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Pushout

Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique Morris begins by making a point similar to Kimberele Crenshaw in her Ted Talk. “Black girls are also directly impacted by criminalizing policies and practices that render them vulnerable to abuse, exploitation, dehumanization, and under the worst circumstances, death.” What is noted by Morris is that when black girls are in school these vulnerabilities do not disappear.

One of the most striking cases that Morris shares is on the opening page. Desre’e Watson, a 6-year-old girl was arrested and processed for throwing a tantrum in a Kindergarten classroom. I was curious about the details of the case and this NY Times article helped fill me in a bit: article: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/opinion/09herbert.html 

To me, this showcases the complete breakdown of every system in place that is meant to protect children. The truly sad part is that Desre’e was not the first child to be arrested she most likely won’t be the last. What Morris goes on to talk about in her book is that these incidents are happening disproportionately to children of color.

An element that makes black girls so vulnerable is the normativity of heterosexual white feminity. In part what is missed when black women are looked at through this lens is the historical trauma and trauma done by society that has, in turn, shaped black feminity. 

For this reason, we need to disrupt heterosexual white feminity as the norm so that there can be space for black female identity in all of its forms. I refer to the many forms of black female identity because black feminist theory, unlike other theories, looks to gather voices to be used toward the collective. This way of thinking allows for shifting rather than a stagnant understanding of what it means to be a black female and work against the formation of stereotypes. 

As I see it, black feminist theory can be used to push against the criminalization of black females for two reasons. The first because this topic of criminalization and the abuse of black bodies is hyper-visible in black feminist theory when it is not as prevalent in other theories because of its intersectionality. Second, black feminist theory helps one to understand why it is different than other forms of feminism and why that is important. Knowledge on this subject I think could go a long way in seeing why zero-tolerance policies are so damaging.

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In my exploration of identity, I found some time to sit down with a peer who has experience in identity work with children. So what we did was take the ideas of intersectionality and the concept of multiple identities and came up with some ways to do identity work around that. 

Okay, well, to be honest, he shared with me some things that he has done in the past and we looked at their applicability.

What we landed on was this dynamic pie chart above. The first picture is the example we made that didn’t necessarily have to do with race and gender but was more to understand the concept of this pie chart. What you do is name your different identities. Writing the name of that identity on the top of the line that will be cut and color in the rest of the circle. What you can do is then reflect on what identities are at play at that moment. 

In the first picture, you can see that I felt that my identity as a student was the most prominent because of my position, I was in the school library, learning and working with a peer. ‘Teacher’ was the next prominent identity because I was using my teacher hat to think about ways to manipulate this activity to work with young children.

I think this activity could be powerful when discussing intersectionality with children because it disrupts the idea that you are one thing all the time or even one thing at one time and one thing at another. The dynamic nature of the pie chart (e.g. the ability to rotate the circles so the ratios change) also creates the visual that in different situations some of my identities are more prominent or active than others.

Using this as a tool in the classroom, I might stop a few times throughout the day and ask the students to manipulate their pie chart to represent what identities are at play. It could also provide opportunities to start seeing patterns. For instance, after using the pie chart a few times I can note the pattern that whenever my student identity is active so is my teacher identity. Then I could look closer into why this correlation happens.

This may be my first and messy stab at identity work and its applicability to intersectionality but I find it to be important. I think if we are able to teach students about their identities in complex ways they will be able to take that and view the world through that complex lens giving them the opportunity to see and interpret the world in a way that we are only beginning to.

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So, I have no idea how to clip a video from youtube but the key part to watch is from the beginning to the 1:55 mark.

I came upon this clip as I was decompressing at the end of the day and it talks about something that has been prevalent in my courses. Names. In particular, honoring someone’s name, especially how they pronounce it. I haven’t really had a space to reflect on my own stance in my studies about pronunciation and I think that is an important place to start.  

If I am being honest, I have a very clouded lens on name pronunciation. And to understand this I first have to tell you about my own experiences with names. My last name although not too hard for me is one that most people do not pronounce correctly. It is Basque in origin but most people have a fun time guessing usually, Italian, German, or Spanish. The first time someone is tasked with saying it out loud there is usually a bit of hesitation. This meant that on the many weekends spent at gymnastics meets whenever I was called up for awards it was inevitably said incorrectly.

