Selma: The Bridge to the Ballot, which is about events that took place in 1965, raises issues
that remain relevant today: the use of the n-word, the misuse of police power, the power of
symbols to intimidate, the effectiveness of popular movements.
Teaching about the civil rights movement means being prepared to talk about race and
racism, not simply as remnants of a long-gone past, but as real forces in the world today.
Race is a social construct, not a biological given. Still, race matters. It shapes our experiences
and has real impacts, from the smallest interpersonal interaction to the largest institutional
arrangements. Many teachers believe that ignoring race—adopting a colorblind stance—is
the best way to overcome its negative power. Yet it’s important for teachers to examine
the ways that race influences their classrooms every day. Stanford Professor of Education
Linda Darling-Hammond has argued that, in schools, teachers and students routinely make
assumptions about each other on the basis of race. “Those are all assumptions that can be
tested, debunked and reframed,” she says, “but you can’t get there without understanding
that race is part of the context.”
Certainly, we must talk about race to help students understand the civil rights movement.
Learning works through a process of assimilating new knowledge into existing beliefs about
the world. Unexplored and unacknowledged background ideas or assumptions too easily create
emotional obstacles to student learning. This is particularly true when teaching about race
and racism. As Spelman College President Beverly Daniel Tatum writes: “If not addressed,
these emotional responses can result in student resistance to oppression-related content areas.
Such resistance can ultimately interfere with the cognitive understanding and mastery of
the material. This resistance and potential interference is particularly common when specifically
addressing issues of race and racism.” If we do not talk about race and racism when we
talk about the civil rights movement, we deprive students of the opportunity to understand
much of American history.
Talking about race and racism means reaching outside the context of the civil rights movement.
We do students a disservice if we encourage them to think that racism is a remnant
of a distant historical era. In addition, we risk losing students of color who know all too well
the continued effects of race and racism.
Many teachers, wanting to avoid discomfort or conflict, avoid open conversations about
race in their classrooms. These reasonable concerns only underscore how important it is to
find ways to make the classroom a safe space in which to talk about race and ethnicity.
