The Counter-Narrative Show | Ebony Faces in Invory Towers

Dr. Manya Whitaker, an Associate Professor at Colorado College, discusses her journey into education, focusing on the psychological and social aspects of teaching. She highlights the importance of multicultural competency and the impact of teacher beliefs on student success. Whitaker emphasizes the need for diverse teachers, particularly black males, to enhance student achievement. She shares her experiences at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) and the additional responsibilities placed on black professors. Whitaker also discusses her book "Counter Narratives from Women of Color Academics," which explores resistance and activism in academia.

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The purpose of the show is to provide a critical examination of society and culture through the intersectional lens of race, gender, and class, more specifically it seeks to provide a COUNTER-NARRATIVE. The Show encourages a reflective assessment and critique of unique standpoints and their potential contribution to popular discourse.

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I man, okay, hello and welcome to the counter narrative show. Today's episode is Ebony faces in ivory towers. We will be speaking with Dr Manya Whitaker. Dr Manya Whitaker is an Associate Professor and Chair of education at Colorado College. She is a developmental educational psychologist with expertise in social and political issues in higher education. Her courses include urban education, diversity and equity in education and education and psychology, among others. She researches the stability of teachers, I'm sorry, of teachers diversity related belief systems across time and setting, and how those beliefs can be intentionally disrupted and restructured through teacher training. She is also the author of schooling multicultural teachers, a guide for program assessment and professional development. She is also author of learning from the inside out child development and school choice, and CO editor, editor of counter narratives, counter narratives of women of color in academics. And she is also if, as if that's not enough, the founder of blueprint educational strategies and educational I'm sorry, an education consulting business. Thank you so much for being here with us. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Can you tell us a little bit more about what brings you to specifically like to the field of education.
When I was in middle school, I absolutely loved it, and I decided then that I wanted to be a middle school language arts teacher. And then by the time I was in college, I realized that middle school teachers don't make that much money, and so I decided, how can I teach and make more money? I'll be a college professor, and so I really stumbled into being an education professor. I was, I got my degree to become a psychologist, a psychology professor, but I was hired here to teach educational psychology, and now I'm starting my 10th year in the Department of Education at Colorado College. And I absolutely,
I Oh, sorry about that. Go ahead.
No, I was just saying, I love, I love what I do. I get to work with students every day. I get to teach at the small liberal arts college and and really fulfill my life's dreams. Awesome.
So can you tell me a little bit more about a little bit more about that and picking education specifically. And even more specific to that, all of the work that you've done around the psychology connected to education, like, why that particular focus?
You know, when we think about education in the United States, we tend to think about it as this, this mechanism of upward social mobility. But for many people, it's not right, particularly people from minoritized groups. And I'm really fascinated by the fact that we PURPORT This narrative and it's just not true. And so I really got into education because I wanted to see where was that narrative falling apart, right? And so we go through these phases where sometimes we are blaming parents, right? Oh, parents and families don't care. That's why kids aren't doing well. Well, we know that's not true, right? And then we shift to well as the teachers, the teachers aren't good enough. It's like some teachers are amazing. That's not necessarily the case, and it because becomes a systemic issue. And so personally, as a psychologist, though, I am a bit more interested in the person level, psychology or cognition behind it, and so I love working with teachers and figuring out what is it that you're bringing into the classroom that will enhance children's educational opportunities. And it's not just pedagogical methods, it's you as a person. So in my research, I really do work with teachers on figuring out. What are your beliefs about the purpose of schooling? What are your beliefs about who you are, who the students are, what they need, and then how do those beliefs affect what you actually do in the classroom? No, that's
so important. I don't know if that's investigated enough. I think so much of research in general is just spent on like quantitative tracking trends and that sort of thing in your in the time that you have been teaching education, researching education, what are some of the trends that you found
that most people, and I'll say 85% of people who go into teaching, who go into education, broadly construed, are doing it because they have identified a problem in the system, right? And they're trying to fill some type of gap. The problem is that people aren't always prepared to appropriately or adequately fulfill those gaps, right? And so we have a lot of people in this field who went through a few weeks or a few months of training, and within that training, they didn't actually get an understanding of how education functions differently for different people, right? And so a lot of what I do in my classes, and I work at an institution that's predominantly white and is incredibly wealthy, and so most of my students tend to come from that background, not all, but most of them. And so I see it as my responsibility to help them understand that everybody has an educational experience that's positive, right? Not everybody gets to enjoy a curriculum where they see their histories reflected in them and in their text, or walk into a classroom where the teacher looks like them or shares their language, right? And so in teaching my pre service teachers how many ways there are to exist in the world, my hope is that they, when they walk into their classrooms, they're viewing every single person who walks in that door as an opportunity and as an asset, right, as opposed to a deficit that they themselves are supposed to fix in some way.
