{"id":123,"date":"2015-08-11T10:53:19","date_gmt":"2015-08-11T14:53:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techandsensibility.com\/?p=123"},"modified":"2015-08-11T11:04:43","modified_gmt":"2015-08-11T15:04:43","slug":"on-teaching-what-is-not-valued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techandsensibility.com\/?p=123","title":{"rendered":"On Teaching What Is Not Valued, But Is Still Needed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Teaching black literature is hard, when generations of students have been taught things like:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-124\" src=\"http:\/\/techandsensibility.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/faith-ringgold.jpeg\" alt=\"faith ringgold\" width=\"214\" height=\"236\" \/>Racism only exists when black people are present.<\/li>\n<li>If black people only loved themselves, racism would go away.<\/li>\n<li>Wealthy, white women in the South and black enslaved women suffered equally.<\/li>\n<li>Naming the sources of\u00a0racial oppression and violence against\u00a0black and brown people is\u00a0really an expression of racism against white people.<\/li>\n<li>Black people can\u2019t\u2026<\/li>\n<li>Black-on-black crime\u2026<\/li>\n<li>Black literature, black studies do not offer a way to engage in anything beyond \u201ca culture of victimhood.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>When you say \u201crace\u201d you really mean \u201cblack.\u201d And racism is a black-white dynamic.<\/li>\n<li>Black people don\u2019t write science fiction.<\/li>\n<li>Black\/African American Literature is not &#8220;American&#8221; literature.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Oh, there\u2019s more, my students tell me. But I will stop there.<\/p>\n<p>It pains me to see the devaluation of black studies is spaces where students need it the most. So embedded are the narratives of pathological blackness, that even when students read about black love, family, community, there is cognitive dissonance that forces them to transform poetry, music, art into the negative. And they tell me this is what they are taught in our public and private institutions.<\/p>\n<p>On the eve of a new semester, I think about the work ahead. That there is so much to do.\u00a0So much work to do.<\/p>\n<p>#fallpreps #Imightbehopeful #orImightnot<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Teaching black literature is hard, when generations of students have been taught things like: Racism only exists when black people are present. If black people only loved themselves, racism would go away. Wealthy, white women in the South and black&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,1],"tags":[28,29,31,30,27],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching","category-uncategorized","tag-black-studies","tag-literature","tag-race","tag-racism","tag-teaching"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techandsensibility.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techandsensibility.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techandsensibility.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techandsensibility.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techandsensibility.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/techandsensibility.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129,"href":"https:\/\/techandsensibility.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions\/129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techandsensibility.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techandsensibility.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techandsensibility.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}