How Real Does It Get?
Editorializing on critical pedagogy, wankstas and the fear of teaching like a girl
A professor in his early thirties paces at the front of the packed room, lecturing while projecting a Powerpoint. He tells the conference audience that he has identified three teacher-types: the gangsta (hard-case awful, unredeemable) and the wanksta (just riding the fence, but could maybe be pushed over into the good side). The third, the rida, is on point; the rida is down with the people. In fact, the rida would take a bullet for his homies. In fact, he has three book contracts on his desk that he can’t even get to, because he’s too busy keepin’ it real, taking bullets, maintaining rida status. He’s all about “critical pedagogy,” which he performed for the room as a choreography of hyper-masculinity, all shouted points and violent metaphors. The rest of us, well, if we aren’t willing to take a bullet, we—a pathetic and leeching bunch of gangstas and wankstas—should get out of education.
Never mind that it is only in Hollywood’s fantasies that the poor dive in front of a bullet for their homies; this recent conference experience is an echo of too many where (male, not all white) professors of education strut to a largely female and white audience about our failures to be real, to be critical (often vaguely defined, but sort of left, and nearly always firmly academic), to be authentic, and how their truer and smarter versions of critical pedagogy and organizing are not like what the rest of us—a bunch of girls—come up with.
Risking exposure of our wanksta status, we want to question the persistence of these critical ideas about education and critical pedagogy, and the implicit ways in which they construct and delegitimize teaching and organizing like girls and often distract us—educators—from the everyday work of social justice in education.
In the US, critical pedagogy—perhaps the grandfather of the rida—is a term and an educational practice most frequently associated with the work of Paulo Freire that views teaching as a political, liberatory project. While abbreviating what is a broad and branching body of scholarship, US translations of the term and the concept of critical pedagogy, as this Wikipedia entry indicates, are deeply gendered and racialized:
Famous authors of critical pedagogy texts not only include Paulo Freire, as mentioned above, but also Rich Gibson, Michael Apple, Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, Joe L. Kincheloe, Howard Zinn, and others. Famous educationalists including Jonathan Kozol and Parker Palmer are sometimes included in this category. Other critical pedagogues more famous for their anti-schooling, unschooling, or deschooling perspectives include Ivan Illich, John Holt, Ira Shor, John Taylor Gatto, and Matt Hern.
Critical pedagogy can and often does make invisible the daily labors of the primarily female force teaching in our public schools and in many of the teacher education programs at colleges and universities, while glorifying the work of a few, mostly male and white academicians. Just like the highly paid male chefs (when the majority of the world’s unpaid daily preparers of food are women) or the valorized male artists (when everyday domestic arts are overwhelmingly practiced, uncompensated, by women), the critical pedagogue is only possible through the erasure of the intersections of gender, race, power and privilege. Genius, artist, chef, critical pedagogue—because women are often too busy being real, perhaps keepin’ it real is just a dick thing.
As Liz Ellsworth (1989) noted almost twenty years ago in Why Doesn’t this Feel Empowering? Working Through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy, critical pedagogy frameworks also ‘fix’ educators in positions of power and privilege, as the critical pedagogue facilitates the empowerment of the others. Like Ellsworth, our ongoing learning and teaching experiences make us suspicious and uncomfortable with a knowledge and learning paradigm that places “us” so seamlessly in the emancipator role. Authority and legitimacy are often produced through hierarchical relations of oppression and domination.
What is also startlingly clear to us—after a few years on the ‘social justice’ and ‘critical’ educational conference circuit—is that no one really wants to be perceived as teaching or organizing like a girl. Most, we suspect, (including ourselves) are fairly unsure of what this might mean, only—like throwing like a girl, all limp-wristed wind-up and no sure aim—it must be something really embarrassing. And, given Hollywood’s persistent snow-job on the profession of teaching, who wants to be confused with Hillary Swank from Freedom Writers? Or to be mistaken as one of those fresh-faced modern day missionaries—recruited at only THE best Ivy League universities and exclusive liberal arts colleges by Teach for America—who, with a summer’s “training,” are sent off to the schools to spend a few years saving poor people? In these versions, teaching is the gendered province of the duped, the naïve, the do-gooders, not an arena of social ferment and radical change. How is it that teaching and organizing like a girl or a woman does not evoke the riotous experiences of outspoken activist teachers—from Ellen Gates Starr and Margaret Haley, on through to Septima Clark, Mary Church Terrell and more?
We must reclaim the radical, social justice-oriented, lady teacher and her sissy colleagues. What the hero-hugging, girl-hating versions of teaching in pop culture obscure is the daily work for change, labor that is often messy and unheroic. To be of use, as Marge Piercy writes, when the “the work of the world is common as mud,” consists, in large part, of showing up and following through, and sometimes, getting out of the way. What rida critical pedagogues obscure is organizing, and movements for social change, within—and not outside of—public culture. What happens in public schools is linked to the economy; what happens in classrooms is shaped by housing and healthcare. In other words, the problem with the pedagogy in public schools isn’t really that it’s not critical enough, or that teachers are wankstas. It’s that all that is public, including schools, is under attack.
Education in the US has always been about sorting and sifting, creating populations that are disposable, superfluous, and designated for low-wage employment. It continues to be a battle to challenge this reality as it persists and takes new forms—from the residential schooling movement, to selective enrollment and charter schools—and to expose and intervene in how race, gender, class, sexuality, nationality, ability and more matter, desperately, in the culling of our children. And Lone Ranger critical pedagogues with a quick draw, but ultimately flaccid pedagogical prescriptions, aren’t going to solve those problems—or at least, not alone.
