bell-hooks-community.pdf

T e a c h i n g

Community

T e a c h i n gCommunity

A Pedagogy of Hope

bell hooks

RoutledgeNew York and London

Taylor & Francis Group

Taylor & Francis Group2 Park SquareMilton Park, AbingdonOxon OX14 4RN

711 Third Avenue New York, , NY 10017

It is imperative that we maintain hope even when the harshness of reality may suggest the opposite.

—Paulo Freire

When I first published Teaching to Transgress: Education as thePractice of Freedom I included a dialogue with Ron Scapp. Wehave the pleasure of being both colleagues and true friends. Inhis new book Teaching Values: Critical Perspective on Education,Politics, and Culture Ron states; “. . . there is a real need (an eth-ical imperative) to disrupt and challenge the simple acts ofprivilege, and that one of the ways to begin this process is bylistening to and acknowledging those for whom such acts arenot simple. So clearly, for a white, heterosexual, male, tenuredprofessor of relative financial security this means reading, lis-tening to, and speaking with, among others, people of color.”We still live in a culture where few white people include blackpeople/people of color in their intimate kinship structures oflove and friendship on terms that are fully and completely anti-racist. We still need to hear about how inclusion of diversitychanges the nature of intimacy, of how we see the world. When

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I walk out into the world with Ron, clearly indicating closenessby our body language and our speech, it changes how I amseen, how he is seen. This is yet another way race matters in awhite-supremacist patriarchal context. It is still important for usto document these border crossings, the process by which wemake community. This dialogue extends the first. It was spon-taneous—neither of us had questions beforehand or alteredwhat we said after the fact. It is shared as a way to bear witnessto real community, real love, and what we do to keep it real.

bell hooks: Ten years have passed since we first dialogued togetherabout the intersections of race, class, gender and their impacton our teaching and learning communities, on our attempts tobond as colleagues, as friends. Since that time you havebecome much more engaged with setting educational policyand dialoguing with policy makers. What are some of the keyissues you face talking to people from a non-biased perspectivewho are still stuck—who are still supporting race, sex, classhierarchies?

Ron Scapp: One ongoing issue is the effort to build trust. Manypeople who occupy positions that afford them the opportunityto set educational policy are often distrustful from the startwhen encountering anyone who claims to offer anti-raciststrategies, particularly new insights.

bh: Say more about why trust is important.

RS: Trust is such a fundamental issue because these people areso invested in all that they have put into operation already.They may feel the need to protect the status quo. Any chal-lenge, but especially one that hints at racism on their part,makes them particularly wary because of what it suggests aboutthem. My goal is to let them know that we share a commonconcern for making education better—for creating optimal

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conditions for all students to learn and teachers to do theirbest work; that’s the common goal we can share and the foun-dation for us to trust one another.

bh: This fear of being found personally wanting in some way isoften one of the greatest barriers to promoting critical con-sciousness, especially about racist and sexist domination. Sincethe practice of critical thinking requires that we all engage insome degree of critical evaluation of self and other, it helps ifwe can engage individuals in ways that promote self-motivatedinterrogation rather reactive response to outer challenge.

RS: Policy makers often hear challenges as personal attacksand don’t see the person making the challenge as a teamplayer who wants to better the circumstances of teachers andstudents.

bh: What are some of the strategies you use to intervene onthis fear and create a sense of shared community and con-cerns?

RS: One effort I make when addressing a smaller group of pol-icy makers is to share stories as a gesture of intimacy, makingpersonal contact, specifically acknowledging moments in myteaching and administrative work where I had to engage incritical vigilance and see the residual impact of racism influ-encing my decision-making process.

bh: In the years since we first began talking together I havelearned that when people feel directly threatened (as in “Youare labeling me a racist or sexist”) they simply shut down orbecome crazily defensive. Like you, I rely on the sharing of per-sonal narratives to remind folks that we are all struggling toraise our consciousness and figure out the best action to take.Even so, we are not all committed to education as the practice

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of freedom. I’m sure you encounter many folks who don’t seefreedom as connected in any way to education.

