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Education is the process of learning and knowing, an undertaking unrestricted to our schools, curriculums and textbooks. Rather, it is a holistic process that continues all throughout our lives. Even mundane, regular events and occurrences around us are educational in some way or another. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that our lives without education would be stagnant, hollow even. No change would occur, no milestones would be reached. We would float in the same place without meaning. Thus, we organize the dissemination of knowledge not just to give meaning to others, but to ourselves. When we educate a person, we can shift a world; to educate a person, passes on meaning from one person to the next; to educate a person, changes the world. Teachers possess such a power. We teachers and professors should find immense meaning in our work—especially when the role has been recently reconstructed to something radically new. We must challenge ourselves to find inspiration again during a time when teaching and education has been entirely digitized to muted chatrooms and emails, forcing the traditional to become innovative, and the personal to become impersonal. In this moment when the comforts and familiarities of regular life has been put on pause, and slowly started again, we reflect on how to make use of the sudden changes brought on during the pandemic. The fervent discussions about race in America remain at the top of our concerns. It’s timely that attention to the racial and economic divide during the crisis have turned this omnipresent national issue into an urgent and revolutionary world protest given that Covid-19 cases and deaths have targeted black and brown communities. It reminds professors that we cannot forget to tackle basic struggles, and inform others that such a struggle even exists. We must teach our students to be actively anti-racist, and even further, to understand how racism intersects with other forms of prejudice to create stronger forms of discrimination. Be it one’s gender, body type, economic status or sexual orientation, we must remind ourselves and our students that no one issue stands alone, but converges with others. Susan Shaw and I co-wrote a book, Intersectional Theology which talks about how there are no single axis issues, but multiple axis issues. Our identities are not dimensional but multi-dimensional; we understand ourselves through the very personal experience of our gender, sexuality, ethnicity, ableism, class etc., One’s identity is the converging of multi-axis identities. These identities all shape us and define who we are. But these identities are also points of justice as racism, patriarchy, homophobia embed themselves in the fabric of our society. In doing intersectional theology, we recognize that it comes with the requirement to create social justice. In the same way, we want our teaching to be meaningful, to address social issues and to further justice. How can we do this? The books that we need to advocate for students to read must be racially and gender diverse, written by a diverse breadth of writers, covering a diversity of perspective and subject matters. The history of theology is mostly written by men. It is crucial that we listen to voices other than white men’s to get a deeper and more expansive theological understanding. Therefore, pedagogically, we need to urge students to read non-white books[1]. We can strategically put them in our syllabus, include authors of color whose work touch on justice, and also select them for their assignments. Projects in class and outside the class can also incorporate social justice elements. I know in some seminaries and colleges, service learning is part of the curriculum. In those schools, part of the justice work is included in the courses throughout their studies. Early on in our schooling we are required to volunteer or participate in service learning, however this idea of justice work should also be upheld by professors in later education, adjusting the work for students studying for their bachelor’s, Master’s, or higher. Whoever the student or professor, whatever the format, setting or institution, informing and encouraging students to promote justice should be lifted as one of the highest priorities in our teaching. Going forward, we can utilize social media as a vital tool to share information and ideas. We can encourage students to blog (for their seminary, church or denominational blogsite), share, or write social justice posts. Social activism on the internet can be a powerful source of information sharing, encouragement and engagement. Political petitions are shared online, protest events are shared and organizations who do the work can also be shared. These elements can be tied into the course content and assignments. Another powerful tool is the media: movies, videos, music, etc. which used in teaching can make for a more poignant, dynamic tactic to promote social justice. I have used movies such as “Sophie’s Choice,” “God on Trial,” and “The Mission” to raise awareness of the social injustices such as anti-semitism, slavery, and colonialism and how to move forward. As we continue to teach during a pandemic, we can harness all the tools we have available online to express our plights, our activism, and our hopes for the uncertain future. We can be motivated by the challenges of virtual learning, and develop new ways to encourage community engagement, even at a distance. Community building, church building can be done online as COVID-19 continues to spread and spike across the United States. The professor has essential power not just in the classroom, but for the next generation. If the professor can also exemplify what they teach in their own lives, it will make a stronger impact in the classroom.  Practice what you preach can also apply to practice what you teach. Teaching should be meaningful and substantive—but above all, it should be transformative. Let yourself be open to the quiet, and grand transformations in the everyday; the ones that shift your consciousness and provide an experience to learn from and be shared. In this way, we, as professors and learners, can continuously provide pieces of wisdom to promote justice and demand change. [1]A few examples of books to consider reading and adding to your syllabus: De La Torre, Miguel, Burying White Privilege, (Grand Rapids:Eerdmans, 2018) Cone, James, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2011) Kim, Grace Ji-Sun, Embracing the Other (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015) Townes, Emilie, Troubling in My Soul, (Maryknoll, Orbis Books, 2015)  

Minority faculty at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) should be keenly aware of the controversial nature of teaching about race. Black faculty who teach about race must simultaneously manage contentious conversations about racism against Black people, while also being confronted with the stereotyped biases of racially-primed white students toward them. Addressing common objections white students may bring into the classroom requires creating space for dialogue and critical engagement. Common issues range from ambivalence, racial colorblindness, white fragility, to white supremacist ideologies. Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other minority students in PWI classrooms may be reluctant to speak up or participate for any number of reasons. Research has shown that students in a majority white environments tend to downplay ethnic and cultural differences. Research has also shown that minority status in PWIs often comes with additional stress due to racism, discrimination, interracial conflict, lack of support and representation, sense of alienation, or an unwelcoming campus environment. Appealing to the institutional identity, history, and demographics of your institution helps to frame the classroom conversation. PWIs do not exist in a vacuum or on an even playing field. They have particular cultures and histories based on the community in which they are embedded. Framing conversations about race within local systems facilitates a historical understanding of racial disparities. If students can see the inequities of race in the immediate context of their own school, neighborhood, and city, the chances of creating a sympathetic learning environment are much greater. Since the Bible has been used to promote the ideology and practices of racism, an important pedagogical move is to identify the biblical and theological roots of the problem. This history is important to tell, expose, and dismantle, particularly in a Christian PWI and perhaps especially in a biblical studies classroom. Minority faculty should