Adapted from a memorandum discussing the Frameworks of Identity course at The Potomac School in April 2015
People at our school tend to approach the topics of diversity, equity, affinity, and cultural competence in one of two ways: silence or grievance.
Those of us who prefer silence most likely have been taught all our lives that the ideal way to promote equality is to be colorblind. We wonder why we should pay outsized attention to these topics when the likely outcome will be that people start believing our school has serious problems with diversity, when in truth we work tirelessly to make everyone feel included in our school community.
Meanwhile, those of us who embrace the rhetoric of grievance most likely feel like outliers, marginalized or even ostracized at our school due to one or more aspect of our identities. We believe it’s important to be vocal about the oppression we experience so that people can stop being so ignorant about their privilege and make some meaningful changes around here.
In truth, neither approach is adequate for advancing our school’s goal of nurturing an inclusive community. Our eighth grade Frameworks of Identity course is designed to seek a third approach that promotes dialogue, empathy, and bridge-building. It employs key concepts from the field of sociology, adapted carefully for this age group, to help students “pull back the curtain” on their circumstances and interactions, develop an understanding of how their unique combination of identities factors into how they relate to our society and to those around them, and ultimately become more adept at standing in others’ shoes.
To this end, our course deliberately avoids common terminology that is likely to cut off meaningful conversation before it even begins. Here are a few such terms:
This term, specifically within the phrase “white privilege,” sends the message to many white people that they have not legitimately earned what they have and do not deserve their status in society. This is not necessarily the intent of the term, but it certainly tends to be the impact of it, particularly for white people who have worked hard and have overcome obstacles in their lives.
This course focuses on one aspect of the overarching concept of privilege, a specific idea we refer to as “unnoticed advantage.” We believe this is a more accurate term as well as a less accusatory one. The concept here is that when we experience the world through the lens of any culturally dominant identity (not just whiteness), we are given the benefit of the doubt in society in ways that tend to be hidden from us yet are painfully visible to those who carry the burden of otherness. Only when we begin to notice our hidden advantages can we truly stand in another’s shoes, develop empathy for them, and understand why they might view a particular situation differently than we do, regardless of whether we ultimately decide to adopt their view.
Working with the concept of unnoticed advantage rather than privilege also takes away the burden of misplaced guilt that many white people find themselves feeling after engaging with these ideas for the first time. In our course, we spend time discussing and writing about the question of what we should do once we notice one of our previously unnoticed advantages. We directly address the idea of feeling guilty, establish that it is unjustified and unhelpful, and then pivot to ways we can use our newfound understandings as a force for good in our interactions with others and perhaps in the wider community.
This term is often employed when discussing the unique burdens of navigating the world through the lens of a culturally nondominant identity. On some level, the term acts as a metaphor, bringing to mind the literal oppression of slavery, a system in which individuals in power directly control others and deliberately inflict physical and psychological harm on them. Thus, to refer to hidden systems of social dominance as oppression is to infuse a potentially abstract concept with the intensity and urgency it deserves.
However, in the context of our course, the term “oppression” can too easily be interpreted as implying that those in positions of cultural dominance are purposefully, deliberately, and heartlessly inflicting harm on others who are too weak and helpless to fight back. This interpretation is unhelpfully dismissive of those in dominant identity categories, who usually do not consciously intend to exert power over others. It is also dismissive of those in nondominant identity categories, who in many cases do not feel weak or helpless, despite acknowledging their lack of advantage.
This course instead emphasizes the systems of power we are all caught up in while avoiding terms like “oppression” that might send the message that an individual person is directly to blame for initiating an injustice.
We avoid this term for much the same reason we avoid “oppression.” The term “microaggression” is an academic term that recently has made its way into popular parlance. It refers to specific interactions, specific things people say or do, that push the buttons of those in nondominant identity categories either because they recur with frustrating frequency or because they vigorously call to mind the pain and isolation experienced by that person as a result of being in a culturally nondominant position. The term itself views the interaction through the eyes of its recipient, the person who feels the impact.
Yet in many if not most microaggressions, the initiator of the interaction is unaware that their comment or action is pushing the other person’s buttons, either because they actually intend it to be a compliment or because they believe they are simply joking around and the other person is in on the joke. Thus, to label the initiator an “aggressor” is to misunderstand that person’s intent and potentially cut off the learning that hopefully can happen once that person comes to recognize the impact of the interaction.
Consequently, this course focuses on the complicated dynamics of this type of well-intentioned yet patently offensive comment. The term we use, “intent-impact disconnect,” is admittedly much clunkier than “microaggression” but is more targeted to what we would like our students to examine and also, like the previous two terms, less accusatory. It allows us to pivot easily to the question of what to do about such disconnects rather than wallow in the blame and frustration inherent in viewing the interaction as an aggression.
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Our aim in avoiding these commonly used terms is to keep the lines of communication open, especially to those who are members of culturally dominant identity groups in the key categories of race, gender, and socio-economic status. We sometimes hear from such students that when the topic of “diversity” comes up, they feel that they are being unfairly blamed for everything, which understandably compels them to adopt a defensive posture. This defensiveness, however justified it may be, ultimately serves as a roadblock to mutual understanding, empathy, and the strengthening of community. So instead of trying to talk people out of their defensiveness, we aim to prevent the need for that defensiveness in the first place. At the same time, we are careful not to dilute or undermine the core concepts we are asking our students to examine; in fact, we believe we are making these concepts even clearer by avoiding the most provocative terms and substituting other terms that are more accurate, targeted, and sympathetic to those in culturally dominant positions. By doing so, we are “walking the walk” of our curriculum by placing no one at a disadvantage in the conversation.
This course also deliberately avoids pushing a political agenda. Contrary to the assumptions of some, we do not believe that cultural competence and an understanding of systemic power structures requires a liberal or progressive worldview. In fact, in our curriculum we make a point to include “political beliefs” on our list of social identifiers, and we find that students often disagree initially about which political affiliation is in the culturally dominant position at our school, in our region, and in the nation as a whole. (Interestingly, students tend to see their own political affiliation as being nondominant at our school yet dominant throughout the country; this is true for both self-identified liberals and self-identified conservatives.) Later in the curricular sequence, students sometimes bring up fiscal policy debates during the segment on equality and equity; as the discussion progresses, we help the students recognize that a multitude of policy positions characterized as liberal, conservative, socialist, and libertarian all profess the goal of fairness, with the central disagreement often being about which type of fairness we choose to prioritize.
We hope that by approaching the content in this manner, we end up engaging not just those students who already view the world through the lenses of oppression and microaggression but also — and perhaps most importantly — those who have found themselves resistant to such lenses. Until now.