Christine Jeske

Discourse doesn’t have to be difficult

Christine Jeske, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Anthropology

A few years ago, as I was teaching a course about racism, a certain student sat right in the center of the front row every day. For weeks he said almost nothing. His posture was impeccable and his attention unwavering. When he submitted his first reading response, he revealed that his family didn’t believe that racism existed. To him, racism was an inherently politicized topic, and he’d assumed his politics couldn’t fit in this class. Behind his wall of silence, he was holding back a great flood of internal resistance. 

I’d taught this class many times, and from authors like Cyndi Kernahan, I’d learned to recognize many signs of passive and active resistance among students studying race. For some students, resistance takes an active form, as when students raise their hands at every opportunity, eager to score points against their imagined opposition. There is no, “Call on me when you’re ready” in the raised hands of an active resister. It’s all, “I’m ready to tell you something now,” and that “something” will be communicated through words like “obviously,” “clearly,” and “as we all know.” But for students like the young man in the front row, resistance plays out in quiet avoidance—skipping class or bottling up thoughts for the safety of dorm room. The former might seem like a greater challenge to teaching, but the latter is just as important to recognize when it comes to teaching about politicized topics.

Because it doesn’t have to be this way. 

The sociologist Derisa Grant suggests that there is nothing inherently difficult about many of the conversations that people imagine to be “difficult.” She says conversations about identity-related topics—race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and other categories that humans deem salient for social sorting—are uncomfortable not because they have to be uncomfortable, but because we make them to be. We deem them ineffable or optional. We set aside these topics until some marginalized person or group has been harmed so deeply as to have to bring it up. 

If discussions of social identity challenge us, Grant says, it’s because we are unpracticed. Any unpracticed task will be challenging. Further, if we believe that our skills in a task can never improve, we have no reason to practice. We will avoid, resist, dread, and fear that learning.

In this year’s CACE seminar, we learned first of all that challenging conversations can be practiced, and secondly what steps we can take to do so. I filled pages of notes with strategies for civil discourse: Build trust through friendship both in and out of class time. Practice easier topics before delving into touchier ones. Focus on extending charity to authors and to each other. Unlearn the human reflex to re-narrate the intent of others. Take vulnerable risks and thank people when they do so. Vigilantly avoid humiliating, debating, or “scoring points” on each other. Remind students that love is both the means and the goal of learning.

When I need a reminder that politically charged conversations can be learned, I think back to what I witnessed happening with that rigid-postured student later that semester. Some students in the class organized an optional lunch conversation to discuss ways they could begin actively address racism on campus. To my surprise, this silent student showed up. Near the end of the meal, he spoke in a timid voice. “Maybe this is no surprise, but racism wasn’t exactly talked about in productive ways in my family,” he told the group. But then he went on. “I’m seeing things differently now. I’m really grateful for this class.”

I asked a follow-up question. “What changed your mind?” Perhaps I unconsciously hoped for a compliment to my teaching ability. But his response was simple. “Honestly, I did the readings. I didn’t plan to do the readings. But I did.”

When I think about what it took for him to do the readings, though, I recognize now that there was more happening in the classroom than he realized. This CACE seminar helped me identify what fell into place that semester for this student. Looking back at that semester, I recall realizing that his silence was rooted in fear. I could help mitigate that fear. Remembering times in my own life when I didn’t expect authority figures to respect me helped me empathize rather than judge. Drawing on that empathy, I went out of my way to uphold his dignity and demonstrate his value in the room. During breaks, I made a point of talking with him about family and topics where we could find commonalities. In the classroom, week after week I led the class in discussing not just the content of the course, but how to discuss that content. His classmates had also taken responsibility for incorporating each other into that learning community. I’d seen them extending charity to him in small group discussions and after class. 

It required a terrifying trust fall for this student to delve into that topic, and together the class was extending hands into a safe landing place. It was not safe in the way that it asked nothing of him, but safe in that way that he was held in community. Civil discourse is learnable, and seeing it happen is one of the greatest joys of teaching.