Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:00]:

Today on episode number 552 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, teaching about race and racism in the college classroom with Cyndi Kernahan.

Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential.Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak, and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches, so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students. Today, I am joined by the author of Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom: Notes from a White Professor. Cyndi Kernahan is a professor of psychological sciences and director of the Center For Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls. A social psychologist, Cyndi’s expertise is in the psychology of prejudice and racism.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:16]:

Her scholarly work is focused on teaching and learning about racism and prejudice and how racial bias and prejudice influence student learning and student success. Cyndi loves teaching, riding, biking, and talking to other people about what they teach and why. Cyndi Kernahan, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:01:38]:

Thanks Thanks so much for having me.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:40]:

I would say that I’m excited about this topic. I’m excited to talk to you. Mhmm. I am a little nervous about this topic. This is a really hard topic to enter into, so we’re gonna start going back in time. Could you take us to an early memory that you have, Cyndi, about what might have been a spark for getting you interested about studying the psychology of prejudice and racism?

Cyndi Kernahan [00:02:06]:

Yeah. Absolutely. That’s a fun question to answer. So the first thing that pops to mind, I was born and raised in Oklahoma City, and I went to Oklahoma City Public Schools. And I was lucky enough to go to school at a time when the schools were relatively integrated. They were more integrated then than they are now certainly. And when I was in my gosh. I I think it was 1st grade.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:02:28]:

I remember distinctly having an argument with a little girl who was sitting next me at the, you know, the nice little horseshoe tables that you sit at, you know, and the teachers in the middle. And I remember really well, it was, I think, I do, having this conversation with this this other little girl, and we were fighting about the race of God. I don’t know how on earth we got into this heavy stuff for 6 year olds. Yeah. But somehow we were having this fight. We both went to church and she was talking about her church and God was black. She was a black little girl and she was saying God was black, and I was saying, no. No.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:03:03]:

I’ve seen God at church. God’s white, and we’re going back and forth. And the the teacher was amazing. The teacher was like, you know, God really isn’t any race, but God might move around depending on it might switch races. And I thought it was, like, such a nice, interesting like, I I can’t believe how smooth this teacher must have been. I look back on it now, and I remember, like, going home and talking to my mom about this. And so I think from a really early age because you know, probably because of those school experiences where I was I was exposed to a lot of different racial groups as a white person, I just was always really fascinated by it. I was fascinated by the way in which my classmates had a much longer bus ride than I did.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:03:46]:

Now as an adult understanding race the way that I do, I know why that is and how unfair the busing systems were, how far my black classmates had to travel to get to the same schools that I went to. So, you know, all of those experiences and that’s the first one I remember in 1st grade. I think all of those really informed my thinking and just really wanting to understand why it is that we have the systems that we do and eventually understanding all the prejudices and biases that I hold and where those came from and and how deeply rooted they are and then trying to understand how to dismantle them.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:04:23]:

I’m gonna share an early memory of mine, and then I’m gonna invite you, Cyndi, to talk to younger me and give some advice on how my thinking was wrong at the time. I’m well aware now that it was wrong, but we’ll go back we’ll go back to younger people.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:04:40]:

Of those too. Yeah.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:04:41]:

But I wasn’t aware. So if you would have come to visit me in my college days I went to college during traditional ages at the time, 18 to 22, and you would have seen posters on my dorm room that were Martin Luther King Junior and John f Kennedy. And I would have told you at the time that I did not see race. I would have shared stories, memories that I had of my mother when she would be referring to other kids, maybe, you know, playing on the soccer team or whatever. There would be the the kid over there in the blue shirt, and that I I think I took probably what I wish wish wasn’t great pride, but probably, like, look how amazing I am because I don’t see race. So, could you gently help younger me see that perhaps I did see race without actually admitting it to to myself? Could you break that down a little bit for us?

Cyndi Kernahan [00:05:34]:

Sure. I mean, it it makes a lot of sense that you would hold those beliefs, right, because color blindness is the dominant ethos. There’s a lot of research on how, you know, we we should acknowledge we’re 2 white people talking about this. Like, there’s a lot of work that shows that white families predominantly, this is what we teach our children, to be color blind. That that is the the right way, the correct way to be. We ignore a lot, especially of the structural and systemic disparities that exist. And so it makes a lot of sense that you would have held that belief and that you would have held that up as, like, look at me. I’m so great that I’m color blind.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:06:10]:

I certainly said those things too, because that’s held up as the way to be. Of course, obviously, that’s impossible. I mean, there’s so many reasons why. I mean, our entire society is structured in a way that advantages white people above people of color. And, you know, in any metric that you want to look at, and that’s that’s a hard thing to come to terms with. I mean, that’s why it’s so hard to teach and talk about, and it’s so contentious in the way that people want it to be taught or not taught. And so it makes sense that you would have those beliefs, and it also it makes sense that it’s important to sort of try to pull that apart as much as possible because we we are gonna absorb all that and we’re gonna we’re gonna recognize and hold those biases. We, of course, would now call them implicit biases, implicit associations.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:06:57]:

