The Handbook of Race and Adult Education E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 597

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

The Handbook of Race and Adult Education While much attention has been given to inclusion, diversity, and multiculturalism within adult education, The Handbook of Race and Adult Education is the first comprehensive work to engage in a dialogue specifically about race and racism and the effect these factors have on the marginalization or oppression of groups and individuals. This landmark book provides the field of adult and continuing education with a model for the discussion of race and racism from social, educational, political, and psychological perspectives, and seeks to articulate a conceptual challenge to the ethnocentric focus of the discussion in the field. It offers adult education scholars, as well as those engaged in research and teaching about race, an opportunity to engage in a discourse about race and racism, including examinations of how these factors have been seen through multiple theoretical frameworks; how they have affected many lived experiences at work, home, and within educational settings; and how they have served to privilege some and not others. The book offers an exploration into how these factors need to be centered in a discourse and perspective that can provide those in the margins as well as in the center with ways to think about creating changes in their classrooms, communities, and homes. This volume is a timely addition to the intense racial debate occurring in this country today. It is a long overdue medium through which those in higher education, as well as the general adult education field, can engage in a discussion that leads to critical understanding and moves us into meaningful change.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

THE EDITORS

THE CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS

Acknowledgements

Scipio

Juanita

Stephen

Vanessa

Foreword

The Beginning Kitchen Table Dialogue

OUR BEGINNINGS

WHO ARE WE?

MOVING FROM HISTORY TO ACTION

OUR KITCHEN TABLE DIALOGUE

PUSHING FORWARD

THE GOAL: ENGAGEMENT IN DIALOGICAL DISCUSSIONS ON RACE AND RACISM

OVERVIEW OF THIS BOOK

REFERENCES

PART ONE - The Myth Versus the Reality of Race and Racism

Chapter 1 - Rebirth of the Indigenous Spirit Turning the World Right Side Up

THE JOURNEY: MY STORY

READING AN UPSIDE DOWN WORLD

SEARCHING FOR THE RIGHT MEDICINE

REDISCOVERING MY WORLD OF ORIGIN

TURNING THE WORLD RIGHT SIDE UP

HEALING WHILE TEACHING: REBIRTHING

REFERENCES

Chapter 2 - Reading, Writing, and Racism Developing Racial Literacy in the ...

THE IMPACT OF RACE AND RACISM ON MY TEACHING

ARE WE THERE YET? THE ELUSIVE PERMANENCE OF RACISM

REFERENCES

Chapter 3 - Experiencing the Race, Gender, and Socioeconomic Divide in Academia ...

IDENTITY: ¿QUIEN SOY YO? (WHO AM I?)

FACTORS INFLUENCING ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

THE EVOLUTION OF OUR SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

ENGAGING IN ADVOCACY AND ACTIVIST SCHOLARSHIP

THE TRIALS, TRIBULATIONS, AND SYNCHRONICITY OF BEING A CHICANA PROFESSOR

WHAT VALIDATES AND INSPIRES US TO STAY THE COURSE

THE NEED FOR DIALOGUE

SYNCHRONICITY

REFERENCES

Chapter 4 - Transforming Teaching and Learning Teaching Race

PERSPECTIVES ON FEMINIST PEDAGOGY

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: THE EXPERIENCE OF RACE IN THE CLASSROOM

TRANSFORMING TEACHING AND LEARNING: BEYOND SURVIVING RACE IN THE CLASSROOM

TRANSFORMATION BEGINS AT HOME

REFERENCES

Chapter 5 - “Who Is This Cowboy?” Challenging the Cultural Gatekeepers

MY LEGACY—THE JOURNEY

THEORIZING—GROWING PAINS

THEORY RECONSTRUCTED

THEORY REALIZED—TRUTH TELLING

REFERENCES

REFLECTION ONE - Healing A Journey Through Conversations on Race and Gender

PART TWO - Problematizing “Whiteness,” Supremacy, and Privilege: Their Impact ...

Chapter 6 - White Whispers Talking About Race in Adult Education

SEEDS OF RACISM

HOW WHITES CONCEPTUALIZE AND DISCUSS WHITENESS AND RACIAL PRIVILEGE

WHY ADULT EDUCATORS NEED TO DISCUSS RACE AND RACISM

REFERENCES

Chapter 7 - Transforming White Consciousness

A WHITE PARADIGM

THE WHITENESS OF MY STORY

REFERENCES

Chapter 8 - Adult Education and the Problem of the Color (Power) Line Views ...

HOW WE CAME TO UNDERSTAND OURSELVES ON THE WHITER SIDE

HOW WE CAME TO ACT ON THE WHITER SIDE

CONNECTING THEORY WITH LIVED EXPERIENCE

REFERENCES

Chapter 9 - White on White Developing Capacity to Communicate About Race with ...

SHUTTING DOWN DIALOGUE BY PROSELYTIZING AND DISDAINING

CRITICAL HUMILITY AS A HABIT OF BEING THAT SUPPORTS REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

TRYING TO REFLECT-IN-ACTION USING CRITICAL HUMILITY

REFLECTING ON THE ATTEMPTS TO APPLY CRITICAL HUMILITY

REACHING FOR A NEW WAY OF BEING

REFERENCES

REFLECTION TWO - Struggling A Journey of Comfort and Discomfort

REFERENCE

PART THREE - Theoretical Responses to Race and Racism

REFERENCES

Chapter 10 - An Exploration of Critical Race Theory

ORIGINS OF CRITICAL RACE THEORY

DESCRIPTION AND DISCUSSION OF CRT

ADULT EDUCATION AND CRT

A WAY FORWARD: RESPIRITUALIZATION AND COMMUNITY

REFERENCES

Chapter 11 - Musings on Controversial Intersections of Positionality A Queer ...

CRITICAL RACE THEORY AND QUEER CRIT

A QUEER CRIT PERSPECTIVE

PRACTICING EDUCATIONAL EQUALITY

REFERENCES

Chapter 12 - Challenging Racism Through Postcolonial Discourse A Critical ...

