Using Students ’ Racial Memories to Teach about Racial Inequality

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214 feminist teacher volume 20 number 3

© 2011 by the board of trustees of the university of ill inois

Using Students’ Racial Memories to Teach about Racial Inequality

Kris MacoMber and sarah nell rusche

As teachers, our lessons about con-temporary racial inequality are compli-cated and contradicted by the rhetoric of color-blindness—the belief that race no longer matters for determining life chances—entrenched in our culture. Stu-dents remain attracted to notions of rac-ism as a problem of the past and often reject the idea that racism is still a major problem today. In this paper we describe an effective classroom exercise, adapted from bell hooks, that we use to overcome these challenges by helping students learn about the persistence of contempo-rary racial inequality. We ask students to reflect on their own racial memories, and by integrating their own experiences with scholarly readings about race, power, and privilege, students learn to connect their racial memories to broader patterns of racial inequality. This exercise meets a key pedagogical goal of both feminist teachers and sociologists, which is to help students understand how their personal experi-ences are connected to broader social arrangements and patterns of inequal-ity. We discuss both successes and chal-lenges of the exercise in this article.

Introduction

Teaching about racial inequality is chal-lenging, especially at predominately white and politically conservative schools in the South. It is challenging, in part, because students are not usually taught to think critically about racial inequality. The majority of teachers, in alliance with the standard U.S. history textbook authors, teach students that racial oppression is a concern of the past (Loewen). Although students learn about historical racism, these lessons distort the continuing sig-nificance of these historical processes for both people of color and whites. Most students lack a basic—let alone critical—understanding of how contempo-rary racism persists. Particularly for white students, discussions of race (if they exist at all) are often laden with the rhet-oric that “race doesn’t matter anymore”—what sociologists call the color-blind ideology (cf. Bonilla-Silva; Gallagher). The color-blind ideology is appealing for whites because it encourages the belief that the cruel racism of the past is behind us and that racial equality has replaced the bigotry and inequality of the pre-Civil Rights era.

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The failure of schools to teach criti-cally about race is evident when we face our college students, who for years have mis-learned critical information about our nation’s historical and current dealings of race and racism. While the class activ-ity described here does not repeal all the years of confusion, silence, and misguided learning, it can help generate open and honest conversations about race, inequal-ity, and privilege pulled directly from stu-dents’ own lives.

Teaching about Inequality in the Feminist Classroom

Paulo Freire argued that reflection on personal experience is the heart of learn-ing. Yet teachers often fail to ask students to share their personal experiences. Feminist teacher bell hooks describes the value of using students’ personal experiences to teach about oppression. She writes, “This pedagogical strategy is rooted in the assumption that we all bring to the classroom experiential knowledge [and] this knowledge can indeed enhance our learning experience” (84). Contrasted with a traditional lecture-based model, asking students to share their early racial memories makes personal experience central to student learning, which in turn can make the content more meaningful to students. As feminist teachers, we embrace the principle that “the personal is political,” and we apply this principle to our teach-ing about social inequality. Similarly, as sociologists we study social life as the interplay of “private troubles and pub-lic issues” (Mills 8). Students’ personal experiences are valuable because they reflect how the social world works in

patterned ways. In short, we aim to help students recognize how their personal experiences reflect larger socio-historical patterns of racial inequality, power, and privilege. The exercise we describe is consistent with the core principles of feminist peda-gogy outlined by Durfee and Rosenberg (106). Throughout the paper we identify how these principles are addressed by the exercise. We also list them below:

1. Recognition that social inequalities exist in society: Students recognize that racial inequality exists and learn how to con-nect their racial memories with socio-logical vocabulary to name and redefine their experiences.

2. Empowerment of the student: Students are empowered by the new under-standing that their lives are shaped by broader social arrangements. We find that students feel empowered to make more “sociologically mindful” choices based on their new insights (cf. Schwalbe 3).

3. A “reformation” of the professor-student relationship so that all individuals both share and acquire knowledge: We partic-ipate in the activity with students, coun-tering the traditional professor-student relationship, in which professors dis-seminate knowledge and students are passive recipients.

4. Privileging the individual voice: By hav-ing students share their memories with the class we give voice and power to their individual experiences.

5. The respect and valuation of diverse per-sonal experience: This exercise fosters a feminist learning community where stu-dents’ diverse experiences are not only respected and valued, but also central to learning about inequality, power, and privilege.

