This week, you will submit a revised version of Paper #1 reflecting on how relationships founded upon difference and justice are vital to a democratic system. You will want to consider

T e a c h i n g

Community

T e a c h i n g Community

A Pedagogy of Hope

bell hooks

Routledge New York and London

Taylor & Francis Group

Taylor & Francis Group 2 Park Square Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN

711 Third Avenue New York, , NY 10017

It is imperative that we maintain hope even when the harshness of reality may suggest the opposite.

—Paulo Freire

When I first published Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom I included a dialogue with Ron Scapp. We have the pleasure of being both colleagues and true friends. In his new book Teaching Values: Critical Perspective on Education, Politics, and Culture Ron states; “. . . there is a real need (an eth- ical imperative) to disrupt and challenge the simple acts of privilege, and that one of the ways to begin this process is by listening to and acknowledging those for whom such acts are not simple. So clearly, for a white, heterosexual, male, tenured professor of relative financial security this means reading, lis- tening to, and speaking with, among others, people of color.” We still live in a culture where few white people include black people/people of color in their intimate kinship structures of love and friendship on terms that are fully and completely anti- racist. We still need to hear about how inclusion of diversity changes the nature of intimacy, of how we see the world. When

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I walk out into the world with Ron, clearly indicating closeness by our body language and our speech, it changes how I am seen, how he is seen. This is yet another way race matters in a white-supremacist patriarchal context. It is still important for us to document these border crossings, the process by which we make community. This dialogue extends the first. It was spon- taneous—neither of us had questions beforehand or altered what we said after the fact. It is shared as a way to bear witness to real community, real love, and what we do to keep it real.

bell hooks: Ten years have passed since we first dialogued together about the intersections of race, class, gender and their impact on our teaching and learning communities, on our attempts to bond as colleagues, as friends. Since that time you have become much more engaged with setting educational policy and dialoguing with policy makers. What are some of the key issues you face talking to people from a non-biased perspective who are still stuck—who are still supporting race, sex, class hierarchies?

Ron Scapp: One ongoing issue is the effort to build trust. Many people who occupy positions that afford them the opportunity to set educational policy are often distrustful from the start when encountering anyone who claims to offer anti-racist strategies, particularly new insights.

bh: Say more about why trust is important.

RS: Trust is such a fundamental issue because these people are so invested in all that they have put into operation already. They may feel the need to protect the status quo. Any chal- lenge, but especially one that hints at racism on their part, makes them particularly wary because of what it suggests about them. My goal is to let them know that we share a common concern for making education better—for creating optimal

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conditions for all students to learn and teachers to do their best work; that’s the common goal we can share and the foun- dation for us to trust one another.

bh: This fear of being found personally wanting in some way is often one of the greatest barriers to promoting critical con- sciousness, especially about racist and sexist domination. Since the practice of critical thinking requires that we all engage in some degree of critical evaluation of self and other, it helps if we can engage individuals in ways that promote self-motivated interrogation rather reactive response to outer challenge.

RS: Policy makers often hear challenges as personal attacks and don’t see the person making the challenge as a team player who wants to better the circumstances of teachers and students.

bh: What are some of the strategies you use to intervene on this fear and create a sense of shared community and con- cerns?

RS: One effort I make when addressing a smaller group of pol- icy makers is to share stories as a gesture of intimacy, making personal contact, specifically acknowledging moments in my teaching and administrative work where I had to engage in critical vigilance and see the residual impact of racism influ- encing my decision-making process.

bh: In the years since we first began talking together I have learned that when people feel directly threatened (as in “You are labeling me a racist or sexist”) they simply shut down or become crazily defensive. Like you, I rely on the sharing of per- sonal narratives to remind folks that we are all struggling to raise our consciousness and figure out the best action to take. Even so, we are not all committed to education as the practice

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of freedom. I’m sure you encounter many folks who don’t see freedom as connected in any way to education.