ENGAGING IN AUTHENTIC DIALOGUE

UNDERSTANDING AFRO-CARIBBEAN IDENTITY AND PERCEPTIONS OF RACISM

USING POSTCOLONIAL THEORY AND DIALOGUES ON RACE

EMBRACING A PRACTICE OF CRITICAL PROFESSIONALISM

REFERENCES

Chapter 13 - Black Skins, No Mask

DEFINING INTERNALIZED RACISM

POSITIONING SASHA PEDAGOGY IN ACADEMIC DISCOURSE

ALLOWING MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE TO OCCUR

REFERENCES

Chapter 14 - Immigration, Racial Identity, and Adult Education Reflections on ...

A CHINOTINO STORY

EXPANDING CRITICAL RACE THEORY

IMMIGRATION AND CIVIL RIGHTS

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF RACE

EDUCATING TO PRODUCE SOLUTIONS, NOT PROBLEMS

REFERENCES

Chapter 15 - A River Runs Through It Building Bridges Across Racial Divisions ...

FRAMING OUR WORK: CRITICAL THEORIES

CLASSROOMS REFLECTING SOCIETY

WHO SPEAKS? WHO HEARS? TRANSFORMING HEGEMONIC NOTIONS

THE RIVER THAT DIVIDES US

BRIDGING THE DIVIDE: SHIFTING THE TIDE

SUSTAINING THE MOMENTUM

REFERENCES

REFLECTION THREE - Looking Inward A Journey Through Dialogue and Reflections on Race

PART FOUR - Reframing the Field Through the Lens of Race

REFERENCE

Chapter 16 - Mammies, Maids, and Mamas The Unspoken Language of Perceptual and ...

RACISM AND LIVED EXPERIENCES

RACISM CONVEYED THROUGH LANGUAGE: WHO AM I?

MAKING THE CONNECTION: RACISM AFFECTS RELATIONSHIPS

ASSAULTING WITH WORDS

USING CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

RECOGNIZING RACISM EMBEDDED IN CONTEXT

HEARING THE SILENT LANGUAGE OF RACISM: SILENCING

ENGAGING IN REAL CONVERSATION IN REAL TIME

USING LANGUAGE THAT GIVES VOICE

REFERENCES

Chapter 17 - The Race Card

THE CONTEXT

AN AFRICAN-CENTERED PARADIGM

THE RACE CARD

THE JOURNEY

THE JOURNEY IS PERSONAL

REFERENCES

Chapter 18 - Expanding the Racialized Discourse An Asian American Perspective

ASIAN AMERICANS AS A HETEROGENEOUS GROUP

ANTI-ASIAN DISCRIMINATION AND THE CONTEMPORARY STEREOTYPES

THE MODEL MINORITY

ADULT EDUCATION PRACTICE: HEALING

ADULT EDUCATION PRACTICE: REFLECTION OF THE OTHER

REFRAMING THE FIELD THROUGH RESEARCH

THE VISIBLE ASIAN AMERICAN

REFERENCES

Chapter 19 - Challenges and Approaches to Racializing Discourse in a ...

WHITE RACIAL DEVELOPMENT MODELS

WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE?

REFERENCES

Chapter 20 - Using an African-Centered Paradigm for Understanding Race and ...

AFRICAN-CENTERED PARADIGM

THE PRINCIPLES OF TWINNESS AND COMPLEMENTARITY

FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

EMBRACING THE AFRICAN-CENTERED PARADIGM

REFERENCES

REFLECTION FOUR - Inpowering the Self A Journey Toward Ending Racism

PART FIVE - Individual and Collective Responses to Race and Racism

OUR COLLECTIVE RESPONSE: CHANGE ISN’T EASY, BUT IT’S NEEDED

ENTERING THE DIALOGUE: AM I SAFE?

INTENTIONALITY, RACE, AND RACISM: THE BEST-LAID PLANS

PUSHING FORWARD

THE ENGAGEMENT: PUSHING THE DIALOGUE FORWARD

REFERENCES

Chapter 21 - Epilogue Implications for Curriculum, Programming, and Research

SCIPIO: AFRICENTRISM IN PRACTICE

VANESSA: WOMANIST IN PRACTICE—GIVING VOICE

JUANITA: BLACK FEMINISM IN PRACTICE

STEPHEN: RECOGNIZING AND CHALLENGING WHITE SUPREMACY

FINAL REFLECTION: FROM THE KITCHEN TABLE TO THE CLASSROOM

REFERENCES

INDEX

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sheared, Vanessa, 1956-

The handbook of race and adult education : a resource for dialogue on racism / Vanessa Sheared . . . [et al.].

p. cm.—(Jossey-Bass higher education series)

Includes index.

eISBN : 978-0-470-61067-1

1. Racism in education—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Discrimination in education—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 3. Adult education—Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title.

LC212.5.S54 2010

374’.1829—dc22

2010006969

HB Printing

The Jossey-Bass Higher Education Series

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

THE EDITORS

Stephen D. Brookfield, PhD, is currently Distinguished University Professor of the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis-St. Paul, where in 2008 he won the university’s Diversity in Teaching and Research Award. He has written and edited twelve books on adult learning, teaching, leadership, and critical thinking, four of which have won the Cyril O. Houle World Award for Literature in Adult Education. He is a straight Anglo-American and leads a punk rock band, The 99ers.

Scipio A. J. Colin III, EdD, is associate professor in the Department of Adult and Continuing Education at National-Louis University, Chicago, Illinois. She is the coeditor (with Elizabeth Hayes) of Confronting Racism and Sexism. She has held positions as an administrator and faculty member in community college and university settings. Her research interests include Africentric pedagogy and womanist consciousness, Africentric educational history and philosophy, African Ameripean adult education history and philosophy and culturally grounded curriculum and community-based programming.

Juanita Johnson-Bailey, EdD, is professor of adult education and women’s studies at the University of Georgia, Athens (UGA). She is a member of the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame, and her book Sistahs in College: Making a Way out of No Way (2001) received the Phillip Frandson Award for Literature in Continuing Higher Education and the Sadie Alexander Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Black Women’s Studies. She currently serves as UGA’s interim director of the Institute for Women’s Studies.

Elizabeth Peterson, EdD, served as associate professor in the Department of Adult, Continuing and Literacy Education at National-Louis University. She published extensively in the field. She is the author of African American Women: A Study of Will and Success, and the editor of Freedom Road: Adult Education of African Americans. She codirected the Gidwitz Center for Urban Policy and Community Development. Elizabeth Peterson passed away before the completion of this book, in January 2009. We will miss her as a friend and colleague.

