Homework answers / question archive / The Awakening of Colin Kaepernick In college, Kaepernick began a journey that led him to his position as one of the most prominent, if divisive, social activists in sports

The Awakening of Colin Kaepernick In college, Kaepernick began a journey that led him to his position as one of the most prominent, if divisive, social activists in sports

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The Awakening of Colin Kaepernick In college, Kaepernick began a journey that led him to his position as one of the most prominent, if divisive, social activists in sports. By John Branch Sept. 7, 2017 The standout college quarterback went to the meeting alone that winter night, looking to join. The fraternity brothers at Kappa Alpha Psi, a predominantly black fraternity with a small chapter at the University of Nevada, knew who he was. He was a tall, lean, biracial junior, less than a year from graduating with a business degree. Sign up for our daily email update with the biggest highlights, the latest medal count and the stories you won’t see on TV. DON’T MISS A MOMENT AT THE TOKYO OLYMPICS: Sign Up “When he came and said he had interest in joining the fraternity, I kind of looked at him like, ‘Yeah, O.K.,’” said Olumide Ogundimu, one of the members. “I didn’t take it seriously. I thought: ‘You’re the star quarterback. What are you still missing that you’re looking for membership into our fraternity?’” His name was Colin Kaepernick, and what he was looking for, Ogundimu and others discovered, was a deeper connection to his own roots and a broader understanding of the lives of others. Seven years later, now 29, Kaepernick is the most polarizing figure in American sports. Outside of politics, there may be nobody in popular culture at this complex moment so divisive and so galvanizing, so scorned and so appreciated. Attempts to explain who Kaepernick is — and how and why he became either a traitor (“Maybe he should find a country that works better for him,” Donald J. Trump said as a presidential candidate last year) or a hero (“He is the Muhammad Ali of this generation,” the longtime civil rights activist Harry Edwards said in an interview last week) — tend to devolve into partisan politics and emotional debates ranging from patriotic rituals to racial inequities. Kaepernick is now (and may forever be) known for a simple, silent gesture. He is the quarterback who knelt for the national anthem before National Football League games last year as a protest against social injustice, especially the deaths of African-Americans at the hands of police. Almost immediately, many of the complex real-world issues of the times — police violence, presidential politics and the foment of racial clashes that continue to boil over in places like Charlottesville, Va. — all flushed through the filter of Kaepernick’s gesture. Time magazine put him on the cover, kneeling next to the words “The Perilous Fight.” With the N.F.L. season beginning in earnest this weekend, Kaepernick finds himself out of the league, either exiled or washed up, depending on the perspective. From left, Eric Reid, Colin Kaepernick and Eli Harold knelt during the national anthem before an N.F.L. game against the Seahawks last September. Joe Nicholson/USA Today Sports, via Reuters The N.F.L. and its 32 franchise owners, none of them African-American, may be the most conservative fraternity of leaders in major American sports. They bathe their games in overtly patriotic ceremonies and discourage players, mostly hidden behind masks and uniforms of armor, from individual acts of showmanship. At least seven donated $1 million or more to Trump’s inaugural committee, far more than any other sport’s owners. In Kaepernick’s absence, other players will kneel. Demonstrators will protest. Some will boycott. His jersey will be seen, more as a political statement than a sporting allegiance, as the game goes on without him. Living mostly in New York, Kaepernick has stayed out of the spotlight, friends said, because he wants the conversation to be not about him, but about the issues he has raised. (He declined several requests to speak to The New York Times for this article.) That is why he will, reportedly, stand for the anthem this season, if he joins a team. Among those who will play this weekend is Brandon Marshall, a linebacker for the Denver Broncos. He was a teammate of Kaepernick’s at Nevada, and it was his idea to join the fraternity. He was not sure Kaepernick would do it with him. “He actually showed up to the meeting before me,” Marshall said in an interview this week. “He’s like: ‘Where you at? I’m here.’ He was real prompt. I was like, O.K., Colin’s serious about it.” Kaepernick’s curiosity and worldview were expanding, growing inside him rather quietly. No one knew then that he would become one of the league’s most thrilling players or that he would lead a team to the Super Bowl just a couple of years later. And they certainly did not expect that he would make even more noise with a now-famous silent gesture. “Being part of that fraternity opens you to a new world,” Ogundimu said. “I would not doubt that it is where he started becoming either more curious about his own background, or where he just started seeing more things — just realized that things weren’t always so easy for the rest of us.” ‘How Dare You?’ Turlock is a pleasant and unremarkable place in California’s flat, interior heartland. It is stifling hot in the summer and can be cool and rainy in the winter. Like many sprawling cities of central California, it features suburban-style neighborhoods and strip malls slowly eating the huge expanses of agriculture that surround it. And, like neighboring cities, the population of about 73,000 is overwhelmingly white and increasingly Latino. In Turlock, fewer than 2 percent of residents identify as African-American, according to the census. Kaepernick walked onto the field with his parents, Rick and Teresa, on senior night in 2010 at the University of Nevada, Reno. Patrick Cummings/Associated Press Kaepernick moved there when he was 4. He was born in Milwaukee to a single white mother and a black father and quickly placed for adoption. He was soon adopted by Rick and Teresa Kaepernick of Fond du Lac, Wis., who were raising two biological children, Kyle and Devon. They had also lost two infant sons to congenital heart defects. The family moved to California because Rick Kaepernick took a job as operations manager at the Hilmar Cheese Company, where he later became a vice president. The boy became used to strangers assuming he was not with the other Kaepernicks. When anyone asked if he was adopted, he would scrunch up his face in mock sadness. “How dare you ask me something like that?” he would reply, and then laugh. “We used to go on these summer driving vacations and stay at motels,” Kaepernick told US magazine in 2015. “And every year, in the lobby of every motel, the same thing always happened, and it only got worse as I got older and taller. It didn’t matter how close I stood to my family, somebody would walk up to me, a real nervous manager, and say: ‘Excuse me. Is there something I can help you with?’” Kyle nicknamed his younger brother Bo, after Bo Jackson, because Colin was good at football and baseball. Colleges were interested in him as a baseball pitcher and a football quarterback, but he made it clear that football was his priority. Kyle burned DVDs of Colin’s high school highlights and sent them to college teams across the country. Only Nevada offered a scholarship. It was in Reno that Kaepernick’s potential as a quarterback was realized, and where his curiosity in African-American history and culture began to foment, mostly as he met teammates with vastly different experiences from his growing up. “I saw him transform, develop, whatever you want to call it,” said John Bender, an offensive lineman during Kaepernick’s tenure and a frequent classmate. “Finding an identity was big for him, because in some aspects in life, he would get the racist treatment from white people because he was a black quarterback. And some people gave him the racist treatment because he was raised by a white family. So where does he fit in in all this?” Kaepernick was a starter for most of four seasons. He became the first N.C.A.A. player to throw for more than 10,000 yards and rush for more than 4,000 yards. He scored 60 touchdowns and threw 82 more. In 2010, Kaepernick’s final collegiate season, Nevada went 13-1, beat No. 3 Boise State in overtime and finished No. 11 in The Associated Press poll at season’s end. Kaepernick, a starter for most of four college seasons, became the first N.C.A.A. player to throw for more than 10,000 yards and rush for more than 4,000 yards. Michael Conroy/Associated Press He never loved the attention that came with the success, but he was deft and polished with the news media, willing to do interviews and quick to share credit for successes. He was the rare player who never needed training in dealing with the media. Kaepernick said his father instilled in him the importance of manners and the proper way to conduct himself in front of others. He once joined other players in calling season-ticket holders who were yet to renew for the upcoming seasons. An older woman told him that she enjoyed going to the games with her husband, but he had recently died. She said couldn’t afford the tickets and she couldn’t imagine going alone. Kaepernick’s family already had 24 season tickets, and the four-hour drive from Turlock did not prevent a small army of supporters at every game. What’s one more? Kaepernick thought. He bought the woman a season ticket. “We’re probably the only N.C.A.A. compliance office in the country that had to check to see if it was O.K. for a player to give a fan something,” said Chad Hartley, an associate athletic director for Nevada. Kaepernick excelled as a student. He graduated with a degree in business management. Some wondered when he slept. When he showed up at Kappa Alpha Psi, members figured that Kaepernick would quit once he saw the commitment required: the time, the rituals, the community service, the all-night study sessions of the fraternity’s history and liturgy. Marshall said that his own schoolwork suffered during the semester, but Kaepernick maintained perfect grades. “The process is not easy,” said Ogundimu, now a case manager for a rehabilitation hospital in Las Vegas. “It’s definitely something that will shine a light on your weaknesses and shine a light on your strengths. He was all strength.” Kappa Alpha Psi, which says it has 120,000 members, has thrown its support behind Kaepernick, writing a letter to N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell and joining a pro-Kaepernick demonstration at league headquarters recently. The ‘Anti-Manning’ Persona Just four years ago, Kaepernick was a different type of sports phenomenon, “the anti-Manning,” as the Sports Illustrated writer Peter King called him. He kissed his tattooed biceps when he scored, which turned his name into a verb: Kaepernicking. His jersey was spotted across the Bay Area. All lean muscles and corrugated abs, he posed nude for ESPN Magazine’s Body Issue. He discussed his growing assortment of tattoos, the first of which were Bible verses inked in college. Active on Twitter, he mostly thanked fans, promoted appearances and kept opinions to himself. “I want to have a positive influence as much as I can,” Kaepernick told King in 2013. “I’ve had people write me because of my tattoos. I’ve had people write me because of adoption. I’ve had people write me because they’re biracial. I’ve had people write me because their kids have heart defects — my mom had two boys who died of heart defects, which ultimately brought about my adoption. So, to me, the more people you can touch, the more people you can influence in a positive way or inspire, the better.” He had led the 49ers to the Super Bowl after Coach Jim Harbaugh inserted him as the starter midway through the 2012 season. Kaepernick dueled with and beat Tom Brady and the Patriots at New England on a brutally cold night in December, 41-34. (“He may have played the best game at quarterback, certainly one of the best games, that I’ve ever seen,” the NBC analyst Cris Collinsworth said during