While we have no solutions but keeping eyes and ears open, and as Allen Ginsberg said, putting our “queer shoulder[s] to the wheel,” we argue that the work we need to do is all together, focused on preserving what is still public, in coalition with other people who are willing to show up. This is never dour work, but rather the opposite: chaotic, energizing, and overflowing with the pleasure of connectivity. Our labor, we predict, will often be unacknowledged; it’s likely that no names will get attached to this project. To teach and organize like a girl, we think, is to be willing to do what feels awkward, to ask uncomfortable questions, to be absolutely wrong, to find out, and still to stay. And then be to willing to show up again. And again. How like a girl; how necessary now.
This is a co-authored work with equal contributions from each of us and no first author. The order in which we are listed is based on a rotation we use in our collaborations on publications.
References
Ellsworth, E. (1989). Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 59(3), 297-324.
Ginsberg, A. (1974). America. Howl and Other Poems. San Francisco: City Lights Books.
Piercy, M. 1973. To be of use. Circles on the Water. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
Wikipedia. Critical Pedagogy. Retrieved on May 22, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_pedagogy
Never mind that it is only in Hollywood’s fantasies that the poor dive in front of a bullet for their homies; this recent conference experience is an echo of too many where (male, not all white) professors of education strut to a largely female and white audience about our failures to be real, to be critical (often vaguely defined, but sort of left, and nearly always firmly academic), to be authentic, and how their truer and smarter versions of critical pedagogy and organizing are not like what the rest of us—a bunch of girls—come up with.
Risking exposure of our wanksta status, we want to question the persistence of these critical ideas about education and critical pedagogy, and the implicit ways in which they construct and delegitimize teaching and organizing like girls and often distract us—educators—from the everyday work of social justice in education.
In the US, critical pedagogy—perhaps the grandfather of the rida—is a term and an educational practice most frequently associated with the work of Paulo Freire that views teaching as a political, liberatory project. While abbreviating what is a broad and branching body of scholarship, US translations of the term and the concept of critical pedagogy, as this Wikipedia entry indicates, are deeply gendered and racialized:
Famous authors of critical pedagogy texts not only include Paulo Freire, as mentioned above, but also Rich Gibson, Michael Apple, Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, Joe L. Kincheloe, Howard Zinn, and others. Famous educationalists including Jonathan Kozol and Parker Palmer are sometimes included in this category. Other critical pedagogues more famous for their anti-schooling, unschooling, or deschooling perspectives include Ivan Illich, John Holt, Ira Shor, John Taylor Gatto, and Matt Hern.
Critical pedagogy can and often does make invisible the daily labors of the primarily female force teaching in our public schools and in many of the teacher education programs at colleges and universities, while glorifying the work of a few, mostly male and white academicians. Just like the highly paid male chefs (when the majority of the world’s unpaid daily preparers of food are women) or the valorized male artists (when everyday domestic arts are overwhelmingly practiced, uncompensated, by women), the critical pedagogue is only possible through the erasure of the intersections of gender, race, power and privilege. Genius, artist, chef, critical pedagogue—because women are often too busy being real, perhaps keepin’ it real is just a dick thing.
As Liz Ellsworth (1989) noted almost twenty years ago in Why Doesn’t this Feel Empowering? Working Through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy, critical pedagogy frameworks also ‘fix’ educators in positions of power and privilege, as the critical pedagogue facilitates the empowerment of the others. Like Ellsworth, our ongoing learning and teaching experiences make us suspicious and uncomfortable with a knowledge and learning paradigm that places “us” so seamlessly in the emancipator role. Authority and legitimacy are often produced through hierarchical relations of oppression and domination.
What is also startlingly clear to us—after a few years on the ‘social justice’ and ‘critical’ educational conference circuit—is that no one really wants to be perceived as teaching or organizing like a girl. Most, we suspect, (including ourselves) are fairly unsure of what this might mean, only—like throwing like a girl, all limp-wristed wind-up and no sure aim—it must be something really embarrassing. And, given Hollywood’s persistent snow-job on the profession of teaching, who wants to be confused with Hillary Swank from Freedom Writers? Or to be mistaken as one of those fresh-faced modern day missionaries—recruited at only THE best Ivy League universities and exclusive liberal arts colleges by Teach for America—who, with a summer’s “training,” are sent off to the schools to spend a few years saving poor people? In these versions, teaching is the gendered province of the duped, the naïve, the do-gooders, not an arena of social ferment and radical change. How is it that teaching and organizing like a girl or a woman does not evoke the riotous experiences of outspoken activist teachers—from Ellen Gates Starr and Margaret Haley, on through to Septima Clark, Mary Church Terrell and more?
We must reclaim the radical, social justice-oriented, lady teacher and her sissy colleagues. What the hero-hugging, girl-hating versions of teaching in pop culture obscure is the daily work for change, labor that is often messy and unheroic. To be of use, as Marge Piercy writes, when the “the work of the world is common as mud,” consists, in large part, of showing up and following through, and sometimes, getting out of the way. What rida critical pedagogues obscure is organizing, and movements for social change, within—and not outside of—public culture. What happens in public schools is linked to the economy; what happens in classrooms is shaped by housing and healthcare. In other words, the problem with the pedagogy in public schools isn’t really that it’s not critical enough, or that teachers are wankstas. It’s that all that is public, including schools, is under attack.
Education in the US has always been about sorting and sifting, creating populations that are disposable, superfluous, and designated for low-wage employment. It continues to be a battle to challenge this reality as it persists and takes new forms—from the residential schooling movement, to selective enrollment and charter schools—and to expose and intervene in how race, gender, class, sexuality, nationality, ability and more matter, desperately, in the culling of our children. And Lone Ranger critical pedagogues with a quick draw, but ultimately flaccid pedagogical prescriptions, aren’t going to solve those problems—or at least, not alone.
While we have no solutions but keeping eyes and ears open, and as Allen Ginsberg said, putting our “queer shoulder[s] to the wheel,” we argue that the work we need to do is all together, focused on preserving what is still public, in coalition with other people who are willing to show up. This is never dour work, but rather the opposite: chaotic, energizing, and overflowing with the pleasure of connectivity. Our labor, we predict, will often be unacknowledged; it’s likely that no names will get attached to this project. To teach and organize like a girl, we think, is to be willing to do what feels awkward, to ask uncomfortable questions, to be absolutely wrong, to find out, and still to stay. And then be to willing to show up again. And again. How like a girl; how necessary now.