Vanessa Sheared, EdD, is dean of the College of Education at California State University, Sacramento. She is the author of Race Gender and Welfare Reform: The Elusive Quest for Self Determination, the coeditor (with Peggy Sissel) of Making Space: Merging Theory and Practice, and the author of chapters and articles on giving voice, polyrhythmic realities, gender and welfare reform, and womanist pedagogy and ways of knowing and being. She has taught in and served in administrative positions at several universities. She is the African American single parent of college graduate Jamil.

THE CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS

Mary Alfred is associate dean for faculty affairs and associate professor of adult education in the College of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M University. As an immigrant from the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia, her research interests include the sociocultural contexts of immigration and globalization, low-income/low literate adults in education and in the workplace, and learning and development among people of the African Diaspora.

Carole Barlas is a member of the European-American Collaborative Challenging Whiteness. She is an adult educator and independent consultant in the field of organizational development and transformative learning. She has been an adjunct professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies and St. Mary’s College. Carole is now retired and is an exhibited painter and a yoga practitioner. She is a White Jewish woman and has two adult children and two grandsons.

Lisa M. Baumgartner is associate professor in the Counseling, Adult and Higher Education Department at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, where she has worked since 2003. She is a coauthor of Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide (third edition), which won the Cyril O. Houle Award for Outstanding Literature in Adult Education in 2007, and Learning and Development: Multicultural Stories (2000). She is a White, childfree woman in her midforties from the upper Midwestern United States.

Rose Borunda is chair and associate professor of counselor education at California State University, Sacramento, where she has served for seven years. She identifies with her indigenous roots as a descendant of the Purépecha tribe. Her recent publications include “Lived Stories: Participatory Leadership in School Counseling,” and “Collaboration and Community Transformation Center Stage: When Teachers, Youth and Parents Actively Value Difference.” She travels this journey with her husband, Mike, two adult children, and many adopted family members and friends.

Ronald M. Cervero is professor and associate dean for outreach, engagement, and strategic initiatives in the College of Education at the University of Georgia. He has researched and written about power and politics in adult education, including Working the Planning Table: Negotiating Democratically for Adult, Continuing, and Workplace Education (with Arthur Wilson, 2008) and, in the Harvard Educational Review, “Different Worlds and Divergent Paths: Academic Careers Defined by Race and Gender”(with Juanita Johnson-Bailey, 2008).

Rosemary B. Closson is on the adult education faculty at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Her research focus is on what is learned from experience in academic and service learning settings in adult education. She has published several articles on learning experientially about race and racism, particularly when Whites are in the minority and African Americans are in the majority. Currently, she is exploring and critically examining critical race theory and its relationship to adult education.

LaJerne Terry Cornish is assistant professor of education at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. A Baltimore native and Goucher alum, LaJerne returned to Goucher as an instructor in the fall of 1998, after spending fifteen years in the Baltimore City Public School System, serving as teacher, project coordinator, and assistant principal. In addition to her career in education, LaJerne is a commissioned lay pastor in the Presbytery of Baltimore. LaJerne and her husband, Wayne Cornish Sr., have one son, Wayne Cornish Jr.

Barbara Ford is professor of elementary education at San Francisco State University and also teaches classes in Africana Studies, with extensive work in Black child development. She was formerly an adult education and elementary school teacher in Los Angeles, and she is a proud mother and grandmother.

Doris A. Flowers is professor in the College of Education at San Francisco State University, where she teaches courses in adult education, language and equity, and social justice. She is the coordinator of the Center for Adult Education Master Degree and the Equity and Social Justice Education programs. Her research focus is on language and literacy in adult learning, race, class, language, gender, educational policy, and African-centered perspectives in teaching and learning.

Raquel A. Gonzáles is professor in the Department of Special Education, Rehabilitation, School Psychology and Deaf Studies at California State University, Sacramento. Her research focus is on students with emotional and behavioral disorders, English learners in special education, and mental health issues affecting Hispanic children and families. She has published several articles centered on her research. Raquel credits her parents for teaching her the meaning behind bien educada.

Catherine A. Hansman has been professor of adult learning and development at Cleveland State University since 1998, and received a Cyril O. Houle Emerging Scholars in Adult and Continuing Education scholarship that allowed her to explore her research interests: power in mentoring relationships; race, class, and gender; and low-income adults in higher education. Among her publications are two books that reflect these interests: Understanding and Negotiating the Political Landscape of Adult Education (with Peggy Sissel), and Critical Perspectives on Mentoring.

Taj Johns teaches transformative leadership from a cultural and social justice perspective. She is adjunct faculty at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California, and Bainbridge Graduate Institute in Seattle, Washington. Taj has a strong interest in understanding the effects of internalized oppression on human development. She is the founder of a Black scholars’ writing group and has published her research in the Handbook of Action Research (second edition, 2007).

Elizabeth Kasl has fostered collaborative learning through scholarly work, curriculum development, and pedagogical practice. When she helped form the doctoral program in transformative learning at the California Institute of Integral Studies, students of color challenged her and supported her initial exploration of issues of racism and White privilege. As an independent scholar, she continues to learn about Whiteness and to benefit from the power of group learning as a member of the European-American Collaborative Challenging Whiteness.

Luis Kong is a Peruvian Chinese American educator and director of the Alameda County Library’s adult literacy program in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the author of “Immigrant Civic Participation in Citizenship Schools”; “Race, Gender and Economic Self-Sufficiency in a Worker-Owned Housecleaning Cooperative”; “The Role of Citizenship Schools in the Construction of Racial Identity Among Older Adult Immigrants”; and “Moving Without Moving: An Exploration of Somatic Learning as Transformative Process in Adult Education.”

Ming-yeh Lee is an Asian Chinese American associate professor of adult education and equity and social justice programs at San Francisco State University, where she has been a member of the faculty since 1998. Born and raised in Taiwan, she immigrated to the United States around twenty years ago. She has received outstanding teaching and research awards and published in the areas of adult immigrant students, adult learning, transnational education, and equity and social justice in education.

Alec MacLeod is a member of the European-American Collaborative Challenging Whiteness. He has been on the faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies since 1993. A middle-aged, middle-class, straight White male, he recently launched a Web project, The Canine in Conversation, that reflects on the ways in which colloquial references to dogs, especially name-calling references, can be signifiers of dehumanization (www.metaphordogs.org).