RS: While these folks can short-circuit genuine dialogue whatdoes often happen is that they become less significant for theirpeers when more progressive voices speak clearly from the loca-tion of lived experience without a tone of moral or political supe-riority. This allows folks who usually hesitate before speaking orremain silent to begin to address their own prejudice or habitualreactions. They engage in critical dialogue. An example of this isthe statement that “racism is over, they’ve had every opportunitygiven to them and still they are complaining.” People say, “Whyshould we spend more money on new resources for poor urbanstudents when so much money has been sunk in, leveling theplaying field, and yet the results do not reflect significantchange?” I respond by calling attention to the many instanceswhere students from middle- and upper-class communitiesreceive additional resources directly from their own families(tutoring for academic skills, coaching for sports) in addition toreceiving material resources (i.e., up-to-date computer programsand hardware) that give them a clear academic advantage. WhenI point out that students from privileged backgrounds are stillpredominantly white, it highlights the fact that race and classcontinue to play a major role in academic preparedness.

bh: Conservatives, though, like to point to the fact that blackstudents from privileged backgrounds do more poorly on stan-dardized tests than poor white students. To them this provesthat class is not a factor. In actuality they are assuming thatclass is solely about money and not about shared cultural expe-riences, common language. Certainly the language deployedin these tests is a direct reflection of racialized codes as muchas class codes. A black middle-calss student may have the samematerial resources as a white middle-class student but operatewithin radically different cultural codes.

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RS: One aspect of my task as a progressive educator is to con-stantly delineate these differences and help folks understandthat these things affect how and why students learn or not.

bh: What has most changed about your thinking in the last tenyears as you have attempted to create greater awareness of theneed for non-biased ways of knowing?

RS: The single most important realization has been the needto establish a genuine sense of community based on trust—inmy teaching practice and in my administrative work—and notjust expertise and knowledge. It’s a simple observation, but thisdoes not diminish its vitality and power. Many professors andschoolteachers working with diverse populations are chal-lenged to recognize the importance of genuine commitmentto the well-being and success of all students and not simplythose deemed worthy because they come from privilegedbackgrounds. Teachers and professors cannot assume thatbecause they hold valuable information that students need toknow this will automatically lead to a feeling of community.

bh: Creating trust usually means finding out what it is we havein common as well as what separates us and makes us different.Lots of people fear encountering difference because theythink that honestly naming it will lead to conflict. The truth isour denial of the reality of difference has created ongoing con-flict for everyone. We become more sane as we face reality anddrop sentimental notions like “We are all just human, just thesame,” and learn both to engage our differences, celebratingthem when we can, and also rigorously confronting tensions asthey arise. And it will always be vital, necessary for us to knowthat we are all more than our differences, that it is not just whatwe organically share that can connect us but what we come tohave in common because we have done the work of creatingcommunity, the unity within diversity, that requires solidarity

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within a structure of values, beliefs, yearnings that are alwaysbeyond the body, yearnings that have to do with universalspirit.

RS: This is especially important for those of us who are com-mitted to education as a way to support genuine democraticprocess and social justice. Enabling students to think criticallyon their own allows them to resist injustice, to come togetherin solidarity, to realize the promise of democracy.

bh: In your recently published book Teaching Values you urgeprogressive educators to refuse to surrender the discourse ofvalues to the Right and to make ourselves heard, naming thevalues that we embrace and that are essential to democraticprocess, to education as the practice of freedom.

RS: Values like generosity of spirit, courage, the willingness toreconsider long-standing beliefs.

bh: Which is what I call radical openness. Even though I dis-agreed with many of the arguments in the Closing of theAmerican Mind, I loved the title because it strategically evokedthe value of openness even as the book did not support open-minded thinking. The will to keep an open mind is the safe-guard against any form of doctrinaire thinking, whether com-ing from the Right or Left.

