Whenever I teach a class, I feel it’s critically important to set the tone on the very first day we meet. In part, this means going over the syllabus and my expectations for the course. Equally important, I share a bit of my own diversity to begin the semester-long process of helping feel more comfortable talking about our differences and commonalities. I emphasize the importance of raising questions in class and not necessarily taking what I say or what the author of our text says at face value.
About three decades ago. I walked into my Introduction to Sociology class at Baltimore City Community College (BCCC). Most of my students had read the first assignment from our text, Sociology The Basics by John Macionis. It was the second day of class.
Initially, I proceeded to ask my students if they had any questions about the assigned reading in the text. A few students asked about some of the language Macionis uses to describe the “sociological perspective.” Then Andrea, her voice quivering, spoke up. She took issue with the opening anecdote on page one of the first chapter. It began, “On a spring evening in New York’s Central Park, in 1989, a twenty-eight -year-old woman was jogging after a day of work in the city’s financial district.” Macionis then goes on to describe what happened to the jogger, who was repeatedly raped and left for dead. This terrifying incident made national news at the time, and the teens who were alleged to have attacked her were referred to as “The Central Park Five.”
After describing the incident in some detail, Macionis poses the question, “What makes people do the things they do?” He then contrasts how a psychiatrist, a police officer, and a sociologist might answer this question. The sociologist, Macionis says, “might note that the offenders (all five of them), were males, that they were teenagers, and that they were members of an economically disadvantaged minority (four African Americans and one Latino). All were charged and convicted.
Back to Andrea. To her way of thinking, this was just one more example of Black males being stereotyped as criminals, rapists, and up to no good. Her comment struck a nerve. Many of my students, most of whom were African-American, agreed. The students were raising tough questions and criticizing the author, just as I encouraged them to do. I couldn’t ignore this issue so I pretty much threw my lesson plan for the day out the window.
Note: I recently watched Ava DuVernay’s excellent television miniseries (Netflix), “When They See Us,” which got me thinking about this class. DuVernay does an excellent job of humanizing the five boys (now men) who were referred to as The Central Park Five, and years later were exonerated. I highly recommend it.
–to be continued
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