Facebook Publication Date: 5/19/2020 19:05
Lace’s New Norms Apply. Required reading.
A comment on learning when 4th grade was a long time ago.
Claire Ramsey
Alain de Botton said that the ancient Greek idea about love was as a benevolent relationship where each is teaching the other to become the best version of herself. A few of you have said you don’t know what to say on Lace on Race, or you fear that it’s not enough. I’d like to direct our communal attention to coaching us to our better selves through learning. For most of us, our formal learning years are in the past. For some, high school was the end, for others college and maybe graduate or professional school. And for most adults, that’s it. The prodigious learning skills we developed during school years go to sleep. We don’t use them very much as adults.
Lace on Race, though, is a learning space. For Lace, of course it is a teaching, coaching and leading space. But the rest of us are here to learn new ways to observe ourselves and others. Our main source of learning is the commentaries and the links Lace provides. All of this is in the pursuit of inner change that will support outer activism.
To some of us Lace’s prohibition of “hearts and likes” has caused irritation. It’s an abrupt change in our habits. We are used to Facebook and the FB “social” conventions. Instead of clicks Lace asks us to engage, to participate, to respond and think. It’s hard to move past “hearts and likes” because our charge from Lace is to push ourselves to learn. But the learning skills we developed so rapidly and so well as students are dormant. We truly do not know what to say because we have not had very much recent practice actively making ourselves learn new concepts and perspectives, esp. those that are scary or difficult or make us feel guilt or shame.
I propose that we need to wake up our dormant learning skills, and remember our active selves from our learning years. Of course sometimes our dormant parts are actually volcanoes that explode and destroy when awakened. And “nice white ladies” have often been expected to be more or less stupefied, or at least to not rock the boat too much. And we are all fearful of looking inside ourselves. But Lace on Race is not for the stupefied or the fearful. So how can we fashion our responses to Lace’s posts and commentaries? I have observed a pattern of non-responses – simple agreement, personal experiences, and life histories – that often follow from the first comment. The first non-response is a model that generates more non-responses, leading away from the original key ideas of the post. These strings of comments don’t work as responses b/c in the main they are not responsive. They might follow the model of the first comment, but they don’t have a lot of coherence with the original post. Lace wants us to further the conversation. We all know how to do this even if we haven’t practiced it in awhile.
In elementary school, as a way to teach children to think, good teachers as wh-questions. And really good teachers make sure that their students trust that they are asking genuine questions, not the common “known answer” questions. You remember them: the first grade teacher might ask “Mary, what time is it?” Mary answers “10:45.” If this were a genuine question, the teacher would say something like “Thank you, in 30 minutes we need to get ready for lunch.” More typically in school though the teacher says “Good.” or “No, try again.” or “Can someone help Mary?” Those are odd answers to a genuine questions. If we answered that way to another adult, it would be offensive or maybe a joke. Kids peppered with known-answer questions learn fast that the main point of school is to try to guess what the teacher is thinking, and say it. Result, they don’t get to practice real thinking. Lace on Race isn’t asking “known answer” questions. We are not expected to guess what’s in Lace’s head. And since we are adults and engaged with the page, Lace doesn’t lead us with wh-questions. . . instead we need to ask ourselves those questions as we engage. It’s hard to respond b/c we have to engage dormant learning skills and at the same time take risks with commentaries and posts that are likely to come from a different base or different reality than the white-centered reality we are used to. It’s hard to engage learning skills when we fear making a mistake. It’s clear from the On Being conversation between Krista Tippet and Claudia Rankine that even professional white conversationalists make plenty of missteps. Lace is kind with her gentle correctives b/c she’s not in this for personal power. She sets the terms of our participation to a degree but she doesn’t want us to simply guess what she is thinking. She’s in it because she knows it’s the best way to walk white women through our white supremacist assumptions and build our muscles for the work outside ourselves.
You can respond in hundreds of ways to push your learning. Lace assumes that you comprehend the pieces and that you could recall the ideas in the piece if you had to. It’s more challenging and more interesting to try to analyze (see relationships in the text), to evaluate or make a reasoned critique, or to synthesize or to create a rational or well supported or cohesive new idea. As Lace has said, ask yourself how your response will further the conversation.
Here are some possible entry points you could try while you ponder your response:
What was confusing? Why? Try to put the confusion you feel into words. If you can, make it into a question?
If you think it’s scary to ask your question, ask yourself why you feel fear. Think of a different way to phrase your question. Who could answer your question? Could you answer it yourself with some reading or research?
Who or what is missing in this piece? Why is that left out? Here, the general topic of is race and equity. So it’s not useful to say that the white perspective is left out or ignored. If you yourself feel left out, take that thought as a chance to work on seeing the context of the piece you are reading. Who wrote it? What audience is it aimed to? Why do you think this is so?
Does the article use metaphors, or make a poetic statement? Do you think readers are meant to take it literally or to apply some interpretation? If it’s a poetic statement, is it true? Why do you think it’s true? Or why do you think it is untrue?
Why does a writer expect you to read a true statement that you may already know?
What level of truth value do you see in the text (that is, does the text contain facts)? If the truth value feels low to you (e.g. maybe you think the comment doesn’t apply to you, or it is not true in your experience) ask yourself if the message/meaning is supposed to be based on truth value. If it isn’t, why do you think the writer says things that don’t have truth value to you?
What assumptions are embedded in the article? Are they easy to detect? Are they useful? Do they surprise you or push you to think again about the article?
What relationships among ideas do you see inside the commentary or article? Do you see anything about causes and effects? Problems and solutions? Problems that are unresolvable? A weakness that should be shored up?
How does this piece compare to other pieces we’ve read?
How is this piece different from other pieces we’ve read?
How would you analyze the piece using a racial justice, white supremacy, or civil rights lens? How difficult it is to look through a different lens? Why is it difficult?
What surprised you in this article ? What made you angry?
What else do you want to know about this piece? What do you want to research more, or find additional information about? (If it’s news, maybe you want to know how it was resolved or whether anything else happened).
What about this piece is new information? Why might this information be new to white peope?
Do you think that this article/commentary is important? Why is it important? How does it connect to the theme we are working on currently? How does it connect to articles we have read previously?
Who is making the commentary? Why? How does the writer demonstrate expertise, or heart, or both? How does the commentary work as a model for your own thinking?
What new ideas are in this piece? What do you think of them? How do they relate to the inner change Lace on Race is pushing us to make?
What background does the piece assume you have?
How has this article pushed your growth?
What kind of critique would you apply to this piece?
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