RS: While these folks can short-circuit genuine dialogue what does often happen is that they become less significant for their peers when more progressive voices speak clearly from the loca- tion of lived experience without a tone of moral or political supe- riority. This allows folks who usually hesitate before speaking or remain silent to begin to address their own prejudice or habitual reactions. They engage in critical dialogue. An example of this is the statement that “racism is over, they’ve had every opportunity given to them and still they are complaining.” People say, “Why should we spend more money on new resources for poor urban students when so much money has been sunk in, leveling the playing field, and yet the results do not reflect significant change?” I respond by calling attention to the many instances where students from middle- and upper-class communities receive additional resources directly from their own families (tutoring for academic skills, coaching for sports) in addition to receiving material resources (i.e., up-to-date computer programs and hardware) that give them a clear academic advantage. When I point out that students from privileged backgrounds are still predominantly white, it highlights the fact that race and class continue to play a major role in academic preparedness.

bh: Conservatives, though, like to point to the fact that black students from privileged backgrounds do more poorly on stan- dardized tests than poor white students. To them this proves that class is not a factor. In actuality they are assuming that class is solely about money and not about shared cultural expe- riences, common language. Certainly the language deployed in these tests is a direct reflection of racialized codes as much as class codes. A black middle-calss student may have the same material resources as a white middle-class student but operate within radically different cultural codes.

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RS: One aspect of my task as a progressive educator is to con- stantly delineate these differences and help folks understand that these things affect how and why students learn or not.

bh: What has most changed about your thinking in the last ten years as you have attempted to create greater awareness of the need for non-biased ways of knowing?

RS: The single most important realization has been the need to establish a genuine sense of community based on trust—in my teaching practice and in my administrative work—and not just expertise and knowledge. It’s a simple observation, but this does not diminish its vitality and power. Many professors and schoolteachers working with diverse populations are chal- lenged to recognize the importance of genuine commitment to the well-being and success of all students and not simply those deemed worthy because they come from privileged backgrounds. Teachers and professors cannot assume that because they hold valuable information that students need to know this will automatically lead to a feeling of community.

bh: Creating trust usually means finding out what it is we have in common as well as what separates us and makes us different. Lots of people fear encountering difference because they think that honestly naming it will lead to conflict. The truth is our denial of the reality of difference has created ongoing con- flict for everyone. We become more sane as we face reality and drop sentimental notions like “We are all just human, just the same,” and learn both to engage our differences, celebrating them when we can, and also rigorously confronting tensions as they arise. And it will always be vital, necessary for us to know that we are all more than our differences, that it is not just what we organically share that can connect us but what we come to have in common because we have done the work of creating community, the unity within diversity, that requires solidarity

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within a structure of values, beliefs, yearnings that are always beyond the body, yearnings that have to do with universal spirit.

RS: This is especially important for those of us who are com- mitted to education as a way to support genuine democratic process and social justice. Enabling students to think critically on their own allows them to resist injustice, to come together in solidarity, to realize the promise of democracy.

bh: In your recently published book Teaching Values you urge progressive educators to refuse to surrender the discourse of values to the Right and to make ourselves heard, naming the values that we embrace and that are essential to democratic process, to education as the practice of freedom.

RS: Values like generosity of spirit, courage, the willingness to reconsider long-standing beliefs.

bh: Which is what I call radical openness. Even though I dis- agreed with many of the arguments in the Closing of the American Mind, I loved the title because it strategically evoked the value of openness even as the book did not support open- minded thinking. The will to keep an open mind is the safe- guard against any form of doctrinaire thinking, whether com- ing from the Right or Left.

RS: The Right’s insistence that progressive education leads to cultural and moral relativism prevented genuine dialogue about the values which underlie democracy.

bh: One of the most powerful uses of mass media has been the false representation of progressive professors as the culprits shutting down debate on university campuses and in school districts, and not the forces of the Right closing the door to all

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ways of thinking that offer an alternative to dominator culture. And, yes, we know that there are individuals who critique dom- inator culture who are rigid in their thinking, but they are not more rigid than their conservative counterparts. Nor do they constitute a greater threat. Indeed, a student encountering a progressive educator who is doctrinaire is far more likely to be guided away from political correctness or any close-minded thinking by the different teaching voices they will learn about along the way. Whereas the Right, who are rigid, rarely include in their course outline a variety of material from a broad spec- trum of academic perspectives and political persuasions.

