextricably connected to how individual and social consciousness are shaped, experiences are narrated, and investments organized so as to speak convincingly to people’s needs, anxieties, and hopes. The mix of power, culture, and everyday life imposes new demands on those of us willing to make education and pedagogy central to politics itself if we want to breathe life and hope into a future that refuses the authoritarian impulses of the present. One productive sign of the times is that women, scientists, and young people are marching and organizing against the impending violence and fascism of the Trump administration. Many individuals and groups are beginning to wage a brave fight against oppressive neoliberal modes of governance. Indeed, all across the globe, there are signs of hope. Young people are protesting the issue of student debt; environmentalists are aggressively fighting corporate interests; teachers in a variety of countries extending from Canada and Brazil to the United States are waging a brave fight against oppressive neoliberal modes of governance; young people are bravely resisting and exposing state violence in all of its forms.

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Prison abolitionists are making their voices heard, and new groups are mobilizing to fight the rise of white nationalism, militarism, and the threat of a nuclear war. Young people are reinventing new forms of collective resistance against gun violence. What all of these groups recognize is that to be voiceless is to be powerless. They are striking, organizing, and protesting to make their voices heard, refusing to allow their grievances to go unheard and ignored by the financial elite. A new militancy can be seen in educators such as the striking teachers in West Virginia who have demonstrated the power of the wildcat strike as a mode of organized collective struggle against criminogenic corporate-​based ideologies, pedagogies, or repression, and ruthless labor practices.46 What is crucial about this strike and its success is that it was not waged simply to improve paltry salaries and abominable labor conditions, but to also make clear that public schools are not for sale and that they represent one of the most crucial public spheres in a democracy. But the most promising act of resistance on the horizon is the level and scope of protest aimed at gun violence which is being mobilized by young people since the Parkland massacre. Not only have they exposed the toxic violence produced by the NRA but also the cowardice of those politicians, such as Senator Marco Rubio, who sell their conscience and dignity for blood money by putting profits from gun sales ahead of children’s lives. Gun deaths among children are rising in the United States as evident by the fact that “3,128 children and teens were killed with a gun in 2016, enough to fill 156 classrooms of 20 children.”47 Yet it is young people, rather than adults, who are arousing the conscience of the nation with their demonstrations, interviews, and March for Our Lives demonstrations, in which hundreds of thousands of students protested throughout the United States and in 800 cities around the world, all of which was designed to end “the plague of gun violence.”48 State and corporate sanctioned violence comes in many forms and hopefully the issues raised by the students marching against gun violence across the United Sates will begin to expand the public’s political horizons by addressing how violence functions as a mode of domestic terrorism in a range of sites. Among others, these include: schools modeled after prisons; streets and poor cities treated as war zones by many police departments; airports that have become centers of repressive surveillance practices against immigrants; shopping centers that exclude poor minorities; debtor prisons designed to punish the impoverished; detention centers for young people whose range of behaviors is being increasingly criminalized; a carceral state that has used the prison as containing centers for racial minorities; and in a range of deadly policies that have turned civil society into a breeding ground for everyday and organized violence. The retreat to nationalism, state sanctioned racism, the expansion of the military-​ industrial complex, and accelerating police violence and the growth of the carceral state, particularly with respect to the war on undocumented immigrants constitute a short list of issues to be addressed by a broad-​based movement of collective resistance. Hopefully, such issues will be eventually in the crosshairs of the

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protesters being mobilized by young people who refuse to put up with the reign of domestic terrorism and gun violence at work in their schools and enabled by the Trump administration. At a time when people’s lives are more precarious, hope for a better society seems to be in short supply. The Parkland youth protesters have put new energy into creating a new vision of hope, or what Ronald Aronson, calls “social hope.” That is, a belief in the ability to act collectively to make a better world and act “not blindly but with a sense of possibility.”49 They have seized upon a vision of social justice rooted in the belief that they can not only challenge oppression but also can change the fundamental nature of an oppressive social order. Education for them becomes a way of translating personal issues into larger systemic concerns, changing the way people see things, and investing in a variety of modes of communication in order to use elements of belief and persuasion as appropriate weapons of struggle. They are talking back, writing, marching, and thinking outside of the boundaries of the deadening political horizons preached by established politicians and the mainstream media. They are also using the new digital technologies and the social media in order to educate a nation about the necessity of collective struggle and a shared militancy based on the need to both change public consciousness and to inspire people to act. What these young people have made clear is that education is central to such a struggle and that it provides the foundation for turning momentary protests into broad-​based movements, which cannot come fast enough in the age of Trump with its fascist investment in legitimized and organized violence.

Notes 1 Creston Davis, “The Time of the Intellectual-​ Activists Has Come,” Truthout (November 4, 2017). Online:  www.truth-​out.org/​opinion/​item/​42472-​the-timeof-​the-​intellectual-​activists-​has-​come. 2 Mort Rosenblum,“The Loon Ranger;All the Fits That Are News to Print,” Reader Supported News (March 16, 2018). Online: www.amazon.com/​Fascism-​Today-​What-​How-​End/​dp/​ 1849352941/​ref=sr_​1_​1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521399237&sr=1-​1&keywords=fas cism+today+what+it+is+and+how+to+end+it+by+shane+burley. 3 Ibid. 4 Daniel Politi, “Bannon: Let Them Call You Racist … Wear It as a Badge of Honor,” Slate (March 10, 2018). Online: https://​slate.com/​news-​and-​politics/​2018/​03/​steve-​ bannon-​let-​them-​call-​you-​racist-​wear-​it-​as-​a-​badge-​of-​honor.html. 5 See US Federal code at www.law.cornell.edu/​uscode/​text/​18/​2331. 6 Chris Hayes, “What ‘Law and Order’ Means to Trump,” New York Times (March 17, 2018). Online:  www.nytimes.com/​2018/​03/​17/​opinion/​sunday/​chris-​hayes-​trump-​ law-​order.html. 7 Ibid. 8 Rosie Gray, “Trump Defends White-​Nationalist Protesters:  ‘Some Very Fine People on Both Sides’,” The Atlantic (August 15, 2017). Online:  www.theatlantic.com/​politics/​archive/​2017/​08/​trump-​defends-​white-​nationalist-​protesters-​some-​very-​fine-​ people-​on-​both-​sides/​537012/​.

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9 Pierre Bourdieu and Gunter Grass, “The ‘Progressive’ Restoration: A Franco-​German Dialogue,” New Left Review 14 (March–​April, 2002), p. 2. 10 Andrew Sullivan, “Can Donald Trump Be Impeached?” New  York Times (March 12, 2018). Online:  www.nytimes.com/​2018/​03/​12/​books/​review/​impeachment-​cass-​ sunstein-​can-​it-​happen-​here.html. 11 Adam Gopnik,“Orwell’s ‘1984’ and Trump’s America,” The New Yorker (January 27, 2017). Online: www.newyorker.com/​news/​daily-​comment/​orwells-​1984-and-trumps-​america. 12 Julia Glum, “Some Republicans Still Think Obama Was Born in Kenya as Trump Resurrects Birther Conspiracy Theory,” Newsweek (December 11, 2017). Online: www. newsweek.com/​trump-​birther-​obama-​poll-​republicans-​kenya-​744195. 13 Kristen Ellingboe and Ryan Koronowski, “Most Americans Disagree with Their Congressional Representative on Climate Change,” Thinkprogress (March 8, 2016). Online: http://​thinkprogress.org/​climate/​2016/​03/​08/​3757435/​climate-​denier-​ caucus-​114th-​new-​research/​. 14 Tom Nichols, “America’s Cult of Ignorance,” The Daily Beast (April 1, 2017). Online: www.thedailybeast.com/​americas-​cult-​of-​ignorance. 15 Byung-​Chul Han, In the Swarm: Digital Prospects, tr. Erik Butler (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017). 16 Brad Evans and Henry A. Giroux, Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of the Spectacle (San Francisco: City Lights, 2016). 17 Ulrich Beck, Twenty Observations on a World in Turmoil (London:  Polity Press, 2010), especially pp. 53–​59. 18 Noam Chomsky, “The Death of American Universities,” Reader Supported News (March 30, 2015). Online:  http://​readersupportednews.org/​opinion2/​277-​75/​ 29348-​the-​death-​of-​american-​universities. 19 Jedediah Purdy, “Ayn Rand Comes to U.N.C.,” The New  Yorker (March 19, 2015). Online:  www.newyorker.com/​news/​news-​desk/​new-​politics-​at-​the-​university-ofnorth-​carolina. 20 Colleen Flaherty, “Old Criticisms, New Threats,” Inside Higher Ed (June 26, 2017). Online:  www.insidehighered.com/​news/​2017/​06/​26/​professors-are-​often-politicallightning-​rods-​now-​are-​facing-​new-​threats-​over-​their. 21 Mark Ensalaco, Chile under Pinochet:  Recovering the Truth (Philadelphia:  University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999). 22 Jedediah Purdy, “Ayn Rand Comes to U.N.C…” 23 Chris Hedges, “The War on Language,” TruthDig (September 28, 2009). Online: www. truthdig.com/​report/​item/​20090928_​the_​war_​on_​language/​. 24 Nicole Aschoff, “The Smartphone Society,” Jacobin Magazine, Issue 17 (Spring, 2015). Online: www.jacobinmag.com/​2015/​03/​smartphone-​usage-​technology-​aschoff/​. 25 Tessa Stuart, “Watch Trump Brag about Uneducated Voters, ‘The Hispanics’,” Rolling Stone (February 24, 2016). Online:  www.rollingstone.com/​politics/​news/​ watch-​trump-​brag-​about-​uneducated-​voters-​the-​hispanics-​20160224. 26 Chris Cillizza, “How Donald Trump Has Enabled the Outrageous ‘Crisis Actors’ Conspiracy in Florida,” CNN Politics (February 21, 2018). Online:  www.cnn.com/​ 2018/​02/​21/​politics/​crisis-​actors-​analysis/​index.html. 27 Frank Furedi, Culture of Fear Revisited (New York: Bloomsbury, 2006). 28 Robert W. McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (New York: Free Press, 2015); Thomas de Zengotita, Mediated: How the Media Shapes Our World and the Way We Live in It (New York: Bloomsbury, 2006). 29 Axel Honneth, Pathologies of Reason (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), p. 188.

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30 Kenneth J. Saltman, Scripted Bodies: Corporate Power, Smart Technologies, and the Undoing of Public Education (New  York:  Routledge, 2016); Diane Ravitch, Reign of Error (New York: Knopf, 2014); Henry A. Giroux, Education and the Crisis of Public Values (New York: Peter Lange, 2015). 31 Gary Olson and Lynn Worsham, “Staging the Politics of Difference: Homi Bhabha’s Critical Literacy,” Journal of Advanced Composition (1999), pp. 3–​35, at p. 25. 32 Immanuel Ness, Southern Insurgency:  The Coming of the Global Working Class (London: Pluto Press, 2015). 33 Natasha Singer, “The Silicon Valley Billionaires Remaking America’s Schools,” New York Times (June 6, 2017). Online: www.nytimes.com/​2017/​06/​06/​technology/​ tech-​billionaires-​education-​zuckerberg-​facebook-​hastings.html?_​r=0. 34 J.M. Coetzee, “JM Coetzee:  Universities Head for Extinction,” Mail & Guardian (November 1, 2013). Online:  http://​mg.co.za/​article/​2013-​11-​01​universities-​head-​for-​extinction. 35 Zygmunt Bauman and Leonidas Donskis, Moral Blindness:  The Loss of Sensitivity in Liquid Modernity (London: Polity, 2013), p. 196. 36 Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (London: Polity Press, 2001), p. 215. 37 John Brenkman, “Raymond Williams and Marxism,” in Christopher Prendergast, Ed. Cultural Materialism:  On Raymond Williams (Minneapolis:  University of Minnesota Press, 1995), p. 239. 38 Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “On Race and Voice: Challenges for Liberal Education in the 1990s,” Cultural Critique, No. 14 (Winter, 1989–​1990), p. 192. 39 John Palfrey, Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces:  Diversity and Free Expression in Education (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2017). 40 Terry Eagleton, The Idea of Culture (Malden, MA: Basil Blackwell, 2000), p. 22. 41 Barbara Falk, “Between Past and Future,” Eurozine (May 26, 2011). Online:  www. eurozine.com/​between-​past-​and-​future/​. 42 Richard Hill, “Against the Neoliberal University,” Arena Magazine, No. 140 (February, 2016), p. 13. 43 Jon Nixon, “Hannah Arendt: Thinking versus Evil,” Times Higher Education (February 26, 2015). Online:  www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/​features/​hannah-​arendt-​ thinking-​versus-​evil/​2018664.article?page=0%2C0. 44 These themes in Arendt’s work are explored in detail in Elizabeth Young-​Bruehl, Why Arendt Matters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). 45 Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, edited by Jerome Kohn (New York: Shocken, 2003), p. 159. 46 Benjamin Wallace-​Wells, “The New Old Politics of the West Virginia Teachers’ Strike,” The New  Yorker (March 2, 2018). Online:  www.newyorker.com/​news/​news-​desk/​ the-​new-​old-​politics-​of-​the-​west-​virginia-​teachers-​strike. 47 Marian Wright Edelman, “Marching for Our Children’s Lives and Nation’s Soul,” Child Watch Column:  Children’s Defense Fund (March 23, 2018). Online:  www. childrensdefense.org/​newsroom/​child-​watch-​columns/​child-​watch-​documents/​ MarchingForOurChildrensLives.html. 48 Jake Johnson, “Ahead of ‘March for Our Lives,’ Student Manifesto Outlines Steps to Eradicate ‘Plague of Gun Violence’,” Common Dreams (March 23, 2018). Online: www. commondreams.org/​news/​2018/​03/​23/​ahead-​march-​our-​lives-​student-​manifesto-​ outlines-​steps-​eradicate-​plague-​gun-​violence. 49 Ronald Aronson, We, Reviving Social Hope (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 2017), p. 33.

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4 THE WORRY WELL Teaching in These Ignominious Times Becky Thompson

Introduction In her important essay on multicultural education the literary critic Wahneema Lubiano writes, “The water is being poisoned right here at the epistemological well. It is important that we take a stand right here at the well.”1 At this epistemological well that we call the academy, we have our work cut out for us, recognizing that we need our minds, bodies and spirits to do this deep well work. In the last two decades we have witnessed rising attention among faculty to the consequences when we carry our minds to one place (to work, the classroom, our desks), our bodies to another (to the gym, yoga studio, our couch), our spirits to another (to the mountains, church, synagogue, mosque), our psychic healing to another (to the couch, the bed, vacations) and our activism to another (to prisons, borders, the streets). Students sense and feel these splits. They are trying to learn amid these splits. Embodied techniques of teaching that allow us to hold in our minds more complexity, paradox and community than previously thought possible requires new bridge work where contemplative practitioners, activists, trauma specialists and feminist teachers listen to each other. The late poet and activist June Jordan once said, “We are not all that is possible. None of us has ever really experienced justice. None of us have known enough tenderness.”2 Her words reveal a pedagogy of tenderness as essential as we create ways of teaching that move us beyond individualism, consumerism, white supremacy, patriarchy and militarism.3 But the truth is that in this time since he-​who-​will-​not-​be-​named has moved into the ever-​so-​white White House, there has been so much damage done on so many levels that asking for pedagogy that makes room for tenderness in the classroom is starting to feel fantastical. How do we even have time for contemplative practices (poetry, yoga, meditation, free writing, talking circles) when students

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and faculty are worried about if their schools will have to close down or merge due to insufficient funds? What planet am I on to think that planned and found rituals of inclusion that lean us toward justice, that rest on rigorous study, that treat the classroom as sacred space, have relevance when the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is picking up friends of mine in our neighborhood, when the travel ban is stopping any of the refugees from Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Iran and other countries whom I met and worked with in the last three years from coming to the United States? And yet, Audre Lorde has told us that “poetry is not a luxury” and Martín Espada named one of his important books, Poetry Like Bread—​both still suggesting that in time of war and rising fascism, there is still room for the mind, for the imagination, for tenderness.4 What I do know is that we are facing formidable challenges in and outside of the classroom that will require us to reach up to a higher, more expansive consciousness than we have known before.

Banishing Books One of my biggest worries has to do with what I am seeing as a reticence about reading deeply among students. Increasingly students seem to interpret my assigning whole books as a sign that I am elitist, classist and behind the times.They interpret my wanting them to be able to hold and read books as an indicator that I can’t see how hard they are working to earn enough money to stay in school. For a few years, as I began to witness this decision to not buy books, I would talk about the essential work of independent book stores and presses in keeping free speech and radical thought alive. I would talk about how I was taught by my mother (a single mother and school teacher who read voraciously and still does) that buying books was decadent. She knew that she didn’t have the luxury of buying books when the electric bill needed to be paid since we could get books in libraries. Which we did. But I  didn’t realize until my third year in graduate school that books were the tools of my trade, the basis of what C. Wright Mills calls “intellectual craftsmanship.”5 I needed books to do footnotes, to check citations at the eleventh hour of revisions. And I needed books for company. I can’t quite imagine my life without my tattered copy of This Bridge Called My Back and Home Girls.6 Where would I be without Joy Harjo’s A Map to the New World that I have managed to tuck into my bag on trips all over the globe.7 I found Marx’s 1844 manuscript in a library on a Friday evening as a first-​year college student, and then found myself by the professor who was teaching that course on Marx who let me know I  was onto something by wanting to read deeply.8 He was impressed I  was there, maybe not knowing that my perching between the book aisles was as much about Marx as it was about loneliness, a common calamity for many first-​year students. Discovering The Death of White Sociology and the Souls of Black Folk on a second basement floor of a library at Brandeis University in my first year of graduate school changed the trajectory

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of my learning forever.9 And my copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Miracle of Mindfulness.10 More than company. Books hold historical memories tied to place and time … like certain songs, precious and irreplaceable. In the past I have tried to tell students that assigning chapters of books and putting them on Moodle is a form of Marx’s alienated labor—​ dividing the process from the product. I  waitressed my way through college. That reality, I thought, earned me the right to say—​it is possible to buy books and still foot your own bill. I  recently found myself in the position of evaluating dozens of current syllabi for a department review. I  couldn’t believe how inaccessible they had become to the naked eye. There are links instead of titles. Many of the syllabi included no books. It was hard to tell what the courses were about; to find the course’s heart. Books at least have titles. And you can hold them, write in them, share them.You can go back through them and see the lines you highlighted before. A yellow highlighter is a yellow brick road to an earlier consciousness. It used to work—​my playing the class card, my talking about the history of independent bookstores and presses, my bringing in books and reading from them, pages falling out, little tiny writing on the margins, the beginning of many poems. It’s not working anymore. I feel forlorn, inept, unsure. Books have saved me. Amazon feels like this generation’s book burning. I am worried. Last semester, when I tried to give my pitch, I realized that almost no student was giving me eye contact. I then, somehow managed to ask, “How many of you are planning to buy the books for the course?” Only two of eighteen said yes. This is when I realized that not buying books is how students are drawing a line in the sand. They can’t control the often wicked decisions they face from the financial aid office. They can’t see their way out of the tens of thousands of dollars in debt they will face after college. They can’t control the shaky job market. But they can control the money they are spending now—​and it won’t be on books. While I might like to chalk up a refusal to read deeply to a president who I am not even sure reads cereal boxes, this issue predates his influence. The neoliberal shift in US educational policy and practice over the last several decades trains for jobs, not minds, bends toward tests, not thinking, pivots on sound bites and tweets. And the damage doesn’t stop with the implosion of the scholarly and independent book store market. It includes a hesitation of thinking deeply in general. Last week, for example, in my “Love Calls Us to the Things of this World: Leaders for Social Justice” class, we watched the eleven-​minute speech by Emma Gonzalez, one of the many Florida high school students speaking out eloquently in the face of gun madness. While most of the people in the class had seen her name and face on their newsfeed, only two had actually listened to any portion of her riveting talk. During our closing circle, students commented that they learned much by actually listening to her speech which they wouldn’t have done on their own. The most they felt they had time for was catching her name.

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How do we teach for critical consciousness when skimming the surface of information has become the national pastime? How can I  get on the students’ side on this issue? Many public high school teachers I know buy books for their students. Shall we do that just in case one or two or maybe more will hug the book to her chest, pass it on to her mother, send it to her brother in prison, carry it with her when she travels, seek it out in the middle of the night?

Fear of the Human Voice In the wee hours, worry is like a Mobius strip, keeping me awake, my obsessing about books coupled with the fallout of a related neoliberal shift, this one the increasing focus on teaching for the test and its close relative, teaching to the evaluation. You, the proverbial you, might think that once I had jumped through the several barbed hoops to secure tenure and promotions in academia I wouldn’t be tyrannized by evaluations. But I am, and increasingly so. Several of my long-​ standing friends who have tenure never look at their evaluations. It is too upsetting, too disorienting. But I work in a university that requires that I respond in depth to my evaluations annually. And my supervisors study and interpret these evaluations as well. I have come to dread January and May of each year. For more than two decades I  scored exceptionally high on evaluations. For the last two years, in one course, my evaluations plummeted. Some comments were helpful, a few were vicious. I began the next semester limping. I am questioning myself as never before. Students smell when we are not confident. Meanwhile research tells us that teaching that most closely approximates the approach of white men is most valued.11 That is still the model. The mythical norm still reigns. Tema Okun’s enormously helpful handout on the practices of white supremacy (perfectionism, worship of the written word, only one right way, individualism, the only progress is linear) helps us see the underlying logic of these standardized teaching evaluations.12 What I am being evaluated on has little to do with what I most care about—​helping to build multiracial communities where rigor and engagement are celebrated. What I have witnessed anecdotally is that since students have begun to complete the evaluations on-​line and independently (not in a classroom setting) there is a dramatic change in tone—​a lack of civility and kindness in students’ critiques that we are also seeing in public life. In anonymous spaces I am seeing an unleashing of anger and criticism. While I  have to admit that my individual feelings have been hurt, again I ask, what will it take to be on the students’ side? What is their anger and hostility teaching us? Might it be that students are so rarely listened to that critiques in anonymous spaces are one of the only places where they feel heard? How might this be connected to social media and internet culture where cyberbullying is a real threat? What I do know is that there is a culture of fear on college campuses now that is unprecedented. For a couple of decades, I have used a two-​page mid-​semester

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teaching evaluation that includes a section where students check reasons why they might not feel comfortable speaking in classes. They may check that they are the odd one out politically, are afraid of being made fun of if their first language is not English, are shy or are dealing with outside issues. While the reasons the students check for not speaking in class have remained fairly steady, what has changed is what they consider a “big” class. It used to be that a big class meant more than forty students. Then I watched it drop to thirty. And then twenty. And now, ten students is considered a big class—​big enough to not want to talk. Increasingly students request small groups as the primary set-​up for class discussions; that is, groups of three to four. Any bigger and the fear that being judged or saying something offensive means they won’t speak at all. Increasingly, I sit by myself, a not so glorified study hall monitor, as they talk in small groups, consulting google if they have a question they cannot answer. When I can get my increasingly fragile ego out of this sad equation, what I am seeing is that the fear of saying the wrong thing has become a stand-​in for much bigger fears—​not having enough money to raise children, the world running out of water. Increasingly, students, across race and class, tell me, they don’t see a future for themselves. At any moment, something might explode.Their world will vanish. With this fear, the messenger (that is me) often gets aimed at since the message is hard and real, implicating all of us in multiple ways. And students are aiming their anger and fears at each other. How they judge each other is mostly at the level of words: did you get the pronoun right, did you use the right language to describe someone’s disability? I find myself silently reciting one of Rumi’s famous lines as if it is a mantra: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field, I’ll meet you there.”13 Fully grown college students can get written out of a social group, on and off line, for a word offense. The fear of speaking that has entered the classroom privileges word over deed. Meanwhile 60 percent of the students at a (deliberately unnamed) college have a diagnosed mental health issue, upping the ante on how they might feel judged, ill-​prepared to protect themselves from intellectual and emotional demands. Teachers listen as politicians suggest that we carry guns, while many of us see that, increasingly, colleges are being asked to be therapeutic environments. Teaching with tenderness has never felt so urgent, and so hard.

Fear of Safe Touch Another concern of late involves the peculiar forms of backlash we are now witnessing in response to decades of feminist work to end sexual harassment. In the last few years, we have witnessed an escalation of women willing to come forward publicly and speak out about being harassed in the workplace. Famous men from multiple locations have been relieved of their jobs and previously protected reputations. #metoo organizing is energizing feminist organizing and inciting crucial conversations about what is required to create healthy work environments.

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It was thrilling to see activists and actresses standing together at the Golden Globe Awards, countering a historical pattern of women competing with each other, rather than seeing ourselves as comrades. As someone who has written and spoken openly as a sexual abuse survivor, who has served as a consultant for universities about how to stop sexual harassment, who stood up to a male mentor in graduate school who had been touching me inappropriately, who was horrified at the way Anita Hill was treated by the Senate Judiciary Committee and who has openly advocated for students who have been harassed, you would think I  would be thrilled by the #metoo movement. Clearly there should be cause for celebration as the United States appears to have gone over the tipping point from ignoring and placating harassment charges to taking charges quite seriously. But I don’t feel like celebrating. Actually, with each subsequent firing I have felt queasier, dreading the next media event.While feminist men friends who have been working for decades to end male violence have listened respectfully to my worries, I can tell they are flummoxed by my response. Some white feminists have looked at me curiously as well. But I am concerned that these fast track firings will come back to haunt us.Where is a consistent and thorough due process? Innocent until proven guilty? If wealthy, white men are not afforded due process, you know that men of color and working class men will not stand a chance. And while high profile owning class men have lost their jobs, we know that accusations leveled at men of color will lead to prosecutions and further mass incarceration. And what happened to truth and reconciliation? Doesn’t the instant banishment regarding sexual harassment parallel the basis of the punishment industry in the US? Demonize those labeled “bad apples” while refusing to see that the whole system is corrupt. An abolitionist perspective is one that does not throw the person out—​rather, we look at the system. Banishing a person is part of the problem that is based on a long history of demonizing people (Black people, Indigenous people, queer people, people with disabilities). Extralegal demonizing has a long history in the US.This is what is happening with the #metoo movement too. Meanwhile we have no real infrastructure for healing for the women who came forward in previous generations and were ignored and/​or demonized as they/​we watch this all happening now. In the frenzy to fire famous people, rape is being conflated with inappropriate fumbling at a work party; long-​term shaming and sexual taunting is being lumped in with sexist words. Amidst these conflations, and in our attempt to banish sexual harassment, we now run the risk of banishing the body as well. As we throw out abuse, we seem to also be throwing safe touch out with it. Closing circles that I have been doing for years in my classes are increasingly a site of anxiety and fear for a few students.14 Teachers are now afraid to close our doors, even when conversations desperately need privacy, quiet space. Teachers are afraid to hug students, to congratulate or console them.We are in scary times when safe touch and harassment have become one. A neighbor of mine whom I have known for twenty years, who has helped me bail out my basement when there has been flooding, has offered me ladders

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and saws, put his arm around me two weeks ago as we were discussing what to do about a gorgeous tree that had fallen during a storm. Two days later he came up to me, his face crushed, saying he owed me a big apology for hugging me without asking. I threw my arms around his big belly, and, almost successfully picked him up to twirl him around, assuring him that, of course, he could hug me, and no apologies needed. Is this fear of touch the latest version of the Protestant Ethic—​hyper individuality, no feeling, no emotion, no warmth? I find it belittling to equate safe touch with sexual harassment. It feels like an enactment of another form of white (female) fragility, and a particularly American one at that. In 2015–​2016 I spent a good deal of time standing on the shores of Lesbos, Greece waiting for rafts of families to come from Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq and other countries. Hugging was often our only common language, especially young children shivering from hypothermia, older people shaking uncontrollably, sometimes for hours while waiting in limbo as authorities decided next steps. And somehow, this fear of safe touch feels connected to the fear of reading deeply, talking openly, facing each other in person rather than through on-​line evaluations. All are surface ways of communicating that cut us off from each other, from beauty, from the art of being human. In her book on what it means to be human, Apache philosopher V.F. Cordova writes that people are basically herd animals. We need each other to keep warm. The skin, the largest organ in the body, is permeable. She writes, Human beings may have the broadest range of connections to the Universe of any being that exists.We might believe that our skin closes us off from the rest of the world, but it is in actuality a very permeable surface. Aside from absorbing the world through skin and lungs, we also see and hear and taste. Our senses connect us to the world.”15 Cordova explains that the white version of freedom is actually a lack of attachment.16 In an Indigenous worldview, freedom is found through knowing that we belong to each other.This freedom begins with recognizing what Cordova calls “bounded space,” a strong sense of identity and a deep understanding of belonging to a very specific space.17 Euro-​Americans lack this sense of bounded space. They feel they can come and go with no accountability. Cordova writes, “A people without a sense of boundaries for themselves can certainly not recognize the sense of boundaries of others.”18 From where I sit, confusing safe touch with sexual violation is yet another version of confusion about boundaries. An overreaction that comes from being lost in space, not grounded, an inevitable consequence of centuries of boundary violations at the level of the land, body and spirit. The reality that the #metoo movement was started by a black woman, Tarana Burke, has been twisted, appropriated by people seeking to protect white women in the public realm.19 Getting rid of high profile men feels akin to getting rid of a few KKK members while the government is now run by white supremacists.

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Something fishy is going on and I fear it will be at the expense of people of color, children, students, old people. I had a similar uneasy feeling for years as the mainstream gay and lesbian movement claimed the right to work in the military and gay marriage as the two most important priorities. I still can’t get behind the logic that military “service” is a true gain for gay people. As the late poet Pat Parker said in 1980, If the passage of the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment] means that I  am going to become an equal participant in the exploitation of the world; that I am going to bear arms against other Third World people who are fighting to reclaim what is rightfully theirs—​then I say Fuck the ERA.20 As for gay marriage, yes, I  am happy for individual couples who have been together for years who now can make decisions for each other when they are sick, or selling their house, or one of them needs a green card. But when it became clear that the Right was on board with gay marriage, we knew something was fishy there as well. As Fenton Johnson writes in his important article, “The Future of Queer,” “What we met and worked and marched and wrote and died for was radical transformation. What we settled for was marriage.”21 Meanwhile, “the backlash from the marriage victory has delayed indefinitely the passage of federal employment and housing protections for LGBT people—​protections long supported by a majority of voters.”22 There are frightening parallels between the work of hegemony to fold in the radical edges of the LBGT movement by privatizing love and the attempt to reduce patriarchy to abuse by individual men. We know that the myth of the Black rapist has long been predicated upon the notion of white women as fragile, as weak. Aren’t we seeing a twisted version of that now—​individual men removed from positions of power in order to bring honor back to individual (white) women as pay inequities remain deeply racialized and gendered, as people of color are still the last hired and first fired? And, we are witnessing the portrayal of the public sphere as the primary location of victimization for women even as the majority of mass shootings (four or more) still occur in domestic settings, perpetrated by men who kill their wives, partners and children. When students and I  watched the seventeen-​year-​old, queer Parkland student Emma Gonzalez take on the NRA, the current president and other state operations that uphold the militarization of society, as a class we talked about the reality that the majority of mass gun violence is “domestic”—​a euphemism for patriarchy in families. Children and women are the majority of those killed. The notion of mass gun violence as a public sphere occurrence distracts us from patriarchy and the reality that home is not safe for many children and women. Shootings in schools and churches are, in fact, an extension of patriarchy into vulnerable public spaces. During our class discussion the students talked about their fear that, at any moment, some man may come through the doors of their college

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and murder people indiscriminately. Where I teach in Boston is, in fact, less than a mile from where the Marathon bombings took place. Many students know people injured in the bombing. We also talked about the current demonization of people with mental health diagnoses, that we need to broadcast the important reality that people with diagnosed mental health issues are two times less likely to commit violent crime and ten times as likely to be a victim of violent crime. Framing the latest mass school shooting as an individual mental health issue misses the larger issue that white supremacy and patriarchy are themselves pathologies.23 In our discussion we needed to shift the dominant frame from individual pathology to a culture based on white supremacy, patriarchy, settler colonialism and militarism where violence is the norm. School shootings are logical extensions of these systems. Our work is to undo these systems of violence which won’t happen as long as we consider gun violence as solved by imprisoning individual shooters.24 The students were articulate in naming their fears, their anger about the rhetoric of individual mental health diagnosis, how the increasing militarization of society leaves them feeling less, not more safe. Students talked about having friends and family in Florida who knew people at the school. They talked about how the school shooting was not raised for discussion in any of their other classes, how they were left to figure it out on their own, as individuals. They talked about how impressed they were that Emma Gonzalez took to the microphone, that the arc of change will come from young people. And, at the end, we did a closing circle. And yes, we held hands. And many students held each others’ eyes longer than normal. June Jordan’s mantra, “We are the ones we are waiting for” was in the room that day. Thankfully.

“I Swim Upstream and Lay My Purple Eggs”25 In times of great stress—​and I think this one qualifies—​many of us find ourselves calling on political, spiritual and intellectual ancestors, historical memory a reality that may help us imagine a future that can sustain us. Of late, I have been realizing how much I miss Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, June Jordan and Howard Zinn; an intimacy of remembrance when I can’t sleep. Howard Zinn used to say that he made room for despair on alternate Tuesdays between 2:00 and 2:30 in the afternoon. Zinn was on the road working for social justice when he died, teaching us “You can’t stay neutral on a moving train.” Anzaldúa knew how to write through her body, how to weave her nepantla (liminal, shape shifting) self into her writing that made room for paradox, that held two seemingly opposite things in a single frame.26 Such a skill and way of being are especially useful now, to encourage rigor and excellence even as key politicians are competing for who can sound the dumbest. A skill, to keep our hearts and breathing open even as Agent Orange is attempting to shrink wrap the US in carcinogenic borders, building walls on borders that were criminally created in the first place.

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I miss Howard Zinn and Gloria Anzaldúa. And I  miss June Jordan. In All Call: Political Essays, the late poet and activist opens her essay “Many Rivers to Cross” with “when my mother tried to kill herself I was looking for a job.”27 In the essay Jordan refuses to leave her body, her feelings, her outrage, her principles out of her writing. She ends her essay with a scene where her father runs to get her in an early morning, unsure if his wife, her mother, was dead or alive. As Jordan realizes that, in fact, her mother was dead she vowed, on the spot, to commit herself to knowing the difference, between dead and alive, for the duration. Audre Lorde’s “Apartheid USA” seems equally relevant right now, as does her biomythography, as I am asking myself, in this early morning light, what myths, what stories do we need now?28 Myths that can help us stand, sit, rise with our spines intact. Myths, that teach us how color and scents and breath bleed into/​become each other. I am reminded of a myth about a people who had to go down into the underworld to realize that the sun is all benevolence. Witnessing an eclipse wasn’t enough to convince them. Walking for miles on a sunny beach couldn’t do it. They had to travel deep into the underworld, taking nothing with them, not even their cell phones. They were there for a long time before they could come up again, through an eye in the world. Upon resurfacing they recognized that ants and beetles had been able to stay on the earth’s surface even as humans had to go down, away from the sun and moon.This reality was theirs to study, these creatures they used to kill with abandon. It feels as if we have been exiled into the underworld of late, not yet able to grasp the lesson that without the planet, there will be no people. It appears that ants and beetles may be smarter than those currently running the government and those of us so much in shock that we haven’t yet taken to the streets. It is no surprise that young people are leading the way. There were reasons that Ella Baker and others named SNCC, the premier organization of the Civil Rights Movement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, emphasis on student, emphasis on youth. The heart of the anti-​apartheid movement in South Africa was young people. Chris Hani joined the ANC Youth League when he was fifteen years old, even though organizing in schools under apartheid was illegal. At twenty-​two, Steven Biko was a leading figure in the South African Students’ Organization. At twenty-​one years old Fred Hampton was the Deputy Chairman of the Black Panther Party before he was murdered by the Chicago police. First Nations (Mi’kmaq) activist Anna Mae Aquash was twenty-​seven years old when she participated in the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties and occupied the Department of the Interior in DC. Patrisse Khan-​Cullors was a teenager when she started organizing to stop mass incarceration and police brutality, working with her queer friends in high school and with the Strategy Center in Los Angeles.29 This semester my social justice syllabus includes youth and elders: Thich Nhat Hanh, Madonna Thunder Hawk, Herbie Hancock, Alice Walker, Sayu Bhojwani, revolutionary mothers and Black Lives Matter activists.30 The names the students added to the syllabus include:  Nina Simone; Maya Angelou; Rosa Parks; Gloria

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Anzaldúa; and Angela Davis. Last year their choices included Malala Yousafzai, Marsha P. Johnson, Lady Gaga, Malcolm X and Wilma Mankiller. Students teach me that the heart and the sun are a similar shape. Both are burning, both offer benevolence. There is another myth that seems relevant to the times we are surviving. It is about a worried well. People visited the well. They thought they saw faces at the bottom. But were not sure if that was the bottom. They heard laughing. And crying. Thought it might be children. Maybe birds. Someone got chosen, a man with spindly legs and a flexible core to be lowered into the well, its walls like ribbons, waving their shape deep into the earth. The spindly man saw hieroglyphics on walls. Some were washed away. Some still vibrated color. Cell phones were embedded into the wall, shining like mirrors, holding their charge. A red-​whiskered Bul Bul made circles around the dangling explorer. Purple the color of eggplant lined the walls between each civilization’s offerings. Bloodshed markings. Love making scenes danced into each other. At the bottom of the well, centuries later—​or was it moments?—​worry the scent of the sand, energy the man’s hope, a magpie insisted that the man hoist his way back up, touching each layer of knowing with his hands, braille in his fingers. She insisted he go back up, knowing, somehow, more than when he descended. Somehow. To learn to sense and honor fear. To see eyes. To notice the difference between the Garden of the Gods and the Berlin Wall. One, all beauty. The other, to take down. Right now, so much seems upside down. Two-​year-​old toddlers are being fed sleeping pills at a day care center as the opioid addiction continues to wreak havoc on predominantly white communities as communities of color have been fighting the influx of drugs into their neighborhoods for decades. Fracking continues to be authorized by the government and tax payers even as lung cancer continues to be a leading cause of early death. Communities most in need of praise and resources for their years of courage and ingenuity—​Ferguson, Aquadilla, Tao Baja and other cities and towns in Puerto Rico—​continue to be vilified. But, according to the myth of the worry well, there are moral agents along the way—​ bloodshed markings, love making scenes, magpies and Bul Bul birds—​that can guide us. Students teach me that, in times of great stress, it helps to reach for lineage. In a doctoral course in education we reach to jazz musicians who have long seen improvisation as the key to innovation, a new, authentic sound: Le Wray to Hendrix to McFerrin, to Black Eyed Peas. In “The Making and Unmaking of Social Theory” we reach for lineage that wraps us in fierce thought. From Marx to Du Bois to V.F. Cordova, to Jacqui Alexander to Audre Lorde. We ask that theory be living, breathing, regenerative, grounded in community, insistent on justice.31 In the poetry class, “Poetry and Prose: Twenty-​First Voices of Conscience” we reach for lineage: June Jordan to Christine Dominique to Evie Shockley, to Sara Abou Rashed. We reach for lineage among poets in exile, carving images while torn from the land they love: Naomi Shihab Nye, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Mohsen Emadi, Abbas Sheikhi. Lebanese American Ruth Awad writes, “I carry

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these suitcases full of rain//​because I  can’t take my country./​If it’s a choice you want—​I’ve never known/​a world that wasn’t worth dying for.”32 Poetry informed by political conscience is a plea against historical amnesia and its twin, psychic inertia—​an antidote that reaches beyond despair to new action. Iranian poet Sholeh Wolpé teaches, “Why do they call us alien/​as if we come from other planets?//​I carry seeds in my mouth, plant tumeric, cardamom, and tiny/​aromatic cucumbers in this garden…. They will grow, I  know, against/​ these blackhorn walls. They are magic.”33 Whether physically imprisoned, barred from returning home or caught in limbo between arrogant nations, political poets know that “complacency is communicable/​like the common cold/​I swim upstream and lay my purple eggs.”34 Under the authoritative regime of he who will not be named, a pedagogy of tenderness offers us poems we can slip into our backpacks, new channels for learning and teaching that can catapult us toward justice. I train my ears for stories of resilience and survival. I reach for books. I look up in search of students’ eyes. I keep accepting and giving hugs. Taking to the streets keeps us alive, in these tender, ignominious times.

Notes 1 Waheema Lubiano, “Like Being Mugged by a Metaphor: Multiculturalism and State Narratives,” in Mapping Multiculturalism, edited by Avery Gordon and Chris Newfield (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2006), 64–​75, at p. 75. 2 Thanks to Mimi Wheatwind and Janice Gould for introducing me to the concept of tenderness that June Jordan introduced to them. Janice Gould, “Outside Language,” in Earthquake Weather (Tucson: University of Arizona, 1996), 13. 3 Becky Thompson, Teaching with Tenderness:  Toward an Embodied Practice (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2017). The author would like to thank Diane Harriford for decades of intellectual/​spiritual/​pedagogical companionship and George Yancy for your indomitable spirit. 4 Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (Freedom, CA:  Crossing Press, 1984); Martín Espada, Poetry Like Bread:  Poets of the Political Imagination from Curbstone Press (Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 2000). 5 C.W. Mills, The Sociological Imagination (New York: Oxford, 1959), 195–​226. 6 Barbara Smith, ed. Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (New York: Kitchen Table Women of Color Press, 1983); Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (New York: Kitchen Table Women of Color Press, 1983). 7 Joy Harjo, A Map to the Next World (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000). 8 Karl Marx, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (New York: International Publishers, 1964). 9 Joyce Ladner, ed. The Death of White Sociology (Philadelphia: Black Classics Press, 1998); W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Penguin, 1989). 10 Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness (Boston: Beacon, 1976). 11 Michael Messner (2000), “White Guy Habitus in the Classroom:  Challenging the Reproduction of Privilege.” Men and Masculinities, April, 457–​469; L.D. Reid (2010),

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“The Role of Perceived Race and Gender in the Evaluation of College Teaching on RateMyProfessors.Com.” Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 3(3), 137–​152. http://​ dx.doi.org/​10.1037/​a0019865. 12 For a copy of the White Supremacy Culture Guideline see: www.dismantlingracism. org. 13 Rumi, The Essential Rumi. Translated by Coleman Barks (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 36. 14 Closing circles were first taught to me by the dancer scholar Brenda Dixon Gottschild who had the courage to incorporate them at academic conferences to encourage academics to relate to each other first as human beings, not just as intellectuals. 15 Kathleen Dean Moore, Kurt Peters,Ted Jojola and Amber Lacy, eds. How It Is: The Native American Philosophy of V.F. Cordova (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007), 230. 16 Ibid., 197. 17 Ibid., 186–​200. 18 Ibid., 197. 19 In 2006 Tarana Burke was working at a camp where a young girl confided in her that her mother’s boyfriend was abusing her. Burke didn’t know how to respond, because the same thing had happened to her. She realized that what she wanted to say was “me too.” Her initiative was intended for survivors to come together and heal that was not restricted to the public sector. It began as an act of solidarity among everyday girls and women, including those hurt by family members. 20 Pat Parker, “Revolution:  It’s Not Neat or Pretty or Quick,” in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa (New York: Kitchen Table Women of Color Press, 1983), 240. 21 Fenton Johnson (2018), “The Future of Queer:  A Manifesto.” Harper’s Magazine, January, p.  28. Johnson explains, “proponents presented same-​sex marriage for what it was: a right-​wing initiative whose goal was to enable the Republican grandparents of Peoria to feel comfortable inviting their grandchild’s same-​sex lover to holiday dinners,” p. 29. 22 “The Future of Queer: A Manifesto,” 30. 23 E.A. Rigsby and M.T. Miller (2016, October 25). “Gun Violence:  America’s Unresearchable Epidemic.” Retrieved September 29, 2017, from https://​tcf.org/​ content/​commentary/​gun-​violence-​americas-​unresearchable-​epidemic/​. Cited in Stephanie Glick, “(Public Mass) Gun Violence, the US Government, and the Pathologization of ‘Others’:  A Comprehensive Overview,” p.  15, Qualifying Exams, University of British Columbia, February 1, 2018. 24 Stephanie Glick, Qualifying Exams, University of British Columbia, February 1, 2018. 25 Sholeh Wolpé,“The World Grows Blackthorn Walls,” in Making Mirrors: Writing/​Righting by Refugees, edited by Jehan Bseiso and Becky Thompson (Northampton:  Interlink Books), 97. 26 Gloria Anzaldúa, Light in the Dark/​Luz en lo Oscoro:  Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality, edited by AnaLouise Keating (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 2. 27 June Jordan, On Call: Political Essays (Boston: South End, 1985), 19. 28 Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light (Ithaca: Firebrand, 1988), 27–​38; Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (Boston: Persephone Press, 1982). 29 Patrisse Khan-​Cullors and Asha Bandela, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir (New York: St Martins, 2017). 30 Alexis Pauline Gumbs, China Martens and Mai’a Williams, eds. Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (Oakland: PM Press, 2016).

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31 Audra Simpson writes, “Theory is generated and regenerated continually through embodied practice and within each family, community and generation of people. Theory isn’t just an intellectual pursuit—​it is woven within kinetics, spiritual presence and emotion, it is contextual and relational. It is intimate and personal, with individuals holding the responsibilities for finding and generating meaning within their own lives,” p. 7.Audra Simpson (2014),“Land as Pedagogy: Nishnaabeg Intelligence and Rebellious Transformation.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society, 3(3), 1–​25. Cited in Stephanie Glick, “Moving from Contradictions to Non-​Contradictions:  Engaging an Ecology of Knowledges to Ally Public Mass Gun Violence and Co-​create Just Societies,” Qualifying Exams, University of British Columbia, February 1, 2018. 32 Ruth Awad, “My Father Is the Sea, the Field, the Stone,” in Making Mirrors: Writing/​ Righting by Refugees, edited by Jehan Bseiso and Becky Thompson (Northampton: Interlink Books), 39. 33 Sholeh Wolpé, “The World Grows Blackthorn Walls,” in Making Mirrors, 96–97. 34 Ibid., 97.

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5 TEACHING STUDENTS SYSTEMIC RACISM THEORY AND AUTOPATHY The Age of White Nationalism Kimberley Ducey and Joe R. Feagin

Introduction In the US and Canada white racism is a material, social, and ideological reality and is undeniably systemic. Each major institution, including education, plays a pivotal role in the unrelenting loop that is systemic racism. Despite this reality, many North Americans—​especially whites—​view racism as an individual issue, as something only outspoken bigots engage in. But racism is both individual and systemic. Getting students, particularly white students, to acknowledge this is the first step in educating for critical consciousness in this resurgent Age of White Nationalism, and it is one of the biggest challenges educators face at many educational levels. The task is complicated by the conventional adoption by educators of concepts like bigotry, intolerance, prejudice, stereotyping, and bigoted discrimination without attention to deeper-​lying systemic issues. Examining racism exclusively through such optics privileges individualistic analyses over systemic ones. Learning about racial oppression and the resulting unjust impoverishment of Americans of color, historically and contemporarily, as well as the unjust enrichments and privileges gained by whites, is critical to increasing the number of whites (and others) who will join organized antiracist efforts. As of now, this very important educational project is at an early stage. In advocating for a central focus on systemic racism theory in our classrooms, we begin this chapter by describing the work of systemic racism theorists, including a sketch of central analytical concepts and themes: systemic racism; the white racial frame; the pro-​white subframe; the anti-​others subframe; racial alexithymia; and counter-​framing.We contend that these sophisticated concepts are essential to raising critical consciousness among students in the contemporary age of white nationalist politicians (e.g., Donald Trump in the US).That is, what savvy educators need in their pedagogical tool kit are critical ideas like the white racial frame and the

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counter-​frame. We next move to a discussion of how systemic racism has been propagated by sweeping social-​reproduction mechanisms over centuries, more recently taking the form of Trumpism in the US case. We also address the emotional labor and perils of teaching white students about systemic racism. Our discussion includes tales of white male students who privilege individualistic analyses over systemic ones, illustrating ways in which the white racial frame and its subframes are deeply embedded in their psyches and how white students generally remain unaware or uncritical of the negative operations of white power and privilege. Strategies for critical pedagogy is the topic to which we then turn, including discussions of the University of Winnipeg’s Indigenization Strategy and its significance for US and Canadian higher education. We follow this with a discussion of innovative “Racism 101” strategies developed by antiracist educators to communicate to students the reality of these countries’ racialized histories. Key to our argument is that without meaningful instruction in the historical and contemporary reality of racial oppression, most white and some other students are more likely to resist a genuine liberty-​and-​ justice framing for their society. Researchers have found that whites’ familiarity with historical racism is related to their capacity to understand contemporary racism, while white guilt can play a constructive role in encouraging whites to take at least some action against white racism. Ultimately, we argue that an appreciation of the racialized history of people of color by whites can at least open the door for cross-​racial solidarity and to allow for the creation of what the African American philosopher George Yancy calls “wide-​awake dreamers.”1 Note that our ideas are strongly shaped by the critical-​racism Black tradition and similar traditions of Indigenous peoples and other people of color. We understand too that an antiracist theory cannot explain the entirety of societal oppression in the US and Canada. Undeniably, racism, colonialism, xenophobia, class-​structured capitalism, poor-​bashing, sexism, heterosexism, transphobia, ableism, and bureaucratic authoritarianism—​to name a few—​are significant elements in an intersecting network of oppressions internal to these North American societies.

Systemic Racism Theory Systemic Racism (White Racism) Feagin (the second author) has long expounded on the limits and limitations of relying on individualistic conceptions when undertaking studies of white racism. He and his colleagues have demonstrated well how systemic racism illuminate racial matters.2 Systemic racism theorists confront the structures and institutionalized operations of white racism and subsequently propose explanations for the persistence of large-​scale racial inequalities. Thus, systemic racism denotes well-​institutionalized patterns of white dominance and subordination of people of color in the existing US and Canadian racial orders. It includes exploitative and

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discriminatory practices by whites against people and communities of color; the extensive resources, privileges, and power discriminatorily attained by whites and enshrined in the white-​dominant racial hierarchy; the perpetuation of extensive racial inequalities vis-​à-​vis entrenched societal reproduction mechanisms; and the copious racial prejudices, stereotypes, images, ideologies, emotions, interpretations, and narratives that constitute the dominant white racial frame that rationalizes and implements racial oppression in everyday life. It is necessary to consider differences between single-​factor and systemic causes of racial oppression. For example, by virtue of a labyrinth of reciprocal institutional and systemic causes, white racism has produced unjust enrichment and unjust impoverishment for generations of white Americans and generations of people of color, respectively. Take, for example, the colossal and well-​institutionalized exploitation by colonial and US whites of Africans and African Americans over three-​and-​a-​half centuries of slavery and Jim Crow segregation. The negative effects of such historical injustices are often hidden from view under a mass of other contemporary social realities, including in the most reputable of institutions of higher education. In contrast, single-​factor causalities for racist framing or actions are usually easier to observe, such as occurred during a White House briefing on Pakistan between President Donald Trump and a Korean American intelligence analyst when Trump asked why she was not working on North Korean policy. Or, when Trump ridiculed Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), referring to her as “Pocahontas” during a meeting with Navajo World War II veterans and numerous times thereafter.3 Because systemic causation entails multiple triggers and is usually intergenerational, it is more difficult to observe than single-​factor causalities in incidents like these. Nonetheless, and perhaps especially in the Age of White Nationalism, communicating this essential lesson to students is one of our most important obligations as anti-​racism educators.

The Rationalizing White Racial Frame Since at least the seventeenth century, the white racial frame has thrived as a racial standpoint from which practically all whites, and to a lesser extent other individuals, routinely operate. It is central to the operation of systemic white racism. Historically, as today, much of the effort to craft and preserve this worldview has come from elite white men. This is expected, for they are central to that historical and contemporary racial frame—​especially its accent on white virtue, a word derived from the Latin vir, which means man or hero.4 Like a typical social frame—​with its customary development meant to enhance, display, and protect an object—​this all-​encompassing white worldview reinforces, brandishes, and defends white superiority.Within the window of the frame is a white-​ imposed landscape, which includes verbal-​cognitive features (racist stereotypes and prejudices); the integrating cognitive features (racist narratives and interpretations); racialized visual imagery and auditory features; racialized emotions; and tendencies

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toward racial discrimination. Inside the core of the frame are key subframes, with key elements collected by whites over centuries, including a pro-​white (virtuousness) subframe and numerous anti-​others subframes (unvirtuousness).