I think so many times in any of the helping professions, whoever we're providing services or support to, we tend to think of them as like problems that need to be fixed, particularly if they come from a marginalized background. Do you feel with that being said, Do you feel like black teachers, black professors and academics have a unique role to play in the education system, and if they do, what exactly is that role? As you see it?
Absolutely we do. And I think that role is different for different people, like people often ask me why I choose to teach at a PWI or predominantly white institution when I have family members who went to HBCU, shout out to all the HBCUs. But I chose this specifically, and what I tell them is that I'm highly needed and necessary in my PWI, right? Because if I'm not here, the classes I'm teaching are not being offered. If I'm not here, the conversations I'm having with my wealthy white students are not being had, whereas I feel like at an HBCU, the conversations I'm having with many of those students, they already know what I'm going to say, right, because they've lived the experience of being a racially minoritized person in public schools. So I just have a bit more value and purpose right now in my life at a predominantly white institution than I might have at an HBCU. And so I think that for every black professor or teacher who moves into education broadly construed, we do so knowing that we're trying to figure out how we can most affect change in an impactful and sustaining way, while also being happy with what we're doing.
I think that you raised such an interesting point, and I think it's so spot on that especially when people see you as among the best or the brightest, that that is definitely a question, why are you at a PWI? Why aren't you at HBCU? But I love your point, because there's black students at a for one at PWI, and also, if you weren't there, certain classes wouldn't be taught. And that sort of thing, I'm wondering about the additional responsibility or load that is put on you as a black woman in a predominantly white institution. Do you just take on Are you the advisor to all of the black black kids? Like, how does that play out on your own role in that space?
Yeah, it's tough. I mean, when I first arrived at this institution, there were two other black female professors. So that was three of us, no black male professors. Now we have, I think, a total of nine of us on campus. So we've definitely made changes in the past eight or nine years, which is very promising, but still it's not enough. And at the same time that we're hiring a more diverse faculty, we've been enrolling a more diverse student body, and so the rate of student body diversity is increasing faster than the faculty. Be. So it does mean that there's there's so few of us going around to help support minoritized students who see themselves in us, who show up in our offices just trying to get answers to simple questions. Maybe they're too embarrassed to ask white professors or their friends, whatever the case may be. So we definitely take on a lot of additional unpaid labor, a lot of which is emotional labor, right? Having kids crying in your office, sending you emails in the middle of the night, giving out your cell phone number because you want to make sure that they know that they can reach out and text you if necessary. It takes, it takes a toll on you, but you know, we, we've chosen to be in this space because we know that those kids need us in this space, and they are the reason why every Monday I get up and I come to work is because you don't know who's going to be waiting for you outside of your door, and need support. Needs a shoulder to cry on, or it's just somebody to laugh with. And so while it is a lot of extra labor, I do think that while I may not be financially compensated for it. For me, it's what I call soul work, right? It feeds my soul. It feeds my spirit. And as long as I feel like I'm being filled and not drained, I'll continue to do this work,
being that it's a predominantly white institution. Are you typically called on in addition to what you already do in terms of your own outreach, counseling, mentoring, supportive students. Are you also, then additionally called on by staff faculty to do more of that
work. Sometimes I will say when, when I first got here, I would say the first three or four years I was here, I was often called on to be the person of color on a search committee, right? So we had the Minority Concerns and the women's concerns and boom, they get both in one person with me. So like, let's ask mommy to be on this search committee. So much so that in my third year review, the Dean basically told me I wasn't allowed to be on any more search committees until after I had tenure. Because up until I had already been on seven different search committees, and I know it's because I'm a black woman. And the reason why I said yes to those invitations, though, is because, once again, if I'm not at that table, who was who was prepared to defend an applicant of color or an applicant who didn't go to an elite institution or a woman applicant, right? So I know that every time I choose to say Yes, right? I'm also making the decision to put myself in the position of speaking up on behalf of so many marginalized groups. And while it's exhausting, I do think it's a professional responsibility I have in this space. So I get called on in that capacity. I used to get called on just to be on, like the diversity committees, right? And and they and people would turn and look to me as if I had all the answers. But now that I've been here so long and we're such a small campus, everyone knows me very well, and so they they know that I'm genuinely interested in working with you and helping you improve whatever it is, but only if you genuinely want to do that work with me. So I'm not somebody who's going to make you feel good ever I'm going to tell you like it is, and I'm going to I'm going to help you, but the second you don't take my advice is the second that this relationship is done in that capacity. So when you've been somewhere 10 years and you have tenure, it's easy to kind of take that firm stance. But I think before I was tenured, I was definitely feeling more pressure just to say yes, and even though I knew I was only being asked because I'm a black woman on campus.
