Faculty Engages in “Decoding Racial Anxiety”
Faculty participated in “Decoding Racial Anxiety,” a workshop led by Director of Equity and Inclusion Stephanie Bramlett, on Wednesday, Jan. 9, discussing prevalent racial issues on campus.
Director of Student Well-Being Christina Palmer explained that the workshop aimed to advance faculty understanding and engagement in diversity, equity and inclusion, in accordance with the Trustees’ Vision Statement on the matter. “Faculty will be even more sensitive and aware of how might each student be experiencing their class, course content and interactions at the table,” she said.
“Racial anxiety is what people of all races may feel before or during a conversation about race—the feeling that we might be judged, misunderstood or discriminated against,” Bramlett said. “Racial literacy, defined as the ability to read, recast and resolve a stressful racial encounter, helps us overcome racial anxiety.”
While Dr. Howard C. Stevenson of the University of Pennsylvania’s Racial Empowerment Collaborative was originally scheduled to lead workshops, he was unable to visit due to illness. Instead, the faculty Committee on Equity and Inclusion opted to host two training sessions themselves.
In both sessions, faculty members were encouraged to journal about their racial identity, background and experiences. Bramlett also introduced terminology relevant to racial anxiety and literacy. “Racial anxiety is what people of all races may feel before or during a conversation about race—the feeling that we might be judged, misunderstood or discriminated against,” Bramlett said. “Racial literacy, defined as the ability to read, recast and resolve a stressful racial encounter, helps us overcome racial anxiety.”
Many faculty members described the workshop as a success, especially in the communication of its purpose and significance. Bramlett herself voiced her satisfaction with the afternoon and hoped for further discussions on identity. “Feedback from both sessions has been quite positive,” she said.
Science Department Chair Alison Hobbie noted, “Racial interactions happen in any context. [...] When you have twelve students and a teacher sitting around a table, or when you have twenty-four faculty members sitting around a department meeting, it’s helpful to recognize and reflect on a moment that is racially charged.”
History Instructor Michael Golay agreed on the workshop’s applicability. He recalled an instance that took place in the classroom during a discussion about the Cherokee Indian Removal of the 1830s. One of his students asked, ‘Are we supposed to feel sorry for these people?’ “It’s hard to know how to react at the moment,” Golay shared. “[The workshop] was instructive to recall those kinds of episodes and think about how we might deal with them next time they come up.”
During the workshop, Dean of Faculty Ellen Wolff made clear that the faculty was accountable for fostering racial equity. “We were told that contributing and advancing diversity, equity and inclusion is in our job description—we cannot opt out of this,” English Instructor Courtney Marshall said. “That was very powerful.”
Despite the positive results of the workshop, faculty remarked that there is still much to improve in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion. English Instructor Wei-Ling Woo observed that conversations at Exeter are still stigmatized and avoided. “Talking about race at Exeter is fraught,” Woo said. “I find this odd and difficult as a person of color. In the future, I hope we can normalize such conversations.”
Marshall, meanwhile, noted that the competitive nature of Exeter is not always conducive to inclusion. “When a place like Exeter is so competitive to the point where people aren’t sleeping, they’re skipping meals and constantly trying to get ahead, how do you talk about diversity of thought and including more people?” she asked.
English Instructor Mercy Carbonell hoped that students and faculty alike would continue to think about empathy, particularly for community members of color who feel alienated. “We need to spend time thinking about how this elite space constructs definitions of race, in a way that is different than other communities… [and] consider how it feels, looks and sounds as a person of color in historically white, predominantly wealthy spaces.”
Similar to Carbonell, upper Tatum Schutt emphasized that in order for the workshops to be effective, faculty must not check out of difficult conversations. “I’ve found that many faculty, worried by the way their racial illiteracy will make them appear among their colleagues, choose to disconnect from the discussion or even ignore the conversation altogether rather than take risks,” she said. “These risks, however, are crucial for forward progress—change cannot occur if faculty are not willing to challenge their internal biases.”
Despite the difficulty of confronting racial tensions, faculty members such as Physical Education Instructor Olutoyin Augustus see this training as an important step in moving the school forward. “When we speak our truth, it can be painful to others,” Augustus said. “I don’t enjoy those experiences, but I honor them in how they create an opportunity to further our learning.”
In the end, the workshop reminded PEA adults of their role in fostering discourse in academic or social settings. In Augustus’s words: “We need to dig deep into what race means for ourselves, what it means for our community and what it means for students in the way that we teach.”