Westmont杂志 Still Dreaming: Race, 种族, and Liberal Arts Education

The 19th annual Gaede Institute Conversation on the Liberal Arts, February 27-29, 2020
 

In what ways have the liberal arts, past and present, fostered racial privilege? 这种教育方法怎么能培养种族公平呢?

The Gaede Institute’s 19th annual Conversation on the Liberal Arts focused on these questions during the last weekend of February 2020. 《ag娱乐官网》, 种族, and Liberal Arts Education” welcomed participants from nearly 20 institutions across the country for a time of shared learning and conversation.

Ongoing discussions on campus about racism and the 400th anniversary of the 1619 arrival of African slaves to the American colonies prompted this year’s theme. “The conference allowed us to widen our conversation partners and to learn from outstanding scholars on the complex and often painful ways race and ethnicity intersect with higher education,Gaede研究所所长克里斯蒂安·霍克利说. ”,, 当然, 这意味着即使在我们学习的时候, we were contributing to nationwide discussion of vital issues.”

埃斯特拉·玛拉·本西蒙, dean’s professor in educational equity at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education and director of the Center for Urban Education, 向全体会议致开幕词. She posed an important question to conference attendees: Why do you perform so much better for white students than for students of color? 她的演讲, 《种族平等:高等教育的未偿债务,” highlighted the importance of equity in education and outlined strategies for implementing it through teaching practices.

A key aspect of Bensimon’s approach involves data analysis in higher education. 她提供基于行动的服务, first-and second-person strategies for educators that involve them in race-conscious reSearch into their own practices. She believes that reflecting on the racial consequences of long-accepted practices will help professors learn to change structures, 惯例和惯例. 例如, she advocates coding strategic plans to identify exclusionary language and mapping grade books with students’ race and ethnicity to create disaggregated data. Analyzing course-level data in one math class at a community college in Colorado helped the professor see the disparity in performance between white students and students of color. 他做出了改变, such as establishing personal relationships with students and scheduling time in class so students could begin their 首页work there, and the success rate for Latinx students increased by 50 percent.

公平引导资源去解决长期问题, broken ladder to college success that confronts students of color. Once professors become aware of the issue, they can use their power to benefit these students.

“这是一个人类问题，也是一个学习问题，”她说. “教师 can become more conscious and change their practices.”

其他全体会议发言人包括鲁迪·布斯托, associate professor of religious studies at UC Santa Barbara, 谁谈到了“种族?, 种族与另类:来自宗教研究的教训.” He addressed the importance of upsetting narratives and challenging assumptions about the creation of our academic disciplines—a process he referred to as counterdisciplinarity.

拥有民族研究和宗教研究的学位, he has discovered that issues of race and ethnicity are always present in the history of religions. He also acknowledged the contrast between the two disciplines, ethnic studies being more activist and religious studies more conservative and academic, 导致违纪. 他认为研究宗教和种族, 哪些可能成为恐惧和误解的对象, 在课堂上给予学生重要的工具, fosters a hermeneutic of suspicion and frees them to ask difficult questions.

雷吉·威廉姆斯，95年, a Westmont alumnus and former resident director at the college, spoke in chapel on the movement of enslaved people to the western world through prisons on the coast of Africa. He focused on the ideology of white supremacy that accompanied African bodies through this “Door of No Return” and remains present with us today.

路易斯·纳尔逊作了闭幕词, “Educated in Tyranny: An Institution Grappling with its Legacy of Slavery.弗吉尼亚大学的教授, he has focused on the institution’s history in the wake of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rallies 在夏洛茨维尔. His talk offered an exposition on Jefferson’s designs for the institution’s buildings and how they concealed the presence of enslaved people on the campus.

“We have allowed our gaze to be distracted from alternative histories,尼尔森说。, noting that stolen labor built the university and enslaved people occupied its grounds for the first 50 years. 他总结了奴隶制的普遍影响

在夏洛茨维尔, 包括种族隔离的历史, 非洲裔美国人ag娱乐官网的迁移, and statistically lower rates of wealth and health for African Americans in comparison to the white population.

This work of truth-telling has led the University of Virginia to acknowledge its role in the history of racism and the rise of white supremacy 在夏洛茨维尔. The institution has built a memorial to enslaved people that honors their integrity and tells their true history. Descendants of enslaved people made decisions about the memorial, 它的特点是,000年是, 每一个劳动被偷的人一份. The absence of names offers a powerful reminder of the destruction of these people.

In closing, Nelson urged attendees to “ask the hard questions of your institution. 修复是什么样子的?... 我们的机会, 尤其是对于那些认为自己是基督徒的人, 是制定修复工作吗.”