an interview last week.) In a playoff game against Green Bay, Kaepernick had better passing statistics than Aaron Rodgers, and added 181 rushing yards. A loss to Baltimore in the Super Bowl, after Kaepernick and the 49ers could not score a touchdown after having first-and-goal at the 7-yard line in the final minutes, did little to suppress the excitement over the quarterback. “I truly believe Colin Kaepernick could be one of the greatest quarterbacks ever,” the ESPN analyst Ron Jaworski said the following preseason. “I love his skill set. I think the sky’s the limit.” But Kaepernick felt the barbs of stardom, too, often dipped in racial undertones. He (and later his mother) had to defend his tattoos after a columnist said that a quarterback is, essentially, the team’s chief executive, “and you don’t want your C.E.O. to look like he just got paroled.” In the midst of Kaepernick’s growing fame, his birth mother, Heidi Russo, emerged and said that she wanted a relationship with her birth son, sparking a flurry of articles, including during Super Bowl week. Kaepernick expressed no interest. Columnists criticized him. Kaepernick’s public persona shifted, whether because of his distrust in the media or because he was following the lead of Harbaugh, often disdainful of reporters, seeing little value in sharing information. More and more in front of cameras and reporters, he was all sulking expressions and terse answers. In a running half-joke, reporters began to count the words in his responses. They were often comically short. Kaepernick, as the San Francisco 49ers’ quarterback, scored a fourth-quarter touchdown in a 34-31 loss to the Baltimore Ravens in the Super Bowl in New Orleans in February 2013. Doug Mills/The New York Times People who knew Kaepernick in Reno were surprised, and veterans of the N.F.L. were confused. But as long as the team was winning, few fans cared about his off-field demeanor. But then the 49ers went 8-8 in 2014, and simmering disputes with the front office led to Harbaugh’s departure at season’s end. Kaepernick’s playing career faded, here and gone like the trace of a comet. The 49ers were 2-6 under Jim Tomsula in 2015 when Kaepernick lost his starting job, then was placed on the season-ending injury list. In 2016, Tomsula was replaced by Chip Kelly, who named Blaine Gabbert the starting quarterback for the first three preseason games. It was safe to wonder if most people had heard the last of Colin Kaepernick. A Quest for an Education Kaepernick’s Twitter and Instagram feeds reveal his trajectory. There were a few football-related messages early in 2016, including a congratulatory note to Harbaugh, coaching collegiately at Michigan, for a bowl victory. Kaepernick posted a photo and quote of Malcolm X on the February anniversary of his murder. In June, he posted a video of Tupac Shakur, the rapper killed in 1996. “I’m not saying I’m going to rule the world, or I’m going the change the world,” Shakur said in the clip. “But I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world. That’s our job, is to spark somebody else watching us.” Kaepernick’s next message was a thank you for supporting Camp Taylor, a charity for children with heart disease. Rick Kaepernick is on the board of directors. By then, Colin Kaepernick was auditing a summer course on black representation in popular culture taught by Ameer Hasan Loggins at the University of California, Berkeley. He drove an hour each way to each class, took notes, did the readings and engaged in class discussions, Loggins wrote in a recent essay. Kaepernick had been introduced to Loggins by Kaepernick’s girlfriend, Nessa Diab, a syndicated radio host and MTV personality whom Kaepernick has dated since late 2015. (Diab previously dated Aldon Smith, another 49ers player, leading to a reported scrap between the two during training camp in 2015.) Kaepernick speaking with the 49ers’ head coach, Jim Harbaugh, during a game in 2012. Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press Diab, known professionally as Nessa, has had a measure of influence on Kaepernick’s views over the past two years. Aside from her work on MTV, she is the host of a nationally syndicated show on Hot 97, an influential hip-hop station in New York, and supported the Black Lives Matter movement from that platform. She has been more active and overtly opinionated than Kaepernick on social media. Loggins and Diab were classmates in Berkeley years ago, and she asked Loggins to recommend books for Kaepernick. It was not the first time Kaepernick sought reading material. As a rookie with the 49ers, he asked Edwards, the sociologist and civil rights activist who served as a consultant for the 49ers, for a reading list, Edwards said. He recommended “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time,” Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” and Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Edwards said. “He was willing to work and study to kind of understand what was happening with his teammates, with other people, and how this whole thing rolled out over 400 years,” Edwards said. The list from Loggins included “The Wretched of the Earth,” by Frantz Fanon; “Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment,” by Patricia Hill Collins; “Black Looks: Race and Representation,” by bell hooks; and “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” by Carter G. Woodson. Before long, Kaepernick and Loggins were engaged in lengthy conversations, until the quarterback asked if he could sit in on the professor’s upcoming summer class. “People that trace our connection to U.C. Berkeley assume he became politicized in my class,” Loggins wrote. “But Colin came in aware, focused, well-read and eager to learn. His decision was made on his own — from the heart. He came to me intellectually curious. The questions he asked me regarding my research, the lectures he attended, he was a sponge.” Kaepernick during media day ahead of his Super Bowl appearance. He eventually became very reluctant to say much in interviews. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Kaepernick’s social media posts flared with urgent intensity, though, when black men were killed by the police on back-to-back days in early July 2016. “This is what lynchings look like in 2016!” Kaepernick wrote on Instagram and Twitter when video of Alton Sterling’s death became public. “Another murder in the streets because the color of a man’s skin, at the hands of the people who they say will protect us. When will they be held accountable? Or did he fear for his life as he executed this man?” A day later, Kaepernick posted video of Philando Castile dying in the driver’s seat of his car after being shot by an officer, taken by a woman recording the aftermath from the passenger seat. “We are under attack!” Kaepernick wrote. “It’s clear as day! Less than 24 hrs later another body in the street!” Kaepernick’s rising anger online created little reaction, at least in football circles. He went to training camp to compete with Gabbert for the starting job. A sore throwing shoulder prevented him from playing in the first two preseason games. He was out of uniform, which is probably why no one in the media noticed that he sat on the bench during the national anthem. It was not until the third game, at home on Aug. 26, that Kaepernick’s gesture got attention. A reporter took a photograph of the San Francisco bench, unrelated to Kaepernick, and later spotted him sitting alone near the coolers. Word of the protest did not spread. Steve Wyche of nfl.com was the only reporter to speak to Kaepernick about it after the game. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick said. “To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.” Demonstrators confronted police officers as they protested the fatal police shooting of Philando Castile in July 2016 in St. Paul. On social media, Kaepernick reposted video of Castile dying in the passenger seat of the car he was riding in. Joshua Lott for The New York Times He added that he had not sought permission from the team or sponsors. “This is not something that I am going to run by anybody,” he said. “I am not looking for approval. I have to stand up for people that are oppressed. If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.” Many didn’t like Kaepernick doing it during an anthem. Some said it was anti-military, a slap to those who served and died. (Kaepernick said on the first day that he had “great respect for the men and women that have fought for this country,” including friends and family, but even veterans were not being treated right by this country.) Some thought it was disingenuous for a millionaire, especially one raised comfortably by a white family, to take a stance on black oppression. Some football fans saw Kaepernick as a second-string has-been looking for attention. “The actual point of protest is to disrupt how we move about our daily lives,” Wade Davis, a former professional football player and a black activist who often works with athletes, said in an interview last week. “What Kaepernick did was disrupt one of our most treasured sports. Whether you agree with his tactics or not is one type of conversation. The larger conversation is what he is protesting about. The fact that so many don’t want to have that specific conversation speaks to the fact that they know what is happening in America is beyond tragic.” For the fourth preseason game, which Kaepernick started, he changed from sitting on the bench to taking a knee on the sideline. Safety Eric Reid joined him. The same night, Jeremy Lane of the Seattle Seahawks sat for the anthem, too. Then soccer player Megan Rapinoe did it before a professional game days later. On Sept. 9, Marshall, Kaepernick’s teammate and fraternity brother from Nevada, was the first to do it in an N.F.L. regular-season game, with the Broncos. The controversy slowly lowered to an uneasy simmer through the fall. Presidential politics took control of the national debate. Kaepernick kept kneeling before games but said little. The 49ers were awful, and Kaepernick retook the starting job. He went 1-10 as the starter for a team that finished 2-14. He threw 16 touchdowns and 4 interceptions, completed 59.2 percent of his passes and rushed for 468 yards. His passer rating of 90.7 was 17th in the N.F.L. Kaepernick’s teammates voted him the winner of the Len Eshmont award, the team’s highest honor, “for inspirational and courageous play.” The coach and general manager were fired and replaced. Kaepernick’s contract with the 49ers was due to pay him $16.5 million for this season, according to ESPN, but was not guaranteed unless he made the team. Knowing that was unlikely, he opted out as a free agent on March 1, and he has been out of a job since. His unemployment is a fuse on another debate, this one over whether Kaepernick is being willfully kept out of the league because of his politics, or if he is no longer good enough to play in it. The N.F.L’s 32 teams each carry at least two quarterbacks, some three. Other athletes joined Kaepernick’s protests last year. Clockwise from top left, Brandon Marshall of the Denver Broncos; Kaepernick, in Seattle; Megan Rapinoe of the United States women’s national soccer team, before an exhibition against the Netherlands in Atlanta; and Seahawks cornerback Jeremy Lane, before a preseason game. Justin Edmonds/Getty Images; Ted S. Warren/Associated Press; John Bazemore/Associated Press; Tony Avelar/Associated Press “It’s really tough to make an argument that he’s not one of the best 64,” said Collinsworth, the NBC analyst. “Everybody has some reason that they haven’t signed Colin Kaepernick. Maybe they have two or three quarterbacks they think are better. Maybe they don’t want the distraction. Maybe they don’t want to pay the money. But it’s hard to say ‘they,’ like all 32 owners think exactly the same. That’s ridiculous. That’s what has made this really complex.” Activism Outside the Spotlight While Kaepernick waits to play, he has hardly been idle. Fulfilling a “million-dollar” pledge he made during the heat of the anthem flap last September, he has donated $100,000 every month since October to up to four charities, with little notice beyond Kaepernick’s website. The beneficiaries are usually