Which means he's going to want to talk about race.
Slavery is on the first grader's mind. At least fifteen times a day, the first grader asks about slavery and how it started and were the only slaves Black people and is it over and what was it like and why did people think it was okay. And I, like so many other White parents, have been seeking to develop my toolbox of ways to talk about slavery and race with him.
Since I study literacy and education, my go to is to turn to research and theory as a place to start. So today, I'm going to turn to Boler & Zembylas's (2003) work on pedagogies of discomfort because it gives me some helpful ideas to respond to the ways my stomach churns when the first grader asks me to talk about topics like race.
In their essay, Boler & Zembylas discuss the way that, in a classroom that engages with concepts of difference (like race, gender, socioeconomic status, sexuality, or other types of difference), students frequently feel actual physical discomfort. Those reactions are often tied up with a person rethinking their understanding of what 'normal' is or what's 'true'. Some of Boler & Zemblyas's suggestions are to embrace ambiguity, examine binaries, and to note that silence and absence reinforce ideas of 'normal' and 'true' that can be incredibly damaging*.
So how might a pedagogy of discomfort inform talking to the first grader?
As a 7-year-old, the first grader has already established ideas about what is 'normal,' but as his parent, my ways of responding to his questions about slavery and race are a big part of how he develops his comfort with ambiguity, his understandings of binaries, and his awareness of silence and absence.
As we talk, I try to think about the discomfort I might be feeling. Am I worried that he's too young to know details about slavery? Worried that conversations about slavery will make him sad? As a White person, am I conditioned to feel like race is something I shouldn't talk about? Am I worried that without meaning to, I'll teach him to overgeneralize? To assume? To make judgements?
I try to avoid silence and absence and embrace ambiguity. I never know all the answers to his questions. I acknowledge that and keep talking about the subject. Sometimes I say, "I don't know everything about this." I look for answers with him. If I say something that's wrong, I correct it, and I let him know that I learned something new.
I'm in no way an expert in talking about issues of difference, but the more I lean on deep thinking by smart people, the more comfortable I feel in having conversations that make me uncomfortable.
After we read the books about Abraham Lincoln, I asked the first grader if they helped him understand slavery.
He said no. Which I expected. So we ordered Ashley Bryan's Freedom Over Me to read next.
* * *
*By the way, Boler & Zemblyas also say that, "Educators who seek to challenge these notions of difference are also likely to encounter the stubborn myth that education can be fully objective, neutral, apolitical...we believe that education explicitly and implicitly, through overt as well as hidden curriculum, shapes nad changes individuals to adapt them to dominant cultural values (p.111)".
This is really important to me because it points to the ways how, when educators engage with issues of difference, they're often accused of being political.
When educators leave issues of difference out, silencing complicated questions, those educators might appear like they're not political. The thing is, promoting dominant cultural values is political. It's just that doing so often goes unnoticed.
Boler, M., & Zembylas, M. (2003). Discomforting
truths: The emotional terrain of understanding differences. In P. Trifonas
(Ed.), Pedagogies of difference: Rethinking education for social justice.
New York, NY: RoutledgeFalmer.
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