The Exercise: Using Early Racial Memories to Teach about Racial Inequality

Simple yet profound, this early racial memories exercise, adapted from bell hooks, is an effective way to begin the unit on race and racism. Teaching racial inequality through racial memories gets students to see the socio-historical roots of their experiences. We ask students to free-write about an early racial memory. We say, “For the next three to four min-utes, free-write about an early racial mem-ory.” We intentionally leave the directions vague so that they write about their own experiences. Free-writing is an on-the spot response to a prompt and is useful for generating conversation. Since the goal is discovery and exploration, free-writes are low-stakes because they are not graded (Bean 97, 105). There are no right and wrong answers in free-writing.1

To keep their identities anonymous, we ask students not to put their names on the free-writes, but we do ask them to list their race and sex.2 We then ask students to volunteer to read their racial memories aloud to the class. By inviting and sharing students’ personal experiences with race we generate discussions about how all of us have experienced some form of racial inequality, whether it is discrimination (for students of color) or privilege (for white students). This exercise has two main learning objectives: (1) students learn about each other’s racial experiences, and (2) students will be able to connect their “personal” memories to larger patterns of inequality, power, and privilege through-out the unit. Introducing students to sociological vocabulary to name (and rename) their

experiences is effective for meeting both of these learning objectives. For example, a student took this early racial memory: “Growing up, there was only one family in my neighborhood who was not the same race as me,” and by the end of the unit re-interpreted it as racial residential segre-gation. By examining their own (and their classmates’) experiences, students learn that these experiences are not simply personal experiences or isolated occur-rences, but rather patterned in meaningful ways. These learning objectives reflect two principles of feminist pedagogy: students recognize racial inequality and learn to respect and value diverse personal experi-ence (Durfee and Rosenberg). In the next section, we describe three different adaptations of the exercise: (1) an introductory discussion where students identify patterns of racial inequality; (2) a qualitative data analysis exercise; and (3) an everyday life application.

adaptation #1: discovering patterns of racial inequality

Learning Objectives: To get students talk-ing (and listening) about race and racism and to introduce vocabulary for the unit on racial inequality. Getting students to talk about race and racism is challenging. Getting white students to recognize and identify white privilege is even more challenging. Since we know we are swimming against the color-blind current, it is important that we lay the foundation of our lesson about racial inequality by identifying how race and racial inequality affect our daily expe-riences. This first adaptation is designed to get the conversation started about the realities of race, racism, and privilege in students’ own lives and to lay the ground-

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work for the rest of the unit on racial inequality. We always use this exercise at the start of a longer unit on race and inequality. Doing so allows students to reflect on their early racial memories and to make mean-ingful connections between their memo-ries and the course content. This is espe-cially useful for teaching white students who have a hard time thinking of a racial memory because they think their experi-ences are unaffected by race. In fact, most white students’ racial memories involve a person of color, exemplifying the invisibil-ity and obliviousness of white privilege. WHAT TO DO: Ask the students to free-write for three to four minutes about their early racial memory. Then ask for volun-teers to share their memory with the class. Without any prior knowledge or readings about racial inequality, you are limited with what you can do with the memories the very first day. Remember that getting students talking is a crucial first step, and this exercise facilitates that. As Lisa McIn-tyre remarks, “If ever there comes a time that I want absolute silence in my class-room, I will simply announce, ‘Today, we are going to talk about racism’” (339). We use the memories first to get the conversa-tion started, and then we introduce impor-tant vocabulary to name the experiences they describe. Our students’ early racial memories have revealed several sociological pat-terns, including segregation, stereotyping, discrimination, and how adults (almost always whites) police inter-racial relation-ships (both romantic and platonic). Many students share early racial memories that reflect the racial segregation in their lives, such as residential, educational, or social segregation. Take Trevor’s memory,

for example3: “I had an African American friend who lived in the parts of town where white people just don’t go. When I went to their house they didn’t want me to go outside because of how their neighbors were. This was a lot different then what I was used to. [Donnie] always came to my house and we played outside, and I lived in an all white neighborhood and nobody minded, but I went there and had to be scared to go outside” (White male). A free-write like Trevor’s provides opportunity to discuss sociological concepts such as resi-dential segregation, the construction of the ghetto, white flight, the culture of fear, stereotypes of African Americans as vio-lent, white privilege, and so forth. When students initially share their early racial memories they are not equipped with the sociological terminology to make sense of them. What they can do, however, is bring their experiences to the forefront of the class so that we may make sociological sense of them together. In this way we are telling students that their experiences are not only personally meaningful but also worthy of wider consideration. This helps students see the connections between their personal experiences and broader social life. By learning to value others’ experi-ences, white students sometimes learn more about race and racism from oth-ers’ experiences than from their own. For example, one of Kris’s African American students, Sherry, shared her early racial memory about being the only African American girl on her swim team, describ-ing how unwelcoming the white people were to her and her family. Kris wrote “racial segregation” and “racial prejudice” on the board. While she was writing that on the board a white student, Alana, said,