be mindful of striking a balance between a persuasive teaching style and difficult conversations, especially when addressing the hard truths about systemic racism. Faculty and administrators at PWIs must seek to understand the nature of negative assessments made by students of Black faculty. Tenure and promotion for Black faculty are often threatened by negative evaluations by white students who perceive them as anti-white especially when discussing Blackness or anti-Black racism. Some Black faculty may experience psychological discomfort when teaching at PWIs. By virtue of the limited numbers of other Black faculty on campus, you may be more visible to other colleagues and students. Some find this hyper-visibility uncomfortable. These dynamics might make you feel compelled to constantly monitor yourself or avoid social situations altogether. Building a strong inter-minority coalition with colleagues inside and outside of the walls of your institution is highly recommended for all faculty of color. Working in your institution requires working on your institution. This is especially true for minority faculty who are committed to creating a culture of diversity and inclusivity at PWIs. Minority faculty should be aware of the impact of racial battle fatigue. In addition to managing course loads, committee meetings, research agendas, and student issues, Black faculty use additional energy to fight microaggressions, overt racism, and institutionalized racism. The effort that it takes becomes emotionally, physiologically, and psychologically distressing. This is racial battle fatigue, and it can lead to a reduced sense of well-being for Black faculty. It is imperative that Black and other minority faculty practice good self-care to mitigate the negative impact of racism and racial battle fatigue. According to Quaye et al. (2019), self-care strategies for Black faculty to consider include “unplugging from people and places that cause them harm, building community with other Black educators, caring for their bodies, finding safe spaces, and using counseling.” References  Alexander, R., & Moore, S. E. (2008). The benefits, challenges, and strategies of African American faculty teaching at predominantly White institutions. Journal of African American Studies, 12, 4-18. Arnold, N. W., Crawford, E. R., & Khalifa, M. (2016). Psychological heuristics and faculty of color: Racial battle fatigue and tenure/promotion. The Journal of Higher Education, 87, 890-919. Bailey, Randall C., Tat-Siong B. Liew, and Fernando F. Segovia, eds. (2009). They Were All Together in One Place: Toward Minority Biblical Criticism. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Chancellor, R. L. (2019). Racial Battle Fatigue: The Unspoken Burden of Black Women Faculty in LIS. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 60, 182-189. Daniel, B. J. (2019). Teaching while Black: Racial dynamics, evaluations, and the role of White females in the Canadian academy in carrying the racism torch. Race Ethnicity and Education, 22, 21-37. JBL Forum on Black Lives Matter for Critical Biblical Scholarship (2017). Journal of Biblical Literature 136.1: 203-244. Nasrallah, Laura and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (2009). Prejudice and Christian Beginnings: Investigating Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Early Christian Studies. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Pizarro, M., & Kohli, R. (2018). “I stopped sleeping”: Teachers of color and the impact of racial battle fatigue. Urban Education, 1-25. Quaye, S. J., Karikari, S. N., Rashad Allen, C., Kwamogi Okello, W., & Demere Carter, K. (2019). Strategies for practicing self-care from racial battle fatigue.  Journal Committed to Social Change on Race and Ethnicity, 5, 95-131. Resources on Racism, White Supremacy, and Black Lives Matter Smith, W. A. (2004). Black faculty coping with racial battle fatigue: The campus racial climate in a post-civil rights era. In D. Cleveland (Ed.), A long way to go: Conversations about race by African American faculty and graduate students. Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 171-190.

Teaching in a two-person religion program at a liberal arts college means you have the opportunity to teach in your field of study, and also in other areas of interest and expertise. It also means your students range from majors and minors to those seeking a general education course. For me, this has meant I teach primarily courses on various religious traditions, including Islam, Qur’an, Asian Religions, and now one on Islamophobia, as well as writing seminars around the topics of gender and race. While the content of these courses lend themselves to discussions that fall under the category of “other,” “diversity,” and other codes for non-dominant traditions, I would argue that the way we teach this content matters as much as, if not more so than, the content itself. To that end, I think a diversity-infused course should not be measured by its content so much as how that content is conveyed. I wish I could say that I knew this, or knew how to accomplish this, when I began my teaching career, especially as it seems so obvious to me now. As luck would have it, a few years ago I coordinated a workshop with a colleague on “demystifying diversity in the classroom,” and we brought Kyana Wheeler and Fran Partridge to help moderate our conversations. In that context, I learned how better to talk about race, whiteness, and white fragility, and I gained some techniques for creating classroom spaces where these conversations could take place. Both in terms of pedagogy and interpersonal connections, it was one of the most eye-opening and liberating experiences that I have had. The facilitators introduced us to a couple of exercises that had us examine our own position in society. We filled out worksheets identifying the various “isms” including sexism, ableism, just to name a few. Additionally, we identified privately our own places of privilege and those of oppression, for example, based on gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic status. Of note, Kyana Wheeler did not include race in these exercises and when we had finished our intense and engaged discussions, she asked us to add the layer of race and note how much worse the discrimination would be. All of this took place after we had privately taken implicit bias tests online. Leaving race out until the end for a group of predominantly white instructors was for me a very powerful demonstration of not only our own positions in the world, but how we talk about race, racism, whiteness, white fragility, and white privilege. The bottom line is we don’t; and we are very uncomfortable when we do. In the semester following this workshop, I taught a first-year writing class under the theme of white fragility focusing on issues of race and gender. In addition to readings on whiteness, white fragility, and doing race, we engaged in discussions about the book, Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, by Monique W. Morris. The students, predominantly white, engaged in conversations about the intersectionality of race and gender. We were able to do so toward the end of the semester with minimal defensiveness, I think, because we had engaged in the exercises described above in the first half of the course. Rather than thinking of them as one set of exercises to set the tone for the course, I conducted these self-awareness practices throughout the course as reminders of our own positionality. During the first week, the students engaged in identifying the oppression at work in particular scenarios. Another week, they took implicit bias tests. A week later, they engaged in discussions about where they felt privilege and oppression. I borrowed the technique of leaving out race until the end. It seemed to work. Currently I am working on a course on Islamophobia and want to move away from catering to white privilege or the comfort of non-Muslim students. Based on a second takeaway from the summer workshop, specifically that race and racism are the most powerful underlying factors of most if not all forms of oppression, I believe a course on Islamophobia must engage in discussions of anti-racism. I have decided to take the tools of self-examination with respect to race and racism that successfully created a space for critical discussion of the plight of black girls in the US school and prison systems, to a course that teaches against Islamophobia. Furthermore, I believe that any course, even ones that don’t deal explicitly with racism or other forms of oppression would benefit from these activities as they help us to understand our place in the conversations, and who we might be leaving out.

