Dr. Rosalyn | We Do it For the Culture
We Do it For the
Culture: A Diversity Course in Three Movements
by Rosalyn D. Davis & Cortny Uttinger
by Rosalyn D. Davis & Cortny Uttinger
Introduction
When I began my academic career, I never
saw myself as someone who would be in the front of the classroom teaching
others. I had firm plans to become a pediatrician because my logic was that
there would always be babies which meant job security. As I wound my way
through different majors, different programs and ultimately found myself in
front of the room lecturing I realized two things. The first thing was my goal
in helping could be met in more ways than being a professional helper. The
second was the power that is present in teaching others about the diversity in
the world around them even in the faces of people that look just like them. This
paper will discuss three movements, or evolutions, of my process in teaching
diversity and inclusion to college students. While the movements themselves are
personal to my perspective and growth as a teacher, our ability to teach
diversity and diverse students is more crucial as the student body continues to
diversify but those teaching most students continue to be predominantly white
(Taliaferro, 2003). It is my hope that suggestions and ideas for others
interested in, or currently teaching, diversity or equity and inclusion courses
can be found in these pages.
Teaching
courses or hosting trainings on diversity, equity and inclusion have often been
a double-edged sword. Imparting knowledge is critical but typically not
sufficient alone to make sure that continued learning happens after the session
ends. Following some of the suggestions listed in previous works about making
sure open dialogues are part of a course as well as more student focused and
reflective assignments has continued to help my thoughts about diversity
education evolve (Garibay, 2014). Introducing subjects like microaggressions
(Sue, Capodilupo, Torino, Bucceri, Holder…Esqulin, 2007) and intersectionality
(Crenshaw, 1991) allow for students to look at themselves as more culturally
rich individuals regardless of their race, ethnicity or gender. While it was
not as equal in my earliest versions of diversity courses as my later courses,
focusing on how to engage the entire student in the learning process is
typically one of the goals as it focuses on more inclusive learning (Garibay,
2014). It would also be remiss for me not to point out that how my students
have reacted to my instruction as well as my reactions to content has not been
driven by the fact that I am a woman of color and that comes with different
perceived level of expertise and baggage (St. Clair & Kishimoto, 2010).
The first movement
involves me as an arbiter of information. My students were expected to, and
often did, come to the course with limited knowledge of the subject matter and
it was my responsibility to rectify that over the course of our time together.
This could be described as a steady drum beat for students to learn a new
dance. The second movement was more of me facilitating the acquisition of new
knowledge. The students were more aware of the world around them but were
missing some nuances of what connected the world to themselves and how they fit
in it. This could be described like a jazz piece. They had the tempo and knew
the tune but needed to learn how to improvise. The final and third movement
involves me in the role of leading an exploration. These students took a
journey with me through a musical genre they know and that has influenced their
lives in ways they couldn’t readily identify and watched how it connected to
diversity, sexuality, race, religion, gender and gender identity. It could have
been as work intensive as the first movement, but the students were the most
engaged and most willing to expand upon what they learned in the lecture.
Movement one:
Learn the beat
My first experience teaching a diversity
course was Introduction to Cross-Cultural Counseling while attending my counseling
psychology doctoral program. It was 2002, not quite a year after the September
11th attacks, and my students were a homogenous group. As I prepared
the syllabus, I was simultaneously terrified and anxious about what the course
would look like in action. I was preparing for resistance and denial from this
group of individuals who had mostly never left their small towns and had
limited at best interaction with people that didn’t look like them. Some of
that anxiety and terror was well founded and there were frequent moments of
students being unable to relate to the material or those that the material
represented as we discussed the various groups. Eventually though, through a
very random occurrence, we had a breakthrough together.
As part of the course
I wanted them to experience other cultures first hand. They could attend an
event geared towards women if they were men, attend service at a mosque if they
were of a different religion, or go to an LGBTQ event if they were straight for
example. Given that even in 2002 student schedules were also becoming more
strained with outside work I also gave them an option to watch a movie that I
had prescreened that delved into diversity issues on some level. We had wrapped
up a discussion earlier than planned and instead of filling it with something
mindless, I opted to show the film Rosewood
(Barone & Singleton, 1997) over the course of our week together. Rosewood (Barone & Singleton, 1997)
shows the real life raising of a Black Florida town in the early 1900s after a
white woman accused an unknown Black man of raping her. The event was denied by
the state of Florida until the last survivors of the massacre came forward and
testified. The movie was meant to both help them out in meeting one of their
cross-cultural experiences but also convey the same kind of information from
our text in a novel way. The only caveat I gave the class was that if they got
upset they were free to leave but otherwise try to keep comments to a minimum
until the end of each class period.