RS: This is why progressive educators, democratic educators, must be consistently vigilant about voicing hope and promise as well as opposition to those dominating forces that close off free speech and diminish the power of dialogue.

bh: Our dialogues together stimulate us. They lead us back to the drawing board and help us strengthen ideas. We have con- tinued to support each other as friends, as colleagues, crossing the boundaries of race, gender, and status. In these past ten years I have resigned a tenured position while you have solidi- fied your place in the academy. As our locations change, our dialogue also changes. I worry that you as an administrator will be sucked more and more into a conventional hierarchy that will change your language and cause you to speak from the very locations of privilege, race, and gender that you have so consistently critiqued.

RS: That’s a real and genuine consideration. But that’s part of the fun of having close comrades who challenge you and keep you honest about your position.

bh: You and I have together strengthened the bonds of per- sonal closeness and professional solidarity by always maintain-

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ing a space where we listen to one another when the other is raising critical questions, when we interrogate each other. Certainly on matters of race, I often bring to you the perspec- tive of someone who sees the world differently because of the different locations I am placed in that you, as a white male, will not be given access to.

RS: Again, I want to state that this is why the building of trust through a process of concrete action, along with cultivating the values of courage and civility, combined with commitment to community, is needed if we are to find unity within diversity. These are all essential qualities that must be cultivated when we seek to build friendship, partnership—inside the academy, in public schools (one of the last bastions of state-supported democracy), and in every setting where values are challenged and embraced.

bh: Can you talk about what you think and how you feel when I challenge you? Like the time you were talking to me in a manner that I felt evoked white male superiority and I told you “Ron, you are being too directive.” How does it feel when I criticize you? Most of the time you see yourself as the good guy, the guy who is out there busting his butt to work for jus- tice in everyday life and in the classroom. We both know that, but you can always assume a position that reinscribes white male privilege.

RS: Like the many people I challenge, I too feel the emotion, the embarrassment, and the anger when I feel accused of being a dominator, however gently that accusation is made, or how accurately. But then I have cultivated the ability to pause and critically consider my actions, to reflect. This is the critical practice that makes solidarity possible, not that we never make mistakes or ever rid ourselves of the fear of being racists or dominators, or of simply hurting others by our ignorance.

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bh: One of the most challenging moments of our intellectual intimacy and our friendship occurred when I was being filmed by my beloved friend and comrade Marlon Riggs for the film Black Is, Black Ain’t. I had invited you to come to the studio without thinking about race. Once true intimacy is formed across difference it is not that we forget our differences, but they in no way insert themselves as inequalities or unjust power levers that separate us so that we stop thinking about the sig- nificance of race or gender, at least when we are together. While I do not forget that you are a good-looking white man (this is a looks-oriented culture, from grade school on we know how much looks determine whether individuals will be treated justly, respectfully) this never means that you assert yourself as a dominator or that I accept your using white male privilege.

RS: That was a very emotional day. We both walked in and felt the intensity of his conflicting moods. Even though I was wel- comed, it was clear that I was being checked out.

bh: As part of your respect for the politics of race you had already stated that if your presence was in any way “disruptive” you would leave. Still, I realized that I needed to check it out with Marlon before I arrived at the studio with a straight white male. He was cool about it. Yet when we arrived it was clear that everyone else was black, that I was the only female and you the only white person, that gay and bi-sexual folks were in the majority. My being went on red alert. I knew this might be (as it was) my last time working with Marlon. He was sick and in the process of slowly dying, past that point where you know there is a chance of a miracle. The miracle was that he was so sick and yet working hard, so alive, yet already in the arms of death. This was a profoundly intimate moment.

