Talk about race: when student stories and multicultural curricula are not enough

Abstract

What happens when a White, university teacher of diverse students tries to promote discussion of race by heeding Critical Race Theorists' call for multicultural curricula and student stories? This teacher and his co‐investigator discover that adoption of multicultural curricula and privileging of student stories are not enough. That is, despite this teacher's following the advice of Critical Race Theorists, discussions in his classroom about race were counterproductive, with students hardening their conflicting positions and turning deaf ears to one another. The authors suggest two reasons for this. First, the instructor was not self‐reflexive about his own White biases. Second, he failed to help students place their stories about race within an historical framework. In other words, he failed to help his students see their stories as representing particular moments in our US national dialogue about racism and ways to de‐center White privilege. Thus, in addition to multicultural curricula and student stories, the authors learn that, in this one classroom at least, teacher reflexivity and historical frameworks for student stories are needed for productive talk about race.