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The Fire This Time:
A Review of Taking It Personally
Herbert Kohl
Ann Berlak and Sekani Moyenda, Taking It Personally: Racism in the Classroom from
Kindergarten to College. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001.
T
DERRICK BELL’S FACES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL
(1992: ix) unambiguously states: “racism is an integral, permanent, and
indestructible component of this society.” Bell and his surrogate, the
fictitious “lawyer-prophet” Geneva Crenshaw, “divine” a racial realism theory
based on that assumption and speculate on the role Blacks and those whites
committed to antiracist activity can play in a redefined struggle for whatever racial
justice can be wrenched from the society.
Taking It Personally: Racism in the Classroom from Kindergarten to College,
by Ann Berlak and Sekani Moyenda (2001), can be read as a post-Bell confrontation with the persistent reality of institutional and personal racism in the
classroom. Though it does not and cannot solve the problem of racism, it presents
as raw and direct a discussion of racism as I have seen in the educational literature.
Divided into sections written separately by Berlak and Moyenda, the book centers
on a single class session in a California state-mandated diversity course, taught by
Ann Berlak in a San Francisco teacher credential program. The great majority of
the students in this class were white. Berlak invited Sekani Moyenda, an African
American former student, to take over the class for that particular session.
Moyenda prepared what she describes as a “Boot camp role play” for the class.
The improvisation was “set up for them to fail” (p. 55). A white male student
named Jim volunteered to be the teacher; and 12 other students were assigned roles
as children in Jim’s imaginary class. Each volunteer:
HE FIRST PARAGRAPH IN
was given a sheet on which were written the child’s goal (for example,
to sleep, to get kicked out of school, to learn), a script (a few lines
describing the essence of the child’s classroom behavior); the child’s
tactics for accomplishing the goals (for example, sleeping, hitting, name
HERBERT KOHL is an educator and author. Among his books are 36 Children, I Won’t Learn from You,
and The Discipline of Hope. He is currently the Director of the Institute for Social Justice and Education
at the University of San Francisco (USF, 2130 Fulton Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117–1080; e-mail:
kohl@usfca.edu). His life history of fighting against racism in the U.S. is featured in the 2002 book
by Cynthia Stokes Brown, Refusing Racism, White Allies and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Teaching
for Social Justice Series, Teachers College Press).
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calling, reading a book); who the child interacts with (“partners in
crime”); an academic level; an “escalation” level; and selected aspects of
the child’s background (“parental drug abuse,” “absence of mother or
father,” “mother is a paraprofessional”) (p. 55).
Four escalation levels were assigned to different characters: angelic, usual,
disruptive, and destructive. Moyenda’s objective was “to raise the issues of
administrative procedures, laws, and paperwork associated with classroom management, and how understanding the children’s home culture and experiences is
relevant to management strategies” (p. 55).
Before the role play started, Moyenda shared with the class two stories about
how she, as an African American, experienced racism in her life and how she came
to her suspicious view of white people’s values and intentions. One incident
occurred during Moyenda’s elementary school years when a blonde girl harassed
her incessantly, but their teacher ignored Moyenda’s complaints, supporting the
girl instead. Later that day on the playground, Moyenda beat up the girl in
frustration. Another incident happened during Moyenda’s adult years as a teacher
when a colleague, a white woman, continually spoke to her brusquely and with
condescension, belittling her knowledge as a Black woman teacher. Moyenda
chose these two experiences to illustrate to the class how they “contributed to the
particular sensitivity I have to questions of classroom fairness and justice. Not just
because I often feel abused and mistreated by white people, but because I don’t like
having to defend myself with one form of violence or another” (p. 21).
Moyenda’s stories and her forceful narrative voice set the tone for the Boot
camp role play. Moyenda designed the improvisation to last for 20 minutes, but the
situation grew out of control after only seven minutes, and the improvisation had
to be stopped. The “teacher” could not manage the “bad” students; as long as
everyone played their assigned roles, the only possible ending was chaos. As
Moyenda had told the class, the situation was set up to fail, but not so quickly or
thoroughly. However, the situation ended not merely with an analysis of what
happened, but also with an argument between Jim, in the role of teacher, and
Moyenda. He claimed that the situation was totally unrealistic and had never
happened to him in a year of teaching; she countered that she had seen it many
times, especially in white teachers’ classrooms.