[su_youtube_advanced url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JR_5IQlhxk&feature=youtu.be"] Last year I participated in a Colloquy at Wabash entitled “Teaching the Black Presence.” Not long after, for the first time in my career, a white male New Testament scholar, Dan Ulrich, approached me about teaching an African American biblical interpretation course for students, primarily white, attending Bethany Theological Seminary in Indiana; for some reason I imagined them to be primarily male. Dan had read and assigned students to read the essays I wrote in True Our Native Land (2007). By Dan’s own admission, he might have been “scared away by the strong hermeneutics of suspicion developed” in my recent work, much of which he has now read for this course. That reflects change. In my experience it is not unusual for scholars in biblical studies to be more familiar with the work of black males than with the scholarship of black females, but that is changing. This collaboration between Dan and me is novel for both of us, and taking it online in the pandemic brings its own challenges. We each carry our own ‘baggage,’ and we are committed to working through it to create a pedagogical experience that will enhance learning for the students enrolled and for ourselves. I am the teaching faculty for the course, the expert in African American and womanist biblical interpretation, although my dissertation and the book I published from it are readings of the Acts of the Apostles. I am a biblical scholar--this is often lost on some colleagues across the academy, as well as students, in my experience. So, as we navigate our way through this course—become acquainted with each other as scholars and human beings—our ‘baggage’ will trip us up at times. But hopefully we will also shed some ‘baggage.’  This is not an easy journey for either of us because of experiences, the ways that we have been socialized in the academy and society, both of which are racialized and gendered in favor of white males and the scholarship they do. We both have been shaped in ways we can and cannot immediately identify. In a meeting during the Colloquy with our consultants (Dr. Marcia Riggs and Dr. Mary Hess), Mary provided feedback to Dan on his first draft blog. It was feedback that I withheld because I did not believe Dan could receive it from me. This is my baggage. After Mary spoke, I confessed that I had a similar impression, but did not want to ‘hurt Dan’s feelings.’ But as I reflect now that was not the reason I withheld my critique. I believed that Dan would not receive my critique, and so why offer it. I was guilty of what I and other black scholars and scholars of color believe (and have experienced) too many white scholars to be guilty of, which is of not providing needed critical feedback to black students and other students of color, of being patronizing and assuming they can’t handle it or are not up to doing the work. I never fail to provide critical feedback to students, regardless of race-ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and so on. But I neglected in Dan’s case to offer useful critique, and my failure was not beneficial to him. I didn’t give Dan the chance to receive my feedback with grace and collegiality until after the white woman scholar offered hers. Going forward I must be honest with Dan, tactful, but honest in offering critique, because he has said he is participating in this collaboration as a learner and peer. This change would reflect neighbor-love informed by a self-love that values critical feedback as necessary for success. As a learner-collaborator, I am grateful for the idea from our consultants to ask students to write more than a two-paragraph statement describing the contexts that impact their selection and reading of a pericope. Our consultants have encouraged me to ask students to write an extended hermeneutical autobiography that will assist them in thinking more critically about their contexts and how culture and social identities, for example, shape them. This collaboration is not easy, but it is giving me life and pedagogical strategies and ideas. Read About Dan Ulrich's Experience with Mitzi Smith

Parasite, directed by Bong Joon-ho, is the first non-English-language, subtitled film to win Best Picture in the Oscars’ 92-year history. President Trump censured the award of the foreign film in a February 2020 campaign rally, wanting to get back to the 1939 classic movie “Gone with the Wind” often criticized for its racist stereotypes. The distributor of Parasite immediately responded to the President with a tweet: “Understandable. He can’t read.” In an earlier speech accepting the Golden Globes Foreign Film Award, Bong observed, “Once you overcome the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” In contrast to #OscarsSoWhite, the US President’s view of Oscars-not-quite-so-white reminds me of the connections between cultural texts and imperialism Edward Said explores in his work. I want to bring this discussion to my teaching context. When social justice is addressed in the classroom, one may assume that the teacher should discuss particular social issues or subjects that exist outside the classroom. Yet, if social justice is primarily about power, privilege, and oppression, a curriculum is inevitably a site in which social justice issues emerge. Curriculum selects, structures, and reproduces knowledge while authorizing certain constructions of knowledge and hence, producing the truth. How have knowledge and the truth been constructed? The western academy and education are rooted in a modern liberalism that presupposes “human” as the white European male. This ideology is racist and colonialist. In a Wabash podcast, “After Whiteness,” Willie Jennings points out that western education has been shaped by the dominant image of formation, “becoming”—becoming a “white self-sufficient man” and suggests an alternative view that highlights “belonging.” It was enlightening to understand where my frustration, along with a sense of inferiority, arose throughout my fourteen years of theological education in South Korea and the U.S. What you are going to “become” is not only unidentified but also, instinctively, unattainable. In my seminary, I was introduced to Luther, Barth, Bultmann, and Moltmann, just to name a few, by all male professors who had earned their doctorates in the U.S. and Europe. In my first year of Master’s studies in the U.S., I couldn’t believe that I was being taught by the prominent male professors whose names I had only seen in books. One of the professors, whom I respected greatly, said to me, “Korean students’ exegesis skills are good, but there is something they lack.” The second part of his words haunted me and I desired to have what I did not have without knowing what it was. Obviously, the professor did not mean that it is whiteness that I lack. Yet the ghost of whiteness surfaces in classrooms in various forms. The student-led campaign in the U.K., “Why is My Curriculum White?”, argued that the course content at universities served to reproduce the ideology of whiteness. This argument can apply to any discipline which was founded on the work of Anglo-European white males, including theological and biblical studies. What’s wrong with using their profound work that has influenced not only Western civilization and Christianity, but also the minds of people in other parts of the world? Why am I anxious about not using one of the canonized textbooks, which white male scholars authored, for my New Testament introduction course? Because we are speaking about power structures that normalize whiteness and white privilege. Institutional whiteness is incorporated in and reproduced through curriculum. As Jennings reminds us, that is how minoritized students and faculty in religious and theological education suffer the “racially formed sense of inadequacy.” Including one or two recommended readings written by non-white scholars in the syllabus is not enough, though one may start from there. Multiculturalism often promotes diversity by including a few minority individuals or groups, while still concealing power structures that perpetuate white supremacy and racism. In order to overcome white curriculum, the teacher needs to disclose the effects of racism embedded in the discipline and institutions, dismantle the ideology of whiteness inscribed in the textbook, and develop students’ ability to critically evaluate knowledge. There are “so many great [white] movies,” as the President said. Breaking “the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles” is more than watching a foreign film. Students know, or need to know, how to read subtitles. Can I read? Asking the question of whether my curriculum reads as white is a matter of social justice—the matter of death-dealing or life-affirming in the classroom.