But, I was never bothered by this, it only gave my dad and me something to laugh about together. The worse our name was butchered the harder we laughed.

I also spent time in a Spanish speaking country and since day one my name was no longer Kristin, it was always some variation like Christine or Christina. And in that context, I was also not bothered. I knew that the letter sounds and combinations were not common so the approximation was okay with me. 

Because of all of these experiences, and my interpretations of my experiences; mispronunciations don’t trigger me in the way it does others. On the other hand, I have always found it important to say my student’s names correctly and worked hard to do so.

 I do recognize that being a part of the dominant culture meant that these mistakes and mispronunciations did not strip me of my identity. My name might be off a bit but my identity was not threatened. I think in Hasan’s case I believe the mispronunciation is a form of microaggression because of his race, slowly stripping away at who he is. He also, very humorously, brings up a great point, that we are much more flexible in pronouncing linguistically difficult names for other white people like Schwarzenegger and Dostoevsky. 

Another interesting element to think about is the correction process. The correction process for my last name never took more than one or two back and forths to mediate. In this clip, you can see that Hasan and Ellen go back and forth at least three times. I think that trying to mediate a back and forth that felt never-ending would become frustrating and awkward to the point of giving up.

In addition to contemplating all of the above, I always circle back to think back to my understanding of language development. Being that all children are born with the ability to produce all sounds. As they become familiar with the sounds spoken by the people around them the neural pruning process does away with the unused connections that hold those unused sounds. This has implications for hearing sounds and producing them. 

One example, to roll my r’s for the rr sound in Spanish. It got to the point where my Kindergarten students who were Mexican would ask me to say ‘dog’ (perro) and then laugh at me when I said ‘but’ (pero). Another example, was when I was trying Skyping with my dad who lives in China practicing to say his friend’s name correctly. I couldn't hear the difference in the way that he said her name and what I was producing. 

All of this leaves me in a very unsettled place. Unsure of how to actually proceed in a situation when a name is difficult for me. When does trying to repeatedly say a name correctly leave the realm of respectful and jump to being rude?

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We need pedagogies that concentrate more of our efforts on inviting people to be with each other in our full humanity.

Harper Benjamin Keenan in Unscripting Curriculum

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Unscripting Curriculum: Toward a Critical Trans Pedagogy

The above article was written by Harper Benjamin Keenan a professor at Stanford University.

In this article Harper B. Keenan writes about critical trans pedagogy and the essential nature of unscripting. 

An interesting element of the unscripting process is the idea that gender and terminology around gender do not have one single meaning or definition. Unscripting aims to break down unchallenged ideas and dissolve rigid definitions. And ironically, even Keenan himself says that he is not in a position to define what terms like transgender mean, even though from an outsiders perspective he would be the best person to supply a definition because of his identity. But Keenan argues that definitions would perpetuate the oversimplification that occurs when adults teach children and it would negate the complexities inherent to its origin.

So then what can we do as teachers if not to teach in the traditional sense? In short, the answer is to guide.

Keenan poses 3 guiding questions for practitioners to use in replacement of offering a prescription:

What are the scripts I have internalized about bodies in the world, including my own and my students?

How can I support my students in analyzing their own scripts?

How can I support students in imagining something different? 

These guiding questions not only help challenge what we as adults have internalized through our experiences and exploration of life but they 100% have faith in children to imagine things differently. I love this pedagogy for many reasons but one is because it has a sub-commentary that children are not yet hardened into one way of seeing the world and that they themselves are not necessarily living in the gender binary even though forces around them are.

This leads me to the next reason why I love critical trans pedagogy. Even though it could have been conceived in a bubble of sorts because of its own inherent importance Keenan still intertwined the foundation of early childhood education into his work. Explore. Experience. Play. His stance is to leverage these core values as a way to generate moments to “explore the questions [kids] have about the world by engaging directly with it.”

All of this leads me to think that Keenan is really onto something. 