So we mentioned earlier about being basically a black face, and also you're racially gendered in a predominantly white institution, and how, how that work shows up the some of it the work that we take on, some of it the work that we are, that is asked of us. And you mentioned you went to Vanderbilt as well as to Dartmouth. You know, being a black woman in that environment, in a predominantly white institution. Can you talk about some of your lived experience in that, experiences in that context, and how has that informed your teaching? So it's interesting
going to Dartmouth for undergraduate, you know, I'm from North Carolina, from Charlotte, you know, I'm in the south, and then I go to Hanover, New Hampshire as a 17 year old freshman. And the thing that was actually most off putting being a black person from the south is I got to Dartmouth and realized, hey, there's more to the world than black people, white people and Mexican people, right? And that may sound crass within the South, that's really all you ever see. And so when I got into that space, I realized, Oh, shoot. And on top of that, being Black isn't just being African American. There were 73 black people in my, in my in my graduating class at Dartmouth, 73 of us. And of the 73 six of us identified as African American. The rest of that 73 were from the diaspora. And that was the first time I'd actually interacted, meeting. Fully with someone who was an African American. And so I actually think that being in a predominantly white space facilitated all of us coming together in ways that I'm not certain we would have done if we were at a predominantly black space, right? Because there's so few of us we're looking for that support, and it forced us to integrate in ways that I think sometimes we draw these boundaries between ethnic groups that we probably shouldn't do. And so I ended up spending four years in a place where, sure, I had some white friends, but I actually ended up having a lot of black friends from all over the world, some of whom went to private school, which was crazy to me. And so it was just interesting to be in a spot where there were people from all over the world, I still did only primarily hang out with black people, but in my mind, it was a different way of being black in America, and so it actually ended up being a very positive experience for me that I don't think a lot of racially black people have in predominantly white schools. Now, Vanderbilt was a little different, because I was there to get my doctorate, so it felt more like a job than actually going to school. Because, you know, you don't live on campus anymore. You kind of go there, do what you have to do, and go back home. But I was in a psychology PhD program. I'll say that across all the sub disciplines, let's say there were 60 of us. Of the 60 of us, three were black. We're all African American, and that was a struggle. We weren't in the same cohort, so I would we were each the only black person in our years. And it was, it was just tough. It was tough being the only so much so that after my first year, I really stopped hanging out with people in my cohort because it was just too difficult for me to be my authentic self with people who didn't understand my daily lived experiences. And so I actually ended up hanging out with folks from Meharry Medical School and tsu, and they became my family. So I kind of sought out the HBCUs in Nashville and integrated myself into their friend group, because that's what I needed at that
particular time when you were in grad school. Did you have someone like, like you around in terms of like? Did you have a mentor? Did you have someone to help you navigate any of those unspoken rules? No,
the thing that was the one word I would use to describe graduate school was lonely, and I'm an extroverted person, and so it wasn't like I was alone. I just felt alone. And so I did not have a mentor, I did not have anybody that I could go to to talk to about these particular types of issues, because it just felt so much like business, business, business, and perhaps that was just how I felt, and it wasn't really how it was. I was much younger than everybody else, coming straight from undergraduate to graduate school. So I started in my PhD program three weeks after I turned 21 and so I already had that kind of overlaying a racial barrier. Then I had an age barrier, and then a little bit of it was like, wow, this is a tough program. Can I actually do it? And so a part of it was me not reaching out to the few black faculty who did exist on Peabody campus. But I think the other part is just that PhD programs are not nurturing spaces. They're just not a space where people feel comfortable showing their emotions, and for better or worse, mostly worse, you know, I became a victim of that. Of that environment
you are speaking to the choir. Can you say more to that about PhD programs not being nurturing spaces like providing examples and counter examples of what it would look like if it was if that same thing was nurturing. So yeah, absolutely.
In my introduction, you mentioned one of the books that I edited with Dr Eric Anthony Groman, who's at Richmond. It's called counter narratives from women of color academics. And one of the reasons why they Eric and I wanted to do this particular text is because we wanted to create a space for women of color academics to share a different narrative than the ones that so many of us have experienced in the academy. Right me saying that the academy is not a nurturing space is an honest reflection of my experiences, yet I'm still in the academy. And I'm in the Academy because I want to create nurturing spaces for those who come after me. And so in that particular book, we invited contributors to tell us these stories about how they are thriving and not just surviving, and many of them talked about really pushing back against the academic quote, norms, right, of objectivity, of not being emotional, being professional all the time, particularly for women, you know, not getting married, not having kids, all of these things that if you do them, you're allegedly supposed to be this successful academic, whatever that means. And so in that, in that book, a lot of the authors talked about, sometimes subtly pushing back, right? So if I'm pregnant, I'm not going to wear maternity clothes. You don't have to deal with the fact that I am pregnant every single day, right? Or some people talked about crying, right? Crying in their advisor's office, which to me, would have been like sacrilegious, right? Because I didn't want my advisor to view me as weak, and so hearing so many empowering stories from women of color who refuse to play the game the way it's been structured was, was a really emotional but a really beautiful experience for me to edit that particular anthology, because it did show me that there are other ways to exist in this hostile space.