The first day they
fell in love with the characters. The second day they were ill at ease with
what they could see was going to transpire. On the third day for those that
stayed throughout the entirety, there was anger and tears. They could not
understand how people who had gotten along apparently well could become so
inhuman to others based on a rumor they didn’t even appear to believe. Where
had that well spring of hatred erupted from so quickly and why had it been so
violent that it decimated a town? Was that hatred still alive and well almost a
century later? We had the first discussion in class during which students were
aware of how their biases could be hurting others and how little had changed
for people who had black or brown skin in terms of how they were perceived. It
was at that moment the dynamic of the class changed and we were able to delve
into spaces we had not had access to previously. There was a student who had
been quite resistant to all the material in our textbook no matter what group
was under discussion. She had continued to view herself as a minority after
moving to the states from Canada. Her family was treated differently because of
their accents but had overcome their shortcomings so she wasn’t sure why people
of color in the United States couldn’t do the same thing. Watching Rosewood (Barone & Singleton, 1997) had
made her understand how hurtful her previous stance had been and she wasn’t
sure why she hadn’t heard about events like that before my class. I will follow
up with more statements from her in a later portion of this essay.
I taught the class
five more times before I graduated and each time there was a Rosewood (Barone & Singleton, 1997) moment
either through that film, an in-class disclosure by someone in the room or
something else that came to campus for us to experience as a group. It was
necessary and crucial for the information to become salient and for the
students to embrace diversity as more than the buzzword of the moment. After
leaving my doctoral program I moved into mental health and taught segments of
diversity courses for others which was not usually enough time for a Rosewood (Barone & Singleton, 1997) moment.
I struggled with feeling like they weren’t fully engaging with the concept of
diversity even though most training models require some level of cultural
competence. That frustration probably led to me abandoning the concept of Rosewood (Barone & Singleton, 1997) moments
in teaching diversity to others because it was emotionally draining to
facilitate them and left me feeling very exposed each time they occurred. That
may have also been because of the six times I taught the course there was never
more than four students of color in a course of 30 people each time. I could
only get to four if I included the biracial students as well. Asking those
students to be bearers of all race-based discussion or opinion was not fair and
the amount of information the majority group students had about race and
ethnicity was extensive so there was a steep learning curve for most involved.
Rothschild (2003) touches on this somewhat when discussing the preparation of
students in high school for college and that depending oh how topics of culture
and race are framed students believe themselves to be accepting but have never
had their views challenged in any significant way.
Movement two:
Figure out a new melody
I left the mental health field full time
and returned to academia about a decade later. In my new faculty role, I
imparted a lot of knowledge about being a clinician and what real life therapy
looked like versus what they believed to be true. I also found myself
supplementing a lot of material in the book with information as it applied to
diverse populations. It didn’t matter what class was on deck I tried to infuse
some level of diversity in it to make the material more in-depth and salient. In
that vein, I started lobbying to teach a diversity class to our students. The
lobbying efforts did not drag on thankfully and about a year later I taught
Multicultural Issues in Counseling to an unexpectedly large group.
It was not a
direct replay of the earlier iteration of my diversity course. The class was
more diverse than my previous courses had been historically, and the push back
wasn’t from my white students during this course. My diverse students didn’t
think there was as much of a need to be culturally aware because everyone
treated them just fine. In this course more diverse meant there were six
diverse students in a class of 25. They represented different racial, ethnic,
religious and sexual minority statuses but that made for more vibrant
conversation. However, these students believed that they were not struggling so
they did not understand why others were complaining about mistreatment. Two
moments in that class became the backbone of change. The first being an in-depth
conversation about educational opportunities and how they differed based on
socioeconomic status and area of the country. It had never occurred to them
that lack of access to education could continue the cycle of poverty and thus
continue to disadvantage people of color because their academic careers had
been nurturing and supportive. The second incident was the church shooting perpetrated
by Dylan Roof and his subsequent arrest versus the treatment of Eric Garner and
others whose interactions with the police ended in their deaths.