This is a co-authored work with equal contributions from each of us and no first author. The order in which we are listed is based on a rotation we use in our collaborations on publications.
References
Ellsworth, E. (1989). Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 59(3), 297-324.
Ginsberg, A. (1974). America. Howl and Other Poems. San Francisco: City Lights Books.
Piercy, M. 1973. To be of use. Circles on the Water. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
Wikipedia. Critical Pedagogy. Retrieved on May 22, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_pedagogy
Comments
26 comments.
Bang for Freedom! (do I need to explain that too?) commented, on November 5, 2007 at 8:50 p.m.:
We all read the world w/ our interests and experiences in mind. Wasn't this professor reporting on the practices of 3 women, and 2 men? And, weren't these women ridas? While I respect your gender concerns as valid, I almost feel like you both are protecting those who are teaching "other people's children", much like a liberal white person; versus teaching the most dispossessed children as though they were your own. How much of this article's introduction is more about the various ways the you two two are implicated in the critiques against wankstas and gangstas? Of course the glorification of violence is problematic, but more problematic is the interpretation of outsiders who see "taking a bullet for someone" as merely some Hollywood fantasy - more than a statement of commitment of folks to one another ready to "ride or die" in this struggle against our common Imperial enemy (no, not white people, and certainly not women). Yes, to ride or die is a very male (or color) associated statement, but what you two are missing is the fact that it captures a lot of our commitment to one another in our desperation to survive in a world that hates us, sometimes even when at odds w/ other men of color. It emerges from a desperation from being criminalized, chastised, and pitched against one another historically to the benefit of white people (women, men, male teachers, and women teachers included). It's an insider terminology shared w/ outsiders at a conference who may interpret this w/ their own lenses, interests, and experiences in place. Too often I hear critiques by folks who question violent under/overtones in our resistance, w/ out understanding that this language is reflective of the violence that make up much of what inner city youth of color see, hear, and experience on a day-to-day basis for most of their lives. That's where the use of violence should be challenged - if not jumping in front of these pigs' bullets, then block the batons of racist cops. Write a letter to the forces that put guns in the hood. Or, criticize wankstas and gangstas who alienate young men of color from schools and inadvertently make the streets more appealing. Actually, in addition to the writing, do some riding.
SALINA , aspiring RIDA commented, on November 6, 2007 at 12:07 a.m.:
And they say 2 HEADS are better than one...
First off, inherent in Critical Pedagogy is the idea that Schools are Microcosms of society; we Social Justice educators are CLEAR on the notion that what most call "school" issues are actually Societal. Had you read some of the authors you mention you would have realized that.
The Professor you mention will be the FIRST to challenge patriarchial constructs CLEAR that oppression on ANY front AIN'T critical. (Is that too HOOD for you?) So your guilt or burden crouched in Women's Liberation is MOST counterproductive and malicious.
Secondly, you sound like Hip Hop apologists; blaming Urban decay, drug use, and misogyny on rap music. The whole Imus uses the N word because 50- cent did it. Patriarchy, objectification of women, and obviously the chip on your shoulders existed LONNNNG before the theory of Critical Pedagogy. To assert that "Critical Pedagogy can and often does make invisible the daily labors of the female force teaching in our schools" is irresponsible and tremendously shortsighted.
- who's OUR schools? just curious; cause SURELY you can't be referring to the one where African American male students have systematically and consistently been disproportionately placed in special education programs? Or maybe your talking about OUR schools where in 2007 De Facto segregation is the RULE rather than the exception? Or maybe you mean "OUR" schools where students are shuttled EN MASSE from grade to grade without acquiring let alone MASTERING fundamental language arts and mathematics?
You quote WIKIPEDIA as an authoritative source on Critical Pedagogy and you expect to be taken seriously?
I'm unclear about your intentions? Are you critiquing Critical Pedagogy or are you making an indictment against systems of oppression? If so, consider more target practice, cause you are WAYY off the mark.
I can say with CONFIDENCE that Critical Pedagogy challenges ALL systems of oppression, be it gender, race, class, religion, and whatever else robs one of humanity.
I'm very interested in what this "hypermasculine" as you called it looks like? Again, I encourage you to do some research: dahomey, yaa asantewaa, the amazons, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, bell hooks, Shirley Chisolm, Cynthia McKinney, alll RIDERS: in it for the LONG haul, down for liberation, by any means necessary.
These are women who are WARRIORS. Ready, willing, and able to do BATTLE in the struggle for freedom. Contemporarily and historically folk who trusted THEMSELVES above and beyond oppressive, imperialistic, racist Policy and law.
If you GENUINELY cared about "inner city youth" then you'd do less writing and more riding.
You know NOTHING about the Professor you speak of and you know EVEN LESS about Liberatory education. Until you do, keep both out of your mouth, otherwise there'll be less room for your foot.
Contemplate using your power for good and not evil.
Lil' Chicana commented, on November 6, 2007 at 12:12 a.m.:
I agree, this article sounds like a white perspective that not only misses the point of what folks of color are talking about but also does a discredit to women of color. The authors fail to give us an alternative to the male views they critique that is useful for women of color educators. Instead they just react to street language in a racist way because it seems all they know about our communities is from Hollywood. As a woman of color I am always looking for critical anti-racist and womanist pedagogical methods. Yet these authors fail to provide anything along those lines. Instead they just use white cultural language about "girls" to rile women up against male teachers, without very clearly explaining what it is we are supposed to be upset at other than the fact that a male is talking and criticizing teachers that don't give 100% in street slang terms. I find the language of this article childish, in refering to women as children and also in its lack of concrete analysis and solutions. If these white women have a real alternative to offer, then they should explain it in a way the reader can comprehend that rises above playground whining. Isn't that what teachers are suposed to be good at?