Moyenda exclaimed, “No one should try to heal his conscience by saving poor
Black kids” (p. 61) and told the class that many white teachers don’t understand
children who have been abused and experienced violence. At this point, one white
student burst into tears and talked about coming from a home where she
experienced violence and the effects of alcoholism. Moyenda responded, “If I can
make you cry by making an off-the-cuff comment, you’re in bigger trouble when
you get into a classroom and school filled with people like me” (p. 61). She went
on to say that she understood how “some whites fear Black children and adults,”
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adding, “I (Moyenda)...fear whites, particularly rednecks.” When Jim responded
that some of his best friends were rednecks, Moyenda shot back, “Then you might
want to reconsider working in a predominantly Black environment.” Later in the
polarized and confused class, she stated that her goal as an educator was for “the
children in my class to become militant Black Americans” (p. 62).
During the unfolding of these events, Berlak remained “standing on the
periphery watching the process of the confrontation unfurl and having absolute
confidence that whatever Sekani would say would be important for the class to
hear” (p. 62). Berlak’s stance is troubling to me. As a reader, I felt she should have
taken action to mediate — or at least, address — the rising tension between
Moyenda and the students.
The first third of Taking It Personally consists primarily of describing the
events portrayed above. The rest of the book is occupied with Berlak and
Moyenda’s analysis of the situation and of the students’ diaries about those events.
Berlak takes the reader on her personal journey toward becoming conscious of her
own whiteness. This means going beyond considering oneself just a normal person
without a racial identity, which is the condition, Berlak claims, of white people
except for those few who have chosen to acknowledge and work on their own
racism. Awareness of whiteness implies accepting a racist polarization between
Blacks and whites in the United States. It implies examining the corners of life
where one might be personally racist, as well as examining one’s institutional
place in society and understanding the ways in which that supports institutionalized racism. The convincing rationale is that whites need to concede their own
roles in perpetuating racism to oppose it effectively.
Berlak’s self-revelations stand in contrast to those of Moyenda. Berlak adopts
a more confessional tone, struggling to understand Moyenda’s antagonism toward
most whites, while accepting just about everything Moyenda says about the
students’ diaries and about whites in general. Moyenda is direct, assertive, and
unambiguous about her opinions and perceptions. A complex dynamic takes place
between these two voices in the book, reflecting a dialectic I have witnessed
between white radicals and African American militants over the years. The white
allies of Black militants (and I have at times been guilty of this myself) tend to shy
away from disagreement with their African American comrades and often accept
judgments from Blacks that they would criticize if other whites voiced them. This
reflects one of the inescapable contradictions that form part of the legacy of racism.
By yielding too much in an argument or going along with actions one disagrees
with, antiracist whites at times manifest the unequal treatment and racism they are
trying to oppose.
By her own account in the book, Moyenda’s role play was set up to fail and to
create chaos. Her stories were meant to confront students with their racism, and her
comments on the action were meant to show her distrust, scorn, and distaste for
most white people. (It is important to note that Moyenda always qualifies her use
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of white with “most” and “many,” though it is apparent that a good number of
students in the class did not hear her that way.) It is arguable whether this assault
strategy is an effective way of getting people to confront their own racism and
understand how it manifests itself in the classroom. Berlak does not question it,
and later in the text says, “As a result of the encounter, I have come to believe that
there are some people who may be unable to grasp the degree of damage racism
wreaks upon people of color (and upon white people) unless they engage face to
face with expressions of anger and pain, and then are helped to understand or
‘process’ their responses” (p. 120).
What is clear is that during that class session, Moyenda upset most of the
students. Many of them wrote about being disturbed by her anger, negativity, and
lack of respect for the feelings of others. Some claimed that this very hostility was
useful to them as they were able to see things through Black eyes for the first time.
