How
White Churches Teach about Race
I introduced the concept of public
pedagogy in part 3. If you have not read
that post, and the others that came previously, please take the time to do
so. In my last post, I left you with the
question of “how do White churches teach about race if the topic is likely not
broached?” To explain this, I will now
introduce the concept of the hidden curriculum.
In order to effectively discuss the
concept of the hidden curriculum, it is helpful to first distinguish between it
and what is termed, the formal curriculum. Formal curriculum can be defined as
what is explicit, known, and officially recognized as being taught to students
(Portelli, 1993). This is known by both
the teachers and students, and anyone else, such as a parent, who
inquires. In schools, an example of the
formal curriculum could be the Common Core Standards; it is an officially
recognized list of skills and topics children are expected to be taught by
grade level.
The hidden curriculum, however, can take
many forms. It can be hidden from the
students, but known by the teacher, hidden from the teacher, but known by the
students, or it can be hidden from both (Portelli, 1993). The hidden curriculum can be manifested in
four ways: 1) unofficial expectations or implicit but expected messages, 2)
unintended learning outcomes or messages, 3) implicit messages arising from the
structure of schooling, 4) created by the students (students and teachers have
different ideas about what is necessary) (Portelli, 1993). An example of the first unofficial but
implicit expectation is the concept of respecting and obeying authorities. Most curricula do not explicitly state “child
will learn to obey authority,” yet when children fail to do so, they learn they
should after facing the negative consequences for failing to do so. There is an expectation that they will not
only learn to respect authority in school, but that this knowledge will
transfer to larger society and they will eventually become law abiding citizens.
The next form of hidden curriculum is
unintended learning outcomes or messages.
A great example of this can be found in Vorbeck’s (2008) work on other
kinds of families. By only teaching
about the nuclear family and assigning work with the underlying assumption that
all students come from one, the unintended learning outcome students may have
is that other types of family are less legitimate. Third, implicit messages arising from the
structure of schooling can be described by the testing obsession that has taken
control of most of the nation’s schools.
To refer back to my example of the formal curriculum, although the
common standards are meant to be a guideline of what is being taught, the high
stakes test associated with it sends the implicit message that the test is more
important than the learning, or that the purpose of learning is to pass a
test. Therefore, if there is no test,
there is no need to learn it; intellectual curiosity is unintentionally dimmed.
Lastly, the idea of hidden curriculum
created by the student is when the students have different ideas about what is
necessary than that of their teacher. A
teacher may assign a list of books for students to read in order to write an
essay. Although the stated purpose of
this assignment is to practice and improve writing skills, the teacher may have
a hidden curriculum from her students for them to also learn about another
culture through the reading. The
students, however, may decide reading the list of books is not necessary to
write the paper because they can use a tool such as Spark Notes. Although they are able to complete the
writing assignment, they miss the opportunity to learn about culture.
How then, does this concept apply to
how PWCs teach about race? In my last
post, I talked about how at the church in which I grew up, we had a Black
History program where we would learn about the contributions of African
Americans. This is an example of a formal
curriculum. In the predominantly White
church I attend now, however, race is rarely mentioned. The omission of the subject of race in our
highly racialized society has the potential to send many messages about race
that may be unintentional. Regarding the
hidden curriculum of race in PWCs, based on my research and experience, what is
taught about race in many churches falls into the categories of unintended
learning outcomes or messages and implicit messages arising from structure. The lack of attention given to other cultures
and the non-recognition of the racism endemic to our society reinforces White
normativity [the idea that White culture defines what is normal and right in
society. Everything else is aberrant] (Edwards, 2008) and teaches colorblind
racism [this is a difficult concept to explain in a sentence, so I recommend reading
chapter 2 of this book, but in short, for this context, I will describe
color-blind racism as ignoring systemic racism while being complicit in it
and/or benefitting from it] (Bonilla-Silva, 2014).
The idea of hidden curriculum of implicit
messaging arising from structure is supported by some research studies that
have been done. A study on implicit
association found that racially homogenous contexts led to a significant
increase in pro-white/anti-black bias (Soderberg & Sherman, 2013). If the result of this study is applied to
churches, the hidden curriculum with regards to structure is revealed. Pro-white bias is reinforced by racially
homogenous contexts. This means that
pro-white/anti-black bias is being taught (though not purposely) through the
racial composition of White monoracial churches.
Other studies have used measures of social
distance such as residential preference and attitudes toward interracial
marriage to find the correlation between religious affiliation and racial
attitudes. Evangelical and mainline
Protestants were found to have the strongest preference for same-race neighbors
when compared to Catholics, Jews, and other faiths (Merino, 2011), and Whites
who attended multiracial churches were found to be far more likely to be
comfortable with the idea of interracial marriage than those who attended
monoracial churches (Perry, 2013). These
findings, although not causal, show there is a contribution by monoracial
churches to the social distance between races present in society today.
So this is the part that gets
uncomfortable. Taken together, I am
making what will be a painful argument for many. Through the hidden curriculum, many PWCs as a
site of public pedagogy, may actually be unintentionally teaching racism!
Thanks
for reading. The End.
Just
kidding. This was a super long post, though. In my final post, I will fulfill
the second portion of the title of this series.
As a reminder, the title was: “How
Predominantly White Churches Can Move from Teaching Racism to Teaching about It.” I hope you will join me as I complete this
series in my final post.
Bonilla-Silva, E. (2014). Racism without
racists: Colorblind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America (4th ed.).
Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Edwards, K.L. (2008). Bring Race to the center:
The importance of race in racially diverse religious organizations. Journal
of the Scientific Study of Religion, 47(1), 5-9.
Merino, S. M. (2011). Neighbors like me?
Religious affiliation and neighborhood racial preferences among Non-Hispanic
Whites. Religions, 2¸ 165-183.
Perry, S. L. (2013) Religion and Whites'
attitudes toward interracial marriage with African Americans, Asians, anf
Latinos. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 52(2),
425-442
Portelli, J.P. (1993). Exposing the hidden
curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 24(4),
343-358.
Soderberg, C. K., & Sherman, J. W. (2013).
No face is an island: How implicit bias operates in social scenes. Journal
of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(2), 307–313.
doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2012.11.001
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