At this point in 2022, if you’ve been paying any kind of attention to the popular discourse around race in America, you’ll have heard the sentiment that ‘it is not enough to not be racist. We must also be anti-racist.’ While it may be a newish concept in the zeitgeist at large, anti-racism has been discussed in academia for decades, even if it’s only now becoming a term that laypeople recognize.

If it’s possible for academia to have rock stars, Ibram X. Kendi is one. New York Times bestselling author, founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, professor of history and international relations, and golden child of the anti-racist movement, he has been quoted (many many) times as saying (in his 2019 book How to Be an Anti-Racist):

“The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it—and then dismantle it.”

This explains why, then, we continue to struggle to have these tough conversations in our classrooms. For all our good intentions to dismantle entire infrastructures built on race-based violence, our natural tendencies to unite rather than divide are causing us to miss a crucial element in our daily discourse around race in the classroom. We are not naming and shaming.

“Any radical pedagogy must insist that everyone’s presence is acknowledged. That insistence cannot be simply stated. It has to be demonstrated through pedagogical practices.”

-bell hooks 

In her study Inclusive Practices in the Technical Communication Classroom, Jessica Edwards wanted to explore why, despite improvements in access, BIPOC still struggle in the education system. Some of her study looked at the actual language around race in classrooms, interviewing real professors and real students about terms like “diversity” and “pedagogy” and “content.” Part of what she found is that professors generally had a good (surface-level) understanding of the ideas. The students were a different story altogether.

Even when provided with definitions, and even when students had a working understanding of these concepts related to the anti-racism, students still struggled to talk about them. Edwards wrote “Overall, students made tangential connections between diversity and history, but struggled to pin down a clear point, despite being provided with a definition…” These are terms and concepts that students should have been exposed to for several years now, and concepts that BIPOC students should be intimately familiar with both professionally and, regrettably, personally. Having the conversation, however, was clearly something that the students were not practiced in.

So, what do we as technical communicators do about this? It’s been accepted by the field (I think) that we have the capacity to make meaningful change in the world and in our classrooms, and since we have that great power, we also have that great responsibility. Since we can, we now must. But what, exactly, do we do?

Edwards, after all her hard work, concluded on an inference. “It can be inferred that more directed discussion about race and diversity would be useful to help students contextualize the ideas (emphasis added).” It’s not enough to know the terms and concepts. We have to have pointed, difficult, awkward, uncouth conversations in our classrooms about race and diversity. It has to be a part of our curriculum in a much deeper way.

The common refrain (usually from white people) is that not everything has to do with race. BIPOC will tell you that yes, it does. People of color simply cannot ‘escape’ race. It’s a part of everything that we do. Race always has something to do with it. We know that race has its finger on how we understand the world, and how the world understands us. So why is it still anathema to point that out in our classrooms?

Edwards wrote “…foundational perspectives are about how ‘the background characteristics of students and faculty affect their understanding of events, issues, and concepts…” and for everyone, not just BIPOC, our social and cultural concept of race is a key component to our foundational perspectives. And therefore, we have to just actually talk about it. “[Our] pedagogy, then, must be a strategy that infuses the foundational with theory and specific content in order to be effective (emphasis added again).”

To be effective technical communicators, ethical and justice-minded educators, and just plain old good citizens, we must get over ourselves. We have to have the conversations that our upbringing, polite society, and maybe even the administration tells us that we should stay away from. We are members of an institution that is not just cranking out good little workers. Universities are meant to make us members of a good, just, and fruitful society. If you’ll allow me to wax dramatic for just a moment… I taught my students the term ‘alma mater’ this semester. This old-timey Latin term for university literally translates to “soul mother.” We’re in charge of these kids’ souls. How can we let our own fear get in the way of their growth?