Pain and Privilege
Chapter 2: The Unbearable Whiteness of Being
This chapter is a very important foundational chapter because it introduces many key terms that are built on throughout the rest of the book. For preservice teachers, I think it’s very important that we become familiar with the term microaggression. Defined as a term used for brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative attitudes toward stigmatized or culturally marginalized groups, microaggressions are committed even by those with the best intentions. Small actions like pronouncing a student’s name incorrectly or scheduling assessments or assignments on cultural holidays add up and contribute to feelings of unwelcomeness that marginalized students often feel at school. It is important to continuously reflect on your actions and listen to feedback from others in order to ensure that you are learning from any mistakes that you have made. As a white woman, I want to make sure that my students feel comfortable correcting me if I ever say or do something that makes them uncomfortable, especially considering how student demographics continue to grow more and more diverse each year. I consider myself to be anti-racist, but that doesn’t mean that I am never going to make a mistake.
I also found the discussion around code-switching to be very interesting. One of the courses that I took for my English/Language Arts endorsement, the Grammatical Structure of the English Language, discussed code-switching and the argument behind what is considered “proper” grammar. With the reality being that “proper” grammar has no true justification behind it, it is important that teachers allow students to express themselves in the manner that they are more comfortable in. While there are obviously times when a more formal grammar is called for, giving students ample opportunity to write and speak without the fear of being corrected over their grammar is instrumental in helping them feel comfortable in the classroom.
I also thought that the conversation around active listening near the end of the chapter was very important because it is a reflection on much of what we have been learning in this course. I cannot change that I am white, but I can make sure that I am listening to the experiences of non-white folks and learning from what they have gone through. I can make sure that I am not speaking over anyone and that I use my position to amply those voices when they want to be amplified. I cannot do anything about the fact that my skin color has given me certain privileges, but I can direct that privilege somewhere where I can try and create change.
Chapter 4: The Unidentified Nationality
This chapter hit hard for me because there were parts in the text where I could relate to the author’s feelings and experiences with the pain of wishing that your family was the stereotypical American family. Growing up in an immigrant family meant that my parents wanted to keep many of their traditions alive so that my older brother and I could connect more with the Polish culture despite not living in Poland. I never minded the way my parents kept their culture alive within myself and my brother until my peers in school had something to say. Suddenly, the things I had always loved, like the way my parents spoke English and the food my mom sent me to school with, became weapons against me. The first time I remember crying and wishing that I was an American was in first grade after I was bullied by a classmate for struggling to say something in English. I still remember that pain to this day. However, I also recognize how my skin color protected me from the more vicious attacks that my fellow ELLs faced. I was never told to go back to where I came from, I was never called a slur. The pain that I felt as a child was real, but I know that it will never compare to the added pain of trying to fit into a society built for white people.
H.P. Yoo’s experience of feeling like he was losing his cultural identity affirms the importance of making sure that our classrooms and the content that we teach is as diverse as possible. He didn’t see himself within the classroom and its content, and without his family’s presence, it was easy for him to lose his connection to the Korean aspect of his identity. Including more representative content is a fairly simple step to take, but can have very far reaching impacts. Additionally, just doing the bare minimum of correctly referring to students’ identities, like acknowledging that a student is Korean not Chinese, is important in showing students that you respect them and their identities. Teachers lead the narrative in the classroom. If you are respectful and are firm in that your students should be respectful to each other, then the classroom environment will be much more affirming than if you continuously commit and allow others to commit microagressions. It is important for all teachers, but especially for ELL teachers, to make sure that their classrooms are not a racist battleground. From educating students on why something that they may have said is racist and is wrong, to designing lessons that naturally spark students’ interests in other cultures, there are many ways for teachers to promote diversity and inclusion within their classroom. Had H.P. Yoo had a more understanding and educated teacher, his middle school experience would have been much different and he would not have struggled with his identity as much.
Chapter 7: Transformative Consciousness Raising Questions
This chapter was one of the most influential chapters within the Pain and Privilege Text simply because of how much self reflection it allowed me to engage in. As I move through the education program, it has become increasingly evident that in order to become the best possible teacher for my future students, I have to reflect on my own personal experiences in order to learn and grow from them. My own experiences within the schooling system have shaped my personal beliefs about education, both negatively and positively, and it is important to make sure that I understand how it has impacted my views about what a teacher should be and do in order to make sure that students are receiving the best possible person of myself when I first step foot into a classroom.
A question that stuck out to me was “Am I teaching just to teach”? Every single person has had at least one teacher who burnt out and was no longer passionate about teaching, something that is not able to be hidden from students. Teaching is a profession that takes a lot out of the one doing it, and if one is constantly giving and giving and never taking time for themselves, it is only inevitable that they burn out. Teachers burning out is a consequence of the system, and is not the fault of the teacher, but I want to make sure that I get out of the profession before I become someone who does the bare minimum and no longer has any passion for teaching and connecting with students at a deeper level.