Anotha aspiring ridah that teaches like woman, and commented, on November 6, 2007 at 11:25 p.m.:
This is the problem with the "white liberal." Never holding themselves accountable to their actions today as present actors nor as historical actors of 500 years of oppression.
"In other words, the problem with the pedagogy in public schools isn’t really that it’s not critical enough, or that teachers are wankstas. It’s that all that is public, including schools, is under attack."
No, the lack of critical thinking is *precisely* the problem in urban classrooms today. Our Black and Brown classrooms are not only lacking the critical tools within their schooling experiences but the critically reflective teachers to bring those tools into the classroom.
Anotha aspiring ridah that teaches like woman (2) commented, on November 6, 2007 at 11:26 p.m.:
I just shadowed one of my students for a day in a majority Black and Brown school, and this deficit among teachers was the first thing I noticed. I was infuriated by the fact that from 7:20am until 2pm, my student is being denied her humanity and trained to think (or rather not think) like a working class obedient follower and never question or pose threats to 'given truths.' There was no sign at teachers even attempting to "do what feels awkward, to ask uncomfortable questions, to be absolutely wrong, to find out," in a critical sense. In fact each teacher was playing her role at "preserving" what has perpetuated the status quo. You must be seriously out of your mind to state that there's something in my student's schooling experience worth "preserving."
Anotha aspiring ridah that teaches like woman (3) commented, on November 6, 2007 at 11:28 p.m.:
Things are *not all good* and *it is* a war. If teachers are truly "laboring" and engaging in the "messy work" of urban teaching, then they are taking risks, exposing power dynamics within society in their teaching, engaging in consistent self-reflection, and usually getting heat for engaging in this humanizing act because yes, schools do reflect (and perpetuate) the dehumanizing ills in our society and any threat to the status quo will get backlash, but if we're in it to "get dirty" then we must commit to doing more than just "keeping eyes and ears open." What kind of half-assed"solution" is that? My students deserve MORE than this. If you're just standing by "watching" and "listening" than you're only participating in and perpetuating the problem.
K. Wayne Yang (1) commented, on November 7, 2007 at 2:51 a.m.:
For real? A response to editorializing on ridas
Even though they are no ridas, Meiners and Quinn have committed the equivalent of an academic drive-by. Especially in the social justice community, we must resist the colonizer’s Manichean constructs (Fanon, ¬¬¬¬¬1967), that is, the creation of polar opposites by degrading the Other in order to construct the Self, by creating a spectacle of monstrosity to prove our own benevolence, or by dismissing a body of work wholesale in order to advance an alternative theory. The authors make some reasonable critiques of critical pedagogy as a field, which like nearly every academic field in the United States is dominated by white men. Also, they suggest an interesting line of inquiry into girl-ness, which I take to be about studying the ordinary, the dirty, and the awkward in social change through education. Unfortunately, they fall victim to the seductive trap of making their point by making an example out of an honorable comrade in struggle. Furthermore, this kind of violence sparked some speedy retaliations, creating yet another Internet battle not worth fighting. How did this happen?
I have had the great privilege of teaching alongside the unnamed teacher highlighted in Meiners and Quinn’s editorial, who is one of the most effective urban educators of young men and women of color in my 15 years of experience as a teacher-researcher. Yes, the same educator they accuse of hyper-masculinity. One of the critical signifiers left out of his description as “a professor in his early thirties” is chicano, which obfuscates the context, constituency, and cultural codes of his presentation. As Grillo & Wildman (2000) remind us, and as Audre Lorde (1989) famously proclaimed before a gathering of white feminists, “the master’s tools” are re-deployed when we obscure racism in order to highlight sexism against white women. His presentation, “Gangstas, Wankstas, and Ridas” has great resonance among the youth, parents, and teachers of East Oakland and communities similar to ours around the globe. (I have seen this talk about a dozen times, and it is actually not presented exclusively to audiences of predominantly white female teachers). Such symbols, of great personal and material relevance to our communities, are often disparagingly misinterpreted as violent or chauvinist by liberal academics in favor of those from more sanitized literati such as Allen Ginsberg. We must remain vigilant about the characterization of darker males as savage “hyper-masculine” or hyper-violent beings, as this too reflects a discourse of colonization (Cesaire, 1972), of lynchings (Wells-Barnett, 1895), of anti-miscegenation laws (Espiritu, 1995), and of the neo-slavery institutions of the prison industrial complex (Davis, 1998). Is this yet another example of recentering whiteness (Morrison, 1998) in the social justice arena, constructed by naming the other as a savage?
K. Wayne Yang (2) commented, on November 7, 2007 at 2:52 a.m.:
The authors failed to make clear that this presentation was in fact not about “Lone Ranger critical pedagogues” doing it alone, but about a strategy for collective agency in schools – how teachers working together can bring about a sea change within oppressive institutions. The idea is not for everyone to become a “rida” but rather to tip the balance in schools between conflicting cultures of dispassionate divestment and self-destructive martyrdom. His presentation gives us practical strategies for breaking the political impasse that produces an overall inertia in U.S. urban schools, as well as overcoming the deadlock within ourselves that inhibit good teachers from becoming great. This school-change strategy is grounded in everyday practice: my colleague struggles alongside teachers through the very social, political and economic realities that the editorial raises. As the founder of a social justice school, I can attest to the practical relevance of his work for schools under attack, as well as for cultural change within schools.
“Gangstas, Wankstas, and Ridas” is not intended to make teachers feel safe, but rather to discomfort the comfortable. This framework should compel the reflective educator “to feel awkward and to ask uncomfortable questions” of oneself. This feeling of discomfort is not exclusive to white women, but also by the teachers of color whose positioning in schools is under great scrutiny (Mosely, 2003), and to community members who know that taking a bullet is not just a Hollywood fantasy. Those of us who are not included in “the rest of us” category constructed by the authors, must also interrogate our own complicity in the culture of divestment in schools, as well as to outline a strategy for school cultural change. The framework of the gangsta who degrades the students, the rida who is effective with youth, and the wanksta who is still figuring it out, is a useful (if not absolute) dialectic for examining self and community within schools alongside organizing work around schools.