There it was. That
moment of outrage that crystallized their understanding that while progress has
been made for some people in this country not much had changed. Their skin
color existed in state where it was weaponized by observers and seen as more
threatening and stronger than normal just because it is easily visually
distinguished from white/fair skin. That thought has been borne out in recent
research in which black girls are seen as more adult and more knowledgeable
about sex and thus less in need of protection and responsible for the
aggressive sexual behavior directed towards them (Epstein, Blake &
Gonzalez, 2017). Those two moments became the refrain throughout that course
and allowed them to look at news reports, their own reactions and those of
their friends and family from a different lens. It was the impetus for them
stepping away from stereotypical information about communities of color are and
remain poor and it took moments out of our control but very salient in the
moment of that course. They became advocates for diverse others and looked at
their own future careers in different ways which was fulfilling for me as a
teacher but much more beneficial for them as they were now at least willing to explore
what they did not know.
The second version
of this class had an unexpected benefit of being small and the students were much
more willing to do the deep dive into the topics than the typical diversity
class. There was one student of color in a class of five and one male student. This
made for interesting dynamics and he was able to explore in class a similar
feeling of his work environment that those around him often negated his
maleness because he was so friendly and open to discussion. This course had
also occurred shortly after one of the most divisive elections in US history,
so students seemed to be more aware of their lack of knowledge and
understanding of some things regarding race and diversity. They used reflection
papers to explore who they were and piece together things they had not done so
prior to class. They attended several cultural events on campus and allowed
themselves to be vulnerable and uncomfortable as we watched videos, processed
the events and had class discussions. They were willing to do the work of
becoming global citizens with minimal direction and in the semesters since that
course ended, they have continued to explore their own identities, get more
involved on campus and travel abroad.
It could be viewed
as bad planning to hope for there be a moment like Dylan Roof or a new study
about the views of the majority about minority populations. Unfortunately,
there have been a steady stream of such events since that time frame. College
campuses being plastered with white supremacist propaganda (Zahneis, 2018),
students of color being attacked or killed on campuses (Bauman, 2018), the
protests in Charlottesville, Virginia (Heim, 2017), and the spate of elected
officials who have admitted to wearing blackface at an earlier point in their
history (Segers, 2019). For anyone who does the work in diversity, equity and
inclusion the question is not if another incident will happen but when it will
happen and the impact it will have on your course materials. Additionally,
while Rosewood is not a film I would be prone to show in my courses now
Fruitvale Station or Tell Them We Are Rising are fantastic alternatives to
spark in depth conversation about race and class in the United States.
Movement three:
Time for a remix
Each of those prior eight classes and several
dozen training opportunities were a mix of fruitful and failure. There were
peak moments that made me feel like the work I did had been valuable and well
utilized by those that I instructed. There were also valley moments that made
me reevaluate what the point of the work was in the grand scheme of things
because people were so resistant to learning unless I could give them a moment
in which I was emotionally open in a vein where it seemed I really should not
be if I was going to maintain a professional stance. Being exposed was also
throwing me out of the rhythm I normally engage in during my classes as well. It
takes a moment to regroup and move forward and without making classroom moments
about myself. I had no plans on teaching another diversity course when an
unexpected opportunity fell into my lap to teach a special topics course in the
summer of 2017. While I could have offered my traditional and easy to roll out
diversity course, I wanted to move in a different direction just to see what
the impact would be in this version.
That is what
birthed the Psychology of Hip-Hop course. I took the same topics as my
traditionally structured diversity courses (women, men, people of color,
sexuality, etc.), added a few new ones (cultural appropriation and power) and
used hip hop and rap music as the overlay and intersection for all of it. The
makeup of both versions of this course have been two diverse students (either
race or sexual minority status) in a group of fifteen students. Unlike my
traditional courses, we would read several thorough articles on each topic,
shared examples of hip-hop music that directly related to those topics, openly
discussed them in class and participated in detailed journal writing each week.
In terms of workload it was not any more intense than a typical diversity
course, although the richness of the class was unparalleled. The only exposure
on my part was my knowledge of hip-hop music but the ways in which students dug
into the material was multifaceted and more than I asked for. They were able to
look at the exact same topics without fear or trepidation and with more understanding
than there appeared to be in my more traditional diversity courses. Even in the
moments that normally tripped up other classes, violence towards people of
color, they were just inquisitive and at the end of the discussion were both
more knowledgeable but felt better able to discuss the subject with other people.
