Comments on: Week 6: Adolescence, Identity Development, Literacy

By: Ryann

Ryann — Thu, 08 May 2008 08:11:00 +0000

I agree that while cross-cultural discussions are difficult, they are not impossible. It is necessary for people of all backgrounds to listen to and learn from the experiences of others no matter how uncomfortable the situation may be. Yet because it is also important for people to understand themselves before they begin to explain to others, discussion needs to happen earlier than high school. If more classes incorporated a more multicultural cuuriculum and more programs existed such as SET that allowed students to continually discuss issues as they grow and face them, students would become more accustomed to dealing with issues of identity, race and interaction with the other. However, with the implementation of these programs comes the necessity for genuine and trained teachers and/leaders of these programs. The facilitation of these programs can be very delicate in terms of the impressions and sensitivity of the topics, and therefore qualified and trained people need to be in these positions in order to foster positive learning environments.

By: Sera P.

Sera P. — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:51:39 +0000

As mentioned by a few other people, I don’t think it is impossible to have successful cross-cultural support groups. It is important to keep Tatum’s findings in their context in that this was a predominately white school and it was important for this isolated group, the Black students, to have a forum to express their problems/concerns. However, it is also important for the white students to engage in the conversation so that they are aware of the types of issues their peers are confronting. The situation reminds me of the quote from Tim Wise in the MSNBC clips we watched when we said: “we’re trying to have a conversation where one group has read 400 pages of the book and the other group has only read the preface.” Inferring from his statement, it is important for white students to begin engaging in a conversation about race with their peers so that they do not rely on images and ideas they receive from the media or Eurocentric curriculum.
On another note, the Black students group’s value was also rooted in the sense of community they felt with each other. This can be applied to ethnic minority students attending predominately white colleges. There is a study by Harper and Quaye(2007) that looks at the positive effects on graduation rates in relation to ones membership in an ethnic student organization . The ongoing debate over the necessity of ethnic theme houses and student organizations may not be taking into account how the positive results for the members of these groups may outweigh the issue of these groups being exclusive(not that I think they are).

By: Alana W

Alana W — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:45:53 +0000

This may come off as pessimistic, but I do not think a program can help white students understand the problems faced by their white counterparts. As Tatum stated in her book, I do not believe white students or children are ready to discuss and understand issues such as racism, especially when they have not encountered it themselves. Part of the problem is very few people are willing to come out and acknowledge racism is still an issue If, you get white students to start discussing it in class, GREAT, but when they go home and experience subtle racist cues from their parents, the news, TV programs etc. all the work done in class will be washed away. Racism has been institutionalized to a point where most people (mainly those who are outside of the race in question) do not even realize it is happening. Additionally, I feel it is vital for black students to continue having discussions about race with one another. It is only through the sharing of experiences can students learn they are not alone and others are there for them. It is important for students of color to relate, understand and speak to each other. Since, they are the only ones who can truly understand their struggles and experiences within race discussion groups do offer a “unique community that cannot be emulated by other races”.

Lastly, I feel creating a separate course such as the SET program explained in the Tatum peace for white students to understand the plight of black students could create further segregation. I am not sure how middle school children would react to having a class where they learned to be more tolerant and excepting of their black counterparts. This kind of class could simply reinforce the idea that there are differences between the races. This kind of class will make everyone plainly aware of race. Yes, it show students subtle racism exists and should not be tolerated, but I am not sure it would do much for bringing the students of different ethnic backgrounds together.

By: Ikira

Ikira — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:08:28 +0000

I forgot to add that while SET is a good start, each school needs to find the best way to integrate students. I am not a fan on importing solutions without tailoring them to specific issues

By: Ikira

Ikira — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:06:39 +0000

As stated in the beginning of this discussion, the article states that white friends cannot offer support to Black friends in the same way that other Black kids can and that they are not “prepared” to be supportive in the same way, and are even sometimes dismissive of the racist experiences that Black kids share with them. My first reactions to the article and both speculation and afirmation. I agree to some extent that kids need support from and understanding peer, however I don’t believe that we can state that only black kids are sympathetic to black kids. I think that people that have been in similar situations can provide support and understanding. For example if student A has been discriminated agaisnt due to his race and student B has also been discriminated against due to his race does it matter that student A is arabic and student B is chinese? They are both undergoing the same situation.
I think the film does a good job of ilustrating that same point. The children in the spelling bee where undergoing the same type of pressure and social outcasting from their peers because of their study habits. This was independent of their race. If you put all of these children in a room they could provide support for eachother because they were undergoing the same dificulties. Addressing the questions posed by the blog on support structures, I like the idea of SET. I think that addressing the racial issues of an institution in the curriculum is a step in the right direction. They are giving attention to the problem and encouraging a dialogue. This is something that we saw in the MSNBC videos last week.
It is important to acknowledge the issues and no longer ignore the problem or the lack of racial integration in our communties. This article also made me think about the broader picture. Tatum mentioned the students being bused in and not living in the community where they go to school. We are trying to integrate our schools, but our communities are not integreated. The redlining that began occuring in the 1930s further segregated our communties and until we address these issues its hard to ask our students to feel supported and represented equally in their schools.
I was specially interested in the students seeking their identity and that black students seek their indetities sooner than white kids. I’m sure that applies to all minorities, not just black students.
While SET provides exposure of students to other groups and I would love all students to be intgrated at all times, interactions with students own racial groups is important. I would not want to discourage that. The idea is not to erase their ethnicities, it is to encourage acceptance and interactions. I would add and ethnic studies class to the curriculum for every grade, also. I feel that information and education is key to fight racism and ethnocentrism.