Racial Alexithymia Among the basic impediments that hinder most whites from embracing an alternative and authentic liberty-​and-​justice framing of society is their lack of empathy for people of color. Systemic racism involves racial alexithymia—​the learned inability of most whites to understand, or to want to understand, the lived experiences of people of color. Meaningful transformation is possible, however. It is not easy and typically involves at least three stages: sympathy; empathy; and autopathy. The preliminary stage, sympathy, is the most common but is limited. It customarily involves a readiness on the part of whites to set aside some racist stereotypes, images, and hostility in favor of a responsive, if mutable curiosity, regarding the negative experiences of racialized others. For example, in the aftermath of the 1960s civil rights movements, many US and Canadian whites reached this stage. Empathy is a higher stage of transformation, in that it necessitates a more advanced capacity to consistently cast off distancing stereotypes and other white-​ racist framing. It requires a conscious and continuous ability to see and feel some of the pain suffered by the racially oppressed. Autopathy, the most advanced of the stages, occurs only when a white person consciously puts themselves into the racist world of the oppressed, even if limitedly. At this juncture, not only do whites experience racist hostility from other whites but they also endure secondary racial pain, most typically when they become intimates of people of color (e.g., parents, partners, friends). As a consequence, they directly and regularly witness what it means to be a victim of white racism. White parents of children of color sometimes reveal the great autopathic pain they often endure as they confront the white discrimination faced by their children.5 In this Age of White Nationalism, a major challenge for educators is adopting effective antiracist strategies in order to create conditions wherein many more white students (and others) are willing and able to meet head-​on the veracity that is the everyday pain of systemic racism for people of color.

Counter-​Frames of People of Color While it is imperative to acknowledge that the legitimating white racial frame is central to systemic racism, it is equally important to understand the recurring resistance to this white worldview. Assertive counter-​frames, grounded in counter-​ system thinking, have been vital to the survival and resistance of African Americans, Indigenous Americans, and other people of color across many generations, and have included both advanced understandings of systemic white racism and passive and active strategies of everyday resistance to it.6

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Systemic racism theory is itself a countersystem perspective—​one that is critically opposed to the white racially framed concepts, theories, and methods at the center of much mainstream social science and other mainstream social analysis. This human-​liberation theory is much more attentive to the insights of people of color and to their ways of investigating racial matters, which mostly live on the margins of academia and the larger white-​dominated society and where prolific counter-​frames are necessarily and regularly developed.

Donald Trump: White Racial Framer (Not So Extraordinaire) Over centuries, a white European and white European American elite—​mostly composed of men—​has developed the dominant white racial frame to justify exploitation, enslavement, and other cruelties against people of color in the US, Canada, and across the globe. As the white elite stole more Indigenous land and enslaved mounting numbers of Africans and African Americans over the eighteenth century, white slaveholders, government leaders, and intellectuals openly rendered “Indians” and “Negroes” as biologically different “races” to “whites.” In Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), the leading US theorist of liberty and equality, Thomas Jefferson, was methodical in his negative framing of Black Americans, whom he regarded as racially inferior to supposedly superior whites. He also had very racist views of “savage Indians.” Jefferson was not unique, for most white US founders and most other whites in the US and Canada then operated out of a negative racial framing of Black and Indigenous Americans.7 In the centuries that followed, as people and communities of color resisted this framing and pursued a more just and democratic system, to one degree or another most whites have aggressively sought to acquire, extend, and maintain white power and privilege. This white quest continues today. It was unmistakably visible in the voting patterns of fearful whites during the 2016 US presidential election. Recently, Washington Post researchers published the results of a survey they conducted that focused on the white millennials who voted for Donald Trump. They concluded that strong feelings of “white vulnerability”—​ not of economic vulnerability—​constituted the key motivating factor behind the support of these younger whites, many of whom will be the country’s future top business and political leaders.8 There have been numerous other studies confirming that white voters’ support for Trump was strongly linked to racial resentment, defined by the Post researchers as “a moral feeling that blacks violate such traditional American values as individualism and self-​reliance.”9 In addition, controlling for factors like political ideology, political scientists have found that white voters’ racist and sexist views correlate much more with support for Trump than do their economic frustrations.10 Shortly before the 2016 presidential election, other researchers found that if whites who strongly identified as white were told that nonwhite groups will outnumber whites by 2042, they

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became more disposed to support Donald Trump.11 In these research studies, we see the dialectical fashion in which systemic racism operates: perceived threats to centuries-​old white power and privilege often lead to overt white resistance to racial change. Additionally, the US Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has coined the phrase the “Trump Effect” to describe the abrupt upsurge of racial bullying arising from the president’s hate speech—​another example of overt white resistance in the face of perceived threats to white power and privilege. In 2016, according to the National Bullying Prevention Center, Black students constituted roughly 25  percent of racial bullying victims, making them the group with the highest percentage of such reported incidents. Following the Trump election, SPLC published a report based on 10,000 teacher survey responses online. Two-​thirds of respondents described a rise in their students’ fears, primarily amongst minority groups, regarding their personal or family’s security.12

The Emotional Labor and Perils of Teaching about Systemic Racism When we teach or write about systemic racism, we have often observed white students’ and other white adults’ hostile reactions. By merely uttering the phrase white racism, educators threaten white power and privilege. Indeed, those teaching about systemic white racism should be prepared to deal with the substantial energy and emotional labor that is required, inside and outside the classroom. To compel whites to engage in a critical way with accurate material on racial oppression, which most have never had to reflect on, typically leads to major difficulties. Most whites come to the classroom with a conventional and uncritical view of racist societal realties, a view drilled into their heads by parents, peers, the mainstream and social media, and other transmitters of the white racial frame.This white-​framed “common sense” is usually unencumbered with a critical bent, a well-​learned viewpoint that inclines white students to constantly challenge even the most data-​filled and substantiated analyses of society’s racial inequality and centuries-​old oppression. Many an educator finds their painstakingly documented arguments challenged by white students who think their homegrown “common sense” is equivalent in substance to social science evidence presented in detail. For this reason, we have found it is imperative to begin our classes with a forthright discussion of ground rules for class discussion and interpretations. These include getting students to shelve certain common-​sense assumptions, to understand that interactive educational settings are different from conventional teaching settings, and to develop a thoughtful view of what counts as substantial evidence for arguments about society. (For example, making clear that the latter do not include unsubstantiated views of white reactionary talk-​show hosts or politicians.)

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White Male Students’ Emotions The fashion in which threats to white male power and privilege lead to blatant racist expressions and conflict in educational settings is evidenced in 2016 email messages received by the first author after a lecture in which she read the aforementioned African American philosopher George Yancy’s poignant “Dear White America” New York Times opinion editorial on white racism.13 The signed emails came in the immediate aftermath of the US presidential election, from two Canadian twenty-​something white male undergraduates enrolled in an introductory sociology course. The two were seniors in their final year of studies, with the introductory course taken as an elective. Subject: White America Letter Hey I’ve been doing some reflecting about the dear white america letter and I have a few questions. As a white male, what am I supposed to do to not be racist or sexist? I fail to understand how and why this letter is appropriate as it creates an argument at which there is no discussion because any attempt to do so means that I  am “hiding.” The logic is demeaning and entrapping for white males. I can easily tell you about my many friends of different races and how I try to not objectify women. But again this would be (according to the letter) hiding. I am hurt that this letter exists because I feel that it promotes blaming of white males—​even tho it claims that its purpose is to bestow a “gift” unto me. Yet, after reading it I do not know what this gift is. I understand my privilege but just as you didn’t choose your gender or race, I didn’t choose mine. Everyday I treat my peers as just that peers. Nothing more or less, regardless of anything.14 Subject: Dear White America I found the letter “Dear White America” to be an interesting concept. In some senses I understand what Dr. Y is trying to say, but in other senses I find it troubling. While I agree that in many cases we are unaware of the impacts and perspectives we have, I disagree that merely by existing, white people are perpetuating racism. I myself am a person who treats all others equally and believe that everyone should have equal opportunity. In terms of the aspects of my life and society that I  have control over, I  do not perpetuate racism. I believe that while I may be a product of society that perpetuated racism etc. I am an active agent of change with my behaviour, however, there is only so much a singular person may do. While my social location may reflect white privilege, my attitude and approach to society seeks to right the wrongs of previous generations. It is frustrating to be labeled based on what I appear to be, rather than what I am. I understand the point he is attempting to make, however, I  will always disagree with blanket statements of groups of people.15

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Most conspicuous is the style and level of emotion in the white male messages (e.g., “I am hurt that this letter exists”; “It is frustrating to be labeled based on what I appear to be”). Both privilege their individualistic analyses over systemic ones. Also notable is that the professor, a white woman, benefits from the white speaker effect (i.e., antiracist discussion is taken more seriously when from such a white speaker), for these were the only negative messages she received in a class where the majority of the seventy students were white. In contrast,Yancy received hundreds of direct negative responses. He was frequently called dehumanizing names; his life was threatened. Even here, the students’ contempt is almost entirely reserved for Yancy. What is unmistakable too is how engrained the white racial frame is in the psyche of both students. If the emails are considered alongside the voluminous vile comments—​including death threats—​that Yancy has received for writing “Dear White America,” it becomes clear that many whites are unwilling or unable to have a genuine and courageous dialogue about white racism. They would rather avoid the conversation completely, or in the case of the students here, blame the messenger (Yancy), while also questioning the pedagogical choices of a white female professor. While the email messages are not extreme in their racist terminology, the racialized themes articulated there have long been voiced, often in less restrained language, by many elite and ordinary whites. Countless white students we have encountered through decades of teaching in the US and Canada have openly asserted a white racial framing of their societies in classroom discussions, in their written work, and in one-​on-​one conversations with us. This is true at all historically white universities. For example, like these students, the white Princeton undergraduate Tal Fortgang—​who became more well-​known for doing so—​made his resentment of anti-​racism education known. In 2014, just prior to the latest Age of White Nationalism, his opinion piece on white privilege published in a Princeton campus newspaper went viral. He censured those who asked him “to check his privilege”—​which, contrary to his asserted understanding, does actually mean being aware and critical of the subtle and covert negative operations of white male power and privilege. He argued that, “It’s not a matter of white or black, male or female or any other division which we seek, but a matter of the values we pass along, the legacy we leave, that perpetuates ‘privilege.’ ”16 He drew on his difficult family history to argue, in an uninformed way, that anyone with proper values and a strong work ethic could overcome any societal barrier.17 Fortgang’s unconditional faith in this mythical narrative doubtlessly stemmed in part from the white-​controlled educational establishments that relentlessly press the all-​pervasive white racial frame (and male sexist frame) on young minds. He was seemingly shielded from a frank telling of US racial history, including the difficult struggles of Americans of color, such as Indigenous and African Americans who for centuries endured whites’ genocidal and enslavement actions, as well as continuing contemporary discrimination. In our view, white male and female students badly need a thorough education on the systemic realities of white oppression, both historical and contemporary.

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Where We Go from Here: Strategies for Educating for Critical Consciousness Indigenization of Canadian Universities: Significance for Higher Education Following the 2016 shooting death of Colten Boushie, of the Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada, and the 2018 decision by an all-​white jury, presided over by a white judge, to acquit the accused white man who shot him, Canadian Indigenous Studies scholar Robert Innes explained that Indigenous People and African Americans in the US face similar issues.18 “They see this case and it resonates with them. They’ve seen it so often in their own communities in dealing with the justice system in the United States.”19 Racial injustice ought to resonate with whites also, but too often does not. This white man had no cause to shoot Boushie, who was not threatening and was so intoxicated that he was likely passed out in the SUV he and his friends were driving. This group had been journeying home when they had a tire leak and stopped for help at the white man’s farm. In the aftermath of Boushie’s death and his killer’s acquittal, Universities Canada—​ an organization that represents the country’s institutions of higher learning—​ released a statement affirming its commitment to supporting the Indigenous community: We are fully committed to supporting our Indigenous students, faculty, staff and local communities now and in the weeks and months to come. As Canadian society grapples with the ongoing reality of racism and the challenges of reconciliation, Canada’s universities reaffirm our commitment to fostering a renewed relationship between Indigenous and non-​ Indigenous peoples in Canada, by examining and changing our own institutional approaches, policies, practices and structures … As public institutions of learning, discovery, and community service that deeply value dialogue, debate, and cross-​cultural exchange, Canada’s universities are committed to a leadership role in advancing reconciliation in Canada.20 Such sentiments are important, but what is needed for real change to occur are large-​scale educational efforts. In our view these endeavors must involve frank and extensive discussions that include the relevant concepts of systemic racism, racial alexithymia, the white racial frame, the pro-​white subframe, the anti-​others subframe, and counter-​framing. An example of a large-​ scale effort—​ teaching younger generations about Indigenous history—​is among the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s many calls for actions from 2008 to 2015 to redress the continuing impacts of Canada’s Indigenous “residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation.”21 In 2016 two Canadian universities took the call for Indigenization

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action seriously; Lakehead University and the University of Winnipeg developed concrete plans. Soon, other Canadian institutions also announced plans for Indigenization reforms.22 At the University of Winnipeg (UW) the Indigenous Course Requirement (ICR) made Indigenous learning part of the undergraduate degree requirements for all inbound students beginning in 2016. This is one part of the Indigenization strategy and is also central to the University’s fulfillment of its academic mission to engage with the society in which it is situated. According to UW’s website: The University … is located on Treaty One [between Indigenous people and the Canadian government] land in the heart of the Métis Nation [major Indigenous group].23 The treaties are agreements which benefit all people, and opened up these lands for settlement. The Métis played a pivotal role in bringing our province into confederation. We believe that as a post-​ secondary institution, therefore, we must provide an excellent academic experience which is also grounded in the territory in which it is located. This means providing our students with an understanding of the local history, cultures, contemporary issues, languages, and ways of knowing of local Indigenous peoples … The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has recommended that Indigenous content be taught to future educators, lawyers, health care professionals, social workers, newcomers, public sector employees, and everyone in the private sector. In short, in order for reconciliation with Indigenous peoples to be possible, everyone in Canada, including every student at The University of Winnipeg, should be helped to learn a baseline of knowledge about First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples.24 The UW administrator for Indigenous Affairs has explained that the ICR initiative was student-​led: [Students] shared this really profound story that touched me, about coming onto campus and going to one of their classes where one of their instructors had invited an [Indigenous] elder. [Then] watching their colleagues, their fellow students react, rolling their eyes and making jokes and totally discrediting the value of having an elder in one of the courses … They [took] it upon themselves that this has to change. The best way to fight racism is through education and awareness and a better relationship.25 Other key campus events that moved the students to action were racist graffiti targeting Indigenous people on campus and a prominent Canadian magazine article entitled “Welcome to Winnipeg: Where Canada’s Racism Problem Is at Its Worst.”26 UW students choose from courses in which at least 50 percent of course content is local Indigenous material, resulting from or grounded in an analysis of

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the cultures, languages, history, ways of knowing, or present-​day reality of the Indigenous peoples of North America. Faculty have many opportunities to meet with Indigenous Elders and community leaders so that their teaching is collaborative. In fact, UW’s Aboriginal Student Services Centre (ASSC) provides faculty, support staff, and students with the wisdom and knowledge of a council of Elders. In addition to traditional Indigenous teachings and cultural activities held in the ASSC, Elders provide guest lectures and counseling services. The office of the ASSC is even equipped with a unique ventilation system for smudging and ceremonial purposes, and any member of the UW community has access to sacred medicines for ceremonial use.27 ICR-​approved courses were in existence before the University’s Indigenization strategy, but have been “renewed and reinvigorated” as part of a “community effort” and “a broader social movement towards truth and reconciliation.”28 For example, non-​Indigenous faculty are now more attentive than previously to Indigenous content in their courses. Even a course titled, “Race, Ethnicity, and Aboriginal Relations,” for example, was taught for years with little attention to Indigenous issues. Currently, more than half the course is devoted to these matters. Other current ICR courses include a French course titled, “Decolonizing Voices:  Francophone Indigenous Literature,” and a history course titled, “Indigenous History since 1900:  Racism, Resistance, Renewal.” At last count, seventy-​seven courses were approved for the ICR. Still, white and other non-​Indigenous students frequently bring the centuries-​ old white racial frame into ICR classrooms, which is especially painful for Indigenous students and professors.While the ICR initiative is too new to warrant any extensive conclusions as to effectiveness, the research cited below suggests that such learning strategies can work to some degree, if done properly. A UW mixed-​ methods study with promising results was conducted following the first year of the ICR, which involved interviews with ten instructors, 164 survey instruments from students who had taken an ICR, and three focus groups with nineteen students. The researchers note that their study did not try: to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the ICR but to consult key stakeholders and to distill their comments into a set of stakeholder recommendations that reflected their experiences … We offer these experiences as a contribution to the UW’s ongoing dialogue on how best to move forward with the ICR and further our efforts to contribute to reconciliation, and to right relations, through education.29 Expectedly, in interviews with faculty, many expressed apprehension concerning backlash from students, especially white students. “Well, I wondered if there was going to be some backlash particularly from students in dominant social locations, white students in particular, and I’ve been happy to see that, for the most part, people are just super-​engaged, you know, and they want to learn and they don’t

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want to repeat the mistakes of the past,” an Indigenous professor told researchers. A  non-​Indigenous professor similarly explained that “there is far less pushback than expected. I’ve had one student … who was more or less openly grumbling about all of this, but that was it.”30 For ICR professors, a positive learning environment was largely contingent on the engagement by students, whereas antagonistic disengaged students triggered anxiety for both professors and their students. Positive reactions to the ICR from the faculty and staff included their communal learning with and from Indigenous people, and their new or renewed aspirations to work toward racial reconciliation for a more inclusive educational system and society. Challenges noted by faculty and staff included the pressure on Indigenous students to take the role of token authorities on the Indigenous experience, how to thoughtfully support students and faculty when talking about a traumatic history, and how to handle contentious class discussions. There was consensus among respondents that white racism and lack of knowledge about it does exist, and that racially relevant education and relationships are key to changing racial stereotypes. Recommendations for enhancements included providing students with more information about the ICR and the purpose behind it, additional support services for students and faculty, supplementary education for faculty, and debriefing mechanisms for all participants.31 Interestingly, 80 percent of the female student survey participants gave the ICR a positive rating compared to 45  percent of male respondents. The ICR satisfaction rate among Asian students was 93  percent positive, among Indigenous students 82 percent positive, and among white students 70 percent positive. The satisfaction rate of Black and Hispanic students was lower at 50 percent, likely in part because few ICR courses dealt with their racism issues.32 While 72 percent of students rated their ICR experience as more or less positive, there was “vehement and vitriolic opposition” from a minority.These students expressed frustration and anger at being “forced” to satisfy the ICR, especially whites who commented thus out of their white racial framing: Blame white people for everything. What I now feel is that we should have assimilated the Indigenous peoples by force. It was indigenous land. But not anymore.This land belongs to Canada and its rightful citizens. When [the professors] weren’t spewing social justice BS and actually focusing on the course material was when their teaching was most impactful. Yeah. Don’t force students to take this course. And if you are, do it free of cost.33 In addition, one Indigenous student described a “most vivid memory” that dealt with the white

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outrage leading up to [the ICR launch]. On three occasions I  saw nonaboriginal students arguing to aboriginal people nearby about how the requirement was “stupid” and “a waste of time.” On the first day, the people in my class seemed very angry that they had to take the course. I remember the room feeling very divided. I felt uncomfortable for the aboriginal students.34 After taking ICR courses, however, many non-​Indigenous students felt they had had a watershed experience and welcomed the chance to fill a gap in their education. As one white student explained, I think one of the most eye-​opening was, you know, when you’re taught it in school you always think we were the first ones here when in fact we weren’t; you know, the Europeans. I didn’t realize there was over eight million Indigenous people in North America when Columbus landed the boat. So it was really quite an eye opener, you know, and being an older student I had no knowledge.35

Some Educational Strategies for the United States Imagine if similar antiracist strategies were fully adopted at all historically white US colleges and universities, including at the elite schools such as Tal Fortgang’s alma mater Princeton. Imagine, for example, a statement such as the following from Princeton University’s faculty Senate: Princeton was funded by profits from the enslavement of African and African descended people and related industries. Their suffering has long benefitted all who study, teach, and research here. Black people played a pivotal role in bringing our institution into existence. We believe that as a post-​secondary institution, therefore, we must provide an excellent academic experience which is also grounded in the history in which it is located. This means providing our students with an understanding of that history and its links to contemporary systemic racism. This knowledge will help our students to understand the contributions Black people have made to our campus, to our country, and indeed to our world, and prepare them to engage in a society where reconciliation with African Americans is an important reality. The University Senate has recommended that African American content be taught in required courses for all our students—​America’s future educators, lawyers, business and political leaders, scientists, health care professionals, social workers, public and private sector employees, among others. In short, in order for white reconciliation with African Americans to be begin, everyone in the US—​especially white Americans—​and including every student at Princeton, should be helped to learn a baseline of knowledge

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about African American history and to discuss critically centuries of white racialized power and privilege. Also imagine such an announcement followed by serious implementing actions in many other US areas too, especially at the many campuses (South and North) where enslaved or Jim-​Crowed Blacks built and maintained college buildings and waited on white faculty and students. White students would thus be much less likely to be sheltered from a frank telling of US racial history, while their absolute faith in a mythical white-​imposed narrative of white superiority and virtuousness would be more likely to be firmly shaken. Indeed, in our view it is crucial that all students, especially whites, be meaningfully taught about the reality of systemic racism historically and contemporarily. For this to occur, many educational and related barriers must be overcome. These include the topmost administrators at white-​dominated institutions becoming truly committed to genuine liberty-​and-​justice ideals and realities. The persistence of elite whites, and disproportionately white men, at the top echelons of most university hierarchies has proved mostly an obstacle to serious anti-​racism education. With wide-​ranging consequences, they and very disproportionately white acolytes have long regulated the structures and operations of colleges and universities, including most curricula. Many of them are still unwilling and unable to accurately assess the country’s white-​racist past, let alone its white-​racist present. In addition to the persistence of elite whites at the pinnacle of most university hierarchies is the fact that of the 1.5 million full-​time instructional faculty in US degree-​granting postsecondary institutions, approximately 79 percent are white, 6 percent are Black, 4 percent are Latino, 9 percent are Asian or Pacific Islander, and less than 1 percent are American Indian, Alaska Native, or multiracial. Among full-​time professors, the bulk of them are white and male, while just one-​quarter are white women. And these are the more secure and powerful faculty members, those who would be most able to implement anti-​racism curriculum changes.36 Consider that recent research on Brown University, where students of color were greatly outnumbered by white students and where white faculty outnumbered faculty of color tenfold, provides insights into the impact of white faculty dominance on students of color. Students of color were found to be at a serious disadvantage as they labored to find supportive mentors who understood their difficult experiences in a mainly white learning environment. These students described difficulties during lectures, including white faculty members there dodging critical racial issues and demonstrating an obliviousness to their personal white racial framing. In contrast, the underrepresented faculty of color were described as empowering and uplifting to students of color.37 The lack of faculty of color is also a huge deficit for white students, who miss out on their critical standpoints. And despite this campus climate, a little over a decade prior to this research (in 2003), Brown was the first major higher education establishment to confront seriously its major connections to African American slavery. The university’s then-​president

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Ruth Simmons, the first African American president of an Ivy League institution, appointed a commission to examine the school’s white-​racist history. “What better way to teach our students about ethical conduct than to show ourselves to be open to the truth, and to tell the full story?” she explained.38 How do we reconcile this earlier ground-​breaking commission with the more recent findings at Brown showing clear racial hostility toward students of color? It is, in part, because such an investigation is merely a first step, as are public apologies, retitled buildings, multiracial memorials, the creation of more multiracial organizational spaces, and modest monetary reparations (e.g., scholarships). All are inadequate in and of themselves. What is needed for real social justice change to take root at Brown and other historically white educational institutions is a genuine commitment to end substantial elements of still-​systemic racism, including such commitments and implementing actions by higher education’s top officials (including trustees) and the mostly white legislators who control federal and state educational funding. Until then, as US historian Howard Zinn once put it: “One reason these [racial] atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth.”39 At all levels of the US educational system, from kindergarten to graduate schools, there are still severe problems in teaching about major aspects of systemic white racism. For example, the Southern Poverty Law Center recently published a report evaluating the educational standards for K-​12 grades in regard to teaching about the civil rights movement—​for all US states. They found that typical efforts on the part of mostly white legislators and educators in most states were to disregard, whitewash, or casually review for students the civil rights movement and its racist milieu. Only a minority of states required educators to give considerable attention to the movement; thirty states mandated nominal or no instruction.40 For educators and others interested in remedying the historical and contemporary ignorance of a great many Americans, especially white Americans, this report provides K-​12 (also college-​relevant) curriculum standards for teaching truthfully, elaborately, and thoroughly about the path-​breaking US civil rights movement and about civil rights in general.

Racism 101 Over numerous decades of teaching tens of thousands of students in the US and Canada, the authors have found that until whites have considerable instruction in the historical and contemporary reality of racial oppression, most will resist or recoil at the suggestion that systemic white racism is real. Most also aggressively resist the fact-​based argument that only radical change in the racial hierarchy of these countries, including toppling the centuries-​old white racial frame, will move us toward a genuine liberty-​and-​justice framing and reality. The UW’s ICR program is a good example of a step forward, one teaching critical consciousness.

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Alas, from kindergarten to college or graduate school, few people in the US or Canada have taken even a brief Racism 101 course. This serious educational omission has had momentous ill-​effects on whites’ and others’ understanding of the extensive racist history and contemporary racial realities that define both of these countries.41 By means of well-​constructed Racism 101 courses, students have the potential to become much more aware of the momentous implications of racist framing by whites and of counter-​framing by people of color. White students would have a real possibility to unlearn key aspects of the white racial frame, and at the same time gain great exposure to an operational and meaningful liberty-​and-​justice framing of society. Yet, engendering an honest acceptance of this alternative liberty-​and-​justice frame, and expanding antiracist action out of it, will ultimately necessitate a seriously protracted process—​years not just weeks or months. Such targeted and regular antiracist education in which many white individuals and their family/​friend networks move toward understanding how white racial privilege and power was unfairly created, how and why most whites regularly and aggressively act to maintain that racist reality in the current day, and what is required to seriously replace that reality. Some antiracist educators have developed innovative Racism 101 strategies to communicate to students the reality of US racialized history, such as getting them to trace their family’s history of developing and passing along assets and wealth generationally. One social science professor who has pioneered in this approach, Jennifer Mueller, has noted that: uncovering and reflecting on specific examples of unjust impoverishment and unjust enrichment in their personal family histories had a profound impact on many students. Many white students acknowledged being able to see and understand how racism and white privilege operated in their own lives in ways that they had not been able to before.42

Educating for Critical Consciousness: Reasons for Cautious Optimism Significant psychological research has revealed that whites’ familiarity with historical white racism is often related to their capacity to understand contemporary racism. Comparing the knowledge and perspectives of Black college students to those of white students, one US study concluded that whites “perceived less racism in both isolated incidents and systemic manifestations of racism” and did worse on measures of historical knowledge than the Black students.43 White students who acquire a more honest critical education about the racist history and contemporary racist realities of the US or Canada, and who actually come to truly value racial equality and social justice, will more likely transmit this wisdom to their children and grandchildren. Indeed, a recent social-​psychological study surveyed many white college students and their parents and concluded that

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students of parents more open to racial diversity were themselves more apt to appreciate diversity, reject the myth of a colorblind society, and partake in college diversity initiatives.44 In addition, social psychologists have discovered that diversity courses and film screenings can have modest, yet positive effects on white students’ awareness of white racism and white privilege, as well as on their willingness to participate in antiracist actions. For example, diminishing acceptance of the colorblind myth, and increases in white empathy and white guilt at posttest, were found among white college students (the experimental group) who viewed a brief film about contemporary white racism. The control group, who did not see the film, registered no such changes. Nevertheless, the overall effect was moderate because there were no major differences between the control group and experimental group on measures of tangible racist prejudices. A more sustained set of courses using such materials would likely be much more effective in bringing changes in this white racial framing.45 The efficacy of generating white racial guilt in white students has been fiercely debated. However, a few studies suggest some such guiltiness can have positive transformative effects on whites. Researchers found that the level of guilt among white college students concerning seemingly racist views predicted their commitment to prejudice-​reducing behavior. In one such study, white students who registered higher degrees of racial guilt were more likely to want to read prejudice-​reducing articles and to correct the wrongdoing that initially generated the guilt.46 In addition, another study of incoming white college students, who were moderately uninformed about racism, found that their immersion in diversity courses and activities augmented their sense of white racial guilt.The researchers conclude that diversity courses not only hasten “academic and social growth of white students but also … encourage positive changes in emotions about racial issues.”47 Moreover, a pioneering study at University of California campuses queried students as to how they obtained a better understanding of the views of students who differed from them in terms of race and ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, political opinions, and religious beliefs. Researchers found campus dialogs that enriched student knowledge “more commonly occurred … where the topic was race/​ethnicity and nationality—​student differences that were more apparent because of visual differences or accent.” The substantial racial and ethnic diversity in settings like University of California campuses may potentially, under appropriate conditions (e.g., continuing student equal-​status exchanges), have positive effects on what people learn and understand about those racially and ethnically different from themselves.48 Consider one final informative research project with broad policy implications. Researchers compared white college students who scored high on antiracist measures with students who did not score in the antiracist range. The more antiracist white students had more diversity experiences both when growing up and in their campus lives. Additionally, in the testing they showed more empathetic concern for societal racism issues and were more mindful of

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the concerns of students of color. The researchers suggested a practical implication: “White antiracist students could serve as discussion facilitators, teaching assistants, residence hall assistants, and paraprofessionals to raise other White students’ awareness of racial issues.”49 This suggestion brings to mind George Yancy’s book Backlash, which deals with how white Americans respond to frank discussions of racism, including the horrendous maltreatment he received after his “Dear White America” letter was published in the New York Times.50 There he suggests that as a country, we need to create small risk-​taking spaces where [people of color] can engage with white people who are ready to listen and who are willing to augment their capacities to listen and to tell the truth about their racism and to share it with others. In this way, white people can do the lion’s share of teaching other white people about racism. After all, racism is a white problem.51

Conclusion Administrators and faculty leaders at institutions of higher learning who seek to deal forcefully with systemic racism and its white racist frame need to know that without more aggressive antiracist efforts there will be little societal change and, as current Trumpism in the US indicates, often significant backtracking. And while educators still rely on weak individualistic concepts like prejudice, bias, and bigotry, there will be little societal change. What we really need are more comprehensive and accurate ideas like the white racial frame and the counter-​frame in order to encourage students to recognize the deeper and systemic reality that is white racism in the US and Canada. Owing to a number of recent social science studies cited above, we remain cautiously optimistic and encouraged by the impact of diverse racial experiences and of equal-​status contacts on the racial views of whites. We are also encouraged by the scale of recent organized efforts in the US and other countries by millions of people speaking out against resurgent white nationalism and its political implementers. As we see it, it is vitally important in the times in which we are living to maintain a sense of hope and possibility about change in systemic racism.

Notes 1 George Yancy, Look, A White! Essays on Whiteness (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2012), p. 136. 2 See, for example, Joe R. Feagin and Clairece B. Feagin, Discrimination American Style: Institutional Racism and Sexism (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978); Joe R. Feagin, Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression (New York: Routledge, 2006); Joe R. Feagin, The White Racial Frame, 2nd edn. (New York: Routledge, 2013); Sean Elias and

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Joe R. Feagin, Racial Theories in Social Science (New York: Routledge, 2016); and Joe R. Feagin and Kimberley Ducey, Racist America. Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations, 4th edn. (New York: Routledge, 2018). 3 David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick, “Donald Trump’s Racism: The Definitive List,” New  York Times, January 15, 2018, accessed July 2, 2018, www.nytimes.com/​ interactive/​2018/​01/​15/​opinion/​leonhardt-​trump-​racist.html. 4 Joe R. Feagin, The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-​Framing (New York: Routledge, 2013), p. 10. 5 See Sharon Rush, Loving across the Color Line (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000); Jane Lazarre, Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996). 6 Jane Lazarre, Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), p. 166. 7 Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. Frank Shuffelton (New York: Penguin Books, 1999 [1785]), especially Query 14. 8 Matthew Fowler, Vladimir E.  Medenica, and Cathy J.  Cohen, “Why 41 Percent of White Millennials Voted for Trump,” Washington Post, December 15, 2017, accessed July 26, 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​monkey-​cage/​wp/​2017/​12/​15/​racial-​ resentment-​is-​why-​41-​percent-​of-​white-​millennials-​voted-​for-​trump-​in-​2016/​ ?utm_​term=.3da2ef478557. 9 Ibid. 10 Brian Schaffner, Matthew MacWilliams, and Tatishe Nteta, “Explaining White Polarization in the 2016 Vote for President: The Sobering Role of Racism and Sexism” (presentation, Conference on The U.S. Elections of 2016: Domestic and International Aspects, IDC Herzliya Campus, January 8–​9, 2017). 11 Brenda Major,Alison Blodorn, and Gregory Major Blascovich,“The Threat of Increasing Diversity:  Why Many White Americans Support Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election,” Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, DOI:  10.1177/​1368430216677304 (2016), accessed July 26, 2018, https://​notpoliticallycorrect.me/​2016/​12/​24/​the-​ threat-​of-​increasing-​diversity-​why-​many-​white-​americans-​supported-​trump-​in-​the-​ 2016-​presidential-​election/​. 12 Nigel Roberts,“A Sincere Apology to Student for Racial Slur Is Unlikely as the ‘Trump Effect’ Takes Root,” NEWSONE, May 20, 2018, accessed June 27, 2017, https://​ newsone.com/​3800875/​racial-​bullying-​trump-​effect-​new-​jersey-​high-​school-​rower/​. 13 George Yancy,“Dear White America,” New York Times, December 24, 2015, accessed July 4, 2018, https://​opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/​2015/​12/​24/​dear-​white-​america/​. 14 Anonymous Student, email message to the first author, Fall 2016. The spelling and punctuation are per the original email. 15 Anonymous Student, email message to the first author, Fall 2016. The spelling and punctuation are per the original email. 16 Tal Fortgang, “Checking My Privilege:  Character on the Basis of Privilege,” The Princeton Tory, April 2, 2014, accessed June 27, 2017, http://​theprincetontory.com/​ main/​checking-​my-​privilege-​character-​as-​the-​basis-​of-​privilege/​. 17 Ibid.; Katie McDonough, “ ‘I’ll Never Apologize for My White Privilege’ Guy Is Basically Most of White America,” Salon, May 4, 2015, accessed June 27, 2018, www.salon.com/​ 2014/​05/​04/​ill_​never_​apologize_​for_​my_​white_​privilege_​guy_​is_​basically_​most_​ of_​white_​america/​; Eva Epker, “Should Tal Fortgang Be Checking His Privilege?” The Stanford Review, May 21, 2014, accessed June 27, 2018, http://​stanfordreview. org/​article/​should-​tal-​fortgang-​be-​checking-​his-​privilege/​; Violet Baudelaire, “To

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the Princeton Privileged Kid,” May 1, 2014, accessed June 27, 2018, GroupThink, http:// ​ g roupthink.jezebel.com/​ t o-​ t he-​ p rinceton- ​ p rivileged- ​ k id- ​ 1 570383740; Daniel Gastfriend, “Reflections on Privilege:  An Open Letter to Tal Fortgang,” Huffington Post, May 7, 2014, accessed June 27, 2018, www.huffingtonpost.com/​ daniel-​gastfriend/​open-​letter-​tal-​fortgang_​b_​5281169.html; Briana Payton, “Dear Privileged-​at-​Princeton:  You. Are. Privileged. And Meritocracy Is a Myth,” Time, May 6, 2014, accessed June 27, 2018, http://​time.com/​89482/​dear-​privileged-​at-​ princeton-​you-​are-​privileged-​and-​meritocracy-​is-​a-​myth/​; Michael D.  Phillips, “In Response to Tal Fortgang,” The Daily Princetonian, May 8, 2014, accessed June 27, 2018, http://​dailyprincetonian.com/​opinion/​2014/​05/​letter-​to-​the-​editor-​dear-​tal-​ fortgang/​; Rod Dreher, “Tal Fortgang, Yes!” The American Conservative, May 3, 2014, accessed June 27, 2018, www.theamericanconservative.com/​dreher/​tal-​fortgang-​yes/​; Mary Elizabeth Williams, “We Don’t Need Your Apology Princeton Kid,” Salon, May 5, 2014, accessed June 27, 2018, www.salon.com/​2014/​05/​05/​we_​dont_​need_​your_​ apology_​princeton_​kid/​. 18 Julian Brave NoiseCat, “I Am Colten Boushie. Canada Is the All-​White Jury That Acquitted His Killer,” The Guardian, February 28, 2018, accessed July 6, 2018, www. theguardian.com/​commentisfree/​2018/​feb/​28/​colten-​boushie-​canada-​all-​white-​ jury-​acquitted; Canadian Press, “A Look at the Evidence the Jury Considered in the Gerald Stanley Murder Trial,” The Star, February 13, 2018, accessed July 6, 2018, www. thestar.com/​news/​canada/​2018/​02/​13/​a-​look-​at-​the-​evidence-​the-​jury-​considered-​ in-​the-​gerald-​stanley-​murder-​trial.html; Jason Warick, “Colten Boushie Case a ‘Painful Reminder’ Racism Is Global, Says Daughter of Martin Luther King Jr.,” CBC News, February 16, 2018, accessed February 3, 2019, www.cbc.ca/​news/​canada/​saskatoon/​ colten-​boushie-​case-​a-​painful-​reminder-​racism-​is-​global-​says-​daughter-​of-​martin-​ luther-​king-​jr-​1.4537664. 19 Jason Warick, “Colten Boushie Case a ‘Painful Reminder’ Racism Is Global, Says Daughter of Martin Luther King Jr.,” CBC News, February 16, 2018, accessed June 27, 2018, www.cbc.ca/​news/​canada/​saskatoon/​colten-​boushie-​case-​a-​painful-​reminder-​ racism-​is-​global-​says-​daughter-​of-​martin-​luther-​king-​jr-​1.4537664. 20 Universities Canada, “Canada’s Universities Reaffirm Commitment to Supporting Indigenous Community,” February 12, 2018, accessed July 2, 2018, www.univcan.ca/​ media-​room/​media-​releases/​canadas-​universities-​reaffirm-​commitment-​supporting-​ indigenous-​community/​. 21 Tracy Bear and Chris Andersen, “Three Years Later, Is Canada Keeping Its Truth and Reconciliation Commission Promises?” Globe and Mail, April 21, 2017, accessed July 5, 2018, www.theglobeandmail.com/​opinion/​three-​years-​later-​is-​canada-​keeping-​its-​ truth-​and-​reconciliation-​commission-​promises/​article34790925/​. 22 CBC News Staff, “New Strategy Will See Indigenous Content in All of Sask. Polytechnic’s Courses,” CBC News, June 19, 2018, accessed July 5, 2018, www.cbc.ca/​ news/​canada/​saskatoon/​saskatchewan-​polytechnic-​indigenous-​strategy-​1.4712983; Jennifer Batten, “Indigenizing the Academy,” Gazette, March 15, 2018, accessed July 5, 2018, https://​gazette.mun.ca/​teaching-​and-​learning/​indigenization-​strategy/​; Mike Thorn, “Workshop Explores Indigenization in University Classrooms,” UToday, February 14, 2018, accessed July 5, 2018, www.ucalgary.ca/​utoday/​issue/​2018-​02-​14/​ workshop-​explores-​indigenization-​university-​classrooms. 23 Métis are people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry, and one of three recognized Indigenous peoples in Canada under the Constitution Act of 1982.

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24 University of Winnipeg Staff, “Background Indigenous UWinnipeg,” accessed June 27, 2018, www.uwinnipeg.ca/​indigenous/​indigenous-​course-​requirement/​background. html. 25 CBC Radio Staff, “Mandatory Learning: Indigenous Course Requirement Launched at Canadian University,” CBC Radio, September 9, 2016, accessed July 5, 2018, www.cbc.ca/​ r adio/ ​ u nreserved/ ​ e xploring- ​ t he- ​ l ink- ​ b etween- ​ e ducation- ​ a nd-​ reconciliation-​1.3742630/​mandatory-​learning-​indigenous-​course-​requirement-​ launched-​at-​canadian-​university-​1.3754056. 26 Helen Lepp Friesen, “We Are All Relations:  An Indigenous Course Requirement (ICR) as Part of a Good Way to Reconciliation,” accessed July 5, 2018, www. uwinnipeg.ca/​community-​engagement/​Research/​indigenous-​course-​requirement. html. 27 Aboriginal Student Services Centre (ASSC), “Elders in Residence,” The University of Winnipeg, accessed July 5, 2018, www.uwinnipeg.ca/​assc/​elders-​in-​residence.html. 28 Friesen, “We Are All Relations.” 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 National Center for Education Statistics, “Characteristics of Postsecondary Faculty,” May 2014, accessed June 27, 2018, https://​nces.ed.gov/​programs/​coe/​indicator_​ cuf.asp. 37 Emma Harris and Joseph Zappa, “Faculty Whiteness Complicates the Classroom,” The Brown Daily Herald, December 4, 2014, accessed June 26, 2018, www.browndailyherald. com/​2014/​12/​04/​faculty-​whiteness-​complicates-​classroom/​. 38 Stephen Smith and Kate Ellis, “Shackled Legacy: History Shows Slavery Helped Build Many U.S. Colleges and Universities,” accessed July 2, 2018, www.apmreports.org/​ story/​2017/​09/​04/​shackled-​legacy. 39 Howard Zinn, “Chapter 1: Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress,” History Is a Weapon, accessed July 3, 2018, www.historyisaweapon.com/​defcon1/​zinncol1.html. 40 Teaching Tolerance Project, Teaching the Movement:  The State Standards We Deserve (Montgomery, AL: Southern Poverty Law Center, 2012), p. 4. 41 See Feagin, The White Racial Frame, ­chapter 9. 42 Jennifer Mueller, personal communication, July 30, 2013. See Jennifer C.  Mueller, “Tracing Family, Teaching Race: Critical Race Pedagogy in the Millennial Sociology Classroom,” Teaching Sociology 41, no. 2 (2013): 172–​187; Jennifer C. Mueller and Joe R. Feagin, “Pulling Back the ‘Post-​Racial’ Curtain: Critical Pedagogical Lessons from Both Sides of the Desk,” in Teaching Race and Anti-​Racism in Contemporary America: Adding Context to Colorblindness, ed. Kristin Haltinner (New York: Springer, 2014), 11–​24. 43 Jessica Nelson, Glenn Adams, and Phia S. Salter, “The Marley Hypothesis: Denial of Racism Reflects Ignorance of History,” Psychological Sciences 24, no. 2 (2012): 213–​218, at p. 213. 44 Hsin-​ Ya Liao, Lisa B.  Spanierman, and Alicia J.  Harlow, “Do Parents Matter? Examination of White College Students’ Intergroup Experiences and Attitudes,” The Counseling Psychologist 45, no. 2 (2017): 193–​212.

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45 Jason R.  Soble, Lisa B.  Spanierman, and Hsin-​Ya Liao, “Effects of a Brief Video Intervention on White University Students’ Racial Attitudes,” Journal of Counseling Psychology 58, no.  1 (2011):  151 and 156. See Lisa B.  Spanierman, V.  Paul Poteat, Ying Fen Wang, and Euna Oh, “Psychosocial Costs of Racism to White Counselors: Predicting Various Dimensions of Multicultural Counseling Competence,” Journal of Counseling Psychology 55, no. 1 (2008): 75–​88. 46 David M. Amodio, Patricia G. Devine, and Eddie Harmon-​Jones, “A Dynamic Model of Guilt: Implications for Motivation and Self Regulation in the Context of Prejudice,” Psychological Science 18, no. 6 (June 2007): 524–​530. 47 Nathan R. Todd, Paul V. Poteat, and Lisa B. Spanierman,“Longitudinal Examination of the Psychological Costs of Racism across the College Experience,” Journal of Counseling Psychology 61, no. 4 (2011): 518. 48 University of California Staff, “Student Experience in the Research University,” University of California, accessed June 27, 2018, http://​cshe. berkeley.edu/​research/​ seru. 49 Kathleen Kordesh, Lisa Spanierman, and Helen A. Neville,“White University Students’ Racial Affect: Understanding the Antiracist Type,” Journal of Diversity in Higher Education 6, no. 1 (2013): 47–​48. 50 George Yancy, Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018). 51 Scott Jaschik, “Backlash,” Inside Higher Education, April 24, 2018, accessed July 5, 2018, www.insidehighered.com/​news/​2018/​04/​24/​author-​discusses-​new-​book-howamericans-​respond-​discussions-​race.

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6 EDUCATION AND THE INTERNATIONAL DIVISION OF LABOR, POWER, AND PRESTIGE William David Hart

The classroom remains the most radical place of possibility in the university. bell hooks1 What is to be done? How do we educate students to think critically in the age of Trump, when shameless mendacity, public corruption, and reflexive cruelty toward the most vulnerable have become the governing philosophy of those who govern us? As a way of addressing these questions we should first ask, what has been done? What have those who have thought carefully, critically, and creatively about education thought? How have educators in the past responded to tyrants, authoritarians, prophets of anti-​intellectualism, and to those who seek to transform a public good such as education into a market for privateers and profiteers? How do these behaviors reflect and contribute to an international division of labor, power, and prestige that is unjust? How might those responses help us to better answer the question, “What should we do now?” I wish to begin this exploration with bell hooks’ insights on education as a practice of transgression and her dialogue with Paulo Freire’s writings on pedagogy, oppression, and the practice of freedom. Then, taking a longer retrospective view, I  consider John Dewey’s work on education and democracy before returning to the present and engaging Wendy Brown’s trenchant assessment of democratic prospects within overdeveloped nations during the era of neoliberal capitalism. Only then, will I directly address critical consciousness in the age of Trump. There is no subjection so complete as that which preserves the forms of freedom; it is thus that the will itself is taken captive. Jean-​Jacques Rousseau2

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Teaching to Transgress Education is a form of emancipation. Reflecting on her early education at Booker T. Washington Elementary School, bell hooks3 remarks: We learned early that our devotion to learning, to a life of the mind, was a counter-​hegemonic act, a fundamental way to resist every strategy of white racist colonization. Though they did not define or articulate these practices in theoretical terms, my teachers were enacting a revolutionary pedagogy of resistance that was profoundly anticolonial. Within these segregated schools, black children who were deemed exceptional, gifted, were given special care. Teachers worked with and for us to ensure that we would fulfill our intellectual destiny and by so doing uplift the race. My teachers were on a mission.4 This is a concise overview of the general orientation entailed in teaching for critical consciousness. In this passage, hooks says nothing about specific subject areas or pedagogical techniques. But we get a clear understanding of the context and the players. The context is domestic American colonialism defined by white supremacy, segregated education, and the interests of the ruling class. The players include students and the teachers who seem preternaturally equipped to educate their students to combat the circumstances in which they find themselves and to elevate the race. These teachers were part of a community and tradition of resistance that was as old as the process of trans-​Atlantic enslavement. hooks contrasts this separate and unequal school under segregation to the primarily white, desegregated school to which she was eventually bused. The difference could not have been greater: from a segregated black school that may have lacked material resources but nurtured students and approached education as the practice of freedom to a historically white school, which begrudged the presence of black students, and where education reinforced domination. hooks embeds her account of critical pedagogy in a narrative of her own teaching experiences. Much of her account pivots on teaching as the art of recognizing difference and avoiding false universality. As she notes, identity politics is a critique of false universality, of a white identity politics that poses as universal. A  ubiquitous example is the construction of the white working class as the real working class: the working class as such, where whiteness is “baked” into the very concept. Normative (male) whiteness marks the identities of nonwhite workers as antithetical to a pristine (white identified) politics of class of class solidarity. Critical pedagogies are part of this larger critique of white identity politics as universality. hooks argues that liberating pedagogies respond to concerns regarding false universality by embracing and accenting the pedagogical value of the experiences, confessions, and testimony of groups marked as particular. These ways of learning are just as valid and especially important and relevant when false universality expresses itself as false objectivity.5

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As her account of false universality shows, critical pedagogy requires a lot of contextualizing. Some of this is a question of historicizing. hooks illustrates this point by exploring the necessity of deep learning among feminists. Even though the feminist social movement exemplifies many aspects of critical pedagogy, it continues to struggle around issues of white supremacy, antiblackness, and race. hooks remarks that: Until white women can confront their fear and hatred of black women (and vice versa), until we can acknowledge the negative history which shapes and informs our contemporary interaction, there can be no honest, meaningful dialogue between the two groups.6 As this comment suggests, there is no easy path to critical consciousness.True consciousness raising demands not only that we acknowledge the ways that the personal is the political but that we confront the structural dimensions of the problem, the institutional practices of antiblackness and their historical foundations. hooks underscores the ubiquity and tenacity of the problem by detailing the ways that the false universality of white identity and male identity have insinuated themselves within feminism and the black freedom struggle: “Significantly, I found that when ‘women’ were talked about, the experience of white women was universalized to stand for all female experience and that when ‘black people’ were talked about, the experience of black men was the reference.”7 hooks’ frustration drove her to interrogate how racism and sexism have shaped every dimension of the scholarship regarding black people.8 Black women such as hooks revolutionized feminist theory and practice by challenging the presumed universality of the category of “woman.” (They also destabilized the notion of blackness and racial solidarity unmarked by gender and sexuality.) At the time that hooks was writing in the early 1990s, there was a presumptive and racist division of labor in which black and other racialized women attended to matters of gendered experience while theorizing that experience remained the preserve of white women. According to this cognitive/​noncognitive, mind/​body dualism, white feminists see and contemplate (theoria) and nonwhite women embody and do. This is merely one example of what in fact is an international division of labor, power, and prestige. Whether this same division—​theory (conceptual thinking) as whiteness and universality and experience (embodiment and particularity) as black and nonwhite—​persists today is a question that I will leave to others to debate.9 The politics of language is a crucial part of any critical pedagogy. hooks recognizes that language itself is a battleground in educating students in the art of critical consciousness. For example, the preference for Standard English over nonstandard forms such as Black English is primarily a matter of politics and social power rather than of linguistic propriety and communicative competence. The intelligence and linguistic competence of many students goes unrecognized or is denigrated by teachers who confuse Standard English with a linguistic unicorn

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called correct English. This epistemic point regarding language notwithstanding, students need to be educated in the practical effects of using nonstandard English under the current regime and should be equipped to move fluidly between standard and nonstandard forms. Code switching is a form of critical consciousness. All of this is part of what Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o describes as decolonizing the mind.10 Contesting language is part of a larger struggle against educational norms that instantiate and universalize bourgeois values, assumptions, and modes of comportment; norms that are hostile to working class life. hooks seeks to disrupt bourgeois hegemony with pedagogical strategies that make class biases explicit to all students and that enable working class students to find their voice and express their uniqueness in a space that was not designed with them in mind. Ultimately, hooks sees education as an expression of desire, an act of love, and an experience of ecstasy. Beyond any mind/​body or reason/​emotion dualism, the whole person of both students and teachers, in all of their passionate complexity and fallibility, is present in the classroom. hooks trumpets Paulo Freire’s influence on her pedagogy. Freire is the author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed and other influential works on education.11 He appears to have influenced hooks more in terms of broad pedagogic orientation than in specific strategies. What influenced her most, she remarks, is the way that Freire’s thought intersected the pedagogical practices of her childhood teachers, primarily black women who saw their educational work as a liberatory act that prepared students to resist racism structured by capitalism, antiblackness, and white supremacy. She recognized Freire as an ally in the struggle to decolonize education despite his sexism and the opposition to him of many feminists. (I should note that Freire’s inattention to gender persists in his later work, after he had time to absorb the criticism of feminist readers.) Despite his neglect of gender and his sexism, hooks recognized herself in his work in a way that she did not in writings of bourgeois feminists because he attended to the experiences, needs, and interests of the subaltern.12 Beyond this general orientation, hooks most often cites Freire’s critique of the “banking model” of education that he developed in Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Education as the Practice of Freedom The banking model of education refers to the notion that students are passive receptacles of knowledge that teachers deposit into them as if they were putting money into a bank. On this model, teachers are the active party and the owners of knowledge (capital, money, wealth) in which they have a controlling interest if not a monopoly. As the owners and subjects of knowledge, teachers make deposits into the students who are the objects of education. Freire harshly criticizes this unidirectional, monological, and unilateral approach to education as a tool of domination. No matter how great the disparity between teacher and student, education as a practice of freedom is bidirectional, dialogical, and mutual. Teachers are always students and students are always teachers.There are only teacher-​students and

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student-​teachers. When education is a practice of freedom, then it is a collaborative process between teacher and student.13 While the teacher is primarily responsible for setting the agenda and selecting learning materials, there is an ongoing process of negotiation with students. In the absence of dialogue, collaboration, and negotiation, you get the banking model of education: “Verbalistic lessons, reading requirements, the methods for evaluating ‘knowledge,’ the distance between the teacher and the taught, the criteria for promotion: everything in this ready-​to-​wear approach serves to obviate thinking.”14 Knowledge is not something that can simply be transferred from teacher to student.This is the antithesis of thinking which is active, productive, and collaborative, a creative exchange. Education as a practice of freedom positions the teacher as a problem-​poser rather than as a bank depositor.15 Freire situates his educational theory within the larger context of revolution. He theorizes education in “a revolutionary situation”16 as the liberation theologian José Miguez Bonino might describe it. In effect, Freire constructs an elaborate allegory between revolutionary leaders and the people, on the one hand and teachers and students, on the other. If, as Freire remarks—​“Revolutionary leaders cannot think without the people, nor for the people, but only with the people”17—​then the same is true of the relation between liberationist educators and students. Teachers and students in communion educate each other. Of course, there is no need to deny the asymmetries in this process of mutual teaching and learning.Teachers (teacher-​students) know more and contribute more to the educational process than students (student-​teachers) but they cannot impose what they know on students. If revolution is an educational process, then education as a practice of freedom is revolutionary.18 Freire’s revolution/​education allegory comprises eight elements, which are divided into antidialogical actions and dialogical actions respectively. Antidialogical actions include conquest, divide and rule, manipulation, and cultural invasion. Dialogical actions include cooperation, unity for liberation, organization, and cultural synthesis. Since these forms of action are antithetical, they are perhaps best considered in pairs.Where “conquest” is an antidialogical action that seeks to dominate the other, break their willfulness and undermine their agency through necrophilic attention, “cooperation” is an other-​directed form of mutuality; it entails a dialogical I–​Thou relationship rather than an “I” relating to an “It.”19 Against the “divide and rule” tactics that characterize antidialogical actions that seek to turn the other against class, group, and self, “unity for liberation” seeks to overcome the divided self, the internalized voice of the conqueror (the oppressor within the mind of the oppressed) by producing a subject who can transform the conditions that make this division possible.20 If “manipulation” is the denial of dialogue, an effort to suppress the interests of the other, to dominate them by using their internal divisions and weaknesses against them, then “organization” is its antagonistic opposite.21 Finally, where “cultural invasion” is the infiltration, surveillance, and the manufacture of reality and consent, “cultural synthesis” is about learning with and about the other and transforming the world through conjoint action.22 Freire remarks:

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Cultural synthesis is thus a mode of action for confronting culture itself, as the preserver of the very structures by which it was formed. Cultural action, as historical action, is an instrument for superseding the dominant alienated and alienating culture. In this sense, every authentic revolution is a cultural revolution.23 Freire was a Christian socialist in the broad tradition of Walter Rauschenbusch, Dorothy Day, and Martin Luther King, Jr. His faith in the capacities of ordinary people, especially the peasant class, is rooted in his Christian socialist communitarianism. I think that it would be wrong to say that Freire was a Maoist but his solicitude for peasants and his accent on harmony between leaders and the people resonates. Though he has a high regard for common people, he does not romanticize them. The people have the capacity to liberate themselves but are often divided against themselves by the conditions of oppression.The ruling ideas of the ruling class encourage ordinary people to construe their capacities negatively. In addition to illuminating the structural features of domination, leaders must address this problem by cultivating critical consciousness (conscientização). This does not mean that the people are mere objects of their leaders’ will. Good leaders do not install their will into the people any more than good teachers deposit knowledge into their students. Leadership and followership, teachers and students have a dialogical relationship. As their primary responsibility, leaders lead and teachers teach but they are led and taught by the people and by their students too. Freire’s texts are studded with the words love and hope. He argues that fighting the oppression that sustains a pedagogy of domination constitutes “an act of love,” which is essential in a social system where lovelessness and dehumanization are tools of subjugation. There are great disparities between the Global North and the Global South that are a legacy of colonialism and capitalism. Inequality and absolute poverty within societies north and south is often as great as those between them. In light of these realities, what remains as a living option in Freire’s account of education as a practice of freedom? Specifically, what is still useful in his educational theory in light of the current international division of labor, power, and prestige? How, in particular, do those who teach in elite colleges and universities educate for critical consciousness (in the age of Trump) when their efforts help to produce a more sophisticated and effective ruling class? This is not just a theoretical or a political question but an existential matter for those of us who teach in this sort of institution and worry about our complicity. The same international forces driving the populist, neo-​nationalists, and fascist movements in Europe also account for the rise of Donald Trump in the United States. To a large degree, these movements are responses to the latest round of capitalist globalization (financialization, privatization, and hyper-​deregulation) that has destabilized local and regional economies, inspired wars, and sent millions of displaced workers and refugees in search of greener pastures. Workers fear job competition and automation, and are angry about a global economy that does not work for them. Under these

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conditions, where governments subsidize the rich and tax the poor, workers find it easy to blame racialized immigrants rather than elites who are responsible for the prevailing economic arrangements, especially when xenophobic politicians such as Trump encourage such reactions. If one analyzes this problem in strictly liberal economic terms, the problem lies in a failure to extend the full measure of liberalization to labor. Capital is “free” but labor is not. The international flow of migrants of all kinds is the underside of a set of global capitalist arrangements that encourage the free and rapid flow of capital, goods, and services across borders while building walls against the free movement of labor. Lest I be misunderstood, I am not suggesting that further liberalization is the solution to the international division of labor, power, and prestige. I  am simply indicating what a consistent liberalism would entail. Further liberalization would be better for some classes of workers and worse for others. I cannot offer a definitive answer to the question of capitalist globalization and the anti-​worker priorities that govern the way automation is adapted. Instead, I return to the question of what educators should do and how Freire’s writings on education might inform our actions. Our larger task is to educate students regarding the international division of labor, power, and prestige and the way that the educational system like other systems produces and reproduces the inequities that the division entails. It means helping them to see the connections between capitalist globalization, immigrant and refugee flows, upsurges in racism, ethno-​ nationalism, xenophobia of all kinds, and an inability to muster the will to confront a carbon-​based economy that drives climate change. For all educators in colleges and universities but especially those at elite institutions that disproportionately produce and reproduce the ruling class, we need to think carefully about what we are doing and why we are doing it. Is our goal to produce a ruling class that is even more effective in exploiting subaltern classes or do we want to goad our students toward challenging their class and the international division of labor, power, and prestige that it underwrites? This is a difficult question but the practice of educating these kinds of students against the grain is even more daunting. In many cases, perhaps, in most, we will fail. But failing in the effort is better than not making the effort at all. This effort might include the general orientation and all of the specific techniques of Freire’s education theory.