Others reacted with anger themselves. One of the students, who eventually walked
out of the room, wrote, “Towards the end of the session she (Moyenda) got louder
and angrier. I felt she started to lash out.... The fact is, she is not an expert.... When
the hostility rose sharply, I had enough. I wanted to listen, to hear her experience
since I have not had that exposure. Lois (another student) echoed the same
feelings. But the discussion became invasive and violent...militant.... I wondered
why you (Berlak) didn’t intervene” (pp. 72–73).
Not all the diaries quoted in the book agreed about the experience being so
negative. The one African American student in the class expressed an understanding of Moyenda’s intensity:
I can’t stand the idea of racism and I can turn into that angry “Negro” boy
who will lash out.... Sekani touched a nerve in our classmates.... Some
of our classmates...need to take a look in the mirror.... Our classmates
should be grateful, not angry.... Sekani was great for our class. She
opened or made people take their lenses off and Look! Look at yourself!
Look at your students! Look!
Taking It Personally confronts many sensitive and key issues in education.
What are the circumstances under which white teachers can be effective teachers
of African American students? What kind of understanding and learning on the
part of the white teacher is necessary for learning to take place in the classroom?
In particular, who is there to teach white teachers about African American culture,
sentiments, and knowledge?
Moyenda emphatically asserts that most white teachers bring a lack of
knowledge of African American culture to their work and, therefore, confuse the
effects of poverty with the effects of culture. African American culture provides
the kind of strength and identity needed to survive slavery and persist amidst
racism, current and past. Poverty is a negative affliction that has to be overcome
and, in a decent society as wealthy as ours, need not exist. When teachers blame
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children’s background and families for their school performance, they are looking
at the poverty and being blind to the culture. Culture has the capacity to help
combat poverty. To overlook that in the classroom is to show disrespect for the
students and their families and to set up conditions for failure. It is ironic that just
as Moyenda set up her role play for failure, students who don’t know how to listen
and learn from her may be setting themselves up for failure.
Most of the students and Berlak herself described Moyenda’s passionate
responses as a manifestation of her anger. I think what happened is beyond mere
anger and spills over into rage. Rage is not anger. It is a response to a metaphysical
wound, an assault on oneself and one’s people that is based on nothing they did,
but upon their very nature. Anger can play itself out, can be assuaged, can
disappear, or be replaced by other gentler emotions. Anger can be turned into
theater or addressed through therapy. Rage cannot. It resides in the soul as a wound
that cannot be healed without fundamental and lasting change taking place. Frantz
Fanon talks about Black rage in The Wretched of the Earth (1986) and sees no
alternative to bloodletting, violent revolution as a way of eliminating it. Derrick
Bell and other race theorists suggest less horrific ways of managing, rather than
expunging, rage. It cannot be overstated that rage cannot be assuaged without
whites and white-dominated institutions becoming so fundamentally changed as
to be unrecognizable.
Rage is not limited to African Americans. Many women live with rage over
roles they have been forced to play simply by being women. Many Jews suffer rage
over the Holocaust and over the continuing sense of being under siege by Christian
culture all of the time. Muslims, and particularly Palestinians, live and sometimes
die through a combination of devotion and rage.
Taking It Personally is about rage. It touches on many crucial and sensitive
issues that affect the role of white people in the education of African American
children. It is an important book, one that educators must read and talk about.
Moreover, it is worth using the book to put rage and culture at the center of
discussions on race, racism, and the education of African American children. As
Moyenda says at the end of the book, “writing this book allowed me to address the
real issues. Not the ones white people want to misrepresent as the issues. Not the
safe ones. But some of the most fundamental ones” (p. 169). We owe her and Ann
Berlak thanks for their candor and insight on ways we might begin to go about
understanding some of the deeper and more intractable issues of confronting
racism in the classroom.
Ann Berlak’s Response
Herb Kohl clearly shares our concern about the persistence and reality of
personal and institutional racism in schools. It is nice to have the book reviewed
by an ally. We are pleased that, in spite of his reservations, he thinks our book
contributes to the discussion of how we as educators are to address racism in our
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classrooms and in our work. I welcome the opportunity to continue this important
conversation.