Anti-Muslim bias manifests in antagonism or ill will towards Muslims and often builds upon white-supremacist, xenophobic, and racist tropes. Anti-Muslim bias can sometimes manifest as Islamophobia, which is antagonism towards the religion of Islam or towards regions of the world historically associated with Islam.  Anti-Muslim bias can be experienced by religiously practicing Muslims as well as those of an ethnic or racial background associated with Muslims. Hence, anti-Muslim bias does not just affect Muslims, it can impact North Africans and Arabs (including Christians) and brown people who present with perceived similar characteristics as Muslims (e.g.,  Sikhs). White Muslims of non-Arab backgrounds, Black, Latinx, and Muslims of East Asian backgrounds experience the effects of anti-Muslim bias as well.  In the North American and European context, there are several motivating factors for anti-Muslim bias. Some of them are explicitly geopolitical, others are rooted in the historic encounter and—in some respects, direct competition—between Islamic and Christian faith-based civilizations. Still others are seemingly rooted in an existential discomfort with human difference. In other words, anti-Muslim bias serves simultaneously as an expedient mobilization technique, as a theological polemic, and as a means to sow animosity and mistrust for personal gain. These motivating factors can overlap and be mutually reinforcing. For instance, many American and European politicians have ignited a political base by that is largely white and Christian by appealing to stereotypes of Muslims as invaders who are frenzied, culturally unsophisticated, nonsensical actors with a propensity toward violence. The white, Christian-identified politicians can then depict themselves as savior–protectors who are poised to guard territory, religion, and national identity. In this way, anti-Muslim bias becomes a lever of ethnic nationalism. Such strains of anti-Muslim bias have foreign policy implications beyond their domestic utility; it is much easier to wage a war in a territory if constituents supporting the war effort believe that their enemy is culturally and religiously inferior and a legitimate existential threat. Likewise, it becomes easier to morally justify news of mass civilian casualties abroad if those bearing the brunt of the suffering are seen as not like “us” in fundamental ways. Their suffering then becomes, in this paradigm, an unfortunate but ultimately unavoidable result of “our” need to protect “our values” from being attacked.  Thus, the gross prejudice and bigotry undergirding much anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic sentiment is readily disguised as noble patriotism. Political discourses that are hostile toward Islam and Muslims—and especially those promulgated and propagated at a national level—readily feed into everyday prejudices and implicit biases against the individuals of minority race, ethnicity, and/or religion; after all, these minorities only tenuously belong to the conceived “we” of the dominant national identity. False narratives, gross generalizations, and academically ungrounded analyses all serve to support notions that Muslims, or those appearing Muslim, are to be regarded circumspectly.  Often anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic sentiments are promoted with coordinated talking points through prominent media outlets and personalities who stand to benefit personally from stoking the flames of bigotry. Rather than appearing as hate-mongers, trafficking in destructive stereotypes, these media personalities can cast themselves as patriots who stand for freedom and democracy over and against the repression and theocracy supposedly valued by Muslims (as a result of their purported collective disposition and religiously mandated convictions). Anti-Muslim bias is a social justice issue because it tears at the civic fabric in a way that exacerbates ideological divides and makes minorities particularly vulnerable to the violence of vigilantes and the mentally unstable. It does not just impact civic life. Like other bigotries, it clouds collective moral judgement. Education about anti-Muslim bias and Islamophobia should include discussions of its effects on targeted individuals and groups, clarification of the stereotypes and false information that propel it, and exploration of the media and financial networks that enable it. Anti-Muslim bias can be taught in the context of how other large-scale religious and ethnic prejudices have led to blatant injustices, crimes, and other morally questionable actions. The topic of compound social marginalizations, the ways in which gendered stereotypes operate, and the niche roles of so-called native informants are all relevant topics to explore in depth. There are many provocative works on these subjects. For instance, for understanding anti-Muslim biases in the United States, I recommend Stephen Sheehi’s Islamophobia: The Ideological Campaign Against Muslims (2011) which covers the nuances of anti-Muslim sentiment with extensive coverage of the approaches of the Bush and early Obama administrations. I also recommend Peter Morey’s Islamophobia and the Novel (2018) for an exploration of how Islamophobic tropes are imbedded in English literature. Sara R. Farris contributes an excellent analysis of how gendered and racially biased assumptions impact European social policies in her book, In the Name of Women’s Rights (2017). The sheer magnitude of the systemic issues and their complexity can be daunting and even depressing, but many creative and entrepreneurial efforts have taken root to try to ameliorate biases and disparities. In this regard, one of my favorites for classroom use is The Secret Life of Muslims, a short-form, web-based series of first-person documentaries that was Emmy-nominated and a Peabody finalist. I have mainly referenced the American and European context here, but Islamophobia and anti-Muslim bias, of course, have a global reach; at present, India, Myanmar, and China are areas of elevated concern.

