Reflections on White Dominate Culture
Ah, the Fourth of July! As a child, I considered the Fourth my favorite holiday. Not because I was saturated in American pride, but because it meant going to a friend's lake house and spending the weekend swimming, fishing, and roasting marshmallows - a nine-year-old's dream! Now, this isn't to say I wasn't proud to be an American, it just means I was more concerned with how I'd be celebrating our freedom rather than the freedom itself. American pride was actually ingrained in my psyche very early on in life. My mom was firefighter, and we spent much of our time down at the fire station - a concrete, greasy building brimming with American flags and paraphernalia. While I spent my time there playing on the fire trucks with a fellow daughter, Analiese, the adults spent their time talking and, well, fighting fires. In fact, the lake house we would spend the Fourth at belonged to Analiese's family. It wasn't until I was older and had educated myself on the current state of our country that I realized how hypocritical Fourth of July celebrations are. Ibram X. Kendi succinctly describes the hypocrisy of this holiday in his article What to an American Is the Fourth of July?. Kendi highlights that the Fourth of July implies all Americans are equally free, a factually incorrect statement. People of color, particularly black Americans, are still disenfranchised in this country. Rather than upholding a faux ideology, Kendi proposes that the Fourth of July "should be [about] celebrating our ongoing struggles for freedom and not celebrating as if we are free." He emphasizes that for this to be possible, people must deconstruct the idea that "freedom comes before power." Freedom of a disenfranchised group of people can only come to fruition if they are in power to create structural change. Resistance is not the same as power, but it is the first step in deconstructing the disproportionate amount of power white people hold in America. This article was beautifully written and deeply inspiring, and left the line, "Patriotism on the Fourth of July is resistance," ringing in my head.
Kendi's powerful writing persisted into his review of All About Love by bell hooks. Since I have never read this book, it was an honor to read Kendi's thoughts on it, which certainly inspired me to add it to my library list. What stuck out to me the most was the conception of "love not as a noun, or a strong feeling" but a verb. This deeply resonates with personal feelings I have about showing your love rather than just saying it. The power in hooks' construction of this idea is it lives outside of romantic and familial love - hooks, and Kendi in turn, believe that to love is to nurture other people. If everyone nurtured others, cared for others, put the best interest of other people before their own, our world would be full of love. Americans "do not know how to love" because America is built on white dominate culture - a theory that prioritizes individuals over communities. It is this idea that disrupts a culture of love from flourishing in America. Black lives do not matter in America right now because Americans do not "know how to love black lives." Americans must show, through structural and systemic change, that they love black lives. This reminded me of the first chapter in Pose, Wobble, Flow in which a distinction is made between "advocating for pedagogy that is "tolerant" and actually being "proactive and anticipatory" in your work (19). You cannot just say that your classroom is accepting of all races, sexes, cultures, etc. without putting in the work to make it true. Just as you have to show your love rather than state it, you must show your dedication to "culturally proactive teaching" rather than declaring it (18). To do this, you must constantly interrogate "your own positionality" as an educator (20). How do your identities influence your teacher persona? This is something I consider constantly as a white educator teacher black and brown children.
Finally, I want to reflect on Gay's second to last paragraph in "Still Processing." It is our (the members of this class) responsibility, as white educators, to educate our students on black culture while NOT perpetuating the idea that suffering and blackness are synonyms. We must establish the truth that black suffering is NOT natural, but is "in fact, by design" (220). This begins with acknowledging our privilege and how white dominate culture infiltrates our classrooms.
Kendi's powerful writing persisted into his review of All About Love by bell hooks. Since I have never read this book, it was an honor to read Kendi's thoughts on it, which certainly inspired me to add it to my library list. What stuck out to me the most was the conception of "love not as a noun, or a strong feeling" but a verb. This deeply resonates with personal feelings I have about showing your love rather than just saying it. The power in hooks' construction of this idea is it lives outside of romantic and familial love - hooks, and Kendi in turn, believe that to love is to nurture other people. If everyone nurtured others, cared for others, put the best interest of other people before their own, our world would be full of love. Americans "do not know how to love" because America is built on white dominate culture - a theory that prioritizes individuals over communities. It is this idea that disrupts a culture of love from flourishing in America. Black lives do not matter in America right now because Americans do not "know how to love black lives." Americans must show, through structural and systemic change, that they love black lives. This reminded me of the first chapter in Pose, Wobble, Flow in which a distinction is made between "advocating for pedagogy that is "tolerant" and actually being "proactive and anticipatory" in your work (19). You cannot just say that your classroom is accepting of all races, sexes, cultures, etc. without putting in the work to make it true. Just as you have to show your love rather than state it, you must show your dedication to "culturally proactive teaching" rather than declaring it (18). To do this, you must constantly interrogate "your own positionality" as an educator (20). How do your identities influence your teacher persona? This is something I consider constantly as a white educator teacher black and brown children.
Finally, I want to reflect on Gay's second to last paragraph in "Still Processing." It is our (the members of this class) responsibility, as white educators, to educate our students on black culture while NOT perpetuating the idea that suffering and blackness are synonyms. We must establish the truth that black suffering is NOT natural, but is "in fact, by design" (220). This begins with acknowledging our privilege and how white dominate culture infiltrates our classrooms.
Hi Jordan,
ReplyDeleteYou're post resonated with me on varied levels. I, too, have always loved the Fourth of July. Having pride in my country, just like you, has been engrained in my psyche since I was a little girl. Being raised by a military father has had it's impact. Often, I remember singing "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" with my dad as he talked about the military and our fight over in Afghanistan. It made me proud to be an American. Yet, we both share a common experience of becoming educated on the inequities within our society and realizing that not everyone is free. I define free exemption from ridicule, discrimination, prejudice, and persecution. I loved when you said, "You cannot just say that your classroom is accepting of all races, sexes, cultures, etc. without putting in the work to make it true. Just as you have to show your love rather than state it, you must show your dedication to "culturally proactive teaching" rather than declaring it." I believe that in order to dismantle our white dominated society then those who are closest in proximity to it need to work on identifying their own biases and breaking down their own racism. Only then as white educators can we facilitate race related discussions and help guide our students to dismantle our society. But if you were to answer the question "How as a society do we dismantle white dominant culture?," how would you answer it?