I used to teach a class called called The Psychology of Stereotyping and Prejudice. While most of the class focused on psychological theories that explain why people are prejudiced, I also wanted students to read something that would give majority students a more gut-level understanding of what it feels like to be the object of prejudice (not just racial prejudice, but also sex, age, sexual orientation, and so on).
I tried all kinds of books over the various years I taught the course, and students brushed most of them aside. "Well, that author's just weird, and that's why her life is so hard." "We passed a few good laws in the 60's, and this doesn't happen anymore." "Maybe that happens to low SES people, but it doesn't happen to middle class people, so it's really classism, not racism." Students had a LOT of reasons for discounting the experiences of various authors.
Finally, I tried Black Like Me. I hadn't used it at first because it was old even when I was teaching this course, back in the 80's, and I thought sure students would discount it on that basis. But no, Black Like Me got IN where other books bounced off. The students would listen to a white man, whereas they were skeptical about the various authors of color I'd tried. The students couldn't claim that John Howard Griffin's experiences were because of something other than color, because color was the only thing that had changed. My students didn't say, "Well, this is old, and things aren't like that anymore," even though they'd said that about any other book that was more than three years old. They were shocked and stunned and saddened.
Black Like Me could be said to use the scientific method -- vary only one thing at a time, to see the effects of that variable in isolation. The scientific method has proven itself to be a powerful tool in other contexts; it turns out to be useful in this context as well.
I used to wish that I had a magic wand or a Polyjuice potion or something, so that I could make all of my students live one month as a member of another race, one month as a member of the other sex, one month as a person over 70 (decades before they'd get there naturally), and so on. Sadly, we have to rely on autobiographies and empathy, instead. :-)
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Date: 2013-08-29 05:59 pm (UTC)I tried all kinds of books over the various years I taught the course, and students brushed most of them aside. "Well, that author's just weird, and that's why her life is so hard." "We passed a few good laws in the 60's, and this doesn't happen anymore." "Maybe that happens to low SES people, but it doesn't happen to middle class people, so it's really classism, not racism." Students had a LOT of reasons for discounting the experiences of various authors.
Finally, I tried Black Like Me. I hadn't used it at first because it was old even when I was teaching this course, back in the 80's, and I thought sure students would discount it on that basis. But no, Black Like Me got IN where other books bounced off. The students would listen to a white man, whereas they were skeptical about the various authors of color I'd tried. The students couldn't claim that John Howard Griffin's experiences were because of something other than color, because color was the only thing that had changed. My students didn't say, "Well, this is old, and things aren't like that anymore," even though they'd said that about any other book that was more than three years old. They were shocked and stunned and saddened.
Black Like Me could be said to use the scientific method -- vary only one thing at a time, to see the effects of that variable in isolation. The scientific method has proven itself to be a powerful tool in other contexts; it turns out to be useful in this context as well.
I used to wish that I had a magic wand or a Polyjuice potion or something, so that I could make all of my students live one month as a member of another race, one month as a member of the other sex, one month as a person over 70 (decades before they'd get there naturally), and so on. Sadly, we have to rely on autobiographies and empathy, instead. :-)