Educating for Democracy Tyrants and authoritarians are always hostile toward those who produce forms of knowledge that threaten their desire to capture, monopolize, and deploy truth for their own narrow and corrupt ends. Journalists and academics are among the primary targets of the authoritarian’s effort to capture and subjugate truth. A politics of truth, therefore, is unavoidable. Among philosophers, truth is a highly contentious idea. A commonsense view holds that truth is correspondence between world and representation, between things in the world and the words that index

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them. A competing view holds that truth is coherence among our various claims. A third competitor construes truth as convergence; that is, as the end result of a very long process of inquiry. If truth is construed as an intralinguistic matter, then truth is a property of language, of the sentences we use. If we believe that the world is independent of our thoughts and makes our claims true or false, then we hold a realist view of truth. Antirealists hold that the “world is well lost,” that the world is not a truth-​maker; that is, it cannot underwrite our truth claims. If truth is constructed scientifically, then it refers to claims that are substantiated in probabilistic terms through empirical and mathematical forms of testing. In its imperialistic form, the scientific notion regards truth as an exclusive property of science or holds that scientific truth is superior to nonscientific truth claims. As this brief survey suggests, there is no consensus notion of truth on the horizon. An irremediable difference, a deferral and incompleteness of meaning, is built into the concept. Among others, there are correspondence, coherence, pragmatic and fallibilistic, verificationist, realist, antirealist, and scientific notions of truth. Some theorists argue that truth is pluralistic phenomena and a function of context.When Pontius Pilate asked, “What is truth?” he was not merely asking a rhetorical question. Disagreement about truth and the authority of authoritarians and tyrants drove Socrates to drink hemlock. Truth is that contentious. But even when our theories of truth are different, we cannot evade the practical necessity of distinguishing between true and false. Nor do theories of truth as long-​term convergence, deferral, and incompleteness prevent us from distinguishing true from false with confidence. Moreover, on a pragmatist view, we could not disagree so strenuously about a small range of truth claims unless we already agreed about most things. Even the most contentious disagreements occur against the backdrop of comprehensive and unquestioned agreement that make disagreement possible. On most matters, truth is not as controversial as the hard cases might lead us to think. With these qualifications in mind, I note that politics, broadly construed, is the site where truth is contested and that education is irreducibly political. Thus, educating for critical consciousness is not a neutral activity. It is guided by judgments about how we should live, how the world should be, and by a clearly articulated notion of justice. If we are dedicated to educating students to be critical and creative thinkers, then we must accentuate the constitutive relation between a liberating pedagogy and radical democracy. No one has thought more about education and democracy than John Dewey. According to Dewey, a society that ensures the equal participation of all members in its collective goods “and which secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through interaction of the different forms of associated life is,” to that extent, democratic.24 These are minimal requirements of a democratic society. Dewey acknowledges the formal distinction between value as appreciation and value as evaluation; “the attitude of prizing a thing and finding it worthwhile, for its own sake, or intrinsically” versus the intellectual act “of comparing and judging.”25 But he rejects the notion that the curriculum should divide value into the intrinsic and the instrumental.

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A subject of study should be measured by its contribution to understanding experience. While literary studies and the fine arts exemplify appreciation at its best, every subject should exhibit an aesthetic quality during some phase of development. All curricular subjects should signify beyond themselves. The value of instrumental values is derivative of their connection with intrinsic values. Instrumental values are worthwhile only in so far as they contribute directly to intrinsic values. Dewey then provides a causal explanation for the separation of values: The tendency to assign separate values to each study and to regard the curriculum in its entirety as a kind of composite made by the aggregation of segregated values is a result of the isolation of social groups and classes.26 The separation of values indexes social structure. It is an artifact of history: “Hence it is the business of education in a democratic social group to struggle against this isolation in order that the various interests may reinforce and play into one another.”27 The separation of values is antidemocratic and democratic education is the privileged means of remediating such divisions in actually existing educational practices. One wonders whether racial segregation in public education provided an empirical template for Dewey’s broad account of the segregation of educational values. Whatever the case, this segregation morphs into the distinction between liberal and practical training. These distinctions are predicated on economic models where some people work and others live off the fruits of their labor. Let us call this exploitation. This social relation is construed by political theory as the notion that some people (thinkers) are fit to rule and that other people (laborers) are fit to be ruled. Let us call this domination. As Dewey puts it, “This fact affected the psychological doctrine of the relation of intelligence and desire, theory and practice.”28 Thus, the absence of democracy or the presence of travestied forms of democracy directly shape the nature of education and underwrite the segregation of intrinsic value and instrumental value, of liberal education and practical training. This ancient legacy of society and education persists. The problem of education in a democratic society is to do away with the dualism and to construct a course of studies which makes thought a guide of free practice for all and which makes leisure a reward of accepting responsibility for service, rather than a state of exemption from it.29 Dewey was more radical than most liberal democrats though less radical, perhaps, than some radical democrats. The “liberal” in liberal democracy refers to liberty and individuality in contrast to aristocracy and authoritarianism. At its best, liberal democracy is the marriage of rule by the demos, the people, and a deep respect for the tensive values of liberty and equality. Liberal qualifies democracy and disqualifies its authoritarian possibilities (the tyranny of the majority) and democracy

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qualifies liberalism and disqualifies its attenuated scope: gendered, racialized, bourgeois, and other normalized inequalities. Liberal democracy is a noble idea and a deeply flawed practice. But liberal democracy is (or was) a real achievement in comparison to the current situation where working class movements have been disempowered and neoliberal democracy reigns. Neoliberalism is defined here as a post-​Fordist political economy where finance capital displaces productive capital, there is a marriage of the profit motive and rent-​seeking, social insecurity displaces social security, and consumer trumps citizen. In short, neoliberalism, as Loïc Wacquant argues, is “constitutively corrosive of democracy.”30 What is an educator to do under these conditions? How do we educate critically conscious students when the collapse of the working class has been abetted by the collapse of liberal democracy and by a multiclass formation of rightwing ethno-​nationalism that combines the typically antagonistic elements of populism and plutocracy? Wendy Brown details the conditions of post-​liberal democracy in Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. She describes what has been lost with the transition from a highly defective liberalism to a disastrous neoliberalism. She helps us understand what we must do if we are to successfully educate against the grain of a neoliberal democracy, where education is merely a commodity, and in the direction of a radical democracy, where education is a public good. Brown identifies a handful of features that characterize the shift from liberalism to neoliberalism. The most important transformation is a change in normative rationality:  a shift from homo politicus as the governing order of reason to homo oeconomicus; that is, the “economization of political life.”31 It is a form of normativity that underwrites President Bill Clinton’s notorious mantra, “It’s the economy, stupid!” Under this rationality, there is no such thing as a nonmarket value. Markets pervade every aspect of life. All values are subordinated to and/​ or are recast as economic values. This transformation of normative rationality is accompanied by a host of other changes in society, economy, and state. These changing relations between political and economic rationality include features that many analysts identify as constitutive features of neoliberalism such marketization, privatization, deregulation, and social insecurity. These practices increase inequality, inappropriately and unethically commercialize domains of life that are noncommercial and ought to be treated as such; create a dangerous intimacy among corporations, finance capital, and the state; and, finally, wreak economic havoc in the form of “bubbles and other dramatic fluctuations of financial markets.”32 Schools have not gone unscathed. All educational institutions especially public colleges and universities are ostentatious targets of this shift from homo politicus to homo oeconomicus. The neoliberal university is now old news. Indeed, Trump University is an indexical sign of the worst features of neoliberal education, that is, higher education as a site for capitalist exploitation, extraction, and predation. According to Brown, the demos has never truly ruled liberal democracies nor large nation-​states:

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But the presumption that it should rule placed constraints on powerful would-​ be usurpers of its ghostly throne, helped to leash legislation aimed at benefiting the few, rather than the many, and episodically incited political action from below oriented toward the “common concerns of ordinary lives.”33 Other than the principle that the people rule, democracy does not have a ruling set of norms. Any number of bad acts and bad actors can find shelter under its canopy: from xenophobic nationalism to racialized forms of colonialism, to heterosexism, and capitalist hegemony. On the other hand, the normative emptiness of democracy enables democratic mobilization against these orientations within those very regimes. While radical democracy would be a tremendous advance over both neoliberal and liberal democracies, there are no guarantees. As Brown notes, even direct democracy, which evades capture by the liberal and neoliberal formations and deformations just described is susceptible to darkness, to failures of recognition, imagination, and will that characterize current neglect of human generated climate change and species extinction, and that fail to prevent genocidal warfare abroad. This leads Brown to a striking if not controversial claim: periodically, democracy requires a nondemocratic supplement; that is, a Cincinnatus-​like form of leadership that acts, against its patrician type, in the interest of the plebeians. In its paradoxical stewardship of democracy, this antidemocratic insurgency, working in the interest of democracy, may find it necessary to use the language of moral absolutes.

Educating for Critical Consciousness in the Age of Trump While sometimes challenging liberal democracy to live up to its ideals, liberal education often mirrors its deficiencies and failures. In the first instance, education is associated with schools. But as a practical matter, education is a social process, a society-​wide process that encompasses family, school, private and public institutions of virtually every kind, and the state. To be successful, this social process needs a social movement to sustain it. The common school movement of the nineteenth century and the creation of black colleges and universities after the Civil War were examples of this kind of education-​sustaining social movement. Pedagogy matters but more important is the political environment that enables or disables a liberating mode of education. Education is irremediably tied up with its political context. Educating for critical consciousness is larger than the classroom. It is the concerted effort of citizens in the political arena. More radically, it is actions of the people struggling for a radical democracy. Liberating classroom pedagogies and a democratic politics of educating the demos are mutually dependent. You educate the demos by organizing it. This is hard, slow, quotidian work. Only an organized people can deliberate regarding the collective ends they desire and the appropriate means for achieving them.34 Only an organized people who practice the art of democratic deliberation can effectively mobilize to enact the kind of political transformations that allow critical consciousness and revolutionary praxis to breathe.

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The basics have not changed. As football coaches are wont to say, sometimes it is not about the “Xs” and “Os,” that is, strategy and technique. Sometimes it’s about “heart,” one’s willingness to compete. Likewise, in this struggle against neoliberal education and the dark shadow cast by Trump, it is less a matter of liberating pedagogies, though they clearly matter, than a willingness to fight, to engage in effective, democratic politics. To fight well, one must mobilize. To mobilize effectively, one must organize. The demos, the people must self-​organize. Through the self-​organizing of the people and without any kind of vanguardism, leaders must step forward and lead. The Undercommons:  Fugitive Planning and Black Study by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten35 represents both an analysis of the neoliberal university and offers suggestions for resisting, undermining, and transforming the “relations of production” within higher education. This fugitive and “criminal” vision, strategy, and set of tactics lie outside and underneath the grasp of capitalism and the state. This quasi-​anarchistic account understands the condition of higher education in the United States as an expression of an international division of labor, power, and prestige. This analysis dovetails in some important ways with Brown’s claim that our current condition might be described as one where, in the first instance, we must defend “bare democracy,” that is, the basic idea shared by both liberal and radical democracy that the demos should rule. Keeping this notion alive in a context in which US neoliberals argue that the market should rule provides a site from which fugitive efforts to restore liberal democracy if not construct a radical democracy can be made. Finally, it is important that we not succumb to the notion that Trump is exceptional. He is the culmination of an antidemocratic politics that has been around now for decades. It got off the ground with the misnamed “Southern strategy” under Richard Nixon. This strategy was as national in scope as the antiblackness that drove it. Nixon’s former strategist, Kevin Phillips, describes the targets of the strategy as Southern “Negrophobes.” But Negrophobia has never been an exclusively Southern phenomenon. This white nationalist and antiblack populist strategy became more sophisticated and aggressive under Reagan and his revolutionaries, took an unapologetically white nationalist turn during Pat Buchanan’s presidential campaigns and has reached its logical conclusion with Trump. Thus, in teaching for critical consciousness in the age of Trump, we should—​without any sense of embarrassment at our philosophical naiveté about the complexity and contested nature of truth or any trace of ironic skepticism—​urge students to seek the truth and expose lies.

Notes 1 bell hooks, Teaching toTransgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994), 12. 2 Jean-​Jacques Rousseau, Emile, trans. Barbara Foxley (Dutton, NY: Everyman’s Library, 1911), 84.

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3 bell hooks is the pen name for Gloria Jean Watkins. She chooses not to capitalize her pen name. 4 hooks, 2. 5 hooks,  88–​89. 6 hooks, 102. 7 hooks, 120–​121 8 hooks, 120–​121. 9 hooks, 123–​125. 10 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Decolonizing the Mind (Melton, UK:  James Currey Ltd/​ Heinemann, 1986). 11 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 2003). 12 hooks,  49–​53. 13 Freire, 72, 80–​81, 83. 14 Freire, 76. 15 Freire,  79–​80. 16 See José Miguez Bonino, DoingTheology in a Revolutionary Situation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1975). 17 Freire, 131, emphases in original. 18 Freire, 131, 134, 138. 19 Freire, 138–​140, 179–​183. 20 Freire, 141–​145, 172–​174. 21 Freire, 147–​149, 175–​177. 22 Freire, 152–​154, 179–​180. 23 Freire, 180. 24 www.gutenberg.org/​files/​852/​852-​h/​852-​h.htm; citation comes from Chapter Seven Summary. The Project Gutenberg EBook of Democracy and Education, by John Dewey. Release Date: July 26, 2008 [EBook #852]. Last updated: August 1, 2015. 25 www.gutenberg.org/​files/​852/​852-​h/​852-​h.htm#link2HCH0018; from Chapter Eighteen Summary. 26 www.gutenberg.org/​files/​852/​852-​h/​852-​h.htm; from Chapter Eighteen Summary. 27 www.gutenberg.org/​files/​852/​852-​h/​852-​h.htm; from Chapter Eighteen Summary. 28 www.gutenberg.org/​files/​852/​852-​h/​852-​h.htm; from Chapter Nineteen Summary. 29 www.gutenberg.org/​files/​852/​852-​h/​852-​h.htm; from Chapter Nineteen Summary, emphasis added. 30 Loïc Wacquant, “Crafting the Neoliberal State:  Workfare, Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity,” Sociological Forum,Vol. 25, No. 2 (2010): 218, emphasis in original. 31 Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Books, 2015), Preface. 32 Brown, Chapter One: Loc. 294, 301, 308, 316. 33 Brown, quoted material is from the Kindle version of the book.“Epilogue: Losing Bare Democracy and the Inversion of Freedom and Sacrifice,” emphasis in original. 34 See Jeffrey Stout, Blessed Are the Organized: Grassroots Democracy in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). 35 Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (New York: Minor Compositions, 2016).

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7 A SEASON OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS On Education and President Donald J. Trump Josiah Ulysses Young III

When I was growing up, my mother, a high school English teacher, would recite the opening lines from Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities from time to time. She said the words reminded her of her childhood in Danville,Virginia, one of the most racist cities in the republic: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.1 Those paradoxical lines are very relevant today. It seems to me that we are experiencing the worst of times and the best of times in this, the age of Trump. The Charlottesville, Virginia tragedy of 2017—​ and President Trump’s reluctance unequivocally to denounce the white supremacy on display there—​showed us that swastikas and confederate flags have not passed away. The white supremacists who rallied there felt empowered by Trump’s 2016 victory, and attest, moreover, to the depth of white nativism in the United States.2 “I am your voice,” Donald Trump has said to his base, “believe me. Believe me.”3 Embracing his chauvinism and vicariously reveling in his personification of Euro-​American privilege, they surely believe he can make America great again by excluding Mexican, Muslim, Haitian, and African immigrants. Incredulously, Trump supporters want to curtail women’s rights to choose; bar same-​sex marriages; and undermine the prison reform movements that would shrink the numbers of imprisoned black and brown people. And yet, not unlike the civil rights activists who made the 1960s “the season of Light,” we are witnessing a fired-​up resistance to the oligarchic chauvinism that he represents. Those of us who oppose this Darkness

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draw upon the sagacity of our teachers—​parents, novelists, civil rights activists, and philosophers—​whose memories and legacies powerfully inspire us to counter the racist braggadocio of a self-​serving rich man, thus experiencing something akin to the age of wisdom. I seek in this chapter to draw upon this wisdom by discussing some of the lessons that are dear to my heart and mind. I will also discuss the president’s popularity among white evangelicals and thus explore certain theological dimensions of the tension between belief and incredulity.

I  “The Spring of Hope” and “the Winter of Despair” I learned some of my very first lessons about Light and Darkness while growing up in Bushwick, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New  York, during a period spanning 1960 to 1972. During the 1960s, poverty, the heroin scourge, the hostility of the police department, and the racism of the New York City public school system crippled our neighborhood. Deborah Wallace and Roderick Wallace point out in their book, A Plague on Your Houses, that city planners saw Bushwick as a decent place to live when it was comprised of white “bus drivers, plumbers,” and morticians. But when African Americans plying similar professions began to move in, during the 1960s, the city planners “saw a slum” and consequently turned Bushwick into one. City services were curtailed, the police became adversarial, drugs infiltrated the neighborhood, and real-​estate firms practiced “racial steering” with the help of the federal government.4 In general, black and brown folk were unable to move from places like Bushwick because of the discriminatory practices of real-​estate barons such as Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump. Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher point out in their book, Trump Revealed:  An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money, and Power, that Trump’s father made his bones by building affordable housing for working-​class whites, including “many immigrant families,” people like his own father and wife: Many apartment complexes were in gritty neighborhoods, often divided by race. The federal government, which helped finance many Trump projects, bore some of the blame for this balkanization; the Federal Housing Administration had all but sanctioned segregation, advising against what were euphemistically called “inharmonious” projects.5 Woody Guthrie, a famous folk singer who lived in a Trump unit, was so disturbed by Trump’s rejection of black applicants that he wrote a little ditty: “I suppose/​Old Man Trump knows/​Just how much/​Racial Hate/​He stirred up/​In the bloodspot of human hearts/​When he drawed/​That color Line/​Here at his /​Eighteen hundred family project.”6 Most black and Hispanic students were herded into classes “taught” by teachers with no faith in them. According to one source, public-​school educators “were

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essentially baby-​sitting … The curriculum included little writing, and when the dismissal bell rang … teachers were out of there before the kids were.”7 Black and Hispanic parents, and some charitable and justice-​minded white teachers, nonetheless confronted that problem by championing the decentralization of certain public schools in New  York City. They thus challenged the hegemony of the predominately white, and largely Jewish, United Federation of Teachers in demanding that educators be accountable to the concerned parents of black and brown students.8 My parents were very concerned about what I  was learning and made my siblings and me aware of the civil rights struggles that were taking place in the nation at that time—​in places such as Danville,Virginia, where my mother is from. Our parents also made us aware of the history from which the 1960s erupted. I learned about the Middle Passage, centuries of enslavement, and the prevalence of lynching from my father. Encouraged by my mother to obtain a library card while I was in elementary school, in addition, I walked many blocks to our local library where I checked out books such as Dorothy Sterling’s Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman, and a book on Geronimo. As a high school student, I read James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time; The Autobiography of Malcolm X; Richard Wright’s Native Son; and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.9 They rested invitingly on our mantelpieces, dining room table, and nightstands, and helped me place my experience in context. I thus learned at home—​every single day—​that those who maligned us with racial slurs were out of touch with reality. It was the best of times because I was taught that such brutal caricatures were unkind and unjust. As result, I  could, and frequently did, take insensitive teachers to task, especially during my high school years, for my high school was known for its racism. Because of my parents’ example, I was a help rather than a menace to my neighborhood. I saw some of my male peers from back in the day knock old women down to snatch their pocketbooks. I often saw them nodding in alleyways and in the playground (it was the worst of times); and I realized, even then, that though their behavior was despicable and inexcusable, they were casualties of a racist system. That mighty lesson taught me to look at the roots of urban decay and avoid tendencies to blame the oppressed alone for neighborhood rot. I realized that I had a responsibility to be a force for good and help others see the Light. The lessons that I learned growing up account, I think, for why I study the works of Emmanuel Levinas, a distinguished Jewish philosopher,10 and James Baldwin, a distinguished African-​American writer,11 until today. I have studied many thinkers, but Levinas and Baldwin are two of my favorite teachers. Representing Light in this time of Darkness, their wisdom grounds much of what I, a seminary professor, teach my own students. In his book Alterity and Transcendence, Levinas writes about “the modality of the hateful I,” which represents, for me, the systemic animus that made Bushwick a place situated between hope and despair. Signifying “autonomy above all criteria,” the “hateful I,” writ large, perniciously disregards the wellbeing of others, intensifies the matter of “the ethical,” and raises questions about “the

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spirituality of the soul itself.”12 But where matters of the soul are concerned, there is, I believe, the imminence of “the spring of hope,” in which one can leave behind him or her the chrysalis of “the hateful I.” Levinas writes about that metamorphosis in offering his interpretation of “bad conscience.” He argues that “bad conscience” is “the hateful I’s” realization of his or her wrongful and unjustified enmity toward the “other.” The shamefulness of that enmity moves the “hateful I” to place him-​or herself “in question.” According to Levinas, the question (which might be something like “who is my neighbor?”) “does not await a theoretical response in the form of information” but “appeals to responsibility, which is not a practical last resort, offering consolation for the failure of knowledge, incapable of equaling being.”13 The one who has denounced his or her unwarranted hostility toward the “other” is not content with I just didn’t know, as if all things would suddenly be put right. Acting on behalf of the mistreated, as if responsibility were like breathing, one is born again—​fears “injustice more than death,” prefers “injustice suffered to injustice committed.”14 Here, one makes a life-​altering choice to become active in the struggle for justice for all human beings rather than people just like oneself. In his 1963 Saturday Review essay, “A Talk to Teachers,” James Baldwin complements Levinas’s perspective on responsibility in writing: The society we live in is desperately menaced, not by Khrushchev, but from within. So any citizen of this country who figures himself as responsible—​ and particularly those of you who deal with the minds and hearts of young people—​must be prepared to “go for broke.” Or to put it another way, you must understand that in the attempt to correct so many generations of bad faith and cruelty … you will meet the most brutal, and the most determined resistance.15 For Baldwin, moreover, The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it—​at no matter what risk. This is the only hope society has. This is the only way societies change.16 Yet, some fifty-​five years after “A Talk to Teachers,” Donald Trump’s election demonstrates how averse people are to the matter of responsibility and the arduousness of change. It is the worst of times; it is the best of times.

II  The Epochs of Belief and Incredulity The white evangelicals who make up a sizable portion of Donald Trump’s supporters are led by men such as Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, Jr. Both view Trump’s election as the work of “God”17 and exemplify a departure from

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the responsibility Baldwin and Levinas commend to us. For Levinas and Baldwin, responsibility attains its cutting edge when it benefits those who are denigrated as the “other.” Evangelicals such as Falwell, Jr and Franklin Graham represent a truncated mode of responsibility rooted in a history of racist hermeneutics. Jerry Falwell’s Jr’s father, Jerry Falwell Sr, the one-​time leader of the powerful Republican power base, the “Moral Majority,” and founder of Liberty University, whose president today is Jerry Falwell, Jr, asserted in his 1958 sermon,“Segregation or Integration, Which?” that the “facilities should be separate” because: God has drawn a line of distinction we should not attempt to cross … The true Negro [sic!] does not want integration …. He realizes his potential is far better among his own race … [Integration] will destroy our race eventually.18 In an Easter Sunday sermon delivered in 1960 Bob Jones, Sr, founder of Bob Jones University, declared that “God Almighty” made one human race but fixed “the bounds of … habitation.” Africans, therefore, would have stayed in Africa if whites had not gone “to Africa and brought the colored people back and sold them into slavery. That was wrong,” Jones avowed. But God overruled … He turned the colored people in the South into wonderful Christian people … Sometimes we have a little trouble, but then we adjust everything sensibly and get back to the established order … If we would just listen to the Word of God and not try to overthrow God’s established order, we would not have any trouble. God never meant for America to be a melting pot to rub out the line between the nations. That was not God’s purpose for this nation.19 Neither Falwell, Sr’s nor Jones, Sr’s perspectives benefited “the other” in places like Bushwick and Danville. History tells us, moreover, that Jones’s “a little trouble” signifies African Americans who, often under the threat of death, challenged the established order; and Falwell’s “The true Negro” signified blacks cowed into submission. Part of their defense of segregation was based on biblical myths, such as Genesis 10 and 11. In Genesis 10, Noah’s sons are dispersed to different parts of the world after the flood. Each son represents the ancestor of a distinct people. Ham, for instance, signifies the people of Africa and Canaan, while Shem signifies the ancestor of the Hebrew people. Not only are eponymous ancestors Ham and Shem different people, they are nemesis too. (See Exodus 11 and Numbers 21:2–​ 3.) We are thus to understand from that tale that the “races” have their appointed places and should not mix. In Genesis 11, the deity, YHWH, scatters humankind to different places and curses them with many tongues so that they will be unable to communicate with one another. Based on those tales, the integration of diverse

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“races” is not scripturally based. (Astonishingly, some people still take such stories literally.) Falwell, Sr did back down from his defense of Jim Crow (when he found it politically expedient to do so), and Bob Jones University has apologized for its discrimination against African Americans. But have white evangelicals in the tradition of Jones, Sr and Falwell, Sr forsworn their old-​time religion in the main? Bob Jones University’s mission statement holds that the “account of origins in Genesis is a factual narrative of historical events; that is, God created the universe, including all original kinds of living organisms (including man) in six literal days.”20 For Liberty University, the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, though written by men, was supernaturally inspired by God so that all its words are the written true revelation of God; it is therefore inerrant in the originals and authoritative in all matters.21 Inerrancy, however, strains credulity and continues to have racist implications. As Jim Wallis, a progressive evangelical human rights activist, has put it, Jerry Falwell, Jr evinces “that white evangelicals voted for Trump not in spite of his racist and xenophobic rhetoric about undocumented immigrants, but because of this rhetoric.”22 Wallis writes, moreover, that Jerry Falwell, Jr is unbothered by Donald Trump’s “racist lie about America’s first black president … That Trump opened his campaign by demonizing immigrants in calling them ‘rapists’ and ‘criminal’ doesn’t matter to [Falwell], Jr. either.”23 Franklin Graham, the son of the celebrated evangelist Billy Graham, told journalist Emma Green that providence positively is at work in Trump’s presidency. Trump “did everything wrong, politically,” Graham said. “He offended gays. He offended women. He offended the military. He offended black people. He offended the Hispanic people. He offended everybody! And he became president of the United States. Only God could do that.” For Graham, “No president in [his] lifetime” speaks “about God as much as Donald Trump does.”24 White evangelicals such as Jerry Falwell, Jr and Franklin Graham indicate how chauvinistic interpretations of the Bible and its perspective on election correspond. Anyone who reads the Hebrew Bible discovers that its Creator,YHWH-​Elohim, is partial to one culture—​“Israel.” It is common knowledge that YHWH-​Elohim punished Israel repeatedly for worshipping other gods. Objectively, however, this punishment signifies the invention of an eternal being who created the world “in the beginning.” His punishment of Israel, moreover, is an ethnocentric concept disseminated by the elite—​the “scribes whose training and talent made them the intellectuals of their time.”25 As writer Jonathan Kirsch argues, the “authors and editors who composed and compiled the biblical text[s]‌” divided humankind “into two categories”—​the elect and the non-​elect.26 Here, righteousness has very little to do with “moral and ethical conduct” and much more to do with fidelity to the covenant. What matters most of all is “the purity of religion” rather than “the

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pursuit of justice.”27 (Who today holds that the genocide against the people of Ai, as fabricated in Joshua 8:24–​25, is just?) “The very worst sin of all … is not lust or greed, but rather the offering of worship to gods and goddesses other than the True God.” Consequently, a prophet or a king who denounces something as aberrant “is using a code word for every ritual and belief other than his own.”28 Similarly, Trump’s xenophobia is for some white evangelicals fidelity to their “God.” To appropriate a point from Jan Assmann’s book, The Price of Monotheism, what white evangelicalism and biblical monotheism have in common “is an emphatic concept of truth”—​“a distinction between true and false religion”—​that consigns all traditional or rival truths to the realm of falsehood.”29 Part of the task of the educator, particularly seminary professors, is to make their students responsible for their “God”; for “God’s” image is not a monolith. It is multiple. Scholar Stewart Guthrie corroborates my contention in his book Faces in the Cloud: A New Theory of Religion. He writes, “the Hebrew and Christian Bibles … attribute diverse human behavior and anatomy to [God]”—​so much so that it is “easy to see these features as reflections of ourselves, and difficult to conceive of nonhuman attributes that are meaningful. The step to thinking anthropomorphic reflections are all that there is may be larger, but it is the same direction.”30 I am not making a case, here, for that larger step; but I definitely think that theological education in this time of Trump should equip persons to realize the astonishing extent to which fundamentalism—​or any theology, for that matter—​reflects what human beings truly mean when they profess faith in “God”—​“that than which nothing greater can be conceived” (Anselm). And one of the good things about the Bible, that massive collection of texts, is that it provides one with different ways to signify “God.” Pericopes from Matthew’s gospel and Luke’s gospel illustrate what I mean. In Matthew 22, Jesus of Nazareth takes on the religious establishment, the priesthood sworn to uphold the Mosaic covenant. They repeatedly attempt to trip him up by setting casuistic traps based on their knowledge of the minutia of the Law. In Matthew 22:30, a Pharisee, a lawyer, asks him, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” (Matt. 22:36 NRS). Jesus replies, “love [agapēseis] the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love [agapēseis] your neighbor as yourself.” Matt. 22:37–​39 NRS This inherent connection between love of “God” and love of neighbor is very much like what Dickens calls “the spring of hope.” To love “God” with all your heart is to contribute to the best of times. And the sharpness of the lesson Jesus is teaching is that such love (agape) is not a legalistic principle. It is, rather, a way of life oriented to others.The ethnocentrism common to the Hebrew Bible surely is not erased in Matthew (consider c­ hapter 15), but there is no wholesale condemnation of sinners and non-​Jewish people either.

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Luke 10 offers another lesson very much like Matthew’s. In Luke, a lawyer asks Jesus a question “to test him. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I  do to inherit eternal life?’ ” (Lk. 10:25 NRS). Jesus, however, tests him: “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” The lawyer gave the right answer—​“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus then tells him that if he apprehends what he knows, he “will live” (Lk. 10:26–​28 NRS). Unable to leave well enough alone, the lawyer asks, “And who is my neighbor?” At that point Jesus tells the famous “Good Samaritan” story, which is one of the finest lessons about “the season of Light” in human letters. In a nutshell, the parable is about a man who was almost beaten to death by thieves. Law-​abiding Jews bypassed the nearly lifeless victim, but a Samaritan, whose people were despised by Jews, was moved with compassion [esplanchnisthē]. The Samaritan went to him and bandaged his wounds, tending them with oil and wine. Then he placed the wounded man on his own donkey, took him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day, he took two full days’ worth of wages and gave them to the innkeeper. He said, “Take care of him, and when I return, I will pay you back for any additional costs.” Lk. 10:33–​35 CEB “What do you think?” Jesus asks the lawyer. “Which one of these three was a neighbor to the man who encountered thieves?” Then the legal expert said, “The one who demonstrated mercy [to eleos] toward him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” Lk. 10:36–​37 CEB The lesson he teaches enables one to move beyond an us-​versus-​them religion—​ that is at the heart of so much bigotry and nastiness—​and toward responsibility for the unjustly treated. In Matthew 23:23, Jesus provides stunning criticism of us-​versus-​them religion: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice [tēn krisin] and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. Matt. 23:23 NRS It is not my contention that Matthew’s scribes and Pharisees are identical to the white evangelicals who support Trump; but there is, I think, a heuristic lesson to be learned here.

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Note that the Greek word for justice in the pericope above is krisin, the infinitive of which is κρίσις (krisis), as in “the activity of God or the Messiah as judge, esp. on the Last Day.”31 We derive the English word crisis from the Greek word krisis. A crisis requires one to make a weighty decision, like the ones brought to light by James Baldwin and Emmanuel Levinas. As Levinas has put it, one’s very soul, “the spirituality of the soul itself,” is in question. For “the weightier matters of … justice and mercy and faith” are very much on the line. If Light is to prevail despite this time of Darkness in our nation today, those of us who are educators must equip those we teach to weigh what is going on and move toward the Light. I do not believe that the mores of Donald Trump and his supporters are sustainable. Should their unkindness and injustice prevail, I fear that disaster is in the offing, not only for those of us at home in the United States but for those in other nations too. James Baldwin’s essay “A Talk to Teachers” is pertinent indeed: now is the time to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not.32 It is, moreover, the educators’ task, particularly those of us at work in the field of theological education, to convey the perilous closeness between theology and ethics. Levinas writes in his book Totality and Infinity:  An Essay on Exteriority, “To posit the transcendent as stranger and poor one is to prohibit the metaphysical relation with God from being accomplished in the ignorance of men and things.”33 What is more, “The dimension of the divine opens forth from the human face”; which is to say, a “relation with the Transcendent free from all captivation by the Transcendent is a social relation … God rises to his supreme and ultimate presence as correlative to the justice rendered unto men” and women.34 Let me emphasize this line: a relation with the Transcendent free from all captivation by the Transcendent is a social relation. The apophasis implicit there may not make sense to one who rejects Anselm’s ontological argument, or sees it, as Ludwig Feuerbach does, as a reflection of our species’ high regard for itself.35 But Levinas’s insight that there “can be no ‘knowledge’ of God separated from the relationship with” those next door is “gospel,” in my view anyway. To put that another way, “the season of Light” expands to the extent that educators help us to overcome the Darkness—​to fear “injustice more than death;” “to go for broke.” Whatever greatness America will be able to claim depends on the proffering of wisdom in this time of foolishness.

Notes 1 Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2003), 7.

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2 William Saletan, “What Trump Supporters Really Believe. The President’s Base by the Numbers,” Slate (August 29, 2017), accessed 30 June 2018, www.slate.com/​articles/​ news_​and_​politics/​politics/​2017/​08/​trump_​s_​bigoted_​base_​by_​the_​numbers.html. 3 Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher, Trump Revealed: An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money, and Power (New York: Scribner, 2016), 346. 4 Deborah Wallace and Roderick Wallace, A Plague on Your Houses: How New York Was Burned Down and National Public Health Crumbled (New York: Verso, 1998), 9–​10. 5 Kranish and Fisher, 53. 6 Ibid., 54. 7 Dana Goldstein, “The Tough Lessons of the 1968 Teachers’ Strikes,” The Nation (September 24, 2014), accessed January 20, 2018, www.thenation.com/​article/​tough-​ lessons-​1968-​teacher-​strikes/​. 8 Ibid.; and Leonard Buder, “Decentralization of Schools Provides Painful Lessons,” The New York Times (archives, December 11, 1988), accessed May 30, 2018, www.nytimes. com/​1988/​12/​11/​weekinreview/​the-​region-​decentralization-​of-​schools-​provides-​ painful-​lessons.html. 9 Dorothy Sterling, Freedom Train:  The Story of Harriet Tubman (New  York:  Scholastic, 1954); James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (New  York:  Dial Press/​Penguin, 1963); Malcolm W with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New  York:  Penguin, 1965); Richard Wright, Native Son (London:  Vintage Books, 1940); Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: Random House/​Penguin, 1952). 10 Solomon Malka, Emmanuel Levinas: His Life and Legacy, trans. by Michael Kigel and Sonja M. Embree (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University, 2002). 11 David Leeming, James Baldwin: A Biography (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2015). 12 Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence, trans. by Michael B.  Smith (London: Athlone Press, 1999), 28. 13 Ibid.,  28–​29. 14 Ibid., 29. 15 James Baldwin, “A Talk to Teachers,” in James Baldwin:  Collected Essays, ed. by Toni Morrison (New York: The Library of America, 1998), 678. 16 Ibid., 679. 17 Robert P. Jones, “White Evangelicals Can’t Quit Donald Trump,” The Atlantic (April 20, 2018), accessed May 29, 2018, www.theatlantic.com/​politics/​archive/​2018/​04/​ white-​evangelicals-​cant-​quit-​donald-​trump/​558461/​. 18 Max Blumenthal, “Agent of Intolerance,” The Nation (May 16, 2007), accessed May 29, 2018, www.thenation.com/​article/​agent-​intolerance/​. 19 Bruce Gerencser, “The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser” (blog) (August 17, 2017), accessed May 28, 2018, https://​brucegerencser.net/​2017/​08/​is-​segregation-​scriptural-​ by-​evangelist-​bob-​jones-​the-​founder-​of-​bob-​jones-​university/​. 20 www.bju.edu/​about/​creed-​mission.php, n.d., accessed June 4, 2018. 21 www.liberty.edu/​aboutliberty/​index.cfm?PID=6907, n.d., accessed June 4, 2018. 22 Jim Wallis, “White Evangelicals Christianity Is a Bubble and It’s about to Burst,” Sojourners (May 3, 2017), accessed June 4, 2018, https://​sojo.net/​articles/​white-​ american-​evangelical-​christianity-​bubble-​and-​it-​s-​about-​burst, original emphases. 23 Ibid. 24 Emma Green, “Franklin Graham Is the Evangelical Id,” The Atlantic (May 21, 2017), accessed June 4, 2018, www.theatlantic.com/​politics/​archive/​2017/​05/​franklin-​ graham/​527013/​.

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25 Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2007), 82. 26 Jonathan Kirsch, God against the Gods: The History of the War between Monotheism and Polytheism (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), 34. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., 35. 29 Jan Assmann, The Price of Monotheism, trans. by Robert Savage (Stanford:  Stanford University, 2010), 3. 30 Stewart Guthrie, Faces in the Clouds:  A New Theory of Religion (New  York:  Oxford University, 1995), 179, emphasis in original. 31 Walter Bauer, A Greek-​English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, trans. by William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich (Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1979), 452. 32 Baldwin, 678. 33 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity:  An Essay on Exteriority, trans. by Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University, 1961), 78. 34 Ibid. 35 Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. by George Eliot (Mineola: Dover Publications, 2008), 164.

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8 COMPLICATING RESISTANCE Intersectionality, Liberation, and Democracy Jennifer Gale de Saxe

Introduction The purposes of public education in the United States are extremely polarized and multi-​faceted. On the one hand, education is framed as a means by which one may “better” their social and economic status. On the other hand, education is seen as a platform whereby young people have the potential to make use of the freedoms they have, whilst contributing to the re-​shaping and reimagining of our current racist, classist, sexist, and inequitable society.1 It is not hard to see how such conflicting purposes intersect and complicate the manner in which too many people are unable to see how highly political, inequitable, and oppressive education is today. Throughout this chapter, I  will first analyze the current context of public education in the US, paying close attention to what needs to be resisted and challenged. Second, I  offer a vision for how education and society might be reimagined so that they embody democracy, justice, and liberation. I then move on to an interdisciplinary discussion of critical education and critical feminist theories, highlighting how such interconnected frameworks have the potential to aid in reconceptualizing education. Finally, I demonstrate how an intersectional analysis may be deployed as a means by which to engage in resistance, and praxis-​ oriented transformation for all educational communities and institutions.

Situating Resistance Resistance, indicates an approach of collective fight back, exposing the inequitable distribution of power, and actively opposing those forces which have a negative impact on our lives, socially, politically and economically.2

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“Successful” education (teaching and learning) is framed and evaluated today by demonstrating, through quantifiable and standardized means, that students in the United States are globally competitive and can compete internationally.3 Within this philosophy, Henry Giroux argues that American youth are “denied opportunities for self-​definition and political interaction … they are transfigured by representations, discourses, and practices that subordinate and contain the language of individual freedom, social power, and critical agency.”4 Through this, we are reminded that the education sector continues to operate under the control and normalization of the racial contract.5 As such, the many interlocking facets of education play the role of maintaining the status quo, whilst normalizing whiteness, patriarchy, and capitalism. Additionally, education is framed as a competition, whereby standardization and individualism drive not only teaching and learning, but also the manner in which “success” is socially constructed so that capitalism, and by extension privatization, is seen as superior to public goods, schools, etc.6 Through the forces of the free market and the push toward standardizing and corporatizing education, the purposes of school continue to be steered away from critical thinking  and activism, which have the potential to challenge the status quo of inequity and marginalization. Instead, schooling emphasizes upward mobility, competition, and the preservation of the status quo.7 These goals reinforce the seemingly neutral characteristics of individualism and standardization, framing them as inherently part of the education process, as opposed to something that must be questioned and challenged. Such an ideology, otherwise known as neoliberalism, views teaching and learning (and education in general) as a means by which to further this agenda, often resulting in top–​down learning, incorrectly framing education as “politically neutral,” and a reinforcement and perpetuation of inequality. Even more suspect, neoliberalism, according to Bargh “demonstrates a translation of many older colonial beliefs, once expressed explicitly, now expressed implicitly, into language and practices which are far more covert about their civilising mission.”8 In essence, a neoliberal ideology seeks to colonize, suppress, and dominate both the mind and body. The insidious nature that propels the structural, racial, and institutional oppressions found within both school and society should not be understated. The cleverly crafted narrative of “failing” public education in the US is hegemonic in nature, and is reinforced through a common-​sense story9 that places blame on individuals and communities, instead of societal, structural, and institutional factors that reinforce inequity and marginalization. Arguably, this narrative has been so skillfully crafted that both students and teachers internalize their own feelings of inferiority, individual failure, incompetence, and self-​defeat.10 It is this thinking that makes room for neoliberalism to persist, as its ideology shuns any attention paid to societal factors that reinforce a normalized version of successes and failures that perpetuate stratification.11

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Of significance, Noliwe M.  Rooks12 discusses this very notion through “segrenomics,” a term she coined through her research on privatizing public education and inequality. Rooks focuses her analysis on segregation, educational inequity, and the ways in which many current “reforms” and “policies” not only reinforce different forms of education between poor and wealthy, but also uphold capitalism to the fullest. She states, “If we as a nation really took seriously dismantling underperforming school districts and replacing them with the same types of education experiences we provide the wealthy, it would negatively impact the bottom line of many companies.”13 Throughout her analysis, Rooks intersects the goals of neoliberalism, (privatization and corporatization) with demeaning, dehumanizing, and self-​ responsibilization in education. She reinforces how interconnected these three facets are to the sustainability of wealth accumulation. Her discussion exposes the often taken-​for-​g ranted interconnectivity between school and society, whilst paying close attention to the fact that one cannot be attended to without the other. Within this discussion, failure is perceived as an individual problem, as opposed to societal or systemic, where esteem is placed on competition and assimilation. Within such a bleak picture of education in the US, it would seem that a fatalistic attitude regarding the future of public education would assume the position as the lowest common denominator. However, there are still opportunities for transformation and change. Significantly, there must be a platform, a vision, for what education and society could and should look like for all students. Tensions and contradictions need to be teased out, and imagination must be reconceptualized as a way to drive and substantiate change. In the words of Grace Lee Boggs, “To be truly human and to really know Truth, people discovered, we need to summon up all our mental and spiritual resources, constantly expanding our imaginations, sensitivities, and capacity for wonder and love.”14

Imagining a Better World Consciousness of relations of subordination and domination is the first step in moving toward the critical sensibility needed to build counterhegemonic movements in education and elsewhere.15 Notably, understanding the need to resist requires that close attention be paid to the external forces and outside of school factors that require reframing and reconceptualizing. In other words, existing social and political frameworks (domination and acquiescence)16 should not be taken for granted, nor seen as mutually exclusive for a just education and world. Following the previous discussion of the current context of education in the US, I offer an alternative understanding for how we need to reconceptualize education so that it has the potential to co-​exist with true human freedom. I look to Suissa to help frame my thinking:

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The question of “what should our society be like” is not merely “overlapping”, but logically prior to any questions about what kind of education we want … The view of society on education is not one of “our society” or “a democratic society”, but a normative vision of what society could be.17 I find it useful to articulate the manner in which I believe the interconnectivity between school and society must be re-​conceptualized, so that my argument and framework for complicating resistance becomes multi-​faceted and nuanced. It is for these reasons that I  offer the following guiding questions:  1) What kind of society do we want? 2) What would education look like in this ideal society? 3) Can we imagine a society that brings us closer to an unequivocally better world?18 In other words, what might such a reconceptualization look like so that we can be purposeful and meaningful within our discussions of resistance? Giroux captures this sentiment within the following quote: “It is crucial for educators to recognize that resistance is a multilayered phenomenon that not only takes diverse and complex forms among students and teachers within schools but registers differently across different contexts and levels of political struggle.”19 I draw on the work of Danielle Allen and Maxine Greene. I draw on these two seminal scholars to help better explicate the manner in which I believe both school and society have the potential to exist as democratic and liberating spaces. Also, both of these theorists have been instrumental in helping me to conceptualize an education that has the potential to coincide with democracy and liberation. Allen draws on her expertise within political theory to help reframe and reimagine a democratic citizenry.20 She argues that the most solid and important activity of engaging with democracy is citizenship (understanding the many nuances that encompass such a term), which throughout history, has been framed through a racist, patriarchal, capitalist ideology.21 Ultimately, this has resulted in conforming to the destructive habits of domination and acquiescence. Allen claims that teaching new habits of citizenship does not begin in the classroom, but instead, outside of the school setting. Such an assertion reinforces the interconnectivity of school and society. Allen also argues that democracy is better served by seeking not “oneness,” but “wholeness.” Within the language of “wholeness” we become a group of citizens who are tied together, working together, and evolving together.Thus, “wholeness” helps capture our diversity and makes a space to honor and respect our fluid and constantly changing society as opposed to “oneness” that forces a false homogeneity among citizens. On this score, citizens would allow for the development of a form of citizenship that could focus on an integral whole. Therefore, Allen claims that teaching new habits of citizenship does not necessarily begin in the “oneness” classroom or school, but rather outside in the context of a “wholeness” society. Expanding on Allen’s arguments, I turn to Greene who offers another notion for redefining and reconceptualizing true human freedom as it relates to the liberating potential of education.22 She considers the following questions as a base:

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How much does the possibility of freedom depend on critical reflectiveness, on self-​understanding, on insight into the world? How much does it depend on being with others in a caring relationship? How much depends on actually coming together with unknown others in a similar predicament, in an “existential project,” reaching toward what is not yet?23 According to Greene, one of the ways to achieve freedom is to offer public spaces where individuals can be in the presence of other human beings, and where thoughtful discussions and action can take place. She sees such spaces as places where individuals can challenge, seek alternatives, and come together in solidarity to help move toward more caring communities. Most important, Greene argues that people are deprived of their true freedom when there is no public space where they can actively participate with others. In fact, Greene’s argument for the opening of public spaces can be tied directly to Arendt’s24 concept of plurality. Arendt sees plurality as the eventual attainment of a communion with other souls. The person is the center of choice, where one can only truly develop their fullness to the degree that they are members of a live community. Additionally, Arendt sees a distinct connection between power, freedom, and public space. She sees plurality as the basic condition between action and speech: “Plurality has the twofold character of ‘equality and distinction’. Without equality, there could be no public space. Without distinctiveness or uniqueness, people would have no need for speech or action to make themselves understood.”25 Only by being with others can one truly attain freedom. Additionally, we need to “open up” spaces to remake our democratic community. Greene focuses on bringing in new voices, new perspectives, and looking at alternative ways of teaching that will lead to what we may see and understand as a transformative way of teaching and learning. This way of being with and within the world not only offers diverse perspectives, but also serves as a platform for empowerment, imagination, and freedom. If there is possibility, multiple perspectives, and unanswered questions, there is freedom. Moving forward, I  build upon my theoretical interpretation of reimagining liberatory education and democracy, to a praxis of engaging with transformative resistance. What follows is a discussion of both critical feminist and critical education theories, noting how their interconnective frameworks have the potential to demonstrate how resistance can and should be intersectional; both theoretically and through praxis.

