Conversation on race and racism at U-M
One of the outcomes of preparing and teaching my course on race and racism is my book, When Race Breaks Out: Conversations About Race and Racism in College Classrooms, published by Peter Lang, Inc. in Feb. 2001 and revised in 2009. Written especially for white instructors who want to encourage deeper, more meaningful conversations about race (or racialized topics such as poverty, drugs, prisons, immigration, school achievement, public assistance, and so on), the book provides insights from instructors and students, definitions of the key concepts, stories from my own practice (and my own upbringing), ways to understand dicey classroom dynamics, and an annotated bibliography of over 225 articles, books and videos with recommendations for classroom use..
I am especially excited about -- and challenged by -- a community based learning course (open to all University of Michigan LS&A students) called Unteaching Racism that I started at the Residential College in Fall, 1997. The course combines experiential classroom activities, readings, videos, interesting writing assignments, guest speakers, and most important -- group projects of students' own design to "un-teach" racism in the community.
I've written several short pieces on how white faculty can put their understanding of race and racism into action: Being An Ally (in ALT DIS: Alternative Discourses and the Academy. 2003, Christopher Schroeder, Helen Fox, and Patricia Bizzell (eds.), Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann/Boynton Cook) and Confronting Institutional Racism, originally a talk at the Conference on College Composition and Communication, 2002.