I’ve been interested in the connection between culture and education for most of my adult life. My wife and I spent 8 years in pastoral work in Central Europe, and since 2005 my work with online education has brought me into intercultural spaces that include the intersection of multiple kinds of experiences, such as international, intercultural, and interracial. We in theological higher education must be aware of the ways multiple perspectives both enrich the learning experience as well as complicate the online learning culture. In the last decade I started inquiring about how different cultures experience online education and learning systems. My article, “Global Contexts for Learning” (2014), was an earlier attempt to describe how cultural backgrounds bring different contextual expectations, a matter course designers and online teachers ought to consider for the sake of leveling the opportunities for intercultural learning spaces. More recently my dissertation journey explored race and faith-based higher education and brought me into meaningful conversations with African American adult learners in non-traditional programs in predominantly white institutions (see Westbrook 2017, published by Routledge). These conversations exposed my own white blindness and helped me see with more focus the ways experiences of racialization affect one’s perspective, including in online education courses. I write this blog from a white perspective, and to be totally honest, this post probably is best suited for white readers. In other words, people who live with race consciousness day after day might not find this essay particularly unusual or insightful. However, those, like myself, who have lived most of life from the white position in predominantly white settings need to be informed of the extra layer of challenges racialization adds to online learning. “The Wall” of Anonymity Two broad themes surface when we consider online learning spaces and race. First, the nature of one’s working through a screen and often written-based exercises presents an “impression of anonymity” (Al-Harthi, 2005, p. 7). One of my interviewees described the online learning environment as “the wall” (Westbrook, 2017, p. 118) that protects students from racially motivated prejudices. Ibarra (2000, p. 7) cited an interviewee in which the person said, “No one can hear my accent on the keyboard.” When a person is interacting in an online course from her or his own context, the student is approaching the learning activities from a comfortable and personally selected environment. Stereotype threat may be minimalized from one computer screen to another. For many, macro-aggressions are recent experiences and the effects of segregation laws from the Jim Crow South have lingered. Some students may welcome an added layer of protection from racial discrimination. “The Wall” of Separation The second major theme is that in spite of the “wall” effect of online learning, each person brings to the classroom previous experiences of racialization, including micro-aggressions in previous schooling, the work place, and in society at large. In addition, each student also has one’s own learning style, preferred communication style, and cultural filter through which one interprets the course. What might be “normal” for some could be intimidating for others, and if the course is based in writing, then social cues and non-verbal regulators are missing, which leaves room for the imagination to infer both positive and negative presumptions about others in the course. For example, one of my interviewees said the following about her online course activities, “But I could also tell when there was a Caucasian writing . . . . Because sometimes they can get too lengthy” (Westbrook, 2017, p. 118). According to this student, she felt like her classmates’ writing styles were obviously white and different from how she would have communicated. Another example was how one interviewee presumed white privilege of her classmates because of their personal introductions in the course (Westbrook, 2017, p. 119). Now, imagine this race awareness by the students who have a background of being followed in department stores, who have had car doors locked while they were passing by, and purses held tighter when they enter elevators, all white responses to the color of the students’ skin. Such examples were given my interviewees. Then, enter back into the online discussion. What impact do these previous experiences of not being trusted have on students who feel underrepresented in a predominantly white online course? In addition, not all of my interviewees’ experiences in the predominantly white institutions were online. Some described their experiences on the physical campuses. They were quite aware of the majority white demographics in student population, faculty, and staff; and one person reported feeling insecure when she started her program due to matters of race. The point here is that this student was thinking about racial differences as well as the macro- and micro-aggressions from before. It was unlikely her white classmates thought about race at all when they were answering personal introductions or doing their course work. Some of their white classmates might even deny such a difference would exist, adding further pain to the problems. Move Toward eQuality in Online Education Online education learning spaces are not neutral spaces. Each student brings personal memories, expectations, hurts, fears, and stereotypes to the online classroom. Although the computer screen may appear to filter “in the moment” forms of discrimination and provide a safe space for “colorblind” interaction, the online experience is still a form of human interaction. Whatever social challenges people have when face to face also extend into the online domain. Rather than presuming a colorblind or neutral space, online education brings together through digital technology communities that are diverse. As theological educators, whether online or onground, we have a moral imperative to design and offer our students learning spaces that resemble the teachings of Jesus and have a spirit of peace and reconciliation. The image of the mosaic of believers before the throne of God in Revelation 7:9, 10 provides a wonderful depiction of the kingdom of God. Our theological institutions that are designed to prepare people to serve in the kingdom of God ought to hold high this image in Revelation as the standard for the reality and beauty of diversity within God’s people. As we envision the near and distant future of our distance learning, I offer the following thoughts to ponder: Design courses in such a way that maximizes access for working adults and parents. Consider accessibility matters in every possible way that digital technology may open new doors; watch out for the incidental new barriers. Predominantly white schools must continue to make diversification of faculty, staff, and students a priority. Design online courses in such a way that recognizes diversity and encourages multiple perspectives to be shared freely and safely. Adult learning programs must provide academic support and ongoing encouragement for online students, recognizing that systemic barriers have created unequal starting points for many adult learners who are returning to school. Faculty and staff must be trained for race consciousness and cultural diversity. Tim Westbrook Harding University Works Cited Al-Harthi, A. S. (2005). Distance higher education experiences of Arab Gulf students in the United States: A cultural perspective. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 6(3). Ibarra, R. A. (2000). Studying Latinos in a “virtual” university: Reframing diversity and academic culture change (Occasional Paper No. 68). Westbrook, Timothy Paul (2014). Global Contexts for Learning: Exploring the Relationship Between Low-Context Online Learning and High-Context Learners, Christian Higher Education, 13(4), 281-294. Westbrook, Timothy Paul (2017). Spirituality, community and race consciousness in adult higher education. New York: Routledge.

