Teaching about Race and Ethnicity: Trying to Uncover White Privilege for a White Audience

Abstract

wonder how to teach race and ethnicity to white students. Davis (1992) identified three classroom responses to teaching about inequality-resistance, paralysis, and rage. Resistance can emerge from a class filled with students raised in a homogeneous community. Classes dominated by resistors often deny inequality or are defensive about its existence. Classes also become paralyzed and overwhelmed by the intractability of stratification systems and don't want to talk about inequality anymore (Davis 1992:235). Other students have experienced inequality, and classes on stratification can provide an avenue for anger. Davis describes several dangers within this class reaction, including scapegoating and reductionist thinking. She also cites rage as a powerful motivator for students. It is particularly difficult to teach many white students about privileges and advantages of their membership in a dominant cultural group. Once white students recognize their advantages, they have to acknowledge that institutionalized inequality not only exists, but favors them. Their resistance ranges from overt hostility to a wall of silence (Cohen 1995). Many white students see inequality as a black or Latino issue. Other students think that, because they are white, they have nothing to add to discussions. Finally, many raceand ethnicitybased privileges are invisible to and taken for granted by most whites and even some people of color. It is problematic for white students to see whiteness as a norm and the natural, inevitable, ordinary way of being human (Dyer 1988:44). I have taught at three universities and have often encountered courses