Leonard Moore, author of Teaching Black History to White People, due out this month, is currently a Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. For more than two decades, he’s taught white students in the south about Black history. In his book, he makes it clear we need to embrace feelings of discomfort when we talk about race, racism, and social injustice.
“If I were teaching (race and racism), I probably would stand up and read out of a textbook, I wouldn’t have any class discussions or have an essay exam.” Based on his experiences. Moore went on to say, “This might be handing the opposition a victory, but professors have to worry about their livelihoods.” Personally, I’ve had professors who spent most of their time in class reading and lecturing. If you had a question, forget it. I avoided these classes because I got nothing out of them. Why then would a professor with a stellar background make this ludicrous statement?
At Colgate University, I picked sociology as a major for two reasons. One, it was a subject that helped my grade point average 😊 But more importantly, sociology challenged me. Prior to Colgate, I lived in a cultural bubble. That bubble didn’t burst at Colgate, but the campus environment, Dr. King’s assassination my freshman year, and the student protests that followed began to make me aware of my racial naivete and cultural isolation.
The readings and discussions, particularly in my sociology classes, forced me to try to make sense of the firestorm that was the 60s. For example, the first four books I remember reading at Colgate were Black Like Me, Black Power, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and Soul on Ice. All four books, and the class discussions that revolved around them, made me uncomfortable and yes, guilty and embarrassed to some degree. And yet I was drawn to sociology; it challenged my thinking, my pre-existing beliefs and made me want to know more. It was all so very new to me.
If I was attending college in certain parts of the country today, readings and open-ended dialogues might very well be banned or at the very least, sanitized or criticized in some ways due to “divisive content.” This is exactly what Professor Moore had in mind when he described what it’s like to teach a course in which discussion of certain historical events, people, or concepts is restricted or banned. Given that he teaches in the state of Texas, he should know.
As a white professor who spent more than four decades teaching primarily African-American students, I’d like to think that even today “academic freedom” in higher education would insulate me from politics and the controversy surrounding “critical race theory.” But what if I was just out of graduate school and the sole financial support for my family and disabled son; a situation I found myself in when I started teaching? Moreover, how would this affect the learning that took place in my classroom? Teaching so-called “divisive concepts” has always been my passion and I think one of my strengths. Would I even enjoy or continue teaching if the curriculum got caught up in this controversy? I’m not sure.
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