“Grab him!” they shouted. “And cage the big dope! Lasso his stomach with ten miles of rope! Tie the knots tight so he’ll never shake loose! Then dunk that dumb speck in the Beezle-Nut juice! Horton fought back with great vigor and vim But the Wickersham gang was too many for him. They beat him! They mauled him! They started to haul Him into his cage! But he managed to call To the Mayor: “Don’t give up! I believe in you all! A person’s a person, no matter how small! And you very small persons will not have to die If you make yourselves heard! So come on, now, and TRY!” Horton Hears a Who! by Dr. Seuss   Horton Hears a Who! is a children’s story book by the dependable philosopher Dr. Seuss. In the parable, Horton the elephant was, on May 15th, having a bath in the jungle. As Horton is splashing and enjoying the moment, he hears a small noise–a faint voice calling for help. The rest of the tale is about Horton risking his life to save the town of Who-ville from those in the jungle who would destroy it. Other characters could not, or would not, hear the Who-villians because they were small in size and their voices were faint. Who-ville is so tiny it can fit on a speck of dust. Dr. Seuss describes the smallness of Who-ville this way--“The elephant stretched his great trunk through the air, And he lifted the dust speck and carried it over, And placed it down, safe, on a very soft clover.” Unlike the other characters of the parable, Horton believed, “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” This is, unfortunately, a contested idea in the story, as well as in U.S. society. In our conversation on oppression, systemic hatred and violence, perhaps the whimsy of Dr. Seuss allows us to enter into this radical notion of inclusion, compassion, and acceptance with fresh eyes and child-like wonder. Perhaps whimsy can be used in our classrooms to teach people the worth of all humanity.  Rekindling our imaginations for the work of empathy is needed, but fraught with danger. Imagination shackled to hatred is as powerful as imagination perpetuating liberation, justice, and love. Evil itself can be imaginative. The power of imagination is recognized by those who would oppress as it is by those who would liberate. Hatred recruits imagination for propaganda and manipulation. Oppression and its many forms of torture are often creative, imaginative–yet are a machine of hopelessness. We cannot naively think that if it is imaginative it is pointing toward freedom. Dr. Seuss, the czar of whimsy and imagination is certainly a compass pointing us toward freedom. Horton Hears a Who! is the life lesson of advocacy and sacrifice. Teaching for awareness of systemic dehumanization, teaching strategies for re-imagining equitable communities are sometimes enriched with a little help from Dr. Seuss.  For those who believe in and teach toward healthy communities, healthy families, healthy individuals and, for our purposes, healthy classrooms, the social structures that are produced by racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, (etc.) are an illogical, un-reasonable, and counter-intuitive situation. Oppression truncates the imagination of the oppressor. White supremacy and patriarchy distort reality. Internalizing the lie of superiority thins the soul and weakens judgement. Imagination itself, then, is constrained by the maintenance and management of hatred. An imagination tasked with the perpetuation of hatred becomes one more blunt and dangerous tool. Dr. Seuss’s brilliant tale provides insight. Students who are reticent, unable, incapable, or simply resistant to the conversation on racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia find Dr. Seuss non-threatening and approachable. The whimsy of Dr. Seuss allows students to lower their guard–this is a good thing. Dr. Seuss reminds white students and male students of the imagination they had as children before white supremacy and patriarchy stripped them bare and robbed them.  This semester, I am partnering with the good doctor in this way. My instructions for an in-class activity are: Place your feet flat on the floor, take everything out of your hands and relax. Breathe deeply. Breath in through your nose and out through your mouth and relax.  Get out your reading assignment, Horton Hears A Who! by Dr. Seuss (it’s on the syllabus as required reading). Sit together in a small group (2 or 3 people, no more than 4) and slowly re-read the book aloud to one another. As individuals, with crayon, magic marker or colored pen and 8.5 X 11 paper consider these questions: In your family, church, community, region, or country–who are those who are treated as the small people? Who are the people who are unheard, unseen, or ignored? Who are the small people for which bias and prejudice is often heaped?  Who are the small people who struggle to be heard? Be specific–make a list.  (I supply the art materials.) Gather together with your small group, and without discussing the rationale, compile one list of all of the groups of small peoples recorded in each individual list. Bring a list with no redundancies. Record your group’s compiled list on a poster sized paper for display. Display the lists and discuss with entire class these kinds of questions: Why are these groups of people considered “small” in society? Why is bias and prejudice foisted upon these particular groups of persons? Is there a common understanding of who is “small”? Are there any groups to be added to the list? Are there any patterns of prejudice or discrimination which we can see in our lists? Accept all answers (within the bounds of sensibility). Next, I re-read aloud the above quote, and then instruct: Sit with this quote, reread it and let it soak in. Breathe deeply as you sit and think. Read our list of “small people” and breathe. Think of your interactions with or/as these oppressed brothers and sisters. Keep breathing as you sit quietly. (At least 10 minutes of silence, more if they can take it.) For which of these groups of small persons are you and your community willing or able to be a Horton? For whom will you and your community fight? For whom will you and your community take a beating? For whom will you and your community be mauled and caged? For whom will you shout encouragement and freedom? Sit in silence; take notes of your own thoughts if you so choose. (I do not ask students to report on this reflection.) Now, consider and discuss aloud: (a) What is at stake if you do not speak for the small people? (b) What is a risk if you do speak for the small people? Discuss for as long as there is energy for this inquiry. In this instance, the professor’s role is primarily listening, clarifying and, if needed, introducing vocabulary to elevate the conversation. With fresh paper, draw the kind of courage which would be necessary for you and your community should you choose to advocate or should you choose to re-invest in your advocacy of hearing and fighting for the small people. You may choose to work on individual or collaborative drawings. We will create a gallery of your drawings. The title of our gallery display is “A Person’s a Person, No Matter How Small!” Whether courage can be taught is one of my confounding meta-reflection questions. My answer today is: only if it can be imagined. The last step of this reflection is the point of the exercise; we must be able to imagine ourselves as people of courage if we are to do this risky, treacherous work of raising consciousness, creating relevant and timely strategies for eradication of oppression and learning how to heal the wounds of dehumanization and systemic hatred. 

