Learning & living difference that makes a difference: Postmodern theory & multicultural education

Multicultural Education, Summer 2002 by Jacobs, Walter R

Second, we must enter the "matrix of domination" (Collins 1991). In the new social movements social minorities form counter-hegemonic understandings of the common good. While it is necessary for marginalized peoples to form oppositional understandings, these efforts can lead to serious problems in both inter- and intragroup interaction. Internally, marginalized groups can generate essentialist discourse, policing boundaries in destructive battles with and/or to the exclusion of those who aren't "Black enough," or "Queer enough," or "real feminists," etc. Externally, such police action may lead to narrow identification with one axis of oppression, and squabbles over "whose oppression is greatest," and/or what combination of oppressions is more destructive. This is "identity politics" at its worst, and needs to be overcome (Haraway 1991; Nicholson & Seidman 1995). Collins offers us this invaluable lesson: no one is purely an "oppressor" or purely "privileged." We never reach a state in which we are not empowered vis-a-vis some Other group; we always exist in a cauldron in which sometimes we are oppressed and sometimes we are oppressors. We-like any- and every-one else-must maintain eternal vigilance, especially since media still portray some groups unequally in order to legitimate the status quo (Valdivia 1995; Wilson & Gutierrez 1995).

In essence, college instructors can teach a transformative multiculturalism by the critical use of its most common manifestation: popular media culture. Teachers can expose students to media products that have explicit social commentary, such as the HBO film , Space Traders (Hudlin & Hudlin 1994), in which the citizens of the United States vote to trade all African-- Americans in exchange for new technologies from extra-terrestrial aliens. When watching and discussing "strange texts" like these (those that are unusual, and challenge comfortable taken-for-granted assumptions), students start to take a much closer look at how priorities are set and articulated by the State, and to question their places within American and world societies and histories (Brooks & Jacobs 1996; Jacobs & Brooks 1999). Michel de Certeau (1997/1974:31) argues that "spectators are not the dupes of the media theater, but they refuse to say so." We must encourage students to say so.

ANTI-ESSENTIALIST RACE CONSCIOUSNESS

THE TEACHER AS TEXT

I am located in the margin. I make a definite distinction between marginality which is imposed by oppressive structures and that marginality one chooses as a site of resistance-as location of radical openness and possibility. (hooks 1990:153)

When students' taken-for-granted understandings are displaced-when we make them say that they are not dupes-- and when they are confronted with multiple complexities about societal haves and have-- nots, students often become angry, blaming the teacher for making them "think" (hooks 1994; McLaughlin 1996). Some wrestle with the challenge constructively, but some yearn for simpler days in which they were comfortably oblivious to the operation of power at the level of the everyday, and resist complex analysis. According to Takata (1997:200), "Learning is messy.... There are often frustrating detours, temporary setbacks, and latent learning," but teachers must tackle such resistance if we are to create anti-essentialist discourse (the second component of Newfield and Gordon's (1996) transformative multiculturalism) and an empowering sense of marginality, as voiced above by bell hooks. In order to help instill a sense of hope in students and encourage them to tackle tough questions, teachers must "emphasize the partiality of any approach to challenging oppression and the need to constantly rework these approaches" (Kumashiro 2001: 4), and demonstrate that we are as deeply immersed in the complex muck as are the students, yet somehow manage to survive and, indeed, thrive in chaotic and disorienting spaces. In other words, the teachers must also become texts: by presenting ourselves as real live individuals with a rich set of fears, vulnerabilities, hopes, dreams, and aspirations, we can help students examine their own complex realities and create powerful and optimistic identities and a sense of critical agency (Jacobs 1998).