Creating Safe Spaces in College Classrooms

During my freshman year of college, I had the opportunity to take a literature class on post-Civil Rights African American literature. It’s the only class I’ve taken during my time at Elon where black students have outnumbered white students. This presented an interesting educational dynamic where minorities in the class weren’t expected to “represent” their race due to the usual homogeneity of most Elon courses.

My experiences in other classes when it came to exploring race or ethnicity studies was that there is always an expectation for minority students to speak on behalf of these issues. The professor and other students place this burden of representation on minority students and it can be difficult to navigate out of.

In response to these types of issues, Abby Ferber, a professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, wrote “Bringing Students into the Matrix: A Framework for Teaching Race and Overcoming Student Resistance”. This text offers a solution to the dilemmas minority students face when it comes to class climate and expectations. Her study is more rooted in the overt cases of racial threatening with students who “exude” racist beliefs or stances that make minority students uncomfortable. Someone outwardly supporting Trump’s support of xenophobia is bound to trigger distress in international students.

Ferber recognized all the macro and micro-aggressions that can exist in the classroom and created a pedagogical template for teachers to use when involved in sensitive topics such as race. She calls it the “Matrix of Privilege and Oppression Framework”. In this framework, she pulls from theories of intersectionality, social constructionism, etc. As a whole, the framework blends these theories and perspectives to cultivate an environment of awareness and empathy.

Critics of this approach will argue that theoretical frameworks such as this only limit the intellectual growth of students. Some claim that “PC culture” is becoming the detriment of society. Others have presented more thorough arguments suggesting that these models are only coddling students and not preparing them for the real world.

There seems to be the notion that just because Elon University is a school that upholds “progressive values” and has all these initiative in place it does not mean that racism can still exist. Patricia Hill Collins writes that “recognizing that racism even exists remains a challenge for most White Americans... They believe that the passage of civil rights legislation eliminated racially discriminatory practices and that any problems that Blacks may experience now are of their own doing.”

This shows that a majority of Americans fail to understand some of the subtler ways racism manifests itself in our culture. The lack of awareness is what allows racism to exist in these ostensibly safe places. Spaces like classrooms have not been taken fully under consideration because there isn’t anything visceral or outwardly alarming about them. This ignorance to the problem is one of the issues that has caused racism to permeate across college campuses.

The primary takeaway then from this model of education is empathy. The threats and micro-aggressions encountered by students in the classroom stifle opportunities for learning and creativity. One of the supposed affordances of the classroom is safety. It is supposed to create a haven for collective learning and growth. By exploring these models, professors and students should feel safer with their beliefs and identities. College is supposed to be a time of development - let's make it the mission across campus to have classrooms be spaces of empowerment and security rather than fear and humiliation.

photos courtesy of:

https://www.freshu.io/biyonka-liang/the-learning-curve-of-a-college-classroom

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