By: Karen A

Karen A — Wed, 07 May 2008 22:53:50 +0000

After reading the little snippet on SET in Tatum’s chapter, I could not help but reflect on my schooling experience and how a slightly similar program to SET helped me in ways I never thought possible. I am an alumna of the Prep for Prep program which was started as a way for minority students in New York City to have an academic support group, and eventually to help them prepare for placement into private independent schools through a rigorous 14 month component beginning in the 5th grade. Like SET, students would meet outside the classroom and discuss issues with an someone (in our case, an “advisor”). Unlike SET, however, we met with not only Prep students from our respective schools, but with Prep students from all over the city for at least 3 hours every week. It has been very helpful in my schooling and I honestly don’t think I would have even made it to Stanford without them.

Even having had a positive experience with a program similar to SET, I have to agree with some of my classmates when they say that implementing a program like SET in every integrated school might not be the best idea. Like Jessica S, I do think that students would regard SET meetings as “secret” meetings and begin to form even more stereotypes and say more inappropriate comments about minority students. Being a Prep student, I do remember having to deal with those types of comments, not only in my public school, but later on in my private school. The only difference is that Prep for Prep has worked to long establish their excellent reputation in the city, so those types of comments came from people that were unfamiliar with the program.

I know that in my high school, I sat at “the black table” and it wasn’t really seen as separation by my white peers. I was just understood that, in a sense, we were creating a support system for ourselves in that predominantly white school. We also had support systems like clubs that promoted cultural awareness. We invited non-minorities to join in order to add different perspectives and in fact, it was a great success in my school. However, I could not really see those kinds of clubs or programs being completely successful at larger integrated public schools.

By: Takeo Rivera

Takeo Rivera — Wed, 07 May 2008 22:24:33 +0000

To repeat the sentiment that’s already been echoed quite a bit, SET is by no means a universal panacea, though it looks like it works in the context described in Tatum’s work, particularly in an area where it appears that race relations are defined in primarily black/white terms (having read Tatum’s entire book a couple of years ago, I definitely feel like Tatum’s treatment of race outside the black/white dualism is tokenistic at best, but that’s beside the point). Some form of racialized community, however, is almost always valuable, obviously; the question is what form it takes shape as. Community can take the form of oppositional culture, or it can come from something like SET, but I don’t think that this either/or scenario applies everywhere. What about low-income schools where students underperform regardless of race, or schools with extremely mixed populations (i.e. Asians, Latinos, etc.)? To cite an example of the latter, I had a lot of friends who attended Hercules High in the East Bay. During their time there, these largley Asian American friends explained their scorn at the African American students receiving additional support and even Black history holidays when Asian Americans didn’t receive anything, attributing this to the fact that the principal was Black. Granted, it wasn’t anything quite like the SET program, but the separate-support paradigm operates with more complexity outside of a black/white context. Naturally, I’d support some form of support group like SET, but it would have to adjust to the landscape; it would have to be of treating any and all groups effectively. Perhaps the groups would be treated in isolation, perhaps not, but there comes a particular danger in mandating the treatment, since that could potentially reduce all of the students’ problems to the downward social constitution that is race, when it could be a number of different things.

But I wanted to address the concern of whether or not white students should get training on how to be more racially sensitive. In something like that, approach is everything. The pedagogy of “cultural competency” can oftentimes very easily become stereotyping, even in higher echelons of learning. Some folks may disagree with me here, but I really take issue with how a certain cultural psychology class is taught at Stanford. Week to week, we learn about the traits of different cultures and how these cultural models influence how people in these cultures think. The class features movies and videos in which we see how these cultural traits get played out; like we’d watch a clip from a Chinese movie and all laugh in class at how what we just learned in the powerpoint was true. Too many people leave the class feeling like they can explain why people of other cultures do what they do; it becomes a form of scientific stereotyping, in which Asians follow “interdependent cultural models” and are thus less individualistic, explaining their apparent passivity in the classroom.