RS: The Right’s insistence that progressive education leads tocultural and moral relativism prevented genuine dialogueabout the values which underlie democracy.

bh: One of the most powerful uses of mass media has been thefalse representation of progressive professors as the culpritsshutting down debate on university campuses and in schooldistricts, and not the forces of the Right closing the door to all

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ways of thinking that offer an alternative to dominator culture.And, yes, we know that there are individuals who critique dom-inator culture who are rigid in their thinking, but they are notmore rigid than their conservative counterparts. Nor do theyconstitute a greater threat. Indeed, a student encountering aprogressive educator who is doctrinaire is far more likely to beguided away from political correctness or any close-mindedthinking by the different teaching voices they will learn aboutalong the way. Whereas the Right, who are rigid, rarely includein their course outline a variety of material from a broad spec-trum of academic perspectives and political persuasions.

RS: This is why progressive educators, democratic educators,must be consistently vigilant about voicing hope and promiseas well as opposition to those dominating forces that close offfree speech and diminish the power of dialogue.

bh: Our dialogues together stimulate us. They lead us back tothe drawing board and help us strengthen ideas. We have con-tinued to support each other as friends, as colleagues, crossingthe boundaries of race, gender, and status. In these past tenyears I have resigned a tenured position while you have solidi-fied your place in the academy. As our locations change, ourdialogue also changes. I worry that you as an administrator willbe sucked more and more into a conventional hierarchy thatwill change your language and cause you to speak from thevery locations of privilege, race, and gender that you have soconsistently critiqued.

RS: That’s a real and genuine consideration. But that’s part ofthe fun of having close comrades who challenge you and keepyou honest about your position.

bh: You and I have together strengthened the bonds of per-sonal closeness and professional solidarity by always maintain-

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ing a space where we listen to one another when the other israising critical questions, when we interrogate each other.Certainly on matters of race, I often bring to you the perspec-tive of someone who sees the world differently because of thedifferent locations I am placed in that you, as a white male, willnot be given access to.

RS: Again, I want to state that this is why the building of trustthrough a process of concrete action, along with cultivatingthe values of courage and civility, combined with commitmentto community, is needed if we are to find unity within diversity.These are all essential qualities that must be cultivated whenwe seek to build friendship, partnership—inside the academy,in public schools (one of the last bastions of state-supporteddemocracy), and in every setting where values are challengedand embraced.

bh: Can you talk about what you think and how you feel whenI challenge you? Like the time you were talking to me in amanner that I felt evoked white male superiority and I toldyou “Ron, you are being too directive.” How does it feel whenI criticize you? Most of the time you see yourself as the goodguy, the guy who is out there busting his butt to work for jus-tice in everyday life and in the classroom. We both know that,but you can always assume a position that reinscribes whitemale privilege.

RS: Like the many people I challenge, I too feel the emotion,the embarrassment, and the anger when I feel accused ofbeing a dominator, however gently that accusation is made, orhow accurately. But then I have cultivated the ability to pauseand critically consider my actions, to reflect. This is the criticalpractice that makes solidarity possible, not that we never makemistakes or ever rid ourselves of the fear of being racists ordominators, or of simply hurting others by our ignorance.

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bh: One of the most challenging moments of our intellectualintimacy and our friendship occurred when I was being filmedby my beloved friend and comrade Marlon Riggs for the filmBlack Is, Black Ain’t. I had invited you to come to the studiowithout thinking about race. Once true intimacy is formedacross difference it is not that we forget our differences, butthey in no way insert themselves as inequalities or unjust powerlevers that separate us so that we stop thinking about the sig-nificance of race or gender, at least when we are together.While I do not forget that you are a good-looking white man(this is a looks-oriented culture, from grade school on we knowhow much looks determine whether individuals will be treatedjustly, respectfully) this never means that you assert yourself asa dominator or that I accept your using white male privilege.

