What I learned about racism from teaching in a homogeneous culture
The defenses of racism from children to the supporters of Trump’s border wall are not all that different
Equally appalled, my co-teacher and I looked at each other to decide which of us was going to stop what was happening at front of the classroom.
Elif, 16, one of our hardest working and brightest students, had just begun her speech.
“My name is Barack Obama,” she said, “My favorite foods are watermelon, fried chicken, and…”
That is about when we cut her off. This was as part of an 11th grade speech class at a private school in Istanbul, Turkey.
We had asked the students to introduce themselves, imagining that they were somebody else in the hopes of loosening their tongues and boosting their confidence.
“But, but, why?” she stammered. She was a good student and immediately worried about failing to complete an assignment.
Moreover, she truly had no idea what the problem with her speech was. Other students had joked around with the activity, after all. What was wrong with her jokes?
At this point, we began trying to explain the racism behind the words. Elif and the other students in the room explained to us that we were the ones being silly.
“But there are no Black people here!”
They proclaimed and this was true, extremely. There were no Black people there or anywhere else in their lives, nor had there ever been.
We talked about it. They lived in a homogeneous culture.
The entire spheres of their existence had been within the context of Turkishness. They were Turks, they only ever had spent time with other Turks, and outside of Turkey the rest of the world comprised the people who were not Turks.
In the absence of any real experience or reasons to think otherwise, media supplied caricatures had filled their understandings of the world.
For instance, there were the Japanese who had bows that were funny to mimic and ate sushi all of the time. There were the Italians who ate pasta and talked with their hands. There were the Chinese who were… actually aren’t they the same as the Japanese?
And this is not to say that the North American and European understanding of Turkey is not grotesquely limited too.
As teachers, we tried to take advantage of the opportunity, digging into the complexities and context of racism, its terrible history, what it does and has done to societies, and to people.
The students’ eyes glazed and Elif only wanted to know if she was going to get points or could do another assignment to make up for this one.
Not only were these concepts largely outside their spheres of experience, but given their cultural homogeneity, there was little motivation to change their habits.
They argued that even if the portrayals they made were “stereotyping” groups, they weren’t being offensive, because none of the people here were offended.
We explained to them that we were.
But we were told that was of little consequence, because of the obvious point that, Elif had not intended to be racist, so she wasn’t: a concept discussed in depth in the novel White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo.
The illusion is that the intention of the doer is more important than the impact of the words or actions.
In their innocence, our students had demonstrated the same failings seen in the West in dealing with racism, how to think about it, and how it permeates our belief systems.
Even in Turkey, the things I felt that I gained from the interaction were similar to Robin DiAngelo’s work on white fragility in America:
1) In the absence of real experience, preassigned labels are easily accepted and espoused as fact.
2) Outside attempts to address the degree of racism in speech and action are only responded with by the defense, “I am not a racist.”
3) Discussions about blame circumvent discussions about solutions.
4) A failure to acknowledge gaps in knowledge or experience, with no attempt to understand perspectives outside of what has been predetermined.
In the US, the Trump administration’s driving narrative has been the immigrant threat.
Leveraged to win the 2016 election and a well that will be returned to running up to 2020, and it resonates with his base.
What is remarkable about the conservative rhetoric surrounding US immigration is not that it is racist, but that it is blatantly so, yet denied as such by almost all of his followers.
The perception that immigrants are “stealing jobs”, along with labels such as “criminals”, “rapists”, “murderers”, and the more broad, “illegals”, have become common tropes in this dialogue.
In the absence of real world experience of what it means to immigrate or be a refugee and the reasons behind it, along with the extremely limited exposure that most have — given problems of proximity, language, and culture — these caricatures fester.
People find little motivation to change these views. Moreover, as immigrants have been cast as a possible threat, risk aversion tendencies further this instinct.
The perception is: I have nothing to gain, but something to lose. Furthering this is people’s stubborn tendency to stick to whatever their standing opinion is.
Studies by behavioral economist, Dan Ariely, also support this, revealing that people tend to overvalue whatever ideas they have, even when presented with other ideas that are objectively better, even if the previously held beliefs were not their own.
Perhaps this explains, the disregard for bodies of evidence that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than those born in the US, or studies that show an influx of human capital has been proven good for economies.
Yet, this, along with moral concerns are largely ignored.
Trump’s manufactured border crisis has glutted the immigration system so that it cannot function, and the administration that is famous for putting children in cages, is also keeping asylum seekers and refugees in inhumane conditions.
It is also providing inadequate resources to ensure that those arriving will not be put under threat, if returned to Mexico or their home country, a situation that is putting the officers in charge under unbelievable strain, as well as in danger of breaking the law.
Encouragement and acceptance of this state of affairs is based in racism.
Individuals that have decided to travel thousands of miles with their family to a place that they do not know, and likely do not know the language, are not provided the benefit of nuanced understanding.
They are instead deemed “illegals” an assertion that merely through the act of seeking a safer life, one’s human value is on par with that of all other committers of crimes.
We need to strive to expand spheres of experience by increasing access to those impacted by racist policies. We need to tell the human stories of the victims of this systemic trauma, because empathy will shatter these poorly made caricatures.
