Even White Males Can Be Taught
How white male supremacy can be challenged in the classroom.
by Alyssa Tocker
One of the rarest things that can happen is when someone whose eyes were closed were taught something that opened them. bell hooks demonstrates this in her dialogue “Building a Teaching Community” by having an in-depth conversation with a white, male colleague. Of course this is a situation in which both parties are members of a teaching community and in search of better ways and better things to present to their pupils. However, that does not mean that this cannot apply to everyday people. As Bell Hooks states, “…that it will show that white males can and do change how they think and teach.”
As everyone has seen in the recent election, white supremacy has not died out with the years and has even become more powerful than it has in recent times. Even if someone does not identify as a white supremacist or an alt-right member/ally, there were still over 60 million people in the United States who voted for Donald Trump. Think of that. 60 million individuals (who were eligible to vote) thought that he was the candidate with the peoples’ best interests at heart. That is true if you are a nationalist, white, male member of society. This shows that many people do not understand that not only is ignorance bliss, but that it is dangerous, as we are currently experiencing. But there is a way to battle this issue without seeming like a neo-liberal d’bag, for lack of a better word.
Bell Hooks addresses these issues in her dialogue with her teaching colleague, Ron Scapp, “a white male philosopher, comrade, and friend”. They discuss conservative views and how they affect the way teachers teach and what they decide to present to their students. Hooks states that there is a negative critique of progressive pedagogy and relates it to being a feminist teacher with little feeling of authority in any aspect of the classroom. This causes them to shut down and reverse their progressive steps and convert to a traditional method of teaching, while they are already institutionalizing radical practices and bringing them into the classroom. Students have been raised to believe that the legitimacy of the subject and teaching is placed solely on the teachers themselves instead of feeling like there is a shared responsibility.
Although this dialogue was written and recorded in 1994, the subject is still relevant today, especially after the 2016 presidential election. There are numerous theories of why Trump won and Hillary Clinton, the first female presidential candidate, lost. Many of these theories are rooted in white, male supremacy and the fear of it crumbling before America’s very eyes. However, many fail to think about what it was that the generation who voted had drilled into their minds since they started sitting in a classroom and listening to an authority figure. The issue as a professor as an authority figure and the only person with legitimate knowledge on the subject being taught, is that people learn that the person above them is the one with all the answers and knowledge. A feminist teacher is one that lets the students teach each other, who does not present themselves as an authority figure that needs to be simultaneously feared and praised. Scapp presents the idea that if the students are given too much freedom, chaos will ensue and discussion will not take place. That is partially because for too long students have felt chained down in a classroom and even the tiniest sort of freedom, such as a teacher leaving the room momentarily, is like a kid in a candy store. Many authority figures in a teaching environment are male and white and try to hide racism and white supremacy because people are afraid to admit their superiority based on their gender and skin color. Donald Trump was that white male teacher who had all the answers without argument and shut down the opponent with a simple “wrong” or “no” while at the same time in a way bashing her for being a woman.
In the same way white, male teachers do, Trump shut down anything that was a threat to his white supremacy or called him out on it. Maybe that is why people were attracted to what he was saying and saw him as the best candidate, because he was “protecting” them. But in reality, he was being ignorant and spreading ignorance as an authority figure with all the “right answers”. Maybe that is why people who voted for him find no viability in the things other people in society say, because we were taught to listen to the person older than us standing in the front of the room lecturing on about whatever subject they received a degree to teach. 60 million people accepted everything he said as correct.
Tanya Rawal-Jindia, a gender studies professor at the University of California Riverside, instructed us, her students, to sit in a circle to demonstrate an equal power teaching environment. Instead of lecturing to us about the readings, she asks us what we thought and what comments we would make. She follows Bell Hooks’ theory of building a teaching community and encouraging us to engage and teach our peers. There has been no chaos in the classroom, no lack of respect, but rather an environment to actually critique, think, and learn without the fear of being struck down as wrong. Perhaps if this was the accepted norm of teaching each other while learning from and listening to peers, the United States would not be “under the rule” of a man who believes women and people of color are subordinate to him, because even white males can change their minds.
But what many forget is the first line of the preamble of the United States Constitution. “WE THE PEOPLE.” So learn from each other, listen to one another, because the person standing in the front of the room is a person too, and that person does not have all the right answers.
