Confronting Racism And Sexism In The Classroom

by Catherine Fischer

Dr. Gloria Watkins believes that effective teaching can explode her students' world view - and Watkins is an effective teacher. "When we 're talking about addressing racism and sexism in the classroom, we 're actually talking about paradigm shifts." said Watkins, an Associate Professor in American Literature and Women's Studies at Oberlin College. A paradigm shift involves changes in fundamental assumptions about reality. Her radical teaching style is known as "liberatory pedagogy," and is designed to help students develop critical and analytical thinking about race, class and gender.

Watkins spoke at Eastern Michigan University in March to celebrate Women's History Month. Using the pen name Bell Hooks, Watkins has also published several books on Black feminism including "Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black"; "Ain't I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism"; and "Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center."

When teaching, Watkins confronts her students with the possibility of transforming the way they view the world. She appeals to knowledge they already carry within themselves and to their reactions to new information. The process of transformation - from accepting racist and sexist notions about oneself and others to rejecting and struggling against oppression - is often an explosive one, Watkins said. Part of the transformation process often involves strong feelings of anger and fear. Tension is usually part of the classroom atmosphere.

Watkins recalled her students' confusion, which was followed by a flood of memories, when she asked them in a composition class to describe their first memory of comprehending racial difference. Watkins also vividly described an outpouring of resistant anger when she asked students to talk about their first sexual experience in a course on the politics of sexuality.

Watkins said her students' discomfort taught her that "when you fundamentally shift people's paradigms, they have an experience of pain." She encourages her students to use their pain as an impetus to struggle for change. She described how her students often come to her complaining that their new use of race, class and sex analysis upsets them in their other classes, because other teachers are not sensitive to these issues. She encourages them to take action, to "organize effective boycotts. Stand outside the classroom and say 'I can 't go to this class because the sexism hurts.'"

Watkins considers it "most critical, and the highest reward" to know that her teaching goes even beyond the classroom in its impact on her students' lives. "My students often say to me, 'we come into your classroom, you teach us about using race, sex, and class analysis and then we go to the movies and do race, sex, and class analysis. We turn on television and suddenly we can't enjoy life anymore because we're analyzing everything.'"

Watkins believes that a liberatory education also carries with it a responsibility to share one's knowledge with others. She expressed concern that the value of sharing knowledge is not held highly enough in universities. "Even though most of our students are inspired by our words, they are very preoccupied with a desire to be materially advantaged. They may not make any effort to share the knowledge they receive in this setting with other people."

Being a radical professor can take its toll. Watkins expressed regret that like-minded Black educators are usually isolated from each other on different, predominantly white campuses. She expressed concern that the the isolation of Black professors practicing liberatory pedagogy leads to the objectification of them as "hot ethnic commodities."

Watkins descríbed her own situation: " At a certain point I feel I may not be able to be as useful in a college location . For example, if everyone commodifies me as 'oh, she's that radical Black woman feminist.' eventually the work that I do ceases to have a certain power because I've already been turned into an objectifíed spectacle. Some people come to my class not seeking transformation, but to witness the spectacle."

Watkins said her teaching sterns from a tradition of Black education which developed in response to oppression in the United States. She descríbed historica! attempts to "colonize the minds" of Blacks: slavery, the denial of the right to leam to read and write, and later the inclusion into white-run schools "founded on the belief that Blacks are intellectually inferior." A "colonized mindset" is one which holds Blacks to be intellectually inferior, and Black culture as having no value. Parallel to this oppression existed the resistance from which a liberatory pedagogy emerged. Despite restrictions, small groups of Blacks came together to learn reading and writing, and to share information about their history and culture. Watkins termed these groups "communities of resistance," noting that "to struggle to read meant one had to be willing to rebel."

Watkins summarized the essence of both historical and current liberatory pedagogy - resisting oppression, and overcoming internalized oppression, ("decolonizing one's mind") - in these biblical words: "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."