small, relatively unknown and surprised. “We had no idea how Colin Kaepernick heard about our organization,” said Carolyn A. Watson, founder and executive director of Helping Oppressed Mothers Endure, or H.O.M.E., a foundation supporting single mothers in Georgia. Someone representing Kaepernick contacted the group, Watson said, “and before we knew it, we were giving them the appropriate information and received a $25,000 check in the mail.” Muhibb Dyer, a co-founder of the I Will Not Die Young Campaign in Milwaukee, thought the $25,000 donation was a prank. “What is unique is that he identified grass-roots organizations like my own that are hanging on by a thread trying to do the work,” Dyer said. “But a lot of the time we are face-to-face, in the trenches, with some of the most at-risk youth in this country. Having him reach out to us is like a lifeline to continue the work that we do that is oftentimes not highlighted, but very much essential to the life and death of youth every day.” The range of charities Kaepernick supports is broad. In January, for example, he gave $25,000 each to a Brooklyn group called Black Veterans for Social Justice, a clean-energy advocacy group called 350.org, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, and the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York. Michelle Horovitz, a co-founder of Appetite for Change, which promotes healthy food through urban gardens and cooking seminars in Minneapolis, said the donation they received was “huge on an emotional level.” She added: “We are huge fans of him and I personally have decided to boycott the N.F.L.” Kaepernick has also held three “Know Your Rights” free camps for children. About 200 came to the one in Chicago in May, at the DuSable Museum of African American History, and others have been held in Oakland and New York. The goal, according to the website, is “to raise awareness on higher education, self empowerment, and instruction to properly interact with law enforcement in various scenarios.” Kaepernick prayed with members of the Ravens after a preseason game in Baltimore in 2014. Rob Carr/Getty Images Children received free breakfasts and T-shirts listing 10 rights: The right to be free, healthy, brilliant, safe, loved, courageous, alive, trusted and educated, plus “the right to know your rights.” There were seminars and sessions on black history, including segregation and Jim Crow laws. There were lessons on healthy eating and household finances. There was advice on speaking and dressing for respect, and for how to calmly handle interactions with the police. Among the speakers were Eric Reid, Kaepernick’s former teammate in San Francisco, and Common, the hip-hop star. Near the end, Kaepernick shared his personal story to campers in Chicago. “I love my family to death,” he said, according to Dave Zirin of The Nation. “They’re the most amazing people I know. But when I looked in the mirror, I knew I was different. Learning what it meant to be an African man in America, not a black man but an African man, was critical for me. Through this knowledge, I was able to identify myself and my community differently.” He explained that he was giving the campers a kit to test their own DNA, to better understand their background, The Nation reported. “I thought I was from Milwaukee,” Kaepernick said. “I thought my ancestry started at slavery and I was taught in school that we were all supposed to be grateful just because we aren’t slaves. But what I was able to do was trace my ancestry and DNA lineage back to Ghana, Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, and saw my existence was more than just being a slave. It was as an African man. We had our own civilizations, and I want you to know how high the ceiling is for our people. I want you to know that our existence now is not normal. It’s oppressive. For me, identifying with Africa gave me a higher sense of who I was, knowing that we have a proud history and are all in this together.” Kaepernick traveled to Ghana this summer. On July 4 on Instagram, accompanying a video montage of the trip, he said that he made the pilgrimage to get in touch with his “African ancestral roots.” He sat in prison cells at “slave castles,” the fortresses that detained people just before they were shipped across the ocean as slaves. He also visited the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, schools and hospitals. Along with Nessa Diab, he also went to Egypt and Morocco. “A part of the motivation was, if you have an awakening, then you start to want to have answers,” Loggins, who was part of the travel group, said on a podcast with Zirin. “You start to become inquisitive at a level that can sometime be seen to others as obsessive.” On a day off last December, Kaepernick took the GRE, the standardized graduate-school entrance exam. “Just exploring all opportunities,” he said. It was about then that Kaepernick was introduced to Christopher Petrella, who teaches American Cultural Studies at Bates College in Maine. Petrella has since helped devise the curriculum and taught at the Know Your Rights camps and become part of Kaepernick’s inner circle. Their first conversation, Petrella said in an email interview, “unexpectedly morphed into a back-and-forth on Bacon’s Rebellion, a late 17th-century political uprising in colonial Virginia that began to codify race and class hierarchies in the U.S. I was immediately struck by Colin’s raw curiosity, historical fluency, and the sophistication with which he spoke of persistent forms of racial injustice and racialized forms of police brutality today.” He, too, has heard Kaepernick’s name mentioned alongside other athletes who became civil rights icons. Petrella said the comparisons were apt, but Kaepernick’s approach reminded him more of Ella Baker, a civil rights pioneer known for her work with the N.A.A.C.P., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. “Just as Colin tends to eschew the spotlight, Baker operated under the principle that ‘Strong people don’t need strong leaders,’” Petrella wrote. “Baker once said that ‘People must fight for their own freedom and not rely on leaders to do it for them.’ This approach seems consistent with Colin’s principle of believing in the capacity of ordinary people to grow into leaders, to self-advocate and to lift as we climb.” What may be settled in the coming days and weeks is whether Kaepernick will once again experience the spotlight of the N.F.L. — whether a team will sign him, or whether it matters to the movement he has sparked. “I’m so proud of him,” said Marshall, his Nevada teammate and fraternity brother. “If people look at the real issue, and look at what he’s doing in the community — the money he’s donating, the time he’s donating, the camps he’s putting on — they’d be like: ‘You know what? This dude’s really a stand-up guy.’” 28 talking about race, learning about racism The Application of Racial Identity Development Theory in the Classroom Beverly Daniel Tatum The inclusion of race-related content in college courses often generates emotional responses in students that range from guilt and shame to anger and despair. The discomfort associated with these emotions can lead students to resist the learning process. Based on her experience teaching a course on the psychology of racism and an application of racial identity development theory, Beverly Daniel Tatum identifies three major sources of student resistance to talking about race and learning about racism, as well as some strategies for overcoming this resistance. As many educational institutions struggle to become more multicultural in terms of their students, faculty, and staff, they also begin to examine issues of cultural representation within their curriculum. This examination has evoked a growing number of courses that give specific consideration to the effect of variables such as race, class, and gender on human experience—an important trend that is reflected and supported by the increasing availability of resource manuals for the modification of course content (Bronstein & Quina, 1988; Hull, Scott, & Smith, 1982; Schuster & Van Dyne, 1985). Unfortunately, less attention has been given to the issues of process that inevitably emerge in the classroom when attention is focused on race, class, and/or gender. It is very difficult to talk about these concepts in a meaningful way without also talking and learning about racism, classism, and sexism.1 The introduction of these issues of oppression often generates powerful emotional responses in students that range from guilt and shame to anger and despair. If not addressed, these emotional responses can result in student resistance to oppression-related content areas. Such resistance can ultimately interfere with the cognitive understanding and mastery of the material. This resistance and potential interference is particularly common when specifically addressing issues of race and racism. Yet, when students are given the opportunity to explore race-related material in a classroom where both their affective and intellectual responses are acknowledged and addressed, their level of understanding is greatly enhanced. This article seeks to provide a framework for understanding students’ psychological responses to race-related content and the student resistance that can result, as well as some 390 talking about race, learning about racism strategies for overcoming this resistance. It is informed by more than a decade of experience as an African-American woman engaged in teaching an undergraduate course on the psychology of racism, by thematic analyses of student journals and essays written for the racism class, and by an understanding and application of racial identity development theory (Helms, 1990). SETTING THE CONTEXT As a clinical psychologist with a research interest in racial identity development among African-American youth raised in predominantly white communities, I began teaching about racism quite fortuitously. In 1980, while I was a part-time lecturer in the Black Studies department of a large public university, I was invited to teach a course called Group Exploration of Racism (Black Studies 2). A requirement for Black Studies majors, the course had to be offered, yet the instructor who regularly taught the course was no longer affiliated with the institution. Armed with a folder full of handouts, old syllabi that the previous instructor left behind, a copy of White Awareness: Handbook for Antiracism Training (Katz, 1978), and my own clinical skills as a group facilitator, I constructed a course that seemed to meet the goals already outlined in the course catalogue. Designed “to provide students with an understanding of the psychological causes and emotional reality of racism as it appears in everyday life,” the course incorporated the use of lectures, readings, simulation exercises, group research projects, and extensive class discussions to help students explore the psychological impact of racism on both the oppressed and the oppressed. Though my first efforts were tentative, the results were powerful. The students in my class, most of whom were white, repeatedly described the course in the evaluations as one of the most valuable educational experiences of their college careers. I was convinced that helping students understand the ways in which racism operates in their own lives, and what they could do about it, was a social responsibility that I should accept. The freedom to institute the course in the curriculum of the psychology departments in which I would eventually teach became a personal condition of employment. I have successfully introduced the course in each new educational setting I have been in since leaving that university. Since 1980, I have taught the course (now called the Psychology of Racism eighteen times, at three different institutions. Although each of these school is very different—a large public university, a small state college, and a private, elite women’s college—the challenges of teaching about racism in each setting have been more similar than different. In all of the settings, class size has been limited to thirty students (averaging twentyfour). Though typically predominantly white and female (even in coeducational settings), the class makeup has always been mixed in terms of both race and gender. The students of color who have taken the course include Asians and Latinos/as, but most frequently the students of color have been Black. Though most students have described themselves as middle class, all socioeconomic backgrounds (ranging from very poor to very wealthy) have been represented over the years. The course has necessarily evolved in response to my own deepening awareness of the psychological legacy of racism and my expanding awareness of other forms of oppression, although the basic format has remained the same. Our weekly three-hour class meeting is held in a room with movable chairs, arranged in a circle. The physical structure communicates an important premise of the course—that I expect the students to speak with each other as well as with me. beverly daniel tatum My other expectations (timely completion of assignments, regular class attendance) are clearly communicated in our first class meeting, along with the assumptions and guidelines for discussion that I rely upon to guide our work together. Because the assumptions and guidelines are so central to the process of talking and learning about racism, it may be useful to outline them here. WORKING ASSUMPTIONS 1. Racism, defined as a “system of advantage based on race” (see Wellman, 1977), is a pervasive aspect of U.S. socialization. It is virtually impossible to live in U.S. contemporary society and not be exposed to some aspect of the personal, cultural, and/or institutional manifestations of racism in our society. It is also assumed that as a result, all of us have received some misinformation about those groups disadvantaged by racism. 