Elaine Manglitz is assistant vice president for student affairs at Clayton State University near Atlanta, Georgia. She has researched and written about challenging White privilege and in particular how White adult educators can challenge racism and White privilege.

Maria Mejorado is professor in the Bilingual/Multicultural Education Department at California State University, Sacramento, and has taught courses there since 2001. She is a member of the core faculty in the Educational Leadership Doctoral Program and is the director of the High School Equivalency Program (HEP), which prepares migrant farmworkers for the GED examination.

Mitsunori Misawa is assistant professor in the qualitative research program at the University of Georgia and an educational and training specialist at Central State Hospital. His research interests include adult bullying; antioppressive education; the intersectionality of race, sexual orientation, and gender; feminist pedagogy; positionality; qualitative research; narrative inquiry; critical race theory and queer theory; and multicultural issues in higher education and health care settings.

Catherine H. Monaghan, is assistant professor and program coordinator for the Adult Learning and Development Master’s Program, Cleveland State University, Ohio, since 2004. One of her current publications is “Working Against the Grain: White Privilege in Human Resource Development” (in S.A.J. Colin III and C. Lund, eds., White Privilege and Race: Perceptions and Actions, 2010). She is White, single, female, middle-class, Irish, Catholic, heterosexual, midfifties, and able-bodied.

Lesley Ngatai was born in New Zealand; her descent lines are Scottish, Danish, and Ngapuhi from her mother and Ngai te Rangi from her father. Raised by a single working mother who had left school at the age of fourteen, she is the mother of a twenty-four-year-old son. She is currently a senior manager in a major research university library in Sydney. Her research interests embrace organizational learning, indigenous pedagogies, Generation Y learners, and issues of cultural legitimacy.

Doug Paxton is a learner and educator who is passionate about how we learn from our experience and connect to people and places around us. His PhD in transformative learning led to his dissertation research on how White people can work together to address racism in themselves and in organizations. He is a member of the European-American Collaborative for Challenging Whiteness. Born in Kentucky, he now lives in San Francisco with his domestic partner, Joe Vassallo.

Nichole M. Ray is currently lecturer in the Institute for Women’s Studies at the University of Georgia. In addition to teaching in women’s studies, she has taught courses in qualitative research, adult learning, program planning, and adult development. Her research interests focus on African American women in higher education, women and career development, and qualitative research methods.

Penny Rosenwasser is a member of the European-American Collaborative for Challenging Whiteness. A part-time instructor at the City College of San Francisco, she is a social justice practitioner and a White, queer Ashkenazi Jew. Penny is completing a book on internalized anti-Semitism and its relationship to justice in Israel and Palestine and also to the construction of race in the United States. Her previous books include Voices from a ‘Promised Land’ and Visionary Voices: Women on Power.

Linda Sartor teaches research in a master of education degree program at Dominican University, leads wilderness trips for Rites of Passage, and is a field team member with the Nonviolent Peaceforce, which is attempting to bring forth a Gandhian vision by placing trained, unarmed foreigners in places of violent conflict to provide a protective presence that reduces fear and violence. Linda is part of the European-American Collaboration Challenging Whiteness and lives in an intentional community in Sonoma County, California.

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz is assistant professor of English education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her work on African American reentry women, culturally relevant literacy instruction in secondary schools and colleges, and the preparation of teachers for urban high schools has appeared in the Journal of Negro Education, Kappa Delta Pi’s Educational Forum, and Adult Education Quarterly, among other publications. She is currently involved in research projects investigating culturally responsive literacy practices in community college and secondary school English classrooms.

Derise E. Tolliver is associate professor and Chicago director of the School for New Learning, DePaul University B.A. Degree Program at Tangaza College in Kenya, and a program director for DePaul University’s travel study course to Ghana. Her teaching and scholarship interests include African-centered psychology, spirituality, and culture in adult learning; teaching practice; personal and social transformation; study abroad; and internalization of the curriculum. She is a clinical psychologist in the state of Illinois.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We began this journey as five colleagues, all interested in pursuing a better understanding about how race and racism intersect with and influence our lives, our dialogue, and how we interact with and react to others of different racial identities. For the five of us, it seemed simple enough to just tell our stories—with four of us talking about how our lives had been influenced by race and racism in the United States, and one of us talking about experiences in both England and the United States, and with four of us being Black women born when African Americans were still being called Colored and growing up over a period of time in which that descriptor shifted to Negro and then to Black to African American and to people of the African Diaspora, and one of us being a White male of European descent, born in England and now living in the United States in the Midwest. Our coming together was a very unlikely grouping outside of our intense desire to explore the meanings and impact of race and racism as it exists in the United States.

There are now four of us, and we will take time here to acknowledge our colleague and friend Elizabeth A. Peterson, who passed away from this life in January 2009. Elizabeth played an instrumental role in bringing the five of us together, and we want to say farewell to our friend and colleague, as well as saying thank you for bringing all of us to this table and to this journey. You will be missed, but your words and your ideas will find their way into the hearts and minds of those who read and go on this journey with us, as they read through the pages of this book.

In addition to thanking Elizabeth for starting this journey with us, we’d also like to say thanks to the many authors who gave of their time, ideas, and perspectives. Without you this book would have been just five voices, and instead it offers many more voices of those who believe, like us, that dialogue is one way of improving how individuals approach and deal with the subject of race and racism. We thank each of you for your contributions to this book.

We also thank our families and friends who have vicariously gone on this journey with us. It is your life stories and your histories that brought us this far. So we thank our parents, siblings, children, other family members, and friends. We each want to take a moment to say just a few words of thanks.

Scipio

I want to thank my beloved mother, Mrs. Mickey C. Colin (1921-1996), for her unwavering support and love and for teaching me by example the true meaning of righteous commitment. She taught me that we are representatives of our family and that daughters are their mother’s legacy to the world. May those who read this endeavor say, “Well done, Ms. Mickey, well done.” Promise made, and, I hope, promise kept. And I thank my brother, Curtis DuBois Colin, for always being there and keeping me grounded.

