The Elephants in the Room: Facilitating conversations on sensitive issues
In the past several decades, colleges and universities have committed themselves to diversifying their student bodies, but more recently, conversations about educational equity have been more prevalent and substantive. More and more college students come from non-hegemonic backgrounds, and because their success rates are far below their white peers, educators and administrators have focused on how to better serve them.
The fact is that our student demographics are rapidly changing, and many of us now find ourselves teaching in majority-minority schools (institutions where the white population is less than 50%). Nationwide, the white student population is still above 50%, at 58% of all college enrollments (a drop from 79% in 1990). However, this is quite the opposite in many colleges, particularly community colleges. In California, for example, white students are only 26.4% of the enrollments in the community college system, which means that ¾ of all students in this system likely come from the African American, Asian, Latinx, and Pacific Islander communities. So what do these data mean for institutions of higher learning?
First, it compels us to rethink our curricula and pedagogies. As our populations of “non-white” students grow, our Euro-centric curricula become more and more irrelevant and inappropriate. We cannot keep excluding the voices of people of color and their histories from our classrooms, so we, as experts in our disciplines, need to study up on the contributions to our disciplines of people who look like our students. Likewise, women, on average, are half our student bodies. More students come from religious minorities. More students are open about their sexual orientations and gender identifications. Consequently, our curricula need to reflect our students, not our faculty. We need to be prepared to teach in a way that is inclusive of our students’ lived experiences. For more on developing a culturally relevant pedagogy, click here.
Second, the diversity of our classrooms will inevitably lead to uncomfortable topics around race, gender, religion, and sexuality. Gone are the days where our students bring fairly homogenous experiences, cultures, and viewpoints to the classroom. Indeed, the data above suggest that our student bodies and hence, our classrooms, have diverse values, opinions, knowledge, and histories, which can lead to this result: our students’ worldviews and opinions will clash with other students’ and possibly even our own.
To be clear, these differences are a real treasure in the classroom and should be embraced. However, these clashes can have detrimental effects on our students and the classroom environments if not handled properly. So how do we navigate these differences in opinions and beliefs? How do we address the “elephants in the room”?
Let’s start with part of the second question – what types of issues and topics do we need to be prepared to address and what types of discussions do we need to be prepared to facilitate? Here are a few, many of which are pulled from current events:
1. Race and racism: topics can include police brutality, racial profiling while shopping or driving, mass incarceration, the marginalization of black, female voices in the larger feminist movement
2. Misogyny and sexism: topics include sexual assault and harassment, the #MeToo movement, rape culture, the gender pay gap
3. Homophobia and transphobia: hate crimes, marriage inequality, same sex adoption, discrimination by business (e.g. wedding cake shops), choosing a bathroom based on one’s gender identification
4. Ethnocentrism and nativism: travel bans, the U.S./Mexico wall, DACA, ICE raids
5. Islamophobia: travel bans, profiling, stereotypes about terrorists, Muslim women and hijabs
6. Anti-Semitism: Holocaust denial, the Israel/Palestine conflict, jokes about Jewish people
7. Ableism: derogatory remarks/jokes about disabled people’s physical or mental abilities, discrimination in the workplace or at school
8. Ageism: workplace discrimination, stereotypes in colleges and universities about older students
This is clearly a lot. So the question is, what do we do when one of these subjects comes up in class? There are three possible answers (but only one good one): you ignore the elephant in the room, you lecture at the students, or you facilitate a conversation that includes all students. My hope is to provide a few strategies for this facilitation.
But first, what do you do if you are caught off guard by a comment or topic, and you just cannot facilitate a conversation in that moment, perhaps because you aren’t informed enough or the topic is so contentious that it could easily escalate to the point of hostility? It is worth repeating that you should never ignore a contentious or uncomfortable topic, and there are several reasons why. First, if a student says or does something inappropriate, ignoring it will not only create a hostile classroom for the students affected by the comment, but remaining silent can make you look complicit. Furthermore, if a student brings up an issue that is important to them, ignoring it could send the message that you don’t care about the student’s contribution or their lived experiences. For example, if a professor is talking about gentrification and a student brings up “white flight” as its predecessor and the professor ignores the contribution, it could be perceived as either a lack of knowledge or a lack of caring. Both are problematic. On the other hand, if the professor has a conversation with the student and brings the rest of the students into it, the class becomes more engaging and dynamic. The bottom line is if a student brings up a point of interest in class, you have a real opportunity to foster genuine learning and investment in the course.
So what do you do if you are unable to respond to the student in that moment? The best thing you can do if you are caught off guard is to have the students reflect on what happened or what was said. This allows you to also reflect and possibly come up with a response. Ask the students to write their reactions and responses down in their notebook – how did the incident make them feel, and why do they believe they feel that way? If you are not comfortable addressing the issue that day, collect the students’ writing (if they are comfortable sharing), read them over in your office, and create a plan for addressing the issue in the next class. Finally, do not continue with the lesson. Dismiss the students after you collected their free-writes.