“I’ve never thought about what that would be like. I mean I’ve never been that person who was singled out like that. I’ve never been the only person of my race on a team or anything.” This was a good opportunity to bring the topic of white privilege into the conversa-tion. So, Kris said, “Okay, so while Sherry is describing the prejudices she felt from white people at her swim center, Alana is describing an important feature of her White privilege.” At this point, Kris had introduced three concepts on the board: racial segregation, racial prejudice, and white privilege. In this exercise students are encouraged to give voice to their experi-ences while simultaneously learning a new vocabulary to re-name their experiences. By having students share their memo-ries, we privilege student’s individual voices. We participate, too, and by shar-ing our experiences we challenge the traditional professor-student relationship where professors are the sole creators of knowledge and students are passive recip-ients. Over the years we discovered addi-tional benefits of incorporating these free-writes into other learning opportunities. In the next adaptation, for instance, we use the rich data generated in students’ free-writes to teach them about racial inequal-ity, while also introducing them to qualita-tive data analysis.

adaptation #2: data analysis exercise

Learning Objectives: Students will learn how to code and analyze qualitative data, and students will make sociological sense out of the data generated from their early racial memories. Although the first adaptation of the exercise should occur at the beginning of the unit on racial inequality, the sec-

ond adaptation should be used later on. After the initial day of writing and sharing their early racial memories, the students turn in their free-writing to us. Once stu-dents have read about racial inequality and have learned fundamental concepts and terminology (e.g., segregation, hate crimes, institutional discrimination, white privilege, white supremacy, immigration, etc.), we do a data analysis exercise with the free-writes. When we discuss these readings later in the unit we ask students questions like, “How does this reading about housing discrimination connect to any of the early racial memories from class?” It is here that students begin to link personal experience to larger social issues. WHAT TO DO: Type up the students’ memories, putting three to four memories on one page. Make enough copies to give each student a page. Put the students into groups of two to three, and have them analyze the early racial memories as pieces of data. In addition to applying their newly developed terms and con-cepts learned over the previous weeks, they also learn how to code qualitative data. Below are some examples of stu-dents’ early racial memories along with their analytic codes. Janeal wrote: “I can remember wanting white Barbie dolls or any type of doll my mother bought, I wanted it to be white. I remember when she brought the black doll I would rip the head off. I just didn’t want the black doll. They weren’t as pretty as the white dolls, straight hair and fair skin. The black dolls were so ugly to me. The hair was the worst and the skin color was just so dark. I guess I didn’t realize how important it was for me to like the black doll since I’m black” (black female). Using the terms and concepts they



learned in the previous weeks, the stu-dents assigned the following codes: white as ideal beauty, white supremacy, white privilege, the intersection of race and gen-der, the devaluation of dark skin, Eurocen-trism, and double consciousness. In another example, Jessica shared: “My aunt didn’t want my cousin to attend my high school because we had a very high number of African Americans. She would rather him go to a school where it was pre-dominately white” (white female). Students’ codes for this passage included educational segregation, racial prejudice, white privilege, and whites policing interracial contact. Lauren remembered: “[In 3rd grade I sat by] an African-American boy. He was such a troublemaker, I remember him being one of the most athletic in the class during P.E. and on the playground. Not that I realized race mattered this year, I think that I just realized that there was race and that he wasn’t like me” (white female). Students’ codes included stereotypes, glorification of black male body (black men as natural athletes), racial difference, and assumption that differences are natural. Kendra remembered: “It was a lovely day for riding bikes. I was with my best friend in the trailer park. We are both black females. While going up and down a particular hill a white boy came outside and said, ‘Look at [Sheila] and her nig-ger friend riding bikes.’ I was surprised that this little boy, younger than me at the time, used such language. It hurt my feelings. The little boy then proceeded to throw rocks at our bikes. We left and never rode bikes on that hill for a while” (black female). Students’ codes included social control of minorities by whites, racial intimida-tion, racism, individual level discrimina-