Juanita

I am indebted to the women of my family and the people of my 13th Street neighborhood who imparted a sophisticated analysis of race to me, the child who paid attention to their conversations about what was happening in and to our fragile and isolated segregated world. Thank goodness these women also shared their wisdom on how to rise above what they called the “ignorance of prejudice and discrimination.” And I am especially grateful to Marvin and Brandice, who are there for me when the analysis and the wisdom can’t keep me from the cumulative pain of the daily racial microaggressions and openly hostile racist acts that I experience as a Black feminist woman in twenty-first-century America.

Stephen

I want to thank my coauthors for inviting me along on this journey, and in particular I’d like to thank Scipio Colin and Elizabeth Peterson for some wonderful collaborations down the years.

Vanessa

I want to thank my mother, Ida Sheared, my stepmother Daisey, and my father, James Lee—your story has made my story and life experiences possible. I thank you for showing me how to love and to think outside the box. I also thank my son, Jamil Sheared, for teaching me what it means to be a mom, a parent, and a scholar. At the age of ten he said to me when I thought about quitting the doctoral program to work, “You like school, and I like to eat, you should do both.” I thank my sisters and all my dear friends, colleagues who have supported me on this journey.

And finally, we want to conclude by thanking David Brightman for saying yes to this book and for working with us patiently for the last three years. We thank the editorial team of Robin Lloyd and Anessa Davenport at Jossey-Bass for taking us to the finish line. This has been a collaborative effort, and we thank all who played a small or a major role in making this edition possible (Brandon Abell, Georgia Gonzales, Katy Romo, La Tina Gago, Sheng-Yun Yang, and Cynthia Vessel).

The Editorial CollectiveVanessa Sheared Juanita Johnson-Bailey Scipio A. J. Colin III Stephen D. Brookfield

FOREWORD

This book is not limited to adult education or even to education—it shows how racism’s location within our social structures causes us to become internally racist as well as entrapped in structural racism without being explicitly conscious of the situation. So this book is for all individuals working with others in formal and nonformal settings.

This exciting book is brought to us by a powerhouse of leaders in the field of contemporary adult education: Sheared, Johnson-Bailey, and Colin III (the articulate proponent of Africentrism) are three of the most quoted African American adult education professors in the United States, and Brookfield is an internationally known critical theorist. These four editors introduce us to over twenty other experientially grounded authors who understand racism from many points along ethnic and color lines.

As the senior editors invite us to join them around the kitchen table, we are plunged into the debate within the first few pages and the discussion turns deadly serious: Can an African American framing her assumptions within the Africentric paradigm escape racism? Yes, I can. No, you can’t. Three days later, I don’t believe the argument was ever settled. This reminds us that racism is complicated and multifaceted. Even the senior editors were deadlocked on what some consider an already solved issue in the present-day United States.

Many people today believe we have moved beyond racism, pointing to our major achievement in electing an African American president. And though we have indeed come a long way since the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, the sociopolitical and the personal structures of racism have become so entrenched over the years that they continue to resist destruction.

Therefore, agreeing that racism is still with us, the authors set out to offer an opportunity to engage in a discourse on race and racism and provide strategies for dealing with the issues in practice.

This book is carefully put together and is divided into four major parts. In Part One, “The Myth Versus the Reality,” we get a dose of reality from representatives of Native America, African America, Chicana America, feminism, and Maori New Zealand, who present their experiences of racism in the raw. Clearly they understand our struggles with both the myths and the realities of racism, and they provide evidence of both. The process of writing the book is also revealed: each group of authors within a section talks together with a senior editor before submitting their manuscripts, so the sharing of content is promoted in developing each section.

After providing a broad and diverse base of racist reality, the authors analyze Whiteness in Part Two, which may be one of the more important sections of the book. When racism is discussed, many White people focus on those of color. Whiteness is still widely taken for granted and thus remains invisible. Ranging from Chapter Six’s “White Whispers,” which addresses how rarely White people acknowledge their complicity in racism, to a critical analysis of White supremacy and power as they operate in groups, this section makes Whiteness explicit. Especially unnerving is Chapter Nine, “White on White,” which might make many White persons think twice about their racial behavior. Concepts such as critical humility, disdain, and proselytizing are all new behaviors for Whites to assign to themselves. But it is all fair game in examining racism.

Part Three is the theoretical section, and through the discussion of critical race theory (CRT), more and more subtleties of racism are exposed. Elizabeth Peterson served as senior editor for this section, and I am sorry to report that she died during the writing process. These authors agreed with Peterson that exploration of CRT and its spin-offs led them to greater optimism about the eventual eradication of racism—a view not usually supported by CRT and many others. This is one of the most important questions raised in this book.

Four strategies for combating racism are presented in the final chapter. Colin III presents Africentrism in practice, which is a summary of her lifelong work on cultural and philosophical approaches to Africana studies. Sheared discusses womanist in practice as a strategy that encompasses her theoretical work on giving voice and polyrhythmic realities arising from an Africana womanist perspective. Johnson-Bailey utilizes a critical psychosocial approach to elaborate on Black feminism in practice as a way of combating racism. Finally, Brookfield turns his critical skills to not only analyzing his own unconscious racist behavior but also summarizing the salient points in Part Three that deal with Whiteness. This part of the book is particularly challenging, as it forces major issues of racism into the foreground. Here we are asked how White identity is established. Do we reproduce a dominant White epistemology? Are we familiar with more than one tradition in other ethnic paradigms? Are we aware of our own practice of supremacy over others? Is the White supremacy in global capitalism reproduced in our classrooms and curricula?

In Part Four, Reframing the Field Through the Lens of Race, the authors describe a specialized approach to educational practice in combating racism. They present alternate ways of responding to racism that include language-based analysis, make White identity development explicit, expose a White supremacy power model, and operationalize the Africentric concept of twinness.

This book has many strengths: it is well written, well organized, and it synthesizes the best scholarship on the topic of racism in education. It does not view racism narrowly, but gives the reader multiple views from which to look at the phenomenon. For a long time we have needed a book that asks questions rather than giving answers, and this volume fills that need. I believe every professor of adult education should read it, regardless of her teaching assignment. It would make an excellent basis for discussing racism within professional associations. This may be too tall an order for the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE), but perhaps the Commission of Professors of Adult Education (CPAE) would be up to the task. If we can’t critically examine our own associations, why should we ask more of our students?

