Readings for Diversity and Social Justice: You Shouldn’t Use This Anthology in Your Class

• In Event: The Anthological Impulse: Pedagogy and Social Justice

Abstract

During my third semester as a graduate student instructor, I ordered Readings for Diversity and Social Justice (2013) for my composition II class at a predominantly white university. When I asked my mentor’s opinion on my anthology choice, he advised me to forget it, saying: “You shouldn’t use this anthology because of who you are [black]. Students will resist you.” For him, white students would not be ready to discuss diversity and social justice and will choose to remain silent. I knew he meant well. However, he made me remember James Baldwin’s “A Talk to Teachers,” in which he stated that “[w]hat societies really, ideally, want, is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish” (326). While I grudgingly agreed with him to drop my first choice, I asked myself, I am the kind of teacher who approves the perpetuation of social injustice and cultural hegemony?

In a racialized society, answering “yes” to my question would mean adhering to what educator Joyce E. King called “dysconscious racism,” which she defines as “a form of racism that tacitly accepts dominant White norms and privileges” (135). I remembered that Baldwin also said in the text mentioned above that “[t]he obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight—at no matter what risk. . . . This is the only way societies change” (326). As one of those who long for real social change, I attempted to follow my mentor’s advice without abandoning my original objective of using texts on social issues to challenge my white students’ beliefs and push them out of their comfort zone.

I discuss how my mentor’s advice to abandon my chosen anthology led me to devise a course packet with texts on the forbidden topics. My white students read texts that made them feel uncomfortable at first, but later on, helped them break their silence and discuss race and white privilege. That experience galvanized my objective of using “controversial” texts/anthologies as a way of helping white students look at themselves from a different perspective.

Author

• Jean-Paul Konda Ntusi, Community College of Allegheny County/ Boyce Campus