Undoing Whiteness in the Classroom does a highly effective job of highlighting not only the challenges of teaching an almost exclusively white student body but also methods for assisting students in offsetting their whiteness from their centered viewpoints. Some of these students seem to live in a very culturally isolated world, which I think is not uncommon for middle America. But trying to open their minds to other viewpoints, belief systems, or media perceptions seems to be the real challenge.
One of Kroll’s techniques is to show varying viewpoints through different medias. She shows a documentary film interviewing men of different races, helps students break down the lyrics of rap music, has them read a non-fiction account of an African American sent to prison, and even presents fine art from a historical time in South African history. Her strong suit is not keeping viewpoints to one media source or even outdated media sources. By utilizing media that make the students feel a level of familiarity, like music, she is able to show students the reality of these viewpoints. Often students think racism is absent if they only see it through the lens of outdated media sources, for example, newspapers. She keeps her sources contemporary so students see these people are living with these issues right now in our society, not in some far away time and place.
By giving the reader specific techniques to use in the classroom she allows us to take the first step to presenting multiculturalism in our modern world. Just showing videos and reading books with students can’t be our only plan of attack. We need to know the words to say when we encounter these issues, we need to know how to say those words so students really hear what we’re trying to get across to them. Only by taking this multi-pronged method can we begin to open their minds to new ideas that aren’t centered in their perceptions.
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