Additionally, a
moment arose very organically during the course because of a video that was
shared. In the video by Lupe Fiasco (2011), Words
I Never Said, people had all been silenced by the state so the words coming
out of their mouths may not be their own thoughts which kept all conversation
sanitized. After the end of that discussion I asked if they felt silenced when
it came to speaking about diversity issues and the overwhelming response was
yes. They were worried about offending others with their questions. My group of
nursing, education, psychology, hotel tourism and management, and business
students who were all seeking positions working with the public were more
worried about offending than learning because they didn’t want to be seen as
racist and unable to move back from that label. That sentiment is in line with
what Rothschild (2003) found in their study that students were more likely to
remain silent in wake of controversial topics but as a unit we moved past what
that discomfort and into what they were lacking by not asking questions. We
discussed what they weren’t learning as a result and how to respectfully
inquire about a variety of topics with other people. For the duration of this
initial course I let them explore what they knew, added the nuances they needed
to keep exploring and show them what the next step or stage might be as they
ventured in new directions. It was probably one of the most fascinating things
I witnessed in teaching a diversity course. This class was only the second
diversity course in which I left feeling empowered and excited about what to do
next with the design and course material. The second iteration of the course
was also good, but students were not climbing mountains with their personal
growth and the first had clearly set me up for different expectation than a new
section could deliver. I was still quite impressed with how current they
remained in connecting world events to the music we engaged with in class and
how we handled would could have been a painful and awkward conversation.
In a lecture that
was focusing on language within hip hop and what words meant in that community
versus what it may mean outside of it we eventually got around to the use of derogatory
language, namely use of the n word in a lot of popular music. I let everyone
take a quick break and then restarted the course with a video of Kendrick Lamar
stopping a fan from performing with him when she used the n word in time with
the music. We discussed the position that if rappers keep using it then they
should expect that others would as well. Then we switched to the position that
it is not a word that is largely accepted by people of color someone who is not
from that community says it because of the history of negativity attached to
the word. To give them more than the opportunity to debate I discussed code
switching and coopting of language by oppressed communities that reclaimed
negative words for their own benefit and uplift. They were able to see that
quickly with a group we had discussed, N.W.A., and more globally in examples
from the LGBTQ+ community as well. Instead of remaining steadfast in there only
being one way of seeing language they embraced the dialogue and wrote
intriguing reflections for that week.
The growth in this
movement was exponential in comparison to the previous two but that was both on
the part of my students and myself. I gave them more room to explore and they
took advantage of it. I took less onus to be expert and they showed me the ways
in which they were exploring the content and applying it to their lives. In
short, the effort may not have been dramatically different for me but the
payoff for them and for me was uniquely different and something that I plan on
infusing into future versions of all my diversity courses.
Reviews from the
listeners
The first version of my diversity course
was taught over a decade ago and two class comments stand out from that
Rosewood moment. The young Canadian woman that I mentioned earlier in this
essay left the course in tears on the second day of the film. I was not sure if
that was because she was angry or in distress based on her earlier statements
in the class. When we began discussing the film, she was entirely silent and
appeared sheepish for a week or two afterwards. In her next reflection paper,
she apologized to me for not being willing to embrace the material before she
saw the film. She again wondered why she had not been taught about the violence
of race relations in this country before her senior year in college. She
discussed the lack of time between the film’s setting and our current era and
she was just struck that these things had just been swept under the rug. She
was actively engaged from that moment forward and was one of the strongest
students in the course. Viewing the film helped another young woman who was
currently involved in an interracial relationship talk to her partner about
race in the country. He had seen the film and refused to watch it with her at
home. After, she finished the film she shared with us that they had a long
discussion about what he faced as a darker skinned Black man in the United
States but especially in Indiana and that even though they had been together for
two years it was the first time she really understood the fear he lived with on
a daily basis.