Conceptualizing Critical Feminist and Critical Education Theories26 To be a feminist is to be a feminist everywhere. Feminism is not a commitment that can be suspended when it is inconvenient. But that does not mean feminists share the same commitments or that it is always clear

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how that commitment should express itself! Work is part of everyday life. When we live a feminist life we are a feminist at work.27 At its core, critical feminism, as a theoretical framework, can be conceptualized as one that embodies critical and difference-​centered perspectives. Moosa-​Mitha discusses feminist research as women-​ centered, collectivist, and grounded in lived experiences.28 Such an approach to research privileges the specific and the contextual. In fact, in order to fully understand the many diverse experiences of oppression, there must be a move away from validating positivist academic knowledges and “Truths” and instead, base a critical feminist theory upon lived experiences and oppositional social movements. When conducting research, feminist theorists position the researcher and the participant in engaged and self-​ reflexive activities.29 Thus, rather than making universal claims, feminist researchers are working to make sense of one’s social reality through subjectivities that are based on narratives, performance, as well as other methodologies that incorporate individual, personal, and collective experiences. Notably, such a manner of being with and within the world falls in line with conceptualizing education for critical consciousness.30 Following suit, both Ahmed31 and Mohanty32 remind us that we must claim all spaces as political, reframe radical theory as insurgent knowledge, as well as set free the “feminist killjoy” that resides within all of us. As such, the importance of merging together critical feminist and education theories is what helps ground intersectionality as both a theoretical framework and praxis for liberation and democracy in education. I refer to Dadds’s work, where she argues: The dilemmas facing humans seeking a liberatory theory for education are global and particular. When we understand this, we realize that feminist thought and action is a key element to critical social theory and is crucial to its engagement with the educational enterprise.33 Within this realm, I aim to build on Freire, and re-​envision his call for an education for critical consciousness and liberatory pedagogy. I demonstrate this by focusing on the following tenets that characterize my conceptual framework (incorporating elements of critical feminist and critical education theories): questioning and challenging hegemonic understandings of oppression; disrupting the educational canon; and recognizing diverse methods and forms of resistance.34 What follows, will be an analysis of the three modes of resistance, reinforcing how they point to the manner in which intersectionality may be deployed as a theoretical framework, as well as a praxis (or tool) for resistance and liberation within education. First, however, it is important to understand both the origins of intersectionality, as well as the manner in which I am engaging with it as an analytical framework and tool. As such, the next section will tease apart some of the nuances that help to better conceptualize intersectionality.

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Methodologies of Resistance and Intersectionality Crenshaw coined the metaphor in 1980’s Manhattan.Whose roads are these? Who designed the grid, and then who built them? Whose land is the entire structure on? How does the grid itself marginalize people, transforming some people into so-​called “minorities” in the imperial gaze while supposedly being able to serve the interests of the “majority”? For me these are the most productive questions that arise as we try to think about the relationship between intersectionality and marginality.35 Intersectionality has become somewhat of a buzzword since the inauguration of Donald Trump. There was quite a lot of criticism about the planning and organizing of the Women’s March on Washington.36 However, because of the term intersectionality, the conversation shifted from thinking about feminism as a white, liberal, cisgender, heterosexual, able-​bodied, middle/​upper-​class movement, to one that must be rearticulated so as to interrogate the historical and present “norm” of what defines a feminist. For those of us who have been engaged in critical feminist scholarship and research within the academy, it is a positive step forward to see such challenges and reconceptualizations of resistance and grassroots movements spilling into society writ large. However, like many methods and modes of resistance, it is important to analyze, challenge, and work to better understand the nuances and multi-​dimensionality that undoubtedly encompasses such activist movements. At its core, an intersectional analysis and interpretation should be rooted in recognizing and analyzing social inequalities. In particular, it should “explore the interaction between different identity markers, such as race, and gender, that underpin social, political and economic formal rules and informal norms and cultures.”37 Importantly, intersectionality moves away from seeing people as a homogenous, undifferentiated mass. Instead, intersectionality provides a framework for explaining how social divisions of race, gender, age, and citizenship status (just to name a few) position people differently in the world.38 Within such a nuanced, context specific analysis, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see the benefits of utilizing an intersectional framework for working to challenge a single story of oppression and marginalization.

Questioning and Challenging Hegemonic Understandings of Oppression As it stands, the hegemonic view of education frames successes and failures as individual issues, reinforcing the myth of equal opportunity. Within this mode, or tenet of resistance, there must be a push back on the cultural and current domains of power. This dangerous narrative underpins the binaries of an us vs. them mentality, cleverly crafting a story of self-​defeat and blame. In other words,

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self-​blame becomes a common sentiment, rather than recognizing and challenging an uneven playing field that is framed as “equal.” Instead, there must be a rephrasing and questioning regarding the many components of education and marginalization: who or what is driving education and education policy? Who is winning and who is losing? And, most importantly, what is the story that we tell the losers to get them to want to continue playing?39 Of significance, Ladson-​Billings discusses both critical race theory and education debt as they relate to inequity, institutionalized racism, as well as challenging a single story of oppression.40 Education debt looks to myriad factors that reinforce the inequalities that have historically been and continue to manifest in our current education system. In essence, Ladson-​Billings argues that the historical, economic, sociopolitical, and moral decisions and policies that characterize US society have created an education debt. Her analysis of said debts reframes and challenges the phrasing of “achievement gap,” instead pointing to an “opportunity gap.” These debts reinforce whiteness as an ideology, capitalism, and the maintenance and sustainability of a system that is both inequitable and racist, often resulting in acceptance and normalcy within our education communities and institutions. As Matias and Mackey argue, “the hegemony of whiteness has so naturalized itself within the field of U.S. education that it goes undetected, despite the major implications it imposes on educational equity of students of color.”41 Therefore, there must be a commitment to teach and challenge the manifestations of whiteness and white supremacy, so that there is a deliberate recognition of the impact and effects of whites holding racial privilege. To connect this notion with liberation and democracy in education, I look to Freire, who argues that we must examine the individual and/​or collective forms of oppression as the starting points (one’s reality), after which we can then move forward to combat and free oneself from oppression through critical action and intervention.42 Importantly, Freire’s notion pushes back against one-​dimensionality, paying close attention to the ways in which we embody multiple identities and experiences. Only by learning, listening, and understanding the diversity of our lives and experiences can we move away from seeing oppression as hegemonic, or as something that is universally experienced. Within this realm, drawing from intersectionality as a theoretical framework, the conversation can be left open so as to avoid essentialist narratives about whom or what intersectionality is referring to. In other words, intersectionality embraces complexity, as its theoretical definition is constantly under construction, malleable, and multi-​dimensional. Moreover, intersectionality gives people better access to the complexity of the world and of themselves. Collins and Bilge argue that there are many ways in which oppressions intersect and reinforce social divisions in a given society at a given time.43 They both build on each other and are mutually inclusive. In as much, not only is it vital to consider multiple viewpoints and perspectives, but self-​reflection, and the consideration of one’s positionality and standpoint are further components of questioning hegemonic understandings of oppression.

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As it relates to teaching and learning, we must recognize our own positionalities in order to challenge the dominant ideologies of traditional educational practices, as well tease apart hegemonic understandings of oppression and resistance. As hooks reminds us, “Women must learn to accept responsibility for fighting oppressions that may not directly affect us as individuals.When we show our concern for the collective, we strengthen our solidarity.”44 To experience solidarity, we must have a community of interests, shared beliefs and goals around which to unite to build Sisterhood. Similarly, Audre Lorde wrote for the need to welcome difference, not to “merely tolerate” people who are different.45 We must embrace difference because it is that which provides a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity has the opportunity to spark like a dialectic. Moreover, Khatun argues, Rather than buying this story that theorises humans as deviations from a white, male, propertied, heterosexual, Protestant-​but secular individual, I want to look at how the colonial production of these categories continues to see the very terms in which we talk about difference.46 In other words, Khatun reinforces the need to think about activism and resistance in a more nuanced and multi-​dimensional way, pushing back on the assigned categories that aim to separate and divide. Precariously, we are living in a time where on one side of the spectrum, we see a focus on attempting to teach and instill tolerance and acceptance. On the other, there is a concerted effort aimed toward isolationism and intolerance. Recognizing the stark contrast between the two, it is more important than ever to teach our children how vital it is to see one another as unique and special individuals. We must strive and work toward re-​imagining our educational institutions as places that promote communal engagement, as well as embrace the uniqueness of individual freedom for all of our students.

Disrupting the Educational Canon Rather than suggesting that knowledge leads (or should lead) to transformation, I offer a reversal that in my view preserves the point or aim of the argument: transformation, as a form of practical labor, leads to knowledge.47 Following Ahmed’s argument, I draw on Denzin et al. who note that in order to re-​g round Freire’s pedagogy, there must be a merging together of the ideals of critical and indigenous scholars.48 Such a union can be referred to as Critical Indigenous Pedagogy (CIP), which includes specific ideologies and ways for understanding the world: inquiry is both political and moral; methods are used critically and for social justice purposes; transformative power of indigenous and subjugated knowledges are valued; praxis and inquiry are emancipatory and empowering; western methodologies, and the modern academy must be decolonized.49 In other words,

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resistance work is multi-​layered, multi-​faceted, and nuanced. However, it must start from the ground up, articulated directly from those who are most affected and impacted by oppression. Kincheloe and Steinberg further argue that such ways (indigenous knowledges) of knowing and acting have the potential to contribute so much to the educational experiences of all students.50 However, because of the status quo and dominant epistemologies of western knowledge production, such ways of thinking about education are deemed irrelevant by academe.51 To challenge the hegemony of the academy (and education in general), decolonizing methodologies are grounded in active resistance, focusing on the unique and diverse experiences of marginalized individuals and communities, with the intention of challenging the manner in which “universal knowledges” is both conceptualized and understood.52 As Simmonds argues in her framing of decolonizing politics through Mana Wahine (an element of conceptualizing Māori feminism), “From this standpoint, decolonisation is not about fragmentation resulting from colonisation, but about unlearning, disengagement, and strengthening Māori at multiple levels.”53 Notably, we can look to Apple and Buras who ask, “whose perspective, experience, and history are privileged in the curriculum as well as in educational institutions more generally?”54 This question is considered by Smith who discusses the need for histories to be retold, authenticated, and rewritten in order to remove the oppression of theories that continue to be perpetuated and unchallenged within the academy.55 Similarly, Grande has articulated the need for a space in which to incorporate Red Pedagogy within educational communities.56 She argues that unless we pose critical questions and engage in dangerous discourse, we will not reach a point of un-​thinking one’s colonial roots and rethinking democracy. Many of the characteristics of Red Pedagogy connect and fall in line with disrupting the educational canon and mainstream academic knowledge; it is fundamentally rooted in indigenous knowledge and praxis, promotes an education for decolonization, and is grounded in hope… just to name a few. Complicating such a notion even further, one of the ways in which to think about intersectionality as a theoretical framework within this context is to critique the often-​ times unchallenged nature of traditional western schooling. Such a concept has been termed multilogicality. Kincheloe and Steinberg define multilogicality simply as the need for humans to encounter multiple perspectives in all dimensions of their lives.57 This idea is central to understanding indigenous knowledges and perspectives, as well as ways of being with and within the world.58 Kincheloe and Steinberg further argue that multilogicality shapes social analyses, political perspectives, knowledge production, and action.59 Thus, by incorporating multiple viewpoints and ways of being and seeing the world, “multilogical teachers begin to look at lessons from the perspectives of individuals from different race, class, gender, and sexual orientations. They are dedicated to search for new perspectives.”60

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Recognizing Diverse Methods and Forms of Resistance Intersectionality and critical education seemingly share three similarities: both areas draw from the broader philosophical traditions of participatory democracy; both work primarily in schooling and formal education as one primary institution location for their praxis; and, for each, navigating differences is an important part of developing a critical consciousness.61 This final strand will engage in the praxis element of intersectionality, recognizing it as a tool for deliberate action and resistance. As Freire reminds us, we must not dichotomize theory and practice by either underestimating theory, or exclusively emphasizing practice.62 Instead, we must bring the two together, seeing both the potential, as well as the contractions between the two. Additionally, it is important to note that hooks fundamentally understands theory as a healing place. She notes, “when our lived experience of theorizing is fundamentally linked to the process of self-​recovery, or collective liberation, no gap exists between theory and practice.”63 Because of this, we must remember that it is not enough to theorize the oppression that is inherent within education, teaching and learning. Instead, we must move beyond allyship and tolerance, recognizing that engaging in movements of solidarity64 is truly what inspires and sustains resistance and activism. We must remember that the application of praxis is more important than its theoretical definition, as the theory is constantly under construction, malleable, and context specific. In fact, intersectionality, as an analytic tool, requires that we pay close attention to the particular historical, intellectual, and political contexts that shape what we think and do. I find it useful to look to the work of Sandoval who calls for a differential consciousness, or an alternative way in which to reassess our current understandings of oppositional praxis.65 In essence, Sandoval recognizes the various ways in which race, gender, and class intersect, and why it is imperative that all forms of resistance within each form of oppression must be addressed if true oppositional resistance and action can take place. Importantly, although Sandoval does recognize and give credit to oppositional methods and forms of resistance, she argues for a dynamic process of moving forward, aiming toward expanding and incorporating many diverse forms of opposition and modes of resistance. Sandoval’s argument complements an understanding of intersectionality as praxis. For example, Collins and Bilge discuss the term relationality as a commitment to the development of coalitions or relations across social divisions.66 They state, “relational thinking rejects either/​or binary thinking, for example, opposing theory to practice, scholarship to activism, or blacks to whites.”67 Thus, the importance of utilizing and recognizing diverse methods and forms of resistance should be a central component of thinking about the multi-​faceted nature of resistance.

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Moreover, there needs to be a direct recognition and confrontation with the omnipresent racism and white supremacy found both within education and society. Within this realm, I  look to a few theorists whose work is centered in critical whiteness studies and literature, as their research and scholarship align with praxis and active forms of resistance. One of the major tenets of critical whiteness studies is that there must be a rearticulation and reconceptualization of whiteness.Through this reframing, resistance comes with a comprehensive understanding for the explicit and implicit ways that unexamined whiteness reinforces the inherent oppression found within our educational institutions and communities. As is often the case, talking about whiteness tends to focus on the invisibility of the privilege and power in a very surfaced manner. Instead, the aim should be to deeply examine and interrogate whiteness as a pervasive ideology, while also conceptualizing it as more nuanced, structural, and institutional, as opposed to an “individual” problem.68 Matias and Mackey argue for a pedagogization of critical whiteness studies.69 Falling in line with the self-​reflexivity that characterizes critical feminist and critical education theories, a pedagogy of critical whiteness becomes an active framework which “deconstructs the material, physical, emotional, and political power of whiteness. Used in conjunction with other critical theories of race, critical whiteness studies provides a ying to the yang studies of race.”70 Matias and Mackey emphasize that a true commitment to racial justice cannot be fully actualized by choosing to ignore how the exertions of whiteness create a violent condition for survival. For another perspective on critical whiteness studies and resistance, I  look to Twine and Gallagher who discuss the concept of Third Wave Whiteness as building upon existing scholarship, while moving further and away from its mere “exposure, yet invisibility,” and toward a reality that challenges the perpetuation of power and privilege.71 Importantly, Twine and Gallagher recognize the interdisciplinary nature of Third Wave Whiteness (owing a significant debt to feminist scholarship on race), noting that: this diverse scholarship is linked by a common denominator—​an examination of how power and oppression are articulated, redefined and reasserted through various political discourses and cultural practices that privilege whiteness even when the prerogatives of the dominant group are contested.72 Significantly, one of the aims of Third Wave Whiteness is to decenter the conversation of whiteness that often occurs as a strategy for denial and protection73 instead of working to expose it as a structural and social construct with the aim of challenging and unsettling it as opposed to seeing it as “invisible” or unmarked.74 Finally, I  look to Leonardo, and his work on rearticulating whiteness and unlearning error.75 Leonardo builds on the work of Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and his argument which suggests that development is a

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result of changes in social structure, not changes within the individual.76 Leonardo argues that there must be a space of possibility for white teachers to unlearn the “common sense” gained through many years of social conditioning through the ideology of whiteness, which did not tell them how race actually worked, but rather how it worked for them. Ultimately, Leonardo focuses on a critical rethinking of whiteness as an oppressive ideology of dominance to something that is rooted in justice and liberation. Significantly, in order to rearticulate whiteness, there must be an engagement with the pedagogical practice of unlearning the codes of what it currently means to be white so that racial justice and transformation become inherently part of deliberately reconstructing whiteness.77 The markers that characterize this third tenet are inherently proactive and demand transformation. They reinforce the importance of interconnectivity, realizing that resistance is multi-​layered and should thus be engaged with similarly. The underlying meaning of intersectionality as a form of praxis reinforces this ideal, demonstrating that only through such multi-​dimensionality can true resistance become actualized.

Complicating Resistance: Intersectionality, Democracy, and Liberation And every now and then, the possibilities explode. In these moments of rupture, people find themselves members of a “we” that did not until then exist, at least not as an entity with agency and identity and potency; new possibilities suddenly emerge, or that old dream of a just society reemerges and—​at least for little while—​shines.78 Unquestionably, conceptualizing the many facets and modes of resistance discussed thus far demonstrates the steep hill that lies ahead of us. Challenging the notions of oppression, individualism, and self-​meritocracy requires a significant reframing and shift for how we currently understand the very essence of schools, society, and democracy. Furthermore, in terms of thinking about intersectionality as a form of praxis, there must be an explicit reworking for how to engage with the many facets of resistance. As just one example, I  look to Ross, who argues for a form of “dangerous citizenship,” as its characteristics help better understand and explain some of the complicated ways in which resistance must be carefully conceptualized.79 Ross describes dangerous citizenship as embodying three fundamental, conjoined, and crucial generalities: Political participation, critical awareness, and intentional action. Its underlying aims rest upon the imperatives of resistance, meaning, disruption, and disorder. In essence, dangerous citizenship is a conceptual container for developing a radical critique of education as social control and a collection of strategies

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that can be used to disrupt and resist the conforming, anti-​democratic, anti-​ collective, and oppressive potentialities of education and society.80 Significantly, embodying the notion of dangerous citizenship requires a commitment to moving beyond traditional means of resisting. Instead, ascribing to the notion of acting as a “dangerous citizen,” there is an unwavering commitment in striving toward an intersectional and praxis-​inspired mindset for opposition and resistance. Such engagement has the potential to rupture the status quo, and challenge the hegemony of a narrative that perpetuates a “common sense” and uncritical understanding of societal inequities. Importantly, it should not be understated that the overlying aims of dangerous citizenship are seen as a “dangerous” response to an oppressive and socially unjust education and society. However, and as I have been discussing throughout the entirety of this chapter, resistance, as an element of praxis, requires that we commit to challenging both the overt and institutionalized forms of oppression that are so fundamentally inherent within education and society. As Darder so eloquently reminds us, we must “create political links between the classroom, campus, and community, in ways that foster a more seamless political democratic understanding of theory and practice.”81 With this inherently political project of resistance that aims for a democratic public life, we must take ownership of our political voices, engage in actions and discourses of solidarity, and strive for social change. In our contemporary moment, we are living in a time where we must wholeheartedly ground ourselves within a democratic, revolutionary, and emancipatory existence.

Notes 1 Bargh, M. (2007). Resistance: An indigenous response to neoliberalism. Wellington: Huia; de Saxe, J.G. (2015). A neoliberal critique: Conceptualizing the purposes of school. Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum, 5(1), Article 7; de Saxe, J.G. (2016). Critical feminism and critical education: An interdisciplinary approach to teacher education. New York and London:  Routledge; Giroux, H.  (2001). Theory and resistance in education:  Towards a pedagogy for the opposition. Westport, CT:  Bergin & Garvey; Giroux, H.  (2012). Disposable youth:  Racialized memories and the culture of cruelty. New  York and London: Routledge; hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge; Kumashiro, K.K. (2010). Seeing the bigger picture:  Troubling movements to end teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1–​2), 56–​65; Kumashiro, K.K. (2012). Bad teacher: How blaming teachers distorts the bigger picture. New York: Teachers College Press; Labaree, D.F. (1997). Public goods, private goods: The American struggle over educational goals. American Educational Research Journal, 34, 39–​81; Picower, B., & Mayorga, E. (eds). (2015). What’s race got to do with it? How current school reform policy maintains racial and economic inequality. New York: Peter Lang; Rury, J. (2016). Education and social change: Contours in the history of American schooling. New York and London: Routledge. 2 Penehira, M., Green, A., Smith, L.T., & Aspin, C. (2014). Maori and Indigenous views on resistance and resilience. Mai Journal, 3(2), 97–​110, at p. 97.

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3 Berliner, D.C. (2014). Effects of inequality and poverty vs. teachers and schooling on America’s youth. Teachers College Record, 116(1), 1–​15; Ravitch, D.  (2013). Reign of error:  The hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to America’s public schools. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 4 Giroux, H.  (2012). Disposable youth:  Racialized memories and the culture of cruelty. New York and London: Routledge, xiv. 5 Mills describes the racial contract as a concept that sees white supremacy as systemic, international, enduring, political, and differentially benefiting “whites” (Mills, C.W. (2015). The racial contract revisited: Still unbroken after all these years. Politics, Groups, and Identities, 3(3), 541–​557). Furthermore, “if in the mainstream racially obscurantist narrative the social contract among everybody brings the raceless liberal-​democratic polity into existence, the racially informed narrative needs to insist that in actuality the white racial contract brings the non-​liberal-​democratic white-​supremacist polity into existence” (p.  543). See also Leonardo, Z.  (2015). Contracting race:  Writing, racism, and education. Critical Studies in Education, 56(1), 86–​ 98. doi:10.1080/​ 17508487.2015.981197. 6 Lipman, P. (2016). School closings: The nexus of white supremacy, state abandonment, and accumulation by dispossession. In Picower, B.  & Mayorga, E.  (eds) What’s race got to do with it? How current school reform policy maintains racial and economic inequality. New York: Peter Lang. 7 De Saxe, J.G. (2015). A neoliberal critique: Conceptualizing the purposes of school. Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum, 5(1), Article 7; de Saxe, J.G. (2016). Critical feminism and critical education: An interdisciplinary approach to teacher education. New York and London: Routledge. 8 Bargh, M. (2007). Resistance: An indigenous response to neoliberalism. Wellington: Huia,  13. 9 Kumashiro, K.K. (2012). Bad teacher:  How blaming teachers distorts the bigger picture. New York: Teachers College Press. 10 Freire, P.  (1974). Education for critical consciousness. New  York:  The Continuum International Publishing Group; Memmi, A.  (1965). The colonizer and the colonized. Boston: The Orion Press. 11 Boggs, G.L. (2011). The next great American revolution: Sustainable activism for the twenty-​ first century. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press; hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge; Monbiot, G.  (2016, April 15). Neoliberalism—​the “zombie doctrine” at the root of all our problems. Common Dreams. Retrieved from www.commondreams.org/​views/​2016/​ 04/​15/​neoliberalism-​zombie-​doctrine-​root-​all-​our-​problems. 12 As cited in Strauss,V. (2018, January 19). How “segrenomics” underpins the movement to privatize public education. Washington Post. Retrieved from www.washingtonpost.com/​ news/​answer-​sheet/​wp/​2018/​01/​19/​how-​segrenomics-​underpins-​the-​movement-​to-​ privatize-​public-​education/​?noredirect=on&utm_​term=.b9f9b9965318. 13 Ibid. 14 Boggs, G.L. (2011). The next great American revolution: Sustainable activism for the twenty-​ first century. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 41. 15 Apple, M.W. & Buras, K.L. (2006). The subaltern speak: Curriculum, power, and educational struggles. New York: Routledge, 282. 16 Allen, D.S. (2004). Talking to strangers:  Anxieties of citizenship since Brown vs. Board of Education. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 17 Suissa, J. (2010). Anarchism and education: A philosophical perspective. Oakland: PM Press, 5, emphases in original.

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18 Suissa, J. (2010). Anarchism and education: A philosophical perspective. Oakland: PM Press. 19 Giroux, H. (2001). Theory and resistance in education: Towards a pedagogy for the opposition. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, xxiv. 20 Allen, D.S. (2004). Talking to strangers:  Anxieties of citizenship since Brown vs. Board of Education. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 21 hooks, b.  (1994). Teaching to transgress:  Education as the practice of freedom. New  York: Routledge. 22 Greene, M. (1988). The dialectic of freedom. New York: Teachers College Press. 23 Ibid., 79. 24 As cited within Greene (1988). The dialectic of freedom. 25 As cited within Greene (1988). The dialectic of freedom, 116. 26 Parts of this section are adapted from de Saxe, J.G. (2016). Critical feminism and critical education: An interdisciplinary approach to teacher education. New York and London: Routledge. 27 Ahmed, as cited within Dhillon, J. (2017). Feminism must be lived: An interview with Sarah Ahmed. Retrieved from truthout.org. 28 Moosa-​ Mitha, M.  (2005). Situating anti-​ oppressive theories within critical and difference centered perspectives. In Brown, L.  & Strega, S.  (eds) Research as resistance: Critical, indigenous, and anti-​oppressive approaches (pp. 37–​73). Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press. 29 Ibid. 30 Freire, P.  (1974). Education for critical consciousness. New  York:  The Continuum International Publishing Group. 31 Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a feminist life. Durham: Duke University Press. 32 Mohanty, C. (2013).Transnational feminist crossings: On neoliberalism and radical critique. Signs, 38(4), 967–​991. 33 Dadds, J.H. (2011). Feminisms:  Embodying the critical. In Levinson, B.A.U. Beyond critique: Exploring critical social theories and education (pp. 171–​196). Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 190. 34 De Saxe, J.G. (2015). A neoliberal critique: Conceptualizing the purposes of school. Catalyst:  A Social Justice Forum, 5(1), Article 7; de Saxe, J.G. (2016). Critical feminism and critical education:  An interdisciplinary approach to teacher education. New  York and London: Routledge. 35 Khatun, as cited in Silverstein, J.  (2017). Intersectionality, resistance, and history-​ making: A conversation between Carolyn D’Cruz, Ruth DeSouza, Samia Khatun, and Crystal McKinnon. Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, 23, 15–​22, at p. 18. 36 The Huffington Post sat down with two of the 2017 Women’s March organizers (Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory). They discussed the notion that although conversation about intersectionality and the dangers of “white feminism” isn’t new, the 2017 march brought such concerns back to the forefront. The event’s initial organizers were criticized for naming the rally the Million Women’s March, essentially taking the name of demonstrations that were organized by black activists in the mid-​1990s. The organizers renamed the event and reached out to women of color to help lead the event, but some women still remained skeptical (Gebreyes, R. (2017, January 27). Women’s march organizers address intersectionality as the movement grows. Huffington Post. Retrieved from www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/​entry/​womens-​march-​organizers-​address-​ intersectionality-​as-​the-​movement-​g rows_​us_​5883f9d9e4b070d8cad314c0?guccount er=1&guce_​referrer_​us=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_​referrer_​ cs=ZI933yL6zm-​se2F0vPTBMQ).

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37 Evans, E.  (2016). Intersectionality as feminist praxis in the UK. Women’s Studies International Forum, 59, 67–​75, at p. 68. 38 Collins, P. & Bilge, S. (2016). Intersectionality. Cambridge: Polity Press. 39 Gillborn, D. (2005). Education policy as an act of white supremacy: Whiteness, critical race theory and education reform. Journal of Education Policy, 20(4), 485–​505; Kumashiro, K.K. (2012). Bad teacher:  How blaming teachers distorts the bigger picture. New York: Teachers College Press. 40 Ladson-​ Billings, G.  (2006). From the achievement gap to the education debt: Understanding achievement in U.S. schools. Educational Researcher, 35(7), 3–​12. 41 Matias, C.E. & Mackey, J.  (2016). Breakin’ down whiteness in antiracist teaching: Introducing critical whiteness pedagogy. Urban Review, 48, 32–​50, at p. 34. 42 Freire, P.  (1974). Education for critical consciousness. New  York:  The Continuum International Publishing Group. 43 Collins, P. & Bilge, S. (2016). Intersectionality. Cambridge: Polity Press. 44 hooks, b. (1986). Sisterhood: Political solidarity between women. Feminist Review, 23, 125–​138, at p. 137. 45 Lorde, A. (1984). The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (2007) (pp. 110–​114). Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. 46 Khatun (2017), as cited in Silverstein, J. (2017). Intersectionality, resistance, and history-​ making: A conversation between Carolyn D’Cruz, Ruth DeSouza, Samia Khatun, and Crystal McKinnon. Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, 23, 15–​22, at p. 16. 47 Ahmed, S. (2012). On being included: Racism and diversity in institutional life. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 173, emphasis added. 48 Denzin, N.K., Lincoln, Y.S., & Smith, L.T. (2008). Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies. Los Angeles: Sage Publications. 49 Ibid.; also see Simmonds, N.  (2011). Mana wahine:  Decolonising politics. Women’s Studies Journal, 25(2), 11–​25; Smith, L.T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London: University of Otago Press. 50 Kincheloe, J.K. & Steinberg, S.R. (2008). Indigenous knowledges in education:  Complexities, dangers, and profound benefits. In Denzin, N.K., Lincoln, Y.S., & Smith, L.T. (eds) Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 135–​157). Los Angeles: Sage Publications. 51 Denzin, N.K., Lincoln, Y.S., & Smith, L.T. (2008). Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies. Los Angeles: Sage Publications. 52 Mohanty, C. (2013).Transnational feminist crossings: On neoliberalism and radical critique. Signs, 38(4), 967–​991. 53 Simmonds, N.  (2011). Mana wahine:  Decolonising politics. Women’s Studies Journal, 25(2), 11–​25, at p. 17. 54 Apple, M.W. & Buras, K.L. (2006). The subaltern speak: Curriculum, power, and educational struggles. New York: Routledge, 3. 55 Smith, L.T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies:  Research and indigenous peoples. London: University of Otago Press. 56 Grande, S.  (2009). Red pedagogy:  Indigenous theories of redistribution. In Apple, M.A., Au, W., & Gandin, L.A. (eds) The Routledge international handbook of critical education (pp. 190–​203). New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. 57 Kincheloe, J.K. & Steinberg, S.R. (2008). Indigenous knowledges in education:  Complexities, dangers, and profound benefits. In Denzin, N.K., Lincoln, Y.S., & Smith, L.T. (eds) Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 135–​157). Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

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58 Freire, P.  (1974). Education for critical consciousness. New  York:  The Continuum International Publishing Group. 59 Kincheloe, J.K. & Steinberg, S.R. (2008). Indigenous knowledges in education:  Complexities, dangers, and profound benefits. In Denzin, N.K., Lincoln, Y.S., & Smith, L.T. (eds) Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 135–​157). Los Angeles: Sage Publications. 60 Ibid., 139. 61 Collins, P. & Bilge, S. (2016). Intersectionality. Cambridge: Polity Press, 169. 62 Freire, P.  (1974). Education for critical consciousness. New  York:  The Continuum International Publishing Group; Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 63 hooks, b.  (1994). Teaching to transgress:  Education as the practice of freedom. New  York: Routledge, 61. 64 Peterson-​Smith, K.  & Bean, B.  (2015, May 14). Fighting racism and the limits of allyship. Retrieved from socialistworker.org. 65 Sandoval, C. (2000). Methodology of the oppressed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 66 Collins, P. & Bilge, S. (2016). Intersectionality. Cambridge: Polity Press. 67 Ibid., 27. 68 Haviland,V.S. (2008). “Things get glossed over”: Rearticulating the silencing power of whiteness in education. Journal of Teacher Education, 59(1), 40–​54; McIntyre, A. (2002). Exploring whiteness and multicultural education with prospective teachers. Curriculum Inquiry, 32(1), 32–​49; Pollock, M., Deckman, S., Mira, M., & Shalaby, C. (2009). “But what can I do?”: Three necessary tensions in teaching teachers about race. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(3), 211–​224. 69 Matias, C.E. & Mackey, J.  (2016). Breakin’ down whiteness in antiracist teaching: Introducing critical whiteness pedagogy. Urban Review, 48, 32–​50. 70 Ibid., 35. 71 Twine, F.W. & Gallagher, C.  (2008). The future of whiteness:  A map of the “third wave”. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31(1), 4–​24. 72 Ibid., 7. 73 Solomona, R.P., Portelli, J.P., Daniel, B.-​J., & Campbell, A. (2006). The discourse of denial:  How white teacher candidates construct race, racism and “white privilege.” Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(2), 147–​169. 74 McIntosh, P.  (1990). White privilege:  Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Independent School, 90(49), 31–​36. 75 Leonardo, Z. (2009). Pale/​ontology: The status of whiteness in education. In Apple, M.A., Au, W., & Gandin, L.A. (eds) The Routledge international handbook of critical education (pp.  123–​136). New  York:  Routledge Taylor & Francis Group; Leonardo, Z. (2017). White historical activity theory: Toward a critical understanding of white zones of proximal development. Race and Ethnicity in Education, 20(1), 15–​29. 76 Leonardo, Z. (2017). White historical activity theory: Toward a critical understanding of white zones of proximal development. Race and Ethnicity in Education, 20(1), 15–​29. 77 Leonardo, Z. (2009). Pale/​ontology: The status of whiteness in education. In Apple, M.A., Au, W., & Gandin, L.A. (eds) The Routledge international handbook of critical education (pp. 123–​136). New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. 78 Solnit, R. (2016). Hope in the dark: Untold histories, wild possibilities. Chicago: Haymarket Books, xxv.

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79 Ross, W. (2017, October 10). The fear created by precarious existence in the neoliberal world discourages critical thinking. American Herald Tribune. Retrieved from https:// ahtribune.com/in-depth/1833-wayne-ross.html. Interview by Mohsen Abdelmoumen. 80 Ibid., emphases in original. 81 Darder, A. (2012). Neoliberalism in the academic borderlands: An on-​going struggle for equality and human rights. Educational Studies, 48(5), 412–​426, at p. 422.

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9 EDUCATING FOR DEMOCRACY Lessons from the Life of Myles Horton Stephen Preskill

Introduction Not long after Myles Horton, the co-​founder of the Highlander Folk School, died in 1990, activist Anne Braden called Horton’s life uniquely meaningful because of his commitment to doing the impossible. As she saw it, establishing the Highlander Folk School in 1932 in the depths of the Great Depression and in a profoundly impoverished part of rural Tennessee was nothing short of “impossible.” Just as improbable was the decision to make Highlander a center for adult learning where downtrodden southern workers, both black and white, could meet together in a spirit of equality and mutual respect. Few places in the world were as inhospitable to workers’ rights and racial justice as the rural South in the 1930s. Jim Crow segregation engulfed the region and workers who wanted to organize for higher wages and better working conditions were immediately stigmatized as Communists. It was an impossible mission at an impossible time.1 Yet, despite the implausibility of such an enterprise, Horton and his Highlander colleagues persisted, and even though there were many setbacks, they eventually achieved at least some of what they set out to do. The southern labor movement did grow rapidly, in part, due to Highlander’s efforts, and in 1944, after many years of trying to bring integrated groups together without success, Highlander became one of the few places in the South where blacks and whites could count on encountering one another as equals.When public intellectual Cornel West was asked over 50 years later which white person in American history, male or female, “was most sympathetic to changing racial differences,” West responded, without hesitation, “Myles Horton.” He described Horton as an “indescribably courageous and visionary white brother from Tennessee.”2 As director of Highlander, over the course of some 40 years, Horton had a hand in fueling two of the 20th century’s greatest social movements:  the crusade for

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organized labor and the freedom struggle for civil rights. Because of Highlander, thousands of people gained the confidence and the skills to make change for the common good in their communities. At the heart of Highlander’s educational approach was its commitment to democracy, which Horton saw as much more than supporting a favorite candidate or voting in elections. For him, it meant nothing less than carving out a “free space”3 in which people could learn and work and play together to gain greater control over their lives. As Harry Boyte has recently put it, free spaces like Highlander were places “where people move from anger to agency [and] develop vision, intellectual life, and democratic habits and skills.”4 The assumption behind this view of democracy cannot be emphasized enough—​“the solutions to oppression were rooted in the experiences and communities of the oppressed” themselves.5 Highlander brought people together to share, validate and analyze their experiences so that the roots of their oppression could be clarified and solutions to their problems acted upon. Horton once said, “to build a democratic society, you have to act democratically in every way.”6 There was no other alternative. It might be tempting to coerce people into accepting democracy, because it was for their own good. Or understandable to try to win support for democracy through eloquent speeches and brilliant arguments. But Horton was convinced that in order to get people to appreciate and accept democracy you had to give them a direct, first-​hand experience with it. They couldn’t just be told about it:  “It had to penetrate all parts of people’s lives, providing them with a say about everything that was affecting them.”7 Because Horton had a lifelong distaste for capitalism and its obsession with profits, he wanted to create a place like Highlander, set off from the rest of society, where people could practice democracy, however briefly, without the interference of money-​making interests. In a similar way, people would not show love and respect toward one another unless they were part of a community where these things were constantly being modeled and enacted. At Highlander, people lived democracy by straining to hear and validate every voice and by attempting to enact a beloved community in which lovingkindness and universal respect informed every action. Of course, it was never perfect. People’s voices were sometimes completely ignored, and harsh, even racially insensitive language was sometimes used. But Highlander strove to be consistent and to maintain the highest standards for how people related to each other. Inseparable from democracy was Horton’s unwavering belief in people, an unshakeable faith that every person had something important, even indispensable, to contribute to the whole. They might need help figuring out how to make that contribution, partly because they had been told repeatedly that their experiences weren’t worth anything, but Horton never doubted that with the right support they would find a way to do this. He had an abiding faith in the value of people’s experiences as the key to identifying and addressing their collective problems. Throughout his career as an educator and activist, Horton constantly re-​invoked these principles.

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This commitment to democracy, as Myles Horton lived and articulated it, continues to be the foundation for all worthwhile education. But as in 1932, when Highlander first began, our current authoritarian moment feels like an impossible time to try to reinvigorate democratic education. To understand why Horton’s approach remains more relevant and more urgent than ever within the 21st century, this chapter will focus on his story and how the strategies developed at Highlander served the interests of the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed. This chapter will begin with Horton’s boyhood growing up poor in western Tennessee and include a few of the critical incidents that led to Highlander’s establishment in 1932. It will also chronicle how he gained influence as an advocate for organized labor, an activist for civil rights, and a champion for participatory democracy, and why the example he set remains education’s last best hope today.

Horton’s Beginnings It’s not an exaggeration to state that Horton’s story begins with multiple experiences of deep poverty in rural Tennessee. He grew up poor in a series of tiny communities east of Memphis. Most of the time, his parents, Perry and Elsie, and he and his three younger siblings got enough to eat, but there were no extras in their lives and little relief from their daily hardships. Yet, as Horton has said, it wasn’t personal poverty that he remembered. He never thought of his family as poor. He just accepted that there wasn’t any money and that his father and mother usually couldn’t count on steady work. What stayed with him was the deprivation of others. This hit home each time his mother served him only a half portion of the evening meal so that she could share the leftovers with their more destitute neighbors. She did this fairly often because, as Horton said, she needed “to share out of her poverty,”8 to help those who were not only poor, but actually sick and frail from lack of food. On those nights, Horton went to bed with hunger pangs, which he must have resented at least some of the time. But his main feeling was respect for what his mother was trying to do to make a difference. As he put it, “I knew it meant so much to her, and I wouldn’t have wanted to hurt her feelings by complaining.”9 An important part of the Hortons’ family life was their membership in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church (CPC). A  Kentucky and Tennessee offshoot of the more strait-​laced Presbyterian church, the CPC had an informality and accessibility that many country people appreciated. For one thing, services were in English, instead of Greek or Latin, and for another, the church encouraged women to be leaders and supported the ordination of female preachers. While its social justice orientation should not be exaggerated, the CPC did at least make an effort, thanks to the example of people like Elsie Horton, to look out for the most destitute members of the surrounding community. As historian Frank Adams has said: “The Hortons gave what they could of their scant supplies of food and

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clothing in times of need or emergency.This was the extent of a church member’s responsibility.”10 As Myles learned more about what churchgoers were expected to believe, however, he grew worried and confessed to his mother that he didn’t see how he could continue to be part of an institution that espoused predestination and original sin. These things just didn’t make sense to him. She answered frankly that those details weren’t important, calling all of it “preachers’ talk.” What mattered, she explained, “is that you’ve got to love your neighbor.” Reflecting on this much later, Horton pointed out that his mother didn’t say anything about God. “Love was a religion to her, that’s what she practiced.”11 For Horton, the lesson was straightforward: If you believe that people are of worth, you can’t treat anybody inhumanely, and that means you not only have to love and respect people, but you have to think in terms of building a society that people can profit most from, and that kind of society has to work on the principle of equality.12 Horton understood that some people came across as mean or abusive or hateful and therefore didn’t seem to merit that love and respect. He assumed, however, that these negative qualities resulted from the cruelties of an unjust and unequal society, not something intrinsic to the person. So, although people might seem unloving and untrustworthy, they had to be treated as if they were loving and trustworthy. Love and trustworthiness had to be posited, baked into the democratic process of relating to one another, until eventually, sometimes after a very long period of time, some of that love and trust could be reciprocated. Horton would eventually turn his attention to the problem of racial injustice in his native Tennessee, but growing up, he was relatively unaware of the discrimination faced by people of color. Or, to put it another way, like so many of his fellow Tennesseans who were white, he took much of that discrimination for granted. In truth, few blacks lived near Horton, and those who did were strictly segregated from the mostly white neighborhoods. Still, he got to know one black family very well.This was Aunt Donnie and her grandson Bob. Aunt Donnie took care of the Horton children when they were very young, just as she had cared for his mother years before when she was little. She didn’t actually live with the Hortons, but would stay for extended periods and pretty much took over the household whenever Elsie became ill or was called away. As Cynthia Stokes Brown has said, one sign of Aunt Donnie’s special authority was Perry Horton’s willingness to relinquish his favorite rocking chair to her whenever she visited. Part of the fun of those visits were the good times Myles and Bob enjoyed together, as they were about the same age. But as the two boys got older, their friendship was subtly discouraged, a change that saddened Myles and that he did not understand at the time. What he remembered most vividly was the day when Bob was delivering some groceries in a wagon for the Hortons

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and began to approach their ramshackle house with his load. As he drove up to the family’s front door, Aunt Donnie barked some scolding words that Horton never forgot: “Boy, don’t you never come up to white folks’ front door. Take that bag ’round back.” Decades later, when Horton told this story to Brown, he told her that “he could still see the tears that flowed down Bob’s cheeks.”13 Of course, Horton did not blame Aunt Donnie for this incident; he knew she was teaching her grandson important lessons, the kind that at that time, given the perils of the Jim Crow South, could spell the difference between life and death.

Challenging White Supremacy Years later Horton again felt the sting of white supremacy when he attended Cumberland University, near Nashville, an opportunity that came his way only because of a football scholarship. As an active member of the State of Tennessee’s Student YMCA, Horton began traveling to meetings in cities like Nashville and Knoxville for the first time, where he saw the impact of Jim Crow up-​close. Once, while attending a gathering in Nashville, he invited a Chinese girl to accompany him at dinner only to learn that no restaurant would admit them. During that same trip, he attempted to escort a black woman into a public library and again was told that interracial couples were barred from entering.What especially galled him about these experiences and caused him such a “rude shock,” as he said later, were the limits imposed by white supremacy on his “own desire for expression.” He would later analyze the situation more closely, using an intellectual and ethical lens, but his first reaction was personal. How dare the state limit his freedom in this way.14 He railed against segregation of any kind, because he resisted any practice that excluded him, that put unwarranted limits on what he could do. As a mountaineer, he didn’t like being excluded from people who weren’t mountaineers. As a country person, he hated being excluded from city folk. As a poor person, he felt excluded from a lot of things. As he put it years later, “I was excluded because I didn’t have clothes … I was excluded because I didn’t have money … I’ve been excluded for a lot of reasons … I don’t like to be excluded.”15 It wasn’t hard for Horton to make the next step, that his hatred of exclusion was not just a personal feeling. It was something shared by all people burdened by injustice. After Horton graduated from college, he held a position for a year as the head of the state of Tennessee’s Student YMCA. He traveled more than ever and grew increasingly troubled by the conflict between his belief in inclusion and the entrenched segregation of Tennessee. As a result, he felt he had no choice, as a leader of the YMCA, to hold integrated meetings even though they were outlawed by the state. In short, he risked punishment, perhaps even jail, to remain true to his beliefs. On one occasion, he invited both black and white representatives of Tennessee’s Student YMCA to a banquet at a whites-​only hotel to launch the group’s state-​ wide meeting. Believing even then that the best way to change people’s minds

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is to immerse them in an experience, not ask for permission or warn them in advance, he brought 120 black and white participants together into the banquet hall and invited them to eat. Startled by the setting but inclined to start eating regardless of the circumstances, the students began sharing the bread that was already on the table. When the all-​black hotel waiters objected, saying they could not serve the integrated gathering, probably because they feared the reprisals of their white bosses, Horton assured them that it would be all right. He said, “We’re paying you to serve us. We hired you to wait on us. If we get up and leave, you’ll go home without any pay, and if we don’t get any food, we’ll get up and leave.” Finally, the waiters relented and the integrated banquet went on. Although he could have been arrested for transgressing the segregation statutes of the state of Tennessee, Horton was willing to take the risk. As he put it, he “took the gamble of doing something about a moral problem instead of simply talking about it.”16 From that time on, Horton became increasingly preoccupied with the problem of racial discrimination. Sometime in 1929, he wrote a series of stories about the indignities of everyday racism in Tennessee that almost certainly reflected his actual experiences. In one of these stories, he portrayed a recently married and well-​educated black couple who were patiently waiting for a Nashville commuter bus to fill up with white passengers, so that they could take the last remaining seats at the very back of the bus.They were anxious to make this trip because they were going on their honeymoon. The wife, a recent college graduate who had enjoyed a sheltered existence at her all-​black school, “had almost forgotten what the world was like.” A surge of white passengers entered the bus and grabbed the last seats, even the ones in the back ordinarily reserved for black passengers, leaving the couple stranded in the aisle. Spotting the frown on the black husband’s face, one of the last white passengers said sympathetically, “too bad but this is the kind of world we live in and it will stay this way until we change it.” The husband, his lips quivering, responds, “Yes, this is the world we live in all right but some of us didn’t quite make it.”17 The moral of this story was clear and went right to the heart of Horton’s hoped for vision for his school, to create a total environment in which all, without exception, would help to make the world they lived in.

Fighting for Workers’ Rights During his senior year at Cumberland University in 1927–​ 1928, Horton encountered a wealthy textile mill owner named John Edgerton, whose dismissive, top–​down attitude toward organized labor helped him to see that classism, like racism, was another form of prejudice he would need to combat. Edgerton was not only a prominent local businessman, he was president of the conservative National Association of Manufacturers and a vociferous opponent of labor unions. He was, in short, a proud member of the owner class. Horton knew relatively little about the historic struggles between capital and labor at this time—​ he was only 22 years old—​but when he heard Edgerton speak during a special

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Labor Day celebration something about his tone and attitude made Horton’s “blood boil.”18 Edgerton called advocates for labor dangerous because they had to be either Communists themselves or funded by Communists. Workers had no rights that owners were bound to respect, he added, and wages would not increase and working conditions would not improve until the owners saw fit to support those changes. Quoted often in national discussions about reducing the work week from six days to five, Edgerton despised such proposals, fearing that more leisure would lead to degeneracy and even greater radicalism. As he put it, The common people had to be kept at their desks and machines, lest they rise up against their betters … Nothing breeds radicalism more quickly than unhappiness unless it is leisure and as long as the people are kept profitably and happily employed there is little danger from radicalism.19 Feeling violated by what he heard and unable to contain his bottled-​up feelings, Horton paid at least one unannounced visit to Edgerton’s woolen factory to speak with the workers as they exited the plant. He told them straight out that they shouldn’t have to put up with the low wages, long hours, dangerous machinery, and incessant racket that a few said plagued the mill.They should organize, protest, demand that the mill be made fit for human beings. The workers, unused to such mobilizing efforts and wary of anything that might threaten their job security, mostly turned away from Horton or pretended not to hear him. Surprised that he had failed to stir up any followers, Horton returned to campus and found himself charged with insubordination. When Edgerton found out that Horton had taken it upon himself to visit his mill and attempted to influence his workers, he was horrified and demanded the student be punished. No real consequences ensued for Horton, but officials at the university warned him not to return to the mill, because he would face expulsion.20 Horton agreed to stay away, graduating that spring, but he emerged from college a changed man. He was radicalized by what he heard, exactly the thing Edgerton most feared. Horton understood more clearly than ever that Tennessee’s social and economic rifts were a function of a long, complex history, a history riddled with conflict and contradiction, and shaped by deeply engrained hatreds and prejudices. It wasn’t enough, Horton realized, to think about how a single person was implicated in all this. The time had come to think about whole classes of people and how the titanic economic forces that determined their quality of life could be better understood and brought under more assertive community control. In his view, conventional schools weren’t equipped to make sense of these issues. Maybe a new kind of school or gathering place could be created to empower people under white supremacy and to analyze the conditions that kept workers permanently under the thumb of unsympathetic owners. Maybe it could be a place where democracy might thrive.

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Attending Union Theological Seminary Not yet ready to establish his own school, Horton took the advice of a friend and mentor and enrolled at Union Theological Seminar during the 1929–​1930 academic year to deepen his learning. One of the first people he met there was Reinhold Niebuhr. At the time, Niebuhr was working on concepts behind Moral Man and Immoral Society, which later became a best-​seller.21 Niebuhr believed individuals were generally moral, but groups participated in systems of oppression that negatively shaped their social outlooks. Horton called this dichotomy between the moral self and the immoral society “exactly my problem” and looked forward to working with Niebuhr.22 Niebuhr saw Horton as a natural ally and invited him to attend an advanced seminar, which was built around the lectures that would form the nucleus of the ideas presented in Moral Man and Immoral Society. Even well-​prepared students, who had far better educational foundations than Horton, braced themselves for the challenging course. Horton felt discouraged almost from the beginning. During the second or third session, when Niebuhr and his students were on a break congregating in the courtyard, Horton approached his professor to confess he would be dropping the course because he couldn’t understand the lectures or reading. “I just have to tell you I’m going to drop out,” Horton began. “I’m not going to go back in because I can’t understand anything you’re saying. I’m not going to waste my time listening to you without understanding, because I  can go over to the library and read something I  can understand.” When Niebuhr objected, Horton repeated, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”23 Niebuhr turned to the other students, many of whom held advanced degrees. He asked a friend and fellow pastor first. “Horton here says he can’t understand what I’m talking about. How about you? Am I  getting through to you?” The embarrassed pastor shook his head. “It’s really hard going for me too.” Niebuhr proceeded to survey the other students in the class. Each one, without exception, admitted that they could not say with confidence that they understood exactly what Niebuhr was saying.24 Niebuhr took these confessions as a sign. Horton had to stay in the class as the resident truth-​teller, the one participant who could be counted on to tell him when the lectures weren’t accessible. In fact, as the semester wore on, Niebuhr would often turn to Horton, especially when the content was particularly dense, for what he called an understanding check. Right in the middle of class, Niebuhr would lean toward Horton and ask, “Myles, do you understand what I’m talking about?” If Horton nodded, then he could proceed. As Horton recalled, “The others were ashamed to say they didn’t understand. I had no pride. I was there to learn and wasn’t even worried about grades or credit. All I wanted was to understand, to know.”25 Undoubtedly, Horton’s honesty and Niebuhr’s appreciation for his forthrightness drew them together. Niebuhr never failed to listen to Horton’s ideas about

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starting a southern mountain school and “introduced Horton to others who would listen” so that his dream could be realized.26 Many years later, when Horton was reflecting on his time at Union, he again singled out Niebuhr for believing in him and for not giving up on him: “He was the one person who had confidence in my ability to work this thing out.”27 Niebuhr represented what was missing from Horton’s own education. The social theories he expounded upon in the classroom combined with introductions to dozens of scholars who helped him to put complex theory into a relatable context were all part of the world to which Horton eagerly sought to gain access. As he put it years later, “If I hadn’t gone to Union, my world would be much smaller. I wouldn’t have gotten to know faculty and student social activists and become involved in all the issues I didn’t know existed before I left Tennessee.”28

Establishing Highlander In co-​founding the Highlander Folk School in 1932, with his colleague Don West, Horton sought to create a place where, above all, democracy could be lived. But at the time of the founding, he still did not fully understand how important it was to base life at the school on the experiences of the people who chose to go there. He and his colleagues had strong, academic backgrounds and had a tendency to fall back on traditional, didactic ways of teaching. He hadn’t yet learned as he later explained that: one of the best ways of educating people is to give them an experience that embodies what you are trying to teach. When you believe in a democratic society, you provide a setting for education that is democratic.You believe in a cooperative society, so you give them opportunities to organize a cooperative. If you believe in people running their own unions, you let them run the school so that they can get the practice of running something.29 But it wouldn’t do just to ask people what their problems were or to give people a space to express their concerns until a common language could be found that would allow Horton and his colleagues to cross the barriers created by academic education and grinding poverty. Horton and the other teachers at Highlander had to learn a new way of communicating, some of which was nonverbal and some of which involved learning to understand how oppressed people perceived their problems. In addition, Horton had to find a way to help people who came to Highlander get to know themselves better. For him, this meant inviting people to share their experiences, subjecting those experiences to a close analysis, and learning to identify recurring themes to fuel a sense of group solidarity and collective motivation. In this way, they would be better able to see themselves and the problems they faced with clarity and then have a stronger basis for tackling those problems.

