Exercise in privilege
Respecting ethnic groups
Role play
MESSAGE
You, a francophone Acadian, are on a foreign planet with a Chinese person, a black African, an English person, an Amerindian.
You receive the following radio message:
ATTENTION! IMPORTANT MESSAGE. THE PLANET YOU ARE ON IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE. A ROCKET IS ON ITS WAY, WITH ROOM FOR THREE PEOPLE. YOU HAVE 10 MINUTES TO MAKE A DECISION. WHO WILL BE ON BOARD THE ROCKET?
Did you make a decision? (yes)
Which one? (Acadian, Amerindian, African)
Did you find the decision difficult? (yes)
Why? (because there were a lot of ethnic groups)
The story of this exercise given to 10-year-olds in New Brunswick, (see image underneath the article), as part of a curriculum teaching about diversity, was reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) after complaints from two mothers of children adopted from Ethiopia. The province’s Minister of Education had to step in to stop the school from using the exercise which, he said, “invites and encourages defining people by stereotypes”. Good for him.
The school thinks the exercise is a good one because
- it is intended to show the students how to be respectful to all groups
- some students have advocated keeping everyone
- some students have suggested keeping the three main groups in the community (“English, French and Amerindian”), “because of being able to communicate”
It’s hard to know where to even start with this one, so I’ll start at the beginning:
Firstly, the exercise assumes that everyone in this French-speaking school is an Acadian – a white Canadian of ultimately French origin – which clearly is not true. One of the mothers, at least, is apparently English-speaking (I could find no references to this event in the French-speaking press), and her daughter is not white.
Secondly, the assumption and lesson is that Chinese people, black Africans, “English people” (they mean English-speaking Canadians) and Amerindians are not like Acadians. And we’re not just talking ethnicity here. It doesn’t say, “a person of Chinese heritage, a black person, an English-speaking person, and a person of Amerindian heritage”.
Thirdly, what’s with the pictures? Check out the thick lips, the slanted eyes and the animal skins (it’s only mildly reassuring that there are no slitty eyes and feather headdresses).
Finally, how exactly does obliging children to decide who should be saved teach them to be respectful of all groups??? In fact, what it does is
- teach them their ethnic group (white) has that power over others, in particular people of colour
- reinforce the notion that certain groups have a right to be here and others don’t (as evidenced by the school’s comment above)
- perpetuate otherisation through its choice of ethnic descriptors
These are ten-year-olds, for pete’s sake! Instead of asking them to make a decision, how about telling them in no uncertain terms that it would be wrong to choose and ask them to think about why?!
(Thanks to pinkpoppies for the tip.)
Posted on February 19, 2009, in furriners, i speak racismese, internalized crap, privilege, racial identity, should be illegal, systemic, wtf. Bookmark the permalink. 9 Comments.
Hi there,
There’s a story on the French language news service.
http://www.radio-canada.ca/regions/atlantique/2009/02/19/005-NB-exercice-retire_n.shtml
Une leçon de multiculturalisme (a lesson in multiculturalism) I am sorry I don’t have time to translate the story but did want to point out that there was a mention today in the French language media.
One of these days I’ll get a blog of my own. Thank you for highlighting it; I just couldn’t let it lie after reading the comment from the AP and her daughter’s “comfort” with racial gestures.
I have learned so much here and from other blogs — once your eyes are open to white privilege, racism and ethnocentrism, it is impossible to close them again.
Pinkpoppies
Please pick me! I don’t want to be left behind :-)
I know I may not speak English well but hey I can do your laundry.
Thanks for sharing this.
Pinkpoppies, thanks for the links! (No need to translate; sinoangle is fluent.) Please do get a blog; I need things to read. It’s all about me.
overseaschinese, you know I would pick you. But I’m not so sure if I would if I were a francophone Acadian. Whatever that is. ;-P
WTF. Should be illegal.
Thanks for the French version, pinkpoppies. I’m barely literate in French, but I noticed that in the real version the “English person” was actually “anglophone blanc”–a White Anglophone.
The English version fails to mention the “White” part for the English person, but mentions the “black” part for the African. I don’t know if it’s because they they have difficulty calling white people white, because they think English-speaking means white anyway, or if they think that mentioning race in a news report about racism is itself racist.
Restructure, all Canadians know that “English people” are white. This is because of Canadian history: first there were the French, then the English came and subjugated them. If you are not French, by default you are English, because in everyone’s minds, people in majority-white countries are, by default, white. This does not need to be mentioned, and it is not peculiar to Canada.
The English report used the same language as the exercise used (my translation is faithful and accurate). The French report has the same source (Radio Canada is the French-speaking arm of the CBC). I do not know why they chose to specify a “white anglophone”. Possibly it is in the wake of the reasonable accommodation debate from last year and the report that recommended that we use accurate terms that stop us from over-focusing on our history and are more inclusive.
The African is specified as “black”, not because the “designers” of the exercise are aware that there are also white Africans, but because they mistakenly (and ironically) believe that it is wrong to refer to someone as “black”. Another case of political correctness in a world that does not understand race.
Oh, okay. I had thought that the French report used the real terms from the execise, but now I re-checked the scan in the English report and you’re right. (I didn’t realize that you were translating from the scan. I had thought that the English translation in the post was from the English report.)
resistance/sinoangle — awesome job. i just thought i would do more than tip you in the story’s direction and do a summary of the french media story. alas brain cells too fried. i have been heartened by the numbers of people who have spoken out.
This is awful. I’m glad the mother is addressing this. I’d be outraged not just by the fact that this was done in class, but also that the principal, once informed, still believed it was OK, and spoke to justify it. This is what happens when there is not a good representation of teachers/administrators/staff of color in schools. And how many of these things don’t come to light?
Here’s a little something that happened here at the college level a couple of years back. The instructor was supposed to be suspended a week, but I think they rescinded that.
More Cowbell, Thanks for sharing the link. Good for Chelsey Richardson challenging the racist math question. I wonder what President Jean Floten will do next, now that she has taken personal responsibility for the institutional racism at the college that she leads.