Belonging is a yearning of the soul. Our life’s quest is often about finding the place, purpose or persons to which or to whom we belong. We need to feel at home; we yearn to feel accepted, swaddled by our relationships. We want to experience being part of something bigger than our finite, individual, selves. The experience of belonging makes us keenly aware of the connectional-joy of humanness. Equally, the experience of alienation, of having no place to call home, of being deemed inferior, is a profound experience of dehumanization and is soul dampening.  Twenty-first century racism would have minoritized people believe that we are “welcome,” only then to be immersed in experiences of disrespect, disregard and hatred.  At best, this creates a psychic quandary for us. At worst, this harm is debilitating to our ability to teach and to learn.  The magnitude of the need to belong necessitates a pedagogical priority, especially in those white schools with minoritized persons on faculty, on staff and in the student body.   The seminary where I am on faculty is located in a very affluent New Jersey suburb. The town is a bedroom community for executives and corporate giants of Manhattan. Consequently, we enjoy clean streets, splendid restaurants, a preponderance of shopping, great theatre, and a world-class jazz club.  Also, consequently, is the existence of a clear two-tier caste society: those who live here and those who come to work as cashiers, waitresses, nannies, elder care worker, gardeners and secretaries. I, due to faculty housing, live in this town. Typically, the workers who come to town are African-American and Latinx.  The residents are typically white.  I am routinely treated by fellow residents, as well as by commuter workers, as if I do not belong here.  I am African-American living in this affluent county – an embodied oxymoron, at best. I pay taxes here, vote here, work here, but, from the gaze of the racist eyeball, I do not belong here…. I’ve lived here for twenty years. Recently, I was having breakfast at the local diner with our dean, Javier Viera. Dean Viera, born in Puerto Rico, is fluent in Spanish. When the waitress came to our table to take our order, she was, as she always is, pleasant, and, in retrospect, sad. I did not notice her sadness until it morphed into a smile. What made her smile was when Javier greeted her in Spanish and ordered his breakfast in Spanish. When Dean Viera spoke to her in Spanish it both surprised and delighted her.  Her face lit up like a Christmas tree.  At his speaking, she went from an almost invisible presence to a woman of dignity. This drastic shift happened when she was spoken to in a language which signaled her belonging – or more accurately, her shift happened when she received the signal that she was not alone, not alien.  The Dean could have ordered in English. I did. Instead, in that moment he chose a language which invited the waitress to know a little bit of who his people are, what his allegiances are, and the kind of man he is.  In this moment of belonging, he code-switched. A few years ago, I drove into the school parking lot and whipped into a space designated for faculty.  I literally parked in front of the sign that read “Reserved for Faculty.”  Distracted by my own thoughts, I got out of my car, opened the back door to get my briefcase and bags, then shut both car doors.  Still distracted as I walked, I headed up the path to the seminary building, intending to go straight to class.  Joe (not his name) was a facilities staff person whose job it was to place temporary signs around campus for upcoming events. Joe had worked at the school longer than I had and by that time I had been there for more than ten years. Joe, seeing me park in faculty parking, stopped hammering a signpost near the space where I parked. He shouted over to me, “You can’t park there.” In Black woman fashion, I decided I did not want to be bothered, this day, with this kind of #$%@##.  Without replying or acknowledging him in any way (ignoring is a Black woman survival strategy), I kept walking. Joe raised his volume and shouted in my direction, “That’s for faculty.  YOU can’t park there.” As I entered the building I looked over my shoulder to see that the sign-man had left his assigned task, walked over to my car and was inspecting the parking tag in my car window. I suspect Sign-man was surprised when my tag read “Faculty.”  Even when I “belong,” Sign-man, on the lowest tier of the hierarchy, believes he can police me and tell me that I do not belong.  WTH! $%##*! Though my enthusiasm at the start of any fall semester wanes, my clarity of purpose sharpens.  At the end of the orientation worship service I position myself in the hallway.  As the new students leave the chapel, I ferret-out the new African American and African students, shake their hands, read their name tags aloud.  I ask in which degree program they are enrolled and inquire about their fall course selection. While doing this, I keep an eye on the stairway. If it looks like a student who I have not spoken with is going down the stairs, I, in true old-Black-church-woman style, snap my fingers to get his/her attention, then wave them over to me. As I corral each student, I use Black church gestures and tones telling them, don’t wait for trouble, then decide to come find me; come sit in my office soon and we will get acquainted. I tell them to email me and we will have coffee or lunch - soon. I want them from their first day to know, at least a little bit, that they are not alone in this place. I tell them that the protocols and practices of respect, decency, and regard of Black church culture are, with their presence, operative and that I am a representative of our shared culture. I want them to know that this school has something of merit to offer them if they can just figure out how to extract the best and leave the rest. I want my gesture to signal to them my availability to help with this leg of their holy journey. I tell them, I, like the other old women of our church tradition, in any given moment, can reach in and down to my DD-located-coin-purse for a piece of money, a freshly pressed handkerchief, a peppermint candy or a straight edge.  For me, the importance of this gesture is like what our dean did for the waitress. Or, more importantly, an antidote for when, not if, the sign-man speaks to them on our campus. I am trying to communicate, in the midst of all the hollow rhetoric of “welcome,” that they belong in our school because our people have fought and won the right for us to be in this place. I code-switch. I code-switch in ear-shot of the public to signal to the African and African-American students, at least a little bit, that their racial/cultural identity is part of this place and that their/our expressions of religion, faith, values and community are here, at least a little bit.  It does not take Jim/Jane Crow era signs reading “Whites Only” at the water fountains and bathrooms to make people of color feel unwelcomed. Strategies of hatred and alienation are maintained in the DNA of the institution as well as by the sign-posters on payroll. By now, I have been at my desk long enough to have a modicum of authority, some institutional voice, and can exercise some mother’s-milk-given moxie.  At this stage, I possess less fear of reprisal or sabotage and more orneriness. My orneriness is one of the gifts of having survived into crone-hood; it is a gift from the ancestors, a pay-off of having earned the distinction of full professorship and being near retirement. As a person who has earned influence and power in this profession, I feel it my obligation to use this cachet to tell Black students that they belong and then to work until it happens.  This year, after my practice of greeting all the students of the African diaspora, I made my way to the foyer for the buffet lunch.  I was joined in the que by a tenure-track faculty colleague who is Korean. A new student came up to my colleague and, in greeting each other, they spoke in Korean.  After the brief exchange, my colleague introduced me to the student in English.  I was glad my colleague also understands the necessity of code-switching to assist Korean students in feeling that they belong, at least a little bit. Later that week, the same colleague and I went to dinner. We chose a sushi restaurant.  The maître d’ greeted us at the restaurant entrance, then sat us at a table.  He took my friend’s drink order in Korean and mine in English. Once the man left the table side – I playfully feinted insult and asked my friend why the maître d’ had not spoken to me in Korean. My friend tipped his head forward and, looking at me over his glasses, smiled. The truth telling of his culturally familiar gesture made me laugh out loud.   