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When he was finally ready to create the kind of school where all participants could live out their dreams of freedom, he envisioned an institution where people from a wide variety of backgrounds would gather. From the beginning, the principle of integration was at the forefront. Highlander made it clear that it stood for inclusion and welcomed both blacks and whites. But for the first dozen years of Highlander’s existence it was difficult to make it happen consistently. Neither whites nor blacks, for the most part, wanted to integrate, though for different reasons. Whites declined to be a part of such meetings because they clung to segregationist practices and were used to the strict separation. Blacks were reluctant out of fear of white violence and the humiliation that accompanied white rituals of non-​acceptance. Still, as Horton has said, Highlander’s position remained clear. They wanted to create a racially integrated environment. When they couldn’t get black students, they would bring in black speakers and black teachers to show how serious they were about welcoming blacks.30 In a letter dated May 1940, Horton describes at some length Highlander’s methods for desegregating its workshops, which included something he calls “natural exposure.” By this, he meant treating all black visitors with the same respect as white visitors, but without drawing attention to it, even though it was, in fact, part of a concerted campaign to fully integrate the school. As Horton described the method at the time: When they come to the school as speakers or as casual visitors, the same consideration and courtesy is shown them as are shown other visitors, but no fuss is made about their presence. Eating and sleeping arrangements follow the routine of all guests.31 When asked how he got black and white participants to eat together at Highlander, he answered matter-​of-​factly: “First, the food is prepared. Second, it’s put on the table. Third, we ring the bell.”32 Finally, in 1944, after a great deal of lobbying, the United Auto Workers agreed to a desegregated workshop at Highlander, which marked the first interracial union gathering ever to be held in the South. It was a triumph for Highlander, but one that was celebrated very quietly in keeping with the principles of “natural exposure.” Soon, Highlander became known as one of the few places in the South where blacks and whites could study and strategize together for social change. In 1952, two years before the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown, African American journalist Carl Rowan called Horton one of a tiny handful of white southerners willing to see “racial segregation as the root and perpetrator of all evils” in the South.33 In the case of Horton, he didn’t just acknowledge this fact; he acted on it repeatedly.

Channeling Anger One of Horton’s early lessons was how to deal with the intense anger that rose up inside him every time he saw workers mistreated or African Americans shunned.

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To be an effective educator for democracy, Horton learned to keep his anger under control, not extinguish it entirely, but channel it more productively so as not to scare off potential allies. As he put it, he had to learn to turn “his anger into a slow burning fire, instead of a consuming fire.” In the 1930s, Horton was hospitalized a number of times for nervous exhaustion. It’s likely that his tendency toward rage also took its toll on his health, compromising his ability to lead. He learned that his anger was an important motivator for the kind of work he was trying to do, and so he didn’t want it to die out entirely, but he also couldn’t afford to let it get out of hand. He came to see his anger as a constant, always there, but not explosive. The fire of his anger was “smoldering … subject to revving up and getting going” but also subdued, which made him better able to meet the needs of activism’s long haul.34 In this way, Horton sought to make his anger an asset, not a liability. It was, as Jeanne Theoharis has recently said with respect to the Montgomery Bus Boycott: “Anger transformed into action.” Like the boycott, Highlander’s ability to create a center where blacks and whites could learn and agitate together grew out of “an accumulation of perseverance, anger, and relationships built over years.”35

Resisting Charismatic Leadership Another piece of Horton’s struggle to make Highlander a model of democratic living emerged from his experiences as a leader in a 1937 textile strike in Lumberton North Carolina. At that time, Horton was deeply involved in the labor movement and would often take long leaves of absence from Highlander to be an observer, or, as in this case, to serve as an on-​the-​g round organizer. Knowing that the workers he was representing were facing a strike of at least two or three months, Horton accepted that it would be part of his job to keep the rank-​and-​file engaged throughout that grueling period. Once the strike actually occurred, he used every trick he knew. Each night after a long day of walking the picket line, he would tell and retell an endless stream of stories designed to keep the workers charged up. He cracked topical jokes, making the textile mill owners the butt of his punch-​lines. He read newspaper stories from a variety of dailies, almost all of which heaped criticism on the strikers, but as he did so, he also painstakingly pointed out all the ways in which the newspapers had gotten the story wrong or had intentionally distorted it to give the owners a public relations advantage. He would invite the crowd to take careful note of what actually happened at their meeting and then to compare their own eyewitness accounts to the skewed report found in the next day’s newspaper.36 As master of ceremonies of these evening gatherings, Horton would introduce a string of singers, musicians, dancers, and comedians to keep the strikers entertained. Over time, Horton was both exhilarated and aghast by the effect he had on the crowds. Sometimes there would be nights when he used his knack for storytelling and delivering passionate speeches that held two or three thousand

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people spellbound for hours. He knew he had a gift for narrative, but this setting seemed to be the ultimate test of his ability to weave engaging yarns out of nothing. In the end, the power to manipulate the people he was supposed to serve frightened him more than it gratified him. Intentionally or not, such power, it dawned on him, could be easily abused. Once the Lumberton strike was over, Horton resolved to return to Highlander for good. He had learned that he was better suited to being an educator than an organizer. He disliked organizing’s emphasis on results at the expense of learning and collective growth. And he hated the ways in which he had to manipulate people to get things done. He concluded that if he had to choose between getting things done and helping people learn, he would opt for learning. The Lumberton experience also taught Horton to distrust charismatic leaders, these larger-​than-​life figures who can take control of a situation and make it their own. He feared that they far too often used their skills not to teach and build understanding, but to mislead and even to deceive their unknowing followers, all for an outcome that too often benefited them more than the people they were supposedly trying to lead. Huey Long, who ruled the State of Louisiana in the early 1930s before being assassinated in 1935, was an especially instructive example of how rapidly rising charismatic leaders can turn into dangerous demagogues. Later, Horton would express concern about Dr King’s charismatic leadership, especially because it prevented other, less magnetic leaders from exerting a significant influence. Of course, Horton was hardly alone in expressing these concerns. Ella Baker, Septima Clark, and a number of other highly effective black leaders, many of them female, made the same argument. Eventually Horton decided that, on the whole, Dr King’s strengths as a force for good and for advancing civil rights outweighed his liabilities.37 But he looked back on those days with dismay as well, because when King’s assassination left a gaping leadership hole in the Civil Rights Movement, no one, in his estimation was ready to step forward and fill it.

Creating an Island of Decency One of Highlander’s most important functions during a workshop was in creating an “island of decency,” a place where no single figure presided or dominated and where instead every participant was respected and expected to contribute. Two, inviolable democratic principles prevailed—​freedom to speak and freedom from discrimination. To exclude any point of view, by cutting a discussion short or privileging one person’s view over another diminished democracy and prevented the group from getting the benefit of a rarely heard, potentially transformative opinion. As Horton put it, “all objections have to be heard, all disagreements allowed to come out in the open. You have to make decisions that everyone can live with. The decisions have to be on that level—​universal.”38 Workshops arose from the felt problems of the participants invited, but just as important, they were premised on the assumption that “people have within

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themselves the potential, intelligence, courage and ability to solve their own problems.” Highlander certainly played a role in stimulating the participants and in exhorting them to probe their experiences more deeply, but the main thing was to immerse people in an environment where they could pool their knowledge, making the most of one another’s insights and perspectives.39 What Highlander did better than anything was to create a microcosm of an integrated, democratic society. This meant that in addition to discussion of shared problems, there would be music and drama and long walks and square dancing and plenty of good food and lots of fun and stimulating conversation. It was a total experience that could last for two weeks or be carried out over the course of a long weekend. The main thing was to treat everyone well and to leave them feeling that they had been part of a powerful community, more capable than ever as individuals to bring about change back home. In a way, that’s what happened to Rosa Parks. Four months before she refused to surrender her bus seat to a white man, launching the Montgomery Bus Boycott, she attended a two-​week workshop at Highlander about racial integration. She was already a highly experienced activist in Montgomery, but she never felt comfortable in predominantly white gatherings, because her experiences with whites had always been so humiliating. She thus felt especially anxious about coming to a school in an isolated, nearly all-​white part of rural Tennessee. Upon arriving, though, she was relieved to learn that half of the 48 participants were black. In addition, Myles Horton went out of his way to humor her and make her feel welcome. She later singled out Horton for praise, whose respectful attitude, ebullience, and irrepressible sense of humor raised her spirits: Myles Horton just washed away and melted a lot of my hostility and prejudice and feeling of bitterness toward white people, because he had such a wonderful sense of humor. I often thought about many of the things he said and how he could strip the white segregationists of their hardcore attitudes, and how he could confuse them, and I found myself laughing when I hadn’t been able to laugh in a long time.40 At Highlander, blacks and whites conversed together, ate, sang, and even square danced together. While bridging the divide between races was one of Horton’s deepest commitments, he had a way of not drawing attention to it, making integration seem the most natural thing in the world. At Highlander, Parks found herself fully accepted, because she was a community leader with rich experience and a person who had a compelling story to tell. When she spoke, her comments were received with interest and respect. As she put it years later, it was one of the few times in her life up to that point when she “did not feel any hostility from white people,” and could participate “honestly without any repercussions or antagonistic attitudes from other people.”41 There were many factors that shaped Mrs Parks’ decision to defy Montgomery’s segregation laws on December 1, 1955,

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but one of those most likely was the positive, confidence-​building experience that Highlander gave her.

A Focus on Listening One of Myles Horton’s chief commitments as a facilitator of democratic discourse was his role as a respectful listener. Horton loved to talk, to tell stories, to offer his view of what needed to be done. It was hard for him to sit back and just listen. But at the same time, he knew that his penchant for talking could get in the way of others’ participation, a potentially fatal blow to the building up of democracy. Frank Adams, Horton’s friend and collaborator, has said that “Listening was not easy for him. His mouth [was] open in most of my memories of him.” But when he finally closed his mouth, Adams also found, Horton could be a profound listener. When Horton made the effort to fully absorb someone’s words, “people heard the sound of their own voices being taken seriously about issues of great import in their lives, usually for the first time ever.”42 When Horton listened in this intense way, devoting “every fiber of his being” to another’s story, it could have a miraculous effect on the dynamics of a group. Formerly reticent participants eagerly stepped forward to be part of the mix and to make their experiences known. Alice Wine, a Johns Island, South Carolina resident, who learned to read and successfully registered to vote because of a Highlander-​ inspired citizenship school, said that the kind of deep listening practiced by Horton “made the tongue work.” You talked, in spite of yourself, about your problems, both private and public, and before long others facing similar challenges joined with you in brainstorming solutions.43 Horton’s way of listening was only the beginning of a process that would eventually involve everyone. First, he modeled close listening in the large group setting. Then he put people into small groups so that they could practice listening to each other. Next, he encouraged people to listen for the problems they all held in common. Individuals couldn’t accomplish much on their own, Horton reasoned. But the more they listened to each other for the common experiences that bound them together, the more “they had a chance to devise some way to overcome” the oppression they faced.44

The Centrality of Questions Just as significantly, Horton prized questions as a good way to advance the democratic spirit that he sought. He never used questions to make people look bad or to humiliate them. His questioning was always in service of increasing understanding and even, in some cases, to liberate a person from a spirit-​killing sense of inferiority. The Reverend James Bevel, who was a black student activist during his first visit to Highlander, just before the beginnings of the 1960 sit-​in movement, had a particularly revealing perspective on Horton’s educational approach. Likening

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him to Socrates, Bevel emphasized the questions Horton asked that were meant to get participants to interrogate their racial assumptions. Horton rejected all talk of black inferiority and posed questions that got students to think in a similarly alternative way. As Bevel put it, He would challenge you on your inferior feelings. He sort of decrudded Negroes from being Negroes and making them think of themselves as men and women … He, like, destroyed all the false assumptions of the oppressor and made us deal with the facts.45 Horton’s love of questioning grew out of his belief that asking questions was a non-​intrusive way to get people to think differently. The right questions at the right time could help a group “examine the underlying reasons for a problem, or why the problem was so persistent, without the facilitator or leader ever having to supply any of the answers.”46 The questions he asked didn’t tell the group what to do or what decisions to make, but they did provide a direction or opened up a new line of thought. As Horton put it, “You can get all your ideas across just by asking questions and at the same time you can help people to grow and not form a dependency on you.”47 Part of the skill of questioning was to use close listening to assess what had already been said so that the question was seen as a natural outgrowth of the discussion up to that point.The question needed to be organic, “not injected” arbitrarily.

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Conclusion In the Age of Trump, far too many people are yearning for a single, politically incorrect leader who eschews polite rhetoric and settles for easy answers. They seem to want someone who can supply the definitive solution to their problems and can singlehandedly eliminate every barrier to their individual happiness. At the Republican National Convention in July of 2016 this idea was captured perfectly by the presidential nominee himself when he said with a smirk that “no one knows the system better than me, which is why I, alone, can fix it.” The implication was clear. People are too stupid or too timid or too underdeveloped to usher in a better life for all, so the man at the top must bring the necessary changes down to the masses, changes that in reality only benefit a tiny, highly privileged elite.48 Myles Horton stood for and acted on assumptions that were the polar opposites of Trump’s. He knew that the answers to people’s problems could never come from one person but must be arrived at through the determined collaboration of a diverse gathering of people. Because he knew it was up to such gatherings to help make a better world, he created a meeting place where they could be in dialogue with each other, with no inferiors or superiors, but with each person’s distinctive experience making an indispensable contribution to the whole. “True dialogue,” he asserted, “is respecting people’s experiences because that’s what a person is.”49 This idea that everyone has something potentially valuable to add to the circle of learners is encapsulated by the experience of Dr Frederick Patterson, President

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of Tuskegee Institute and a visitor to Highlander not long before the historic 1954 Brown decision was handed down by the Supreme Court. The Highlander workshop Dr Patterson attended attracted a smattering of academics and scholars, but also included a large number of sharecroppers and people with only rudimentary literacy skills. At first, Dr Patterson was extremely uncomfortable, unsure how to interact with individuals who seemed so limited. Then he heard a sharecropper from West Tennessee talk quite powerfully about human nature and the things that drew people to one another and he wondered where this man had acquired such profound ideas. Suddenly, Dr Patterson realized that the man was speaking from his experiences, that he knew things the President of Tuskegee didn’t know: While I was learning to be president of Tuskegee, he was learning to live. When I was learning to be an academician, he was learning how to deal with his neighbors. So he had rich experiences that I was denied. And I was beginning to wonder what I  could give to him—​I knew what he could give to me.50 Such was the spirit of Highlander. It is the same spirit that we need in our educational institutions today. That spirit assumes that every member of the learning community, no matter how humble or disadvantaged, is a potential teacher and leader who must be granted the freedom to voice personal perspectives, to recount relevant experiences, to express righteous anger, and to put forward daring proposals for collective change. This teaching/​leading role is paired with an equally strong commitment to lifelong learning, best characterized by a radical openness to people’s experiences and a willingness to use an analysis of those experiences to jumpstart social change. As Myles Horton would have said, such a spirit is premised, above all, on faith in people and their desire and ability to create a more equal and just world. Without that faith and without the conditions that liberate democracy, humane and inclusive social action will wane, allowing the cruel and hateful and prevaricating ways of rulers like Donald Trump to prevail.

Notes 1 Anne Braden, “Doing the Impossible,” Social Policy 21 (1991): 26–​30. 2 Dale Jacobs, ed., The Myles Horton Reader (University of Tennessee Press, 2003), xxvii. 3 Sara Evans and Harry Boyte, Free Spaces: The Sources of Democratic Change in America (University of Chicago Press, 1992). 4 Harry Boyte, “Free Spaces in Schools and Colleges,” Huffington Post, February 2, 2017, www.huffingtonpost.com/​harry-​boyte/​free-​spaces-​in-​schools-​and_​b_​9138744.html. 5 Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (Free Press, 1984), 142. 6 Myles Horton, The Long Haul: An Autobiography, 1st ed. (Doubleday, 1990), 227. 7 Horton, 172.

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8 Horton, 4. 9 Horton, 4. 10 Frank Adams, Unearthing Seeds of Fire: The Idea of Highlander (J.F. Blair, 1975), 5. 11 Horton, Long Haul, 7. 12 Horton, 7. 13 Cynthia Stokes Brown, “Giving Aunt Donnie Her Due,” Social Policy 21 (Winter 1991): 19–​25. 14 Thomas Bledsoe, Or We’ll All Hang Separately:  The Highlander Idea, 1st ed. (Beacon Press, 1969), 35. 15 Bledsoe, 36. 16 Horton, Long Haul,  17–​18. 17 “Myles Horton Papers, 1851–​ 1990” (Madison, WI, 1929), Wisconsin Historical Archives, http://​digital.library.wisc.edu/​1711.dl/​wiarchives.uw-​whs-​mss00831 Box 4, Folder 5, emphasis in original. 18 Horton, Long Haul, 25. 19 Quoted in Benjamin Hunnicutt, Work without End:  Abandoning Shorter Hours for the Right to Work (Temple University Press, 1988), 41. 20 Adams, Unearthing Seeds of Fire,  8–​9. 21 Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932). 22 Horton, Long Haul, 35. 23 Horton, 34. 24 Bill Moyers, “The Adventures of a Radical Hillbilly,” Television, Bill Moyers’ Journal (Public Broadcasting Service, 1981). 25 Horton, Long Haul, 35. 26 Adams, Unearthing Seeds of Fire, 12. 27 Myles Horton, interview by Dana Thomas, March 9, 1959, Box 2, Folder 16, Myles Horton Papers, Wisconsin Historical Archives. 28 Horton, Long Haul, 36. 29 Horton,  68–​69. 30 Myles Horton, interview by Mary Frederickson, 1975, 48, Southern Oral History Program. 31 Myles Horton, “Letter to Arthur Raper,” May 21, 1940, Highlander Papers, Reel 7. 32 Brown, “Giving Aunt Donnie Her Due,” 25. 33 Carl T. Rowan, South of Freedom (Knopf, 1952), 205. 34 Horton, Long Haul,  79–​81. 35 Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History (Beacon Press, 2018), 193. 36 Horton, Long Haul, 122. 37 Myles Horton and Paulo Freire, We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change, ed. Brenda Bell, John Gaventa, and John Peters (Temple University Press, 1990), 109–​112. 38 Horton, Long Haul, 137. 39 Horton, 153. 40 Septima Poinsette Clark, Ready from Within: Septima Clark & the Civil Rights Movement: A First Person Narrative, ed. Cynthia Stokes Brown (Africa World Press, 1990), 17. 41 Rosa Parks, Rosa Parks: My Story (Puffin Books, 1999), 106–​107. 42 Frank Adams, “In the Company of a Listener,” Social Policy 21 (Winter 1991): 31–​35. 43 Adams,  31–​35.

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44 Adams, 33. 45 Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 148. 46 Stephen Preskill and Stephen D. Brookfield, Learning as a Way of Leading: Lessons from the Struggle for Social Justice, 1st ed. (Jossey-​Bass, 2008), 123. 47 Horton and Freire, We Make the Road, 147. 48 Yoni Appelbaum, “I Alone Can Fix It,” The Atlantic, July 21, 2016, www.theatlantic. com/​politics/​archive/​2016/​07/​trump-​r nc-​speech-​alone-​fix-​it/​492557/​. 49 Myles Horton, interview by John Peters and Brenda Bell, 1985, 16, Box 2, Folder 20, Myles Horton Papers. 50 Horton, 19.

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10 THE BEAST BEHIND THE WALL Critical Teaching in Terrible Times Ira Shor

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? W.B.Yeats, “The Second Coming,” composed 1919, published 1920

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I Ten years before Donald Trump lost the 2016 vote but still won the White House, a striking photo appeared on the front page of the New York Times. A petite young woman in a long dress and peasant blouse crosses a rushing stream, skirting a waterfall with a baby on her back, a second child in hand, a third holding on from behind, a full basket balanced on her head. Her calm demeanor is extraordinary given the dangers of this scene. I have gone whitewater canoeing over waterfalls and been thrown into the foaming drink. The rocks below can be sharp or slippery—​a summer adventure for me, no kids in tow, beer and food waiting onshore. Would the refugee woman and the children make it to the far bank, and then safely North? As journalist Ginger Thompson reported in the article under the photo: The rains came recently and flooded most rivers, making parts of this border as treacherous as the Sonora Desert, the deadly Arizona gateway where more than 460 migrants died of exposure and dehydration last year … So many female migrants have been raped or coerced into sex, the authorities said, that some begin taking birth control pills months before embarking on the journey North.1 About such desperate and determined immigrants, Donald Trump said this in announcing his candidacy for President:

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When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best … They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crimes. They’re rapists … I  will build a great wall—​and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me—​and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I  will build a great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.2

II Evocative photos like the immigrant woman squiring three small children across a stream en route North, help launch the first day of my writing classes. Visual texts draw students into a participatory start, especially important for the many American students who are over-​schooled and under-​educated, weary of seatwork and wary of teachers. Outside class, my first-​year college students are talkative, busy, and smart, but in class many respond minimally, waiting defensively for the teacher to “do education to them.” (“Don’t kill us with your voice!” wrote a student to me on day one.) Most expect to hear again the riot act, the teacher narrating the rules, requirements, assignments, deadlines, and subject matters (“Education is suffering from narration sickness,” Paulo Freire lamented in Pedagogy of the Oppressed).3 Mass education is a long institutional narrative aimed at students. Typically, students in my classes are talked at, talked over, talked about, and talked down to, relentlessly tested and bureaucratically tracked.4 Such schooling was called “normalizing” by Michel Foucault, who emphasized the norms of authority adjusting behaviors year by year.5 Like his contemporary Pierre Bourdieu,6 Foucault identified schooling as a primary apparatus for mass management, or as he put it, for the production of “docile bodies” (compliant and productive). More sullen than docile and routinely non-​compliant, my students take my required composition class as their next step toward a (hoped-​for) good job down the road. For the majority but especially for those of color, the four-​year diploma is the best chance they have to qualify for higher incomes and lower unemployment, but only some finish the degree, and Black graduates earn substantially less than white graduates.7 College is an expensive and obligatory station for students eager to earn a decent living, yet they end up competing against each other for the few raises, promotions, and good salaries in the job market.8 The odds are stacked against them, but this is the only game in town, so they play.9 Even though the school-​to-​job pipeline moves most sideways to the same economic locations they started from, the stakes for my students are lower than for the young woman and children in the photo, who are refugees at risk of dying on the trek. When this photo appeared in 2006, it lacked the topical urgency Trump gave it ten years later when he made immigration a cause celebre (“Build the Wall!”). By 2018, Trump was arresting and separating families at the border, incarcerating children, and sending thousands of armed troops to Texas to stop the latest caravan of desperation heading north from Mexico, demonizing the families en route

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as middle-​eastern terrorists and MS-​13 gangsters. Domestically, in some schools, dark-​skinned kids found themselves newly targeted by Trump’s hysterics: Found inside the backpack of a Latina student, a note said, Go back to Mexico. Two other hate-​ filled incidents [at this suburban Philadelphia school]—​invoking Donald Trump’s name and using swastikas—​were also reported the day after the election of Pres. Trump.10 This political turn of events made the above photo prime for critical writing. So, I took it to the first day of class and asked students to write what they see.

III My use of visual texts to initiate writing classes adapts Paulo Freire’s “codification” method. “Codifications” are hand-​drawn illustrations of legible scenes, activities, and objects familiar to students which are designed to prompt discussion. Freire put the codifications onto slides, and using inexpensive Polish machines, projected them onto whitewashed slum and village walls, to convene basic literacy circles for adults in Brazil in the late 1950s and after.11 As this curriculum was structured, the first codifications were ten slides on an initial theme of “nature versus culture.” The slides successively drew these illiterate students into recognition of the human agency called culture, which they already practiced without naming it. Freire began with an anthropological notion of culture to re-​position these students into an empowering narrative. Though illiterate and poor, disregarded and disrespected, the peasants and workers were asked to re-​perceive themselves as users of culture every day to make their world. “Culture” here means a whole way of life constructed by human action using various tools. The students in Freirean circles were addressed as cognitive subjects to re-​ imagine themselves as “cultured” people whose labors and efforts have productive outcome. Culture is not high-​status cultivation, not belletristic objects or fine linguistic manners foreign to their lives, but rather what they do every day. A critical rethinking of everyday practice was thus the theoretical foundation of this learning method. In this approach, Freire extended John Dewey’s earlier definition of “culture” as habits of mind expressed by and in social action, that is, the activity of making meaning from your experience and then acting constructively on that knowledge. To Dewey, “education” was a process for gaining more culture, which to him meant a growing capacity to understand and to act on social experience.12 For Freire, who acknowledged a debt to Dewey, literacy instruction asked students to reflect critically on cultural action they already practiced. Literacy for Freire is always situated in power relations. Culture can be accumulated and practiced either as “cultural action for freedom” or as “cultural action for domination.”13 The opposing memes of “cultural action for freedom”

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vs. “cultural action for domination” summarize the dialectic of Freirean critical pedagogy. To Freire, all pedagogies are aligned with one meme or the other; none can be neutral in societies where wealth, power, and privilege are vastly unequal. There is no level playing field in education or any other sector of an unequal status quo. Pedagogy can question this status quo to interfere with it or can leave it alone to continue on its way. In this regard, the tenth and final slide in the opening series pictured Freire’s literacy class itself. Becoming literate in this process was cultural action for freedom because the students were gaining power to challenge their own marginalization in a very direct way. Freire’s students were directly marginalized then because the 1932 Brazilian Constitution prohibited illiterates from voting. Before the coup of March 30, 1964, Freire’s culture circles graduated newly literate adults who could legally register as qualified voters. Reading and writing conferred on them electoral power to change the government. Once literate, Brazil’s twenty-​million unlettered poor could choose to vote for parties and leaders who served their interests, vastly expanding the electorate from the bottom up.14 Thus, reading and writing had direct potential to alter power relations, in this case by putting into office a new government with a mass mandate from below to re-​organize society for the benefit of the majority. A literacy program so closely connected to transforming power relations was on an historic track to test some great expectations of literacy advocates—​that reading and writing could indeed change the world for the better. But, faced with a pre-​revolutionary situation, the Brazilian oligarchs called out their generals, who overthrew the Goulart Administration employing Freire, crushed his literacy program, jailed Freire and forced him into a long exile, first to Chile where his pedagogy re-​started in the agrarian reform there, then later to the world at-​large where the method attracted innumerable teachers, scholars, and activists, while a homesick and very busy Freire yearned for democracy to return to Brazil so he could finally return as well.

IV In Brazil or elsewhere, democracy and equality are key values of critical pedagogy. At Staten Island Community College, when I began in 1971, the political climate on campus and in society was democratizing, pulled left by the mass movements of that era, opening space for oppositional teaching. That space narrowed as the climate was forced right by America’s own threatened oligarchy who used tools other than a military coup to accumulate vast wealth and power after the egalitarian 1960s.15 With relatively open space when I began, I experimented in class, hitting dead-​ ends and some discoveries. One day, unhappy with how a class was going, I impulsively brought a hamburger to the room and presented it as a text for analysis. I  passed it around for close inspection, after which students wrote what they observed. They smelled the item and composed short essays reporting its aromas,

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colors, and textures. Most had eaten countless burgers; some had served countless burgers on part-​time jobs; none had ever looked at one this closely. Discussion followed for an enthusiastic hour and rose to how the brown-​speckled burger fit into the American job market and food chain. (Another class went from burger study to a campaign to change the cafeteria menu and prices, with their project being headed by a retired police officer.) This surprise success led me to introduce other topics and items from daily life. I named this approach “extraordinarily re-​experiencing the ordinary.”16 Then, a colleague urged me to read Paulo Freire, who advocated “generative themes” from the lives of students as problems for dialogic inquiry. His ideas were oxygen. Staten Island in New  York City was then and is now a white-​dominant, right-​wing Republican stronghold. (Trump in 2016 received 57% of the vote there while losing the other four boroughs of the City.) This was a Tory area during the Revolutionary War. By the 1970s, the FBI had identified a high concentration of organized crime figures on this Island. The Island also has a high density of residential police and firefighters. In my first year, a Black family’s home near me was firebombed. A few years later, an unarmed Black boy, Ricky Bodden, was shot to death by police. In 1976, northside Black students who bussed to the white South Shore were attacked by whites with baseball bats when arriving at New Dorp High School. In fact, one Black girl on that bus later became a student in my class where she displayed a nasty scar on her forehead from being knocked unconscious that day. More recently, in 2014, unarmed Eric Garner was strangled to death by Officer Daniel Pantaleo who a grand jury refused to indict despite video showing him using a prohibited choke-​hold as Garner yelled repeatedly “I can’t breathe!”17 In that same year, the Island was reported to be a major center of the national opioid epidemic.18 Addicts and recovering users, as well as children of gangsters, ex-​convicts, firefighters, sanitation workers, police, along with cashiers, receptionists, nurses’ aides, waitresses, counter clerks, apprentices, daycare workers, and delivery drivers, have been students in my classes. My campus was a community college in the City University of New  York when I began but was forcibly merged with a senior unit in the “fiscal crisis” of 1976 into an under-​funded four-​year institution with some graduate programs. The war launched then against Open Admissions and Free Tuition led to decades of permanent austerity and instability:  suddenly canceled courses, classes and programs; a vast use of overworked and underpaid adjuncts; large investments in punitive testing but little money for supplies, Xeroxing, or secretarial help, postponed building repairs and maintenance, and irregular cleaning of grounds and toilets. A cancer cluster from ground pollution led to years of avoiding the yellow water spewing from drinking fountains. This public college, a ladder to the American Dream, some say, became bankrupt, littered, and costly to attend in a city with 79 billionaires and Wall Street banks spectacularly recovering their wealth after spectacularly crashing the economy in 2008.19

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V In such a site, on the first day of class, I speak as little as necessary, preferring students to express as much as possible. I say, “Hello everybody!” and write my name and the course title on the board, then hand out a sign-​in sheet (Figure 10.1). The sheet asks for basic personal information including hours on jobs, to let me know how many are doing college and wage labor at the same time. Email addresses are obviously useful, but so are street addresses to mail papers to absent students and to identify which few students travel from far-​away Queens and the Bronx as well as the few housed in new small dorms on campus. There is low-​ stakes writing here as well as questions on writing to see what students recall from many years of English classes, thinking questions regarding “fact vs. opinion,” and final items inviting students to co-​develop the course by indicating topics they want for the syllabus and advice on things the teacher should do and avoid. As students finish the sign-​in sheet, each puts his or hers on my desk while I hand out a second sheet asking them to write a brainstorm right then on any topic they choose or from a topic list on the page itself (Figure 10.2). As they write, I  read their sign-​in sheets, to acquaint myself with this new group. Later at home, I re-​read the sheets to see who is majoring in what, who may need individual tutoring, the levels of literacy, etc. Most indicate that they do not read newspapers, yet they have strong opinions about most things once they finally open up in class. Of course, newspapers are cumbersome, unlike their ubiquitous iphones to which they are glued for texting and surfing, though not much for news of the world. The sign-​in and the brainstorm produce low-​stakes writing not graded but very useful for orienting me to the students. This is a busy start to the course which moves the first day quickly, helpful in making an important first impression that time will not drag in this room. From the final two questions on the sign-​in sheet, asking what they want to write about as well as their advice to the teacher on things to do and avoid, I collate their answers and hand them out subsequently as a ballot to vote on their preferences, from which I draw in organizing future lessons. Figures  10.3 and 10.4 show two sample collations from writing classes thirteen years apart. Turning the topic list into a ballot is another invitation for students to collaborate on the syllabus. In the third class meeting, I return the ballot indicating which topics and advice items got the most votes. Their advice on “do’s” and “don’t’s” for the teacher is fairly consistent term to term, urging me above all to be fair and to make class interesting, to not yell, to explain assignments carefully, to not rush through things, to keep students involved, to let class out early, etc. There is a consensus that it’s up to the teacher to keep them interested. A recent brainstorm sheet (see Figure 10.2, from January, 2018) included a topic on “President Trump” and one on “undocumented immigrants,” but each drew few responses. Before returning these and other brainstorms in the next class, I clip

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151—​COLLEGE WRITING : SIGN-​IN SHEET (PLEASE PRINT CLEARLY!) YOUR NAME_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Address_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ZIP_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Phone_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​Email (PRINT!)_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Major: Career Goal: Do you come to class from work? _​_​_​_​_​ Hrs./​week on the job?_​_​_​_​ Kind of job?_​_​_​_​_​ Raising kids?_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Read a daily newspaper?_​_​_​ Which one?_​_​_​ 1. Why are you in college?   What do you like so far about college?   What do you NOT like about college so far? 2. What is GOOD COLLEGE WRITING in your opinion? Define “GOOD COLLEGE WRITING”: 3. What is writing “good for,” in your opinion? What can you do with writing that matters? 4. How does someone become a good college writer? 5. EASIEST things for you to do when you write for college? HARDEST things for you to do when you write for college? 6. Do you make an outline before you write?   Do free-​writing/​brainstorming?  Write a rough draft?           Proofread carefully before handing  in?   Show your writing to others for feedback?   Indent each new paragraph?  Use a grammar book?          Spell-​ Check? How do you know when one paragraph ends and you should begin a new paragraph?   What makes a paragraph strong?   What should you do in paragraph 1, the INTRODUCTION?   What should you do in paragraph 2?   How do you link the first sentence of a new paragraph to the last sentence of the previous paragraph?   When using information from a source, how do you show it in your paper? 7. What’s the difference between an “opinion” and a “fact”?   An opinion is _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​   A fact is _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​   Write one fact here about this sign-​in sheet:   Write one opinion about this sign-​in sheet:   Write one fact about New York City:   Write one opinion you have about NYC: FIGURE 10.1  

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8. What would you like to write about, read about and discuss this semester?        List three topics: 1.             2.          3. 9. Suggest do’s and don’t’s for the teacher to help you like class and learn more: DO’s            ***              DON’T’s

FIGURE 10.1 (cont.)

onto them background items from my files on the topic each student chose, to encourage their interests and to let them know I take them seriously. In general, because brainstorms are rough drafts written in class, they are often too scribbled or crossed-​out to reproduce for class discussion. Later on, I use in class other student compositions, which I think of as “unofficial texts,” because they are products of non-​scholastic working-​class undergraduates. Putting their writing first on the table for class discussion, I  backload what I  call “official texts,” diverse materials which have the authority of published sources and major media. I ask students to compare their own points-​of-​view with those in the official matter; this encourages a dual comparison, linguistically vis-​à-​vis their vernacular discourse vs. the formal discourse of the printed matter and politically vis-​à-​vis their explanations with those in the sources. I consider myself to be part of the “official texts.” In class, I am an authority, an officer of the institution who convenes class and assigns grades, a doctorate who speaks academic discourse and quotes data and sources, and not inconsequentially, a tall, old, tenured white man whose age, color, size, faculty status, and gender carry authority into the room. My voice, then, is part of the “official texts,” and like the source material that I bring in can silence students who feel outgunned linguistically and academically. (“Don’t kill us with your voice!”) Therefore, to create hospitable conditions for student participation, I must privilege their writing and utterances as the foundational materials while restraining my voice and the voices of authority conveyed by printed texts. Only when a discussion has been driven by student speech and compositions, do I then feel authorized to speak in a declarative voice about the subject, making statements and summative observations about the topic underway. Otherwise, I stay in the interrogative, posing questions and problems for students to think through, write about, and debate. The restraint of my own voice is what I consider a democratic discipline inside critical pedagogy, restricting teacher-​talk. Frontloading student expression launches discussion into which I backload my comments as well as research materials.

VI On the first day, after collecting sign-​ in sheets and brainstorms, I  introduce photographs as prompts for writing and discussion. Visual prompts are more quickly evocative than printed matter for obvious reasons—​looking at photos is

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YOUR NAME_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ CHOOSE A TOPIC AND WRITE A “BRAINSTORM” NOW: Many writers “brainstorm” or “free write” to get started.Very few people write finished essays off the top of their heads. “Brainstorming” helps writers begin; you start writing your thoughts without worrying about spelling or punctuation. Write about a topic that interests you nonstop until you fill up both sides of this page. Then, read it over, underline parts you like best, add or take out words or sentences, etc. Writers use rough drafts like these as starting points to go on to their second drafts. Right now, please choose any topic to write on that interests you, OR if you like, you can choose one of these topics: 1. Which news events, conditions in society, or topics do you think are the most important? Write about them and explain why you think them important. 2.  Mayor DeBlasio: 3–​4 things he should do to improve life in this city? 3.  CSI President Fritz: 3–​4 things he should do to improve your education here? 4.  Pres. Trump: 1 year in office now. Is he doing a good job? His successes? Failures? Most important things he should do to help you and the nation? 5.  Life in NYC: Growing Up/​Being Young, the good and the bad? 6.  Finding jobs in NYC: easy? hard? wages? Working on a job while going to college? 7.  Family: Is NYC good for family life? What do families need to be happy? Do families get what they need? Housing? Transit? Schools? Parks? Clean, safe streets? 8.  Police and minorities in NYC and in America—​Do police treat minorities fairly and equally on the streets and in their communities? Do minorities get fair treatment in courts and prisons? Evidence? Examples? Solutions? 9. Women and men: Do women have equal choices and chances? Can women major in any field and have an equal chance for any career or job? Can women earn as much as men? Is sexual abuse a widespread problem at work, home, and in everyday life? 10. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still going on: $2 Trillion spent; 7000 US dead; 30,000 wounded; a million Iraqis displaced, injured, killed; a refugee crisis; worth it? 11. Global Warming: 2016 was hottest year on record, 2017 was the second hottest; 3 warmest years are last 3 years; causes? solutions? threats? 12.  Same-​sex marriage: now legal in all 50 states of the U.S.; good? bad? 13. Immigration: should the 700,000 undocumented immigrants brought here as children be allowed to stay and earn citizenship, or should they be deported? WRITE YOUR TOPIC HERE:_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ START WRITING BELOW AND CONTINUE ON BACK, FILLING BOTH SIDES:

FIGURE 10.2 

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  151—​FALL 1999–​STUDENTS’ PROPOSED TOPICS : PLEASE CIRCLE THE ITEMS THAT MATTER MOST TO YOU: CHILDREN/​ PARENTING  GOALS  RACISM/​ STEREOTYPES E-​ COMMERCE  MUSIC  MEDICAL  ISSUES WRITING ADS  TECHNICAL WRITING  CREATIVE WRITING/​ FICTION INVESTIGATIVE WRITING  STRUCTURE OF WRITING  FREE SPEECH ONLINE WRITING FOR YOUNG PEOPLE’S PROBLEMS: DRUGS, SEX, GUNS, SUICIDE, PEER PRESSURE, PARENTS INTERNATIONAL EVENTS  CURRENT AFFAIRS _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ STUDENT SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHER FOR DO’S AND DON’T’S: PLEASE CIRCLE THE ITEMS THAT MATTER MOST TO YOU IN BOTH GROUPS: DO: SMILE, BE PATIENT, CLEAR AND NICE; SUGGEST TOPICS; TALK ABOUT HOW YOU BECAME A GOOD WRITER AND WHAT INTERESTS YOU ABOUT WRITING; TIME MGMNT. TIPS USED BY SCHOLARS; SPEAK SLOWLY; LET ALL STUDENTS PARTICIPATE IN EVERYTHING; LET US PICK OUR OWN BOOKS;YOU ARE THE BOSS; BE CONSIDERATE; GIVE ENOUGH NOTICE FOR REPORTS; EXPLAIN THOROUGHLY WHAT’S EXPECTED; GIVE EXAMPLES; LET STUDENTS KNOW HOW THEY ARE DOING. DON’T: YELL; RUSH THROUGH THINGS; LECTURE ON ISSUES AND ISSUE ASSIGNMENTS THAT MAKE CLASS MONOTONOUS; EXPECT US TO REMEMBER WHAT WE LEARNED IN HIGH SCHOOL; GIVE US A 500-​PAGE BOOK TO READ JUST BEFORE FINALS; KEEP US TOO LATE; GIVE TOO MANY EXAMS; REQUIRE PUBLIC SPEAKING; RUSH A LESSON. FIGURE 10.3 

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151 Fall 2012 Prof. Shor STUDENTS’ ADVICE TO TEACHER THE STUDENT ITEMS BELOW GOT AT LEAST 10 VOTES: DO’S: Explain each lesson well and make sure everyone understands it. (13) More options to choose from topics assigned for essays. (14) Positive criticisms. (10) Help us to be better writers. (14) Respect yourself. (11) Be friendly. Be funny, have a personality. (11) Be helpful and understanding. (14) Allow students to ask questions and for help. (13) Correcting and showing mistakes. (10) Let us out early. (11) DON’T’S: Yell or terrorize our writing skills. (11) Rush. (14) Be rude. Be a jerk. (14) Keep us until 9:50. (14) No pop quizzes. No tests. (12) FIGURE 10.4 

faster than reading texts in print. In addition, students in my classes do not read or write much outside school, so they come to class post-​literate but with uneven decoding and encoding skills.The photo mentioned at the start of this chapter is a visual prompt I included the first day after Trump continued assailing immigrants, especially those from Latin America.20 In preparation for the immigrant photo, I asked students to practice an epistemic method:  “careful observation” followed by “explanation and interpretation.” Students used this method to decode eight faces displaying eight different emotions published by a noted psychologist, Dr Paul Ekman, famous for studying emotive configurations of the face’s forty-​three muscles. I asked students to write under each face the emotion it showed from a list Ekman provided. Once all the students had made a choice, I asked for hands on which emotion each chose. On some faces, they differed more than on others, which led to surprisingly passionate debate. I wanted to push closer observation of the faces, so I asked them to explain in writing how they know the emotion they chose is correct for each face. I helped along with this written articulation by posing questions for careful observation: Are the eyes wide or narrow, squinting,

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or relaxed? Are the lips pursed tightly, slightly open, or opened wide? Are the nostrils contracted, relaxed, or flared? Is the nose level, drawn downward, or upward? Is the forehead furrowed or smooth? Why does a face showing one or another of these shapes communicate the emotion you chose? I pointed out specific faces, asking for example, Why is the mouth open in “fear?” This exercise amused and challenged the students, especially when I finally handed out the key accompanying the text, and they saw how their answers compared to Ekman’s. Following the faces, the next visuals presented scenes where one person is “the boss.” I asked students to decide who the boss is and then to write down how they know. One photo depicts founding engineers of an electronics firm in 1960 in California’s Silicon Valley.21 Students observed this image of seven engineers on one side huddled closely together smiling, all in shirts and ties facing one other engineer who stands apart and wears a different colored tie, and then wrote and discussed who they chose as the boss and why.The separately huddled group is the clue most followed in designating the boss as the singularly stand-​alone figure. Next, I displayed a photo prompt from New York City’s “Silicon Alley” in 2014 showing a computer startup meeting where a boss convenes a round-​table of his key staff. In 2014, the individuals sit facing each other (not standing in a huddle facing “the boss”); the contemporary figures were casually dressed-​down (not dressed-​up), some bearded and one with a baseball cap, no tie-​and-​white-​shirt formal attire of the earlier group, with even a bottle of wine on the table in New York. In the 1960 photo, all were male and white; in 2014, all were male and white save for one who appeared to have a non-​European ethnicity. Dress standards in this business decidedly changed over fifty years, but the exclusion of females and minorities pretty much stayed the same. I posed this as a problem and brought it up again later in a unit on “the gender wage gap” which included data on male–​female employment in tech fields.22 When we reached the photo of the immigrant woman crossing the stream, I asked them to describe what they see, and added a new question to “interpretation:” What counts the most? My post-​literate college students can write descriptive texts of the photos, which is of course easier than articulating what counts the most. For the immigrant photo, for what counts the most, students variously selected the baby in the woman’s arms, all three imperiled children, the basket precariously balanced on the woman’s head, the rushing water, the nearby waterfall, the fact that she is alone in the stream, and the surmise of some that her billowing blouse may indicate she is pregnant. Because there is no single right answer, their diverse interpretations rose and fell persuasively with the rhetorical skill of their own writing. Their different choices also led to peer debate, which of course I keep going for as long as possible, to draw their expressiveness out as far as I can, not pre-​empting them with my take on what counts the most. The more students write and debate their own perceptions, the more active their thought and language, which develop through participation, in a learning process organized as an “activity system” to overcome “the narration sickness” Freire famously designated as the toxic element of traditional schooling.

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As students read aloud their texts on the photo, I designated their serial interpretations as “Theory One,” “Theory Two,” “Theory Three,” etc. I spoke the word “theory” in every session and wrote the word “theorizing” on the board, to habituate them to reflective writing, and to name the cognitive activity underway. After serial reporting and subsequent debate on what counts the most, a student asked about the woman in the photo, “Where is her husband?” As is my practice, I repeated the question to the whole class for their unofficial texts in spoken response rather than me going first in my official voice. One student speculated that her husband must be back home. I wondered aloud: Would she leave by herself and go off with the children on such a journey without him? They doubted this. I asked for a second theory to explain her being by herself. Another student proposed that the husband is out of the photograph, on the far bank waiting for her. But, I asked: Would he let her cross the dangerous stream alone instead of being with her in the water to shepherd the kids? Someone then suggested that her husband might already be in the North working. I did not have in class the article accompanying the photo so there was no source to consult on this. In the moment, I commented declaratively that men often immigrate first, and asked why that would be a preference. Some students indicated that it is safer for men to make such a trip than for women and children. I added that men who make it to the new land often send for their spouses and children. (My great-​grandfather did that after fleeing czarist pogroms in 1906 in Ukraine, later bringing over his wife and six children, my grandmother among them.) European immigrants like my ancestors have done well in the economy and in the national imaginary, looming heroically large, familiar, and sympathetic (for example, Fiddler on the Roof in the case of Russian Jews). At first considered “not-​quite-​white ethnics,”23 Jews were admitted to “whiteness” after World War II.24 In our contemporary moment, for darker-​skinned immigrants from Asia, Africa, or South America, sympathetic narratives are scant, leaving these disfavored sojourners vulnerable to Trump’s slanders. The photo is an opportunity to develop such a sympathetic narrative in a public sphere, the classroom. So, to encourage students inventing a story for the photo, I asked: Why is the woman doing it? Why is she risking her life and the lives of the three small children? In one class, a female student said that what the young woman left behind was worse than what she was facing on the trip. I pushed her to say more, so she added that the woman was running away from hopeless poverty and violence to find something better for the children. I then asked, Is this woman and her children a threat to the nation? Should they be prevented from coming here? Several students said “no” decisively, but others were non-​committal, perhaps from indifference or from tiredness in an evening class after a day on the job, perhaps from an abiding hostility to such immigrants, perhaps from loyalty to Trump. Of course, I would rather they express such thoughts in debate, but I can’t force anyone to speak. Right-​wing conservatives certainly dominate this borough, but on campus I can provide some space to develop counter-​narratives which challenge the prevailing discourse.

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For a stronger unit on immigration, I  can provide more articles and materials to question myths fabricated by Trump and others: that immigrants steal jobs from Americans born here, that the immigrants are parasites who bleed the public sector for benefits without paying taxes, and that Mexicans especially are criminals (I strengthened the unit the next term I taught it by integrating data charts and reports challenging Trump’s representation of the national emergency vis-a-vis immigration). Facts and argument are tools for opposition knowledge-​making if we build public spheres friendly to their use. Critical classrooms can become such public spheres, where reason and evidence count. But, more than reason is at play here. Feelings count, too. The photo of the trekking woman and kids dramatizes the dangers for many immigrants who are represented here not as rapists and criminals, but rather as sympathetic refugees inside an aspirational ­immigrant narrative which has unfortunately been centered on Europeans.

VII The picture of the woman crossing the stream thus appealed emotionally and rationally in opposition to Trump’s passionate arousal of white nativism and racism. Besides this photo, others also opened to race and gender. For example, the photo of computer engineers in Silicon Valley in 1960 showed only white men, almost perfectly repeated in the 2014 photo. Such “Then and Now” photos scaffold the next pedagogical move of the syllabus, from visual texts to printed texts, from reading the world through visual prompts to reading the world through data bases and printed sources. “Then and Now” is the actual title of a chart I introduce which presents US Census data comparing New York City in 1950 to New York City in 2000 (Table 10.1). These comparisons from our town, fifty years apart, provide much to think about.Typically, I begin discussion with the question “What counts the most?”The students first noticed two occupations that went to zero in this period,“blacksmith” and “elevator operator.” When I asked them to explain why “blacksmith” and “elevator operator” disappeared, students easily theorized technological changes as the cause. But, other changes are not easy to interpret, such as the big increases in lawyers/​judges, authors, and social workers. To draw attention to the more difficult comparisons, I asked, Why did bakers, fishermen, and funeral directors decline so much? Did New Yorkers eat less fish and bread by 2000? Did we stop dying? The discussion here required intermediate scaffolding questions from me to draw out from students their utterances of the economic and technological changes involved, which are simply too detailed to report in the limited space of this chapter. While such an activity based in data is intellectually challenging, it also has a decisively existential and emotional appeal. It amused and intrigued the students because they reported their own relationships to elevators, fish, and bread, for example.“History” became “their history”—​local, legible, experiential, and problematic, not a pre-​set collection of remote events, dates, names, or places to memorize for the midterm. Because data charts require time for careful observation, I sent this chart home with students and asked them to pick three changes in the City which they think

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TABLE 10.1 

Then and Now Fifty years ago, The New York Times ran a series of articles on how New York City was expected to change in the future. Here are examples of actual changes, based on the 1950 and 2000 censuses. 1950

2000

POPULATION (million) 7.9 8.0 MEDIAN AGE 34.5 34.2 RACE  White 90.3% 44.8%  Black 9.4 26.4  Other 0.3 28.6 MARITAL STATUS, AGE 15+  Married 62.4% 43.4%  Divorced 1.5 7.7   Never Married 24.3 37.6 PLACE OF BIRTH   United States 72.7% 59.7%   Central America/​Caribbean 0.9 13.9  Europe 21.3 7.6  Asia 0.6 8.4 EDUCATION, AGE 25+   Less than high school 62.7% 27.7%   4+ years of college 7.1 27.5 HOUSING   Owner occupied 19.1% 30.2%   Median rent (1999 dollars) $261 $646   Median owner occupied unit value $73,088 $211,900 EMPLOYED, BY OCCUPATION  Accountants 38,932 69,796  Authors 3,641 16,906  Bakers 15,719 7,313  Blacksmiths 624 0  Economists 714 5,751   Elevator operators 28,884 0  Fishermen 1,002 238   Funeral directors 2,143 1,062   Lawyers/​judges 23,384 54,683  Physicians 19,027 33,103  Policemen 24,805 33,281   Real estate agents 10,069 19,612   Social workers 9,828 48,621  Teachers 50,424 138, 427 “Then and Now,” The New York Times, Nov. 21, 2005, B1, from Census Bureau data.

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“count the most,” describe how each changed in those fifty years, interpret why this change happened, and finally explain why they picked their three as the most important.Typical in these writing classes, few wrote about the dramatically changing racial composition of New York City: white residents who comprised 90.3% in 1950 were only 44.8% in 2000, a stunning decline. Perhaps students evaded these data because race is a risky topic to confront in public for students of any color. Some who did speak or write about it attributed the vast increase in non-​ whites to the Civil Rights Movement which improved the lives of minorities who used their new rights to move to New York City for jobs. One or two suggested in their homework that white New Yorkers fled the city when non-​whites moved here en masse.To open these data to more reflection, I asked students to drill down and figure out how many whites left the City in that fifty-​year period. I cued them to apply the changing percentages to the overall population figures, and paired them with partners. Despite some dismay at a math problem coming at them in a writing class, most accurately reported that about 3.5 million fewer whites lived in the City in 2000 than were here in 1950, replaced by about an equal number of non-​whites. I put their figures on the board to give their briefly spoken answers the extended impact of written and read ones. I then asked, Why did so many whites leave New York in those years, and where did they go? Students wrote at their seats, read to each other in pairs, then read aloud, volunteering such claims that whites moved out to small towns or suburbs where there were better jobs, housing, parks, and schools. I pushed the question, If life in small towns or the suburbs was better for families and children, then why didn’t Black and Hispanic people also move there instead of coming to urban New York City? Some students ventured that non-​white families were not welcome there or could not afford to live there, which I could not get others to pick up as a thread. Stopped by student resistance, I decided to move on and revisit this theme later with materials on racial segregation in schools and housing, which is of course the 800-​pound gorilla in the room.25 Most of us who grew up in this city, no matter our color, were raised on segregated streets and schooled in segregated classrooms. I re-​introduced racism as a theme later through a research packet I assembled on the coinciding fiftieth anniversaries of Dr King’s assassination and the release of the famous Kerner Commission Report, which asserted that “Our nation is moving towards two societies, one black, one white—​separate and unequal.”26 The assignment asked students to evaluate the 1968 warning—​Have we become two unequal societies? Have race relations in the last fifty years gotten better, worse, stayed the same, or better in some instances and worse in others? The research data on race was followed by deep dives into economic and gender inequalities.27

VIII Questioning the status quo needs no defense, especially in hostile times like these. Repairing a society damaged by crony politicians and toxic billionaires and a

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truthless leader with great power is a civic responsibility, but certainly not easy. Such a conundrum of rebuilding a damaged society greeted Paulo Freire when he finally moved back to Brazil in 1980. Home after a long, enforced absence, Freire re-​discovered the ways Portuguese was spoken in his native land. He started teaching at two universities and helped found the new Workers Party, which took power after his death in 1997, only to lose it in 2018. Confronting the old powers still in power when he first returned, Freire practiced what he earlier called “untested feasibility.” By this, Freire meant “the future which we have to create by transforming today, the present reality. It is something not yet here but a potential … beyond the limits we discover.”28 This is what drives opposition, a determination to test successive interventions until we discover in persistent practice how to gain traction for social justice. In Brazil sixty years ago, when a young Freire first organized literacy circles, the newly literate adults left the classroom to vote and to join movements to overcome the status quo dehumanizing them. So must we.