RS: That was a very emotional day. We both walked in and feltthe intensity of his conflicting moods. Even though I was wel-comed, it was clear that I was being checked out.

bh: As part of your respect for the politics of race you hadalready stated that if your presence was in any way “disruptive”you would leave. Still, I realized that I needed to check it outwith Marlon before I arrived at the studio with a straight whitemale. He was cool about it. Yet when we arrived it was clear thateveryone else was black, that I was the only female and you theonly white person, that gay and bi-sexual folks were in themajority. My being went on red alert. I knew this might be (asit was) my last time working with Marlon. He was sick and inthe process of slowly dying, past that point where you knowthere is a chance of a miracle. The miracle was that he was sosick and yet working hard, so alive, yet already in the arms ofdeath. This was a profoundly intimate moment.

RS: Being in that setting, I knew I had to be respectful of thewhole mood. Most of the time white men allow themselves to

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deny awareness, to keep from sensing moods and beingempathic. Feeling the mood, being open comes from a prac-tice of respect, a willingness to acknowledge up front that youmay not and will not be automatically accepted everywhere yougo. The practice of “pausing” is a practice of respect. It allowsyou to acknowledge and access other’s peoples feelings with-out violating that space with your insistence that you have aright to be there, or anywhere you want to be. By pausing, bydemonstrating deference to those who may reject you, to givethem the opportunity to be in doubt and to possibly reject youis one way to repudiate white male privilege, and one way toallow others to be in the position of the chooser, the authority.

bh: That’s such an important life lesson because often it isthose white folks who want to hang in the space of blacknesswho are most freaked out if they are not allowed immediate,uninterrogated access. They are often the folks who areenraged if their desire to hang is denied, deferred, or if it sim-ply is not an appropriate moment for them to be present.

RS: This is why it’s important when we are challenging racismor any unjust hierarchy to accept moments of awkwardness,embarrassment, and maybe even rejection. To acknowledgethat possibility without refusal, to accept the judgments ofthose deemed other. We are still wanting as white folks to be atthe center even if we are in the minority.

bh: We learned that day how much our emotional awarenesscan serve as a force to bind us together in community andenable us to transcend difference. That day we were all boundtogether in a heavenly solidarity. It was such a moving experi-ence. Race, gender, sexual labels all those human constructsgave way to the emotional experience of creating art in theface of impending loss. You were present fully in the moment.Nothing about your whiteness separated you from us. The

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presence of death can do that. It can make us put everythingin proper perspective.

RS: That feeling of community that reaches beyond bound-aries only happened because of the incredible generosity ofeveryone present. Trust was established at the onset when Ishowed by my behavior that I was not there to take over andwas fully prepared to stay and be silent, to do whatever taskassigned to me, or to leave. Instead, this experience of yoursharing space, of heterosexuals being guided by the geniusand creativity of gay black men, brought us closer together.Our friendship was shared and witnessed as we showed, by ourinteraction, that we can be together, critique whiteness, dis-mantle structures of privilege and let love that is rooted in part-nership be the tie that binds us.

bh: Our friendship, which has been fundamentally rooted inanti-racist activism, in sharing our vulnerabilities and ourstrengths always gives me hope. Just when I feel that the vastmajority of white men are hopeless because of their stubbornrefusal to work for justice and change, you share some storyabout your work, about the way you have conducted yourself inthe world, that reminds me change is possible, that the strug-gle is ongoing.

RS: Your presence in my life these many years has providedsupport, direction, and love. If I could share what I havelearned from my experience of bonding with an incrediblypowerful intelligent feminist black woman, it would be thathonest, just, and passionate engagement with difference, oth-erness, gives me the opportunity to live justly with love.Difference enhances life. This is not to be confused with shal-low notions of inclusiveness or experiencing diversity whereone stands in the space of privilege, taking in and from thosewho are other. But rather where one is fundamentally

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moved—transformed utterly. The end result of this transfor-mation is mutuality, partnership, and community.

bh: Tragically, people have been told, especially since the tragicevents of September 11, the lie that encountering differencewill diminish their spirits rather than afford them the oppor-tunity to nurture spiritual and intellectual growth in new andvaried ways. This dialogue is yet another occasion for us to bearwitness, to be examples of solidarity between a white male anda black female that is abiding and life sustaining. Just as ourrelationship provides us with needed intimacy and love, webear witness publicly to engender hope, to let readers knowthat genuine connection and community is possible.

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