tion (as opposed to institutional), racist language, and racially motivated hate crime. Mike wrote: “Somehow I was taught, I believe in school, that African Americans were slaves. Either I misunderstood or it was not explicitly stated that slavery had been abolished. I asked my teacher if one of my African-American classmates was a slave, and she firmly said no and some-how made me feel very guilty for having asked this. While her intentions were good I guess, it made me feel as if there was a difference between whites and blacks, but it was not to be spoken of” (white male). Students’ codes for this memory included vague history lessons, unwill-ingness for whites to talk critically about race and racism, color-blind ideology, and contradictions. You can use the data analysis adaptation in several ways. You can use it as an in-class group activity, or you can put it on an exam and have students apply concepts to the memories. You can provide a word bank with terms and concepts for students to pick from, or you can ask students to think of terms and concepts they learned in their readings and class discussions. It is also possible to have students use course readings to support their analy-sis. For example, our students usually read an excerpt from Douglas S. Massey and Nancy Denton’s American Apartheid, which examines racial residential segre-gation in the United States as a historical process. This reading pairs well with a nar-rative like Ashley’s:

There wasn’t one specific moment that I can remember where I realized that race mattered. However, almost all of my life I grew up in a mostly white neighbor-hood. There was one house though, on the street . . . that a black family lived

in. I never really saw it as a big deal, but I remember talking to my mom about it and wondering why that was the only colored family4 in our neighbor-hood. I grew up playing in my neigh-borhood with all white kids . . . I also went to a somewhat nice elementary school, where there were mostly whites throughout. (White female)

Notice that despite the fact that this stu-dent lists several aspects of her life that were “mostly white,” she had a difficult time recognizing how race mattered. This reflects the invisibility of whiteness and white privilege (cf. McIntosh), another topic we address during our unit on racial inequality. In this part of the exercise, students’ memories bring course concepts to life in ways that might not occur from only reading books. By connecting their own personal experiences to broader patterns of inequal-ity, students’ learning is more relevant to their lives. In accordance with the prin-ciples of feminist pedagogy, this exercise values individual voices and personal experiences with social inequality. This can be empowering for students because they begin to see how inequality is reproduced in sometimes invisible ways. Especially for white students, learning to acknowledge their privilege can be an empowering, albeit difficult, process. In the next section we describe a third and final adaptation of the early racial memories exercise in which students examine their current everyday lives through this lens.

adaptation #3: everyday life application

Learning Objectives: Apply course con-cepts about race to everyday life; examine how race, inequality, and privilege affect everyday life.

Elsewhere we describe a teaching exer-cise that encourages students to apply sociology to their everyday lives (Rusche and Macomber). The purpose is for stu-dents to see how their lives are con-nected to and shaped by broader social patterns. We instruct students to observe their everyday lives through a sociologi-cal lens and then explain their observa-tion using sociological tools (e.g., course readings, films, class notes, etc.). In this third adaptation, students use the experi-ences in their free-writes to identify pat-terns in their current lives. For example, they can examine the segregation of their social lives, or the racial prejudices they face as minorities or perpetuate (or listen to) as whites. Kris adapts this activity in her advanced-level human behavior class for the section called “Seeing Race in Everyday Life.” For this activity, she instructs students to do the following:

You must conduct observations of how race matters in contemporary culture. Examine the social spaces you inhabit: around campus, your neighborhood, what you see in the media, your week-end activities, the supermarket, shop-ping malls, restaurants, your jobs, your family life, etc. In terms of social positions, statuses, roles, ideologies, and stereotypes, pay close attention to patterns of racial difference that shape these spaces. Pay close attention to white privilege. Be sure to connect your observations to four concepts from the course readings and class discussions about racial inequality in the United States.

Kris has found this to be a useful exercise to help students recognize and examine the relevance of racial inequality, power, and privilege in their everyday lives. This



assignment ends up being especially enlightening for white students who have been taught to remain oblivious to their white privilege (cf. McIntosh). Once they are given some analytic tools, however, white students are able to recognize the powerful ways their white privilege ben-efits them every day. For example, one white student wrote about how she was aware of her white (and class) privilege when she went to court for a DUI charge, accompanied by her parents and their lawyer. Another white student wrote about how he never realized, until taking Kris’s sociology course, how segregated his life was. He thought that segregation was what happened to African Ameri-cans in the 1950s. However, after paying close attention to how racial segregation affected his life—by living in a gated com-munity in an all-white suburb and attend-ing all-white schools—he began to realize how his white privilege affects his life, despite the fact that he was previously oblivious to it. Students of color also learn to name and re-interpret the inequalities they expe-rience and witness in new ways. An Arab-American student wrote about the pres-sure she felt as a young child to pass for white. She learned growing up as an immi-grant in the United States that “white” was the preferred racial group, so she tried to hide her Saudi Arabian heritage. It was not until high school that she found other Arab-Americans with whom to celebrate her ethnic and cultural identity. She wrote that she now understands how minorities’ diverse cultures are marginalized by the dominant white culture and that there is nothing inherently “better” about being white. She reinterpreted her childhood by describing the “double consciousness” (a concept she learned in class) she had