It is much more effective to teach cross-cultural understanding from the perspective of understanding power and privilege, since the disparity in power and privilege is really the source of the issue, not merely racial difference and cross-cultural miscommunication. There are lots of workshops, privilege games, etc. that can confront this issue; explanations of white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege, etc. are probably what would be most valuable to students of more privileged positions, rather than a form of cultural catering or “how to treat students of color better.”

By: Diana A

Diana A — Wed, 07 May 2008 21:50:56 +0000

Whoops, for my first paragraph, I meant to write:

“I think the need for the latter (same-race support) derives from the very fact that current interracial support structures, more often then not, are NOT what they should be.”

BIG emphasis on the NOT what they should be! Sorry about that.

By: Diana A

Diana A — Wed, 07 May 2008 21:48:38 +0000

Everyone has brought up some really good points! To answer the first two questions – I would say yes and yes – that yes, there is a way to make interracial support in high school more supportive, but at the same time same-race support provides a sense of shared experience, connection, and understanding oftentimes difficult with interracial support. I think the need for the latter (same-race support) derives from the very fact that current interracial support structures, more often then not, are what they should be. I think most of the time this is the case because many of these structures, especially if they are at predominately white suburban schools, are led by or co-opted by dominant groups – this goes back to the question, how many persons of color do you see represented in high level school administrations? That is a huge bottleneck, I think, in fostering safe spaces in schools where students are given the support to navigate through these complex identity questions. I agree with Jay B that this must begin with “school administrations educating themselves” and larger systemic changes like that – but not only school administrations educating themselves, but increasing representation of people of color on these boards in the first place. Leadership at both the national, district, and school/classroom level are crucial to addressing these issues, and I think it is a responsibility, an obligation of people in such top administrations to recognize these issues of race/class/gender identity development and how they impact student achievement and success. What we see at the school level is not solely, but definitely significantly dependent on what happens at these larger levels.

I think programs like SET are very beneficial – everyone has brought up really good points about the implementation of it, and although I don’t have all the answer and would need to really explore this more (the experiences of student in SET or not), I do agree that it should be expanded in some way so all students are educated and exposed to these issues, especially those of the dominant groups – as we know, with inherent privilege and that status in our society hierarchy often blinds people from even being conscious of it in the first place (yes, we do have a long way to go). I think not having programs like SET where students are given a safe space to share their experiences, feelings, etc denies difference among students and goes back to the “we should be colorblind” argument (which we know is problematic) of the White middle class norm dominant in our society. I am a huge advocate of interethnic coalition building and solidarity, and I think institutionalizing programs similar to SET or something like it (mandatory ethnic studies classes or all, with a big emphasis on discussion and self-reflection as opposed to memorization of facts, etc?) is a tremendous leap forward.

By: youthschoolsraceinfilm

youthschoolsraceinfilm — Wed, 07 May 2008 21:33:16 +0000

It would be reductive to assume that people’s experience from this context would be the same or similar in that context; social realities are largely shaped by sociocultural/historical contexts. While some are intentionally good attempts, “cookie cutter solutions” are often suspicious as several of you have pointed out. Cultures derive from who’s involved and what’s made possible by participants of a particular context. SET and its various forms may work for some, but it may not for others (i.e., causing further stigmatization). The attempt centers on the individual (to fix) and not the structure (to change). In thinking about joint efforts and coalition-building with and beyond the black/white spectrum, it might be good for us to also consider the contributions of standpoint theory. Below is a tidbit from wikipedia.
__________

Standpoint theory is a postmodern method for analyzing inter-subjective discourses. “Developed primarily by social scientists, especially sociologists & political theorists. It extends some of the early insights about consciousness that emerged from Marxist/socialist feminist theories and the wider conversations about identity politics. It endeavors to develop a feminist epistemology, or theory of knowledge, that delineates a method for constructing effective knowledge from the insights of women’s experience.”[1] It arose amongst feminist theorists, such as Dorothy Smith, Nancy Hartsock, Sandra Harding, and Patricia Hill Collins.

According to this approach:

* A standpoint is a place from which human beings view the world.
* A standpoint influences how the people adopting it socially construct the world.
* Social group membership affects people’s standpoints.
* The inequalities of different social groups create differences in their standpoints.
* All standpoints are partial; so (for example) Standpoint feminism coexists with other standpoints.

Standpoint theory supports what Harding calls strong objectivity, or the notion that the perspectives of marginalized individuals can help to create more objective accounts of the world.