by Tim Sutton

The 2014-15 school year began with protests in Ferguson, MO and ended with protests in Baltimore, MD.  In between, the school year was punctuated by the ongoing #BlackLivesMatter movement nationally, while at Umass incidents of racist graffiti in dormitories occurred in the fall semester, and in the spring, the administration first implemented, then rescinded a policy to exclude Iranian students from certain programs in the sciences and engineering related to nuclear power.

How might the writing classroom participate in shifting the campus culture toward one that is more just and equitable?  I offer (an expanded version of) the following in-class writing assignment to the Writing Program instructor database: 

Ask your students to freewrite after writing this question on the chalkboard: “Try to remember a time that you were acutely aware of the color of your skin.” 

This writing assignment asks students to see themselves as raced.  This is but one step toward identifying the social relations by which race is defined in contemporary society.  In my experience trying out this exercise in my classrooms I find that even while asking students to think about their skin color, their responses often veer into discussions of hair, language, citizenship, food, etc.  This offers an opening for conversations that work to undermine notions of race as something concrete, fixed, something you can “see” and move it into the realm of meaning, something that is constructed and is performed.

White teachers, especially brand new graduate students, are poorly equipped to talk about issues of race.  Most avoid the topic because they feel uncomfortable and it makes students uncomfortable.  Maybe it seems too far off topic.  Writing is making culture.  

This is about where and how we live.  The point is to move beyond texts and context to the lives they inform, to intervene at those sites where the personal aspects of our lives are crossed by politics and history, where private troubles become public matters.  C. Wright Mills calls this “the sociological imagination.” If social and racial justice is my goal, how am I going to act any different?  

If I want a different world, what changes do I make in my own life, in my syllabi, in my actions and behavior to produce it?  To make it real?