Notes 1 Thompson, Ginger, “Mexico Worries about Its Own Southern Border,” New  York Times, June 18, 2006, A1. 2 Trump, Donald, “Donald Trump Campaign Announcement,” C-​Span, June 16, 2015, www.c-​span.org/​video/​?326473-​1/​donald-​trump-​presidential-​campaign-​ announcement (last accessed Feb. 7, 2019). 3 Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Continuum, New York, Twentieth Anniversary Edition, 1993, 52. 4 See Ravitch, Diane, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, Basic, New York, 2010; Spring, Joel, The Sorting Machine Revisited: National Educational Policy since 1945, Longman, New York, 1989; Fine, Michelle, Framing Dropouts, SUNY-​Press, Albany, 1991; Oakes, Jeannie, Keeping Track:  How Schools Structure Inequality, Twentieth Anniversary Edition, Yale UP, New Haven and London, 2005; Rose, Mike, Lives on the Boundary, Penguin, New York, 2005; Goodlad, John, A Place Called School, Twentieth Anniversary Edition, McGraw-​Hill, New York, 2004, among others. 5 Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Pantheon, New York, 1978, 135–​228. 6 Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Tr. Richard Nice, Harvard UP, Cambridge, 1984, 133. 7 Lewin, Tamara, “Most Don’t Earn Degree in 4 Years, Study Finds,” New  York Times, Dec. 2, 2014, A18; Leonhardt, David, “The Growing College Graduation Gap,” New York Times, Mar. 26, 2018, A23; “College Does Not Close Racial Pay Gaps,” editorial, New York Times, Sept. 20, 2017, A22. 8 “A Broken Bargain with College Graduates,” editorial, New  York Times, May 22, 2016, SR8. 9 Kraus, Michael W., Shai Davidai, and A.  David Nussbaum, “American Dream? Or Mirage?” New York Times, May 3, 2015, SR9.

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10 Vara-​Orta, Francisco, “Hate in Schools,” Education Week online, Aug. 6, 2018, www. edweek.org/​ew/​projects/​hate-​in-​schools.htm. 11 Freire, Paulo, Education for Critical Consciousness, Continuum, New York, 1974, 62–​84. 12 Dewey, John, Democracy and Education, The Free Press, New York, 1968. 13 Freire, Paulo, “The Adult Literacy Process as Cultural Action for Freedom,” Harvard Educational Review, 68.4, Winter, 1998, 480–​498. 14 Kirkendall, Andrew J., Paulo Freire and the Cold War Politics of Literacy, Univ. of North Carolina UP, Chapel Hill, 2010. 15 See my Culture Wars:  School and Society in the Conservative Restoration, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992. 16 Shor, Ira, Critical Teaching and Everyday Life, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1987, 93. 17 Weiser, Benjamin, and J.  David Goodman, “As Federal Inquiry Stalls, Police Dept. Will Proceed with Internal Garner Case,” New York Times, July 17, 2018, A17; Mueller, Benjamin,“Police Department Moves to Discipline Officer in Deadly 2014 Chokehold Case,” New York Times, July 20, 2018, A22. 18 Goodman, J. David, and Michael Wilson, “Heroin’s New Hometown: Narcotic Takes Hold on Staten Island,” New York Times, May 5, 2014, A1, A20; Wilson, Michael, and J. David Goodman, “Heroin Takes Over a House, and Mom,” New York Times, Nov. 30, 2014, 1, 26. 19 Schifman, Gerald, “New  York City Has More Than Six Dozen Billionaires and One Just Got a Lot Richer,” Crain’s NY Business online, Mar. 22, 2018, https://​dev. crainsnewyork.com/​article/​20180322/​NEWS/​180329953/​new-​york-​is-​billionaires-​ top-​city-​but-​has-​three-​fewer-​than-​last-​year-​according-​to-​forbes (last accessed Feb. 7, 2019). 20 Jordan, Miriam, “Big Jump in Rejections at the Border as Asylum Seekers Face New Hurdles,” New York Times, Aug. 8, 2018, A13; Shear, Michael D., and Ron Nixon, “Draft Rule to Punish Immigrants on Welfare, Just in Time for the Midterms,” New  York Times, Aug. 8, 2018, A10. 21 Hale, Mike,“Men Who Took Silicon to Silicon Valley,” New York Times, Feb. 5, 2013, C4. 22 Miller, Claire Cain, “Tech’s Man Problem,” New York Times, Nov. 16, 2014, BU1, 6–​7; Benner, Katie, “Women in Tech Reveal Culture of Harassment,” New York Times, July 1, 2017, A1, A16. 23 Roediger, David R., The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, rev. ed.,Verso, New York, 1999. 24 Brodkin, Karen, How Jews Became White Folks & What That Says about Race in America, Rutgers UP, New Brunswick, NJ, 1998. 25 Campos, Paul F., “White Economic Privilege Is Alive and Well,” New York Times, July 30, 2017, SR3. 26 https://​babel.hathitrust.org/​cgi/​pt?id=mdp.39015000225410;view=1up;seq=10, last accessed Feb. 7, 2019. 27 Stiglitz, Joseph, “Inequality Is Holding Back the Recovery,” New York Times, Jan. 20, 2013, SR 1, 8, 9; Stiglitz, Joseph, The Price of Inequality:  How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future, Norton, New York, 2013; Cohen, Patricia, “A Bigger Pie, But Uneven Slices:  Research Show Slim Gains for the Bottom 50 Percent,” New  York Times, Dec. 7, 2016, BU1, 3; Cohen, Patricia, “Profits Swell, But Laborers See No Relief,” New York Times, July 14, 2018, A1, 6; Brown, Anna, and Eileen Patten, “The Narrowing, but Persistent, Gender Gap in Pay,” Pew Research Center online, April 3, 2017,

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www.pewresearch.org/​author/​abrown; Miller, Claire Cain, “Tech’s Man Problem,” New  York Times, Nov. 16, 2014, BU1, 6–​7; Benner, Katie, “Women in Tech Reveal Culture of Harassment,” New York Times, July 1, 2017, A1, A16. 28 Shor, Ira, and Paulo Freire, A Pedagogy for Liberation, Bergin-​ Garvey Greenwood, New York, 1986, 153.

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11 “DO SOMETHING ETHICAL” Critical Thinking, Theorizing, and Political Will Joy James

Theologian Bernard Lonergan in Insight:  A Study of Human Understanding1 approaches human cognition as theoretically reflective action. Lonergan’s epistemology is tied to praxis; it posits a four-​part sequence of experience, reflection, judgment, action. Action leads to new experiences in a constant cycle of evolving thought toward ethical outcomes. In “The Race for Theory,” Barbara Christian instructs that “theorizing” as a verb is dedicated to the service of community.2 Barbara Christian observes that people of color theorize in narratives and prefer dynamic ideas that encourage the spirited resistance to attacks on their humanity. The action of theory and within theory is key for the literary theorist. Audre Lorde maintains that “silence will not protect you” and that the master’s tools will never dismantle the masters’ plantation house.3 Liberation pedagogies to contain violence and build communal futures are present in the works of Paulo Freire and Martin Luther King, Jr.4 All of these liberation pedagogies have positions on or theories of praxis. Indeed, all present pedagogies are important devices deployed for ethical acts. The argument here is that to do something intellectually rigorous, one must do some act of constructive good for the commons. That at face value seems to fly in the face of competitive and predatory systems that are Malthusian in their effect if not their intent. So, we can rephrase the philosophical and theoretical arguments into one injunction for pedagogy and instruction: if we wish to evolve beyond the predator–​prey matrix of social (dis)order, then we must find the common good as tending toward health and protection of all, human and nature. Where pedagogy is understood to represent learnedness, diligence, and moral character, uber-​competitive nations built on the acquisitions taken from genocide and enslavement have a steep learning curve. US administrations, even when liberal, are excluded from the benign constructs that advocate and protect the poor and the disenfranchised (which includes all species). That is how empires,

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even ones shaped by democracy, trend:  they consolidate power by theft and coercion and posture as super humans or elites destined to rule by evolutionary dictates. If those administrations are riddled with duplicity, lies, incendiary propaganda, kleptocracy, sexism/​misogyny, homophobia, racism, anti-​Semitism, anti-​ environmentalism, anti-​prisoner rights, xenophobia, sexual predatory behaviors, then the flaws become not just liabilities but disabilities in terms of apprehending and pursuing the common good that is inclusive of all beings. Add allegations of involvement in organized crime (white or not white) and one has an ethical crisis, a democracy burning from within due to corruption, and from without due to disaffection and alienation of the citizenry overwhelmed with survival. Moral statements are considered “unscientific” but without moral judgment guidelines or restraints on accumulation—​of territory, water rights, animal parts, people—​do not exist. The profile of this “era” is shaped by robber baron (the ­honorific title is self-​aggrandizing, the adjective is meaningful). Theft and depletion of others and the commons for the monopoly of the few occurs not because elites are the most qualified to control (which is more of the descriptor of an authoritarian regime not a democracy); but because they have the concentrated power and violence that permit domination and expropriation and exploitation. This brings us to the administration of the 45th POTUS or President of the United States, Donald Trump. POTUS 45’s disregard for law, democratic norms, compassion, equity and respect for marginalized or vulnerable groups—​ impoverished immigrants, LGBTQ communities, women, the poor, people of color, people of African descent, indigenous nations, environmentalists, human rights activists—​indicates that the president is not a “good man.” He lacks empathy, veracity, honesty, and the capacity to sacrifice for others or for the greater good. His political performances are pugilistic, white supremacist, misogynist, violent, and narcissistic. The speeches and gestures of 45 are honed for “low-​brow” television, right-​wing radio talk shows, and beauty pageants that recycle auction blocks. They also work for “high-​brow” (neo)Nazis, the “good people” on both sides disclaimer concerning an atrocity in which only an anti-​racist, pacifist white woman was murdered in Charlottesville, VA. As president of the United States his critics depict him as the consummate “snake-​oil-​salesman.” Reactionaries applied a similar descriptor to POTUS 44, Barack Obama; but 44 never leveled charges of “birtherism” and treason against a US politician. Insight eludes the current president and presidency, abetted by conservatives in Congress and a very conservative Supreme Court with two appointments made to the court by 45. The anti-​democratic norms, the valorization of a racist commons has not shamed or deterred Trump supporters, loyalists, combatants. His approval ratings poll at about 35–​40%. Those who view 45 as their leader, and see themselves as his warriors and protectors, have found the prototype which they sought. In their pedagogy, he belongs to them as their anointed fighter and a consummate teacher. It is not instruction in rationalism that they seek. Lonergan’s insight is not

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an epistemology that leads them out of an authoritarian wilderness where they believe they can survive. By all indications, those who are not wealthy will find their health, income, environmental protections, workers’ rights, women’s rights, disability rights, insurances for the survival and well-​being of their families and kin diminished or damaged by policies that reject the consent of a shared planet with dignity and decency as the norm. A billionaire who does not pay his share of federal taxes,5 a businessman who has been sued for scamming workers,6  students, and associates; a leader who consorts with or employs convicted felons;7 an open admirer of dictators and an apologist for torture,8 45 illustrates the  “master’s tools”  of which Audre Lorde warned. These are the tools capable of bulldozing a natural habitat to build a golf course or destroy an indigenous burial ground; disappear pristine public lands and parks into fields for oil and gas drilling; the tools capable of disappearing hundreds if not thousands of children from their parents on the southern border in order to terrorize already traumatized people; the tools fine-​tuned to disappear hundreds if not thousands of children into foster care and adoption without their parents’ permission—​technically human trafficking; and exonerate police killings and paramilitary or fascist killings of blacks and people of color. In the absence of rationalism or ethics for a shared commons, a white nationalist president can depict black/​people of color as threats and competitors—​for jobs, electoral votes, cultural productions. What pedagogy could undo such hatred and predatory power? There is a long tradition of intellectual and ethical interpretations of law, society, and ethics for the greater good. The presence of vice and violence as largely unrestrained inspire the virtue of critical thinking, ethical will and political action for the common or greater good (not restricted to a racial or economic or religious group). “Virtue” in the Trump era will be defined as efficacy in containing the disruption of civic norms (admittedly, historically democratic norms have been applied in xenophobic or racist, heterosexist, and classist ways). That containment would recognize that a private real-​estate and media mogul’s empire benefited from shared affinities with individuals organizing crime and political chaos, while disparaging  ethics, social justice and human rights.  Such  habits and protocols are increasingly  operational as governmental norms. Civic law suits and oversight agencies proved more effective than a Republican congress to hold checks and balances among the branches of government. Progressive pedagogies and instructions in civic duty would decry all of the above.Yet, in a profit-​driven state sailing under the flag of racial capital and environmental depletion, a predatory POTUS did not invent a predatory democracy, rather he is the product of predatory democracy. Trump is not an anomaly. He is an extreme variant of a repressive norm that exceeded expectations, including his own, in consolidating domination over government and finance to shore up its legitimacy by writing law (through lobbyists and court appointments) that benefit the “haves” particularly those who accumulate with a robber baron code

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of conduct. How to undo “virtue” as victory in predatory war? A critical ethical pedagogy would see the aberration not just in the individual(s) but also in the structures. The “masters’ tools” will not build the beloved community. The pedagogy of the oppressed, labor for the liberation of the poor and the propertied who benefit from their exploitation, can be theorized through insight and narratives.Yet when we turn our ethics into politics we will be faced with allies and enemies. Our ability to build alliances is fractured by individuals and groups which prefer to sit at the masters’ table rather than labor for a greater democracy. We can identify three instructions in the search for foundational ethics for democratic politics:  1. “sisterhood” is more of a projection than a reality given the rootedness and opportunism of white supremacy; 2.  racism regenerates or reproduces itself rapidly in a combative arena; 3. military formations speak a language that recognizes ethical codes shaped by mandates for victory through violence as superior to the ethics of civil society.

Lesson #1: Anti-​Racist Sisterhood Is Unstable Ideology does not seem to be a major feature in intersectional analyses; hence progressives seem at times unprepared when coalitions with vulnerable groups do not maximize ethical and political outcomes, such as women’s rights and the reduction of sexual assault. Seylah Benhabib writes in “The Pariah and Her Shadow” of Hannah Arendt’s biography on the 18th century Jewish intellectual Rahel Varnhagen and the appearance of salons as a female public sphere.9 Arendt began her biography on Varnhagen in 1929, finished it in 1938, and published the biography in 1957. For Benhabib: Salons such as Varnhagen’s revealed the presence within modern society of an alternative form of public sphere, one that is more egalitarian, fluid, experimental, and in which lines between intimacy and sociability, the public and the private are renegotiated and resignified.10 Benhabib asserts that Arendt presents an alternative genealogy of modernity and a public sphere that resists the hierarchical male controlled spaces of the Greek polis; she argues that although uncomfortable with this “alternative account of modernity” Arendt never fully rejected its possibilities. Living the contradictions of being an assimilated Jewish woman, educated by elite German philosophers, including Martin Heidegger who became a Nazi (and was at one time her lover) made it imperative for Arendt to reflect on the meaning and contradictions of Varnhagen’s appearance in the world and the brief power that she wielded as an outsider. The contradictions are embodied in the choices that we all have: conform and acquiesce even to the unethical and evil or resist and remain an outcaste.

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The choice for Varnhargen was between assimilation as “parvenu” or interloper or remain ostracized with political-​intellectual independence of the self-​conscious “pariah” who embraced her Jewish identity in an anti-​Semitic world. For Benhabib, the salon became a space of female power for privileged, albeit stigmatized, European women. Yet consider that both the parvenu and pariah would have been attended to by the captive maternal—​a slave, maid, servant, waitress prohibited from public discourse and debate with the women seated at the table; the women who traversed the interior spaces of the salon (as opposed to parliament) who expressed insight, talked pedagogy, and lamented their exclusion from the masters’ tools or their inability to consolidate their own skills. Consider that today our debates about ethics and Trumpian predations take place in campus dining halls or cafes and that our discourse does not invite the participation of the laboring women/​men who serve tea and toast. This observation does not seek to shame anyone. It merely probes at the ties or bridges that connect us in a search for ethics and political tools for a global commons. There are multiple tiers to traverse concerning subjugated feminized beings:  whether parvenu or pariah women might seek sovereign powers by aligning themselves with a patriarchal or predatory white supremacy. Suffragettes’ fight for the franchise led to the 19th amendment which granted women the right to vote. Some of those women argued that they should have the vote in order to counter the vote of emancipated black males. US democracy was built on racism. The year 2020 will be the 100th anniversary for this powerful tool won by feminists to benefit all women, including those hostile to feminism and female emancipation, and hostile to blacks and people of color. That white male candidates are marked by patriarchal politics and allegations of sexual predatory behavior toward white women seems to not alter the vote count or the base. The master’s tools seem to be acceptable to the mistress if she has the power of gender parvenu within the house and can keep the pariah outside. In 2016, Donald Trump won 53% of the white women’s vote despite credible allegations of sexism and sexual aggression to defeat Hilary Clinton, the white democratic candidate who had the historic opportunity to become the first (white) woman POTUS, and further equal rights and legal protections for women. In December 2017, the current democratic US Senator from Alabama, Doug Jones, defeated alleged pedophile and candidate of President Donald Trump, Roy Moore not because he received the majority of white female votes—​but because he had received the majority of black votes, over 90% of men and women, with black women giving him the greatest percentage. Jones had prosecuted the Klansmen responsible for the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The four preteen and teen girls were civil rights activists. As slain captive maternals, their sacrifices were remembered over 50 years later in the special election. In the 2018 midterm gubernatorial races in Florida and Georgia, white women gave the losing candidate Andrew Gillum, the black Florida

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gubernatorial candidate 47% of their vote. They gave Stacey Abrams the black female gubernatorial candidate in Georgia who also lost in a hotly contested race only 25% of their vote. Abrams would have been the first black woman governor of Georgia. White women did not see Stacey Abrams, who would have become the first black and female governor in that state, as a parvenu with progressive politics, an outsider worthy of public leadership. White women overwhelmingly voted for Abrams’ republican white male opponent, the secretary of state whose oversight of elections led to allegations of massive voter suppression, likely because they saw Abrams as a pariah, or perhaps more of a leper. To join with Abrams to focus on a “fair fight” campaign for all votes to count and be counted (in the future) should not distract from the disturbing fact that a white nationalist in office might be preferable for considerable numbers of white voters, male and female.

Lesson #2: The Familiar Is Regenerative in Racist Warfare Democracy was primed for POTUS 45 because the historical context of this presidency was shaped by the warfare of captivity and slavery. It was not just white supremacy that provided a platform for Donald Trump with his rhetorical battle of birtherism, but democracy itself fueled by pedagogy and praxis that preceded POTUS 45. In this anti-​democratic framework, warfare itself is a virtue; and epistemology reflects and ratifies it as right and just in ways in which unspoken or unspeakable forms of violence and predatory relations are normalized. Sun Tzu’s The Art of War may or may not have influenced Donald Trump’s ghost-​written promotional The Art of the Deal.11 Tzu’s 2000-​year-​old text views war as permanent and the best war leader is the one that never enters the battle field. The pugilistic propaganda and constant punching of the Trump administration are tied to its realization that the best war leader is the one who never leaves the battle field of racist demagoguery for white supremacy because white nationalism has a compelling emotional pull in the United States and across the globe. Centuries old battles for capitalism and conspicuous consumption rendered captivity and dehumanization based in racism the de facto and de jure structures for civil societies and political economies. During February 2017, black history month, President Trump and Sean Spicer heralded Frederick Douglass for “doing a great job” that year in race relations; their language suggested that neither knew that Douglass was a deceased 19th century former slave fugitive turned abolitionist. Late night comedy seized this occasion to ridicule educational deficiencies within the White House, but they tended to underemphasize the willful denial among the citizenry of democracy’s dependency on captivity. Later that month, on February 17, 2017, at a rally in Melbourne, Florida, President Trump invoked the slave era again as he condemned investigative reporting and independent journalism of the Fourth Estate:

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I want to be among my friends and among the people. This was a great movement. … I want to be here with you, and I will always be with you, I  promise you that … I  also want to speak to you without the filter of the fake news. We are here today to speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.12 The President denounced as “fake” mainstream media such as the Washington Post, The New York Times, MSNBC, CNN (Fox and Breitbart which championed his candidacy and presidency were spared). Welcoming his base with his brand of populism to discredit the Post and Times, Trump quoted President Thomas Jefferson’s June 14, 1807: “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper.”13 MSNBC’s Morning Joe undermined Trump’s attack on the critical press by pointing out that POTUS 45 quoted from Jefferson’s (POTUS 3)  attempt to deflect a journalist’s condemnation of his sexual relations with enslaved Sally Hemings. Jefferson sought to shield his lack of virtue and morality by attacking those who exposed him as a hypocrite. A southern White House at Mar-a-Largo, in Florida, two centuries after a southern White House at Monticello, Virginia, is a useful visual to contemplate if one wishes to argue that plantation style democracy increases the political-​ economic gains that disenfranchise minorities. The exploitation of captives and vulnerable groups can be elided if one denounces coverage of predatory behavior. As the Fourth Estate, the press has a duty to report malfeasance but malfeasance and corruption are protected not just by wealth but also by police and (para)military. Denying reality by condemning public critique is familiar and recycled rhetorical warfare against democracy.

Lesson #3: Confront the Ethics of Generals and Armies Satirical depictions of Trump form a pedagogy of critique. Some depict POTUS 45 as similar to Frances Ford Coppola’s Lt. Colonel Bill Kilgore (played by Robert Duval) in the 1979 film, Apocalypse Now. In the film, Kilgore struts bare chested (an image also associated with Russian leader Vladimir Putin). Wearing a black Calvary cap, he squats in a field being shelled while young US troops desperately scramble for cover, and opines the infamous line: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” That grimly laughable moment diminishes tension because Kilgore promises the troops that the Vietnamese war will end with the deaths of people attacked and occupied when the US invaded the sovereign country. No one of sound judgment believes that the “War on Terror” in the Middle East has a termination date. It began in 2003 during the George W. Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq, which the administration falsely claimed had weapons of mass destruction. That US invasion led to a near-​genocide and destabilized an entire region, allowing one terrorist act led by Saudi Osama bin Laden to become a catalyst for counter-​terrorism that produces more terrorism in response to September 11,

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2001. Kilgore’s promise differs from another anti-​interventionist war film, Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 Dr.  Strangelove, in which Peter Sellers plays multiple characters including that of “Strangelove,” an ex-​Nazi scientist who inadvertently addresses the US president as “Mein Fuhrer” as he attempts to incite a nuclear holocaust. Cultural images and art instruct us in ways that academic texts fail to do: with humor, images, visual culture, and emotional intelligence. We can see the pathological violence military and police used to consolidate wealth:  unethical and illegal wars, in recent memory from Vietnam to the invasion of Iraq under the false pretense of destroying “weapons of mass destruction.” Violence that is predatory, not patriotic, can be masked when officers and politicians call for a blind loyalty to the state despite the racist tenets and investors behind most wars. Adam Gopnik addresses Trump’s bombing of a Syrian air base as a response to the use of Sarin gas by President Bashar al-​Assad. Gopnik dismisses the bombing as a “Trumpist ritual of lashing out at those who fail to submit, the ritual act of someone whose inner accounting is conducted exclusively in terms of wounds given, worship received, and winnings displayed.”14 For Gopnik, “revisionist trends” by journalists and pundits assert a discernible plan in Trump’s consistently aberrational behavior and blatant lies. Despite the “presidential mantel” that some attempt to place upon the shoulders of POTUS 45, Gopnik maintains that there “are no ideas, save a respect for authority evidencing itself in the use of force.”15 Gopnik thereby concludes that the “Trump Syndrome” is 45’s singular appetite “for announcing his authority through violence, a thing capable of an unimaginable resonance and devastation.”16 Gopnik’s reading of 45 offers a view of Trump commonly held by his critics. Yet one needs to also look over the President’s shoulders to the three Generals who stood in his shadow to project onto him a rationality and a civic virtue that he did and does not possess. Trumpian praxis reflects the military ethos in pursuit of capital. Mergers and acquisitions and hostile takeovers in predatory capitalism suggest war and kleptocracy. The use of the emoluments clause in a law suit against 45 suggests conflict of interest that impacts not just 45 and his extended family but also those in his administration and in congress or on the courts. Corruption coexists with the rhetoric of a president continuously at war, with the democrats, with undocumented immigrants, with feminists, with environmentalists, with the transgendered communities, with anti-​racists, etc. Attorney General Jeff Sessions revived the war on drugs to reignite draconian policing and imprisonment because the war template was the norm for the cabinet. Fired as US Attorney General in November 2018, ostensibly for recusing himself from the FBI Mueller investigation into Russian meddling into US elections and white-​collar crime, Sessions lobbed his parting salvo against civil rights:  undoing the Obama era mandates to regulate police aggression in largely urban and poor communities of people of color. Military and police strongly support the Trump administration. Three Generals worked to stabilize the Administration and project global power for the democracy

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based on military strength. Between 2016 and 2018:  Jim Mattis, Secretary of Defense; John Kelly as Director of Homeland Security and later Chief of Staff; H.R. McMaster National Security Advisor all dutifully served Donald Trump. All projected their stature and structure onto 45. Of the three, it is McMaster who is of most interest here because McMaster presented himself as an independent thinker, an intellectual with high standards for truth-​telling. An educator and ethicist, his writing and speeches advocate for a loyalty to the military as devotion to the country. Although the US military historically functioned as the world’s “police” and engaged in interventionist wars for corporate capital, McMaster refers to the “warrior ethos” as an ideal that civil society should embrace in order to support “our troops.” Trusting Generals requires blind support rather than learning how to control the deployment of violence and ensure accountabilities for civil and human rights violations. If the call to do battle for justice makes us noble, progressives need pedagogical tools to identify where perpetual warfare is not transformation but replication of prevailing norms. This issue is related to but transcends the distinctions between pacifist and nonpacifist wars for justice. In his November 18, 2014, keynote address at Georgetown University’s Veterans Day ceremony, McMaster argued for perpetual war: Our military is a living historical community and those of us serving today are determined to preserve the legacy of courageous, selfless service that we have inherited from the veterans who have gone before us. One of the patterns of American military history is to be unprepared for war either because of wishful thinking or a failure to consider continuities in the nature of war—​especially war’s political and human dimensions … war is only possible through sacrifice.17 McMaster liberally quotes then sitting president Barack Obama: “As President Obama observed ‘a non violent movement could not have stopped Hitler’s armies.’ ”18 McMaster builds upon the former president’s acceptance speech for his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in which Obama asserts: “To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism—​it is recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”19 He references western thought’s foundational philosopher: Aristotle first said that it is only worth discussing what is in our power. So we might discuss how to prevent particular conflicts rather than eliminate all conflict, and when conflict is necessary, how to win. And in the pursuit of victory, how to preserve our values and make war less inhumane.20 McMaster instructs without self-​consciousness of his own limitations and those of his “warriors.” Again, quoting the former POTUS, although he would later serve

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for a man who spent decades spewing racist “birtherism” to delegitimize 44: “As President Obama observed ‘a nonviolent movement could not have stopped Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms.’ ”21 Noting no flaws among US military (imperial might, racism, sexism and sexual violence), McMaster heralded the “warrior ethos.” Before he was unceremoniously fired by 45, McMaster campaigned for civil society to respect and support the professionalism of the military through emotional and psychological homage stripped from necessary analyses of US foreign policies and transnational corporations. His military ethics fails to be grounded in global ethics. It is grounded in victory and conquest to protect a nation that engages in interventions in search of markets and acquisitions. The pedagogy of ethical practice would have to relinquish the masters’ tools of warfare while attempting to confront when it cannot persuade the warrior ethos.There is insufficient theorizing on how organized violence in democracy expands its international reach and contains its internal rebels seeking greater democratic rights.

Conclusion There are countless lessons for instruction in pedagogy for the oppressed. Currently as democracies falter across the globe, it is not only the poor and disenfranchised who suffer with anxiety about their future and their rights. The middle class, the affluent, those who believed in democratic ideals and the stability of democratic norms in civility and citizenship are dismayed by the present crisis. There are a thousand ways in which we could instruct ourselves, our communities, our classrooms on how to go forward. How best to delineate the brave from the foolish and then to shamefacedly admit that the brave often do what appears to be foolish: challenge authority; assert principles of fairness; believe in humanity; and fight for human rights. Pedagogical lessons are needed to comprehend democracy’s origins, its repressive and progressive features, and its imperial military that ensnares and protects the nation. How we teach ourselves and allow others to teach us will prove pivotal in progress or retrenchment. That we attempt to do meaningful pedagogies, ethically grounded actions, to impede or reverse authoritarianism demonstrates that the future still belongs to those who seek sustainable, dignified life for all.

Notes 1 Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1957. 2 Barbara Christian, “The Race for Theory,” Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Spring, 1988), pp. 67–​79.

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3 Audre Lorde, Your Silence Will Not Protect You. London:  Silver Press, 2017. Also, see Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (1984). In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (2007) (pp. 110–​114). Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. 4 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Bloomsbury, 1971; Martin Luther King, Jr, Where Do We Go from Here, Chaos or Community? Boston: Beacon Press, 1967. 5 “Donald Trump Acknowledges Not Paying Federal Income Taxes,” NYT, October 10, 2016. 6 Roger Parloff, “Why U.S. Law Makes It Easy for Donald Trump to Stiff Contractors,” Fortune, September 30, 2016. 7 “How Many of Donald Trump’s Advisers Have Been Convicted?” The Guardian, August 22, 2018. 8 Ishaan Tharoor, “Trump’s Affinity for Dictators over Democrats,” The Washington Post, June 12, 2018. 9 Seylah Benhabib, “The Pariah and Her Shadow: Hannah Arendt’s Biography of Rahel Varnhagen,” Political Theory,Vol. 23, No. 1 (1995), pp. 5–​24. 10 Seylah Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003, p. xii. 11 Sun Tzu, The Art of War. Chichester: Capstone Publishing, 2010; Donald Trump with Tony Schwartz, The Art of the Deal. New York: Penguin Random House, 1987. 12 Allison Graves, Katie Sanders, and Aaron Sharockman, “Fact Checking President Donald Trump’s Florida Rally,” Politifact, www.politifact.com/​truth-​o-​meter/​article/​ 2017/​feb/​18/​fact-​checking-​president-​donald-​trumps-​florida-​rall/​ 13 http://​press-​pubs.uchicago.edu/​founders/​documents/​amendI_​speechs29.html 14 Adam Gopnik, “The Persistence of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” The New Yorker, April 21, 2017, www.newyorker.com/​news/​daily-​comment/​the-​persistence-​of-​trump-​ derangement-​syndrome 15 Gopnik, “The Persistence of Trump Derangement Syndrome.” 16 Gopnik, “The Persistence of Trump Derangement Syndrome.” 17 H.R. McMaster, “The Warrior Ethos at Risk,” https://​myemail.constantcontact. com/​ T he-​ Warrior-​ E thos-​ a t-​ R isk-​ - ​ H -​ R -​ - ​ M cMaster-​ s -​ R emarkable-​ Veterans-​ Day-​ S peech-​ - ​ a t-​ G eorgetown-​ . html?soid=1114009586911&aid=0QipLubc AJw 18 Ramandeep Girn, “Obama’s Cynical View of Human Nature,”  The Undercurrent, Winter 2009–​2010, December 20, 2009. Girn provides an alternative to McMaster’s philosophy. 19 McMaster, “The Warrior Ethos at Risk.” 20 McMaster “The Warrior Ethos at Risk.” 21 McMaster “The Warrior Ethos at Risk.”

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12 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY The Daunting Task Before Us Bill Bywater

Introduction This chapter begins with the work of contemporary educator Christopher Emdin. Through his eyes we see the current appalling situation of urban education as exacerbated by Donald Trump’s presidency. Emdin proposes reality pedagogy as a method for creating an inviting learning space for urban students of color. Reality pedagogy draws from the students’ culture to enhance learning by using urban cultural practices such as hip-​hop and rap. In these practices students cooperate to teach each other the lessons. Emdin says that the students and the teacher are apprentices to each other. The students teach their culture to the teacher and the teacher gives them the lesson to place into their cultural context. This creates a democratic process in the class which engages everyone because the teacher is no longer delivering the lesson to a passive class. Pursuing Emdin’s ideas of apprenticeship, democracy, and process, I  widen them by introducing John Dewey’s notion of democracy as a way of life which sees growth in connection with others as a lifelong process. From this perspective, I  articulate an enriched notion of apprenticeship which, as Dewey points out, calls on whites to coordinate their lives with the lives of blacks. Whites have mostly failed to do this, creating a situation in which whites betray the very democracy they are so proud to celebrate. The daunting task before us is, thus, doubly complex.

The Problem—​Part One: Failing Education for People of Color Christopher Emdin1 has well described how Donald Trump’s candidacy and presidency have given renewed life to simplified narratives about people of color and

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all immigrants.Trump attacked immigrants for taking Americans’ jobs. He attacked Mexicans as rapists. He labeled John Lewis a person of all talk and no action, erasing his central position in the struggle for civil rights, and, by implication, the movement itself. Each of these moves appealed to and reactivated longstanding American mythic beliefs that race is real, that America is a white nation, and that people of color and other immigrants are to be feared as a danger to the white majority. These mythic beliefs also reinforce the notion that people of color, especially, live in problem communities which need to be rescued from their deficiencies. This deficit view, especially of urban communities, Emden argues, creates a major problem for the education of the young people who live in them: In urban communities across the country, efforts to recruit educators have taken on a dangerous form that involves pleading to the “kind-​hearted nature” of the affluent. … College graduates are told that a short term “giving back” to “the most unfortunate” will provide them with loan forgiveness while benefitting them in their future life plans and professional goals beyond the classroom. This self-​serving and ego-​driven charity donor mentality is the major recruitment narrative for many urban schools and sets the stage for thousands of teachers to go into classrooms believing that they are heroes … These new teachers walk into classrooms not only holding on to the perception that urban youth of color are inherently damaged, disadvantaged, and in the need of restoration, but they are the ones to save their students.2 When teachers see only the faces of deficiency before them in the classroom, pity and condescension leave no room for respect. When the teacher does not respect the students, the students do not respect the teacher so they lose interest in the class material. Education’s goal is not realized in what becomes a standoff between students and teachers. As Arash Daneshzadeh3 observes, schools are microcosms of our larger society including its power relations. Teachers are far more likely to be comfortable with being in these relations than are students of color and those who are poor. When teachers act on the assumptions built into these relations, students will see them as agents of the larger oppressive forces which surround them. In this situation, teachers become ever more convinced of the deficits of the students and students become ever more detached and disengaged as education fails to respect their culture. The goal of education has always been to socialize young people into the dominant society, which is taken as the norm. To normalize students of color is to repress, even destroy, their culture. As Venus Evans-​Winters4 argues, “Deculturalization practices in schooling attempt to strip African American children of their culture and replace it with the culture of the White middle class/​oppressor or what is considered normative.”5 She observes that ever since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 schools serving

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students of color along with their teachers of color have disappeared. bell hooks6 has spoken eloquently about her experience as education changed. She was 16 when bussing to white schools began in her community. School changed utterly with racial integration. Gone was the messianic zeal to transform our minds and beings that had characterized teachers and their pedagogical practices in our all-​black schools. Knowledge was suddenly about information only. It had no relation to how one lived, behaved. It was no longer connected to antiracist struggle. Bussed to white schools, we soon learned that obedience, and not zealous will to learn, was what was expected of us. Too much eagerness to learn could easily be seen as a threat to white authority. … Now, we were mainly taught by white teachers whose lessons reinforced racist stereotypes. For black children, education was no longer about the practice of freedom. Realizing this, I lost my love of school. … That shift from beloved, all-​ black schools to white schools where black students were always seen as interlopers, as not really belonging, taught me the difference between education as the practice of freedom and education that merely strives to reinforce domination.7 For Evans-​Winters, demands for obedience, and acts of domination and violence against students of color have increased exponentially since hooks’ experience in 1968. Metal detectors, dress codes, zero tolerance policies, searches and police officers in schools have all added to the fear and intimidation of students by white authority. “Black youth are not viewed as children in need of state or adult protection in ways White children are in this country,” she concludes.8 Monique Morris9 in her work with black girls and young women confirms the observations of both hooks and Evans-​Winters. She cites many instances where girls’ enthusiasm for learning is regarded as a challenge to a (white) teacher’s authority. When black girls are punished for being too loud or disrespectful or willfully defiant (a widely used category, according to Morris10), their black femininity is being pathologized, she says.11 White norms for femininity are seldom exhibited by black urban girls. Their loudness “is a demand to be heard;” their attitude rejects “a doctrine of invisibility and mistreatment.” Both are signs of resilience in a world which seldom treats them with dignity.12 Black girls interpreted their attitude not as a stagnant expression of anger and dissatisfaction. Rather it lived along a continuum of responses to disrespectful or degrading triggers in their lives … Most common was the notion that an “attitude” was provoked by incidents of disrespect. In other words, these girls saw the “attitude” as a response to suggestions (overt or implicit) that their identity was an inferior one.13

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Many of the black girls in Morris’ study were arrested and incarcerated because of incidents involving “attitude” in school.They violated some school policy about a behavior that would not have subjected them to arrest if it had taken place elsewhere.14 For these students, both girls and boys, there is a school to prison pipeline exacerbated by the fact that they fall further behind in their schooling while they are in the criminal justice system.The criminalization of blackness is as old as slavery. It continues today in our schools, especially the urban ones, in the form of the idea that black culture is deficient and must be suppressed and replaced. Beyond the stress caused by a school environment in which one’s culture is not valued, lies the trauma which many children, especially urban children of color, experience outside of school. Sekyiwa (Set) Shakur’s story as told to Jasmine Guy15 illustrates this. Set describes herself as having an ache of sadness in her chest since she was a baby. She considered suicide. Addicted to crack, Set’s mother, Afeni Shakur, was often missing from Set’s life. Set grew up having to provide for herself. For a time she lived with her alcoholic aunt, but by 12 she was on her own. She says: Yeah, my family just thought I was crazy. And I acted crazy at times. I was so angry, so enraged. I would scream and throw things and hurt people.16 … I was filled with rage, but it would just come out in these fits. I couldn’t stop it once it started.17 … When my mom was cracked out, she’d be gone for months, but I would pretend she was around so they couldn’t take me away to a home or something; I went to school every day.18 The worry Set was bringing into the classroom every day about whether her charade would be successful together with her “crazy” behavior and her thoughts of suicide, all would have added up to a situation of chronic stress. She was eventually diagnosed with post-​traumatic stress disorder. She reports that knowing she is a trauma survivor has helped her get help and treatment.19 Any child whose parents have to face the uncertainties of poverty or who lives in a situation of family instability or neglect can suffer as a result of their trauma. Christian Picciolini20 tells how a childhood of neglect made him a prime target for a Nazi white-​power skinhead recruiter named Clark Martell.21 Both Christian’s parents worked long hours chasing the American dream. Beginning in infancy, he spent evenings and weekends at his maternal grandparents’ house. There he was isolated from playmates and as a youngster spent time drawing and day dreaming in a closet.22 But, despite having grandparents who gladly took me in and kept their watchful gaze on me, as a young child I  longed for my mom and dad. I worried at times that their absence was punishment for misbehaving, so I became the good kid, working hard to give them every reason to want

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me around. … Still it wasn’t enough. I simply couldn’t compete with their steadfast pursuit of the American Dream.23 His parents sent Christian to a private Catholic school where he was marginalized and bullied. He was a lonely and insecure child with a growing “passion and fury running through me, waiting to be unleashed.”24 Unleashed it was in his skinhead identity, a conduit of fury: “[T]‌he terms skinhead and fear became synonymous. People began to consider skinheads racial terrorists. In a way, I liked the sound of the word terrorist. The power behind it. But people had it wrong. White-​power skinheads were patriots.”25 Christian left the skinhead life as he came to realize that he was treating his children and his brother just as his parents had treated him; he had no time for them, he was always away from home on skinhead activity. His wife divorced him and took custody of their two sons. His younger brother was killed while cruising in a gang-​infested neighborhood in search of weed. In 2009 he founded Life After Hate.26 Bessel van der Kolk has been studying and treating trauma survivors since the late 1970’s. His recent book27 gathers together his research and experience along with developments in the field. Trauma researchers now recognize that long-​term stress in one’s daily environment can have the same traumatic effect as violent, disruptive events. Under stress, the body’s cortisol levels increase; under chronic stress these levels stay high. Cortisol, along with adrenaline, prepare us for flight or fight. Kolk says: The amygdala’s danger signals trigger the release of powerful stress hormones, including cortisol and adrenaline, which increase heart rate, blood pressure, and rate of breathing, preparing us to fight or run away. Once the danger is past, the body returns to normal state fairly quickly. But when recovery is blocked, the body is triggered to defend itself, which makes people feel agitated and aroused. … [T]‌rauma increases the risk of misinterpreting whether a particular situation is dangerous or safe. You can get along with other people only if you can accurately judge whether their intentions are benign or dangerous.28 Research has found that children who grow up in poverty and in households with parents who are stressed by economic and family instability are oversensitive to threat because their stress hormones are not at a normal level.29 As a result, they are less trusting and, therefore, less curious about the world, less adventurous, less able to pay attention, easily distracted and constantly nervous. Kolk calls this Developmental Trauma Disorder: As we organized our findings, we discovered a consistent profile: (1) a pervasive pattern of dysregulation, (2) problems with attention and concentration,

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(3) difficulties in getting along with themselves and others. These children’s moods and feelings rapidly shifted from one extreme to another—​from temper tantrums and panic to detachment, flatness and dissociation. When they got upset … they could neither calm themselves down nor describe what they were feeling. … Having a biological system that keeps pumping out stress hormones to deal with real or imagined threats leads to physical problems:  sleep disturbances, headaches, unexplained pain, oversensitivity to touch or sound. Being so agitated or shut down keeps them from being able to focus their attention and concentration. … Spending all their energy on staying in control, they usually have trouble paying attention to things like schoolwork … Having been frequently ignored or abandoned … they cannot help but define themselves as defective and worthless.30

Reality Pedagogy Christopher Emdin31 has proposed “reality pedagogy” as an approach which will counter the deculturalization discussed by Evans-​Winters and will return a sense of agency, thus reducing stress, to students who otherwise would be subject to having their internal and cultural life ignored: Structures within the schools like school personnel and their belief systems, that do not consider the ways that people view the world, actually interrupt the process of having students whose worldview has been masked from becoming active parts of the schooling process. These structures support reductionist approaches to instruction and viewing the world, that require individuals who are involved in highly communal practices based on oral traditions, community, coteaching and colearning to remove themselves from their norms and adopt an alien approach to teaching and learning.32 Reality pedagogy reverses deculturalization and engages students’ own urban hip-​hop experience: Reality pedagogy is an approach to teaching and learning that has a primary goal of meeting each student on his or her own cultural and emotional turf. It focuses on making the local experiences of the student visible and creating contexts where there is a role reversal of sorts that positions the student as the expert in his or her own teaching and learning, and the teacher as the learner. It posits that while the teacher is the person charged with delivering the content, the student is the person who shapes how best to teach that content. Together, the teacher and students co-​construct the classroom space.33

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Several themes stand out in Emdin’s work, each of which he connects to the hip-​hop culture of urban youth. The themes of agency, democracy (which he also calls the cosmopolitan ideal),34 apprenticeship, and process form the backbone of reality pedagogy. Engagement with art can be a powerful tool for motivation and learning, Emdin suggests.35 Rap battles and poetry slams can bring the students’ hip-​hop world into the classroom while showing respect for the art they value. These same art forms can be used to deliver course content. Students gain agency as they become teachers to one another. “Droppin’ science” is another rap that can accomplish this goal. It involves describing, discussing, and analyzing life in an urban existence—​even what urban schools are like. Droppin’ science in a school setting would be a rap that treats class materials the same way.36 Further, Emdin advocates co-​teaching as an important element of reality pedagogy.The classroom space is co-​constructed by teacher and student(s).The teacher gives students access to all the materials the teacher would use in preparing a lesson and explains the larger context of the lesson in the course and of the institutional constraints on what the course must include. Emdin argues that when the students understand the full context, they can see that like the art forms they practice there are rules for each. Understanding this allows students the footing upon which to fashion an effective lesson using hip-​hop techniques.37 Emdin says co-​teaching in reality pedagogy requires apprenticeship.38 Students are positioned as experts on how to deliver the content of a lesson while the teacher is their apprentice. The teacher is the expert on the content to whom the students must apprentice themselves to create an accurate delivery. Students, who co-​teach, experience the excitement of successfully mastering a subject while in the context of hip-​hop practice, so they listen respectfully to whoever has the mic. With this exchange, the teacher can learn to incorporate hip-​hop practices into the classroom and the students’ culture is validated so better learning takes place. Better learning can take place, in part, because validation will reduce cortisol levels. Classrooms which employ co-​teaching and other elements of hip-​hop culture are cosmopolitan spaces, says Emdin. In this space, “each student is a full citizen, responsible for how well the class meets the collective academic, social, and emotional goals.”39 The social and emotional goals Emdin seeks create a classroom in which students support one another. Emdin understands hip-​hop culture to be communal and democratic. He describes how even in the competition of rap battles these characteristics are not lost.40 They should be present in the classroom as well, in contrast to the usual process of basing learning in competition, pitting students against one another. In the introduction to his edited book,41 Emdin and George Sirrakos, Jr write:  “Borrowing from the ideas of John Dewey42 schools and classrooms are a reflection of the world; therefore, in order to make sense of the urban classroom, we need to make sense of the world.”43 In the following sections of this chapter, Emdin’s work will be located within the larger context of Dewey’s idea of democracy as a way of life together with its implications for a specific type of

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apprenticeship as a process of growth which especially places responsibility for growth on white people of the United States.