2. Prejudice, defined as a “preconceived judgment or opinion, often based on limited information,” is clearly distinguished from racism (see Katz, 1978). I assume that all of us may have prejudices as a result of the various cultural stereotypes to which we have been exposed. Even when these preconceived ideas have positive associations (such as “Asian students are good in math”), they have negative effects because they deny a person’s individuality. These attitudes may influence the individual behaviors of people of color as well as of whites, and may affect intergroup as well as intragroup interaction. However, a distinction must be made between the negative racial attitudes held by individuals of color and white individuals, because it is only the attitudes of whites that routinely carry with them the social power inherent in the systematic cultural reinforcement and institutionalization of those racial prejudices. To distinguish the prejudices of students of color from the racism of white students is not to say that the former is acceptable and the latter is not; both are clearly problematic. The distinction is important, however, to identify the power differential between members of dominant and subordinate groups. 3. In the context of U.S. society, the system of advantage clearly operates to benefit whites as a group. However, it is assumed that racism, like other forms of oppression, hurts members of the privileged group as well as those targeted by racism. While the impact of racism on whites is clearly different from its impact on people of color, racism has negative ramifications for everyone. For example, some white students might remember the pain of having lost important relationships because Black friends were not allowed to visit their homes. Others may express sadness at having been denied access to a broad range of experiences because of social segregation. These individuals often attribute the discomfort or fear they now experience in racially mixed settings to the cultural limitations of their youth. 4. Because of the prejudice and racism inherent in our environments when we were children, I assume that we cannot be blamed for learning what we were taught (intentionally or unintentionally). Yet as adults, we have a responsibility to try to identify and interrupt the cycle of oppression. When we recognize that we have been misinformed, we have a responsibility to seek out more accurate information and to adjust our behavior accordingly. 5. It is assumed that change, both individual and institutional, is possible. Understanding and unlearning prejudice and racism is a lifelong process that may have begun prior to enrolling in this class, and which will surely continue after the course is over. Each of us may be at a different point in that process, and I assume that we will have mutual respect for each other, regardless of where we perceive one another to be. 391 392 talking about race, learning about racism To facilitate further our work together, I ask students to honor the following guidelines for our discussion. Specifically, I ask students to demonstrate their respect for one another by honoring the confidentiality of the group. So that students may feel free to ask potentially awkward or embarrassing questions, or share race-related experiences, I ask that students refrain from making personal attributions when discussing the course content with their friends. I also discourage the use of “zaps,” overt or covert put-downs often used as comic relief when someone is feeling anxious about the content of the discussion. Finally, students are asked to speak from their own experience, to say, for example, “I think . . .” or “In my experience, I have found . . .” rather than generalizing their experience to others, as in “People say . . .” Many students are reassured by the climate of safety that is created by these guidelines and find comfort in the nonblaming assumptions I outline for the class. Nevertheless, my experience has been that most students, regardless of their class and ethnic background, still find racism a difficult topic to discuss, as is revealed by these journal comments written after the first class meeting (all names are pseudonyms): The class is called Psychology of Racism, the atmosphere is friendly and open, yet I feel very closed in. I feel guilt and doubt well up inside of me. (Tiffany, a White woman) Class has started on a good note thus far. The class seems rather large and disturbs me. In a class of this nature, I expect there will be many painful and emotional moments. (Linda, an Asian woman) I am a little nervous that as one of the few students of color in the class people are going to be looking at me for answers, or whatever other reasons. The thought of this inhibits me a great deal. (Louise, an African-American woman) I had never thought about my social position as being totally dominant. There wasn’t one area in which I wasn’t in the dominant group . . . I first felt embarrassed. . . . Through association alone I felt in many ways responsible for the unequal condition existing in the world. This made me feel like shrinking in a hole in a class where I was surrounded by 27 women and 2 men, one of whom was Black and the other was Jewish. I felt that all these people would be justified in venting their anger upon me. After a short period, I realized that no one in the room was attacking or even blaming me for the conditions that exist. (Carl, a white man) Even though most of my students voluntarily enroll in the course as an elective, their anxiety and subsequent resistance to learning about racism quickly emerge. SOURCES OF RESISTANCE In predominantly white college classrooms, I have experienced at least three major sources of student resistance to talking and learning about race and racism. They can be readily identified as the following: 1. Race is considered a taboo topic for discussion, especially in racially mixed settings. 2. Many students, regardless of racial-group membership, have been socialized to think of the United States as a just society. 3. Many students, particularly white students, initially deny any personal prejudice, recognizing the impact of racism on other people’s lives, but failing to acknowledge its impact on their own. beverly daniel tatum RACE AS TABOO TOPIC The first source of resistance, race as a taboo topic, is an essential obstacle to overcome if class discussion is to begin at all. Although many students are interested in the topic, they are often most interested in hearing other people talk about it, afraid to break the taboo themselves. One source of this self-consciousness can be seen in the early childhood experiences of many students. It is known that children as young as three notice racial differences (see Phinney & Rotheram, 1987). Certainly preschoolers talk about what they see. Unfortunately, they often do so in ways that make adults uncomfortable. Imagine the following scenario: A white child in a public place points to a dark-skinned African-American child and says loudly, “Why is that boy Black?” The embarrassed parent quickly responds, “Sh! Don’t say that.” The child is only attempting to make sense of a new observation (DermanSparks, Higa, & Sparks, 1980), yet the parent’s attempt to silence the perplexed child sends a message that this observation is not okay to talk about. White children quickly become aware that their questions about race raise adult anxiety, and as a result, they learn not to ask the questions. When asked to reflect on their earliest race-related memories and the feelings associated with them, both white students and students of color often report feelings of confusion, anxiety, and/or fear. Students of color often have early memories of name-calling or other negative interactions with other children, and sometimes with adults. They also report having had questions that went both unasked and unanswered. In addition, many students have had uncomfortable inter-changes around race-related topics as adults. When asked at the beginning of the semester, “How many of you have had difficult, perhaps heated conversations with someone on a race-related topic?”, routinely almost everyone in the class raises his or her hand. It should come as no surprise then that students often approach the topic of race and/or racism with both curiosity and trepidation. THE MYTH OF THE MERITOCRACY The second source of student resistance to be discussed here is rooted in students’ belief that the United States is a just society, a meritocracy where individual efforts are fairly rewarded. While some students (particularly students of color) may already have become disillusioned with that notion of the United States, the majority of my students who have experienced at least the personal success of college acceptance still have faith in this notion. To the extent that these students acknowledge that racism exists, they tend to view it as an individual phenomenon, rooted in the attitudes of the “Archie Bunkers” of the world or located only in particular parts of the country. After several class meetings, Karen, a white woman, acknowledged this attitude in her journal: At one point in my life—the beginning of this class—I actually perceived America to be a relatively racist free society. I thought that the people who were racist or subjected to racist stereotypes were found only in small pockets of the U.S., such as the South. As I’ve come to realize, racism (or at least racially orientated stereotypes) is rampant. An understanding of racism as a system of advantage presents a serious challenge to the notion of the United States as a just society where rewards are based solely on one’s merit. 