Right? That has a long history of research, but at the time, we didn’t we didn’t talk so much about that. And still even still, like, there’s still research. Like, most white families still talk about their talk about it in that way.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:07:10]:

I in a interview that I did with Betsy Berry, we were talking some a little bit about how we approach teaching more difficult topics, and the idea that you just brought up implicit biases and implicit associations.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:07:28]:

Mhmm.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:07:28]:

In my sense, and, obviously, you and I are in quite different context, so this may be different for you, but I feel like we can, today, somewhat safely say those things, but I’m even you know, as I prepare to teach a class in which I do talk it’s a business ethics class, and so I do talk about bias and discrimination. I do a little bit on the law. It’s not a law class, but, you know, to try to sometimes sometimes laws are built around values. You know, that that kind of that’s kind of the approach that I use, but I have had a whole lesson talking about what are microaggressions, for example, and now I’m kind of thinking I mean, I feel like every time I teach the class, I’m always rethinking, how do I wanna approach it? How can I bring people into the conversations? Because if I use words that are contentious too early Mhmm. They just know that they’ve heard those words and that they’re bad words, but there’s not, like, we’re already arguing with each other without even I’m I’m maybe exaggerating because I think we’re only arguing with each other in my imagination because I actually haven’t ran into a lot of the challenges that I fear I might run into.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:08:34]:

Mhmm.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:08:34]:

But I so I’m wondering before we start talking more about some of the misunderstandings, if you have thoughts around words like or phrases like implicit biases and implicit associations in your teaching and in your work, do you go straight in, or do you kinda have a little avenue to to try to watch out for or otherwise address what could potentially be words in which are are very, might trigger some sort of, like, extreme Mhmm. Disagreement early on?

Cyndi Kernahan [00:09:04]:

Yeah. I think I’m I’m lucky in that as a psychologist, social psychologist, these are all my fields. And so I I feel like I can talk about them. I usually make some jokes about the fact that, like, with implicit bias, that that science has been around since I was in graduate school, like, the mid nineties. So, like, that it’s been around a long time, but it’s like it just got discovered by normal people, like, a few years ago. And it was actually in, the presidential or vice presidential debate, I think, in 2016. And I remember when that happened, and I was like, oh my gosh. Here’s this this concept for my field that’s in and that’s when it became more contentious.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:09:43]:

And so I like to make jokes with students about, like, okay. So here’s this term, and and it was in it was great when it was in the debate, but, boy, they didn’t really talk about it correctly. And so I sort of make this joke, and I try to point out as much as I can, like, how there’s sort of the way that we as scientists or social scientists would talk about this, and then there’s the larger public understanding. And that’s true across all fields. Right? Like, as academics, like, we have very particular ways of defining and thinking about things which are when they’re taken up by a larger audience or not. So I try to point that out as much as possible to try to get at the fact that when people hear this, they’re adding stuff onto it. But let’s look at the science, and let’s look at what the actual definition is. So when I come at those terms a lot, even things like diversity, like, I was I was teaching I think this was back in the spring last year, and I I put a bunch of headlines up to show them, like, diversity, equity, inclusion.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:10:38]:

And then, like, let’s look at, like, how we and the social sciences would actually define these and what they mean. And I think that sort of gets at that that on that discomfort that people might have around the projections that we add to them. So I try to just sort of point that out.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:10:53]:

Yeah. And I’m this is echoing back to that conversation with Betsy that

Cyndi Kernahan [00:10:58]:

Mhmm. It

Bonni Stachowiak [00:10:58]:

it’s starting to seem to me that we kinda can’t go wrong if we come back to it. I’m hearing 2 things from you, Cyndi. 1 is we’re coming back to it from a disciplinary lens.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:11:09]:

Yeah.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:11:10]:

And in a discipline, there might be wide disagreement, but that would be important to talk about anyway. You know? I’m thinking about that right now when if I I was thinking in the business ethics class, if I put up headlines, it very it feels like very much that it would have been safer in recent history to have things that would be like, look at this wonderful diversity, equity, and inclusion, and now we’re starting to see more companies that are moving away from that. And, also, I talked about this with Betsy, professional associations that are moving away from that.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:11:47]:

Mhmm.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:11:47]:

I’m not personally happy about that, but that’s still a conversation that we could have

Cyndi Kernahan [00:11:52]:

Mhmm.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:11:52]:

Where companies see these things differently. And you might see a professional organization and that then, but that that that idea of talking about it from a disciplinary lens. The second thing that I am hearing from you is how much, you didn’t say the word safe, but but it felt safer to me when you have a longer period of time that these things have been talked about. It’s doubtful to me that your students are gonna be like, how dare you say that happened in the mid nineties? I was there. Like, you know, and so I yeah. And I like that you kind of approach it with some humor too. I was as soon as you said the mid nineties, I could picture, like, okay. Let’s play some music that was playing in the mid nineties.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:12:32]:

You know what else was happening?