Another question that made me reflect was the question of “Am I willing to be vulnerable to talk about difficult subjects like race”? I recently attended a disarming racial microagressions training presented by Student Counseling Services’ Multicultural Outreach Team at one of my RSOs meetings, and they presented a lot of great information that made me reflect about questions similar to this. One part of the training that stuck out to me in relation to this question is when the presenters mentioned that often when they give this training, white individuals try to relate to the struggles of racial minorities by relating to their experience as a woman, member of the LGBT+ community, etc. While people think this is helpful and that it helps them relate, all it really does is offer white people yet another chance to speak over BIPOC. As a white woman entering the profession, I need to make sure that I give my students the opportunity to speak about issues relating to race without trying to relate to them in a bid to make myself less uncomfortable. Students deserve a safe space to be vulnerable about the issues that they face, so the least I can do is also be vulnerable and take the opportunity to observe these conversations, even if it makes me uncomfortable.
Chapter 10: Being Ambiguously Brown in Africa
This chapter was absolutely fascinating to me because it shows how race is an abstract concept made up by humans, yet it is placed in such high regard when it comes to how others are treated. The way the author’s racial identity was perceived by others was highly dependent on where she was physically located, contributing to a great sense of frustration as no one stopped to ask her what she personally identified as. This parallels many of the experiences that the authors of other chapters had, where assumptions were made about their race and no one bothered to ask them. As we have discussed many times in class, it is important to affirm each individual students’ identity and not make broad assumptions about how they may identify. This can be done through informal surveys or conversations, and also provides the teacher with the opportunity to see if a student may want materials being sent home to be translated into a different language.
This author’s experience also connects to some of the discussion that was had at the end of chapter two, where that chapter’s author calls on teachers to deliberately teach race as a sociopolitical construction reinforced by federal and state legislation. Race has been imagined and reimagined in many different ways, none of which truly serve a purpose other than to divide. It can be a difficult topic to navigate, because for some students, their identity is going to be closely tied to their race and we do not want to invalidate how they perceive themselves and their identity. However, as many of the other chapters have discussed, it is important for teachers to be vulnerable during these conversations and continue, even if they do not feel entirely comfortable during it. Teachers must take an active role in dismantling white supremacy, and showing that there is no scientific basis for it is a basic step that teachers can take.
Additionally, I believe that it is important for teachers to give students the space to be uncertain about their identity, racial/ethnic or otherwise. It is well known that young adolescence and middle school is the time when children first begin to question and discover their true selves, but just because they are beginning to do so does not mean they are going to have a concrete answer. Allowing students to be as specific or as vague as they’d like when it comes to discussing their identity is a key component of ensuring that your classroom is a safe space for self discovery and reflection.
Chapter 12: Bordered Lives
I found this chapter to be an important read because of how well it depicts the many hoops one has to jump through in order to become documented in the United States. The siblings that this chapter follows were children when they immigrated to the United States without documentation. Their entire life was in the United States—they grew up in California, attended school there, made their friends there, and put down all of their roots in their small town. Despite this, their immigration status presented as an obstacle when it came time to apply to colleges, as they were classified as international students who had to pay an inflated tuition. After completing their undergraduate degree, they had to seek options outside of the United States because there was no other way to sustain themselves in America.
I think that it is very important that pre-service educators read the testimonies of those who are undocumented because it goes to show how many struggles our students may be facing outside of the classroom. It is important that we offer our students compassion and care where we can because school should not be an added stress to the lives of these students. It is easy for people to brush off their struggles as a consequence of them breaking the law to enter, but all teachers should remember that their students are children who have no say in if their family is going to immigrate without documentation, and that undocumented immigrants would not choose the life of hardships that they face if they weren’t desperate and facing significantly worse conditions back home.
This chapter also caused me to reflect on the experiences of my parents and the privilege that they had as a result of being European immigrants. My parents did not come to America in the most legal way, but they never had to face the suspicion of being an illegal immigrant because their skin color protected them. They were able to get their Green Cards and find work much more quickly than other immigrants because they didn’t have to work against racism. My parents and I speak Polish in public and have never received a negative reaction like my Mexican peers have faced for speaking Spanish in public. Being an immigrant is difficult and being an undocumented immigrant is even harder, but there is one group that faces much more negativity and suspicion and it is important for us to remember that when interacting with our students. Teaching is not just about instructing students in your respective content area; it should also include advocating for your marginalized students and being their supporter when they face challenges like those described by the Villegas siblings. I hope to be able to provide similar comfort and support that the siblings received from the professor who helped them apply to graduate schools in Canada to my future students.