This semester I started my Masters in Art Education program with the class Critical Analysis of Multicultural Art Education taught by Dr. J.T. Eisenhower Richardson. Throughout the semester we explored, historically, how both race and racism drive, divide, intersect, and create issues within the education system while also focusing specifically on race and racism within art eduction. The course highlighted the rise of post WWI housing policies that have led to the segregated communities around the US and the many educational policies that followed said segregation that whitewashed how and what the children of the US would learn. In the end, both the housing system and the education system let a large portion of the population down by not adjusting to the needs of everyone and seeing the population as Americans and not as different races and genders.
Throughout the course, we tackled many ideas such as race is a social construct, the white-streaming of the educational system, and how, as teachers, we are not always given the best tools to handle a multicultural classroom. It was through these readings and conversations that I could truly realize my own part in the process and my own shortcomings in real life situations. One thing that was hammered home is that in any teaching environment, a connection must be made between student and teacher if a higher level of learning can take place. To do this properly, I need to be more than just a liberal white male who has already reaped the rewards of being just that, and I need to progress to an empathetic ally who is here to help anyone through my door, not just the students that look like me.
Through this course, I have extended my own understanding of what it means to be an ally and how I can put my own privilege to good use as a teacher, a mentor, and as a friend and a colleague. Within the first weeks of the semester I was brought in to a project outside of my day to day teaching that paired me with a number of underrepresented communities in the Chicago theater/film/art industry and I was chosen to help mentor them through an entire independent film production where I could apply my knowledge and help support those around me who have had a hard time getting the chance to work in such a setting. It was eyeopening, beautiful, stressful, gratifying, tragic, and wonderful, all at the same time.
Annotated Bibliography
Kohli, R. & Solórzano, D. (2012). Teachers please learn our names! Racial microaggressions and the K-12 classroom. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 441-462.
Within this article, published in 20212, Kohli and Solórzano argue that students of color constantly encounter racial microaggressions between the grades of K-12, specifically in regards to the pronunciation of their names. They argue that “enduring these subtle experiences with racism can have a lasting impact on the self-perceptions and worldviews of a child.” (pg. 441). Both authors have firsthand experience with these microaggressions and it lends to their thinking. As someone who is named something that is not very generic (yet still understandably white), I can empathize with how it feels to be called something other than what your parents named you and how that stays with you for a very long time. It is a stark reminder that paying attention to your students cultures is just as important as students paying attention to your teachings if you want to connect.
Rothstein, R. (2018). The Color of Law. Liveright Publishing Corporation.
Within this book, Rothstein draws direct parallels between decisions made by the US government (a very white establishment) in a post World War 1 society that helped create and solidified the segregation within our major cities and suburbs that our country subtly continues to propogate today. Within those decisions made by the whites in power, Rothstein shows us specifically where BIPOC groups were not allowed to participate in the growth of generational wealth in the form of land ownership while white families could invest in their future generations. The driving forces behind these decisions and racist laws were a need to keep races separate. The whites in power used legislation as well as written and unwritten real estate practices and guidelines to keep BIPOC families from investing in real estate. Within the system, those BIPOC families that could invest were charged 3-4x more for their investment while facing stricter rules for missing payments than white families. If there is a book that every teacher in America should read, I would vote for this one. It is such an incredible reminder of how we got to the times and places that we live in today. “I think it can be fairly said that there would be fewer segregated suburbs than there are today were it not for any unconstitutional desire, shared by local officials and national leaders who urged them on, to keep African American from being white families’ neighbors.” (pg. 54)
Kraehe, A., Acuff, J. (2021). Race and Art Education. Davis Publications Inc.
Kraehe and Acuff spend a fair amount of time at the beginning of their book, defining what it is they see as race and as racism. They outline ways to talk about race and racism and they show how whites have used it throughout the education system. They also add in how they themselves have grown up in radicalized classrooms and how to overcome it. The beauty in this work is how the authors describe the difference that will be made if art teachers begin to undo the whitewashing of art in our society and history by using an anti-racist art pedagogy and an abolitionist mindset within the classroom. It is through these techniques that we, as future and current art teachers, can change how all students look at art and the history that surrounds the story of it. If you don’t know how racism affects the arts classroom, than you will not know how to reverse it. "The meaning of race is not stable or fixed in biology but rather at different moments is reshaped by human beings to exploit a variety of circumstances." (pg. 18-19)
Love, B. L. (2019). We want to do more than survive: abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Boston, Massachusetts, Beacon Press.
Love takes the story of her own life and brings it to the forefront of her book. As a young black student all the way through school and into her own classroom setting, Love take us on a journey of healing and facing her own faults while pointing out the holes within our teaching system, ones that she herself fell prey to before she could fully grasp what she was doing as a teacher. Love shows us that to be truly excellent teachers, we must teach with the the urgency of an abolitionist out to correct the wrongs of the previous generations. It is within her own stories where her techniques shine as she shows us how it did not work the first time around for her as a teacher and how a new mindset and educational outlook must be taught to teachers for them to be affective at their job. “Abolitionist teaching is not a teaching approach: It is a way of life, a way off seeing the world, and a way of taking action against injustice. It seeks to resist, agitate, and tear down the educational survival complex through teachers who work in solidarity with their schools’ community to achieve incremental changes in their classrooms and schools for students in the present day while simultaneously freedom dreaming and vigorously creating a vision for what schools will be when the educational survival complex is destroyed.” (pg 89)
Katz-Buonincontro, J. (2018). Creativity for Whom? Art Education in the Age of Creative Agency, Decreased Resources, and Unequal Art Achievement Outcomes. Art Education, 71 (6),
In this article, Katz-Buonincontro makes a case for creativity to be a human right and not just a human act. She uses this argument to show that inequality in art education has stunted students views on what creativity is and how it should be used. With creativity as a human act, the way our current education system teaches many, the acts are small, separate, and skin deep where as creativity as a human right means that no matter who you are, where you come from, you should be given an opportunity to excel and given the tools and teachings to exceed in the arts. But our educational system holds back many BIPOC communities in larger cities where art education is one of the first fundings to be removed from the budget. The access to arts education within the major demographic groups is widening with affluent whites receiving the easiest access which means that underrepresented groups are being left by the wayside. "When art educators open up the curriculum to allow students to make socially relevant and personally meaningful connections, then it’s possible for students who may feel disenfranchised to excel at learning in the arts." (pg. 37)