as an Arab-American living in the United States. This third adaptation asks students to take their early racial memories and use them to analyze how racial inequal-ity and privilege affects their everyday life as young adults. By merging the past and present, students can make sense of their experiences in light of their new knowledge about the ways that both racial inequality and privilege are reproduced in social life. This may be the most empowering of all the adaptations because the students learn to examine the racial qualities of their own everyday lives. With a little prompting, many students will take a hard look at how racial discrimination is present in their families, their friendship groups, fraternities/sororities, workplaces, and so on. Many students have told us, either in papers or in personal communi-cation, that they have learned to see race and racism differently, sometimes creating relationship challenges. Some students have felt empowered to actively object to the racist language their friends and fami-lies use; others have written about the new struggles they face when they visit their families, whom they now understand as racist. Another form of empowerment is simply being empowered to learn more. Several white students have chosen to explore racism for a final presentation or paper topic, focusing on the racism found in institutions like education, the criminal justice system, and the media.

challenges of the exercise

Up to this point we have discussed the successes of using early racial memories to teach about racial inequality. There are also some challenges and pitfalls to expect. First, it is important to note that

the success of the exercise depends on students’ willingness to share their memo-ries with the class. If you have not already established a comfortable and respectful learning community, students may feel apprehensive about sharing something personal, especially when their memory may be embarrassing to them or offensive to others. Therefore, we doubt that this exercise will be as effective in large, lec-ture-style classrooms.

Teaching Through Resistance

Another challenge we encounter is whites’ resistance. White students are likely to resist or reject thinking of their experiences as racist, as instances of white privilege, or as outcomes of sys-tematic oppression. They prefer, instead, to think of their experiences as isolated instances. To counter whites’ resistance we integrate additional course readings and other learning materials to help white students recognize how their personal experiences are directly related to the organization of society. The broader point of this lesson is to disrupt ideologies of individualism that prohibit many students from seeing broader social patterns of inequality, power, and privilege (cf. Klein-man and Copp). To teach through whites’ resistance, we explain how racism is more than the attitudes and behaviors of prejudiced individuals; rather it is a system of advan-tage based on race (cf. Tatum; Feagin). To help students understand how whites’ social, economic, and political power sustains racial inequality, Kris distrib-utes a list of Jim Crow laws to her class and asks for volunteers to read the laws aloud. White students are often appalled by the overt prejudice and discrimination

in the laws, and surprised by the obvi-ous social advantages that Jim Crow laws granted whites. Kris then asks students to consider the following questions: What purpose did Jim Crow laws serve whites? What ideologies are reflected in the laws? After discussing these questions, white students become aware of how carefully and purposely whites constructed Jim Crow laws to maintain their dominance over African Americans and other racial minorities. Sarah uses a similar strategy by dis-cussing historical examples of legal-ized and institutionalized racism such as the 1853 Alabama law that one hun-dred lashes would be inflicted on slaves who learned to read and write (Marable 31–34). Rather than framing this merely as a barbaric law from the past, Sarah helps her students identify the persistent effects of such a law by examining racial educational inequality and differential literacy rates today. Another way we counter or pre-empt whites’ resistance is by using Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege” list to help whites understand the cumulative effects of their privilege. White students often say they “don’t feel powerful,” and many are likely to deny having any advantage over minority students. However, when we go through the McIntosh list of white privileges, white students become aware of the dozens of invisible privileges they take for granted. Occasionally a student will try to argue that racial minorities have more privileges than whites, citing the prevalence of minority scholarships. We address this challenge by discussing the importance of these scholarships for reducing inequalities.5

By discussing the historical roots of racial inequality, its persistence, and



the cumulative effects of white privilege you can minimize whites’ denial that contemporary racial inequality exists. Although some students remain quietly resistant, and a few verbally resist, we have found that, for the most part, stu-dents are receptive to these exercises. As with many lessons about inequality and privilege, some will not want to have their privilege challenged or exposed. If, as Nancy Naples contends, most whites learn about inequality in school, rather than from experiencing it first hand, it is possible that racial inequality is a new idea to some students.