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Place-Conscious Pedagogy

Barbara Comber wrote an interesting book called Literacy, Place, and Pedagogies of Possibility (2016). Her ideas of place-conscious pedagogies is fairly interesting and for me is reminiscent of project based learning that has a strong emphasis on the spaces that affect the lives of students. The pedagogy that Comber puts forward did not seem revolutionary to me but was nonetheless inspiring. One piece that emerges throughout the book that begins to make me reconsider the potential of her theory is the reiteration of embedded identity work. There is an emphasis on narratives of individuals and the collective that builds agency all while doing meaningful work that can connect to the standards that need to be taught. This all brought me to think of identity work in relation to the idea of intersectionality. The vehicle of place-conscious pedagogies seems to bridge these concepts for me and firmly places the classroom as a space for positive change. 

Marginalized groups who are subject to the invisibility of intersectionality are creating their own identities as they move through space but what is of concern is that these identities are not recognized as significant in broader arenas. Comber writes “If we want different values, we have to tell a different story, a story that understands that an individual narrative is an essential component of a person’s identity, and without it, it is impossible to imagine yourself as part of a group.” My inquiry is could all of these elements (place-conscious pedagogy, identity work, intersectionality) come together in the classroom to create more visibility for our students? Are classroom stories powerful enough and far reaching enough to bring people who deal with double discrimination to a point of visibility?

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Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance

bell hooks once again has me really chewing on what she proposes in her “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance” article. And to be frank, I probably need to read it another 5 times to really unpack everything that she is saying. That being said I want to look at one of the main points she makes. hooks argues that within commodity culture, ethnicity, race, the Other, become the spice to which mainstream white culture uses to liven their life. That dominate cultures identity crisis is pushing them towards “eating the Other” for fulfillment as they crave the exotic. One example she gives is from a conversation she overheard. White males were discussing their game which involves seeing who can have sex with the most women of other races and ethnicities. This example clearly supports hooks point but it made me reflect on my own experiences with other cultures which are a bit less extreme. 

From dating, friendships and family to traveling and studying my experiences have always been around understanding different people and perspectives in our world. To fall in line with hooks metaphor, I have craved an understanding of how the rest of the world works and how other people think. Have I therefore been engaged in “eating the Other” or is there a nuance that needs to be mediated? I in no way deny that these experiences gave me immense pleasure and knowing that my family is comprised of amazing humans from different races with varying sexual orientations gives me a huge sense of pride. Which can also be seen as problematic through hooks lens. As I assume my case is not unique, where does that leave us?  

hooks writes “Mutual recognition of racism, its impact both on those who are dominated and those who dominate, is the only standpoint that makes possible an encounter between races that is not based on denial and fantasy.” I find this to be a fascinating point that does create a bit of ground to stand on. When I think to how this can be possible it becomes a bit more dicey. How can a mutual recognition of racism take place if people from the dominate culture are not acknowledging its ever present stench? It seems that our lessons on the abolition of slavery worked too well and we have somewhat erased the pervasiveness of racism in the school setting which has led to a false belief that ‘we are past that’. I think this idea pairs nicely with hooks earlier notion of an identity crisis in the dominate culture. In fact, I think these two issues are one and the same. Because people in the dominate culture do not understand their own identity and how it has been shaped by the people around them (mostly by oppression and exploitation) we are stuck.

hooks ends with a thought that she posed to her colleagues and students to debate about “the distinction between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation.” There weren’t any incredible revelations to this point but I think it perfectly teases out an area for further exploration.

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Call ‘em Out

When going through CPR or First Aid training one of the things that you are taught is to be very specific when seeking the aid of others. For instance, do not shout out “Call 911!” to the crowd of people around you, specifically point to someone and put the onus on them “Hey, you! Call 911!” This, they tell you, raises the chances that your demand will be met and less likely that the people around you will assume that someone else will follow through. 

I bring this up because as I read through different papers on race, gender, and intersectionality I have seen that many times the authors speak to or about a collective. The use of our and we to direct the responsibility to society is accurate but I think we are the point where it is no longer effective in regards to creating positive outcomes. And what is the point of academia if not to instigate change? Society is the crowd that we are shouting at but everyone around the table can easily throw their hands up and say to themselves, “Well they can’t possibly mean me!”

Now that we understand that society at large is the home to racism, sexism and all the other -isms. I think it is time to move forward to look more closely at who enables the -isms to continue. I think a great example is the Harvard bias case against Asian American students or Robert Livingston’s piece he wrote on black female leaders and how their identities effect their perception in these roles.