Phyllis M. Cunningham Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus Northern Illinois University

The Beginning Kitchen Table Dialogue

VANESSA SHEAREDJUANITA JOHNSON-BAILEYSCIPIO A. J. COLIN IIISTEPHEN D. BROOKFIELD

We began this project with the intent of engaging a group of scholars from various backgrounds, disciplines, races, languages, and social classes around the issue of race and racism. More important, we wanted them to engage in a dialogue about how race and racism have shaped their lives and lived experiences, not only in their disciplines but also in the ways they interact with others generally. We initially chose individuals within the field of adult and continuing education, but quickly learned and decided that to narrow our book’s focus only to this discipline would obfuscate the impact the issues of race and racism have had on all of us. We also chose a dialogical model, seeking to construct a wide-ranging discussion of race and racism (sociocultural, sociohistorical, and intellectual) from social, educational, political, and psychological perspectives in order to articulate a conceptual challenge to the ethnocentric focus that is generally applied to this topic.

When we began this project, we thought that if change is going to occur in our field’s theoretical frameworks and practices, then all adult and higher educators must be challenged to “practice what they preach” and to engage in a critically reflective process in examining their own racial identity and how it shapes their worldview. To that end, this book is aimed at offering adult and higher education scholars and also all those in other fields who are engaged in research and teaching about race with an opportunity to engage in a discourse about race and racism in an effort to determine (1) how racism has dictated how they think about people of varying backgrounds and socioeconomic circumstances; (2) how racism has affected their lived experiences at work, at home, and in educational settings; and (3) how racism has served to privilege some and not others. In addition, we wanted to provide possible strategies for ourselves and other educators and researchers to use in order to give voice (Sheared, 1994, 1999) to the lived experiences of those who have been marginalized or negated in this country’s discourse, history, policies, classrooms, communities, and services.

Just as we and others in the academy are grappling with the stark realities and impacts of racism in the classroom, discussions are being held in homes, churches, and other organizations about whether race and racism are still factors in how individuals operate and communicate in these various settings. Moreover, a number of events in the media in 2008—such as radio talk show host Don Imus calling African American members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappyheaded hos,” presidential candidate Newt Gingrich referring to the Spanish language as the “language of the ghetto,” and George W. Bush remarking on presidential candidate Barack Obama’s ability to “articulate well”—sparked much debate on race. Such comments along with the continuing debates being heard on public radio and television, at community events, and throughout the halls of the academy lead us to believe not only that racism is alive and well but that it is being used in reverse by both the oppressor and the oppressed. Racism exists when one racial group has power and authority over another racial group because of beliefs about race. So the term racism—which was once used to describe how Whites treated all other racial groups who lacked power and authority in political, historical, or economic arenas because of their racial identity—is now being used by Whites and even those who once were marginalized to describe how minority groups relate to majority group members, namely the White men and White women considered to have power and authority over how others are treated.

We believe that this book is a timely addition to the intense debate that is occurring in this country and beyond. The public, we believe, is looking for ways in which to have a discussion about this subject. It is long overdue, and we look forward to providing a medium through which those in higher education as well as in the general adult education field can engage in a discussion that leads to a critical understanding and moves individuals into meaningful change.

These issues are not new, for as early as 1897, W.E.B. DuBois noted that people’s histories are interconnected by how they see themselves as groups through the lens of race. And even though people might attempt to ignore race as being a factor, it inevitably has served to define how people operate and communicate with each other as individuals and within groups. DuBois (1897) stated that “the history of the world is the history, not of individuals, but of groups, not of nations, but of races, and he who ignores or seeks to override the race idea in human history ignores and overrides the central thought of all history.”

Over the course of the last fifteen years, discussions have occurred on college and university campuses and at national and international conferences in adult education, as well as in all other areas of higher education, concerning the importance of including varied perspectives, ideologies, and racial groups in research studies, courses, publications, and media. Many of us in the field of adult and continuing education who have characterized our lifework as being focused on addressing the educational needs of the underserved who have been economically, socially, or politically disenfranchised because of their race believe that if these dispossessed are going to gain access, equity, and parity in society, then conversations like the ones proposed in this book are an important step toward that change. Even though the field of adult education has made a commitment to addressing these issues, we still believe that limited attention is being given to the role that race and racism play in how and why underserved individuals come to be in their present economic, political, and social conditions. Some have argued that race and racism are not influential factors here, but we believe that race and racism, as DuBois noted in 1897, are critical factors and must be examined if people are to change how they interact and communicate with one another. Moreover, we think that engaging in discourse about race and racism may lead to changing structures and systems of oppression and marginalization as experienced by those whose realities and possibilities may be determined by the color of their skin.

So even as we acknowledge that much attention has been given to inclusion, diversity, and multiculturalism within the field of adult education, we also believe that the members of our discipline have yet to engage in a dialogue specifically about race or racism and the ways in which these factors operate to foster or produce marginalization or oppression of specific groups and individuals within multiple educational, political, and corporate settings. Even though multiculturalism, gender, and sexual orientation have begun to receive increasing attention in the field of adult education, along with the impact of these factors on the teaching-learning context, adult education literature and practitioners have given relatively little attention to race and racism as an area of discourse. Given the relative invisibility of these two factors, their impact has yet to be problematized within the field of adult education (or within higher education as a whole). For the most part these factors are often ignored or relegated to the dialogical sidelines. In short, our field has tended to engage in what we would describe as an act of intellectual ethnocentrism.

One way to understand ethnocentrism is as a racialized perspective. To take a racialized view of something is to see it through the distinctive lens of one racial group’s lived experiences (Sheared, 1999) and to assess its educational value relative to the expansion of the field’s knowledge base and the impact on practice (Brookfield, 2002). As Outlaw (1996) in general and Brookfield (2002) specifically have noted, the intellectual world of the field of adult education is racialized in favor of the Eurocentric perspectives that are predominant in many other endeavors as well, and therefore our field has been unwilling to create a dialogical context or seriously consider how and in what ways other culturally grounded, intellectual racializations could positively influence theory, practice, and research (Colin III, 1988). However, discussions about race and racism should not nor do they occur in a vacuum. Stories and histories have been written to correct or insert a new paradigm (or framework) for thinking about how various racial groups have contributed to the fabric of our field and this society. For instance, the history of our field and its leaders presented in the work of Johnson-Bailey demonstrates how the field boldly incorporated issues pertinent to African Americans through acknowledging the work of such early scholars as Alain Locke and W.E.B. DuBois (Johnson-Bailey, 2006), and then goes on to examine the ebb and flow in the ways race has been discussed across the years in the various editions of the Handbook of Adult and Continuing Education (Johnson-Bailey & Cervero, 2000), and in the field’s prominent journals and student dissertations (Johnson-Bailey, 2001a).