K. Wayne Yang (3) commented, on November 7, 2007 at 2:54 a.m.:
I am interested in learning more about “teaching and organizing like a girl,” which is a potentially very radical framework that the authors propose. However, I would question the construction of girl-ness as the binary opposite of the “rida”. How is the radical girl framework reshaped by the words of Sojourner Truth (1851):
"And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman?"
How does the girl framework understand the critical love of bell hooks (2004) for black masculinity? How does it listen to the female homies (Mendoza-Denton, 2000), and those men among us who accept neither the hyper-masculine nor emasculated identifiers (Riggs, 1995)? How does it understand the sister souljahs who do not shy away from using violent metaphors to describe the violence in our communities (Brown, 1992)? In other words, how does it understand the 3 out of the 5 “ridas” in the presentation who are women (Duncan-Andrade, 2007)?
The authors cite a list of white, male academics as a kind of genealogy for the ridas, none of whom my colleague endorses. He draws his inspiration from the likes of Joan Cone, a veteran teacher of several decades, who understands how masculinity is not by essence the opposite of feminism; and from the women and men, including the white female “ridas” at the center of his presentation, who dare to jump off the fence and be vulnerable to the figurative and literal bullets that are already flying.
A final critical signifier left out by the authors, is “teacher”: my colleague is also a high-school teacher, a rare vocation for professors of education. He does the grimy work that many educators unfortunately avoid, from cleaning bathrooms to late night home visits. He is not an administrator, or a teacher-coach, or a know-it-all pundit. In the authors’ metaphor of the world of high-class restaurants, with highly paid male chefs and female food preparers, he is the dark-skinned, non-unionized busboy who has learned how to read and write the world enough to flip the script. Is that really a dick-thing?
K. Wayne Yang (references) commented, on November 7, 2007 at 2:55 a.m.:
References
Brown, E. (1992). A Taste of Power. New York: Pantheon Books.
Césaire, A. (1972). Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Davis, A.Y. (1998). The Angela Y. Davis reader. Joy James (ed.) Malden, Mass. : Blackwell.
Duncan-Andrade, J.M. (2007). Gangstas, Wankstas, and Ridas: Defining, developing, and supporting effective teachers in urban schools. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 20:6, 617 - 638
Espiritu, Y. Le. (1995). Filipino American lives. Philadelphia: Temple. University Press.
Fanon, F. (1967). The Wretched of the Earth. [1961] trans. C. Farrington,. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Grillo, T. & Wildman, S.M. (2000). Obscuring the importance of race: the implication of making comparisons between racism and sexism (or other -isms). In R. Delgado, J. Stefancic, Eds. Critical Race Theory: the cutting edge, 2nd Ed. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
hooks, b. 2004. We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity. Routledge
Lorde, A. (1984). The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. In Sister Outsider by A. Lorde. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press
Mendoza-Denton (1999). Fighting Words: Latina Girls, Gangs, and Language Attitudes. In D. Galindo and M. Gonzalez (eds.) Speaking Chicana : Voice, Power, and Identity. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Morrison, T. (1998). Playing the dark. In David R. Roediger (Ed). Black on white: Black writers on what it means to be white. New York : Schocken Books.
Mosely, P.M. (2003). The gap in Black: How Black teachers experience racial disparity in student achievement. Unpublished dissertation. University of California, Berkeley.
Riggs, M (1995). Black is, black ain’t [film]
Truth, S. (1851/1993). Ain’t I a woman? In M. Washington (ed). Narrative of Sojourner Truth. New York : Vintage Books, 1993
Wells-Barnett, I. B. (1895/2002). A Red Record. Amherst, N.Y. : Humanity Books.
feminist of color commented, on November 7, 2007 at 10:12 a.m.:
um, damn. i thought the talk at the conference was inspiring, lit a fire under me, and was real about the genuine crisis in education. i think the speaker is someone who truly lives by his principles, and i've seen him now in multiple settings.
that being said, i think the point raised by this initial critique is real. as someone who has been involved with social justice work since i was a teenager, the 'rida' is a dominant idea of how you have to be down with the movement. make no mistake about the military motif that runs through a lot of 'conscious' political events--never mind that no military has ever been innocent of sexually assaulting women or abusing children.
the authors weren't citing all of those white, male critical pedagogues from wikipedia to say that they're the ones who are really doing it; they're making the point that those are the folks who get recognized. now, the speaker is a person of color, but there is a thread of lone ranger-esque masculinity happening in a lot of the talk around critical pedagogy.
for me, as a radical woman of color who can't always pull off the kind of 'rida' persona demonstrated by the speaker--i need alternative imaginings of what a rida might look like. in his other work, the speaker (i don't know why we're not saying his name, but i'll go along) writes of carino, the need to deeply care for students, and he rightly attributes this ethic of care to feminists. while the speaker's talk at the T4SJ conference did not engage in the wide spectrum of what ridas might look like, i know that he believes there are a variety of ways to be truly down for your students, and not all of them look like 'hyper-masculinity.'
so--although i think the speaker has to be credited for his other work (both academic and teaching), i do agree with the central point that his speech at the conference alone may have presented a limited idea of what a rida is. our job now, as folks concerned with critical pedagogy and the crisis in education for low-income students and students of color, is to explore what kind of rida we can be. we should definitely challenge the notion that ridas are inherently dudes, and we need to acknowledge that male teachers have male privilege--they don't have to work as hard to establish respect in the classroom. let's be expansive and inclusive about what a rida might look like--as long as she's down for her students, she can be a 'girly' as she wants to be.