I find these concrete examples and case studies incredibly helpful because the onus is clear. Narrowing our focus even farther to those responsible and those affected, I believe can aide in transforming the work done in academia to being the work that generates visible transformations.

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Ohh the fun exploration of gendered toys!

I would have to say in my 3 years of educational studies, this topic has come up at least twice a year, although with an apparent lack of innovation in the way we speak about it. Possibly because not much has changed...except for a more intense gendering of toys, as the article points out. While many people (although not all) are ready to move forward from these stereotypes, toy industries are clearing clinging on for dear life as it presents opportunities for profits.

However, I found it refreshing that the article was not just a push for gender neutral toys but instead encouraging counter-narratives and collaborative play with your child as a means for doing so. 

At this point, as the article touches on, it is unlikely that sexist messages and gendered socialization is going to go away anytime soon. So sometimes the step needs to be not only how can we change this but also how can we work within the structure we have to help the next generation move past the binary that has controlled much of our lives? How can these binaries and stereotypes be rejected in a way that causes lasting impacts for our students? For me that certainly doesn’t mean filling a room full of gender neutral toys that will do little to insight the conversations that need to be recognized so that counter narratives can have meaning. That being said, the classroom should provide many opportunities for students to play without the burden of being bombarded and caged by the stereotypes of gendered stories and books. Balance, in everything, is key. 

A critique of my own educational experiences on gender studies speaks to its limited nature. It has always been clearly pointed out that we should interrupt these notions and this has always been paired with critiquing gendered materials but beyond that it has been fairly lacking. What does gender studies in younger grades look like, can there be a formal place for this in curriculum and standards? Another problem is that this has been a strong topic of conversation in preschool but as children get older and become more set in these ways the conversations seem to fade away to allow space for the core subjects. And then, my most favorite question to sit with...is it even being addressed in upper elementary grades and middle and high school?! (Clearly my ECE background doesn’t make me privy to all of the going-ons in the upper grades) But if these conversations stop then the potential for fade out is great. ECE should represent the groundwork around these conversation but it certainly should not the end there.

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An Anecdote from Brunch

I was having brunch this past weekend with my boyfriend’s coworkers. These surgical residents found a rare moment to have time together outside of the public hospital they basically live at. Which, is why, it was not surprising when the conversation turned to sharing their more shocking stories dipped in humor to make their underlying frustrations more palatable. I was lucky enough to be a fly on the wall as they became absorbed in their sharing, when one story peeked my attention.

The Indian woman across from me, who out ranked all of the people at our table, began to tell the story. She was in the room with a patient who she spent considerable time building a rapport with the family and had gone through much of the risks and benefit of the care she had planned for the patient. She gets the sense that the family is skeptical of her expertise and almost on cue in walks in the white male resident two years her junior in experience and the one who would not be completing the surgery. As he enters he gets right up close to the family and takes over the conversation and asks the senior resident to begin translating for him because he does not speak Spanish. Apparently it only took a few moments for him to rid the apprehension from the family successfully gaining consent for the surgery.

All it took was a white guy with less experience to walk in the room to be the convincing factor.

As the residents are sharing this story they are laughing at its ridiculousness because they are fully aware that the woman of color was the one with the real authority, skill and knowledge to complete the procedure. But that didn’t matter because the power given by the family and patient was to the white male who only needed to be just that to deserve it. I turn to my boyfriend in awe of this and with raised eyebrows he tells me “this happens more than you would think.”

To me this is one of those moments where it is difficult to discern which of the factors led the family to be apprehensive with one doctor over another. Was it that she was Indian? Was it that she was a woman? Was it the intersectionality of these two factors?

What I found to be most disconcerting is that although at least half of the people in the room (I can’t speak for the patient and their family) is that they saw it playing out and recognized the lopsided power in play. What would have happened if the man came in to support his colleague rather than overpower? Could it have changed the perspective of the patient?

What is known is that nothing was challenged in this scenario and it played out as one would expect. As, I am guessing, it will over and over again reaffirming the power structure and invisibility in these spaces.

