General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: An Observation About White People and Wypipo [View all]ProudLib72
(17,984 posts)This was the semester I was using a subtext of bias in the class. Each essay they wrote was predicated on a different bias, whether it was male/female, racial, or able bodied/disabled. I never have a seating chart (this was a college class after all). When the students got to choose where to seat themselves, there was a "Hispanic side" and a "black side" with the few white students in the class sitting scattered among the two "sides". The seating arrangement occurred organically.
There was one student named Juan who sat on the "Hispanic side" the entire semester. At some point midway through the semester, Juan said something about being black. For several minutes, the other students were a little confused. "Are you black?", they asked. They had to make sure because, after all, he wasn't that dark and his name was obviously Hispanic. "Yes, I'm black," he told them. One of the black students said, "You want to come sit over here?" and patted the top of the table next to an empty seat on the "black side". I had to point out that Juan was doing just fine sitting where he was on the "Hispanic side" and would have continued to fool everyone had he not actually stated his ethnicity to the class.
The strange thing (or maybe it wasn't so strange) was that the class self segregated from the very beginning. Was it an unconscious decision that they gradually became aware of? Whatever the case, the day they discovered Juan was black forced them to admit there were "sides". That was a good teaching moment.