By Ann Green
George Floyd • Ahmaud Arbery • Breonna Taylor • Sandra Bland Michael Brown • Walter Scott • Tamir Rice • Eric Garner • Kalief Browder • Trayvon Martin • Emmett Louis Till
I have taught race, writing, and service-learning for more than 20 years. I am white. What we, white faculty and staff and students, must speak about — what we do not speak about often enough — is how “the faith that does justice” can address systemic racism. African-American lesbian feminist Audre Lorde’s often quoted phrase “the master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house” stays on my mind when I plan and teach service-learning classes. How can service-learning be a tool that dismantles, smashes, upends systemic racism?
Rev. Clementa Pinckney • Tywanza Sanders • Rev. Sharonda Singleton • Cynthia Hurd • Ethel Lance • Susie Jackson • Myra Thompson • Rev. Daniel Simmons • Sr. Addie Mae Collins • Denise McNair • Carole Robertson • Cynthia Wesley
At a Jesuit, Catholic University we are called, as Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., writes, to teach the actual world as it unjustly exists. In service-learning courses, this means addressing racism in real time. In the midst of a global pandemic and the pandemic of racism, in the aftermath of George Floyd and so many others’ murders, we white teachers must teach against white supremacy, and as the theological ethicist Bryan Massingale writes: “understand the difference between being uncomfortable and being threatened. There is no way to tell the truth about race in this country without white people becoming uncomfortable.”
How can you create space for discussions of race/racism and systemic oppression that don’t reinscribe white supremacy? Photo courtesy of the University of Nebraska.
English professor and peace activist Mary Rose O’Reilley posed a question in The Peaceable Classroom: How can we teach English in a way that people stop killing each other? O’Reilley reflected, in part, about how to keep men, college students, out of Vietnam, but her question has shaped my teaching: How can you create space for discussions of race/racism and systemic oppression that don’t reinscribe white supremacy? How can you teach service-learning for racial justice? How do you teach service-learning so white people stop killing Black people?
Atatiana Jefferson • Aura Rosser • Laquan McDonald • Stephon Clark • Botham Jean • Philando Castille • Alton Sterling • Michelle Cusseaux • Freddie Gray • Oscar Grant • Jimmie Lee Jackson
White silence about race sends a message about race. As Massingale writes, Amy Cooper knew exactly what she was doing when she called the police on Christopher Cooper, the bird watcher in Central Park, coincidentally on the same day of George Floyd’s murder. The first thing we must do when we teach service-learning is speak about race and racism and white supremacy and white privilege. We must ask students to consider the differences between terms like “racial justice” and “antiracist” not simply as a game of linguistic gymnastics, but to show how language constructs our realities and shapes our thoughts. We must not only hand out reading lists on racial justice or systemic racism, but teach white people how to talk about race and how to reflect on race and thread race throughout the curriculum as a part of our discussions about justice. And this is more than teaching white people how to use the “correct” language about race; the absence of racial slurs does not mean the absence of racism. We want to move beyond performative antiracism to work toward the deeper structural changes that achieve racial justice.
John Crawford • Tony McDade • Jonathan Ferrell • Samuel DuBose • Terence Crutcher • Amadou Diallo • Jermane Reid • Sean Bell • Aiyana Jones • John Crawford • Miriam Carey • Timothy Thomas • Michael Stewart
As a white woman in the United States, I know racism is as American as a parade on the Fourth of July. Racism is baked into the apple pie at the picnic, where were often events at which white Southerners celebrated lynchings. We must shift discussions of race beyond correcting an individual who is not “woke” enough to use the “right” wording to eliminate and overturn the systems that are used to elevate whites and that ultimately kill Black and brown people at disproportionate rates, whether through police violence, COVID-19, or the everyday racism that permeates systems of health care, education, and housing.
We must teach about racism by saying their names.
Ann Green is a professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University. Search the names in this article to read their stories.
The featured cover photo (above) is courtesy of Today.