393 394 talking about race, learning about racism Such a challenge often creates discomfort in students. The old adage “ignorance is bliss” seems to hold true in this case; students are not necessarily eager to recognize the painful reality of racism. One common response to the discomfort is to engage in denial of what they are learning. White students in particular may question the accuracy or currency of statistical information regarding the prevalence of discrimination (housing, employment, access to health care, and so on). More qualitative data, such as autobiographical accounts of experiences with racism, may be challenged on the basis of their subjectivity. It should be pointed out that the basic assumption that the United States is a just society for all is only one of many basic assumptions that might be challenged in the learning process. Another example can be seen in an interchange between two white students following a discussion about cultural racism, in which the omission or distortion of historical information about people of color was offered as an example of the cultural transmission of racism. “Yeah, I just found out that Cleopatra was actually a Black woman.” “What?” The first student went on to explain her newly learned information. Finally, the second student exclaimed in disbelief, “That can’t be true. Cleopatra was beautiful!” This new information and her own deeply ingrained assumptions about who is beautiful and who is not were too incongruous to allow her to assimilate the information at that moment. If outright denial of information is not possible, then withdrawal may be. Physical withdrawal in the form of absenteeism is one possible result; it is for precisely this reason that class attendance is mandatory. The reduction in the completion of reading and/or written assignments is another form of withdrawal. I have found this response to be so common that I now alert students to this possibility at the beginning of the semester. Knowing that this response is a common one seems to help students stay engaged, even when they experience the desire to withdraw. Following an absence in the fifth week of the semester, one white student wrote, “I think I’ve hit the point you talked about, the point where you don’t want to hear any more about racism. I sometimes begin to get the feeling we are all hypersensitive.” (Two weeks later she wrote, “Class is getting better. I think I am beginning to get over my hump.”) Perhaps not surprisingly, this response can be found in both white students and students of color. Students of color often enter a discussion of racism with some awareness of the issue, based on personal experiences. However, even these students find that they did not have a full understanding of the widespread impact of racism in our society. For students who are targeted by racism, an increased awareness of the impact in and on their lives is painful, and often generates anger. Four weeks into the semester, Louise, an African-American woman, wrote in her journal about her own heightened sensitivity: Many times in class I feel uncomfortable when white students use the term Black because even if they aren’t aware of it they say it with all or at least a lot of the negative connotations they’ve been taught goes along with Black. Sometimes it just causes a stinging feeling inside of me. Sometimes I get real tired of hearing white people talk about the conditions of Black people. I think it’s an important thing for them to talk about, but still I don’t always like being around when they do it. I also get tired of hearing them talk about how hard it is for them, though I beverly daniel tatum understand it, and most times I am very willing to listen and be open, but sometimes I can’t. Right now I can’t. For white students, advantaged by racism, a heightened awareness of it often generates painful feelings of guilt. The following responses are typical: After reading the article about privilege, I felt very guilty. (Rachel, a White woman) Questions of racism are so full of anger and pain. When I think of all the pain White people have caused people of color, I get a feeling of guilt. How could someone like myself care so much about the color of someone’s skin that they would do them harm? (Terri, a White woman) White students also sometimes express a sense of betrayal when they realize the gaps in their own education about racism. After seeing the first episode of the documentary series Eyes on the Prize, Chris, a white man, wrote: I never knew it was really that bad just 35 years ago. Why didn’t I learn this in elementary or high school? Could it be that the white people of America want to forget this injustice? . . . I will never forget that movie for as long as I live. It was like a big slap in the face. Barbara, a white woman, also felt anger and embarrassment in response to her own previous lack of information about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. She wrote: I feel so stupid because I never even knew that these existed. I never knew that the Japanese were treated so poorly. I am becoming angry and upset about all of the things that I do not know. I have been so sheltered. My parents never wanted to let me know about the bad things that have happened in the world. After I saw the movie (Mitsuye and Nellie), I even called them up to ask them why they never told me this. . . . I am angry at them too for not teaching me and exposing me to the complete picture of my country. Avoiding the subject matter is one way to avoid these uncomfortable feelings. “I’M NOT RACIST, BUT . . .” A third source of student resistance (particularly among white students) is the initial denial of any personal connection to racism. When asked why they have decided to enroll in a course on racism, White students typically explain their interest in the topic with such disclaimers as, “I’m not racist myself, but I know people who are, and I want to understand them better.” Because of their position as the targets of racism, students of color do not typically focus on their own prejudices or lack of them. Instead they usually express a desire to understand why racism exists, and how they have been affected by it. However, as all students gain a better grasp of what racism is and its many manifestations in U.S. society, they inevitably start to recognize its legacy within themselves. Beliefs, attitudes, and actions based on racial stereotypes begin to be remembered and are newly observed by white students. Students of color as well often recognize negative attitudes 395 396 talking about race, learning about racism they may have internalized about their own racial group or that they have believed about others. Those who previously thought themselves immune to the effects of growing up in a racist society often find themselves reliving uncomfortable feelings of guilt or anger. After taping her own responses to a questionnaire on racial attitudes, Barbara, a white woman previously quoted, wrote: I always want to think of myself as open to all races. Yet when I did the interview to myself, I found that I did respond differently to the same questions about different races. No one could ever have told me that I would have. I would have denied it. But I found that I did respond differently even though I didn’t want to. This really upset me. I was angry with myself because I thought I was not prejudiced and yet the stereotypes that I had created had an impact on the answers that I gave even though I didn’t want it to happen. The new self-awareness, represented here by Barbara’s journal entry, changes the classroom dynamic. One common result is that some white students, once perhaps active participants in class discussion, now hesitate to continue their participation for fear that their newly recognized racism will be revealed to others. Today I did feel guilty, and like I had to watch what I was saying (make it good enough), I guess to prove I’m really not prejudiced. From the conversations the first day, I guess this is a normal enough reaction, but I certainly never expected it in me. (Joanne, a white woman) This withdrawal on the part of white students is often paralleled by an increase in participation by students of color who are seeking an outlet for what are often feelings of anger. The withdrawal of some previously vocal white students from the classroom exchange, however, is sometimes interpreted by students of color as indifference. This perceived indifference often serves to fuel the anger and frustration that many students of color experience, as awareness of their own oppression is heightened. For example, Robert, an African-American man, wrote: I really wish the white students would talk more. When I read these articles, it makes me so mad and I really want to know what the white kids think. Don’t they care? Sonia, a Latina, described the classroom tension from another perspective: I would like to comment that at many points in the discussions I have felt uncomfortable and sometimes even angry with people. I guess I am at the stage where I am tired of listening to Whites feel guilty and watch their eyes fill up with tears. I do understand that everyone is at their own stage of development and I even tell myself every Tuesday that these people have come to this class by choice. Some days I am just more tolerant than others. . . . It takes courage to say things in that room with so many women of color present. It also takes courage for the women of color to say things about Whites. What seems to be happening in the classroom at such moments is a collision of developmental processes that can be inherently useful for the racial identity development of the individuals involved. Nevertheless, the interaction may be perceived as problematic to in- beverly daniel tatum structors and students who are unfamiliar with the process. Although space does not allow for an exhaustive discussion of racial identity development theory, a brief explication of it here will provide additional clarity regarding the classroom dynamics when issues of race are discussed. It will also provide a theoretical framework for the strategies for dealing with student resistance that will be discussed at the conclusion of this article. STAGES OF RACIAL IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT Racial identity and racial identity development theory are defined by Janet Helms (1990) as a sense of group or collective identity based on one’s perception that he or she shares a common racial heritage with a particular racial group . . . racial identity development theory concerns the psychological implications of racial-group membership, that is belief systems that evolve in reaction to perceived differential racial-group membership. (3) It is assumed that in a society where racial-group membership is emphasized, the development of a racial identity will occur in some form in everyone. Given the dominant/subordinate relationship of whites and people of color in this society, however, it is not surprising that this developmental process will unfold in different ways. For purposes of this discussion, William Cross’s (1971, 1978) model of Black identity development will be described along with Helms’s (1990) model of white racial identity development theory. While the identity development of other students (Asian, Latino/a, Native American) is not included in this particular theoretical formulation, there is evidence to suggest that the process for these oppressed groups is similar to that described for African Americans (Highlen et al., 1988; Phinney, 1990).2 In each case, it is assumed that a positive sense of one’s self as a member of one’s group (which is not based on any assumed superiority) is important for psychological health. BLACK RACIAL IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT According to Cross’s (1971, 1978, 1991) model of Black racial identity development, there are five stages in the process, identified as Preencounter, Encounter, Immersion/Emersion, Internalization, and Internalization-Commitment. In the first stage of Preencounter, the African American has absorbed many of the beliefs and values of the dominant White culture, including the notion that “White is right” and “Black is wrong.” Though the internalization of negative Black stereotypes may be outside of his or her conscious awareness, the individual seeks to assimilate and be accepted by whites, and actively or passively distances him/herself from other Blacks.3 Louise, an African-American woman previously quoted, captured the essence of this stage in the following description of herself at an earlier time: For a long time it seemed as if I didn’t remember my background, and I guess in some ways I didn’t. I was never taught to be proud of my African heritage. Like we talked about in class, I went through a very long stage of identifying with my oppressors. Wanting to be like, live like, and be accepted by them. Even to the point of hating my own race and myself for being a part of it. Now I am ashamed that I ever was ashamed. I lost so much of myself in my denial of and refusal to accept my people. In order to maintain psychological comfort at this stage of development, Helms