Passing out homework in my first-period English class one morning, I noticed one of my students staring at her paper. “I don’t want to do this,” she complained. “It’s retarded.”
Recognizing my student’s statement as a microaggression, an indirect or unintentional discriminating comment about members of a marginalized group, I weighed my options, quickly thinking through a few possible responses. I considered how I would want someone to point out my own mistakes. I recalled the admonition of my graduate school’s Civil Dialogue Committee: Criticize the ideas; don’t demean the person expressing them. I considered what I should say. By the time I formulated an articulate rebuttal, the moment had passed—and I hadn’t said a word.
As the year wore on, instances like these accumulated. Despite my vow to interrupt oppressive or biased language, too often I kept silent, doubting myself and my tactics. Eventually, I began to lose faith in my ability to challenge my students’ discriminatory speech. Then I witnessed an interruption done right. Walking to class one afternoon, I heard one student complain to another about a bet they had made. “You Jewed me,” one boy told the other.
I watched as a teacher calmly approached the students. He did not overreact to the situation, but neither did he ignore it. Instead, he was patient. He used “I” statements. He called attention to the behavior, rather than the individual, and emphasized its direct impact on others. “When you compare being Jewish to being cheap,” he explained, “other people hear you and believe it’s true. That makes me sad.” Observing the students’ bashful body language, I could tell they had received the message loud and clear.
Days later, I commended my co-worker on his ability to successfully interrupt with kindness, trust and respect. When I asked for his secret, he told me he kept a diligent practice of contemplative ethics. Contemplative ethics borrows its principles from contemplative education. Its tenets stress mindful reflection on our interconnectedness and shared reality as a way to access more compassionate, more just interactions with others.
Mindfulness instructor Linda Ruth Cutts teaches contemplative ethics in the San Francisco Bay area. “We cannot escape the reality of our interconnectedness,” she notes. “The most we can do is stay present, and ready to respond to difficulties as they arise.”
As an educator, you can practice contemplative ethics in your classroom by asking yourself:
Is my speech…
True? Are my words as objective as possible?
Timely? Is this the right place and time to speak? When someone is the subject of an offensive comment, they may not want to immediately, publicly engage. Solidarity does not force them into exchange.
Useful? Do I speak primarily to help my students? Are they served as a result?
Kind? Successful dialogue hinges on thoughtful execution. Compassion communicates more clearly than shame.
Coming from a place of good will? When engaging in difficult conversations, it helps to acknowledge that everyone involved is only human. Remember that people rarely set out to hurt others, and notice if you are taking someone’s side before you engage.
Cutts stresses that these principles are not meant to induce shame or guilt if we fail to embody them perfectly. Instead, she says, they act as a barometer for measuring our internal landscape. If we find that our speech falls short of our expectations, we can use the opportunity to pause, re-center, forgive ourselves, apologize if we need to and try again.
Contemplative ethics reinforces an idea that educational scholars already know: Oppressive speech does not happen in a vacuum. Rather, it exposes the internal biases that linger below the surface of our conscious thoughts. By reflecting on these biases, we can curtail their expression. As Simba Runyowa notes in the Atlantic article “Microaggressions Matter,” “It is all too easy to hurt and insult others without exercising vigilance in interacting with those whose lived experiences are different from our own.”
Interrupting oppressive language can be awkward, scary or even painful for educators. All too often, the window of time to practice doing so appears in a moment, and then vanishes in a flash. But when we contemplate the ethical underpinnings of our actions, we activate our potential to speak up for change.
Ehrenhalt is the school-based programming and grants manager with Teaching Tolerance.
