Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom by Hooks Bell

Author:Hooks, Bell [Hooks, Bell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: feminism, Philosophy, Politics
ISBN: 9780415968201
Amazon: 0415968208
Goodreads: 51398
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2009-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Black, Female, and Academic

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who teaches in public school shared that when a black female teacher was walking toward two white male students engaged in disruptive behavior one boy declared “We had better stop because the teacher is coming”; the response of the other body was that “Oh—she’s just a black woman.” Already this white boy who is still in grade school has learned to devalue black woman hood. Will he just suddenly learn respect for black female teachers when he enters college?

When I fi rst began teaching, I learned from student evaluations that I was perceived as racist because I often called attention to racial identity: Any reference to white identity that linked it with the system of white supremacy created discomfort in the classroom. My critiques of systems of domination risked being viewed as expressions of personal anger. Again and again, black female professors come together and discuss among ourselves ways to challenge all students, but particularly those white students who wrongly project onto us that we are angry or mean.

Individual black female professors complain that students see them as the “bitch” who is out to get them. Indeed, the idea for this essay began when a younger colleague asked me how we can correct and challenge white students without falling prey to racialized stereotypes that just lead to disrespect and a closing of the mind. She declared: “I’m tired of being seen as the angry mean black bitch.”

Understanding that most of our students, irrespective of their race, have by virtue of being socialized in imperialist capitalist white-supremacist patriarchal culture internalized ways of thinking that are stereotypical, black female professors must enter the classroom prepared to challenge negative stereotypes when necessary. Very early on in my teaching career, in a course on black women writers, I was lecturing on Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and referenced the history of black women working as domestics in white households. A white female student raised her hand to disagree when I suggested that often black maids served white families with apparent good cheer and then

100 Teaching

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