“Why Are You Shoving This Stuff Down Our Throats?”: Preparing Intercultural Educators to Challenge Performances of White Racism

Abstract

In general, white students respond intensely to explorations of racism. Intercultural educators are often unprepared for the challenges white students assert during conversations about racism and are unsure how to reply appropriately. Herein, we offer examples of student responses to critical race pedagogy in order to assist teachers in addressing similar stories told in their own classrooms. Based on data collected from over 300 student assignments collected between fall 2003 and fall 2006, we present a typology that categorizes patterns of white student resistance, including acknowledgement of racism, white self-preservation, diversion from structural power, and investment in white supremacy.

Keywords:

• Racism
• Intercultural Communication Pedagogy
• Resistance
• Whiteness

This manuscript has been submitted for presentation at the International Communication Association's annual convention in Montreal, Canada.

This manuscript has been submitted for presentation at the International Communication Association's annual convention in Montreal, Canada.

Notes

This manuscript has been submitted for presentation at the International Communication Association's annual convention in Montreal, Canada.

1. In our teaching and research, we focus on intersecting forms of oppression and privilege. For the purposes of this paper, we focus on race because of space constraints and for analytic clarity.

2. Our pedagogical practices are informed by critical approaches to the study of Intercultural Communication, which involves a commitment to examine unequal relationships of power and to intervene in dominant discourses in the interests of social justice.

3. In fact, W. E. B. DuBois (1990) argued that “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line …” (p. 16) in July 1900.

4. Here we specifically reference the third chapter of Warren's (2003) larger study.

5. We use the term strategy to refer to a consequence of communicative action and not necessarily an intentional “manipulation” of an audience. Like Nakayama and Kizek (1995), we are interested in the circulating power of whiteness that functions within/through the language that people use and do not believe we can know the intention of any particular speaker.

6. This erasure of blackness and the history of people of African descent is also used by students of color to suppress the past: “I found myself wanting to say that the US government took this land from my ancestors and gave us a tiny bit of land in return, but you don't see me still angry … .”

7. The teacher's body is a primary site of pedagogy in the intercultural communication classroom and in conversations about race. Faculty of color are almost always “read” as racialized by students (of all colors) and the bodies of white teachers often go unmarked until a student of color or the teacher him/herself addresses whiteness (Cooks, 2003). Classroom pedagogy is always structurally situated and the choices a teacher can or will make should consider those structural constraints.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Julia R. Johnson

Julia R. Johnson is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies and a Feminist Studies Affiliate at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas

Marc Rich

Marc Rich is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at California State University, Long Beach

Aaron Castelan Cargile

Aaron Castelan Cargile is a Professor of Communication Studies at California State University, Long Beach