We see these attempts as being a part of our beginning conversations and understandings. We know that these steps are important and can provide adult educators and others with a way to reflect on and change how they think, talk, and act in various settings. We believe that we and others have a long way to go, and we see this book as a vehicle for changing thoughts and actions. Conversations about multiculturalism, gender, and sexual orientation should be viewed therefore as good first steps.

Clearly, adult educators must be challenged to practice what they preach and to engage in a critically reflective process in examining their own racial identity and how it shapes their worldview. In any great novel or book, as in life, there is a beginning, middle, and end. For us and the contributing authors in this book, our beginnings involved unveiling ourselves and sharing our stories about how we have come to this phase in our professional, personal, and social journeys.

OUR BEGINNINGS

When we began this book there were five of us, but one member of our editorial group, Elizabeth Peterson, passed away in January 2009, while we were still working on this project. We pay homage to our colleague, and believe that her voice and her spirit were with us throughout this project.

In keeping with the principle of practicing what one preaches, we now share with you portions of our discussions and work around our metaphoric kitchen table, to give you a glimpse into the difficulties everyone faces when the subject of race and its antecedent racism are discussed. The first step we call the uncovering of who we are. You will see the steps and beginnings taken by all the editors and contributing authors throughout this book. This uncovering, we believe, is a good first effort toward moving from the self to the necessary act of placing ourselves in the shoes of others. What better place to begin than with the editors, engaging in an exploration with each other about this topic.

WHO ARE WE?

Vanessa

I am a single parent African American woman, born in the 1950s to a young single Black woman—in a very segregated South. I never dreamt that in 2010, I would be able to say that I had graduated from high school or had obtained a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a doctoral degree, let alone that I would go on to become a professor and an administrator in a university setting. Twenty-three years ago I accidentally entered the field of adult education. When I applied for the position at Northern Illinois University, I did so only with the intent of acquiring a salary in order to take care of my son and myself. Although I believed that racism existed and had experienced it as a child growing up in the South—where I recall having to drink out of the “colored only” fountain, going to the theater through the door that said “coloreds only,” and going to an all-Black Catholic school for my first three years of schooling—little did I realize that twenty-three years later I would be engaging in a project with four other colleagues on the topic of racism. Back then, if I had been asked to place a label on my experience of attending a Catholic school, I would have had to say that I thought of myself as being privileged. So even as a child I knew that there was something different about the schooling I had been given access to—at least while living in the South. In the mid-1960s, my three sisters and I moved to Chicago to live with my mother. Even though I had witnessed the “no colored allowed” signs earlier, it was while living in Chicago that I got a firsthand glimpse into poverty and the real struggle for financial and economic survival. My mother left home early in the morning to work as a waitress in a local restaurant, and after a year or so of doing this, she determined that there was a need for her to leave that job and get help from the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. This was not an easy decision, but with four girls, she decided that she needed to stay home with us, especially the younger ones. She did not let this stop her; she later decided to go back to school to get her GED, and while assisting in the classroom with my youngest sisters’ Head Start class, she obtained a job there as an assistant teacher, and worked there for twenty-five years, eventually becoming the head teacher. This new job was over an hour away by bus, so my sisters went to a baby sitter, but because I was old enough to have a key, I could go straight home after school. All four of us finished high school, and two of us went on to obtain college degrees. Looking back on those days—and despite the stories I’ve heard since in the media or read in newspapers or research journals about the possible economic or educational success of children growing up in a single family household, no father in the home, and a family income based on minimum wages—I now realize that even though the racialized construct of our society had a bearing on my life, it did not prevent me from being able to move forward. The reason for this was found in the strength and persistence of a single Black woman—my mother.

On the school front I became the kid who studied hard, did her homework, and never caused any trouble. I was so studious in my classes by the fifth grade that when a teacher failed to show (and there were many such days), another classmate and I were the ones excused from class so that we could substitute for the absent teachers (usually in first- or second-grade classrooms) for that day or week. As a child I felt special when this happened, but reflecting back on those days I now realize that this was an example of how racism afflicts low-income or racially disadvantaged communities. The children in my school were not valued enough to warrant sending an adult substitute teacher out to work with them. For me, now, this represents the epitome of marginalization. As I noted in my dissertation (Sheared, 1992), when people are marginalized, adequate resources are not given to ensuring their success. While I didn’t know what any of this meant as a child, I now recognize that my life story is replete with examples of the perpetuation of racist acts, even though at the time I did not have a name for them.

Over the course of the years I witnessed the events of the 1960s and 1970s, when rioting occurred in Black neighborhoods, and police routinely visited neighborhood homes, walking through without a warrant, looking for that Black criminal that none of the home’s inhabitants knew or had ever even heard of.

I witnessed the positive waves of the 1970s into the 1980s, as those of us who had grown up going through “colored only” doors now, as a result of the civil rights movement and the laws it produced, found that for the first time we could dream of possibilities. For myself this meant the possibilities of going on to college, even though my family were not able to factor that into the family budget; attending one of the most prestigious Christian liberal arts colleges, where I obtained a BA degree; attending a southern school, one that once upon a time did not even admit Blacks, but now there I was receiving an MA degree; and finally earning that EdD degree from another state school in the North.

Ultimately, I discovered that I could have a career in higher education as a professor and now as a dean in a teaching institution. So without a doubt this subject matters to me, for not only have I witnessed racist acts against others but I have also felt the slings and arrows of racism in my personal life. My beginning was growing up in the racially divided South, and multiple acts of racism have invaded my life story, but this beginning did not mean that I, a child of a single parent African American woman, would never be where I am now or that I would not one day make space for other voices to tell their stories—stories describing beginnings that shaped us yet did not determine our possibilities. So even though racism is alive and well, it need not define our endings—especially if those of us who have gone through it tell the stories and seek the actions that can redefine our possibilities and realities.

