How are your students this semester?

I get this question multiple times at the beginning of each semester that I've taught at the college level. And while I firmly understand that the intent of the question is to gain more insight into my teaching experience and show interest in my life in general, it's a question that has constantly irked me.

The question presupposed the idea that there are good classes and bad classes. Good students and bad students. And I can tell you that this mentality has rubbed off on the student body. In many student meetings I've had UMass students talk about their education as if is somehow less than the educational experience at nearby colleges like Amherst, Hampshire, Smith, and Mt. Holyoke. There is this invisible glass ceilings that UMass students feel their education is below in a geographic area chocked full of management-level educational institutions.

I asked a question in my lecture class yesterday.

I asked, "Is racial prejudice disappearing?"

Let's be clear, this was an intentionally ambiguous cue. A prompt that could be interpreted as "is it lessening" or "is it going away." Race, of course, being the major filter through which the question was received.

I figured this picture would draw in a larger audience.

Immediately, and almost as if it were a automatic response, a Black woman in the front of the class began shaking her head, "no, no, no, no, no."

I asked her if she wished to expand on her position.

Her head continued to shake.

And at that moment, when I asked her if she wanted to share her opinion, we sat on the precipice of the reality of discussing race.

This young woman had to decide whether it was worth it to risk being White Man-splaned race by your professor in a large class of her peers.  The short answer: No. Fucking. Way.

She also had decide if I, a White teacher, was asking her to explain race to my class.

And a few questions later, a White male student near the front asked another question about "the place of White people" in the discussion about race, and I decided that a fundamental truth about this subject needed to be said aloud.

"Let's be clear, it is not Black people's responsibility to explain racism to you. It is not the job of the systematically disenfranchised to educate you about the reality of the world we all inhabit together. That is your job as a human being."

The entire class exhaled.

I should have added that it was also my job as their professor, but I hoped that was self-evident.