RS: Being in that setting, I knew I had to be respectful of the whole mood. Most of the time white men allow themselves to

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deny awareness, to keep from sensing moods and being empathic. Feeling the mood, being open comes from a prac- tice of respect, a willingness to acknowledge up front that you may not and will not be automatically accepted everywhere you go. The practice of “pausing” is a practice of respect. It allows you to acknowledge and access other’s peoples feelings with- out violating that space with your insistence that you have a right to be there, or anywhere you want to be. By pausing, by demonstrating deference to those who may reject you, to give them the opportunity to be in doubt and to possibly reject you is one way to repudiate white male privilege, and one way to allow others to be in the position of the chooser, the authority.

bh: That’s such an important life lesson because often it is those white folks who want to hang in the space of blackness who are most freaked out if they are not allowed immediate, uninterrogated access. They are often the folks who are enraged if their desire to hang is denied, deferred, or if it sim- ply is not an appropriate moment for them to be present.

RS: This is why it’s important when we are challenging racism or any unjust hierarchy to accept moments of awkwardness, embarrassment, and maybe even rejection. To acknowledge that possibility without refusal, to accept the judgments of those deemed other. We are still wanting as white folks to be at the center even if we are in the minority.

bh: We learned that day how much our emotional awareness can serve as a force to bind us together in community and enable us to transcend difference. That day we were all bound together in a heavenly solidarity. It was such a moving experi- ence. Race, gender, sexual labels all those human constructs gave way to the emotional experience of creating art in the face of impending loss. You were present fully in the moment. Nothing about your whiteness separated you from us. The

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presence of death can do that. It can make us put everything in proper perspective.

RS: That feeling of community that reaches beyond bound- aries only happened because of the incredible generosity of everyone present. Trust was established at the onset when I showed by my behavior that I was not there to take over and was fully prepared to stay and be silent, to do whatever task assigned to me, or to leave. Instead, this experience of your sharing space, of heterosexuals being guided by the genius and creativity of gay black men, brought us closer together. Our friendship was shared and witnessed as we showed, by our interaction, that we can be together, critique whiteness, dis- mantle structures of privilege and let love that is rooted in part- nership be the tie that binds us.

bh: Our friendship, which has been fundamentally rooted in anti-racist activism, in sharing our vulnerabilities and our strengths always gives me hope. Just when I feel that the vast majority of white men are hopeless because of their stubborn refusal to work for justice and change, you share some story about your work, about the way you have conducted yourself in the world, that reminds me change is possible, that the strug- gle is ongoing.

RS: Your presence in my life these many years has provided support, direction, and love. If I could share what I have learned from my experience of bonding with an incredibly powerful intelligent feminist black woman, it would be that honest, just, and passionate engagement with difference, oth- erness, gives me the opportunity to live justly with love. Difference enhances life. This is not to be confused with shal- low notions of inclusiveness or experiencing diversity where one stands in the space of privilege, taking in and from those who are other. But rather where one is fundamentally

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moved—transformed utterly. The end result of this transfor- mation is mutuality, partnership, and community.

bh: Tragically, people have been told, especially since the tragic events of September 11, the lie that encountering difference will diminish their spirits rather than afford them the oppor- tunity to nurture spiritual and intellectual growth in new and varied ways. This dialogue is yet another occasion for us to bear witness, to be examples of solidarity between a white male and a black female that is abiding and life sustaining. Just as our relationship provides us with needed intimacy and love, we bear witness publicly to engender hope, to let readers know that genuine connection and community is possible.

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1

Selected for the Communication & Media Studies Collection™ from James W. Carey, Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society, Revised Edition, pp. 11–28. Copyright © 2009 Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business.

A Cultural Approach to Communication

By James W. Carey

I

W hen I decided some years ago to read seriously the literature of com- munications, a wise man suggested I begin with John Dewey. It was advice I have never regretted accepting. Although there are limitations to

Dewey—his literary style was described by William James as damnable—there is a depth to his work, a natural excess common to seminal minds, that offers permanent complexities, and paradoxes over which to puzzle—surely something absent from most of our literature.