Did any of them, or did any any folks talk about resistance in terms of, just for example, any of their topics, like their topics, wanting to use a non Eurocentric theoretical framework or reference certain things, or just basically what their dissertation or thesis was, was there anything that came up around that? Yes.
So a lot of the contributors talked about resistance in sometimes subtle ways. And so we had some indigenous scholars write a chapter where they talked about the use of I, the word I right in their writing, and what that means in indigenous communities, and what does we mean in indigenous communities? And I thought, when I know when they first submitted, that Eric and I were like, Oh, I never thought about this before. Right language, resisting the conventional language norms. Others talked about your professional, professional appearance. So we have one author who talked about having pink hair, right? And she was the director of a women's center on campus, and people always stopped her and said, You're so brave for wearing your hair that way, right? And it's like the hair color. It shouldn't be something that makes me brave or not brave, but it does in this space, and so many of them talked about resisting in those kind of ways. Some talked about crying with their students, with their advisors, nursing in public, even speaking out when you're on a job or a campus interview and saying, Hey, I looked at this schedule at some point I need a break so that I can pump right I have, I have an infant who I'm feeding, and nowhere in this schedule is there somewhere for me to have a break. Others talked about resistance in a much more kind of explicit way. We had some authors talk about leaving the academy, right? Absolutely, leaving the Academy because it became a space where their resistance basically made them become forced out. Some talked about resisting the traditional academic path, you know, postdoc, Assistant, associate full professor, and to instead leave the academy and start a nonprofit organization right giving up tenure to show people that this is not the only path to be successful. And so if I had to pick a word, I will say that resistance is is definitely one of the themes throughout that text.
You also write about in your work and in your teaching, some of the social and political issues in education. What are some of the social and political issues that you're seeing in education right now? Yeah,
that's a big question. I mean, right now, if I politically, that's always the easiest one, because it's the most obvious one. Right Is this battle over school funding or school choice, and who has a choice? What does choice look like? How expensive is my choice and who gets to take my choice away? You know, right now, the Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, continues to try to put through legislation where public tax dollars are used to fund private schools right or other types of organizations outside of the public sector. And thus far, she's been unsuccessful, but that is a huge political battle, because those funds are most necessary for people from marginalized and minoritized communities who don't have supplemental income in their household, if their school no longer serves lunch or breakfast, if their schools no longer have after school programs, if transportation is not provided to school, they can't get to school. Particularly right now during the pandemic, we're seeing this, right? We're seeing how economically segregated our education system is, and we have politicians who want to make it even worse, right? And so I think that, for me, is the most contentious political issue right now in school school funding, and that's what really undergirds all of the hot topic, things we hear like school choice and charter schools. And that's not the real battle here. It's not charter versus traditional public school, right? The battle is who is paying for this and what is the money being used for, right? And so with respect to social issues, I think for me in my classes and in my research, it does really boil down to multicultural competency, particularly of our teachers and our administrators, and the fact that the. Current racial pandemic is showing us right? It's showing people's true colors, and you best believe that some of those people who are shouting Blue Lives Matter are also in the classroom teaching our kids, right? And while they may not say or do anything explicitly racist or discriminatory, they're just not going to call on my child, right? They're just not going to answer my child's questions, whatever it is, this is what's happening to our kids, because we have allowed people without multicultural sensitivities, multicultural competencies, consciousness, humanity, to enter into our spaces. So for me, that becomes a social issue that absolutely affects the political side of education as well.
