7/8: Armstrong / Wildman + Gomez

Armstrong and Wildman, "Colorblindness Is the New Racism" 

Argument: Armstrong and Wildman argue that the principle of "colorblindness"--the belief that it's possible and indeed moral to "not see" or think about race--obscures the workings of white privilege and its important role in racial inequality and discrimination. As an alternative, the authors propose "color insight," a practice that acknowledges "that most of us do see race" (67) and facilitates recognition of and reflection on assumptions about race and power that might otherwise remain hidden and unexamined.

 Talking Points:

• Historical contexts for "colorblindness": I was struck by the authors' observation, in their discussion of Plessy v Ferguson, that the Supreme Court rejected the principle of colorblindness in 1896 because, at that time, recognizing race benefited white people (through segregationist policies that reserved more and higher-quality resources and amenities for white people); "the contemporary use of colorblindness became an active principle only when government programs that recognized race became perceived as disadvantaging White people" (66). This helps me think about the paradox of colorblindness: as both these authors and Johnson noted, white people's hesitation to discuss race can be well-meaning, because in a country with such a long history of white supremacy, it seems like the best thing to do would be to treat everyone the same way. And in 1896, when Justice Harlan argued for the principle of colorblindness in his dissent to Plessy, "treating everyone the same way" would have been a powerful moral intervention at a moment when the Court instead decided to firmly and explicitly institutionalize racial discrimination. Today, however, racial discrimination is theoretically illegal (although some recent Court cases have eroded the Voting Rights Act, for example!), and "colorblindness" allows us to ignore systems and practices that, although they may not use the explicitly racist and exclusionary language of a "whites only" sign on a water fountain, continue to benefit white people at the expense of people of color.
  
  
• Color Insight exercises: As I mentioned in my post on Johnson, I love specific examples and concrete suggestions that I can incorporate into my own teaching, so I loved that this article included a whole sequence of activities for teaching color insight! As I read, I thought about how I could adapt some of these activities--which were developed for law students--for my 10th- and 11th-grade Humanities students. One challenge is that I think I would have to give lots of time and care to these activities; like many of us, my students are eager to reflect on their own identities and experiences with race and racism, but they are also reluctant to share thoughts and stories that could make their friends uncomfortable or disturb the illusion that everyone in their friend group is "equal," so it's important to take the time to "creat[e] a setting to ensure that the mention and discussion of race is possible" (68) and "buil[d] trust" among classmates and teachers (71). I wish I had made time to do exercises like these in my 11th-grade American Studies classroom last year, where our reading really forced us to confront the history of racism in the United States in ways that were uncomfortable for many students, and where students had very different experiences with both America and racism. I think the racial observation exercise (68 - 71) would be really powerful, if difficult; the prompt to "recall ... one's first memory of having a race" (71) would have been a perfect assignment to pair with our unit on the Harlem Renaissance, where my students read essays by Zora Neale Hurston and W.E.B. Du Bois in which both authors described becoming aware of racial difference after encounters with white people. Writing about their own experiences might have allowed my students to engage even more thoughtfully with Hurston's and Du Bois's ideas, and might have created a structured, "safer" space where they could work through their thoughts and feelings about the racial dynamics in the essays and the ways in which these dynamics intersected with their own experiences in and beyond the classroom. (I am not teaching this class again this year or I would definitely try this exercise with these texts!)
     
• Making color insight valuable for all learners: The authors' final point--that "student reactions to these exercises and techniques suggest that they do make a difference both to students who already see a racialized reality and to those who are just learning that one exists" (77)--addressed a question that came up for me as I read, and that I continually struggle with as a teacher: how do we ensure that both these groups of students get something valuable out of our study of race, privilege, and power? As a white teacher, it is important to me to help white students recognize the often-invisible privileges that this article describes--but this is a lesson that my Black students and other students of color already know too well, and I sometimes wonder how helpful it is for them to sit through another lesson about white privilege. I also worry about implicitly pressuring "students of color to 'testify' as to their experience"--Armstrong and Wildman were smart to include this caveat (72)! (My personal hang-up about these dynamics in the classroom informed my sensitivity to Johnson reminding us about his white/straight/male privilege over and over again!) I think the activities Armstrong and Wildman suggest are valuable because they allow students to reflect on and (optionally) share their individual experiences, which is valuable for everyone. I think it also helps for students to get the opportunity to learn from teachers from diverse backgrounds--something that we don't have much control over as individual teachers, but--as the "Social Justice Classroom" reading noted--we can always learn from the expertise of colleagues, families, and our wider community. I noticed that Armstrong and Wildman appear to be a Black and a white woman, respectively, which adds to the richness of the perspectives they bring to the concepts of colorblindness, white privilege, and color insight.

Gomez, "Why Bad Bunny's Super Bowl Halftime Show Mattered"

Argument: Gomez argues that Bad Bunny's halftime show performance was powerful for Hispanic viewers because it centered Hispanic and Latino culture and history in one of the most mainstream institutions of anglocentric American culture; while white, English-speaking culture usually operates, to quote Armstrong and Wildman, as "the normative foundation" for mass cultural events such as the Superbowl (63), in this case the norm was Puerto Rican culture specifically, and pan-American latinidad more broadly.

•  It was a great idea to pair this piece with Armstrong and Wildman; the Bad Bunny halftime show is a great example of a phenomenon that makes white privilege / anglocentrism visible to white, English speaking viewers; as Gomez points out, resistance to the "language and cultural focus" of the performance "publicly confirmed what many [Latine viewers] already knew" about the ways in which mainstream US culture marginalizes and/or erases the experiences of Spanish-speaking people. Further, the connections Bad Bunny's performance made between Puerto Rican cultural structures (music, street culture) and the neglect and harm caused by PR's neocolonial (just plain colonial?) relationship with the US illustrate the relationship between "colorblindness" and material harm; just as Armstrong and Wildman argue that "colorblind" lawyers do a disservice to their clients if they ignore the ways in which race might be operating in a case (73), Americans who ignore Puerto Rican culture and continue centering the fiction of a normative culture across US states and territories risk ignoring the ways in which Puerto Rico is economically and culturally exploited. 
• As I read this piece, I thought about how, as an English speaking American with only a rudimentary knowledge of Spanish, I missed many of the references Gomez mentions--but I was also able to enjoy the performance on many other levels, and had the opportunity to learn more about the context for the performance and to rewatch with that context. This made me think about how important diverse classroom materials are for students, and how there are multiple ways in to any text for any audience. One of my favorite responses to the show was a social media post--which of course I can't find now--about how it was an excellent example of dual language instruction. Even though the show didn't center English-speaking viewers, it provided lots of scaffolding and cues for viewers who didn't speak Spanish, including projections of English words and the use of gesture and expression to convey meaning. 
• I have to admit it that I had a difficult time getting through this particular piece; at this point, text that was generated or heavily edited by AI feels like nails on a chalkboard. I was interested by the note at the end that the text was "proofed" by AI " to ensure correct spelling, grammar, and accuracy"; the piece was very obviously completely rewritten by AI. I'm sympathetic with the impulse to use AI to make sure your writing is correct and/or marketable on social media--especially given the article's point about Americans' discrimination against people whose first language isn't English. But I still find this kind of writing unpleasant to read!