Bridget commented, on November 7, 2007 at 11:54 a.m.:
I am really sorry that I missed this conference because it sounds amazing.
First things first, I am a young white woman who did Teach for America in Camden, NJ. I almost wrote "working class" but those are my roots, not my current reality. (I make more a year now as a teacher than my mom used to make in three years combined.) Not all white teachers are wankstas, and not all teachers of color are ridas. Many poor Latino and Black students are kept down not only by well-meaning (or not so well-meaning) white teachers but also by middle class teachers of color who distance themselves from their students. There were so many times that I heard teachers at my school say "well, these are ghetto children from the projects, what do you expect?" or "look at their moms on welfare and no respect taught at home," etc. Was my position as the young/liberal/female/formerly working class teacher a strange one? Yes. Did I constantly have to check myself, and often forget to do so in the midst of my whiteness? Yes. But was I happy that at least for one year and for 45 minutes a day my students got to talk about unions, about the pollution in their city and environmental racism, about the distribution of money in the Camden school district? Yes. I'm not sure if I am a rida, or even if a white girl from Kansas can be a rida for kids in Camden, but I was there and I gave a damn. Too many teachers (both white and of color) honestly do not.
Today, I am continuing to teach and I agree that we need to look at what it means to be a rida for our students. A general critique of military/masculine language is valid. A critique of white female teachers not getting it and not even wanting to get it is also valid. I hear the folks who are pointing out all the female ridas out there but I think it's also important to remember that sometimes those female ridas do things differently than their male counterparts. In the book "Best of Enemies" by Osha Gray Davis, Ann Atwater, a poor Black woman, is the real "rida" in her community and is the one doing the real organizing in Durham, NC. She is sometimes in conflict with the male "ridas" who talk pretty speeches and wear dashikis but aren't really in touch with poor folks.
In short, can we be honest with ourselves and with each other that it's all a lot more complicated than well-meaning white teachers screwing things up and male and female freedom fighters standing side by side? Sometimes a rida is a soft-spoken woman. Sometimes male ridas talk too loud and drown out the voices of their sisters. Again, I am sorry I missed this conference!
salina commented, on November 7, 2007 at 7:08 p.m.:
true indeed, I'm certain we ALL agree that the patriarchy and mysogyny symptomatic of the MACRO permeates even the most "liberatory" movments. I have OFTEN been involved in confrontations with those "hypermasculine" revolutionairies who have as Freire and Fanon cautioned inadvertently become the Oppressor. Those who talk about Freedom, Justice, and Equality, but abuse, objectify, and oppress women, same gender lovers... The majority of us, no matter how developed or conscious we are, have to be vigilant in our self-deconstruction. WE've been socialized and educated by the very system we seek to dismantle and rebuild. It's a struggle for ALL of us... Rather than ATTACKING those who have PROVEN track records for a COMMITTMENT to Social Justice, ATTACK the social and other constructs that makes this work necessary in the first place.
Girl 2 Womanist commented, on November 7, 2007 at 8:25 p.m.:
I pose a question to the authors of this piece. Why did you come to San Francisco? Why did you decide to attend a Teachers for Social Justice Conference? Why do you do whatever it is you do everyday? Do you spend your time, teach your students, and write your articles with the people you would "die" for in mind?
Do you care so much about the people you love, that your defense for the poor, helpless, GIRL teachers out there is a quote from wikipedia, a mention of Ginsberg, and a hundred lines of text on a website?
Or do you care so much about the people you love, that you would share your youngSTAR's culture, voices, lives, and teachers with the world, in hopes that one, or maybe even two ridas, soldiers, fighters, lovers, hell even good teachers, will be inspired from your work. Work you do EVERYDAY, for free, with book contracts on your desk, and no bullet proof vest.
If a change in vocabulary was all you needed to become a better teacher for youth of color in urban communities, WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY SOMETHING A LONG TIME AGO! We could all do many other things with our time if we knew THAT was all you were looking for. I would have made "girlie" metaphor cliff notes for some male theorists books, played pop music during my teacher ed classes, and bought pink outfits for all of the lacking teachers I know. And no I'm not talking about the Freedom Writers kind.
Near the end of the article, you both comment on "doing work together." Who ever said the rida can't work with girls? Who ever said the rida doesn't like girls? Who ever said the rida wasn't a girl herself? Realizing you must have seen rap videos, and "urban movies" (as this is where much of your information on "riding" comes from) you missed the parts when the rida, is side by side with women, many of whom I assume were girls at some point in their life, and who weren't afraid to ask questions and "do what feels awkward." Many times the rida is a woman. Many women ridas look nothing like "hypermasculine, pacing, 30-something" professor you speak of. They look like mothers, grandfathers, homies, sisters, best friends, students... And they take bullets, stay after-school, go to the basketball game, stay up till 5 am putting together a lesson, buy lunch, live in the community, push, frustrate and love.
Who are we really attacking here; the system that made this work possible, or the people that work to make liberation a possibility?
Linda commented, on November 7, 2007 at 8:46 p.m.:
I have had the honor and priviledge of working with the professor you write about and I absolutely resent the criticism of him in this article. I learned more from him about teaching and social justice critical pedagogy than my two masters educations combined. Those teachings continue to impact my daily practice.
I don't really understand what this article means by teaching and organizing "like a girl," but it seems like we should try to break down these barriers and distinctions among race, class, and gender rather than classifying the fighters of social injustice along these lines and crtiticising them for not being more one or the other. It isn't about doing the work like a man or woman or whatever, everyone has a different style, what's important isn't how so much as why and towards what end. Being inclusive rather than divisive can only help to support those already doing excellent work and inspire others to do so as well. This professor has inspired countless teachers to do great work and is extremely successful in his approach and effect. I totally agree with salina, that "Rather than ATTACKING those who have PROVEN track records for a COMMITTMENT to Social Justice, ATTACK the social and other constructs that makes this work necessary in the first place." Amen.