writes: 397 398 talking about race, learning about racism The person must maintain the fiction that race and racial indoctrination have nothing to do with how he or she lives life. It is probably the case that the Preen-counter person is bombarded on a regular basis with information that he or she cannot really be a member of the “in” racial group, but relies on denial to selectively screen such information from awareness. (1990, 23) This deemphasis on one’s racial-group membership may allow the individual to think that race has not been or will not be a relevant factor in one’s own achievement, and may contribute to the belief in a U.S. meritocracy that is often a part of a Preencounter worldview. Movement into the Encounter phase is typically precipitated by an event or series of events that forces the individual to acknowledge the impact of racism in one’s life. For example, instances of social rejection by white friends or colleagues (or reading new personally relevant information about racism) may lead the individual to the conclusion that many whites will not view him or her as an equal. Faced with the reality that he or she cannot truly be white, the individual is forced to focus on his or her identity as a member of a group targeted by racism. Brenda, a Korean-American student, described her own experience of this process as a result of her participation in the racism course: I feel that because of this class, I have become much more aware of racism that exists around. Because of my awareness of racism, I am now bothered by acts and behaviors that might not have bothered me in the past. Before when racial comments were said around me I would somehow ignore it and pretend that nothing was said. By ignoring comments such as these, I was protecting myself. It became sort of a defense mechanism. I never realized I did this, until I was confronted with stories that were found in our reading, by other people of color, who also ignored comments that bothered them. In realizing that there is racism out in the world and that there are comments concerning race that are directed towards me, I feel as if I have reached the first step. I also think I have reached the second step, because I am now bothered and irritated by such comments. I no longer ignore them, but now confront them. The Immersion/Emersion stage is characterized by the simultaneous desire to surround oneself with visible symbols of one’s racial identity and an active avoidance of symbols of Whiteness. As Thomas Parham describes, “At this stage, everything of value in life must be Black or relevant to Blackness. This stage is also characterized by a tendency to denigrate White people, simultaneously glorifying Black people. . . .” (1989, 190). The previously described anger that emerges in class among African-American students and other students of color in the process of learning about racism may be seen as part of the transition through these stages. As individuals enter the Immersion stage, they actively seek out opportunities to explore aspects of their own history and culture with the support of peers from their own racial background. Typically, white-focused anger dissipates during this phase because so much of the person’s energy is directed toward his or her own group- and self-exploration. The result of this exploration is an emerging security in a newly defined and affirmed sense of self. Sharon, another African-American woman, described herself at the beginning of the semester as angry, seemingly in the Encounter stage of development. She wrote after our class meeting: beverly daniel tatum 399 Another point that I must put down is that before I entered class today I was angry about the way Black people have been treated in this country. I don’t think I will easily overcome that and I basically feel justified in my feelings. At the end of the semester, Sharon had joined with two other Black students in the class to work on their final class project. She observed that the three of them had planned their project to focus on Black people specifically, suggesting movement into the Immersion stage of racial identity development. She wrote: We are concerned about the well-being of our own people. They cannot be well if they have this pinned-up hatred for their own people. This internalized racism is something that we all felt, at various times, needed to be talked about. This semester it has really been important to me, and I believe Gordon [a Black classmate], too. The emergence from this stage marks the beginning of Internalization. Secure in one’s own sense of racial identity, there is less need to assert the “Blacker than thou” attitude often characteristic of the Immersion stage (Parham, 1989). In general, “pro-Black attitudes become more expansive, open, and less defensive” (Cross, 1971, 24). While still maintaining his or her connections with Black peers, the internalized individual is willing to establish meaningful relationships with whites who acknowledge and are respectful of his or her self-definition. The individual is also ready to build coalitions with members of other oppressed groups. At the end of the semester, Brenda, a Korean American, concluded that she had in fact internalized a positive sense of racial identity. The process she described parallels the stages described by Cross: I have been aware for a long time that I am Korean. But through this class I am beginning to really become aware of my race. I am beginning to find out that white people can be accepting of me and at the same time accept me as a Korean. I grew up wanting to be accepted and ended up almost denying my race and culture. I don’t think I did this consciously, but the denial did occur. As I grew older, I realized that I was different. I became for the first time, friends with other Koreans. I realized I had much in common with them. This was when I went through my “Korean friend” stage. I began to enjoy being friends with Koreans more than I did with Caucasians. Well, ultimately, through many years of growing up, I am pretty much in focus about who I am and who my friends are. I knew before I took this class that there were people not of color that were understanding of my differences. In our class, I feel that everyone is trying to sincerely find the answer of abolishing racism. I knew people like this existed, but it’s nice to meet with them weekly. Cross suggests that there are few psychological differences between the fourth stage, Internalization, and the fifth stage, Internalization-Commitment. However, those at the fifth stage have found ways to translate their “personal sense of Blackness into a plan of action or a general sense of commitment” to the concerns of Blacks as a group, which is sustained over time (Cross, 1991, 220). Whether at the fourth or fifth stage, the process of Internalization allows the individual, anchored in a positive sense of racial identity, both to proactively perceive and to transcend race. Blackness becomes “the point of departure for 400 talking about race, learning about racism discovering the universe of ideas, cultures and experiences beyond blackness in place of mistaking blackness as the universe itself ” (Cross, Parham, & Helms, 1991, 330). Though the process of racial identity development has been presented here in linear form, in fact it is probably more accurate to think of it in a spiral form. Often a person may move from one stage to the next, only to revisit an earlier stage as the result of new encounter experiences (Parham, 1989), though the later experience of the stage may be different from the original experience. The image that students often find helpful in understanding this concept of recycling through the stages is that of a spiral staircase. As a person ascends a spiral staircase, she may stop and look down at a spot below. When she reaches the next level, she may look down and see the same spot, but the vantage point has changed.4 WHITE RACIAL IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT The transformations experienced by those targeted by racism are often paralleled by those of White students. Helms (1990) describes the evolution of a positive white racial identity as involving both the abandonment of racism and the development of a nonracist white identity. In order to do the latter, he or she must accept his or her own Whiteness, the cultural implications of being white, and define a view of Self as a racial being that does not depend on the perceived superiority of one racial group over another. (49) She identifies six stages in her model of white racial identity development: Contact, Disintegration, Reintegration, Pseudo-Independent, Immersion/Emersion, and Autonomy. The Contact stage is characterized by a lack of awareness of cultural and institutional racism, and of one’s own white privilege. Peggy McIntosh (1989) writes eloquently about her own experience of this state of being: As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage. . . . I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group. (10). In addition, the Contact stage often includes naive curiosity about or fear of people of color, based on stereotypes learned from friends, family, or the media. These stereotypes represent the framework in use when a person at this stage of development makes a comment such as “You don’t act like a Black person” (Helms, 1990, 57). Those whites whose lives are structured so as to limit their interaction with people of color, as well as their awareness of racial issues, may remain at this stage indefinitely. However, certain kinds of experiences (increased interaction with people of color or exposure to new information about racism) may lead to a new understanding that cultural and institutional racism exist. This new understanding marks the beginning of the Disintegration stage. At this stage, the bliss of ignorance or lack of awareness is replaced by the discomfort of guilt, shame, and sometimes anger at the recognition of one’s own advantage because of being white and the acknowledgment of the role of whites in the maintenance of a racist beverly daniel tatum system. Attempts to reduce discomfort may include denial (convincing oneself that racism doesn’t really exist, or if it does, it is the fault of its victims). For example, Tom, a white male student, responded with some frustration in his journal to a classmate’s observation that the fact that she had never read any books by Black authors in any of her high school or college English classes was an example of cultural racism. He wrote, “It’s not my fault that Blacks don’t write books.” After viewing a film in which a psychologist used examples of Black children’s drawings to illustrate the potentially damaging effect of negative cultural messages on a Black child’s developing self-esteem, David, another white male student, wrote: I found it interesting the way Black children drew themselves without arms. The psychologist said this is saying that the child feels unable to control his environment. It can’t be because the child has notions and beliefs already about being Black. It must be built in or hereditary due to the past history of the Blacks. I don’t believe it’s cognitive but more biological due to a long past history of repression and being put down. Though Tom’s and David’s explanations seem quite problematic, they can be understood in the context of racial identity development theory as a way of reducing their cognitive dissonance upon learning this new race-related information. As was discussed earlier, withdrawal (accomplished by avoiding contact with people of color and the topic of racism) is another strategy for dealing with the discomfort experienced at this stage. Many of the previously described responses of white students to race-related content are characteristic of the transition from the Contact to the Disintegration stage of development. Helms (1990) describes another response to the discomfort of Disintegration, which involves attempts to change significant others’ attitudes toward African Americans and other people of color. However, as she points out, due to the racial naivete with which this approach may be undertaken and the person’s ambivalent racial identification, this dissonance-reducing strategy is likely to be