Juanita

My childhood experiences of growing up in 1950s segregated Columbus, Georgia, crystallized my understanding of race and racism by the time I was five years old. Although my happy, carefree existence was informed by race and racism, it was not ruined or spoiled by it. Segregation just defined and confined my world in this American apartheid called Jim Crow. My personal existence was more often than not determined by three factors. First, I lived a privileged life in the world of the Catholic mission school that I attended, with White nuns, my extended family, whom I dearly loved and who, I felt, loved me. Second, I had my group of girlfriends that included my best playmate, Dianne, a White girl. Although Dianne and I lived worlds apart, we often played together because she spent many nights and weekends with her family’s maid, our neighbor. And finally, my world was shaped by my precious freedom: my parents allowed me to run around with abandon as a wild girl child. The only occasional threats to my world were a few neighborhood kids who thought I didn’t fit in and wasn’t Black enough because I went to a Catholic school instead of public school. When their hatred was at its highest they’d chase me from my school bus stop to my home or they’d throw rocks. But they didn’t much frighten me or impact my way of life. However, my near-perfect existence was disrupted when Dianne’s mother ripped us apart because school-age children could not have friendships that crossed racial lines. So when we began first grade our play dates ended; we could only watch each other from the vantage of our respective porches. As a child, I was helpless and only able to miss my friend Dianne and to wonder about her occasionally in the years to come.

For the next eight years I was sheltered in a secure all-Negro, Catholic grade school environment (we had moved from colored to Negro by 1968), where I was privileged. I recall such highlights as riding on the school’s float in the Columbus Christmas parade as Suzie Snowflake and playing Portia in a fifth-grade production of The Merchant of Venice. Reflecting from the distance of time and a critical race theoretical frame, I now know that even in the segregated grade school environment I was advantaged because of my light skin color, a vestige of White racism.

After grade school I attended the newly desegregated Catholic high school, and for the four years of high school I was the only Black girl in my class. My new classmates were different—driving new cars like convertible T-Birds and having maids who looked like me. I always wondered if, given my working-class status, some of their maids even knew my people. But I could never judge this from the maids’ expressions because they avoided looking at or acknowledging me when I visited my friends’ homes. Nevertheless, high school was a place where I thrived academically and socially—I served as the editor of the school newspaper and one year was even elected the Mardi Gras representative for our biggest annual social event.

By my college years my world perspective was set, and I moved through the world as a free thinker, a feminist, and a Black person with a consciousness about race regardless of what life threw my way. It was during my undergraduate years at a small, predominantly White Southern Baptist university that I met the real world, a world unsupervised by liberal, do-gooder nuns, and came to understand that the Catholic schools had been controlled and artificial environments where we were all made to play fair. Schooling in this new place meant constantly fighting to prove that I had earned my academic scholarship, challenging grades so that I could stay on the dean’s list, and barely graduating cum laude.

So fifteen years after finishing my BA degree, when I attempted to enter graduate school and encountered racism yet again, I was prepared for the struggle. I was refused admission to the University of Georgia’s Journalism School because the graduate coordinator felt that my insistence on being a part-time student conveyed a lack of dedication. I had heard about the university’s Adult Education Program, and because training was a large part of the state government job I had then, I did what so many of my colleagues have done—stumbled into an adult education program, where I was also initially refused admission. The rejections didn’t deter me. One appeal hearing later and I entered the graduate program in adult education. Being turned down by the J School has been the best redirect of my life.

Looking back and viewing these collective experiences, I know the following: I understood at an early age what it meant to have cross-cultural friendships; I had an extended family that did not look like me; and I had experienced the pain of being rejected by members of my own race. As a first grader who had been ripped away from her best friend, I came to know that there were racist systems in place that the Black adults who ruled my world were powerless to challenge or change. It is obvious to me that my stance as a Black feminist adult educator who researches race and gender is grounded in those early years. I have been emboldened to step out of the shadows of my segregated world and to exist as a fearless scholar by the women in my family and neighborhood who talked back in resistance to a system that disrespected them and by the courageousness of my grade school missionary nuns. It is no accident that my research agenda—expressed in a dissertation and subsequent book, Sistahs in College (Johnson-Bailey, 2001b)—flows from a lifetime of trying to figure out how race has affected the schooling experiences of Black women in mostly White settings. Throughout my life I have encountered racism and shed many tears over the setbacks, detours, and attacks resulting from this powerful force. The daily microaggressions have taken their toll on my spirit, but I go on with my work because it is so important to me. I guess I’m still desperately seeking answers as to why I couldn’t play with Dianne, or maybe I just want the world to be a place where my girl child can truly run free and not live with the threat of having her world and life choices controlled by structural inequalities established to protect and ensure the continuance of White supremacy.

Scipio

There are those times in my life when I sit myself down and ask, “Why are you still battling White racism?” I first met my opponent when I entered first grade at Carter School. All we had done in kindergarten was to take naps; color, and sit in a circle and be read to. Well, I could sleep at home; I already knew how not only to color but to color within the lines; and I knew how to read, so I didn’t need to be read to. I expressed my disappointment to my parents, probably on a daily basis, and was always reassured that better times were ahead, reminding me of all the things I had to look forward to in first grade. After suffering through the silence in kindergarten, I approached first grade with joy and excitement about entering the real world of learning. Little did I know that White racism would be greeting me at the doors of first grade with open arms.

I was overjoyed on my first day when the teacher said that one of the things we were going to do was to learn how to read, and then she passed out the book. I know I am dating myself, but the book was one of the infamous Dick and Jane readers. Little did I know what was between the covers: “See Dick run. See Jane run. See Dick and Jane run.” Huh? What world am I in? I thought to myself, “OK, they are running; so what?” And then as my brother would say, with my silly self, I raised my hand and asked a question. I asked the teacher if I could bring one of my books, Black Beauty, from home. Welcome, White racism, to my world—or more accurately to yours. First, the teacher in responding mispronounced my first name again, calling me “Scripto”; I thought we had cleared this up when she took attendance. Reflecting back, that exchange was my first introduction to White racism. After I said “present,” I had told her that my name was pronounced Scipio, and she had asked me, “How did somebody like you get a name like that?” I told her and mistakenly thought that was it.