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe  impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day.  Why,  sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”  -- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass   The matter-of-factness of the Queen’s statement about believing impossible things is her formidable strength. My contribution to a society that must take seriously its issues of inclusion, equity, eradication of poverty, economic justice, and ecological ruin is showing my students that belief in impossible things is their prophetic obligation. I want to teach my students to be more like the Queen, and less like Alice. The current hegemonic reality would have us believe that the current state of things is all there is. And, how it is now is as it should be – and anything else is impossible. We are distracted from imagining a world of communal mindedness and cooperation. We are taught that justice is impossible, improbable, and, I dare say, imprudent. For some students, the challenge to believe impossible things is the immediacy of being taught by an African American, female professor who has, by the position she holds in the school, authority over them.  “How is it possible,” I hear them attempting to reconcile their cognitive dissonance, “that a person deemed by society to be inferior can be in this place of higher education? She must be a credit to her race; She must be an Affirmative Action hire; she must have slept with somebody to get this kind of job.”  For other students, the challenge to believe impossible things is when they see someone like themselves–same racial identity, same gender, same hair texture, and possessing the same ability to suck my teeth and roll my eyes like a champ. “How is it possible,” I hear them attempting to reconcile their confusion, “that a person like Her can be in this place of higher education? She must think she’s white. She must have left the church–she ain’t Christian. She must be sleeping with somebody to get this kind of job.”  If I can press past the immediate narrowness of some students when gazing upon my Black, female body in my own classroom, I am eager to get to deeper urgencies of believing impossible things for social change.  The politics of inferiority, the oppressions of white supremacy, white nationalism, and the current state of misogyny would have us believe, require us to believe, that the current reality is all that is possible. The status quo truncates the imagination as a way of maintaining control. Unimaginative students routinely resist learning about social transformation and the creativity necessary to disentangle and revision society without systemic oppressions. Every teacher, if you get to teach long enough, develops a shtick. The word “shtick” comes from the Yiddish language meaning “bit”–as in a “comedy bit” performed on stage. If you are not sure if you have a shtick or if you are not sure what it is–ask your students, they know. Or attend the annual end-of-the-year skits where students gleefully parody the faculty.  Keep in mind that imitation is the greatest flattery and smile during your moments. One of my many classrooms shticks goes like this: With a wry smile on my face and beginning with a dramatic pause I pose this question:  Which came first – race or racism?  Some students recognize my wry smile, become cautious--suspicious that this is a trick question. Some students hesitate to answer for fear of getting the answer wrong. A silence wafts through the classroom. I then answer my own question: Racism birthed race and not the other way ‘round.  Students’ faces signal more suspicion, disbelief, and occasionally . . . curiosity.  The silence moves deeper into disbelief and some low-grade fear (like something dangerous is about to happen). Feeling a teachable moment potentially approaching, I keep going: It took the depravity of racist hearts to construct race and not the other way ‘round. Race was created as a social/political system whose ultimate and exclusive aim is to create a permanent social under- caste of human inferiority.   (Dramatic pause, I breathe deeply so students can breathe also.) I continue: Given the spiritual evil necessary to maintain the system of patriarchy, white supremacy and white nationalism, it would make sense to assume that the victims of this social system (all women and children, people of color, the poor, LGBTQ brothers and sisters, disabled folks–for example) should be, and many are, either annihilated, embittered, or paralyzed with fear . . . . Yet, the African American men and women I know, while they have suffered tremendous hardship, oppression, and loss, exemplify a story other than defeat.  When you are a people who know how to believe impossible things, the reality of a situation does not keep you from freedom. I ask for questions and comments, linger only for a little while, and then continue with discussion questions such as: What would it take for you and your people to be able to imagine a more just society-a world without racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, ableism? What obstacles make imagining this society difficult? What is at stake for your people if you do not imagine this world? What is the role and responsibility of church leadership in the more just society? What skills, capacities, and know-how do you need to assist your people in transitioning into a more just society, church, and world? These are not questions proffering a utopian society, nor are they questions for idle flights of fancy or busy-work. Believing in the impossible as well as teaching belief in impossible things is what it will take in order to save the racists and the victims of racism. If we are to teach our students, in the words of Bishop Desmond Tutu, to endure hardship without becoming hard and to have heartbreak without being broken, then they have to have an imagination that can conjure that which evil says is impossible.