Apprenticeship, Democracy, and Process For Dewey democracy was first, a personal way of life, and second, a political arrangement. The political arrangement will continue to exist only as long as people practice democracy as a way of life. As part of this life, citizens have faith in one another to work together to solve social problems. Democracy as a way of life depends on cooperation, trust, and communication. It requires free and full conversation about the issues of the day between people who have faith in the capacities of one another for intelligent judgment and action. Discussion of differences can enrich a person’s experience and can be self-​corrective as the play of discussion and persuasion form public opinion. In this process, people become apprentices to each other. Coordinating one’s life path with the lives of others is the way humans grow, according to Dewey. For humans, growth is an endless intersubjective process of transaction with our surroundings to enrich our experience by enriching and growing the lives of others. Here is Dewey’s44 democratic moral ideal: Democracy is a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature. … That belief is without basis and significance save as it means faith in the potentialities of human nature as that nature is exhibited in every human being irrespective of race, color, sex, birth, and family of material or cultural wealth. … Democracy is a way of personal life controlled not merely by faith in human nature in general but by faith in the capacity of human beings for intelligent judgment and action if proper conditions are furnished. … Intolerance, abuse, calling of names because of differences of opinion about religion or politics or business, as well as because of differences of race, color, wealth, or degree of culture, are treason to the democratic way of life.45 This apprenticeship for democracy centers on cooperation and trust. Unfortunately, it has not become a cultural norm. Instead an apprenticeship of domination, quite antithetical to democracy, characterizes our lives. This apprenticeship of domination can begin innocently enough with a division of labor. When a culture designates certain people as teachers, then some teachers can become teachers of teachers and an apprenticeship of mastery is born. Today, whether they are tool-​and-​die makers, research scientists, bakers, brewers, chefs, or sociologists, apprentices learn the techniques that are foundational for their enterprise, from those who precede them and have been designated as masters. One of the habits required for this apprenticeship is domination. Those who would be designated masters must learn the techniques required to dominate and control

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both apprentices and the raw materials of their enterprise.Those who are successful apprentices, learn to accept the authority of mastery as they work through their apprenticeship to gain master status. When these roles are held within the bounds of a specific practice, they can be essential for the survival of a society. When these roles exceed the bounds of a practice and become the basis for a culture, we have a culture of domination instead of one characterized by mastery. Elsewhere I  have argued46 that Immanuel Kant (1724–​1804), the renowned German philosopher, is a prime example of an advocate for a culture of domination. Kant, as so many thinkers and wielders of power before and after, committed what Dewey47 later called the fallacy of selective emphasis. In this fallacy, a thinker removes a favored concept, idea, or fact from its context and elevates it to a general, even metaphysical, principle. Kant, viewing the successes of Isaac Newton’s (1642–​1727) science in revealing the very essence of nature and, thus in fulfilling Francis Bacon’s (1561–​1626) dream of the total control of it, and the ability of European culture to reach heights previously unattained anywhere, saw every reason to celebrate absolutely the white masculinity of Europe. Kant, along with his era, refined and advanced worldwide white supremacy as never before. This domination continues to know virtually no bounds to its ruthless control. Today neoliberal capitalism continues to support and expand our culture of domination using money as the grand principle to which all else—​inorganic and organic—​is subordinated. Dewey’s idea of democracy as a way of life stands in opposition to white supremacy’s world domination. In a series of writings over about 20  years, we can see him coming to grips with the significance of his own growing recognition that a culture of domination makes democracy impossible. He begins with some important observations in 1922 when he addressed the Chinese Social and Political Science Association on the topic “Racial Prejudice and Friction.”48 In this lecture, he argues that race prejudice has a biological basis in a spontaneous or “instinctive aversion of mankind to what is new and unusual, to whatever is different from what we are used to.”49 He also says, “In the main this feeling left to itself tends to disappear under normal conditions. People get used to what was strange and it is strange no longer.”50 So, for Dewey, it is necessary to undertake an examination of what forces keep the aversion alive, and deepen it, given the long-​standing relationship between blacks and whites in the United States. First of all, there has to be a physical difference between groups such as skin color, hair texture, or shape of nose. While having no significance in themselves, these offer an anchor for irrational behavior. Next, although religion may sometimes be relevant, political and economic factors are the most important.51 In the first place, the fact of political domination creates the belief in superiority on one side and inferiority on the other. It changes race prejudice into racial discrimination. This situation then produces conditions which justify the belief in respective superiority and inferiority. … In the psychological

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tests given American conscripts during the late war, the Negroes as a group ranked low.This fact might be seized upon to prove their case by those who hold to inherent inferiority. But unfortunately for the argument, the Negro group from the northern states, where the Negros though not fairly treated receive better treatment, stood distinctly higher than the southern in the intelligence tests, thus proving the effects of environmental opportunity.52 Intensifying the irrational, aggressive nature of domination, is the fact that, Dewey says,“we also hate those whom we have wronged,” and that the dominators’ disdain and contempt hide “an uneasy subconscious feeling that perhaps the subject people is not really so inferior”53 Dewey comes to the conclusion that race is largely a scientific fiction but still a practical reality.54 He says that “the world is not sufficiently civilized to permit close contact of peoples of widely different cultures.”55 Even though race is a practical reality, the introduction of “widely different cultures” marks a shift in the argument. On the next page we are told twice that the friction in the speech’s title is not about race. The friction is brought about by “differences of speech, manner, religion, moral codes … political organization and habits and national rivalries.”56 Dewey explains this shift away from a potentially powerful analysis of white supremacy as follows: For, I repeat, this friction is not primarily racial. Race is a sign, a symbol, which bears much the same relation to the actual forces which cause friction that a national flag bears to the emotions and activities which it symbolizes, condensing them into visible and tangible form.57 Race is a location which brings to the fore the habits of a civilization—​the bad habits in the case of race: habits, moral codes, and political organization like the domination which creates the myth of superiority with its hate and disdain, and undercurrent of uncertainty. It is these factors which must be eliminated wherever they occur, not just in the case of race.Thus, we need to discuss aspects of the culture which underlie race hate. Dewey’s point sounds a lot like David McClean’s position in “Should We Conserve the Notion of Race?”58 McClean does not think we should. Instead we should not see problems of social justice that have a racial prehistory as “racial problems” or problems of “racism,” rather [we should see them] as simply “stupid, unpardonable bias unacceptable to a civilization like ours.” Shifting our descriptions of these sorts of injustices away from racial language and categories—​to, in a sense, change the subject—​is, I think, critical to deflating race itself, to removing the cloud of race from around our social intercourse and politics.”59

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For both Dewey (in 1922) and McClean (in 2004) race problems are a sign of something deeper infecting a civilization. We shouldn’t be distracted from the deeper issues by the spectacle of race, horrible as it may be. Here is Dewey talking about changing the larger culture: There is clearly one thing to be done which would meet the situation. Cultural evolution, better understanding of foreign cultures, will do something of course.As contact and intercourse continue, many differences which now produce what we significantly call estrangement will be mitigated. Assimilation will take place from both sides. … We are carrying old political and old mental habits into a condition for which they are not adapted, and all kinds of friction result. An international and interracial mind can be built up only slowly. Individuals here and there achieve freedom from prejudice and rational control of instinctive bias with comparative ease. But the mass cannot attain it until there has been a change not only in education, and in the means of publicity, but also in political and industrial organization.60 Dewey’s address to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1932 is completely consistent with this statement.61 He urges the black community to engage in changing the political and industrial organization of the United States by forming a political party that would focus on the problems of those who are at an economic disadvantage. His hope was that economic suffering would make it ever clearer, at an accelerating pace, to all workers of all races and ethnicities that they were in the same boat; that the economic issues they faced could unite them politically. Notice, however, that before he makes his crucial appeal, he tells his audience that the group they represent has suffered more than any other: Doubtless the group which you represent has suffered more than any other, more keenly, more intensely. Doubtless you are, on the whole, to lose employment and the last to be taken on.You are quite likely the last to get an equal opportunity to share in whatever measures of relief or constructive public work, to tide-​over the depression, undertaken. But none the less, the causes from which all are suffering are the same.62 Here we see the theme of 1922 returning. Underlying the black experience are deeper social issues. Dewey is not denying this experience.We saw he did not deny it in 1922, either. He thinks he has a bigger problem to solve. So he says: The things I should like to say to you tonight are the same sort of things that I would say to representatives of any white group that is also at a disadvantage economically, industrially, financially, and at a disadvantage politically in comparison with the privileged few. … In many parts of the country your

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particular group is more definitely disfranchised than other groups. But if you stop to look over the field you will realize that there are large numbers of white groups that are voluntarily un-​enfranchised if not disfranchised. The average vote in our national elections is about one-​half, fifty per cent, of those who might go to the polls and vote. That seems to me a very significant fact. Practically one-​half the people who might vote voluntarily decline to do it; they disfranchise, un-​enfranchise themselves. Why?63 Dewey answers his own question by discussing the need for a third political party to challenge the Republicans and the Democrats. People do not bother to vote because they no longer see a significant difference between the two parties and neither party is willing to give any substantial help to those who suffer economically. After making his case that the two existing parties are not helping those in economic need, he returns to his theme of cultural change and the black experience: Now I submit to you the thing I would submit to any white group that is also at a disadvantage, since your fundamental difficulties do not come through color or any other one thing. They come from the fact that in a society which is economically and industrially organized as ours is, those who want the greater profits and those who want monopoly, power, influence, that money gives, can get it only by creating suspicion, dislike and division among the mass of people. … In what I have said I have not, I hope, been unmindful of all of the special disabilities which the colored group suffers. I know how great they are, how serious they are, how they are intensified at a period like the present. But I also know that those who wish to keep power, political and economic, in their hands—​political power that follows from the possession of economic power—​believe in the principle of dividing so as to conquer.64 Again, it is a deeper social issue of dominance—​the powerful dividing to conquer—​not race prejudice itself which must be the target. I agree with Dewey that dominance is a central characteristic of western culture which is entangled in virtually all of its ills. Yet, I am far less comfortable with the idea that dominance per se can be separated from that which is dominated. As Kant and other 17th and 18th century white supremacists argued, it is skin color which is the sure indicator of who is to be dominated, of who requires domination. Growing up in a white supremacist, patriarchal society makes racism part of one’s socialization.You learn it without thinking about it. Domination is absorbed as already raced or gendered or anthropomorphized, for example. Shannon Sullivan65 makes a similar point. By 1941 when Dewey published “The BasicValues and Loyalties of Democracy” in American Teacher,66 he could have observed that economic hardship had failed to fundamentally alter racial friction.The Depression did not change in any significant

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way the habits or moral code, or the political or economic arrangements, already established in United States.Whites’ hate, disdain, and contempt for blacks had not been shaken. In this essay he calls on educators to take action with respect to three loyalties “which are emphasized by contrast with contemporary totalitarianism.”67 The first loyalty is to communication. The propaganda of the Soviet Union, Italy, Germany, and Japan is such a complete inversion of the truth as to create a daze during which these totalitarian actors can accomplish their goals, Dewey says.68 A democracy must have enough free communication so that propaganda cannot control the citizens. The second loyalty is to the freedom to develop intelligence which requires alertness to the facts and the ability to tell what facts are relevant in solving a specific problem. These two loyalties are clearly closely linked. The third loyalty required by democracy in the face of totalitarianism is to “transform passive toleration into active cooperation.”69 He says: Our anti-​democratic heritage of Negro slavery has left us with habits of intolerance toward the colored race—​ habits which belie profession of democratic loyalty. … There are still many, too many, persons who feel free to cultivate and express racial prejudices as if they were within their personal rights, not recognizing how the attitude of intolerance infects, perhaps fatally as the example of Germany so surely proves, the basic humanities without which democracy is but a name. … So I close by saying that the third loyalty which measures democracy is the will to transform passive toleration into active cooperation.The “fraternity” which was the third member of the democratic trinity of the France of the Revolution has never been practiced on a wide scale. Nationalism, expressed in our country in such phrases as “America First,” is one of the strongest factors in producing existing totalitarianism, just as a promise of doing away with it has caused some misguided persons to be sympathetic with Naziism [sic]. Fraternity is the will to work together; it is the essence of cooperation. As I have said, it has never been widely practiced, and this failure is a large factor in producing the present state of the world. We may hope that it, not the equality produced by totalitarian suppression, will constitute the “wave of the future.”70 In short, white people are going to have to work a lot harder to overcome their anti-​black racism in order to stop being traitors to democracy. This puts a fine point on Dewey’s comment of 1939 in “Creative Democracy—​The Task Before Us” that “the calling of names,” as he puts it, because of “differences of race, color, wealth, or degree of culture, are treason to the democratic way of life.”71 Dewey now focuses on white people and their traitorous behavior as the root of failed race relations. At the very beginning of the 1941 essay, he comments that it is necessary to observe a person’s behavior to tell where that person’s loyalties lie. He has now seen enough of white peoples’ behavior to decide that white people are excessively loyal to whiteness and, thus, not sufficiently civilized.

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In theory, it should not be difficult to teach white people to be cooperative. As I have argued elsewhere72 evidence from anthropology and neuroscience indicates that everyone is a natural born cooperator. We need to reinforce the impulse to cooperate. We do not need to teach it from scratch. Easier said than done, indeed. Setting aside the real possibility that trauma has damaged a child’s ability to cooperate, even preschoolers will already have been impacted by our culture of domination, and its associated competition, as the habits it introduces and reinforces override cooperation. Teachers at all levels, and those who train them, must uncover and incorporate into their work techniques which bring back to the fore that we are social, cooperative beings. The path from theory to reality is hardly smooth or direct.

The Problem—​Part Two: Civilizing White People In 1948 in the new introduction to Reconstruction in Philosophy,73 Dewey was still searching for a “new moral order”74 that would be based on “distinctively human” ends and standards.75 In the book, he makes it clear that the end is growth and the standard by which growth is measured is the “continuous reconstruction of experience.”76 This means that the social dependencies and interdependencies,77 which we all share, are endlessly expanded and deepened so that we have an increasingly subtle understanding of our lives together and, thus, are able to make increasingly successful decisions about how to enhance our lives together—​to grow. Growth is a life-​long process of finding in one’s environment those elements which support it and challenging the elements which thwart it. Dewey observes that the moral meaning of democracy lies in requiring that all institutions of society contribute to the growth of every member.78 Growth is not primarily personal or subjective. It is intersubjective and public. White supremacy and our western culture of domination have stunted the growth of both peoples of color and whites around the world and within the United States. Neither group, Dewey would say, is “free to develop the capacities of human individuals without respect to race, sex, class or economic status.”79 Emdin’s discussion of urban education, hooks’ recollections and Set Shakur’s story of childhood trauma all illustrate how black people are not free to develop their capacities. Black people have long known that white people’s growth has been stunted as well. David Walker80 gave eloquent voice to this knowledge when he observed that white people’s morality had been ruined by avarice and greed. Sourced, I argue, from enlightenment white supremacy. Today we have Ta-​Nehisi Coates’81 clear-​visioned assessment that white supremacy is maintained by domination and exclusion82 and addicted to unprecedented plunder not only of peoples of color but the earth itself.83 George Yancy84 points out how the black counter-​ gaze can be so helpful in revealing to whites important aspects of white culture that make growth impossible. For Coates, whites cannot grow because they are living in a dream. For Yancy, white growth is blocked because whites have etched

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into their psyches an opaque racist self which can never be completely plumbed but can only be inhibited through careful vigilance.85 Black people have had to be students of white culture. This quasi-​apprenticeship began in Jamestown and has continued to the present day because mastery of white culture, together with its privileges, has always been forbidden. To begin to co-​operate with, rather than tolerate, black people, whites must join with them in an effort to establish mutual growth.This mutual apprenticeship for growth—​I call it a Deweyan apprenticeship86—​has some similarities to the dual apprenticeship of mastery that Emdin proposes where each side has special knowledge that one learns from the other. In an apprenticeship for growth not only does each side learn about the other side but each side is challenged to learn about itself. Two important aspects of this Deweyan apprenticeship—​call it DA for both apprenticeship and apprentice—​are courage and the inhibition which courage requires. In the first place, it is unpleasant to learn about other people’s suffering, trauma, and hardships. This is especially true in a culture which teaches its citizens to blame the sufferers for their hardships. It takes courage to face the unpleasant. It takes an ability to inhibit one’s first reactions to really listen to, and to learn about, the situation of the sufferer and the effects of trauma, to hear their stories and to tarry, to dwell with, the hardships. Staying with the trouble (as Haraway87 might put it) allows the DA to fully engage not just with the aesthetic aspects of culture, such as Emdin describes, but with the surrounding elements that birthed and maintain that art. The DA’s grasp of the culture weaves together its emotional dimensions and an intellectual understanding of the internal and external forces which created and maintain it. As DAs pursue this work they will recognize that they inhabit the same world as the sufferers and the hardships. It is a very courageous act to accept this fact as it contains a recognition of one’s connection to the suffering, trauma, and hardship. It also enables the DA to understand the connections between trauma and culture which are not easily visible to those within it. Second, the DA’s focus now includes the DA as the DA grows to grasp a broader understanding of the complex relationships across the experiences of more and more people and the institutions which impact them. Courage and forbearance are required to tarry with and absorb unpleasant facts about oneself, or the community with which one identifies, which challenge an established, positive image. The two aspects of a DA are fundamental to the education of all white teachers so that they will not perpetuate white supremacy in their lessons or classroom behavior. Whether they work in urban, suburban, or rural schools, knowledge of black culture, black critiques of white culture, and the nature of co-​ operation between blacks and whites helps teachers and their students grow into citizens who foster democracy. Along with courage and inhibition, the use of imagination is very important to a DA. The shift from toleration to cooperation requires the DA to imagine

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relationships that do not yet exist in a world which does not now exist. For this reason, imagination plays an important role for Dewey in creating a new moral order. As I have argued elsewhere,88 we use imagination to examine our current situation to find the possibilities which it affords. This is a two-​fold action that requires a careful, detailed look at the current situation while being acutely aware of the different futures the situation could produce. These two actions necessarily engage knowledge of the past. As Dewey notes, the long history of race relations in the colonies and the United States will play a role in what futures are more or less likely at any given time. All teachers—​again, pre-​K to post-​doc—​should examine their teaching spaces and materials as well as themselves to seek opportunities to teach cooperation and to challenge the mythic beliefs which Emdin and Coates, for example, have so well characterized. To fully interrogate their teaching spaces and materials, white teachers must examine their own internalized anti-​black white supremacy. No white person born in the United States or who has resided there for a good portion of their life should assume that they have escaped this internalization. It is insidious. It is not necessarily taught. It is absorbed like learning one’s first language. It becomes physically imbedded. Michael Eric Dyson89 eloquently expressed his recognition of and deep concern about the internalization of white supremacy: Beloved, there is something black folk fear, whether you can see it or not, whether some of us black folk will say it or not. Our fear is that you believe, that you insist—​finally, tragically, without hesitation, with violent repercussions in tow—​that, in all sorts of ways, we are still your nigger.90 Danielle Allen91 views the threat of white supremacy, like Dewey, as a betrayal of democracy. Whites are unwilling to co-​operate with blacks in sharing the burdens of democratic citizenship, she argues. An illustration of this failure to share a burden would be the maldistribution of money to support public education. Democracy requires an effective education for all, while those who have the financial means (mostly white people) to take on some of this burden have not done so. It does not bother most white citizens that Dyson’s statement is a true characterization of how our society works. This is the result of insidious white supremacy. Dyson and Allen are demonstrating what Yancy92 calls the black counter-​gaze. Yancy says this gaze is a gift “that ought to engender a sense of gratitude, a sense of humility and an opportunity to give thanks.”93 Yancy goes on to say that the counter-​gaze is not a gift for whites but a collective gift for all of us. It is a gift which enables growth and with growth, democracy.Yancy continues, [the gift is] an invitation to see more, to see things differently. It is a special call that reframes, that results in a form of unveiling, of seeing, and of recognizing a different side. … Whites must also be humbled by the gift of seeing

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more of themselves, more of the complex manifestations of their whiteness, as seen through black experiences of whiteness.94 When Yancy describes his pedagogy later in the book, he says: I bring a counter-​gaze, a demanding gaze, an inviting gaze, an understanding gaze. It is a gaze that encourages [whites] to travel, to move into a space of uncertainty, to fracture just a little bit, to rename familiar experiences, to dialogue, to transgress, to show trust … When my white students show no interest in exploring whiteness … I convey to them that they have decided to settle for less, that they have decided to remain unfinished as human beings.95 The task before educators today—​made even more urgent by the Donald Trump presidency—​is to undertake a DA in which they employ their imagination, infused with the courageous use of the black counter-​gaze, to create lesson plans and a learning environment in which students and teachers cooperate.Teaching from and learning from the black counter-​gaze is central to DA’s commitment to growth and democracy. It requires the courage to listen, to tarry with the fact of widespread trauma, to absorb things into oneself just as at an earlier time one absorbed white supremacy and the courage to bring to awareness one’s own white supremacist racism and to push back against it. These are tasks for a lifetime of growth.We can learn to be courageous listeners, we can learn to be cooperators, and we can learn to inhibit our white supremacist impulses. The task before the teachers of teachers is to introduce their students to the black counter-​gaze and to promote among them the capacity of imagination to meet their students where their cultures have placed them and to move those students to a deeper understanding of their cultures and of their lives while preparing then for cooperation with others in their role as citizens of a democracy. Teachers of teachers must together with their students become flexible enough in their imaginations to be able to devise lesson plans and learning environments for the challenges they will meet in their own teaching environments. We cannot foresee exactly what will be required but a nondefensive openness to the situation of one’s students will allow teachers to direct students of any age and background toward a more democratic future.

Notes 1 Christopher Emdin, “Destroying the Spectacle in Urban Education:  Embracing the New Danger” in George Sirrakos, Jr and Christopher Emdin, Eds., Between the World and the Urban Classroom (Boston: Sense Publishers, 2017), pp. 69–​81. 2 Ibid., p. 75.

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3 Arash Daneshzadeh,“Media as Cultural Discourse and Youth Emancipation” in George Sirrakos, Jr and Christopher Emdin, Eds., Between the World and the Urban Classroom (Boston: Sense Publishers, 2017), pp. 1–​18. 4 Venus Evans-​ Winters, “Necropolitics and Education” in George Sirrakos, Jr and Christopher Emdin, Eds., Between the World and the Urban Classroom (Boston:  Sense Publishers, 2017), pp. 19–​33. 5 Ibid., p. 22. 6 bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress:  Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994). 7 Ibid., pp. 3–​4. 8 Venus Evan-​Winters, “Necropolitics and Education,” 2017, p. 27. 9 Monique Morris, Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools (New York: The New Press, 2016). 10 Ibid., p. 70. 11 Ibid., p. 178. 12 Ibid., pp. 19–​20. 13 Ibid., p. 86. 14 Ibid., p. 77. 15 Jasmine Guy, Afeni Shakur: Evolution of a Revolutionary (New York: ATRIA Books,  2004). 16 Ibid., p. 153. 17 Ibid., p. 158. 18 Ibid., p. 157. 19 Ibid., p. 147. 20 Christian Picciolini, White American Youth: My Descent into America’s Most Violent Hate Movement—​and How I Got Out (New York: Hachette Books, 2017). 21 Ibid., p. 42. 22 Ibid., p. 22. 23 Ibid., p. 19. 24 Ibid., p. 60. 25 Ibid., p. 60, emphases in original. 26 lifeafterhate.org 27 Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (New York: Penguin Books, 2014). 28 Ibid., pp. 61–​2. 29 Ibid., p. 129. 30 Ibid., p. 160. 31 Christopher Emdin, Urban Science Education for the Hip-​Hop Generation: Essential Tools for the Urban Science Educator and Researcher (Boston: Sense Publishers, 2010); Christopher Emdin, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood … and the Rest of Y’ll Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education (Boston: Beacon Press, 2016). 32 Emdin, Urban Science Education, 2010, p. 30. 33 Emdin, For White Folks Who Teach, 2016, p. 28. 34 Emdin, Urban Science Education, 2010, p. 28. 35 Emdin, For White Folks Who Teach, 2016, p. 168. 36 Emdin, Urban Science Education, 2010, p. 95. 37 Emdin, For White Folks Who Teach, 2016, p. 87–​92. 38 Ibid., p. 89. 39 Ibid., p. 107. 40 Ibid., p. 154–​5.

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41 George Sirrakos, Jr and Christopher Emdin, Eds., Between the World and the Urban Classroom (Boston: Sense Publishers, 2017). 42 John Dewey, 1938, “Experience and Education” in J.A. Boydston, Ed., The Later Works of John Dewey,Vol. 13 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), pp. 1–​62. 43 Sirrakos, Jr and Emdin, Eds., Between the World, 2017, p. xx. 44 John Dewey, 1939, “Creative Democracy—​The Task Before Us” in J.A. Boydston, Ed., The Later Works of John Dewey,Vol. 14 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989), pp. 224–​30. 45 Ibid., pp. 226–​7. 46 Bill Bywater, “Becoming a Deweyan Apprentice:  A struggle against White Supremacy” in Jay Michael Hanes and Eleanor Weisman, Eds., The Role of the Arts in Learning: Cultivating Landscapes of Democracy (New York: Routledge, 2018), pp. 19–​35. 47 John Dewey, 1925, “Experience and Nature” in J.A. Boydston, Ed., The Later Works of John Dewey,Vol. 1 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), pp. 32–​4. 48 John Dewey, 1922, “Racial Prejudice and Friction” in J.A. Boydston, Ed., The Middle Works of John Dewey, Vol. 13 (Carbondale:  Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), pp. 242–​54. 49 Ibid., p. 243. 50 Ibid., p. 246. 51 Ibid., p. 247. 52 Ibid., p. 248. 53 Ibid., p. 284. 54 Ibid., p. 251. 55 Ibid., p. 252. 56 Ibid., p. 253. 57 Ibid., p. 253. 58 David E. McClean, “Should We Conserve the Notion of Race?” in Bill E. Lawson and Donald F. Koch, Eds., Pragmatism and the Problem of Race (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), pp. 142–​61. 59 Ibid., p. 150. 60 Dewey, “Racial Prejudice and Friction,” 1922, pp. 251–​3. 61 John Dewey, 1932, “Address to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People” in J.A. Boydston, Ed., The Later Works of John Dewey, Vol. 6 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989), pp. 224–​30. 62 Ibid., p. 225. 63 Ibid., p. 226. 64 Ibid., p. 230. 65 Shannon Sullivan, Revealing Whiteness:  The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), p. 32. 66 John Dewey, 1941, “The Basic Values and Loyalties of Democracy” in J.A. Boydston, Ed., The Later Works of John Dewey, Vol. 14 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989), pp. 275–​7. 67 Ibid., p. 276. 68 Ibid., p. 275. 69 Ibid., p. 277. 70 Ibid., p. 277. 71 Dewey, “Creative Democracy,” 1939, p. 227.

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72 Bill Bywater and Zachary Piso, “Neuropragmatism and Apprenticeship: A Model for Education” in Tibor Solymosi and John Shook, Eds., Neuroscience, Neurophilosophy, and Pragmatism: Brains at Work with the World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 185–​214; Bill Bywater, “Becoming a Deweyan Apprentice,” 2018. 73 John Dewey, 1948, “New Introduction to Reconstruction in Philosophy” in J.A. Boydston, Ed., The Middle Works of John Dewey,Vol. 12 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), pp. 256–​77. 74 Ibid., p. 275. 75 Ibid., p. 270. 76 John Dewey, 1920, “Reconstruction in Philosophy” in J.A. Boydston, Ed., The Middle Works of John Dewey, Vol. 12 (Carbondale:  Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), pp. 77–​201, at p. 184. 77 Ibid., p. 185. 78 Ibid., p. 186. 79 Ibid., p. 186. 80 David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured [sic] Citizens of the World, But in Particular and Very Expressly to Those of the United States of America, Charles Wiltse, Ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1830/​1965). 81 Ta-​Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015). 82 Ibid., p. 42. 83 Ibid., p. 150. 84 George Yancy, Look, a White! Philosophical Essays on Whiteness (Philadelphia:  Temple University Press, 2012). 85 Ibid., pp. 168–​9. 86 Bill Bywater, “Becoming a Deweyan Apprentice,” 2018. 87 Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016). 88 Bill Bywater and Zachary Piso, “Neuropragmatism and Apprenticeship,” 2014; Bill Bywater, “Becoming a Deweyan Apprentice,” 2018. 89 Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2017). 90 Ibid., p. 137, italics in text. 91 Danielle S.  Allen, Talking to Strangers:  Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v.  Board of Education (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004). 92 George Yancy, Look, a White!, 2012. 93 Ibid., p. 6. 94 Ibid., p. 10, italics in text. 95 Ibid., p. 78.

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13 TRUTH AND (TRUMP’S) METHOD The Instability of Critical Thinking in Education Kal Alston

On May 1, 2018, a team from The Washington Post claimed that “President Trump has made 3,001 false or misleading claims, according to The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president. That’s an average of nearly 6.5 claims a day.”1 The authors point out that the daily rate of false claims escalated in 2018 and that many of the claims have been repetitions, including two claims repeated more than fifty times each. Some of his best-​known false claims are about matters that are easily checked; they refer to historical facts. For example, he has claimed that he made the largest tax cut in US history, when the size is known to be the eighth largest; claims that his actions are “the best,”“the biggest,” or “the most” are easily shown to be false. However, the ease of disproving those statements seemingly has no effect on the rate of repetition.

The President of the United States Is a Chronic (and Pathological) Liar The Washington Post, along with other political observers, has chronicled much of this activity by fact-​checking speeches, tweets, and other utterances made explicitly by Donald Trump himself. Many of the so-​called mainstream media have been reluctant to call the President himself a liar or his utterance lies, and that reluctance has extended itself to his spokespeople, from Sean Spicer to Sarah Huckabee Sanders to John Kelly to Rudy Giuliani. Even though all of them have been confronted by reporters and others and asked to explain contradictions spouted by their boss, they have all stuck to the line that he was “just kidding”—​Sanders when she stated that the President was “probably joking” when he encouraged law enforcement officers to be “rough” while arresting suspected gang members;2 Hogan Gidley when he called Trump’s suggestion that Democrats were being

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“treasonous” (if they didn’t applaud during the State of the Union Address) “tongue in cheek.”3 Sanders suggested that Trump was employing “allegory” after he told donors that Japanese regulators were dropping bowling balls on American automobiles to keep them off the market. “Obviously, he’s joking about this particular test,” Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “telling a reporter that Trump’s anecdote was merely ‘illustrative of creative practices’ countries use to keep American goods out of their markets.”4 The past relationships to truth telling held by Sanders and others are not known to us,5 but working as an interpreter for the President’s words and actions is not a job for any parrhesiast. It is, however, possible to construct the job as protecting the President from a biased and unfriendly press or as supporting the narrative of the President to the public to overcome “media interference.” Both Sanders (& Co.) and the media were called out by comedian Michelle Wolf at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April 2018, the former for lying and the latter for dining out on the lies and the access to power: Every time Sarah steps up to the podium I  get excited, because I’m not really sure what we’re going to get—​you know, a press briefing, a bunch of lies or divided into softball teams. “It’s shirts and skins, and this time don’t be such a little bitch, Jim Acosta!” I actually really like Sarah. I think she’s very resourceful. She burns facts, and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Like maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies. … There’s Kellyanne Conway. Man, she has the perfect last name for what she does. Conway. It’s like if my name was Michelle Jokes Frizzy Hair Small Tits.You guys have got to stop putting Kellyanne on your shows. All she does is lie. If you don’t give her a platform, she has nowhere to lie. … There’s a ton of news right now, a lot is going on, and we have all these 24-​hour news networks, and we could be covering everything. Instead, we’re covering three topics. Every hour is Trump, Russia, Hillary, and a panel full of people that remind you why you don’t go home for Thanksgiving. … You guys are obsessed with Trump. Did you used to date him? Because you pretend like you hate him, but I think you love him. I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you. He couldn’t sell steaks or vodka or water or college or ties or Eric, but he has helped you. He’s helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster, and now you’re profiting off of him. If you’re going to profit off of Trump, you should at least give him some money, because he doesn’t have any.6

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The jokes were pointed and intended to prick and provoke and to take up the challenge set out by the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) when they announced Wolf ’s selection to perform at the dinner: “Our dinner honors the First Amendment and strong, independent journalism,” the WHCA noted in their statement. “Her embrace of these values and her truth-​to-​power style make her a great friend to the WHCA. Her Pennsylvania roots, stints on Wall Street and in science and self-​made, feminist edge make her the right voice now.”7 Note the “truth-​to-​power style” used as an encomium in the days before the Dinner. After the dinner, several journalists objected on social media about the “cruelty” of the set in general and the treatment of Sanders in particular.8 Women journalists, including Maggie Haberman and Mika Brzezinski, criticized what they perceived as attacks on Sanders’s body in a reference likening Sanders to “Aunt Lydia,” a character from the Hulu series, The Handmaid’s Tale, played by award-​winning actress Ann Dowd. Aunt Lydia is the menacing head of re-​education for “wayward” handmaids in the television version of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel. The actress is twenty-​seven years older than the White House Press Secretary, and there is intentionally no glamor in her dress and demeanor while in character. However, the defensiveness of the women reporters seemed to relate to the physical characteristics of Aunt Lydia rather than the role itself—​she is a stalwart promoter and maintenance patroller of the authoritarian and gyne-​phobic regime of Gilead. Wolf ’s riff on Sanders was aiming at her willingness to deflect and ignore probing questions from the press about administration policies, as well as a tendency shared by many of her colleagues to state publicly that the President “did not say that” when there is substantial evidence (sometimes on his own Twitter stream) that he did. Sanders was merely one of the examples that Wolf held up to support her central thesis—​that the US has a President who lies, distorts the truth, or otherwise makes false statements. Furthermore, he has enablers, like Sanders, whom he employs, and media figures, like Haberman and others, who do not rock the boat, perhaps for fear of losing access. The Toronto Star Washington Bureau Chief, Daniel Dale, is responsible for fact-​ checking everything President Trump says, and the paper publishes his updated list of “false claims” every week. At the end of May 2018, Dale answered his critics, who demanded that Dale stop softening his descriptions of the false claims and simply call them “lies.” His rebuttal9 and the distinctions contained therein provide a helpful approach to this chapter and pose four questions: What kinds of knowledge are susceptible to true or false claims? Does it matter what the origins and intents of these knowledge claims are? Should educators care about whether or not the President of the United States lies or is “merely” ignorant? If so why? If we do care, what educational remedies are at our disposal to address the problem?

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Dale makes the case that his first job in fact-​checking is to assess accuracy, and that while he does that for each of the items on his weekly list, he does not believe that every item on the list is a “lie.” He invokes Merriam-​Webster’s definition: “Lie, verb: to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive.” He further suggests that the intention may be difficult to assess because Donald Trump is often “confused or ignorant.” He gives an example of what he would call a lie: “Trump clearly lied when he said in July (2016) that he got ‘a call from the head of the Boy Scouts’ to praise his controversial speech to a scout event.” And Trump sometimes makes up events “out of thin air” or uses “wildly” exaggerated numbers. But, he argues, sometimes the intent is not as clear, as when Trump stated at a Michigan rally that “This is the state where Henry Ford invented the assembly line.” This is false because this feature of the auto industry was pioneered by Ransom Eli Olds. Dale attributes this gaffe to ignorance or misconception by his speechwriters or by Trump himself (since he is known to go off script). Why should we care if Trump or anyone else in public life “lies” to the public by whom, presumably, they can be held accountable? Do intent and impact make a difference in whether or how much we care? As citizens? As educators? As humans? What kind of knowledge are susceptible to true or false claims? ( a) Alice has three apples in the bowl on her kitchen table. (I am in the kitchen) (b) Alice bought the apples at Tops on Tuesday. (Alice told me) (c) Alice tells me that to keep the doctor away, she has eaten nearly a million apples in her life, one a day. (Alice is fifty-​five years old) All three claims are subject to belief based on different sorts of evidence.They also could be the result of different kinds of intent on Alice’s part. In (a) I can see the apples; no statement or assertion on Alice’s part is necessary for me to believe the evidence of my own eyes. Perhaps statement (b) is the result of my asking where the apples came from; perhaps Alice has noticed my interest in her produce. This time Alice has made a statement that could be true or false, in part or in whole (maybe she stole them from her neighbor’s apple tree or maybe she bought them at Wegman’s or she bought them at Tops, but last Friday). Finally, (c) is clearly at least exaggerated. If, indeed, Alice ate one apple a day for her entire fifty-​five years (let’s credit infant Alice with strong teeth and digestion), that only adds up to 20,075. So, I think we could call it a gross exaggeration. At the least she is making a strong pitch for a connection between apple consumption and health; the actual number of apples Alice herself has eaten, at least on the surface, has no effect on other outcomes in the world. If it turns out that Alice did not buy the fruit at Tops on Tuesday, it could be a memory lapse; she forgot that she bought her apples this week at Wegman’s. If she bought the apples earlier than she stated, it could be a benign deception; she wants

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to serve me an apple that is a bit older than she is willing to admit to. Or she could not want me to know that she is a bad neighbor and a thief. In the case of Wegman’s rather than Tops, we could in no way conclude that her memory loss resulted in her knowing that she was stating something false with the intent that I believe that false statement to be true.10 If the untrue part of the statement is the date of purchase, she could have forgotten or maybe she knows that I will only eat super fresh fruit, but she wants to offload her excess fruit on me. If the latter is the case, she is making the statement deliberately to deceive me into taking an action I might not otherwise take (eating the apple). Whether her intentions are purely self-​serving or intended to cause me harm we cannot immediately suss out. If, however, Alice knows that she did not purchase the apples at all and actually stole them, her false claim becomes a lie. In this case she is presenting what on the surface appears to be a factual statement, which turns out to be a way of deceiving me and turning my attention away from the unethical action she took by stealing. Her knowledge that stealing is unethical (and likely her perception of my potential disapproval) motivates her “misstatement.” Trump often makes misstatements about things that can be disproven, which is how we ended up with the curious locution of “alternative facts” and the constant bleating from Trump and his spokespeople about “fake news.” Trump also stymies many of the efforts of those staffers to corral his speech into socially accepted discursively flexible spaces because he tweets his thoughts in real time and because they cannot count on his willingness to stick to an agreed-​upon script in his public appearances. Trump repeats many of his false claims over and over, in part, because in the rally setting those claims elicit cheers and applause—​for example, he is quite fond of stating that he has accomplished something that [some other President] was not able to accomplish. He stated in a speech on June 27, 2018, “You understand that for a nation to be successful, it must have a strong military and it must have strong borders and security inside our country. And we’ve just had $700 billion approved—​the largest ever for our military.” The New York Times noted, as did Dale, that President Obama signed a $725 billion defense budget in 2011.11 Likewise Trump claimed that he won Wisconsin for the Republicans for the first time since 1952 (Eisenhower won again in 1956; Nixon won in 1960, 1968, and 1972; and Reagan won in 1980)  at a campaign rally in South Dakota. And in a speech in Wisconsin on June 28, he reminded the crowd that Wisconsin was the state even Reagan didn’t win; Reagan did not win in Minnesota in 1984.12 He also will falsely state events or facts that are directly contradicted by audio or video tape or by transcripts available of previous statements, speeches, or tweets. His communications staffers are left to invite journalists and the public into whichever truth-​distorting rabbit hole looks most appealing at the moment. Every major print news organization has deployed staff time to fact-​checking, whether it is the major speeches or press conferences or, like Dale, “everything he says.” After the Helsinki “Summit” with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the press conference, and the subsequent walkbacks and walkbacks on the walkbacks, the public was left in confusion about the support of the President of the United States for the conclusions

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of the US intelligence community. Further, the White House initially released a transcript of the Putin/​Trump press conference that omitted part of a Reuters question to Putin about interference in the 2016 election and whether he wanted Donald Trump to win. Several days later the transcript was fixed. However, CNN subsequently reported that the White House has also suspended the previous practice of providing a summary for the public of private conversations with foreign leaders, a change that raised concerns for South Korea and Japan in the Trump/​ Kim Jong-​Un and for NATO allies in the Trump/​Putin conversations.13

Does It Matter What the Origins and Intents of These Knowledge Claims Are? Trump makes use of repetition of false statements/​characterizations, whatever the origins of the non-​factual statements. For example, Dale claims that Trump has exaggerated the US Trade deficit with Mexico (factually $69–​71 billion in 2017) thirty-​four times, usually claiming that the deficit is $100 billion and once recently that it is $120 billion.14 Does this exaggeration matter? Does the repetition matter? There is an argument to be made that both matter because it creates a narrative that Mexico is taking advantage of the US and that Trump’s administration needs to make a big change. After thirty-​four such assertions about Mexico (and forty-​six exaggerated trade deficit claims about China and twenty-​seven such claims about the European Union), Trump’s announcements of tariffs could appear to be a rational response on the part of the government to unfair practices (and “unfair” has been a featured characterization in Trump tweets). The other nations have not responded by yielding to the tariffs with grace and acceptance; rather, they have imposed their own retaliatory tariffs on goods that have already started to raise the price of auto production and caused some industrial layoffs. Whether we or the journalists among us want to call Trump’s false claims “lies” or not, may be irrelevant. What is not irrelevant is the purposeful nature of the misstatements and false claims. Dale (and others who may count on steady employment throughout this administration) is understandably leery of moving beyond facts to what could end up being a moral judgment. If Statement A is false and you call it a misstatement or a false claim, the evaluative gesture is toward the statement, not the speaker. Once you call Statement A “a lie,” you are saying something specific produced from an evaluative gesture that ends in casting the speaker as “the liar.” Given the rate of production of false claims, I can understand why it might be nigh-​ on-​impossible to categorize each and every one or to get a clear picture of whether or not Trump actually believes that the statement is false and intends to deceive: If I say that someone told a lie I am saying something descriptive about what he said, that it is not true and was known or believed by him not to be true, but I am not making a neutral report of the fact that these things were the case; I am condemning the action. The word “lie” incorporates two things;

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it has descriptive truth-​conditions (if we discovered that the person honestly believed what he said, we should withdraw the claim that he lied) but it also points us toward a particular judgment, it tells us to condemn rather than acquit or applaud. And the word “lie” is by no means unusual; rather it is typical of the vocabulary of ordinary life.15 It seems more likely that Trump is playing a completely different discursive game than we are used to playing with Presidents, so that his actual beliefs and intentions are less material than we might think.The work Trump’s lies are doing is, I suggest, material that teachers and educators ought to attend to in their roles as cultural re/​producers. Insofar as he uses his utterances (whether in a rally or in a tweet) to direct followers’ attention to a different topic or to perform comparative self-​ aggrandizement or to test the waters for a new or continued policy direction, he affirms that he is not particularly interested in the veracity of the claims, only in getting his message communicated in that moment. Insofar as we focus exclusively on the truth of the claims themselves, we may well miss the intentions contained in, for example, the repetitions of his messages or the selection of those he targets for abuse or criticism. So, Trump presents multiple opportunities for educators both to correct the factual errors of Trump’s utterances and to teach about the production of knowledge. Of course, when teachers teach history, very rarely are students given the opportunity to lay hands on the “evidence” to support the historical facts they are given.16 Instead, they are provided enough facts to support the logic of the narrative found in the curriculum. Most of the curricula given to students, at every level, relies on some version of true belief of the work or utterances of others because neither the teachers nor the students have the time or tools to question that work through their own empirical labors.17 For example, the starting premise of this chapter is based on the many fact-​checkers employed by major journalistic companies such as the Washington Post Company. Allowing for error, I  nevertheless rely on the counter-​claims offered by Glenn Kessler (“The Fact Checker,” Washington Post) or by Dale, who have fulltime employment judging Trump’s claims on factual, not moral, grounds.18 They leave that work to their colleagues on the Opinion Page, who are far less hesitant to ascribe motives to Trump and call out what they adjudge to be moral failings.19 In Trumpian lexicon, statements are tools to be used by the speaker to accomplish his/​her ends. In Trump’s case, those ends are often self-​aggrandizement, blame shifting, misdirection, and testing the waters. Of course, self-​aggrandizement is a time-​honored sales strategy. Many US raised individuals will recall television ads in which Crazy Eddie or some local variant would promise the “biggest, best” deals on electronics (cars, mattresses, personal injury legal representation). Politicians will oversell their legislative accomplishments in order to better their chances of reelection. Trump’s pre-​ presidential reputation as a deal maker certainly had the whiff of PT Barnum

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about it, but for three decades the Trump name was on hotels and towers, and for more than ten years viewers far beyond Manhattan saw him as the boss in the penthouse who got things done and didn’t stand for whiners and losers on a manicured (but enjoyable) “reality” television show. The stakes when he claimed to have larger crowds at his inauguration than Obama (demonstrably false) seemed low—​although this character trait was at least puzzling to many. By the time eighteen months later when he claimed to have gotten a denuclearization promise from the North Korean strongman Kim Jong-​Un, almost no one but his most fervent supporters believed it, but he held fast to the claim for months. So, these kinds of statements are in support of the image he actually has of himself that he is the consummate deal maker, and they require that the readers/​auditors bracket what they know about his failures and his alternative facts. Blame shifting is a language game at which Trump is a master. His entire policy stance for his presidency has been to blame everything wrong on President Obama in order to claim that his policies will fix US ills. As multiple individuals have left his administration due to ethics or legal violations, he has usually blamed witch-​ hunts or conspiracies for their downfalls—​as long as they remain loyal to Trump. If, as is the case with Cohen, they become disloyal, he downplays their connection to him and slams their competency. He dis-​remembers his claims to hire only the “best” people when the weight of the corruption charges or criminal indictments pulls down those people he hired or recruited to run his campaign or this country. Probably the most lasting example of this rhetorical strategy is that at every step of the Russia/​election tampering investigation, Trump has not hesitated to continue his pre-​election chants of “But her emails” or “Lock her up” about Hillary Clinton—​about whom it is increasingly more ridiculous to charge with Russian collusion. Mueller has evidence and witness accounts of which campaign Russian agents were seeking to help in the 2016 election, and it does not appear to be Hillary Clinton’s at this time.20 That Trump continues those chants after his shameful performance with Putin in Helsinki in the summer of 2018 is a clear indication that truth is not high on his intentions list. Who’s the criminal? Must be HRC; Lock her up, not Flynn or Manafort. The most powerful man in the Free World tweets his outrage every morning and every night, reportedly for the most part in response to Fox News reportage. Anti-​Trump followers of @realDonaldTrump retweet and express their own outrage, in large part over his untruths. As the President continues to focus on Hillary’s emails, the immigration status of an accused murderer, Omarosa, and on whether he should intervene in South Africa’s policy toward farm ownership and labor, the headlines in local and national news media follow the circus instead of highlighting continuing human rights crises. The true death toll following last year’s hurricanes in Puerto Rico, the continuing contamination of water in Flint, Michigan, the government’s non-​compliance with family reunification judicial orders, the rapid pace with which the Senate Republicans are packing the Federal judiciary: these are ongoing national concerns. Given the return of hurricane season, the stripping

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of regulations at the Environmental  Protection  Agency, the ongoing inaction on a rational immigration/​refugee policy, and the upcoming fight over Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, these matters should not be on page whatever, behind whether Omarosa has heard a tape of Trump using the “N-​word.”

Should We Care? When I was about four years old, I went into a store with my father.When we got home, I had “somehow” acquired a Tootsie Roll. When my father asked where it came from, I think I said something like, “I found it,” which wasn’t a strict lie, but omitted what came after finding it (“and I took it”). My father had me stick out my little hands and, for the first and last time, gave them each a light smack. We went back to the store to return the candy. Subsequent conversation (lecturing?) revealed that the rationale for the patty-​smacks was not the theft per se, but the lying. For him that was the formative moral error because it damaged the possibility of trust from the parent–​child relationship, and that trust was for him foundational to human thriving. It certainly became formative to my understanding of my filial duty to my parents; I did not want to see that particular look of disappointment ever again on my father’s face. I certainly never forgot the incident (although I will certainly admit to a few sins of omission later in teenage years, my trust bank had a healthy balance). What kind of ethical relationship do we want between citizen and President (or any leader)? What do we do to hold the other accountable? We know that narrative omissions are par for the course in politics and any form of leadership. For reasons as varied as national security, business, or market considerations, or social conventions, we do not expect to be told everything about the way government (or businesses or legal wrangling or our parents or our teachers or our universities) do the daily business of making the sausage. But we as citizens do have thresholds, varied though they may be, of tolerance of being told one thing while another thing is happening (see Kirstjen Nielsen, Head of Homeland Security, denying that the White House had “a policy of family separation” at precisely the same time as the so-​called zero-​tolerance policy was separating even very young children from parents who were hopeful immigrants or refugees at the US border). When the citizenry is forced (by sheer volume) into accepting that many of the daily utterances from the Executive branch of government have a potentially distant relationship to facts or to the truth, what is the recourse available? For educators and educational theorists, this state of the world poses a challenge, but also an opportunity to connect students and other interlocutors to the idea of dynamic forms of critical thinking.The dynamism is focused on blending thought, judgment, and action. That faith and trust that I sought to cultivate with my parents is not dissimilar from the faith and trust we need to live in civil society. Sometimes that is faith that we citizens understand in common what laws mean and that if we disagree, we also

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understand how to adjudicate those differences.The Black Lives Matter movement is a powerful response to a lack of faith in that common knowledge. What is the role of policing? And what accountability is there when there is a dispute over the meaning of “protect and serve?”There have always been deadly consequences to the paradoxical over-​and-​under policing of Black bodies/​communities, but there is also a temporal and cultural distance between the public executions of Black people in festive lynching picnics, the televisual narratives of Bull Connor and his compatriots turning fire hoses and snarling dogs on adolescents, the state whitewashing of the execution of Fred Hampton—​and the visuals of military vehicles rolling in Ferguson and the long series of phone filmed executions of unarmed Black men, women, and children.These contemporary events were no shock to the consciousness of those who live/​d in Black communities, but the return to a stark visibility and ubiquity made clear to those outside that lived experience the depth of the rupture between knowledge and faith and its deadly consequences. In schools at all levels, one can usually find some kind of instructional standard with the aim of teaching students to “think critically.” I  once taught a course mostly to k-​8 teachers on “Teaching Critical Thinking.” We read theories and foundational texts21 as well as essays by children from a critical thinking contest, but the most startling moment in the class was when I asked them to step mentally away from the act of writing as the key demonstration of critical thinking. I  asked them to envision what the noise level and sense of order would be in their classrooms if they were entirely successful in creating twenty-​eight critically thinking fifth graders. For those who connected thinking to the ability to act, a deep shudder went through the classroom. We began to discuss the extent to which fulfilling our goals as teachers relied on our students being willing to give over a large part of their “criticality” to our expertise and knowledge. We wanted our students to be able to construct beautiful, careful, and rational arguments, but we did not want those arguments to disrupt the institutions we loved. In that incomplete vision of what it means to encourage critical thinking,22 we were not thinking about how learning debate set the stage for the Parkland survivors to move beyond grief and speeches to rallying in Tallahassee to change gun laws or committing to a young voter registration caravan across the country. In this version of critical thinking, these students—​faced with the tragic consequences of passively accepting the schism between what they had been taught (that adults and society were set up to protect them) and what they experienced—​have sought to restore faith in what they know and have been taught by becoming agents. UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access conducted a study in the spring of 2017 to assess teacher perception of changes in their school’s climate post-​ 2016 election. Fifteen hundred and thirty-​five teachers responded to their survey, with more than half of them providing longer answers to an optional open-​ended question. The researchers subsequently interviewed thirty-​five social studies and English teachers across diverse geographic and demographic sites. They reported six areas of effects.23 The one that relates most strongly to this chapter is “Effects of

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National Politics on Student Polarization, Incivility, and Use of Unreliable Sources.” Teachers in predominately white schools were almost twice as likely to report more polarized and contentious relations between student groups than teachers from schools with predominately students of color. In similar percentages respectively, they reported that class discussions became more contentious and disrespectful. Importantly, 41% of teachers reported that, compared to the year before, more students were introducing unfounded claims (often from Twitter or Facebook) as evidence of facts. In this finding, there was no difference related to the racial composition of the school. Teachers, for example, found that students were more likely to “accept false and misleading ‘news’ stories as fact and refute or ignore verifiable news stories that are not in line with their existing political ideology.”24

Conclusion: Truth or Consequences Some analysts of the Trump era have identified the Bannon conception of the Deep State as motivating orders and actions from this administration that undermine the reasonable reliance on the institutions of the government by the governed.25 Belief in the ideals of equality and justice that appear in the Declaration of Independence26 and confidence in American progress (as well as acceptance of the economic promise of capitalism embedded in the American Dream) persist in the face of racial, gender, economic inequality and injustice over the country’s entire history. The faith in those ideals has spread to the structures and institutions that carry those ideals in their mottos and pledges—​despite histories of failure and worse. There have always been grounds for coherent and principled critiques of those structures and institutions—​from the continuation of slavery in the Constitution to Plessy,27 from the Chinese Exclusion Act28 to Executive Orders 906629 and 13780.30 Nevertheless, despite those failures (and all the resultant generational consequences), ongoing and powerful movements, for the most part, proposed changes in law that, whether revisionary or revolutionary in context, relied on the vital role of the rule of law (itself). The concerns that have been expressed about the consequences of some of Trump’s assertions, for example, about “fake news” and the media being the enemy of the people or his references to Congress as people responsible to him rather than to “the People,” have been in part about truth and in large part about “keeping the faith.”When Trump speaks (or tweets), he often seems to be speaking in code to his base rather than participating in the language game that Americans have recognized as “Presidential Speech.” This speech presumes purposes that may lead to obfuscation or more/​less affirmative “truthiness.” There are often dire consequences to the faith in the truth-​telling obligations of the President, for example, the declarations of officials in the (G.W.) Bush White House that were erroneous, as well as deceptive, that led to the ongoing US military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. Misleading citizens may also take the form of unfulfilled promises: President Obama promised to close the detention centers at

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Guantanamo Bay, and he did not. Obama’s faith in the government and the power of democratic institutions led him to suggest to his supporters that through voting any damage done by his successor could be undone. (Voting is necessary for those who desire change, but it remains unclear whether it will be sufficient given the ongoing depredations of the Voting Rights Act at both state and federal levels.) Nevertheless, even critics of this species of untruthfulness do not generally suggest that either Bush II or Obama could not distinguish truth from falsehood or that they were deceptive as a central feature of their personalities. The consequences of a leader who models on a daily basis a disregard for the importance of truth in the social and political compact between government and the governed directs the focus away from a concern over accuracy or veracity of any statement.The faith and reliance on those statements is swept away in a torrent of performance art. We are led to be concerned about what Kanye West’s Make America Great Again hat wearing during a White House meeting means about his mental health rather than what is happening to the mental/​physical health of the children separated from parents/​guardians who are still being detained in tent cities or are being adopted with minimal record-​keeping. We get a lifetime appointment of a Supreme Court justice whose history of legal opinions were withheld from Congress (and the people) and whose performance in the hearings was Trumpian in its defensiveness, blame shifting, and shot through with lies small and large. This ended with actual grownup Senators saying things like “I believe something happened to Blasey Ford, but I do not believe that it was Kavanaugh,” which ends in a peculiar blend of theatre of the absurd and theatre of cruelty. We become insensitive to the value of truth and the role it plays in setting the stakes for all kinds of human relationships and reliances—​whether between parent and child, teacher and student, or researchers and history/​science. Critical thinking, even at its most academic, relies on some pertinent relationship between thinking, logic, and rational argumentation. Critical thinking as a first step to ethical action and social living relies on the ability to have reasonable faith not only in the physical world, but in the community and communicative underpinnings of a social reality that is subject to our capacity to think in common, to disagree, to agree, and to act on short-​and long-​term consequences of our and others’ actions.

Notes 1 Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo, and Meg Kelly, “President Trump has made 3001 false or misleading claims this far,” Washington Post, May 1, 2018, at www.washingtonpost. com/​news/​fact-​checker/​wp/​2018/​05/​01/​president-​trump-​has-​made-​3001-​false-​or-​ misleading-​claims-​so-​far/​?utm_​term=.d1d72a3e5a75 (accessed May 13, 2018). 2 www.cnbc.com/​2017/​07/​31/​white-​house-​says-​trump-​was-​probably-​joking-​when-​ he-​said-​police-​should-​be-​rough-​with-​suspects.html (accessed May 13, 2018). 3 www.cnbc.com/​2018/​02/​06/​trump-​treason-​remarks-​were-​tongue-​in-​cheek-​white-​ house.html (accessed May 13, 2018).

