Whether we’re talking about race or gender or class, popular culture is where the pedagogy is, it’s where the learning is’ Bell Hooks

Over the last few months, I have had the opportunity to be enlighten. I never considered that I was ignorance to the world around me or how much privilege I had by being born white. I knew racism existed and that there was still prejudice in the world, but I never consider the role I could play in changing it but as Margret Mead says, ‘it only takes a few thoughtful citizans to change the world’.

At the started this module, I felt that I wasn’t racist or prejudiced , so I didn’t recognise that I needed to rethink who I was. I recognise now that this was my white fragility. This module has already made me see the world in a completely different way, I have been a part of the problem but perpetuating a world that favours white, colonialist history as Robin Dianglo says “White people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions. By doing this unit it has enabled me to look at the world differently from the perspective of minority student as well as reflect on my own positionality and intersectionality.

You are not born racist, you are born into a racist society, like everything else if we can learn it, we can unlearn it. -Jane Elliott

I have found this module to be transformative, inspirational and challenging. It has been the topic of many of my conversations with friends and family recently. Many people were aware or heard of positionality, intersectionality but wanted to know more, so it’s been great to open the discussion and hear others thoughts. With some fellow teaching colleagues, I have shared my thought and experiences since doing the module and they have gone on to do further read themselves or have asked me to share some of the resources with them. They now plan to build positionality into their teaching.

I do not tolerate any form of sexism, racism or homophobia , I always pick people up if I hear a racist, homophobic, or sexist comment, joke, or a derogatory comment. However, I’ve realised that over time I’ve become more passive and although my opinions are unchanged, I didn’t continue to grow or continue to challenge the system, I had become as D’angelo calls it a White progressives’. She says  ‘White progressives can be the most difficult for people of color because, to the degree that we think we have arrived, we will put our energy into making sure that others see us as having arrived.’I have had to look at my white fagility, I see that this is the start of my journey of ongoing self awareness and education. My role in teaching is to highlight and engage the next generation, to build inclusion into their experience and great understanding of the wider world.

During this module, at first, I was happy to just listen as I felt that what I was hearing from the other members of the groups was very powerful. I wanted to listen and hear rather than comment and engage. When talking with my tutor they asked if I had put myself in the position of a voyeur, I don’t think that was the case, I did engage but first I wanted to process, listen and learn and understand.

Reading the article, Critical Race Theory An Introduction by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic really made me think about how much I take being white for granted. In the opening paragraph, the article talks about random events and interaction with people, be it a jogger or shop keeper, either the engagement can be either positive or negative, we might question it, but I would never consider race being a reason for this interaction, whereas it I was a person of colour I might. I thought this was insightful as it really brings in the concept of positionality, and how we view the world through our own lens. This has made me think about this in a wide context not only in race but in sex, gender, faith and disability.

I’ve experienced bias in the past because I am a woman. Working in a male dominated industry I often found men tried to trip me up by asking testing question so they could see if I was good enough and competent at my job. I always felt I had to prove myself but passing their ‘little test’. Sometimes a man would speak to me rudely or in a patronising way or making a sexual innuendo, and I remember thinking that if I was a man, they would never have dared speak to me or make me prove myself like that. However, this not my norm, these were one of events, but its does give me a small microcosm of how something that I am, that I’m proud to be and cannot change, can be used again me.

Shades of Noir  

Shares of Noir is a great independent programme who’s resource support the pedagogies of social justice. It has consistently enlightened me with truthful conversation around subject such as race, gender and sexuality. This is an incredibly important resource, for everyone. It has help me with keys terms and given me sighting into the lives and lived experiences of many of our students. Below I have highlighted a few articles that I will discuss in my teaching. I will also signpost the Shares of Noir site for students to be aware of this resource.

Intersectional Film

This s a great resource that I will recommend to my students to read, and also refer to in my lecture. For my intervention for this module, I will be looking at positionality and intersectionality before we create with the students their ‘Code of conduct’. This resource will allow them to see how change is happening in the film and TV industry as well as offering them further insight into intersectionality. The Key terms at the back will give them greater understanding and clarification of these terms. The articles also cover many topics like ‘Intersectionality safety in the classroom’ again a very important topic for me as a lecturer and for my students to understand the reason why we need to create a safe space, so that discussions can take place within the group but with the knowledge of what is acceptable and what’s not.  

Conversations. TV and Film.

It’s great to read and hear about some of the reviews and thoughts of other students. This is a great resource for my students to see a wider view within the TV/film genre that they might have other wise missed. From This is England/ La Haine to Monster and even Brooklyn 99. Many of these films are about the culture we live in today, and its intersectionality. I teach on MATV which is a factual course, but all these resources allow for us to start conversations and look at the changing representation of race, gender, sexuality, disability in TV/Film world. By using this resource, it allows students to challenge their own programme making and understand the power they have to create change through equality and positive representation.

https://shadesofnoir.org.uk/category/media/film-tv/

Mental health and creative healing

Again, another helpful article for my students. This year due to covid I know many people of have struggled. Overseas students arriving in the UK for the first time found lockdown incredible difficult, they’ve said how hard it was to be isolated in a new country and culture with little support and being far from home. I have also had other students confide in me that they suffer from anxiety and/or depression, so being online has been quite challenging for them at times.

