When I saw that my company was holding a few diversity and inclusion events, I got excited. I chose one called “Courageous Conversations” and spent the hour getting a taste of my own teacher medicine—being forced to talk to strangers in breakout rooms. We discussed how important and yet invisible our differences are and how to approach insensitive comments with curiosity rather than judgement. I clicked out of the Zoom call feeling unsatisfied. 

In a sense, they are right to talk about differences. In teaching in an online classroom that spans the state of Michigan, I’ve had times where my students’ cultural experiences have butted heads. I had two angry parents during the first week because I talked about white privilege. After mentioning non-binary as a gender option, I had one student say, “That’s weird,” and another counter, “I’m a part of the LGBTQ+ community, and I’m offended by you saying that.” One pair of students defended their decision to ask “Do you agree that African American children should go to school?” on a Black Lives Matter survey by insisting that, no, Ms. Johnson, there are people who disagree with that statement. I had another student write to me that the survey must have been written by a white male because who else would ask a question like that (I’m 90% sure the pair were both students of color). 

Yet, I’ve grown frustrated with the safe and palatable emphasis on difference and the refusal to equip teachers on how to broach hot-button topics. In my school’s own diversity and inclusion team, we’ve been holding events for students to talk to each other, built off of things like picture books and slides of young women activists. When I asked about the point of these events, the answer I got was, “We’re letting students connect with each other and see their differences!”

I’ll take “How to Make White Teachers Feel Good About Doing The Work and Still Avoid Actually Having Difficult Conversations” for 100, [Jeopardy host].

In my classroom, I want to talk about AI-trained systems—how their training data can be marred by racial and gender bias. I want my students to be able to compare articles and spot fake news; I don’t want to be accused of spreading the liberal agenda because all the fake news I can find skews conservative. And I want to bring up these topics well in a way that doesn’t cause harm to my minoritized students and that dismantles the automatic “well that’s politics and you shouldn’t talk about politics in x class” argument. Where are students going to learn how to talk to others if we aren’t courageous enough to teach them these difficult conversations inside the classroom?

To be completely transparent here, I’m frustrated with these initiatives because they feel as half-baked as me. When I sat down to generate ideas for this post, the first thing I wrote was the first thing I always think of: I feel like I just keep taking up space on this blog.

I don’t know how to reconcile that I believe I should teach all the concepts I listed above and that I’ve stayed silent in my classroom out of fear. I don’t know how to hold my public proclamations of wokeness alongside the fact that I occupy this space every month and choose not to talk about nearly anything of importance. I wish every month I could just write a version of Jennifer Holberg’s post “This Space Intentionally Left Blank.” I’m not sure this white guilt is even worth naming if I’m not going to do anything about it.

And what am I to do? Continue to write as if systems are not failing my students? My friends? Decenter myself more in my writing? Console myself that all this performative posturing on the internet doesn’t actually mean anything and I should just spend my summer reexamining my values in the classroom through Gholdy Muhammad’s Cultivating Genius?

In my heart of hearts, I know that I do not live up to my own standards. I am not cut out to be the writer people turn to for conversations of equity and dismantling unjust systems; there are much wiser people to listen to. I write to make sense of my life, and a part of my white privilege is that my life isn’t a controversial topic.

I want to end this essay reassuring you that I am still a Good White Person™, that I’m going to find the courage to have these conversations offline, if not online. And maybe I will. But your time will be better spent reading these educators who are actually putting their money where their mouth is.

Alex Johnson

Alex Johnson (‘19) is a high school English teacher in Massachusetts. She spends her days being an uncool adult who enjoys reading romance novels and explaining niche rhythm game strategies.