met with rejection by whites as well as Blacks. (59) In fact, this response is also frequently observed among White students who have an opportunity to talk with friends and family during holiday visits. Suddenly they are noticing the racist content of jokes or comments of their friends and relatives and will try to confront them, often only to find that their efforts are, at best, ignored or dismissed as a “phase,” or, at worst, greeted with open hostility. Carl, a white male previously quoted, wrote at length about this dilemma: I realized that it was possible to simply go through life totally oblivious to the entire situation or, even if one realizes it, one can totally repress it. It is easy to fade into the woodwork, run with the rest of society, and never have to deal with these problems. So many people I know from home are like this. They have simply accepted what society has taught them with little, if any, question. My father is a prime example of this. . . . It has caused much friction in our relationship, and he often tells me as a father he has failed in raising me correctly. Most of my high school friends will never deal with these issues and propagate them on to their own children. It’s easy to see how the cycle continues. I don’t think I could ever justify within myself simply 401 402 talking about race, learning about racism turning my back on the problem. I finally realized that my position in all of these dominant groups gives me power to make change occur. . . . It is an unfortunate result often though that I feel alienated from friends and family. It’s often played off as a mere stage that I’m going through. I obviously can’t tell if it’s merely a stage, but I know that they say this to take the attention off of the truth of what I’m saying. By belittling me, they take the power out of my argument. It’s very depressing that being compassionate and considerate are seen as only phases that people go through. I don’t want it to be a phase for me, but as obvious as this may sound, I look at my environment and often wonder how it will not be. The societal pressure to accept the status quo may lead the individual from Disintegration to Reintegration. At this point the desire to be accepted by one’s own racial group, in which the overt or covert belief in white superiority is so prevalent, may lead to a reshaping of the person’s belief system to be more congruent with an acceptance of racism. The guilt and anxiety associated with Disintegration may be redirected in the form of fear and anger directed toward people of color (particularly Blacks), who are now blamed as the source of discomfort. Connie, a white woman of Italian ancestry, in many ways exemplified the progression from the Contact stage to Reintegration, a process she herself described seven weeks into the semester. After reading about the stages of white identity development, she wrote: I think mostly I can find myself in the disintegration stage of development. . . . There was a time when I never considered myself a color. I never described myself as a “white, Italian female” until I got to college and noticed that people of color always described themselves by their color/race. While taking this class, I have begun to understand that being white makes a difference. I never thought about it before but there are many privileges to being White. In my personal life, I cannot say that I have ever felt that I have had the advantage over a Black person, but I am aware that my race has the advantage. I am feeling really guilty lately about that. I find myself thinking: “I didn’t mean to be white, I really didn’t mean it.” I am starting to feel angry towards my race for ever using this advantage towards personal gains. But at the same time I resent the minority groups. I mean, it’s not our fault that society has deemed us “superior.” I don’t feel any better than a Black person. But it really doesn’t matter because I am a member of the dominant race. . . . I can’t help it . . . and I sometimes get angry and feel like I’m being attacked. I guess my anger toward a minority group would enter me into the next stage of Reintegration, where I am once again starting to blame the victim. This is all very trying for me and it has been on my mind a lot. I really would like to be able to reach the last stage, autonomy, where I can accept being White without hostility and anger. That is really hard to do. Helms (1990) suggests that it is relatively easy for whites to become stuck at the Reintegration stage of development, particularly if avoidance of people of color is possible. However, if there is a catalyst for continued self-examination, the person “begins to question her or his previous definition of Whiteness and the justifiability of racism in any of its forms. . . .” (61). In my experience, continued participation in a course on racism provides the catalyst for this deeper self-examination. This process was again exemplified by Connie. At the end of the semester, she listened to her own taped interview of her racial attitudes that she had recorded at the beginning of the semester. She wrote: beverly daniel tatum 403 Oh wow! I could not believe some of the things that I said. I was obviously in different stages of the white identity development. As I listened and got more and more disgusted with myself when I was at the Reintegration stage, I tried to remind myself that these are stages that all (most) white people go through when dealing with notions of racism. I can remember clearly the resentment I had for people of color. I feel the one thing I enjoyed from listening to my interview was noticing how much I have changed. I think I am finally out of the Reintegration stage. I am beginning to make a conscious effort to seek out information about people of color and accept their criticism. . . . I still feel guilty about the feeling I had about people of color and I always feel bad about being privileged as a result of racism. But I am glad that I have reached what I feel is the Pseudo-Independent stage of White identity development. The information-seeking that Connie describes often marks the onset of the PseudoIndependent stage. At this stage, the individual is abandoning beliefs in white superiority, but may still behave in ways that unintentionally perpetuate the system. Looking to those targeted by racism to help him or her understand racism, the White person often tries to disavow his or her own whiteness through active affiliation with Blacks, for example. The individual experiences a sense of alienation from other whites who have not yet begun to examine their own racism, yet may also experience rejection from Blacks or other people of color who are suspicious of his or her motives. Students of color moving from the Encounter to the Immersion phase of their own racial identity development may be particularly unreceptive to the white person’s attempts to connect with them. Uncomfortable with his or her own whiteness, yet unable to be truly anything else, the individual may begin searching for a new, more comfortable way to be white. This search is characteristic of the Immersion/Emersion stage of development. Just as the Black student seeks to redefine positively what it means to be of African ancestry in the United States through immersion in accurate information about one’s culture and history, the white individual seeks to replace racially related myths and stereotypes with accurate information about what it means and has meant to be white in U.S. society (Helms, 1990). Learning about whites who have been antiracist allies to people of color is a very important part of this process. After reading articles written by antiracist activists describing their own process of unlearning racism, white students often comment on how helpful it is to know that others have experienced similar feelings and have found ways to resist the racism in their environments.5 For example, Joanne, a white woman who initially experienced a lot of guilt, wrote: This article helped me out in many ways. I’ve been feeling helpless and frustrated. I know there are all these terrible things going on and I want to be able to do something. . . . Anyway this article helped me realize, again, that others feel this way, and gave me some positive ideas to resolve my dominant class guilt and shame. Finally, reading the biographies and autobiographies of white individuals who have embarked on a similar process of identity development (such as Barnard, 1987) provides white students with important models for change. Learning about white antiracists can also provide students of color with a sense of hope that they can have white allies. After hearing a white antiracist activist address the class, 404 talking about race, learning about racism Sonia, a Latina who had written about her impatience with expressions of white guilt, wrote: I don’t know when I have been more impressed by anyone. She filled me with hope for the future. She made me believe that there are good people in the world and that whites suffer too and want to change things. For white students, the internalization of a newly defined sense of oneself as white is the primary task of the Autonomy stage. The positive feelings associated with this redefinition energize the person’s efforts to confront racism and oppression in his or her daily life. Alliances with people of color can be more easily forged at this stage of development than previously because the person’s antiracist behaviors and attitudes will be more consistently expressed. While Autonomy might be described as “racial self-actualization, . . . it is best to think of it as an ongoing process . . . wherein the person is continually open to new information and new ways of thinking about racial and cultural variables” (Helms, 1990, 66). Annette, a White woman, described herself in the Autonomy stage, but talked at length about the circular process she felt she had been engaged in during the semester: If people as racist as C. P. Ellis (a former Klansman) can change, I think anyone can change. If that makes me idealistic, fine. I do not think my expecting society to change is naive anymore because I now know exactly what I want.To be naive means a lack of knowledge that allows me to accept myself both as a White person and as an idealist. This class showed me that these two are not mutually exclusive but are an integral part of me that I cannot deny. I realize now that through most of this class I was trying to deny both of them. While I was not accepting society’s racism, I was accepting society’s telling me as a white person, there was nothing I could do to change racism. So, I told myself I was being naive and tried to suppress my desire to change society. This is what made me so frustrated—while I saw society’s racism through examples in the readings and the media, I kept telling myself there was nothing I could do. Listening to my tape, I think I was already in the Autonomy stage when I started this class. I then seemed to decide that being White, I also had to be racist which is when I became frustrated and went back to the Disintegration stage. I was frustrated because I was not only telling myself there was nothing I could do but I also was assuming society’s racism was my own which made me feel like I did not want to be White. Actually, it was not being white that I was disavowing but being racist. I think I have now returned to the Autonomy stage and am much more secure in my position there. I accept my whiteness now as just a part of me as is my idealism. I will no longer disavow these characteristics as I have realized I can be proud of both of them. In turn, I can now truly accept other people for their unique characteristics and not by the labels society has given them as I can accept myself that way. While I thought the main ideas that I learned in this class were that white people need to be educated to end racism and everyone should be treated as human beings, I really had already incorporated these ideas into my thoughts. What I learned from this class is being White does not mean being racist and being idealistic does not mean being naive. I really did not have to form new ideas about people of color; I had to form them about myself—and I did. IMPLICATION FOR CLASSROOM