Kohl raises what I see as a central pedagogical issue explored in Taking It
Personally, an issue college and university teachers who hope to address the
effects of racist conditioning upon both white students and students of color must
come to terms with: the issue of displays of emotion and feeling in classrooms and
how teachers should respond to them. He labels Sekani’s direct and passionate
interchanges with the class an “assault strategy,” and questions the wisdom and
effectiveness of that “strategy,” apparently believing that Sekani’s expressions of
rage made it all but impossible for the students to learn from her about racism.
Thus, he is concerned about my decision not to intervene to protect the students
from the “assault.”
The distinction he draws between anger and rage is important and useful.
However, I do not agree with him that expressions of rage should be curtailed.
Rage is uncomfortable. Rage is dangerous. And rage is a reality that rarely makes
its presence known inside classrooms. Sekani’s encounter with the class exposed
her rage and it did initially anger and upset some of the students. Because of Sekani
and my deep reflection on Sekani’s presentation and its aftermath, however, I have
come to believe that anyone who wants to engage in an antiracist pedagogy that
gets to the heart of the matter must consider the conditions under which expressions of rage may be essential to the process.
A large part of the book is devoted to showing that, if thoughtfully examined
and analyzed in class, encounters with rage can provoke a rethinking of racism that
strategies that leave feelings (including rage) outside the classroom do not and
perhaps cannot achieve. We argue and document through students’ journal entries
that, because of Sekani’s visit and our “processing” of the experience, all students
were emotionally and intellectually involved, and all, however temporarily,
eventually reached a much deeper level of understanding of racism. One student
wrote that it was one of the most valuable classes she had ever had. Teachers who
have used the book in antiracist and foundations courses have reported that
promoting students’ reflection upon their responses to the book has raised their
students’ understanding to a different plane.
What happened in the encounter and its aftermath was not a preplanned
strategy, but a fortuitous happening that added another layer to my understanding
of what it takes to promote the unlearning of racism in classrooms.
Sekani Moyenda’s Response
Kohl’s review was one of the most refreshing I’ve read, not because I
necessarily agree with all of it, but because it made me think about how others may
perceive and view my relationship to Ann and to the book. The book does not
reflect the influence Ann had on me, because I did not fully understand her
influence until after the book was completed and I continued to confront and resist
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racism in my own backyard. Our collaboration and the process of writing the book
changed us both. Does it mean that Ann was too easy to give in on the issues? You
missed the many hours of debate and, frankly, I think that when Ann came to share
my point of view, it was because my arguments were well reasoned, logical, and
ethical, not because she needed my approval to assuage her “white guilt.” I did not
make her what white supremacists call a “race traitor”; she came into my life that
way. I am glad you raised the issue, because sometimes that dynamic does occur
and we all need to do a self-check as allies in the struggle for social justice.
Rage is not all I feel on the subject of racism. I focused on rage and grief,
because these are the emotions pointedly avoided when discussing the issue. As
with all forms of emotional defense, rage at this time in history is a social necessity
if one is to combat racism in its most malignant forms.
We both thought it best to speak in our own voices in the book rather than to
write as if we were of one mind. If the book left anyone with the impression that
we wrote our parts independently of one another, perhaps it is because we are both
independent thinkers and we each integrated the wisdom of the other in our own
way. But more to the point, we both find different aspects of the discussion
important, just as we had different responses to Herb Kohl’s review, and we
wanted to fully honor both of our perspectives.
REFERENCES
Bell, Derrick
1992
Faces at the Bottom of the Well. New York: BasicBooks.
Berlak, Ann and Sekani Moyenda
2001
Taking It Personally. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Brown, Cynthia Stokes
2002
Refusing Racism. New York: Teachers College Columbia.
Delpit, Lisa
1996
Other People’s Children. New York: The New Press.
Fanon, Frantz and Constance Farrington
1986
The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press.