The next version
of the course was more recent, and students shared equally engaging thoughts in
papers and in their course evaluations. Eighty percent of the written comments
discussed the value of just being able to have open conversations about race
that supplemented the readings and that the environment allowed them to share
their thoughts without fear. The following quote is indicative of what was
shared: “Openness to have honest conversations about things that matter.” My
favorite comment came from someone outside of the major: “I found this course
very interesting. I thought everything was very valuable. I’m not in this major
but as a health science major I found this course would be a great course for
health science majors to take.” While
this student isn’t in education, this addresses the points that Taliaferro
(2003) brings up in their work that students in several different disciplines
need good diversity training in order to be good practitioners in the future. There’s
a lot of information I did not know that I will be able to use.” Those are
great to see the first time you make a major revision to a course but the most
interesting moment in that course was a student’s reaction to Dylan Roof
getting Burger King and taken into custody in a bullet proof vest and that was
just utter shock and disbelief. However, it made him reflect on his high school
athletic career and the fear he and his teammates had about playing in a
predominantly Black area before they got to the event. Upon arriving there, he
was struck by how aggressive the parents from his school were towards the
opposing team who seemed to him to be just like him except they were Black. He
was never able to forget how ugly the parents seemed in that moment because he
only saw it when his opponents were not White.
The final version
of the course provided some of the best written feedback and in class
discussions I think I had ever experienced. One student shared a particularly
significant history of trauma in her past and that her younger sister had
embraced hip-hop as her outlet to express herself. She expressed her
appreciation for the course by saying: “I finally understand the music my
sister has been listening to for yours. I have been able to discuss some songs
and things with her and it has brought us much closer. I know see hip-hop more
as poetry written by people who can relate to my life instead of noise I just
couldn’t embrace before now.” Other students shared a similar sentiment in that
they understood some of the hypermasculinity that was expressed in the music
and what it meant to embrace or not embrace the lyrics that were being
presented. We were also able to have lengthy discussions about hip-hop artists
that they were likely not listening to because they were not getting the same
kind of airplay as Kanye West or Drake. The positive aspects of hip-hop and the
message it was able to convey if you were receptive to it led to new personal
theme songs being discovered. Finally, a student shared: “I learned a lot about
the history of hip-hop. I learned why it
started and when. I really liked this
class and felt it helped me grow as a person.
Really helped me create a more open mind.”
If we discuss one
of the goals of inclusive pedagogy which is to use narratives to make
connections between the content and real life then I can see in each of these
reviews how students began to do that in every diversity class I taught
(Garibay, 2014). Even making that
statement though, I can say it was easier to do with more experience and in
courses that students were able to more concretely take outside material and
tie it back into our current course as they did by having to share music in the
Hip-Hop course or engage in cross cultural experience or being diversity
experts in previous courses.
Large amounts of
the feedback showed the acquisition of new knowledge which is crucial to
teaching courses like these. In that regard, one movement or the other may only
matter to the instructor and the kind of energy you would like to put into the
course. However, the more personally engaged and reflective of personal growth
feedback has continued to come from the Remix portion of my teaching. It could
be because that is a topic that students are already excited about and willing
to connect to easily. It could also be because I am a fan of the genre so get
energized about teaching it in a different way than the other movements. It
could also just be a template for crafting new options as I am doing a blended
version of movements two and three in an online graduate course now and it also
seems to be connecting to students in equally profound ways.
Summary and
suggestions
As we seek to increase their understanding
of all topics but especially diversity, equity and inclusion we should
continually revisit our course goals and how we want to go about achieving
them. That may be dependent on what level of course we are teaching or the
kinds of students we are teaching. Students who are lacking in basic experience
with different cultures may benefit from courses founded firmly in imparting
knowledge. Movement one for me was in large part because my students were
taking a lower level course, had limited exposure to psychology and were from a
very culturally homogenous area. Students or colleges with more diverse student
bodies or knowledge could deal more expressly with open dialogue and
experiences that allow them to stretch their comfort zones. Students in
movement two knew more and had been exposed to more so it felt disingenuous to
stay at the lower level of instruction. Pushing their growth within a limited
range just seemed like the best idea to get them invested in the material and
learn something. While the idea of being diversity experts in the first version
scared them, once they embraced the concept and found what they were passionate
about it led to more hands-on learning and a tangible work product they could
share with others for employment or graduate school opportunities. The final
option could be employed if you are trying to meet students where they are and
use a subject, they are already intrigued by to increase their engagement. Movement three was just an attempt to see if
a novel hook could get students to learn the same concepts but in a much more
robust way. The answer turned out to be yes and the students benefitted greatly
from that. As our students become more aware and accepting of diversity issues
there will likely need to be a new dance with them in order to make sure they
have learned new content and can apply it but that is a challenge I think we
should all be able to meet.
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