Challenge to Equality: "We Made It, Why Can't You?", The

Multicultural Education, Spring 2007 by Bhavnagri, Navaz Peshotan, Pr�speri, Jorge Dante Hernandez

(4) Link past and present traumas: How has the 9/11 attack, a traumatic event, influenced the psyche of the parents and children who were the victims, and the psyche of our nation for generations to come? Have their souls been wounded? How are we pooling our and the world's resources to end terrorism, to prevent our potential annihilation, and thus minimize the multigenerational trauma of terrorism on us?

Similarly, did the Native Americans and African Americans also experience terror, when the onslaught kept coming not just for a day but also for generations? Did they, like us, have the world's resources to pool to circumvent this multigenerational trauma, to end their terror, and to prevent their annihilation and future attacks? Is it so hard now to relate to their plight of multigenerational trauma?

How would we feel if the terrorists intentionally introduced a small pox epidemic to annihilate our civilization? How, then, must the Native Americans have felt when the colonists actually committed such a dastardly act, by presenting innocent Native Americans with blankets used by small pox victims as gifts to annihilate their civilization? How would you feel towards your gift-givers and their deception?

Additionally, encourage the White in-service teachers to write personal narratives about power relations within their life experiences (e.g., family and school settings, religious institutions, police and court systems). Such narrative research is highly promoted in critical pedagogy (e.g., Whelan, Huber, Rose, Davies, & Clandinin, 2001) because it is "an ideal mechanism to inquire, reflect, examine, and interpret our memories both from our personal experiences and from multiple perspectives shared by others" (Gallavan & Whittemore, 2003, p. 20). Therefore, discussions of these narratives would hopefully promote critical thinking about power relations that they have experienced and extrapolate it to others' experiences.

2. The Affective Goal: Educators need to promote empathy, perspective-taking, and emotional engagement by not blaming, being knowledgeable, providing empathic readings, memorable oral story retelling and dramatic performance.

First, teacher educators should not blame or silence White students who believe that parity has been reached, for that provokes hostility, resistance, and guilt. Instead teacher educators need to (1) develop empathic responses in these students, (2) help them understand that parity is in their self-interest, and (3) empower them to be co-responsible and be an ally in transforming society (Howard, 1999; Tatum, 1994; Zinn, 1995).

Second, teacher-educators need to be knowledgeable about disparities because, as Howard (1999) states, "you can't teach what you don't know." Thus, knowledge impacts their efficacy.

Third, teacher educators should provide empathic readings such as historical case studies of unsung heroes (e.g., Fleming, 2001), emotional narratives and testimonies of slaves (e.g., Lester 1998 b), actual accounts of abolitionists (e.g., Still, 1872), stories of resilience and resistance of slaves such as Nat Turner (Edwards, 2000), Fredrick Douglass (1845/1997), Harriet Tubman (Schraff, 2001), Sourjener Truth (Bernard, 2001), and Native American Chiefs such as Geronimo (Hermann, 1997), Sitting Bull (Bodow, 1994), Crazy Horse (Brennan, 2002) and Chief Joseph (Klingel & Noyed, 2003).