TEACHING Although movement through all the stages of racial identity development will not necessarily occur for each student within the course of a semester (or even four years of college), beverly daniel tatum 405 it is certainly common to witness beginning transformations in classes with race-related content. An awareness of the existence of this process has helped me to implement strategies to facilitate positive student development, as well as to improve interracial dialogue within the classroom. Four strategies for reducing student resistance and promoting student development that I have found useful are the following: 1. the creation of a safe classroom atmosphere by establishing clear guidelines for discussion; 2. the creation of opportunities for self-generated knowledge; 3. the provision of an appropriate developmental model that students can use as a framework for understanding their own process; 4. the exploration of strategies to empower students as change agents. CREATING A SAFE CLIMATE As was discussed earlier, making the classroom a safe space for discussion is essential for overcoming students’ fears about breaking the race taboo, and will also reduce later anxieties about exposing one’s own internalized racism. Establishing the guidelines of confidentiality, mutual respect, “no zaps,” and speaking from one’s own experience on the first day of class is a necessary step in the process. Students respond very positively to these ground rules, and do try to honor them. While the rules do not totally eliminate anxiety, they clearly communicate to students that there is a safety net for the discussion. Students are also encouraged to direct their comments and questions to each other rather than always focusing their attention on me as the instructor, and to learn each other’s names rather than referring to each other as “he,” “she,” or “the person in the red sweater” when responding to each other.6 THE POWER OF SELF-GENERATED KNOWLEDGE The creation of opportunities for self-generated knowledge on the part of students is a powerful tool for reducing the initial stage of denial that many students experience. While it may seem easy for some students to challenge the validity of what they read or what the instructor says, it is harder to deny what they have seen with their own eyes. Students can be given hands-on assignments outside of class to facilitate this process. For example, after reading Portraits of White Racism (Wellman, 1977), some students expressed the belief that the attitudes expressed by the white interviewees in the book were no longer commonly held attitudes. Students were then asked to use the same interview protocol used in the book (with some revision) to interview a white adult of their choice. When students reported on these interviews in class, their own observation of the similarity between those they had interviewed and those they had read about was more convincing than anything I might have said. After doing her interview, Patty, a usually quiet white student, wrote: I think I learned a lot from it and that I’m finally getting a better grip on the idea of racism. I think that was why I participated so much in class. I really felt like I knew what I was talking about. 406 talking about race, learning about racism Other examples of creating opportunities for self-generated knowledge include assigning students the task of visiting grocery stores in neighborhoods of differing racial composition to compare the cost and quality of goods and services available at the two locations, and to observe the interactions between the shoppers and the store personnel. For White students, one of the most powerful assignments of this type has been to go apartment hunting with an African-American student and to experience housing discrimination firsthand. While one concern with such an assignment is the effect it will have on the student(s) of color involved, I have found that those Black students who choose this assignment rather than another are typically eager to have their white classmates experience the reality of racism, and thus participate quite willingly in the process. NAMING THE PROBLEM The emotional responses that students have to talking and learning about racism are quite predictable and related to their own racial identity development. Unfortunately, students typically do not know this; thus they consider their own guilt, shame, embarrassment, or anger an uncomfortable experience that they alone are having. Informing students at the beginning of the semester that these feelings may be part of the learning process is ethically necessary (in the sense of informed consent) and helps to normalize the students’ experience. Knowing in advance that a desire to withdraw from classroom discussion or not to complete assignments is a common response helps students to remain engaged when they reach that point. As Alice, a white woman, wrote at the end of the semester: You were so right in saying in the beginning how we would grow tired of racism (I did in October) but then it would get so good! I have loved the class once I passed that point. In addition, sharing the model of racial identity development with students gives them a useful framework for understanding each other’s processes as well as their own. This cognitive framework does not necessarily prevent the collision of developmental processes previously described, but it does allow students to be less frightened by it when it occurs. If, for example, white students understand the stages of racial identity development for students of color, they are less likely to personalize or feel threatened by an African-American student’s anger. Connie, a white student who initially expressed a lot of resentment at the way students of color tended to congregate in the college cafeteria, was much more understanding of this behavior after she learned about racial identity development theory. She wrote: I learned a lot from reading the article about the stages of development in the model of oppressed people. As a White person going through my stages of identity development, I do not take time to think about the struggle people of color go through to reach a stage of complete understanding. I am glad that I know about the stages because now I can understand people of color’s behavior in certain situations. For example, when people of color stay to themselves and appear to be in a clique, it is not because they are being rude as I originally thought. Rather they are engaged perhaps in the Immersion stage. Mary, another white student, wrote: beverly daniel tatum 407 I found the entire Cross model of racial identity development very enlightening. I knew that there were stages of racial identity development before I entered this class. I did not know what they were, or what they really entailed. After reading through this article I found myself saying, “Oh. That explains why she reacted this way to this incident instead of how she would have a year ago.” Clearly this person has entered a different stage and is working through different problems from a new viewpoint. Thankfully, the model provides a degree of hope that people will not always be angry, and will not always be separatists, etc. Although I’m not really sure about that. Conversely, when students of color understand the stages of White racial identity development, they can be more tolerant or appreciative of a white student’s struggle with guilt, for example. After reading about the stages of white identity development, Sonia, a Latina previously quoted, wrote: This article was the one that made me feel that my own prejudices were showing. I never knew that Whites went through an identity development of their own. She later told me outside of class that she found it much easier to listen to some of the things White students said because she could understand their potentially offensive comments as part of a developmental stage. Sharon, an African-American woman, also found that an understanding of the respective stages of racial identity development helped her to understand some of the interactions she had had with white students since coming to college. She wrote: There is a lot of clash that occurs between Black and White people at college which is best explained by their respective stages of development. Unfortunately schools have not helped to alleviate these problems earlier in life. In a course on the psychology of racism, it is easy to build in the provision of this information as part of the course content. For instructors teaching courses with race-related content in other fields, it may seem less natural to do so. However, the inclusion of articles on racial identity development and/or class discussion of these issues in conjunction with the other strategies that have been suggested can improve student receptivity to the course content in important ways, making it a very useful investment of class time. Because the stages describe kinds of behavior that many people have commonly observed in themselves, as well as in their own intraracial and interracial interactions, my experience has been that most students grasp the basic conceptual framework fairly easily, even if they do not have a background in psychology. EMPOWERING STUDENTS AS CHANGE AGENTS Heightening students’ awareness of racism without also developing an awareness of the possibility of change is a prescription for despair. I consider it unethical to do one without the other. Exploring strategies to empower students as change agents is thus a necessary part of the process of talking about race and learning about racism. As was previously mentioned, students find it very helpful to read about and hear from individuals who have been 408 talking about race, learning about racism effective change agents. Newspaper and magazine articles, as well as biographical or autobiographical essays or book excerpts, are often important sources for this information. I also ask students to work in small groups to develop an action plan of their own for interrupting racism. While I do not consider it appropriate to require students to engage in antiracist activity (since I believe this should be a personal choice the student makes for him/herself), students are required to think about the possibility. Guidelines are provided (see Katz, 1978), and the plans that they develop over several weeks are presented at the end of the semester. Students are generally impressed with each other’s good ideas, and, in fact, they often do go on to implement their projects. Joanne, a white student who initially struggled with feelings of guilt, wrote: I thought that hearing others’ ideas for action plans was interesting and informative. It really helps me realize (reminds me) the many choices and avenues there are once I decided to be an ally. Not only did I develop my own concrete way to be an ally, I have found many other ways that I, as a college student, can be an active anti-racist. It was really empowering. Another way all students can be empowered is by offering them the opportunity to consciously observe their own development. The taped exercise to which some of the previously quoted students have referred is an example of one way to provide this opportunity. At the beginning of the semester, students are given an interview guide with many openended questions concerning racial attitudes and opinions. They are asked to interview themselves on tape as a way of recording their own ideas for future reference. Though the tapes are collected, students are assured that no one (including me) will listen to them. The tapes are returned near the end of the semester, and students are asked to listen to their own tapes and use their understanding of racial identity development to discuss it in essay form. The resulting essays are often remarkable and underscore the psychological importance of giving students the chance to examine racial issues in the classroom. The following was written by Elaine, a white woman: Another common theme that was apparent in the tape was that, for the most part, I was aware of my own ignorance and was embarrassed because of it. I wanted to know more about the oppression of people in the country so that I could do something about it. Since I have been here, I ...