Here’s an example: let’s say you hand back the grades for a particularly difficult test, and as you debrief with the students, one male student says, “That test raped me.” Unfortunately, this type of reference is common. A few students chuckle, many don’t seem to notice, but a few seem annoyed or mortified by the comment. Nonetheless, the classroom has that awkward feel to it, and you know what was said was inappropriate. But maybe you don’t know how to respond or how to articulate your feelings about the issue. If you are a male instructor, you may not know exactly why it’s a big deal. So what do you do?
First, you should mention that kind of language isn’t appropriate, especially in an academic setting. This lets the students know that you have acknowledged the incident, and that you do not condone it. You should also acknowledge that the comment made several students feel uncomfortable, but make sure you do so in a way that shows compassion. Do not attack or admonish the student who made the comment. In fact, I often tell my students that we all come from different upbringings and things that are inappropriate to some are appropriate to others, and these moments are opportunities to teach and learn from one another. After acknowledging the comment, ask the students to write about it. The free-writes can be anonymous. In fact, they should be. Collect the free-writes (if they’re willing) and let the students out early.
When you review the free-writes, you will likely notice that many students didn’t notice or didn’t care. But a few students will have something to say about it, and you should use their comments to guide your discussion during the next class period. And remember, even if only one student was offended, you need to address it. Otherwise, the classroom becomes a hostile environment, which can have academic consequences for the student and professional consequences for the instructor. After a couple of days, you will likely be more equipped to talk about rape culture, sexual assault, and misogyny.
If you feel like you can tackle the incident in the moment, there are a few strategies you can use. They would also be useful if you defer the conversation to the next class period. They include:
1. Don’t attack the student who made the comment. It is ok to disagree with that student, but remember, we all have very different lived experiences, and we are all acculturated in very different environments. Use this as a teaching moment, not as punishment or an opportunity to publicly humiliate someone.
2. Ask questions. You may want to ask the student why they believe what they said. You could ask the student why they think that comment is appropriate or how that comment could possibly be offensive. If it is not a derogatory one, you may actually learn something new. For example, the student who brought up white flight in connection with gentrification isn’t being offensive or threatening. The student is simply expressing their reality and knowledge. We can take a moment to learn from this even though the topic of race can be uncomfortable.
3. Allow the other students in the room to engage in the conversation. Do not let this be a conversation between you and that one student. The other students have experiences and knowledge to contribute to the conversation. Invite them into it. It is a teaching moment.
4. Don’t spread misinformation or propaganda. If you aren’t knowledgeable about a topic, let the students do the talking or defer the conversation to the next class period. And again, it’s ok to disagree with a student, but do not be aggressive. Model appropriate discussion behaviors.
5. Make it clear to all the students that you are available outside class for further discussion or clarification. There may be students who are not comfortable engaging with the rest of the class but who want to say something. Share exact dates and times you will be available to chat privately.
6. Finally, respect the students’ lived realities. You have no idea what the students have experienced or what their lives are like, so do not tell students that they are wrong or are “blowing things out of proportion.”
So what do you do if a conversation gets too heated or one student complains about another student after class? In my experience, the strategies we just discussed can effectively de-escalate a situation in most cases. However, things could get contentious despite your best efforts. There are two options. One, you could bring the students into your office and mediate a resolution between them yourself. Perhaps this means they sit in different parts of the room, that they are more cognizant of the others’ responses, and that they don’t work in groups together. If that doesn’t work or you aren’t comfortable with this option, talk to your dean or student affairs administrator. This type of situation is part of their jobs.
The bottom line is that you want to create a space where students are not afraid to speak up, and this type of classroom is vulnerable to uncomfortable topics and inappropriate comments. But we can’t let this possibility force us to shy away from these types of open classroom environments. In fact, the whole purpose of education, particularly higher education, is to think about and discuss current events and other touchy subjects. So when sensitive topics come up in class, be prepared to facilitate a dialogue around that issue and model appropriate democratic behavior for our students. In a time where this country is so divided on socio-political and ethical issues and where people of different beliefs are more likely to shout angrily than have a civil discussion, it is more important than ever that we are equipping our students with the abilities to think about the issues facing this country in an intelligent, compassionate way and to articulate their beliefs in a way that is productive and level-headed.
With all the above in mind, here are some scenarios to think about. How would you respond and facilitate discussions?
1. During a conversation that involves politics or the federal government, a student says to the class, “Donald Trump is racist.”
2. While reading from a novel, a student reads prose that includes the n-word. Instead of replacing it with the n-word, he actually says it.
3. Before class, your students are chatting and joking around. One black student loudly calls another black student the n-word.
4. During a discussion about slavery, a white student comments, “slavery wasn’t that bad. Only a small number of slave-owners were abusive and violent.”
5. Your class has been talking about race and racism, and a student asks, “Why is everyone so unfair to white people. I am not racist and my family never owned slaves.”
6. While your students are in groups, two students are joking around and one says to the other, “You are so retarded!”
7. It is election season, and a male student in class argues that a woman couldn’t be president because “women are too emotional.”
8. Before class starts, students are chatting and one woman says to another, “I was shopping this weekend and the person helping me couldn’t speak English very well. It was super annoying but I was really patient with her. She was trying so hard.”