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Let me be very clear about my first point: the college bribery scandal was no surprise to anyone. White elites using money to get an unfair and illegal advantage to opportunities that were already positioned at the end of their yellow brick road is not new news. We all knew it was happening, we were just fuzzy on the details. 

While this is causing ‘scandal’ in some circles it reaffirms what historically underrepresented groups have know all along...the institutions and systems in place position them at a disadvantage and any government program present will not create a level playing field. It is simply not enough to push against privilege + money.

Affirmative action has been placed parallel with this scandal as both bring up the idea of “taking someone’s spot.” Many personal stories have surfaced about the way that students who benefit from affirmative action have been put down because of their so called “advantage.” Both the personal accusations of an unfair advantage and the public debate create even more obstacles for students trying to navigate spaces that already are blind to their worth. My hope for this attention is that it disrupts the thinking of the people situated outside of the two focal groups (affirmative action beneficiaries and the white elite) to be more critical of the social hierarchy constructed and the power that we give to people who certainly do not need any more of an advantage. 

And what if more of these evident truths come out with all the gory details involving the people we once admired (*cough cough...Aunt Becky)? What if the veil was lifted, would it enrage enough people to truly work towards a better sense of equality? Can this momentum hold long enough to expose other elitist privileges and could that impact the way people view historically disadvantaged people therein moving the needle? Or, will the scandal’s spotlight on important discussions fade once again?

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A moving reminder that (white) feminism is NOT feminism for all. That a “safe space” is not synonymous with safe for all. And that your ironic use of the N word is not so ironic...or funny.

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But the price of error is higher for you than it is for your countrymen, and so that America might justify itself, the story of a black body’s destruction must always begin with his or her error, real or imagined—with Eric Garner’s anger, with Trayvon Martin’s mythical words (“You are gonna die tonight”), with Sean Bell’s mistake of running with the wrong crowd, with me standing too close to the small-eyed boy pulling out.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me)

The price of an error being more significant for one person over another based on the race or gender is devastating. As a child you are brought up to understand that actions have consequences and if you were privileged it was the belief that consequences are the same for everyone. Yet for black boys and girls this is not the truth. As Coates points out these errors do not even need to be real for the highest price to be paid. 

What isn’t always apparent when parring the price of an error with the stories of Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin is that it can lead someone to believe that the price is exclusive to the oppression or loss of a black body when in fact its roots run deeper and effect the prosperity of life as well.

Robert Livingston from Harvard University discusses his research on race and gender and how they effect the perception of corporate leaders. Though the depth of his work is a topic for another post a detail of his research is complimentary to the notions of Coates. “If you are a black woman, you can be an assertive leader as long as you don’t make any mistakes. But the first time you make a mistake, your competence is called into question well before the white woman or the black man.” I think the relevance in bringing this up is to recognize that this errors not only threaten lives but also impede the life that is lived.

I see this as important to recognize because when high profile cases are ear marked as the example of disproportionate price of an error it becomes easier to construct a wall around that scenario and overlooking that it holds true in daily life. This illusion makes it harder to recognize and in turn harder to address and change.

Article on Robert Livingston: http://theconversation.com/intersectionality-how-gender-interacts-with-other-social-identities-to-shape-bias-53724 

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It only took one minute for Kimberle Crenshaw to make visible the invisible. She also eloquently spoke to the point of why invisibility can and does persist: “no frames for us to see, no frames for us to remember them, no frames for us to hold them.” Could this be because we are thinking and teaching too narrowly?

If you haven’t watcher her Talk she describes how African American women sit at an intersection that causes others to “drive” past them even though they sit squarely between two major contemporary issues; gender and race. When we begin to broaden our lens and look at these issues as interconnected we are looking at their “intersectionality.” This is what I am drawn to. This is one of those ideas that we are behind on our understanding.

In a strange way, I relate this to the adoption of the newly popular way of doing math. The push for students to understand their word rather that to simply follow an algorithm. For our newest generation of learners this is just a way of being and doing but for the ones teaching it we are reconceptualizing our prior understanding and broadening our scope to incorporate a better way. In regards, to intersectionality we all are the teachers trying to grapple with creating new schema so that hopefully a new generation will be able to use this tool to more readily ensure the visibility of all who are sitting at an intersection.