My first year of undergrad I took a small (around 20 student) all first-year Political Science seminar course about Race and the United States - the course was focused on having us read a couple of articles a week that were a mix of news and academic articles about topics ranging from reparations, to the removal of Confederate monuments, to food deserts and environmental racism. Then in class, we would discuss the arguments made by every article and analyze how they were framing histories of racism and race in the United States. Midway through the semester, I was walking after class with one of my classmates who is Vietnamese American and we were debriefing the class, she noted that she often didn't speak in class because it felt wrong that we were picking apart instance and structures of racism, like food deserts and the model minority myth, that had wrecked violence on her community so our predominantly white class could try to understand racism in the US. For her, it was hard and a jarring reframe to intellectualize violent acts of racism.

Example of Teachable Moments and Racism

Prasad discusses how, by presenting instances of racism as instances for white students to learn about racism through by scrutinizing, picking it apart, and analyzing, instances of racism are reframed from being sites of injustice and accountability to learning exercises. This reframing also allows white students to take comfort in thinking that racism can be resolved through academic analysis.Teachable Moments and Racism

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Brittany is a Deaf Black woman and assistant professor. Brittany noted how colleagues typically tell her to incorporate her personal experience into her research. Brittany pushes against this because she doesn't want her writing reduced to experience as a Deaf woman and doesn't want to have to display herself for the scrutiny and learning experience of nondisabled white readers.

Example of Compelled Surveillance: Brittany and Research Positionality

Prasad, Pritha and Louis Maraj. 2022. "'I Am Not Your Teaching Moment': The Benevolent Gaslight and Epistemic Violence." College Composition and Communication 74 (2): 322-351.

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