You also talked about, in addition to multicultural education, you talk a bit about urban education. Can you say a bit about what exactly is urban? Urban Education like, what makes it urban? I'm actually
really glad you asked that, because people, when you say the word urban education, they think it's a proxy word, a code word for things like black, brown and poor and inner city, right? And I don't believe in proxy code words, right? I say what it is, and I mean what I say when I say it. And so urban is actually, right? It's defined by the government what urban areas are based upon population density. So I live in Colorado Springs, Colorado, about an hour south of Denver. I think people will consider Denver an urban area. It is, but so is Colorado Springs, even though it's not a traditional what we consider city place, it is a city, right? And so urban when, when I teach my students, I let them know that urban is about the composition and the location of an area, the boundaries of a physical space. Now, when we talk about urban education, we're talking about what's happening in schools and in communities surrounding schools within those physical spaces. And so we go through the themes of urban education historically, right? And the biggest one is going to be segregation, whether it's neighborhood segregation feeding into segregated schools, or whether it's traditional charter schools feeding into urban segregation because they intentionally Pick black and brown families to whom to advertise and recruit for their schools. Right? So segregation becomes a big theme within urban education, because the flip side of that is what's now being called Urban Renewal, that we know to be gentrification, right? And how is that affecting schooling? How does white flight affect schooling? Again, with the finances? How do those pieces emerge in urban education? And then, for me, the most important part in urban education is who's teaching these babies, right? What are their qualifications? How long do they stay? How effective are they when they're there, right? And so a lot of urban education, sadly, is about addressing what's not working. Because so far in the field, we're just getting to the place where we can even begin to imagine what could work in urban schools. And so what we're starting to see is a big push for more money for higher quality teachers, for mentoring programs, for community schools where the schools are infused within the community, as opposed to these, these individual buildings that function in isolation of the people who live around them. So I think we're returning to the original idea of a neighborhood school, and hopefully that'll be a positive direction in urban education.
You mentioned, and I appreciate you putting it just that way. Who's teaching these babies? Can you speak more to like how does the cultural identities of teachers influence the interactions that they have with their students, and additionally, how do those relationships, in turn, impact teaching and learning process?
Absolutely. So I teach a class called teacher and teaching identities, and the purpose of that class is exactly what your question is, and I have my primarily white female, upper income pre service teachers, I really force them to confront who they are and who they're bringing to the classroom, and how that person intersects with the many people the students are bringing into that shared space. And so when I say who you are, I have the students do a cultural auto ethnography, where they have to talk about how they became the person that they are, right? And then how does the person that they are shape the beliefs that they possess, beliefs about themselves, beliefs about their kids, beliefs about their own job responsibilities. And what you tend to see is from my research, and it shows up in my classes as well. And what you see is that so many of our teachers have not even thought about that. When you ask them, Why is it you want to be a teacher, they say a couple of things, I love kids. I love my content area. I like the lifestyle teaching affords me. And that whenever somebody says that, I'm like, okay, so you have a family that has money who can supplement your income because the lifestyle. How towards you is not okay. So that's already very telling, right? Like, I can have the summers off. I'm like, okay, so you don't have to work two extra jobs to make ends meet when you stop being paid, right? And so what I see from my teachers of color, though, are they say I want to teach because I want these kids to have a better schooling experience than I did. So often my teachers of color go back to the communities from which they originate, right? Because they want their communities to be and do better. And with respect to the second part of your question, you know, how does, how does relationships affect students? I mean, it means so much. It feels so empowering and then just validating to walk into a classroom and even have someone who looks like you. And that's not to say that having a black teacher as a black child means automatically, teacher is going to be great for you. That's absolutely not the case. But what it means is you begin to imagine possibilities for yourself that you may not have imagined prior to right and in most cases, when a teacher is from a minoritized group, they are much more compassionate and empathetic for of with their students who are from minoritized groups as well. So that teacher student relationship becomes incredibly impactful, and we know that that is the variable that can often predict students academic success, particularly bipoc students, right? Is how strong is my relationship with my teacher? That's our mediating variable, not my prior grades, not family involvement, right? Not even my own personal motivation to do well. It's how much does this teacher believe in me and I'm going to do well for that person?
Oh my gosh, that's so true. I feel like I've seen that play out in so many different areas. I have a 13 year old who definitely performs differently for her teacher, black woman Miss Young because she doesn't want to let Miss Young down. She wants to impress Miss Young. There's so much relational there,
because it's not about it's not about a child's ability, right? Yeah, and I think that's where we start to get really frustrated as parents, is that we say, Okay, you're in Mrs. Young's class and you're rocking it. How come when you go to Mr. Wilson's class, you can't be the same, right? Right? There's usually, well, I'm not feeling Mr. Wilson,
or they don't like me,
right? And as a parent, you're like, Okay, I get it, but I need you to not worry about whether or not you're feeling Mr. Wilson and just do your work, right? It's as a as a teacher. Educator, I know that when a child says that the teacher doesn't like me, it means so much more than that. Yeah, right. It means the teacher ignores me, or, even worse, the teacher actively is derisive towards me. Yeah, right. The teacher says stuff to hurt my feelings or embarrass me. Teacher has low expectations than me and thinks I'm dumb, right? And it's just And too often that is the case. And so, of course, a child, any human being, is going to disengage when the person in authority over them does not believe in them, views them as lesser than right? And that's why I've really dedicated what has so far been my professional work to really enhancing the equity minded, social justice orientation of our classroom teachers.