Dewey opens an important chapter in Experience and Nature with the seemingly preposterous claim that “of all things communication is the most wonderful” (1939: 385). What could he have meant by that? If we interpret the sentence literally, it must be either false or mundane. Surely most of the news and entertainment we receive through the mass media are of the order that Thoreau predicted for the international telegraph: “the intelligence that Princess Adelaide had the whooping cough.” A daily visit with the New York Times is not quite so trivial, though it is an experience more depressing than wonderful. Moreover, most of one’s encounters with others are won- derful only in moments of excessive masochism. Dewey’s sentence, by any reasonable interpretation, is either false to everyday experience or simply mundane if he means only that on some occasions communication is satisfying and rewarding.

In another place Dewey offers an equally enigmatic comment on communication: “Society exists not only by transmission, by communication, but it may fairly be said

Communication & Media Studies Collection

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to exist in transmission, in communication” (Dewey, 1916: 5). What is the significance of the shift in prepositions?1 Is Dewey claiming that societies distribute information, to speak rather too anthropomorphically, and that by such transactions and the channels of communication peculiar to them society is made possible? That is certainly a reason- able claim, but we hardly need social scientists and philosophers to tell us so. It reminds me of Robert Nisbet’s acid remark that if you need sociologists to inform you whether or not you have a ruling class, you surely don’t. But if this transparent interpretation is rejected, are there any guarantees that after peeling away layers of semantic complexity anything more substantial will be revealed?

I think there are, for the body of Dewey’s work reveals a substantial rather than a pedestrian intelligence. Rather than quoting him ritualistically (for the lines I have cited regularly appear without comment or interpretation in the literature of com- munications), we would be better advised to untangle this underlying complexity for the light it might cast upon contemporary studies. I think this complexity derives from Dewey’s use of communication in two quite different senses. He understood better than most of us that communication has had two contrasting definitions in the history of Western thought, and he used the conflict between these definitions as a source of creative tension in his work. This same conflict led him, not surprisingly, into some of his characteristic errors. Rather than blissfully repeating his insights or unconsciously duplicating his errors, we might extend his thought by seizing upon the same contradiction he perceived in our use of the term “communication” and use it in turn as a device for vivifying our studies.

Two alternative conceptions of communication have been alive in American culture since this term entered common discourse in the nineteenth century. Both definitions derive, as with much in secular culture, from religious origins, though they refer to somewhat different regions of religious experience. We might label these descriptions, if only to provide handy pegs upon which to hang our thought, a transmission view of communication and a ritual view of communication.

The transmission view of communication is the commonest in our culture—perhaps in all industrial cultures—and dominates contemporary dictionary entries under the term. It is defined by terms such as “imparting,” “sending,” “transmitting,” or “giving information to others.” It is formed from a metaphor of geography or transportation. In the nineteenth century but to a lesser extent today, the movement of goods or people and the movement of information were seen as essentially identical processes and both were described by the common noun “communication.” The center of this idea of communication is the transmission of signals or messages over distance for the purpose of control. It is a view of communication that derives from one of the most ancient of human dreams: the desire to increase the speed and effect of messages as they travel in space. From the time upper and lower Egypt were unified under the First Dynasty down through the invention of the telegraph, transportation and communication were

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inseparably linked. Although messages might be centrally produced and controlled, through monopolization of writing or the rapid production of print, these messages, carried in the hands of a messenger or between the bindings of a book, still had to be distributed, if they were to have their desired effect, by rapid transportation. The telegraph ended the identity but did not destroy the metaphor. Our basic orientation to communication remains grounded, at the deepest roots of our thinking, in the idea of transmission: communication is a process whereby messages are transmitted and distributed in space for the control of distance and people.2

I said this view originated in religion, though the foregoing sentences seem more indebted to politics, economics, and technology. Nonetheless, the roots of the transmis- sion view of communication, in our culture at least, lie in essentially religious attitudes. I can illustrate this by a devious though, in detail, inadequate path.

In its modern dress the transmission view of communication arises, as the Oxford English Dictionary will attest, at the onset of the age of exploration and discovery. We have been reminded rather too often that the motives behind this vast movement in space were political and mercantilistic. Certainly those motives were present, but their importance should not obscure the equally compelling fact that a major motive behind this mo

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