Race Matters in the Classroom

This blog started in response to the need for a forum on race and teaching theology and religion in the wake of the August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown and subsequent protests and police response in Ferguson, Missouri. However, we have purposively framed the blog more broadly than this single incident. Teaching for racial and social justice, dismantling the structures of white privilege in academia, and diversifying the faculty, the students, and the canon, are abiding concerns of the Wabash Center and many of our colleagues in the WabashNation.

We invite authors to send us 500 to 750 word essays on this topic for possible posting in this space. Send to: [email protected]

We will post blog texts here as we receive and edit them for posting. We encourage you to check this site frequently for updates. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook to receive announcements of new postings. Or sign up on the right to receive announcements through email or your RSS feed.

Race Matters Teaching Tactics Published by ARTS Online
Nine contributors to the Wabash Center's “Race Matters” blog contribute short teaching tactics they have used to help students engage difference in meaningful ways.

 

Check it out!

Our blogs are now housed on our new Wabash Center website: https://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/resources/blog/ Read more →

Embodying the Brown Puerto Rican Experience in the Classroom of an Evangelical Seminary

Angel Santiago-Vendrell
Associate Professor of Evangelism
Asbury Theological Seminary, Orlando Campus

For the last two years, I have taught a required class on evangelism for ordination at the United Methodist Church at Asbury Theological Seminary on the Orlando Campus during the summer and January terms. The course is structured as an intensive class delivered over five days. Over these two years, I have never had an African American student in class. For example, in the J-Term of 2015, there were 11 white students: 9 males and 2 females. In the summer of 2015, there were 22 students: 12 males (2... Read more →

Building Bridges Through Technology

Himanee Gupta-Carlson
SUNY Empire State College

Shortly after the verdicts in the Ferguson and Staten Island police beating cases led to protests via social media and demonstrations across the country, I found myself involved in two conversations. The first occurred with a car mechanic in Saratoga Springs, the small rural New York community where I work. The mechanic, an African American, described the encounters between the African American males and police officers as well as the citizen protests as signs of unremitting violence. He relayed a racially coded incident with local police in which a man was pulled over, rightfully, Read more →

Race Matters: Biblical Representations in the Seminary Classroom

Wil Gafney
Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible
Brite Divinity School

When and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me. Anna Julia Cooper Student enters. Looks at me, looks at other students, looks back at me. Is this room 101? Looks at me, looks at other students, looks back at me. Is this Hebrew? Looks at me, looks at other students, looks back at me. Are you teaching it? There is no place that race is not present and... Read more →

The Task of Decentering in Teaching Old Testament

Gregory L. Cuéllar, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Old Testament
Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary

My introduction to Old Testament course has served as an experimental site for decentering racializing master-narratives, especially those that have contributed to the marginalization of the Other in the Texas-Mexico Borderlands. As a Latino biblical scholar, decentering represents an important pedagogical tactic that is shaped and informed by various forms of critical theory, postcolonial theory, and archival studies. This theoretical apparatus also draws heavily upon a lived experience of marginalization as an ethnic-Mexican in the Texas-Mexico Borderlands. Moreover, the present racial crisis in U.S. society has made... Read more →

Racial Diversity and its Limits: What One Experience with Asian American Students Might Tell Us About Teaching Race

KC Choi
Associate Professor, Department of Religion
Seton Hall University

I was horrified to discover that Dylann Roof regarded Asians as inherently racist and thus possible allies to white supremacist causes. That opinion received little media attention, except for spotty clusters throughout social networking sites. And while Roof’s assessment of Asians is nothing short of galling, I also found them disquieting; it was the words of a white supremacist mad man that had uncomfortably recalled a specific set of experiences in my course “Race, Politics, and Theology.” Students in my course have mirrored the relative racial and ethnic diversity of... Read more →

On the Night After Charleston

Dr. Efrain Agosto
New York Theological Seminary

We gathered for our regular summer session class on a Thursday evening at New York Theological Seminary, June 18, the night after the horrific shootings in an AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Three of my six students for the class were out sick; no doubt saddened by the tragedy of the night before, perhaps even so adversely affected that they had a kind of visceral, physical reaction that affected their health. Six of the nine African Americans murdered Wednesday night in Charleston were women, by all accounts gifted and faithful leaders of Read more →

The Rachel Dolezal story

Nyasha Junior, Ph.D
Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible
Temple University Department of Religion

The Rachel Dolezal story is all over the news. The story is a horror show for many reasons, but as Dolezal was an African-American Studies instructor at Eastern Washington University, her story brings up important issues of race in the classroom. It has me wondering how my colleagues think about and handle these issues. What does the Dolezal story bring up for you as an educator? What assumptions do your students make about you based on your body? What assumptions do students or other scholars make about Read more →

No Hay Peor Ciego: Unlearning to See

Loida I. Martell-Otero
Professor of Constructive Theology
Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University

When those of the dominant culture express shock and dismay at events such as those that took place in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, when they claim with indignation that this “should never happen again,” I think of a Puerto Rican proverb: “No hay peor ciego que el que no quiera ver (There is no worse blind person than the one who refuses to see).” Joseph Barndt observes that in the socialization process of being raced as white, the dominant culture is not only segregated from people of.. Read more →

Disorientation

Stephen G. Ray Jr.
Neal A. and Ila F. Fisher Professor of Theology
Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

I admit that I was a bit flumoxed by how disoriented most of the students in my class were through much of the semester. My two very talented TAs were likewise lost for an answer. We realized late in the game that the reason for this seeming disorientation was there before us the entire time - we just resisted seeing it. Before continuing, it might be helpful if I shared a pedagogical decision I made about the teaching of the class. As I shared... Read more →