Jana Dean commented, on November 7, 2007 at 9:56 p.m.:
I'd been thinking about the talk off and on the last few weeks. I'm glad to see others were too.
I think Andrade used a cultural form -- that of the actor -- in which the person on the stage becomes the absolute focus of attention. It's a very powerful act -- just look at an audience under the spell. Everyone agrees to temporarily turn over agency and suspend animation. This happens all the time. Teachers, actors, ministers, motivational speakers, magicians, musicians all do it. Whenever we stop and listen, we give the actor power to shape our time, perception and experience.
What Andrade did was to use that actor's power to tell other people's stories, which is already a useful departure from demanding to not only be the storyteller but also the hero of the story. It's tricky however, because the powerful performer -- who temporarily anyway holds us rapt -- can become so much the object of attention that we don't hear the story, which, if it's a story about powerful collective action, can be counterproductive. On the other hand, hear's to the performer with a great message who's also got enough charisma and attitude to get heard above the noise.
This kind of actor is cultural form that I think eventually we will grow out of as life on this little planet with so many people becomes more and more social and hence we need more and more stories of collective action. If we're to have movement, we gonna have to stop looking so much to heros and find ways to tell the stories we make together. (I'm talking the long long haul here.)
At the same time, there's no sense in giving up the storytellers. It is possible to take the stage and use it to tell others' stories without obscuring them. Luckily we have examples. Vi Hilbert, a Skagit elder, linguist and storyteller, first showed it to me. She had a way of holding space, being vulnerable (she called it removing the 'mask'), stepping back and letting the story unfold so that it is the story, not the performer, that occupies the powerful time and space that the audience has granted to the storyteller. Others I have seen do it well are Laura Simms, Diane Wolkstein and Terry Tempest Williams. In theater, Augusto Boal's work is key. His process literally gets the people on the stage so that the stage itself becomes irrelevant. Don Finkel wrote a great book called Teaching with your Mouth Shut in which he applies it to the classroom. I'm sure there are dozens more.
All that said, I thought Andrade's message was deeply feminist one -- essentially that this is hard hard work, because it's emotional work. It's heart work as much as it's mind work. It's a struggle and there's no way we can do it alone. I left inspired by his commitment, voice and seeming understanding of what it takes to get up and go to work day after day after day. If that's what girls do, then we need to boys to do it with us.
Bang for Freedom! commented, on November 8, 2007 at 12:45 p.m.:
How we describe phenomenon is context specific, rooted and emerging from the concrete conditions of our own dispossession, and relative to the type of relationships we build w/ young people.
To what degree are white and/or historically middle class folks here understanding what really goes on in the hood, or w/ folks of color in racist, colonial Amerikkka? Everything of value for folks of color worldwide has been stolen by Europeans. Your comforts rest on our genocide. It’s inside the wretchedness of this reality that our theoretical frameworks emerge. Matriculate through these schools of racial hatred, experience daily teachers who hate us, be force-fed a curriculum of cultural terrorism, and have your identity stripped from you in place of a world view that despises your existence; Walk home in fear of some of your own people, people struggling through life just like you, and top that off with punk ass police.
This is only a PART of what we’re up against. What side are you on? Are global reparations your top priority? Do you think that will come w/ teachers who aren’t willing to ride or die for the young people needed as soldiers in this struggle?
This is what our liberation is up against. Yet, we want prettier descriptions? I’m tired of pacifist ideals from people who are not there when the police brutalize our communities. Where are you pacifists when the military is occupying and poisoning our countries? You certainly aren’t taking bullets or beatings for us, then. Instead, you tell us to use nicer metaphors, here. So, I am less interested in hearing about our “anger,” especially from the comforts of those who aren’t faced w/ oppressive psychological, interpersonal, intra-cultural, and institutional violence on a regular basis. Our work isn’t done out of a disregard of women, as you suggest. Loving our people drives our work. Our work, as Che noted, is "moved by great feelings of love."
Overcoming our present situation means that we have to recognize the violence that has put us here. Some argue that it will be violence, or the passion that stirs violence, that gets us out. Social justice in this regard means that systems change. Otherwise, these systems are inherently violent. This oppressive state institutes the military and police as violent forces which protect systems of political and economic inequality. Fanon reminds us of our enemies' purpose when he writes, “The violence with which the supremacy of white values is affirmed and the aggressiveness which has permeated the victory of these values over the ways of life and of thought of the native mean that… In the colonial context the settler only ends his work of breaking in the native when the latter admits loudly and intelligibly the supremacy of the white man’s values.”
For those ready to defeat this oppression, let’s continue to ride...
As important, let's do so in a manner our students respect, use, and understand...
watts beautiful commented, on November 8, 2007 at 10:41 p.m.:
without being too verbose, i've had the opportunity to know jeff as a professor and friend/mentor to my colleagues. while i respect him on many levels as a critical pedogogue and fellow urban educator, i have observed that he indeed needs to be challenged on his quite male patterns of behavior. i was at the t4sj conference, thought his delivery of the speech was effective, but you know, i took what i wanted from it. if he is someone open to criticism and wants to open himself up to improving himself in all areas of social justice, i believe it will happen. and if not, we can either choose to struggle for change or drop it. i'm not too clear on what the "girl's way" of doing things are, but i am definitely doin things my way and am always willing to share the things that have worked for me and my students who are rida's all the way... keep on struggling companeros/as...
Bridget commented, on November 8, 2007 at 11:50 p.m.:
I really appreciate the honesty of this discussion. (another reason why I really liked "Best of Enemies," which I strongly suggest to everyone here!) I think it's important though not to conflate white with middle/upper class and also not to conflate being of color with being poor. Yes, poor whites get advantages based on race but there are some dirt poor white kids languishing in messed up schools as well. There are also some very well paid school administrators of color who draw their paychecks from the intellectual impoverishment of their students.