Emotions in the Classroom

In our experiences, we have always found that whether students are resistant or receptive, the topic of racism can stir a variety of emotions. An additional chal-lenge of using students’ personal experi-ences is that it can create a very emotional classroom. How we deal with these emo-tions can be just as valuable as the infor-mation we give students about inequality. Students’ memories often reflect racial intolerance and prejudices. They recall instances that were hurtful to them as children, and retelling their memories is sometimes potentially harmful to others. We believe that emotions play an impor-tant role in a critical feminist classroom. As bell hooks urges, “we have to learn how to appreciate difficulty as a stage in intellectual development. Or accept that that cozy, good feeling may at times block the possibility of giving students space to feel that there is integrity to be found in grappling with difficult material” (154). Therefore, we use students’ experiences—even the unpleasant ones that hurt—as “teachable moments.”

For example, because of the emotions associated with racial epithets, students who share memories involving these can create extreme discomfort for everyone. Jamie’s 4th grade memory is an example of this:

When I was in the fourth grade I was playing a [world geography] game at school [where we had] to pronounce each name out loud . . . The word Nige-ria came up on the screen. I had never heard or seen this word before and I pronounced it “Nigger.” I got in a lot of trouble with my teacher and she called my father. I told him that I didn’t know what that word meant. I had never heard the word “nigger” before. I was told by my teacher to apologize to all of the African-American students in the class. I knew never to say that word again, but it wasn’t until a few years later that I understood what that word really means. (White Female)

When moments like this arise we discuss the importance of language in the repro-duction of inequality. This often leads to a conversation about the historical and con-temporary significance of the “n-word,” and Sarah often shows a video clip from the organization “Abolish the ‘N’ Word” to convey the emotional significance of language. The introduction to the web-site plays Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” against a backdrop of photographs depict-ing lynching and other forms of brutality against African Americans and text stat-ing that, among other things, “hate is the author of the ‘n-word’” (“Abolish the ‘N’ Word”).6

As with many exercises in a critical feminist classroom, there are bound to be a mix of difficulties and rewards. We feel that the benefits of this exercise far out-weigh the challenges you may encounter.

This early racial memories exercise, in all its parts, accomplishes two major goals: (1) it helps students understand the per-sistence of racial inequality in their every-day lives; (2) it helps create a feminist classroom where students’ diverse voices and experiences are valued, respected, and central to knowledge creation.

Conclusion

As critical-feminist teachers, we value the experiential knowledge our students bring to the classroom. We urge them to make sense of their past experiences in light of their new awareness and insights about racial inequality as the unit progresses. In doing so, students recognize the broader racial patterns of their individual experi-ences. They learn that their personal expe-riences are shaped by larger socio-politi-cal arrangements. Teaching about racial inequality is challenging, especially in the color-blind era, where there are ideological barriers blocking open and honest discussions. We find that this early racial memories exercise helps us get past many of these barriers by bringing personal experience to the center of the classroom. By giv-ing name to their early racial memories and redefining their experiences through sociological scholarship, students begin to see racial inequality, power, and privi-lege in their everyday lives.

notes

1. We find that most students actually write better in their free-writes than they do in their traditional course papers because they are not trying to meet some imposed expectation to sound smart or to sound like an expert. Stu-dents also feel empowered to write knowing they are not getting judged or graded on it. This also does wonders for freeing the writer within.

2. However, this does not always ensure con-fidentiality. Both authors have taught classes with only one black female student, or one Asian male. In these cases, identifying minority students is rather easy. 3. All students’ names are pseudonyms 4. The use of the word “colored” by stu-dents is surprisingly common in the South where we teach. It is surprising, perhaps, since we are from the North and learned as children that this phrase is pejorative and should not be used. When students use this language we treat it as a teachable moment and discuss with students how language func-tions to reproduce inequality. 5. We also discuss the legacy policies of elite “white” universities as a contrast (cf. Larew). 6. Conversely, Sherryl Kleinman, and Martha A. Copp explore the importance of language in the reproduction of inequality and offer strate-gies for using humor to grapple with language that is emotionally charged (cf. Copp and Klein-man; Kleinman and Copp; Kleinman).

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Using Students ’ Racial Memories to Teach about Racial Inequality

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