Pedagogy and Its Anxieties in the Post-Race Era
Teaching George Schuyler’s Black No More
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11272132 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sterling Lecater Bland (Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 60-78 |
| Publication date | 2017-12-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | MELUS Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0163-755X • E-ISSN: 1946-3170 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/melus/mlx063 |
| OpenAlex | W2761081327 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 5 |
My sociology teacher had once said that there were but three ways for the Negro to solve his problem in America[:] . . . “To either get out, get white or get along.” Since he wouldn’t and couldn’t get out and was getting along only indifferently, it seemed to me that the only thing for him was to get white. We have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals. As a result, those differences have been misnamed and misused. Tonight, my friends—I find, in being black, a thing of beauty: a joy, a strength; a secret cup of gladness. . . . Accept in full the sweetness of your blackness. Classroom consensus often disguises an unsettling peace. I teach English and African American studies at a large, state-supported metropolitan university that is annually recognized by U.S. News and World Report as being the most diverse campus in the nation. There is a profound sense of pleasure and satisfaction that comes from teaching a student body recognized for its diversity of race, class, ethnicity, national origin, economic background, and language. The students are neither resistant to nor uncritically sympathetic to multi-ethnicity—either textual or pedagogical—in their classrooms. Multi-ethnic texts are not simply something they exclusively encounter as classroom assignments. Their lives, particularly as their lives are experienced on campus, are multi-ethnic texts. This is not to suggest the kind of post-racial, post-racist narrative that has so often been reproduced in the new, post-identity millennium. My students struggle with the same threats to multiculturalism that they see reflected in national discussions about immigration, income inequality, and the disparities that function around incarceration, social justice, housing, education, and health care. My interest here is to think through some of the practical and theoretical implications of teaching multi-ethnic literature to a diverse student body at a time when the challenges and anxieties surrounding that particular pedagogical endeavor are so pronounced.
Aesthetics · Art · Beauty · Class (philosophy) · Diversity (politics) · Ethnic group · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Pleasure · Sociology · White (mutation) · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Latin American and Latino Studies · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society
| Highly cited | No |
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