Jennifer Seibel Trainor,  "The Emotioned Power of Racism: An Ethnographic Portrait of an All White High School."



As I was reading this article, I kept asking myself this simple, yet naive question,  "Why does racism have a place in literary studies, and how can teachers keep it out of the classroom?"  The answer to the first question is perhaps an easier one to answer. Obviously, we each bring our own views, conceptions, and misconceptions any number of racial groups. If someone was not fortunate to attend schools that were diverse, or learned to be tolerant of  other people, and accepting of someone that was different from you, then racist views can emerge. I really believe, however, that racism begins in the home, and then it unfortunately extends outside of the home to include schools, and other social gatherings. It then spills over into academia, and in this instance, in literary studies.

If someone grows up in a racist environment, then, what steps can a teacher take to steer the student away from racist views? What can the teacher do to help the student to identify with the person that he or she deems as  "the other?" How can the teacher help to not only facilitate compassion, but also to help them see parts of themselves in the person? What can the teacher do to prevent students from saying that an author is racist against white people, instead of saying, 'I can understand why the character in To Kill a Mockingbird feels this way.... It is because of ... and if I were in that situation I might feel that way as well. Or this may not be my truth-- but it is  the truth of the person in the novel. Let me try to see it from this perspective."

I suppose one of the things that a teacher can do to facilitate compassion in her or his students,  is to gear writing assignments  toward helping students to identify with characters, and by extension, people, who they believe are different from them. I don't have this completely worked out in my head, but I am thinking that a writing assignment would give details to how the students view various characters in the novel, and how they see themselves in situations that the characters have gone through.