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4 www.nbcnews.com/​politics/​donald-​trump/​trump-​was-​only-​joking-​about-​japanese-​ bowling-​ball-​test-​cars-​n857111 (accessed May 13, 2018). 5 We do know some of Giuliani’s patchy past, but his television appearances and interviews since returning as counsel to the President in the spring of 2018 have been contradictory at best. 6 www.vox.com/​policy-​and-​politics/​2018/​4/​30/​17301436/​michelle-​wolf-​speech-​ transcript-​white-​house-​correspondents-​dinner-​sarah-​huckabee-​sanders (last accessed February 6, 2019), emphases added. 7 http://​time.com/​5170753/​white-​house-​correspondents-​dinner-​2018-​comedian/​ (accessed May 13, 2018). 8 Trump, for the second year, declined to attend the dinner. The tradition has been that after the comedian “roasts” the administration and the press, the President returns the favor. This year the President sent Sanders as his surrogate, and Wolf made clear at the beginning of her set that she would not waste her best “burns” on the absent Trump. Sanders, as Trump surrogate, was the object of the most pointed jokes, although she did not have the presidential prerogative to offer a rebuttal. 9 www.thestar.com/​news/​world/​2018/​05/​28/​call-​them-​lies-​why-​we-​sometimes-​ dont-​use-​ he-​l-​word-​when-​trump-​is-​wrong.html (accessed July 7, 2018). 10 From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: The Definition of Lying and Deception.The author of the entry begins with asserting that the most widely accepted definition of lying is the following: “A lie is a statement made by one who does not believe it with the intention that someone else shall be led to believe it” (citing A. Isenberg,“Deontology and the Ethics of Lying,” in Aesthetics and Theory of Criticism: Selected Essays of Arnold Isenberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), pp. 245–​264, at p. 248).The author does not state any evidence for this “most widely held” conclusion. Nevertheless, the entry posits A. Isenberg’s work as the starting place for all of the proffered elaborations, counters, and refutations from numerous philosophers and social theorists. https://​plato.stanford.edu/​ entries/​lying-​definition/​(last accessed February 8, 2019). 11 Daniel Dale, “Donald Trump makes 100 false claims for second consecutive week,” The Toronto Star, July 6, 2018, at www.thestar.com/​news/​world/​analysis/​2018/​07/​ 06/​donald-​trump-​makes-​100-​false-​claims-​for-​second-​consecutive-​week.html (last accessed 10 July, 2018). 12 Ibid. 13 Nancy LeTourneau, https://​washingtonmonthly.com/​2018/​07/​27/​trump-​doesnt-​want-​ us-​to-​know-​about-​his-​conversations-​with-​foreign-​leaders/​ (last accessed July 29, 2018). 14 http://​projects.thestar.com/​donald-​trump-​fact-​check/​ (last accessed July, 29, 2018). 15 From E.P. Brandon, Do Teachers Care about Truth? (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987), p. 64. 16 Brandon (1987). 17 At the present, the same platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc.) that feature news by “legitimate” outlets also give space to bots and purveyors of conspiracy theories. 18 However, after the plea deal of Michael Cohen, Kessler did call the sequence of statements made by Trump (and his designees) about the alleged payoffs of Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal lies and deliberate dishonesty. August 22, 2018. www. washingtonpost.com/​politics/​2018/​08/​23/​not-​just-​misleading-​not-​merely-​f alse-​ lie/​?noredirect=on&utm_​term=.3043d19e68d3&wpisrc=nl_​most&wpmm=1 (last accessed February 6, 2019). 19 See almost any of Charles Blow’s columns over the past two years in The New York Times. 20 See the Flynn Sentencing memo, Addendum to Government’s Memorandum in Aid of Sentencing, p. 3, Section I.B.i “Interactions between the Transition Team and

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Russia,” filed December 4, 2018. www.documentcloud.org/​documents/​5425878-​ Gov-​Uscourts-​Dcd-​191592-​46-​1-​2.html (last accessed February 6, 2019). 21 Edward M.  Glaser, An Experiment in the Development of Critical Thinking (New  York:  Teacher’s College, Columbia University, 1941). Glaser defines critical thinking as follows, “The ability to think critically, as conceived in this volume, involves three things:  (1) an attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one’s experiences, (2)  knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning, and (3) some skill in applying those methods. Critical thinking calls for a persistent effort to examine any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the evidence that supports it and the further conclusions to which it tends. It also generally requires ability to recognize problems, to find workable means for meeting those problems, to gather and marshal pertinent information, to recognize unstated assumptions and values, to comprehend and use language with accuracy, clarity, and discrimination, to interpret data, to appraise evidence and evaluate arguments, to recognize the existence (or non-​existence) of logical relationships between propositions, to draw warranted conclusions and generalizations, to put to test the conclusions and generalizations at which one arrives, to reconstruct one’s patterns of beliefs on the basis of wider experience, and to render accurate judgments about specific things and qualities in everyday life” (pp. 5–​6). 22 Richard Paul and Linda Elder, The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools (Tomales, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking Press, 2008). “Critical thinking is, in short, self-​directed, self-​disciplined, self-​monitored, and self-​corrective thinking. It presupposes assent to rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective communication and problem solving abilities and a commitment to overcome our native egocentrism and sociocentrism” (p. 4). 23 John Rogers, “Teaching and learning in the age of Trump: Increasing stress and hostility in America’s high schools,” UCLA IDEA, October 2017, v–​vi. 24 Ibid., p. 16. 25 See authors on the Trump era such as Matt Taibbi, Michael Wolf, Rick Wilson, and Bob Woodward. 26 Note the incorporation of those ideals and the specific language into documents such as Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States by the National Woman Suffrage Association, July 4, 1876, and “To Determine the Destiny of Our Black Community”:  The Black Panther Party’s 10-​ Point Platform and Program (October 1966). 27 Plessy v. Ferguson (US 1896) US Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. 28 The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress (1882) and signed by President Chester A.  Arthur, providing an absolute ten-​year moratorium on Chinese labor immigration. The exclusion was extended through various laws through 1920. 29 Executive Order 9066, issued by President Franklin Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, authorized the evacuation of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to relocation centers further inland.This included both “foreign-​born” and US-​born citizens of Japanese descent. 30 Executive Order 13780 is the third version of the so-​called “Muslim Ban” signed by President Donald J. Trump in March 2017 (and litigated in multiple federal courts), placing limits on travel to the US from certain countries, and barring entry for all refugees who do not possess either a visa or valid travel documents. The US Supreme Court upheld the President’s authority to issue this order in April 2018.

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14 TEACHING IN TIMES OF ANTI-​ACADEMIC PROVOCATION Cris Mayo

While teaching in times of anti-​intellectualism is nothing new, lately the sense of provocation feels, to many of us, intensified. Likely every generation can narrate its own experiences of conservatives claiming that new additions to the canon upset understandings of what knowledge should and can be. For what it’s worth, I remember when “political correctness” was still an in-​house movement-​related charge that one was not adequately challenging one’s bourgeois tendencies or was not yet fully getting the values of the patriarchy out of one’s head. But, to extend that particular example, for the last few decades conservatives have used “political correctness” to mean thinking and acting in ways that challenge what conservatives think knowledge and thought ought to be.The evident nostalgia for greatness gone by, when “we” didn’t need to think thought differently or consider subjugated knowledges, is reflected in the word “Again” at the end of a slogan that adorns hats and bumper stickers. This chapter seeks to place difficult pedagogy into temporalities that recognize the newness of hate and disengagement, that acknowledge the continuities of such exclusionary resistances, and that also recognize the continuities of generosities that continue, even if bumpily, to help us live and learn together. Conserving not only memories of struggles but memories of opposition and critical practices in education is key to continuing this pedagogical work. The new assertions of institutional and personal ignoring are part of trends, even if they now seem ever-​more exaggerated. Our commitment to dialogue and contextualization is also all the more necessary as new refusals to engage come from people whose arguments are the result of not knowing what universities have been, how they have struggled to expand access (including access to those who now seem to find them reprehensible dens of liberalism). Concentrating on pedagogy in times of anti-​academic sentiment—​from students and from colleagues and from those who occupy the

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“highest” offices in the US—​requires that we return explicitly to academic values of dialogue and critical inquiry and name those as academic virtues. Reminders about the long duration of our commitment to academic values and use of dialogic pedagogical approaches are among our best defenses against anti-​academic provocation. I  begin with a discussion of how to keep demonstrating that willingness to contextualize and teach, even when one’s ephemeral interlocutors are disinterested, skeptical, or simply might be long gone (just in case they are still there somewhere). I then turn to the complexities of generosity that enable us to work with allies but also sometimes pull us all up short when we realize our judgments about tactics or sense of temporal urgency differs. In each of these discussions, even as my own anger grows, I try to remind myself that I do not know the time or meaning of people’s resistance. Trolls may be at the start of resisting their own membership in queer communities, allies are themselves often closely connected with LGBTQ family members and trying to find ways to be helpful, and as teachers, we may need more patience about our impact than we have as activists. Balancing the stress of different temporalities is a challenge. The academic stakes of this return to fewer knowledges and the embrace of the ignorance that enables a narrow view of greatness presents a major challenge to those of us who do want to teach and learn. The desire to return to not knowing, to obscure what is known, to remove webpages devoted to federally funded scientific research or guidance on how to best educate students with disabilities, feels like an intensified refusal of knowledge, a refusal to know, more than just simple disagreement. The active removal of knowledge is not a simple return to ignorance and un-​knowing, it is a public gesture of refusal to recognize research, which is intent on silencing science, policy, and thinking. The practices that remove knowledge or ridicule knowledge increasingly provoke anti-​academic responses to teaching in higher education as well. These are all tactics intent on pushing us back in time. Still I also don’t want to go too far in suggesting these backward looking tactics are new. Having directed a gender and women’s studies program in the late 2000s, I  know all too well that any time we would propose a curricular change or a new course, our colleagues in the faculty senate would take the opportunity to propose doing away with our unit. One regularly sees comments in Inside Higher Education arguing that any department or program whose title ends in “studies” ought to be done away with, as if studying were not something that all disciplines, inter-​disciplines, and multi-​disciplines do. Surely, we all study as a profession and studying more, one would hope, would be better than studying less. Arguments cautioning about the end of critical inquiry, if inclusion is taken too far or if safety is emphasized over criticality, suggest that the academic world has become biased toward diversity. It takes, I think, a fair amount of willful unknowing to think that those who are different have already won the academic game and control curricula, pedagogy, and policy. Sometimes—​not always—​such arguments also verge into the typical comments in trade periodicals, bemoaning the inability

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of majority-​group candidates to get jobs and railing against the apparent requirement that one be x in order to teach x. These observations can only be made if one has never looked at demographic trends in higher education employment, tenure, and promotion, information that one assumes should be available at most universities. Even if one might not have access to institutional research, that information is simply apparent by walking across any campus. One has to do an awful lot of erasure of who is in administration (in higher education, in government, wherever) to come to these conclusions. And part of my concern here is that people associated with universities—​whether commenters in publications or disgruntled members of universities themselves—​know how to do research. Making claims without doing research runs counter to academic practices and we want to encourage our students, our colleagues, and our stakeholders to join us in thinking and researching. Behind that gesture of certainty that the world has changed and inclusion has taken over is not only an arrogant viewpoint that needs no evidence, there is also the longing and anger for the world where only other people had identities1 and those who were dominant did not have to account for their political meaning of their exclusion of others.2 That longing for the lost cause of unearned privilege marks everything from chants that “you will not replace us” to attempts to save the “second place trophies” of a lost war. The unmarked subject does not enjoy being marked or being reminded that it too is part of difference or having to face that there are still things to be learned about and changed for the better at universities (and elsewhere).To continue to learn and act in aid of such improvements involves initiative, research, and critical thinking. In other words, nothing that ought to be beyond anyone’s abilities in higher education—​the same activities are regularly practiced in every discipline in the midst of teaching and learning. One would hope that these academic skills would be helpful in encouraging members of university to continue to think and act in ways that recognize subjugated knowledges, fix exclusions, and redress grievances, all the while also expanding the practices of thinking into better futurities. One way to address the (re)new(ed) context of anti-​academic intolerance is to remind people why they are committed to learning and how the practices related to teaching in the midst of difference and diversity are practices they already do. Part of our task in anti-​academic times is to remind people that teaching about tolerance, inclusion, equity, and difference is complicated but also always part of the traditions of higher education. Reconnecting to an academic mission related to diverse and different students means, too, thinking of institutional responsibilities as expanding, derived from learning and thinking in the best Arendtian sense of developing a thoughtful, enlarged mentality and thinking from the perspective of others.3 This is not to suggest that such tactics for thinking and learning are easy. As Natasha Levinson4 points out, teaching across and through differences means engaging different temporalities. Students experience their subjectivities as connected to different times of oppression: for some, classroom engagements are

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part of the long duration of subjugation, for others, a sense of responsibility for injustice is new. Not only are urgencies of a different temporal quality, knowledges, too, are shaped by histories of different scales. Cynthia Dillard5 draws the temporalities of Black lives together, connecting violences, resistances, thinking, and learning to a project that pushes against the weight of histories into a task of “learning to read productively,”6 to assert and insist on presence against violence.

Dialogue and Context The LGBTQ+ Center at my university officially opened in fall 2016 and almost immediately ran into both welcome on campus and an indication that not everyone was supportive of its existence. We find ourselves very supported, a point I will return to later, and also in an ambivalent position because we recognize how circumscribed that support may be. We are well aware that we are located in a state that does not include sexual orientation or gender identity in its nondiscrimination law. Because the social, political, and pedagogical context of the LGBTQ+ Center is complex, it was all the more important that our practices be clearly and firmly situated in the mission of land grant institutions and academic practices. In a state with significant poverty and at an institution committed to ensuring access, persistence, and graduation, focusing on academics in relation to advocacy simply made sense, even before what has been characterized as a downward national shift in climate with respect to support for LGBTQ people. In the first few weeks of operation, we received phone messages and mail from people unhappy about our center. They didn’t always leave very long messages, usually just said we should go away. But one phone message, received at 2:30 a.m. from a blocked number, featured a man yelling that we only care about being victims, we only cared about our safety but not about engaging with different opinions. He ended his middle of the night message claiming that we were unwilling to dialogue with those who opposed us. The caller did not leave a call back number. We posted a message on our Facebook page welcoming a further conversation, on the off chance that the person who left the message was interested in dialogue, but we received no response. We continued to receive one-​ sided telephone or graffitied claims that we were not interested in dialogue or only cared about ourselves. Each time, we took to our webpage in response and offered to talk but none of our invitations were ever taken up. Each time someone stole a sign, left a message, sent a letter, or pushed a friend through the center door yelling, “now you’re gay,” we made it clear that such things had happened and that if people wanted support or conversation, we were there for that. We were instructed by a few different offices at the university to report every incident and we dutifully did so. Each time we were also reminded that no one was physically injured and so there wasn’t really anything to report.We kept track of how many minor incidents we reported and were told our numbers were off because the offices to whom we were reporting were not actually keeping track

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of everything; they were sorting, distinguishing, and discarding reports. That’s fine, of course, we realized everything was not major but we also realized that the constant irritations were wearing. After two different rounds of floor signage was stolen (eight in all), the office in charge of designing such things stopped replacing them. A  group somewhere was charged with longer conversations about how to have signs indicating where the center was that didn’t violate the university rule about not having signs on buildings. They came up with some ideas but all of them ran contrary to the stylistic decision to not let centers and offices clutter the landscape with signs (although we had them to start with until they were stolen, of course).We started chalking our name on the sidewalk. Inevitable graffiti arguments started. The morning after the 2016 presidential election, I  came to work to find students gathered in the LGBTQ+ Center I direct sitting in the dark and very clearly unsettled. The students had already experienced hostility that morning when a young man wearing a name tag that read “Deplorable” came into the center saying, “You think I’m deplorable, who wants to join me now?” He then left abruptly. Again, there was no interest in any actual conversation. His comfort at coming in, taunting, and leaving without dialogue seemed to typify what we had been and would continue to be dealing with. But if our critics were lacking in confidence to do anything besides bluster and retreat, our students had major concerns about what might be significant social changes ahead. They would have been glad to share this concern about progress soon-​to-​be-​stalled with the self-​named Deplorable had he had any intention of staying around to find out. One young lesbian was concerned that the new administration would follow through on its pledge to end same-​sex marriage, just as she and her fiancée were planning their wedding. Another student was concerned that the clear racism of the Republican campaign was going to make her ability to move across campus even more challenging than it already was. Another student talked about his hopes of joining the military and wondered what the outcome would be (the transgender “ban” eventually put that out of his plans. Although the ban has since been lifted even recruiting personnel are not encouraging transpeople to pursue a long-​term career in the military, uncertain what the outcome will be.) The students took advantage of the space offered to share their own diverse concerns with one another and to strategize, as well, for ways to weather the coming difficulties. They were capable of taking up a dialogue across differences about the intersecting and complex identities served by the center. Part of what we realized, as a result of phone calls, graffiti, and the like, is that LGBTQ+ issues have stimulated interest, but not learning. Targeting is a form of noticing and we have to assume that there is something behind the targeting that might be more than just hostility, but clearly no one comes to the center to be a target. So, part of educating, however much thoughtful people may deride the idea of safety, has to be the insistence on respectful terms of engagement. Our concern is that too many kinds of “notice” we have gotten do actually verge

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on harassment. The one-​sided phone calls were not the only non-​responsive interactions we’ve experienced. The next round of non-​dialogic non-​interaction featured a series of white young men, one at a time, at least a day apart, coming into the center, walking the perimeter of the large lounge, touching counters and displays as they went around, touching brochures but not reading them, and then leaving. Each time I would go out and talk to the single silent visitor and each time he would not respond or look at me, just walk silently around touching things but not engaging. Beyond saying a few supportive things (come back and visit us when you feel like talking) or offering cookies, these encounters generated nothing pedagogically productive. But it is possible even those whose contact with us is odd or unpleasant (as long as, of course, they do not actively harass individuals) were in some way or other finding out what the center was for, trying it out for some future use. I assumed this was a fraternity hazing ritual or some other such activity but at the same time wanted to make sure that if those young men had chosen our location because, just maybe, LGBTQ issues were somehow important to them, they could see that their presence was welcome. For those of us who work on issues that are not immediately visible, it is hard to know if one is being trolled in the negative sense or cruised in a circumspect manner that might later help the person come out or help them share resources with an LGBTQ friend. Given the context of non-​response and disinterest, our educational programs have become more deeply contextualized in way much more justification than I might have thought necessary even a few years ago. Institutional responses to hosting trainings, too, have also become more openly defensive. Since moving to West Virginia, I’ve also done trainings where campus security people were present to discourage threatened disruptions received before the event. The greater attention to contextualization of LGBTQ issues in higher education entails reminding participants that universities, especially land grant universities, have long had a responsibility to encourage access and learning. Our lessons and presentations on LGBTQ issues stress the intersections among diversities that have created the contemporary university. From international students who bring the world to rural areas and bring needed financial support to the racial segregation encouraged by our university’s decision to found an historically Black college rather than allow Black students to enroll in the late 19th century, to the changes that women’s entrance into state education allowed, to the Middle Eastern students interested at first in our energy studies programs, our university’s diversities and their effect are evident in our growth, our range of offerings, and the way the institution educates students to learn from one another, as well as learn their subject matter. West Virginia University increasingly attracts students of color through the Common Application but it is an institution organized in a state that opted for segregated higher education and in a state whose population is 96.5% white. Our presentations stress the necessity of understanding higher education itself as

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an endeavor motivated by thinking about diversity and aimed at developing the talents of diverse constituents. But if people in the audience or class are already also suspicious about why a state-​supported institution would recruit international students or seek students from under-​represented groups who come from other states, such discussions become the occasion for multiple forms of bias to be expressed. The insistence on intersectionality, not surprising in a time of heightened explicit racism, does not so much situate our discussion of LGBTQ issues in broader accepted diversity-​related discussions as it raises, sometimes, for students, that their many different forms of prejudice are interconnected. But connecting such discussions with programs that have helped all students get to university or that also reflect the perennial challenges that white lower-​income students have in higher education seems to invite all groups into the conversation. Our emphasis on the policy bases for encouraging diverse contexts for learning helps provide all students with a way to advocate for one another and hopefully, too, short circuit the hostility of those who would provoke us into silence. At one presentation, organizers shared that despite some threat requiring the presence of security officers, all the evaluations for the event were positive. One organizer included a screenshot of an evaluation showing that an audience member had filled out their form with “Don’t know what this has to do w/​university” before the presentation started and later crossed it out and wrote in “Interesting!” as well as indicating interest in further presentations on diversity. Correspondence with one student who was clear about his opposition to the event led to a longer conversation about his frustrations as a rural white man who felt he shouldn’t have to compete with diverse people who received more government help than he did but eventually led to at least some sense of common cause with other people who also experienced discrimination. I wouldn’t characterize this as a success but at least our correspondence was cordial, if challenging, and our personal meeting was civil (if also supervised by three security officers much more concerned about the tenor of some of the pre-​talk communication). If aspects of my pedagogical approach have become more defensive, another change is more intent on jolting people into thinking about their responsibilities. I don’t find the discourse of privilege useful, especially not in a state where even the white population’s rate of infant mortality is so high and the average age of death is so young. Privilege seems an ineffective way to talk about how whiteness functions, except to echo Du Bois’s warning that it is a psychological wage. What is more necessary, I think, is to point out in simple terms that racism is virulently present, and has been since before the founding of the state, and that other biases, too, are expressed too comfortably in public and through policy. Our conversations are part of the history of how people have come to live in the state, go to university, and why so many also need to leave the state. These are not easy histories to face and not easy futures either, but, in some sense, there is no novelty to the struggles any of us are facing.

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Continuities and Limits of Allyship Our trainings and educational programs are meant to help generate a more supportive context for further inquiry and part of this, like any teaching endeavor, means recognizing that people will continue to learn and find ways to connect with one another. It also means recognizing that many people already have made such gestures, even if they are sometimes incomplete, or that many people are trying to find a way into conversations and knowledges that they know they have been kept from. When we were brand new on campus, we wanted to signal our start in a friendly cheerful way, despite the fact that our newness was arguably the result of years of institutional disinterest stretching back at least three decades and thus three decades of LGBTQ community disappointment. But our genesis is also the result of generosities of continued community support, dedicated faculty and staff activism, and very supportive and enthusiastic administrators. So, our center is always wedged between people at all levels of the university who care deeply about diversity, inclusion, representation, and even political/​educational challenge and mild harassers including people who occasionally ask how much state money goes into supporting something they don’t see as part of higher education. FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests initially followed each time the center helped organize an event, demanding to know how much state money was used. Emails requesting specific budgetary information about which state funds, if any, support center activities have died down (and we forward them on to higher authorities since we do not have access to that information). The center’s first project demonstrated the generosities that attended our founding and did a sort of one-​way opening of conversation about our start on campus. To this end, we distributed buttons with a rainbow background and a cheery “Hi” to anyone who wanted them.We thought to keep the message simple, just to signal greeting and invite greeting in return. I took this idea from the Office of Minority Student Affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-​Champaign where the orientation for students of color (about 5% of the students in a state where people of color represent closer to 20% of the state population) encourages them to say hi to every person of color they see. I found out about this while walking with a first-​year student across campus one day in my first year there, dozens of years ago. He was a gregarious fellow but it seemed that he knew everyone so I asked him how he got to know everyone so quickly. He said, no, he didn’t know the people he was greeting, the idea is that you feel more support if you keep talking to one another, whether or not you know anything at all about the other Black person. Such generosities may be different when button wearers have no knowledge of whether or not the person they are tacitly saying hi to is an LGBTQ, ally, queer heterosexual, or any other variation. Many of the WVU staff who came to the center looking for buttons in our early days were just collecting buttons—​we are a somewhat button-​mad campus and so the plan to have our

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grand opening heralded by buttons turned out to respond to a local craze anyway, although we didn’t know it at the time. Despite being a center that was decades in the making, most people showed signs of welcome, whether or not it was specific to LGBTQ issues or just a general sort of collegiality. So, we had some conversation about whether a generalized greeting was the best opening, as it covered over complications in the years before the founding and was not especially packed with educational information. Still, my conversations with the all-​female parade of staff coming down to the center also revealed that they have gay cousins, trans kids, and every other variety of connection to queer community not entirely signaled by the letters of the acronym. Unlike our other approach to education, the Safe Zone program (neither safe nor a zone), wearing a button doesn’t require anything other than wanting to wear the button and being willing to circulate the possibility that one has a connection to the LGBTQ+ community. That in itself, in a small town that prides itself on being a liberal bubble but is only a semi-​liberal bubble, I took to signal a communal act of generosity, born out of connections people may not usually share. A few staff members did point out that they were tentatively taking a button, not wanting to out a trans or gay child. The approach to pedagogical generosity then is a two-​way street:  our allies are engaged in the same generosities that we’re trying to do ourselves, trying to situate themselves in the correct time of understanding and outness. Our state had recently had a very public debate over the restoration of freedom of religion and narrowly missed passing a law that would have given people more grounds to object to and discriminate against LGBTQ people in employment, public accommodations, and housing—​we do not have any state-​level projects for sexual orientation and gender identity but as of now, 11 of our 12 largest cities do have municipal nondiscrimination ordinances with various levels of enforcement provisions. To counter the so-​called Religious Freedom Restoration Act, rainbow colored “All Kinds Welcome Here” stickers went up on businesses around the state eager to encourage LGBTQ+ and allies to feel welcome, to see that exclusion was not going to be the future of the state. This campaign, like our button distribution (although we did not know it, being ignorant newcomers), also created a sense that this was and will continue to be a supportive community.

Temporal Gaps in Allyship In many ways, ours is not a supportive community and like the discussions of dissatisfaction with allies one can read on Facebook blogs and anywhere else, the kinds of signals of generosity do not always play out in everyday advocacy or even commonsense. One example: our Faculty Senate was actually working on “chosen name” policy before the center started and I got involved in those conversations before I started working here. Everyone was keen to do all they could institutionally to ensure that trans and gender nonconforming people felt welcome and supported—​everything

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from chosen name to gender inclusive-​bathrooms. But making policy does not mean that policy will be enacted, much as “teaching” does not guarantee “learning.” The chosen name policy ran into significant pushback and allies did not know what to do. But assuming that they had it under control, they did not involve us until we started hearing from trans students that the promised chosen name 1) was delayed, unfortunately after announcements had been made assuring trans students it was possible, and 2) did not include ID cards. Our allies have been in these conversations and variously describe the situation as one where the IT department came up with “dozens of objections” to including ID cards in chosen name OR “no one thought of ID cards.” Our allies, in other words, were trying to take care of the situation themselves because they were committed to the project. Allies had initiated the chosen name process and had encouraged it along its many different steps. But like any large organization with complex procedures, delays mounted and complications started to generate pushback. It may be that in not bothering us for justifications that might have pushed things along, the process became delayed. Myself, I would have happily sent reminders that we have a nondiscrimination policy that one department cannot decide to abrogate, and so on. So, however much I sincerely do appreciate the efforts of allies, there may be at least a minor problem with generosity if in trying to be politic or gradualist that generosity isn’t able to indicate the determination to push through obstacles.When an ally hits the limits of change that they can affect through kind and collegial gradualism, my thinking is that they need to turn to someone who knows there will be objections and knows how to oppose those objections. So, as someone interested in dialogic teaching, I  may have sympathy for someone who says, “we just needed to give the units a chance to voice their opinions.” But when I am also having to tell trans students that the promised name change process has not been initiated and I know they are frustrated, that appreciation of the extended time of dialogic process comes to an end. At some point, the different temporality of trans students’ needs to come back into the conversation and their urgencies need to be addressed. An ally can be determined to not keep one a stranger and still manage to slide back into ally-​centric ways of thinking that may forget the urgencies of those for whom or with whom they are working. Those of us who have allies have in some sense made this problem ourselves with what we may think to be a potent double bind that we put people with privilege in—​we tell them “nothing for us without us,” we tell them “stop coming to us for answers, do research,” we tell them “you cannot speak for us.” But in many ways, we do need allies to understand where they are likely to fall short, where they need more information, and where they need to be clearer about the different temporal pressures faced by those for whom they are working. At some point, we need to stop and evaluate whether the generosities we signal and appreciate cover over the difficulties that still remain when our differences put us in different time frames for change. We are not perpetual strangers here on campus, we are a part of the broader conversation and part of decision-​making, but there are moments of disconnect, what might be a corollary to Joyce E. King’s

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classic work on dysconscious racism or the limited understandings of equity that, in her example, public school teachers bring to discussions of antiracist teaching.7 She argues that white teachers need to develop expanded imaginations and need as well to understand how their whiteness has developed and what it does. Her work aims at overcoming the distortions that structure white knowing and acting and are useful for both reminding all of us that whiteness structures our institution. But her work also reminds us how practices and thought are structured through multiple forms of dominance. Levinson8 argues that those differences in time and histories need to become the focus of our teaching and they could just as well become the focus of how we develop educational policy. Dillard,9 in the context of thinking about Black women in particular but with broader implications as well, insists that histories and resistances be motivated by love, respect, and worthiness. If we are to encourage generosities from allies, the educational context needs to come back into the picture more strongly, precisely to help people recognize the necessity of action in this time and place. In the attempt to be inclusive at an institutional level, the larger reasons for engaging in welcoming, and transformative acts and policies too easily may get forgotten when bureaucratic difficulties impede progress. Ideals get sacrificed to such things as when “[our software] populates the name field with legal name” and other such processes. Our software can do whatever someone tells it to do and either adding a field for a chosen name or switching how the field is populated are all things that other universities have managed to do. Logistical problems are not only unimaginative in the realm of equity, they claim an impediment that need not remain one for long, if only those in the institution would think more about the meaning of their actions. To take another example, chosen name policies at some institutions include the provision that one can only change one’s name once. This is utterly unimaginative about the complicated and thoughtful processes of gender identification. For some, yes, their gender may be clear to them and a single transition may undo the pain of having been misattributed at birth. For others, though, this is a process of re-​recognition that unfolds in their time and in their terms. I have heard that student services professionals are concerned that students will choose comic alternatives to their real name in order to create hilarity at graduation. My guess would be that such antics are uncommon and that probably it wouldn’t be hard to prohibit invective or profanity as a seasonal change to one’s preferred name. But I’ve also heard that changing students’ names is bothersome and whether the object is the probably-​not-​unreasonable concern with student whimsy around graduation time or whether is it inconvenience, such objections are not sufficient justification for continuing transgender students’ experience of obstacles to their recognition and learning. To swerve back to the growing context of anti-​intellectualism that we are experiencing under an authoritarian leadership obsessed with fiction over fact, falsehood over truth, I am also concerned when another administrator suggests that our students need grit to face these exclusions. Possibly we do need to

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continue the LGBTQ community traditions of developing oppositional strategies and navigational capital. However, we are living in a hostile context.We need allies who can think with us and be encouraged to act on the basis of that thinking. But despite some challenges, there are also, to continue moving back and forth between the possibilities created by allies and the moments where things fall apart/​slow down, very hopeful signs, signs that have been there for a long time. Renewed and continued attention to diverse forms of civilities and advocacy across difference has led to very good outcomes. Without allies we would not have a strong nondiscrimination ordinance in Morgantown, passed in the fall of 2017, that includes gender identity and sexual orientation. Allies were very generous in crediting the LGBTQ Center with helping to get that passed. Honestly, it was literally nothing of the sort—​the hard work had been done by progressives who got a progressive slate elected to city council and that group was highly responsive to progressive community members who had been working on this policy for years. They knew what to do. We hope they know, too, that without state-​level protections what these policies teach us is that we have limited hope for movement and flourishing. Our moments of congratulation are not the end point, they are the start of more difficult struggles. This is essentially why we start Safe Zone trainings saying this is neither safe nor a zone, we don’t intend people to come in thinking they’ve got it all figured out but want them instead to come in wondering and to leave watching for what comes next, both in terms of subjectivity-​creation in queer communities and restrictions that may surprisingly emerge in the midst of institutional habit or legislative impulse. We live in times that require we all think together more, even if our urgencies may not always match.

Notes 1 Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997). 2 Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). 3 Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind (New York: Harcourt, 1978). 4 Natasha Levinson (1997), “Teaching in the midst of belatedness: The paradox of natality in Hannah Arendt’s educational thought,” Educational Theory 47(4): 435–​451. 5 Cynthia Dillard (2016), “We are still here: Declaration of love and sovereignty in Black life under siege,” Educational Studies 52(3): 201–​215. 6 Ibid., p. 203. 7 Joyce E. King (1991), “Dysconscious racism: Ideology, identity, and the miseducation of teachers,” Journal of Negro Education 60(2): 133–​146. 8 Natasha Levinson (1997), “Teaching in the midst of belatedness.” 9 Cynthia Dillard (2016), “We are still here.”

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Note: Page numbers in bold refer to tables. #BelieveWomen 38, 39 #MeToo 37–​39, 41, 71–​72, 73 9/​11  189 Abrams, S. 188 Adams, F. 148–​149, 159 Adams, G. 101n43 Afghanistan 68, 224 Ahmed, S. 33, 131–​132, 135n47 Alcoff, L.M. 30, 35–​36, 41 Allen, D.S. 130, 209 Allison, J. 51 Alt-​Right  28, 51 American Teacher (journal) 205 Anderson, E. 36 anger: and action 155–​156; and anonymity 70; and election of Trump 7; and epistemic injustice 33; and racism 24, 92 anonymity 15, 70 Anselm of Canterbury 122, 124 anti-​intellectualism 228–​239; and allyship 235–​239 antiracism 81, 82, 84, 88, 96–​98, 238 anti-​Semitism  187 Anzaldúa, G. 75 Apocalypse Now (film) 189 Apple, M.W. 129n15, 136 Appreciative Pause discussion protocol 26 apprenticeship 194, 200–​202, 208

Aquash, A.M. 76 Arendt, H. 48, 61–​62, 131, 186 Aronson, R. 64 Arthur, C.A. 227n28 al-​Assad,  B.  190 Assmann, J. 122 audit culture 46, 58, 60 authoritarianism: and education 109, 110, 111, 148; and election of Trump 6, 9, 45, 46, 48–​49, 54, 57, 238; global 58, 59 autopathy and racism 84 Awad, R. 77–​78 backlash 4–​5, 37–​38, 71, 74, 91 Bacon, F. 202 Bader Ginsburg, R. 37 Bailey, A. 31 Baker, E. 76, 157 Baldwin, J. 31, 118–​120, 124 banking model of education 106, 107 Bannon, S. 46, 224 Bargh, M. 128 Bauman, Z. 57n35, 57n36 believing game 18 Benhabib, S. 186–​187 Berger, P. 1, 2 Bevel, J. 159–​160 Bible, The 120–​124 Biko, S. 76 Bilge, S. 134, 137

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Index  241

Birmingham, Alabama, bombing 187 Black Lives Matter movement 223 black people: and #metoo movement 73–​74; and allyship 237; counter-​ frames of 84–​85, 96; counter-​gaze of 209–​210; crime and 168; Dewey and 204–​206; education and 93–​96, 104, 105–​106, 113, 117–​118, 194–​199, 233; employment and 74, 165; franchise 187–​188; housing and 117; Indigenous Course Requirement (ICR) 92; racial framing 85–​86; racial profiling 24; stereotypes 12, 14–​15, 196; theory and 187; Trump and 6, 7, 47, 116, 121, 185, 188; see also segregation; white supremacy blackness, criminalization of 12, 40, 197 Blasey-​Ford,  C.  225 Bob Jones University 121 Bodden, R. 168 Boggs, G.L. 129 Bohm, D. 24 Bohmian Dialogue discussion protocol 24–​26 Bolton, J. 46 Booker T. Washington Elementary School 104 books and education 68–​70 Boston Marathon bombings 75 Bourdieu, P. 47–​48, 165 Boushie, C. 89 Boyte, H. 147 Braden, A. 146 Brandon, E.P. 219n15 Brazil 166–​167; Workers Party  180 Brown, W. 112–​113, 114 Brown University 94–​95 Brown v. Board of Education (1954) 155, 195 Buchanan, P. 114 Buras, K.L. 129n15, 136 Burke, T. 37, 73, 79n19 Bush, G.W. 189, 224, 225 Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York, education system 117–​118 bussing 196 Cacho, L.M. 7 Canada 60, 81, 82, 85, 89–​93 capitalism: and the American Dream 224; and education 51, 112, 128–​129, 134; election of Trump and 11, 49, 60, 190; and labor 108–​109; and racism 106, 188 celebrity culture 50, 54

Chalk Talk discussion protocol 20–​22 Charlottesville,Virginia 8, 28, 47, 116, 184 children, gun deaths 63 Chinese Exclusion Act 227n28 “chosen name” policy 236–​238 Christian, B. 183 Christian socialism 108 Cillizza, C. 52–​53 CIP see Critical Indigenous Pedagogy Circle of Voices discussion protocol 18–​19 Circular Response discussion protocol 22–​24 citizenship 49, 130, 139–​140, 209 City University of New York 168 civic culture 48, 49, 54, 57 civic illiteracy 49, 59–​60, 62 civil rights 55, 118, 147, 187, 190 Civil Rights Movement 76, 84, 95, 157, 179 Clark, S. 157, 158n40 class: #metoo and 72; and education 104, 106, 108–​109, 112; and election of Trump 7; and labor rights 151–​152 class size 71 Clinton, B. 112 Clinton, H. 187, 221 close listening 159–​160 closing circles 79n14 Coates, T.-​N. 31, 207 code switching 106 codifications (Freire) 166 Coetzee, J.M. 57 Cohen, M. 221 collective action 36, 41 Collins, P. 134, 137 colonialism 75, 82, 104, 108, 128, 135 Color of Fear (documentary film) 24 commercialization 55, 112 common school movement 113 Congo 68 conspiracy theories 52–​53, 226n17 contributory injustice 34–​35 Conway, K. 54, 215 Cordova,V.F.  73 corporatization of education 51, 58, 128 counter-​gaze, black 209–​210 counterstory 14 countersystem perspective 85 CPC (Cumberland Presbyterian Church) 148 criminal justice system 197 Critical Indigenous Pedagogy (CIP) 135–​136 critical pedagogy 56, 60–​64, 105–​106 critical race theory 12, 14, 134

24

242 Index

critical whiteness studies 138–​139 cultural nationalism 62 cultural synthesis 107–​108 culture: black 194–​207; and education 45–​46, 54–​55, 166–​167, 190; popular 51, 52; white 207–​210 culture of fear 53, 70–​71 Cumberland Presbyterian Church see CPC Cumberland University 150, 151 Dadd, J.H. 132 Dale, D. 216–​217, 218, 219, 220 Daneshzadeh, A. 195 dangerous citizenship 139–​140 dangerous thinking 54–​55 Danville,Virginia  116 Darder, A. 140 deculturalization 195–​196 Delpit, L. 41–​42 democracy: education and 57, 59, 61–​63, 109–​114, 130–​140, 146–​161, 167, 194–​210;Trump and 8, 46, 47, 49, 53–​55, 184, 185, 187, 188–​189 demonization 8, 72, 75, 121, 165 Denzin, N.K. et al. (2008) 135 depoliticization 52–​53 deregulation 55, 108 Developmental Trauma Disorder 198–​199 Dewey, J. 110–​111, 166, 194, 200–​209 Dickens, C. 116 Dillard, C. 231, 238 discussion protocols 18–​26 diversity, experience of 97–​98 domestic terrorism 46–​47, 63–​64 domination: culture of 201–​203, 205, 207; and education 47–​48, 53, 106–​108, 111, 129, 130, 166–​167; Trump and 184, 185; see also white supremacy Donskis, L. 57n35 Dotson, K. 32–​34, 39, 41 Douglass, F. 188 Dr. Strangelove (film) 190 drugs, war on 190 Du Bois, W.E.B.  6, 234 Duke, D. 8 Dyson, M.E. 209 Eagleton, T.  59n40 Edgerton, J. 151–​152 education debt 134 education funding 51, 55, 93, 95, 168, 229, 235 Eisenhower, D.D. 218 Ekman, P. 174

Elbow, P. 18 Elder, L. 227n22 elite whites 83, 94 Emdin, C. 194–​195, 199–​201, 208 empathy 12, 84, 97 England 14 epistemic injustice 32–​41 ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) 74 Espada, M. 68 Europe: culture 186–​187, 202; immigration 176; nationalism 108 Evans, E. 133n37 Evans-​Winters,V. 195–​196 fake news 46, 47, 48, 52, 218, 224 fallacy of selective emphasis 202 false universality 104–​105 Falwell, J., Jr. 119–​121 Falwell, J., Sr. 120, 121 Fanon, F. 8 fascism 46, 51, 62, 108 Federal Housing Administration 117 females: community of 135; education 94, 106, 196–​197; and employment 175; and immigration 164, 165, 175–​177; race and identity 105, 238; right to choose 116; silencing of 38, 40; stereotypes 12, 32; white norms for 196 feminism: and #MeToo 71–​72; and the body 216; critical feminist theory 131–​133; and race 105–​106, 138, 186–​188 Feuerbach, L. 124 First Nation people 90 Fisher, M. 117 Florida 69, 75, 187–​188 FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) 235 Fortgang, T.  88 Foucault, M. 165 franchise 167, 187–​188, 204–​205, 225 freedom: Berger on 2; and democracy 157; Dewey on 204, 206; education and 61, 103–​105, 106–​109, 128, 129, 130–​131, 161, 196; Freire on 166–​167; under Trump 8, 52, 54–​55; white 73 Freedom of Information Act see FOIA freedom of religion 236 Freire, P. 2, 9, 40, 106–​109, 132, 134, 135, 137, 165, 166–​168, 175, 180, 183 Fricker, M. 32–​36, 43n41 Gallagher, C. 138 Garner, E. 168 gay rights 74; see also LGBTQ community

24

243

24

Index  243

Georgia 187–​188 Germany 7, 51, 206 Gidley, H. 214–​215 Gillum, A. 187 Giroux, H. 128, 130 Glaser, E.M. 227n21 global financial crisis (2008) 168 globalization 108–​109 Gonzalez, E. 69, 74, 75 Gopnik, A. 50n11, 190 Gottschild, B.D. 79n14 governance 58, 60, 62 Graham, F. 119–​120, 121 Grande, S. 136 Grass, G. 47–​48 Greece 73 Greene, M. 130–​131 Griffiths, D. W.  8 group interest 30 gun violence 63–​64, 69, 71, 74–​75 Guthrie, S. 122 Guthrie, W.  117 Guy, J. 197 Hampton, F. 76 Handmaid’s Tale,The (novel and television series) 216 Hani, C. 76 Harney, S. 114 Havel, V.  62 Hayes, C. 47 Hebrew Bible, The 121–​122 Hedges, C. 52 Heidegger, M. 186 Helsinki “Summit” 218, 221 hermeneutical injustice 32, 33–​34, 35, 43n41 Heschel, A.J. 2 Highlander Folk School, Tennessee 146–​148, 154–​159, 161 Hill, A. 72 Hill, R. 60n42 Hogg, D. 52 Honneth, A. 55 hooks, b. 103, 104–​106, 135, 137n63, 196 Horton, M. 146–​161; background and early life 148–​151; co-​founding Highlander Folk School 154–​156; Union Theological Seminar 153–​154; and workers’ rights 151–​152 housing 74, 117, 179 Huffington Post 142n36 Hughes, R. 50

ICR (Indigenous Course Requirement) 90–​93 identity politics 104 identity prejudice 32, 33, 39 ideologies, dominant 11–​12, 135 ignorance, systemic 28–​32, 34–​35, 39, 40–​42 illiteracy 47, 51–​54, 166, 167 immigration: educational discussion on 169, 174–​177; Trump on 28, 47, 48, 68, 109, 116, 117, 121, 164–​166, 177, 194–​195, 222 Indigenous Course Requirement see ICR indigenous people: Canadian universities 89–​93; Critical Indigenous Pedagogy (CIP) 135–​136; counter-​ frames 84; freedom and 73; Trump and 47; white racial framing 85 Innes, R. 89 Inside Higher Education (journal) 229 integration, racial 120–​121, 150–​151, 155, 158, 196 intersectionality 129, 132–​140, 234 Inuit people 90 Iraq 68 Iraq war 189, 224 Isenberg, A. 226n10 Jefferson, T. 85, 189 Jewish people 118, 123, 176, 186–​187 Johnson, F. 74, 79n21 Jones, A. 52 Jones, B., Sr. 120 Jones, D. 187 Jordan, J. 67, 75, 76 Judaism 121–​122 Kant, I. 202, 205 Kavanaugh, B. 225 Kelly, J. 191 Kerner Commission Report 179 Kessler, G. 220, 226n18 Khan-​Cullors,  P.  76 Khatun, S. 133n35, 135 Kincheloe, J.K. 136 King, J.E. 237–​238 King, M.L. Jr. 1, 8, 157, 179, 183 Kirsch, J. 121–​122 KKK (Ku Klux Klan) 8 Kolk, B. van der 198–​199 Kranish, M. 117 Ku Klux Klan see KKK

24

244 Index

labor 51, 63, 111, 146–​147, 151–​152, 156, 186; division of 105, 108–​109, 114, 201 Ladson-​Billings,  G.  134 Lakehead University 90 language as political 105–​106 Latino people 94 leadership, charismatic 156–​157 Lee, R.E., statue of 28 Leonardo, Z. 138–​139 Levinas, E. 118–​120, 124 Levinson, N. 230, 238 Lewis, J. 195 LGBTQ community 231–​236, 239 liberation pedagogies 183 Liberty University 120, 121 Lindeman, E.C.L. 22 literacy 50, 161, 166–​167 logos (word or reason) 4 Lonergan, B. 183, 184 Long, H. 157 Lorde, A. 7, 68, 76, 135, 183 Lubiano, W.  67 Lumberton, North Carolina, textile strike 156–​157 McClean, D. 203–​204 McCrory, P. 51 Mackey, J. 134, 138 MacKinnon, C.A. 37n53 McMaster, H.R. 191–​192 Mallory, T.  142n36 Mana Wahine  136 March for Our Lives 63 marriage, same-​sex 79n21, 116 Marx, Karl 68, 69 Mason, R. 33 Matias, C.E. 134, 138 Mattis, J. 191 media: education and 46, 55, 57, 62; racial representations 15, 46; Trump and 48, 53, 189, 214–​215, 221, 224 Medina, J. 31, 33, 34n36, 36 mega-​ignorance  31 mental health 71, 75 Métis Nation 90 Mexico, Trump and 11, 15, 28, 116, 165–​166, 219 Milano, A. 37 militarism 11, 49, 60, 63, 74, 75 military, the, Trump and 189–​192 Mills, C. 29–​30 Mills, C.W. 68, 141n5

Mohanty, C.T. 58n38, 132 Montgomery Bus Boycott 156, 158 Moore, R. 187 Moosa-​Mitha,  M.  132 “Moral Majority”, The  120 Morris, A. 147n5 Morris, M. 196–​197 Moten, F. 114 Mueller, J. 96 Mueller, R. 221 multilogicality 136 Muslims 11, 15, 116 myths 76–​77 “narration sickness” 165, 175 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) 204 National Bullying Prevention Center 86 National Football League see NFL National Front, France 46 nationalism: and education 81–​98; historical 114; and totalitarianism 206; Trump and 6, 28, 47–​48, 62, 63, 185, 188 Nelson, J. 96n42 neo-​fascism  7, 8 neoliberalism 49, 62, 112, 202; and education 45–​46, 60, 69, 112–​114, 128–​129 neo-​nationalism  108 neo-​Nazism  51 New Dorp High School, New York 168 New York City, Census 177–​179 New York City education system 117–​118 New York Times,The 5, 24, 38, 87, 98, 164, 178, 218 Newton, I. 202 NFL (National Football League) 8 Ngũgĩwa Thiong’o  106 Nichols, T.  50 Niebuhr, R. 153–​154 Nielsen, K. 222 Nixon, J. 61n43 Nixon, R. 114, 218 non-​volitional prejudice  36 nostalgia 29, 228 Obama, B. 50, 52, 184, 191–​192, 218, 221, 224–​225 Okun, T.  70 Olson, G. 56n31 Omarosa 221, 222 opioid addiction 77, 168

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Index  245

Orwell, G. 50 Otherness 2, 7 Pantaleo, D. 168 Parker, P. 74 Parkland massacre 63–​64 Parks, R. 158–​159 parrhesia (courageous speech) 4 patriarchy 11, 12, 74–​75, 128, 187 Patterson, F. 160–​161 Paul, R. 227n22 pay differences 74, 165, 175 PC see political correctness Penehira, M. et al. (2014) 127n2 Phillips, K. 114 Picciolini, C. 197–​198 Pilipchuk, M. 31–​32 Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) 227n27 plurality 131 poetry 68, 77–​78 Pohlhaus, G., Jr 34 police 12, 24, 47, 63, 76, 117, 168, 190–​191 political correctness (PC) 28–​29, 30, 228 political idolatry 8 Porter, R. 38 Poteat, P.V. 97n46 press, the see media Princeton University 88, 93 prison system 60, 63, 116, 197 privatization 55, 128, 129 Professor Watchlist  9 propaganda 48, 61, 188, 206 Purdy, J. 51n19 Putin,V. 189, 218–​219 racial alexithymia 84 racial bullying, “Trump Effect” 86 racial identity 14 racial profiling 24 racism, systemic 81–​98; acknowledgement of 13; backlash and 5; and Canadian universities 89–​93; counter-​frames of 84–​85; educational strategies and 93–​96; epistemic injustice and 34–​35; racial alexithymia 84; single-​factor and systemic causes of 83; teaching and 86; white male power and privilege 87–​88; and white racial frame 83–​86 Racism 101 courses 95–​96 rape 36, 37–​40, 41, 72, 164 Reagan, R. 114, 218 reality pedagogy 194, 199–​201

Red Pedagogy 136 refugees 68, 108, 109, 165, 222 relationality 137 Religious Freedom Restoration Act 236 Republican National Convention (2016) 160 resistance 127–​140; collective 61–​64, 127–​131; forms and methods 137–​139; and intersectionality 133–​140 Rooks, N.M. 129 Roosevelt, F. 227n29 Rosenblum, M. 46 Ross, W. 139–​140 Rousseau, J.-​J.  103 Rowan, C.T. 155 Rumi 71 Safe Zone program 236, 239 Salter, P.S. 96n42 Sanders, S.H. 214–​216 Sandoval, C. 137 Sarsour, L. 142n36 sarx (flesh) 4 Saturday Review (journal) 119 school shootings 74–​75 segregation: and Biblical myth 120–​124; in education 104, 111, 179, 196, 233; Horton and 149, 150–​151, 155, 158; and labor rights 146; and systemic racism 83 Sessions, J. 190 sexism 8, 28, 37, 72, 85, 105, 106, 187 sexual harassment 11, 33, 36–​41, 71–​75 Shakur, A. 197 Shakur, S. 197 silencing 29, 32–​33, 38, 40, 41, 229 Simmonds, N. 136 Simmons, R. 95 Simpson, A. 80n31 Sirrakos, G., Jr 200 slavery 83, 85, 93, 94, 183, 188, 206 Smith, H. 20 Smith, L.T. 136 SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) 76 “social hope” 64 social justice 28–​32, 40, 64, 95, 148, 203 social media 48, 62, 216 social psychology 96–​97 Solnit, R. 39, 139n78 South Africa 14, 76, 221 Southern Poverty Law Center see SPLC Spanierman, L.B. 97n46 Spelman, E. 31

246

246 Index

Spicer, S. 188 SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) 86, 95 Standard English 105 Staten Island 168 Staten Island Community College 167–​168 Steinberg, S.R. 136 stereotypes 12, 14, 32, 83, 84, 92, 196 Stokes Brown, C. 149 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee see SNCC Suissa, J. 130 Sullivan, A. 48 Sullivan, S. 205 Sun Tzu  188 Supreme Court 161, 184, 222, 225, 227n30 surveillance 9, 63, 107 sympathy 84 Syria 68, 190 teaching evaluations 15, 70–​71 Tennessee, State of, Student YMCA 150 testimonial injustice 32–​33, 35, 38, 41 Theoharis, J. 156 Third Wave Whiteness  138 Thompson, G. 164 Time’s Up 37 Todd, N.R. 97n46 Toorn, K. van der 121n25 Toronto Star,The 216 totalitarianism 48, 62, 206 touch, fear of 71–​75 Trail of Broken Treaties 1972 76 Trump, D.: anti-​political correctness 28–​29, 35; approval ratings 184–​185; blame shifting 221; and democracy 188–​189; on Due Process 38; election of 15, 168; ‘fake news’ 188–​189; false claims 52–​53, 62, 214–​225; ignorance as virtue 49–​52; on immigration 28, 47, 48, 68, 109, 116, 117, 121, 164–​166, 177, 194–​195, 222; international movements and 108; law and order and 47; and the military and police 190–​192; “Muslim Ban” 227n30; racism 46, 83, 188–​189, 194–​195; Republican National Convention 160; and role of education 45–​64, 114, 116–​124; self-​aggrandizement 218, 220–​221; and Syrian bombing 190; and truth 31–​32; use of Twitter 46, 48, 216; and white ignorance 31, 34–​35, 40–​42; and white racial frame 85–​86; and

white supremacy 6–​9, 11, 17, 26, 85–​86; women’s vote 187 Trump, F. 117 truth 31–​32, 109–​110 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 89, 90 Tuana, N. 30–​31 Turning Point USA 9 Twine, F.W. 138 UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access 223–​224 Union Theological Seminar 153–​154 United Federation of Teachers 118 Universities Canada 89 University of Illinois at Urbana-​Champaign  235 UW (University of Winnipeg) 90–​93 Vara-​Orta, F.  166n10 Varnhagen, R. 186–​187 Voting Rights Act 225 Vygotsky, L., Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) 138–​139 Wacquant, L. 112 Walker, D. 207 Wallace, D. 117 Wallace, R. 117 Wallis, J. 121 Warren, E. 83 Washington Post,The 85, 214, 220 Waters, M. 8 Weinstein, H. 37–​38 Weiss, B. 38 West, C. 146 West, D. 154 West, K. 225 West Virginia University 63, 233–​234 WHCA (White House Correspondents’ Association) 216 white evangelicalism 122 white nationalism: education and 81–​98; historical 114; Trump and 6, 7, 11, 28, 47–​48, 185, 188 white people, moral growth of 207–​210 white racial frame 82, 83–​84, 85–​86 white speaker effect 88 white supremacy: acknowledgement of own racism 13–​17; and democracy 187; Dewey and 202–​203, 207; education and 17–​26, 94, 104, 134, 196, 209–​210;

246

247

246

Index  247

Horton and 150–​151; internalization of 209; Kant and 202, 205; as the norm 6–​7; practices of 70; and school shootings 75; Trump and 6–​9, 11–​13, 49, 116, 188 whiteness: and election of Trump 6–​7, 31; hegemony of 133–​136; ignorance and 31, 36; as norm 2, 104, 134, 238; and racial identity 14; as racist 13, 206, 234; reconceptualization of 138; Third Wave 138; see also black people: counter-​gaze of; critical whiteness studies; ignorance, systemic Wine, A. 159

Wolf, M. 215–​216 Wolpé, S. 78 women see females; feminism Women’s March on Washington 133 Worsham, L. 56n31 Wright, R. 6 Yancy, G. 13, 16, 36, 40–​41, 82, 87–​88, 98, 207–​208, 209–​210 Yeats, W.B.  164 Zinn, H. 75, 95 Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) 138–​139

248