Yeah, I mean, that's so true. I know with with my daughter, one of the things that came up is this teacher embarrasses me and makes me feel like I don't belong. She's in a black she's a black girl in a STEM program at a high performing school, and the teacher regularly, whenever she asked a question, makes her feel like it's the most ridiculous question. So then she doesn't want to ask the question, right? Then she doesn't perform well, and it's just like that, that reinforcing of that so that is so important. I agree with you. I think it speaks to your other work too, around the psychology, right? The Psychology of engaging in a classroom. Also, that piece about why people are doing the work is important. I wrote an article a while back around black women who pursue social work degrees, and why they pursue those degrees. And the three things that themes that came up were they wanted to be service to their community. There was a desire to resist misrecognition, and they also wanted to have a seat at the table in a way that would allow them to kind of help someone not have that same experience. I feel like a person going into a profession with those things in the helping profession, teaching is a helping profession. Social work is a helping profession. Um. Um, mental health professionals. There's some nonprofit these are helping profession. I think it matters why you're there. I think it matters if you're there because it's a hobby. I think it matters if you're there just because you're bored at home. I think it matters if you're there because you want to feel important and needed. And I think some people are around that way? Are there for that reason? And I really appreciate what you said about coming back to that whole looking at it as social justice, the connection between education and social justice. Can you speak to that a little bit more? Why is education a social justice concept?
Because teaching is a political act. Right? Every time I bring my brown body with a head wrap or my Afro and my earrings, right, every time I bring this body into a white space or any space, I'm making a political statement, not because I want to make a political statement, but in the United States, being black is politicized, right? So my humanity is a political issue. Hence, black lives matter, right? Why do we have to even say that? Why do why do we have to tell people that human beings, that life in general matters, right? And so when you bring that into an educational space, you it becomes a political entity in which you do become political behaviors. And I tell my pre service teachers, all of them, no matter of their demographic backgrounds, right is that the second that you believe that what you're doing is innocuous is the second that you fail all of your students, because every choice you make set students on particular pathways, whether it's your recommendation for a gifted or an advanced program or a STEM program or an after school activity, whether it's you get sending a positive or negative message home, you know all of these choices matter. How enthusiastic are you about the math content in the classroom that's going to dictate how enthusiastic your students are. What language do you use? You are sitting in front of people during some of the most sensitive developmental periods of life, and they are just soaking in everything that you're modeling for them, and then they take that out into the world. And they're not always conscious of where they got beliefs and behaviors and language, right? But as a teacher, we have to be conscious of the influence that we have on students, most often an implicit, subconscious influence on students ways of being and knowing, right? And so we go in an equity minded if we go in knowing that I'm going to put you on this particular path, because I want you to grow up and destroy this system and build it back better. Right then, I'm going to make certain pedagogical choices. I'm going to give you certain types of feedback. I'm going to engage in the community in different ways, because at the end of the day, this is the person who I know you want to become, and it's my job to help you become that person, right? And that's what justice is about.
I'm so here for it. I am so here for it. One of the things that you just said just really resonated with me and just kind of mirror some research that I've done around I did a phenomenological Study of African American mothers and their daughters, and something came up that I did not expect in my research, but it made sense after it came up this there was this transference of culture, but also this act of resistance in adornment. The decision to wear their hair natural, the decision around what shirts to wear, the decision like all of these things were like, not just esthetic or even performative, but a way of informing then that child, a way of practicing self, self love, love of themselves. So then, as a as a modeling certain behavior, so that then their child can, then, like, be open to, not just be open to but be unapologetic about loving themselves. Be unapologetic about the kinks in their hair or how big their lips are. And then to another piece, I feel like that shows up in this realm of being esthetic you mentioned earlier about showing up in certain spaces. And there is something that is politicized through this ethnocentric lens around what it means to be professional, what it means to look professional. Why isn't my neatly placed head wrap not professional? Why isn't if I want to wear magenta color lipstick, why is that not professional? And I think that some of those things should be into. Interrogated in those particular spaces, even something as simple as wearing my natural hair, you know?
