Mentorship | Social Injustice | Diversity

You Need to Talk About Racism with Your Students

To elicit change about racism in America we must first be open to talk about it actively.

Angel

Published in

Mentoring Hats

5 min readJun 4, 2020

Racism, even if most of America claims not to be racist, continues to oppress Black Americans and people of color. The recent murder of George Floyd by a racist police officer serves as the latest reminder we must take action against racism. As mentors and teachers, we have the opportunity to establish a two-way exchange of information and resources to discuss ways to eliminate the barriers of social injustice many still face in this country. We should act on it.

It’s important to incorporate race as a topic of discussion with students and mentees even if it makes us feel uncomfortable. I am still in the process of educating myself about this topic. Two years ago, I read Ijeoma Oluo’s book “So You Want to Talk about Race?” and more recently, “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. For now, I will share some reflections from these and other readings and encourage everyone to have meaningful and honest conversations about these issues.

Your conversations will change depending on how you define racism

Ijeoma Oluo’s book presents two definitions of racism:

1. Racism is any prejudice against someone because of their race.

2. Racism is any prejudice against someone because of their race when those views are reinforced by systems of power.

To understand and combat racial injustice, we must adopt the second definition.

If you supervise or work with Black students, understand they are tired. As of June 2020, there is no escape from systemic racism. Ta-Nehisi Coates describes the agonizing question Black Americans ask themselves each day:

How do I live free in this black body?

That’s their struggle and it’s not caused by a small group of white supremacists in Virginia; it’s caused by decades of systemic racism. This point of understanding should be the launching pad for your conversations about racism. Racism is not something “resurfacing” or limited to isolated incidents of police racism; it’s systemic and ingrained across all levels of our lives. Furthermore, racism is not a mere consequence of our physical differences. Racism is built-in as part of America’s fabric. As best told by Coates:

“Americans believe in the reality of “race” as a defined, indubitable feature of the natural world. Racism — the need to ascribe bone-deep features to people and then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them — inevitably follows from this inalterable condition. […]
But race is the child of racism, not the father. And the process of naming “the people” has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy. Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible — this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white.”

To combat systemic racism, how race affects each aspect of our lives must be discussed with supervisors, mentees, and colleagues. We must support each other from within. The more these discussions take place, the more we will be able to appreciate our own privilege, how it potentially affects other communities, and how to use it to raise others from the marginalized corners of this country. Moreover, we will be able to identify our own racial biases.

Please don’t stay silent

It is not enough to discuss racism only if the topic comes up in conversation. It must be an active exercise. If we selectively suppress these conversations, we end up with color silent individuals and not the color blinded everyone thinks they are. This distinction comes from Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum’s work on having discussions about race, especially at an early stage with students. In addition to the book “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? and Other Conversations about Race”, Dr. Tatum emphasizes the importance of not staying silent in the Stanford TEDx talk “Is My Skin Brown Because I Drank Chocolate Milk?”

The questions below, taken from the article Getting Over Your Fear of Talking About Diversity, can drive the inclusion of race in conversations with your mentors, mentees, and colleagues. Additional resources are listed at the end of this article.

What are the biggest barriers to your success and what role can I play in helping to remove them?

Do you feel safe enough to take risks at work? To contribute? To belong to the community?

What percentage of your time is spent on addressing exclusion or microaggressions against you or others?

Whose voice or what perspective is missing from this conversation?

How can I help amplify your voice and that of other underrepresented voices?

Finally, when discussing racism and oppression, keep mind that race is just one component of our identity. In your conversations about social injustice, explore the concept of intersectionality.