And again, I'm still not sure if a white girl from Kansas can even really be a rida for Black/Latino kids in Camden. Ideally, my students could have had more teachers who had experiences closer to theirs and were also completely dedicated to their education. Instead, they had a country girl who was definitely packing a little knapsack like all white folks. But this is the reality. There needs to be more discussion about how we can get more teachers of color into classrooms (who are actually ridas!) and also how white teachers can still be ridas, and not in some weird white savior kind of way. This discussion can be coupled with talking about gender and heterosexism in the classroom. And I know a lot of this discussion is "going on" in theory, but how much of it is making its way to actual classrooms?
salina commented, on November 9, 2007 at 12:27 p.m.:
Although I agree with your point about "more discussion on how we can get more teachers of color into classrooms who are ridas..." I think the MORE critical discussion is the one Jeff engages folk in, WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE A RIDA? What does BEING DOWN entail? Are people willing to SACRIFICE: their money, luxury rides, gated communities, and other trappings for liberation? I'm not implying activists and educators living under freeways and riding the bus mind you. But are folk WILLING to give up some of the "extras" , are folk willing to LIVE and BREATHE and EAT and SLEEP this work? Being a RIDA is a LIFESTYLE, if I may sound trite... It's not a 9 - 5 or 7 -4 only on the weekday kinda gig. If you're a RIDA, you're a RIDA at church, at the Mosque, the synagogue, family reunions, in your COMMUNITY. If you are White and RIDIN, then it's CRITICAL that you not just be hanging out in the hood building with Black and Brown folk. You MUST TAKE THAT WORK TO YOUR COMMUNITY, educating and shaking things up with WHITE FOLK.
Weak (The Comment Formerly Know as "Weak") commented, on November 9, 2007 at 12:41 p.m.:
This comment was removed because of slanderous language.
salina commented, on November 9, 2007 at 12:46 p.m.:
and those administrators of color are like the strawmen on the plantation. Because they're of COLOR does not mean they're not being puppeted by the proverbial oppressor... Race is at the CENTER of this. NOT economics, NOT class, though BOTH ARE DEFINITELY components. It's counterproductive when everytime race comes up, somebody wants to give an example of how there are "poor uneducated white folks too...". Go to New Orleans and check the "rebuilding" effort, and tell me that it's about CLASS and ECONOMICS. Ask Mae Jemison, ask Oprah, ask any other wealthy Black person who's felt the VICIOUS VICIOUS sting of RACISM that alll the money in the world won't erase. Ask the indigenous, darker folk in South America, Asia, and dang near anywhere else on the planet...
Bridget commented, on November 10, 2007 at 7:55 a.m.:
I agree that this is definitely about white teachers/ridas of all types taking it back to their communities. But please remember that not all of those communities are gated paradises of consumerism and soccer moms.
I also agree that many people of color in positions of power are puppets. The principal at my school had pictures of MLK and African proverbs up in his office, but was also one of the many people responsible for the miseducation of our students. At the same time, he was a small fish in the greater pond of New Jersey, a state with more school districts per capita than any other just to make sure that white kids (and these were middle/upper class) didn't have to go to school with poor children of color 10 minutes away.
As a white person, I'm not sure how much I can comment on the RACE versus CLASS debate, and people much wiser than I am have struggled to weigh in on this one. I was pointing out about poor white students because I felt like much of the discussion was conflating white with rich and of color with poor, which I think is a mistake. But yeah, about 98% of the kids at my school were Latino and Black and they were not getting an education.
If being a rida means giving up gated communities and luxuries, then I'm already there because I had never had those in the first place. And is there something wrong with riding the bus? :) But I have always had a hard time with anyone, white or of color, talking about freedom while they enjoy wealth. So here we are, the bus riders, the teachers who stay late, the folks who get up at five everyday just to get there early. Some of us are carrying around our whiteness, others our maleness, others our straightness, etc. But we're entrusted with educating children, some of them almost completely broken by former educators (of all backgrounds) who told them they were stupid and would never be able to make it. For all our discussions and debates, how do we best do that work?
Bridget commented, on November 10, 2007 at 1:35 p.m.:
This article raises some good questions about what it means to be a rida: http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/
Lara commented, on November 13, 2007 at 11:49 a.m.:
JAJA this stuff is funny and I know it is not for real. Cuz if you were in and working and LIVING in the Barrio, you would know that we dont live in hollywood and that the bullets are real.
Forget organizing like a girl!
My gente want to organize like a Mujer! You white folks will never understand this.
feminist of color commented, on November 15, 2007 at 1:10 p.m.:
hold up...'Race is at the CENTER of this. NOT economics, NOT class, though BOTH ARE DEFINITELY components.'
what happened to gender?? you talk about being sick of white folks hijacking race discussions by bringing in class; what about hijacking discussions of gender by ONLY making it about race?
no doubt women of color--and some white women--can be ridas for their students, but the question the authors raise is, how do we acknowledge that being a rida looks different for different folks, and that often has to do with gender? i'm not just struggling with white folks in this moment; i'm struggling with men of color, too. if you think patriarchy isn't an integral piece of racism and capitalism and imperialism, you're kidding yourself.
a woman can mos def be a rida with a gun in her hands, but she can also be a rida as a teacher, a mother/auntie/sister/friend, a health worker, a cultural worker, etc. those folks rarely get honored as 'ridas', and teachers who look like traditional teachers rarely get honored, even if they are down for their students in the way andrade advocates.
can i just get a witness on how few folks have engaged with the central point that these authors made? yes, maybe they're white women. and yes, i don't think an online forum is necessarily the place, and i definitely don't think it's productive to have gone after this one man specifically, who--as i said earlier--is concerned with feminism, and is doing a lot of good in the world. but damn, are you really going to just slam them because they're white, and not look at what they're saying? the kind of everyday care work many women teachers do is central to being a rida, but it's often the very thing that's left out of our perceptions of what a rida is. that's about patriarchy. that's about the invisibility of women's work. that's about the historically gendered nature of teaching.
Post a comment