This article offers support information, and although it focuses on what well-being looks like for young ethnic minorities, the information it gives is relevant for everyone. It also gives key advise to tutors like me about the process and actions that we can put in place to help students from diverse populations/backgrounds in regard to mental health. The role we play in build a good rapport with our students and keeping an eye on attendance and following up to check in if they are ok. I personally have found this incredibly helpful and have used this in my teaching.

Submission of Work to Shades of Noir: Mental Health & Creative Healing

 ‘A pedagogy of social justice education: social identity, theory and intersectionality’, Read Hahn Tapper (2013).

I think the text highlights that to deal with conflict within the intergroup
workings, it not enough to just have contact by working together as this can be
superficial but that we also need to have discussions about social identify.
This was very much highlighted in the Video ‘Room of Silence’ where students
wanted to engage and talk about issues but without the conversation and feedback, they were left feeling exposed and frustrated. It’s not enough to just aware, it’s also important to talk and discuss and share, only though
communication can students integrate their experiences and voices, and conflict can be resolved.

I also thought that what Freire highlighted was very poignant, the role of
the tutor and the role we play in terms of social identify and status. We do
have to be mindful that we don’t presume that everyone in the classroom is
coming from the same place as us. It’s easy when you only have an 1hr lecture
to ‘lecture’  or  as Freire calls it the ‘banking concept’ but he highlights that we need to create experiences ‘with and not just for students’. By sitting alongside the students, we are also learning from them and them from us. bell hooks discusses her engagement and  interaction with her students in her book Teaching to transgress by saying “When everyone in the classroom, teacher and students, recognizes that they are responsible for creating a learning community together, learning is at its most meaningful and useful.”. 

I think the power dynamics is interesting between the tutor and students as
it’s a tough one to change. I have found that when the students arrive on the course, they often look looks to us for knowledge and support, thus creating this in-balance, but as the course progresses, they dependency on the tutor shifts and they become more independent and confident in their voice. Sometimes culture plays a part of this as they have only ever seen the role of the
teacher as the dominant power in the classroom. By reading more about Freire work and the democratic relationship, and bell hooks ‘Teaching to Transgress’ it is important that we change this hierarchy structure to one of equal footing .  

 “Witness- Unconscious Bias” 

The video with Josephine Kwhali discussing ‘unconscious bias was a short, honest and succinct talk about the problem with the term, ‘unconscious bias’. By mere fact that by allowing and using the phrase, it’s making it acceptable for people to be bias and as Kwhali says use it  ‘get out of jail free card’.  It made me think of the lecture on “Whiteness and institutional racism: Hiding behind unconscious bias by Shirley Ann Tate and how she breaks down the word into ‘un’ and ‘conscious’ , as she says ‘Un’ is significant because this is where the denial of anti-Black and people of colour racism is maintained’ (Tate 2018)

I had never considered this point of view before, and since hearing it, it has changed my thoughts on the concept of what ‘unconscious bias’s means. Bias is conscious and as Josephine Kwhali said, she was conscious of what racism was from the age of 4. She then goes on to say that with all the years of anti-racist debates, policy and strategies, ‘there is something worrying about what it will take for the unconscious to become conscious, ….and if it really is unconscious then that is of significant concern’. 

If the term ‘unconscious bias’ is allowed to the acceptable norm but at what point does the unconscious bias become conscious and how can we make the conscious the norm. 

The video also discusses the concept of improving the profile of women, but this usually means white middle class women when it should include all women and that we should stand together and be count as equal, irrelevant of race or class. Having read ‘Teaching to Transgress’ by Bell Hooks, it echo’s her calls for all women, to be involved in the feminist movement and that it’s not just for white middle class women. “As long as women are using class or race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realized.(hook 2000) There has been a conscious shift to take action and steps have been made to improve women’s profiles, but still not enough is being done for black or minority women or working class.

Retention and attainment in the disciplines: Art and Design’ by Finnigan and Richards 2016.

1. The Report discusses the concept of the identity in students work and how the tutor can influence their work with their own thoughts and options, thus change the direction of the student’s idea. This alienates the student from their own work, as they no longer recognise it and are trying to interpret a tutor’s idea rather than their own. This also stops innovation of a fresh outlook. I think that although we often want the students to look at their culture and identity and reflect that in their work, when we give feedback, we can overlook those aspects and revert to our ‘known’ area of knowledge and positionality. By being mindful of this and sitting alongside them so we support then to enable their vision and creativity.

• The report discusses the imbalance between the tutor’s desire to allow the students to be creative and take risks and how this ambiguity confuses the students. However, new students want guidance and clear briefs so they could complete their learning modules. Initially the students want to settle in and feel reassured but as tutors we want to harness their fresh ideas and not influence them.  Looking at these two points, it shows how impotent the tutors support is to the students, giving enough to encourage confidence but not too much to influences unrecognised change. As tutors our job should be to allow and encourage space for creatively and personally identity to development as well as academic attainment.