Bring the Noise

• Author: Darryl A. Brice,Derrick R. Brooms
• Published date: 01 April 2017
• Date: 01 April 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/2153368716689490
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Bring the Noise:

Black Men Teaching

(Race and) White Privilege

Derrick R. Brooms

1

and Darryl A. Brice

2

Abstract

In this article, we use autoethnography to reflectcritically on our experiences, teaching

race and Whiteprivilege at the collegiate level.Given our experiences as twoBlack male

professors,we argue that teaching about race alongwith variations of race talk is treated

as and translated intoideologies of “noise.” Thus, race as subject matteralong with our

raced and genderedidentities all contribute tohow students hear, receive, and respond

to our teaching. In our pedagogical approach, we desire to “bring the noise” by using

critical pedagogy and asserting White privilege as the cornerstone for understanding

social,cultural, and structuralrealities in the UnitedStates. Additionally, weunravel some

of the nuances of our experiences in teaching White privilege and the ways that

some students resist within the classroom setting. We find that many students contest our

race and gendered presence in the learning environment, seek to reframe conversations

about race and privilege, and resist discussions that focus on White privilege. In offering our

experiences, this article is intended to encourage educators to (a) incorporate critical

pedagogy that challenges and confronts student resistance and (b) better understand

how their roles and identities contribute to classroom learning and instruction.

Keywords

Black male faculty, White privilege, race, student resistance, critical pedagogy

Until we as white people are clear about what it means to be white, the issue of race in

this nation and in the colonized world can never fully be addressed.

—Frances Kendall (2006, p. 39)

1

Department of Sociology, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA

2

Highline College, Des Moines, WA, USA

Corresponding Author:

DerrickR. Brooms, Department of Sociology,University of Louisville,118 Lutz Hall, Louisville, KY 40292,USA.

Email: dr.brooms@louisville.edu

Race and Justice

2017, Vol. 7(2) 144-159

ªThe Author(s) 2017

Reprints and permission:

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DOI: 10.1177/2153368716689490

journals.sagepub.com/home/raj

We are two Black male professors who attended the same graduate school program

andbothhavemorethan10yearsofin-class teaching experience in higher edu-

cation. For the analysis presented here, we primarily focus on our individual

experiences in teaching two sociology courses, “race and ethnic relations” and

“introduction to sociology,” over a 2-year period at two different historically White

institutions. During the first year of our graduate program at a historically White

institution, we were assigned to read Frankenberg’s (1994) work, White Women,

Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness, as part of a unit focusing on

race in our foundational graduate program class. Frankenberg’s work had the

potential to make an important contribution to the course because her work exam-

ines the social construction of Whiteness and moves the conversation around race

beyond the experiences of Blacks and other people of color. She contended, “For

when white people look at racism, we tend to view it as an issues that people of color

face and have to struggle with, but not as an issue that generally involves or

implicates us” (p. 6). Later, Frankenberg asserted her desire to document the ways in

which racism is as much a White issue as it is an issue for communities of color (p.

21). Upon reading this material, and engaging in our own discussion of the text, we

were dismayed at our professor’s decision to open class discussion by asking t he

four students of color, among a class of 21 students, to offer comments on the book.

Throughout the remainder of the night, the professor failed to invite or specifically

ask White students to engage in the conversation, thus undermining and ignoring

Frankenberg’s argument that Whiteness and its accompanying privilege is crucial in

structuring race relations.

In effect, for this class, the course content around Frankenberg’s work allowed an

opportunity to see Whiteness in more visible ways and opened it up as an avenue of

and for investigation; yet the White male professor further privileged Whiteness by

offering White students an opportunity to remain silent during a discussion about

race. Thus, part of our early graduate training was entrenched within wh at Picower

(2009) calls the “tools of Whiteness.” For Picower, these tools operate as active

protections of privileged and hegemonic ideologies that redirect and/or avoid talking

about race and racism. Even though we and other students were inv ited to make

sense of Frankenberg’s work, our efforts were undermined by White silence in the

classroom. This silence was a function of privilege that “allowed” other students to

speak while at the same time stunting the in-class conversation and various learning

opportunities.

In this article, we examine our experiences teaching race and White privilege and

use “noise” as a theoretical construct to analyze student responses in the classroom. In

writing from our own situated standpoints, what we offer in this article developed as

we embarked on our teaching careers and our professional desires to teach issues

regarding race, diversity, inclusion, and privilege. We start by reexamining our per-

sonal narratives and experiences teaching race and ethnic relations and introduction to

sociology courses at the collegiate level. In particular, we focus on a total of 2 years of

teaching these courses; the first author taught four race and ethnicity courses over a 2-

year period—one course per academic semester—while the second author shares

Brooms and Brice 145