And I think it takes, it takes so much courage and vulnerability and just time and life experience to be able to even have that conversation with yourself, right? I think I agree 1,000% that we first learn these narratives from our caregivers, from whoever's raising us, and then they're either undermined or reinforced when we go to school, right? And as we get older, we move into professional workplaces that tell us that, you know, having Afro or locks or cornrows, whatever it is, is unkempt, right? And unfortunately, often our parents tell us that, because that's what they're told at work, and our parents want us to get a job, right? So they raise you saying, okay, Manya, when you have that interview, you might want to flat iron your afro, right? So when I interviewed for this job here all those years ago, I did flat iron my afro, and I still carry I won't call it shame, but I think it's hurt, because I hurt myself and making that decision to do that, you know, and now it's been a long time. I do have tenure. I do. I am in a much more secure and stable position, and so I feel comfortable, you know, wearing my my hair any way I want, dressing the way that I feel most comfortable in being my authentic self, but I do think it's a balance. Because I mean, all parents know this. You want your child to feel beautiful in who they are, in whatever, in all aspects, physically, emotionally, mentally. You want them to feel beautiful and capable and proud, but you know that when they step outside of your household that the world may not view them that way. And so how do I instill in you this self confidence and self awareness while also preparing you to respond to the hostility with which the world is going to treat you? It's incredibly, incredibly difficult, right? And so it's much respect to the parents who are doing this every single day, and in my world, I'm trying to get the teachers prepared to do that every single day, and at least to be aware that the kid who walks into your classroom may have had a different shirt on last period right? May have had a head wrap on it they took off when they entered your classroom, and tell me why that might be. What have you done to create a classroom climate where that child feels like they can't be themselves, right? That's my task, right? It's like have my teachers understand that whatever they think is normal is not right, and there is no such thing as normal.
I appreciate that work, especially if they're going to end up being teachers of
black kids.
I put up a post, and it was probably it not, probably it was the most shared post that I have ever had in my, I don't know, 10 years on Facebook. And this post asked the question. The question was, What grade were you in the first time that you had an African American man as a teacher that didn't teach music or gym? That post got shared over 21,000 times. I think that's saying something. Do you think that's saying something? And if so, what is it saying?
It's saying that we want it, right? We have a deep desire to have black men in the classroom, and we're not getting it. The fact that I can tell you, right? My answer is seventh grade. Mr. Sims was my journalism teacher, and I did not have another black male teacher until I was in graduate school, and that that I can pinpoint, and I still remember his name and the grade and the subject matter. I can tell you what period I took journalism that year. I can tell you what the assignments were in that class, because it was so meaningful to see a black man as a teacher, because even in the black community, the narrative is that women are teachers, right? We were the teachers of the community, and so Brown versus Board of Education moved our kids into white schools, and we all lost our jobs, right? But it was never black men who were the teachers. And so that doesn't mean, though, that we don't need black men in the classroom? We absolutely do. In fact, research shows us that having a black male teacher can increase, particularly black male students, academic achievement by up to three grade levels. Having one black male teacher in elementary increases your achievement by up to three grade levels. Right? It's not that the black male teacher is the best teacher on planet, right? It's about how it makes children feel, yeah, to be in an educational space, and how those feelings translate into educational practices and behaviors, right? I mean that your post was shared so much. Much. It just it rang it rang true for so many people that this is an authentic need and a desire that exists in the black community.
Definitely, yeah, I definitely felt that way. My first black first time I had a black man as a teacher was in graduate school. Nope, sorry, undergrad, and then I had a lot in grad school. I had a lot more in in college levels. In your research, you've done some, you've done some research around or writing around, leveraging, like in your women of color academics book where you talk about the counter narratives. Can you speak to us about that and tell us how have those women of color academics leveraged their professional positions to challenge the status quo in their scholarship specifically? And then you can also talk about their teaching, their service, their activism and their leadership. But I'm really interested in how they challenged it first in their scholarship,
I will say so there's two chapters, and the one that has to do with scholarship is from an African American woman. I can't remember what type of institution she teaches at, but she was up for tenure the year that she decided to more intentionally and actively integrate students into both her teaching and her scholarship, such that she was doing research with them. Their names were on the research publications. She was becoming an activist on campus with the student organizations, and all while she's up for tenure, maybe was the year preceding her going up for tenure, whichever, it was a very risky time to choose to put yourself out there as what you know you're often called a social justice warrior, right? And so she knew, though she knew, that the kids had valid demands, and the institution wasn't listening, because they didn't have the capital to get the institution to listen, and she did. And so she put her capital on the line on behalf of the students, you know. And so when she shows up, she performs with them. Another author similarly talked about one of our Native American authors leading a Native American student organization. They decided to burn the flag, and she stood there with them while they burned the flag, right, knowing that she's probably going to be fired, right? And she got called into the provost office and was not fired, but was, you know, given a heavy reprimand and task size to doing this. But I think many of the authors talked a lot about knowing that I chose this profession because I am a helper. I am a giver, right? I'm a lover, and if I'm not helping the students, then who am I helping, right? If I'm not helping the community, then who am I helping? And so they often would put their professional jobs on the line because they knew that they had the capital to get something done for the community or for the students that