I have received and facilitated workplace
diversity trainings pretty regularly for 5 years. I have written and refined
social justice lessons into my math curriculum. I mention both of these things
to say that I have spent more time than many others paying attention to how people
engage with identity work. I have spent a lot of time being taught responsible
ways of engaging people of various ages in these difficult conversations, and,
through trial and error, have learned strategies that help people process these
ideas and feelings.
I’m in a workplace diversity training.
I understand why we are doing
ice-breakers first, I understand why people who are further along in
their identity development are frustrated, I understand the ways in which
facilitating this conversation for 144 people is different than 15 people like
our facilitator is used to, and so I do what more experienced people did during
my first large facilitation experiences--invite people to re-engage, help
explain the intentionality behind the structure so people understand the difficulties,
etc.
A (white, male, middle-aged) teacher doesn’t
like ice breakers, so he is sitting. A couple of people try and encourage him
to join, but he doesn’t want to, so we leave him alone. During the discussion
following the activity, we begin talking about assimilation. He says, “I feel
like I’m being asked to assimilate by participating in this discussion,” and
walks out.
It goes unaddressed.
Later, a (male, older, asian) teacher says that
he’s offended by the other teacher’s actions, because he trivialized what
assimilation actually is and how it affects people. Assimilation means that you
experience violence when you try to opt out. Assimilation means you can’t opt
out. Assimilation is stripping you away from your culture and punishing you for
trying to hold onto any part of it. Assimilation isn’t being asked to
participate in something unappealing to you, like having to
pick between two desserts when you’d prefer a savory snack. The stakes are
different here--what happens when you opt out?
Assimilation means being receiving death threats from parents when you want to use the bathroom at school, and having to move schools because you are no longer safe.
Assimilation means having
your name changed from Carlitos to Jamison and not being returned to your
mother when her immigration proceedings are cleared.
Assimilation is colonialism. And it doesn’t
exist in a historical vacuum that we can remove ourselves from--it happens now,
today, this minute. Some of it happens in our classrooms, which was the whole
point of this training. To compare experiencing assimilation to participating
in workplace icebreakers is to compare experiencing sexual assault to being
assigned to sit next to someone you don’t like on a seating chart.
I wanted to ask the teacher to consider what might
happen if a student walked out of their science class because they didn’t want
to “assimilate” by doing their bellwork. Would they let the student leave?
Would that student get in trouble? Would it negatively impact their grade?
We never defined assimilation before, during, or
after this diversity training.
I’m disappointed that the facilitators didn’t
address this. I’m wondering if anyone who had already built trust with the
teacher followed up with him after he walked out.
And I’m wondering what my role is, in a new
community, in deciding when and how to speak up when I notice things like this
happening.
