For my teach-out project, I landed on the idea of having a one-on-one conversation with my Dad on the subject of white privilege. The concept surrounding white privilege was something I had an idea of before taking this class, but not a complete understanding. The very same could be said for my dad– he is a very relaxed guy, liberal leaning, but not necessarily someone active in that political space. The only times such sensitive topics such as race and white privilege appear is at the dinner table. My dad is also a teacher, and time and time again has experienced diversity seminars at his school. This is important, since he and I both teach in a very diverse district. However, these seminars, especially those focused on the subject of whiteness, rubbed him the wrong way. At dinner, my dad would complain he didn’t like being targeted for being a “white old man”, and didn’t understand why– he isn’t racist, and in his words did not actively use being white to his advantage. After learning what I’ve learned in this course, I realized that my dad would really benefit from a complete understanding of white privilege. I thought, if I could just talk to him honestly about it, instead of being talked down to in a seminar, maybe that barrier could be broken, and we could have an open discussion on white privilege and what it means.
I chose two materials for this teach out: Alan Johnson’s Privilege, Power, and Difference, and Mellody Hobson’s color brave TED talk. Both share similar ideas on the subject of not being a part of culturally dominant groups. They make it clear that there are dominant groups in the United States, brought to life by social constructs meant to keep white people in power. Important too, was the fact that these materials stress taking ourselves personally out of the equation when discussing it– the issue of white privilege is less about us as individuals, and more so about the groups we belong to. How we as white people obviously benefit from being so– we have to worry far less about being stopped in a store, or being pulled over, or attaining better career paths. Where there is privilege, there is oppression. White privilege has more to do with how we are treated by the people surrounding us than it does ourselves personally. These ideas made a big impact on me when I first learned of them in this class, which is part of why I chose these two materials in particular. I also chose the Mellody Hobson TED talk because I knew this was a video my dad definitely watched in one of his school’s diversity seminars. I wondered if he would have a different perspective on it after the first part of my teach out.
The teach out itself went great. We started with a discussion on what we believed white privilege was. My dad understood that it meant white people had certain advantages they could utilize. He believed that his age group was a target of diversity seminar because the “pendulum was swinging the other way”-- meaning, socially underprivileged groups are finally getting exposure, but with this “extreme” comes unnecessary targeting. My dad reasoned things would eventually even out again, and his group wouldn’t be targeted. Part of what I learned in this class was actually meeting someone at their level. Instead of telling him that he was outright wrong, I instead got to the root of why he was feeling what he was feeling. Once that is exposed, it is possible to break down that understanding bit by bit. From here we talked a little bit about popular media depictions of representation, how every show has a diverse cast now. I reasoned with him that while that may be true, media depictions might not necessarily represent real struggle. If things were truly “evening out”, I don’t think we would still be fighting for LGBTQ rights or fighting against the censorship of history. We also talked about shows that he grew up with, and what they say about white privilege– why was it that the white main character of “All in the Family” was allowed to be a racist bigot? Would the show have been greenlit in the first place if it was instead a black main character?
From here, I brought out the Alan Johnson reading and explained his key ideas– unearned privilege, the nature of obliviously benefitting from white privilege without actively “using” it, the Diversity Wheel. I tried to reason how we would be treated differently if we were a different race, and how this unequal treatment is a result of our own cultural pedagogies benefitting white privilege. He was apt to listen, which was motivating. Finally, we watched Mellody Hobson’s TED talk, which I have mentioned, we have both watched before, but I wanted to see if he would have a new perspective on it after our talk.
Following the teach out, my dad said I did a great job explaining it. He said that I did a better job of it than even the diversity seminars at his school! This fact I wasn’t really surprised by; after experiencing one in my district, it doesn’t help that the people teaching these don’t really care about the subject either. My dad said he had a far more complete understanding of what it meant, and how our privilege leads to another group being oppressed. We talked further about how this info was important, especially teaching in such a diverse school district. He pointed out how much of his school’s faculty was exclusively white, and we talked about what that says about white privilege, and opportunities. At the end of our conversation, he asked me what he could do, if he had no control over being old and white in this current system. I told him to simply talk about it– as Alan Johnson put it, the first step in solving a problem is addressing a problem to begin with. I hope my teach out had a lasting impact on my dad.
Thank you for such a great class! It was really enlightening and refreshing to talk about these subjects in such an open and honest space. I hope everyone has a good rest of their year!