needed to be done. But similarly, and it wasn't in scholarship, there was a the first chapter of that book is from a Latina who talks about becoming a provost, and how when she took on this and when was the Vice Provost role, she she just pushed and pushed and pushed. She changed pay salaries for women, all women. She created funds for women of color to have their own research groups. She created funds for people of color at her institution to bring guest speakers to campus. She challenged all types of hiring practices right, retention and evaluation practices, and she pushed and pushed and pushed and was eventually fired from that position, right? And sent back to the faculty pool, and she's since left that institution and moved to a different institution. But these are the types of stories that you know when I when I edited that anthology, I was in my third year as I was taking my third year sabbatical, so I was pre tenure. The book is not going to count towards tenure, right? It's not what we call an academic book. It's not even really a trade book. It's an edited anthology, right? And I, and Eric and I both knew that we were taking a risk and even doing it, because it's not viewed positively, right, as as a as a pre tenure academic, but it just felt so important to both of us to create a space for people to say, you can be brave, but it is going to come with risks. And here's my story, and here, let me tell you why. For me, it was worth the risk of giving up tenure, of leading my PhD program four years in, of filing a federal lawsuit against my HBCU for their failure to properly investigate my title nine claim, right? And so we have entries from graduate students through, like I said, Provost, right? We have deans of entire colleges who talked about the ways in which they continue to push back and resist all at while, while, you know, risking. Their professional well being right if we lose our jobs, most of us don't come from families that can support us. So it's really inspiring, but it's also educational to know that, yes, I can, I can push and push and push, but am I prepared for the consequences? And that's the real question when it comes to activism and justice, is, am I willing to accept the consequences? Because I care so much about the cause
so so much of what you're saying to me, just like speaks to this concept or idea of having a greater purpose or a greater sense of purpose. Our late brother Chadwick Boseman was given this speech that I recently watched a video for, and it was a commencement speech. I'm not sure which school it was. Was it Howard's probably, you know, probably giving a speech at his alma mater. In the speech, towards the end, he said he's speaking to, you know, it's a commencement so the graduating class, and he's saying to them, to pursue purpose, pursue purpose more than you pursue a job, more than you pursue a career. And he was saying, because purpose is across industries, purpose is transferable, you know, purposes. So I feel like that speaks to that. Speaks to this, this idea that the purpose of whatever comes first, and then there's all of these different avenues to get there. And I think it speaks to what you've done even with the book, also, because your, if your purpose was to get tenure, you probably like to just focus on that. I should say they probably wouldn't have written a book. It would have been distracting or taking away from it, or a waste of time, or whatever other things, but you were focusing on a purpose. And I also love that it seems like it's a book that is consumable by a larger audience than what are the the type of things that were encouraged to produce an academic in academia for tenure. You know, the women, a lot of the women that that I might write about or care about or reference, they're not necessarily reading, you know, Rutledge, also, I don't know the degree to which they have access to because there's institutional access that people need to get to be able to have access to those so much more I can say before I let you go, I would like you to please let everyone know a little bit more about where can they get your book, where can they follow you, connect with you, all of those things, absolutely. So
all of my books, I have three books and then a fourth one in the works are easily found on Amazon. So my first book, learning from the inside out, child development and school choice is a book that really represents my psychological roots, where it's written for parents, right, and in recognition that not all kids are the same, and that all kids need the same thing from their schools. And so the book kind of walks you through development of children. And then the second half of the book is like, okay, so given the type of kid that you have, what type of school and model and classroom is the best fit for your particular child. And so that book was published by Roman Littlefield, where you can also get it there. My second book is the anthology Coronavirus women of color academics also on Amazon, but if you get it from the publisher, there is a paperback coming out, I think, and in September that is substantially reduced price. And it's a beautiful book, because, as I said, it represents narratives from women across academia, across identities and across experiences. And then my third book is schooling multicultural teachers that came out with emerald publishers, and this is more of a book for school leaders, not for parents, but any school leaders or teacher leaders who are really looking to figure out how to assess their teachers equity orientations and then create action plans to help them become more equity minded, and then at some point in the in the near future, I'll have a fourth book that doesn't have a name yet, but it's for school leaders on how to create an equitable school beyond just discipline policies or community engagement behaviors, but in terms of, how do I even create a building that enhances equity? How do I hire and retain and reward equity oriented teachers? How do I do equity assessments and audits for my entire building? And so that will will not be out, I think, until late 2021 but I'm busy working away and trying to do my part to make the world a better place. You
are busy. I mean, you still, we talked about earlier off camera, about how many like your your course load, and you just recently got. I became department chair of your department, as well as, did you say, director of a of an institution
I was, I was the interim director of our multicultural center for about five or six months, but thankfully, I'm no longer in that position. We hired a fabulous person.
Oh, wow. I mean, that's definitely more than enough. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the counter narrative show and share your lived experience with us. Appreciate your insights.
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Sure
thing, thank you to everyone who are watching live, or folks who are watching later, feel free to like or share and you can reach remember everything that Dr Whitaker said in terms of like, where you can find her books. Thank you again for watching the counter narrative show. Have a good night. Oh, okay, I have a quick question for you. Yeah.