Cyndi Kernahan [00:12:34]:

History for them. Yeah.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:12:36]:

Yeah. But to, you know, humanize yourself and humanize the topic, that could be kind of fun. So that’s really helpful.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:12:42]:

Super important to be a normal person with them and to be, like, I make fun of myself so much. And I I mean, it’s I think it’s really helpful for them to because at the key of all of this when I think when we’re teaching and talking about this is that they have you would really need a lot of trust. You need a lot of trust. You need a good community, and so you really have to try to build in as much of those moments as possible, particularly for things like this that are so can be so heavy and can be so hard. Like, I mean, just today, when I was teaching, I was like, wow. I’m I’m just bumming you all out. Like, I know that I am. You know, what we were talking about today related to racism.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:13:21]:

And so I say that a lot, and I I try to, like, keep those moments in there so that we have it as as much positive aspect to sort of work with all the the difficulty that we have too. I really learned a lot from Sarah Cavanaugh’s I think her first book, right, The Spark of Learning. It’s so excellent, and I go back to it so much about pulling in as much positive emotion as possible and how to do that.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:13:44]:

Oh, I love that. So we’re gonna be looking at some of the misunderstandings and mistakes that we make when attempting to teach about race. But before we do, share with us some of the longer term effects of learning about racism, which may help root us a bit in when we inevitably make mistakes or when we have misunderstandings that we’re not able to reconcile. Like, why is it worth it to go through the discomfort and to take some of the risks that we’re gonna be expected to take when we do this?

Cyndi Kernahan [00:14:16]:

Yeah. It’s a good question. I mean, I think the research on it, at least that I’ve done and some others that I’ve seen are positive as far as the outcomes for this. I mean, take learning about race and racism is not the panacea. I mean, education is not enough alone. And I think too many people assume that that’s true. But if you look at the way if you look at the way courses on race and racism affect students, what you find is that there are a number of positive outcomes. One study I did looked at, like, race the shifting of racial attitudes over the course from the beginning of the end of the semester and then a year later.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:14:52]:

And what we found is that, you know, over the course of the semester, I found this over and over again, students begin to better understand institutionalized racism, which is my main goal for them, and also to understand white racial privilege. And so they they grow in their understanding of that. You know, they they end up feeling more confident talking about it with other people, which I think is a really also a good outcome. And then if you look at them a year later, they don’t revert back. And so you don’t see what you see is very similar to what you see at the very end of the semester a year later even. The those attitudes have have shifted and they sort of stay shifted. And I think that’s important and I’ve certainly, like all of us, I think I’ve gotten this wonderful emails from students years later about how it affected them. And I’ve gotten many of those emails from students who are now working in hospitals or schools that talk about, like, they remember what we talked about with respect to race and racism and how it’s very institutionalized and rooted in policies and the things that they tried to do differently with that in mind.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:15:52]:

And that’s always that’s the best thing in the world for me to hear because that bears out what the research shows, particularly when you teach about race racism in the way that you should teach about it, I think, as a systemic phenomenon in addition to an individual, but primarily, it’s very important to focus on systems. When students understand that, I think it really helps them make sense of the world better, and I think that’s why you see those shifts in attitudes.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:16:16]:

Let’s then shift our focus on some of those misunderstandings and some of the mistakes that we make. And why don’t we start with this focusing on this as an individual effort? Yeah. And then I’m interested in you continuing what you were saying, and then also how can we help to make those shifts? I I imagine that’s not just something that you just have to ask one extra question to to shift our own mindset, let alone those we might be facilitating learning for to start to shift that thinking over to the more systemic.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:16:49]:

Yeah. Like, a couple of thoughts. I mean, one, I think it’s very easy and it’s definitely sort of the American ethos to talk about racism as, like, as Peggy McIntosh said years years ago, like, individual acts of meanness. Like, that that’s the way that we’re very, you know, socialized to think about it. I I should like, even now. I hate saying even now because it doesn’t just shift over time. But I noticed post, like, the George Floyd protest, the protest in response to his murder, like, there was a lot of people using the word systemic racism, but still talking about it as an individual thing. Like, this individual person is behaving mean towards this individual person.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:17:30]:

And that’s such a it’s a trap for a couple of reasons. I mean, one, it’s not it’s not fully accurate as to what racism is. It doesn’t help us really understand the large disparities that we see in things like wealth and income and employment and housing and all the things are so consequential to people’s lives, you know, and why people have different life outcomes as a result of race. And so it’s really important to talk about it as a system. I think the other reason it’s a mistake to only talk about it as an individual phenomenon is because when you do that, you set it up especially for white people as, like, okay. Well, I’m a good person because I’m not individually racist. I’m not individually biased. Setting aside the implicit stuff and the stuff that’s very deeply rooted.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:18:15]:

Again, I go back to my school experience. Like, all that stuff, even setting that aside, it turns into this question of personal morality. You know? And so, like, if I just confess and acknowledge that I have privilege and acknowledge that, you know, I had this individual bias, but now I’m trying to be better than great. You know? And it’s just not that it’s it’s a trap for students, I think, because when we focus on it as systemic, it allows them to stop focusing so much on themselves about, like, am I a good person or am I a bad person? And what if I laugh at someone’s racist joke or or I don’t speak up when that racist joke is made? Like, then I’m a bad person. And so then you see a lot of, like, just wanting to get away from it and not engage with it at all. You know, withdrawal, basically. That’s one of the responses that you can, one of the types of resistance you can see to this sort of teaching. But when I talk about it as a system for white students, I think it’s very useful because it helps to depersonalize it because it’s it’s it is about whiteness and white people, but it’s also about the collective.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:19:14]:

I think also for students of color, talking about it in terms of systems is also very useful for the same reason. It depersonalizes it, makes it less about it helps people to make sense of their lives, like the daily discrimination, the things that are faced by students of color. It’s like, oh, that’s part of these larger policies. Not surprisingly, research also shows that students of color, especially black students, have an easier time understanding that concept because they have so much personal day to day experience with it. But they may not have always, it depends on the student, have the language for it. And so by giving the language of systemic racism and really talking about what it actually means, I think we just we help everybody to to better understand it, to be more accurate, and to be more effective and likely to stay engaged with it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:20:01]:

Another thing that has come up in my feeble attempts to integrate this into some of my teaching is very similar to what you were just talking about where just not really an understanding of what something like a disproportionate negative outcome might look like. And so I’m hearing you say that I’m I’ve been on the right track to teach. What what does the word disproportionate mean?

Cyndi Kernahan [00:20:26]:

Yes. It’s incredibly important. So

Bonni Stachowiak [00:20:28]:

As you were sharing that, I was thinking back to an episode that I did back on, and I’ll link to this in the show notes, on episode 539 with Teresa Thompson. She was talking about she did a a take on what she learned about and I learned about from Peter Newberry. I’m like, I feel like I’m doing a play within a play within a play here. And that’s when students are coming into the class. Peter Newberry would have a image of something related to astronomy and ask students, what do you notice? What do you wonder? And so in her field of accounting, Teresa would instead have a phenomenon of, is it a particular company that just got a huge boost in their stock price for some reason, but doesn’t actually list the headline of what it is they’re looking at? Or is it the Nasdaq as a whole? Or is it something not a financial chart? And without the details, she would ask them the same thing. What do you notice? What do you wonder? And try to get them to predict what accounting or financial phenomenon was being displayed. And so I was kind of thinking about that probably I could use I’ve been experimenting a little bit with some new AI tools that will create easily some graphs and charts of phenomenons, and it might be interesting to show disproportionate negative outcomes and let them kind of guess what some of those variable variables are as a as a way of bringing them into the conversation instead of what I’m hearing you say is just, like, the shame. You know, moving it from the individual to the systemic, but also to do it in a way of maybe heightening some curiosity and and coming at it that way.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:22:12]:

Do you have other thoughts about how to help us shift to that systemic thinking that we need so much?

Cyndi Kernahan [00:22:20]:

I think it’s important to remember that it that it takes time. You know? And and students often, particularly white students, can be resistant to learning this. And so understanding that students are resistant, where that resistance comes from, the fact that, as I said earlier, white students don’t tend to get a lot of this in their families. Like, the the discussions are not often around race and racism, and so often it’s just not discussed at all. And so it it it it makes sense that racial literacy is very low. And so I think when you’re coming into this, you just have to know that it’s gonna take a bit for them to start to get that. But as you continue to point out with very specific examples, like, here’s a policy that then or a law that creates, you know, it’s it doesn’t seem on its face like a a racist policy, let’s say. But let’s look at these disparities that it ends up creating and what does that do.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:23:11]:

And there’s so many examples. I mean, I I think that whatever field you’re in as a person, you can find those. Like, you can find those policies or laws or norms or whatever they are that have created these disparities. Sometimes you can look back historically within your field and find those, and I I think that can be a good way to get in that. Like, here’s this disparity that we see in, like, publishing or sports or whatever it is, that you wanna use through your disciplinary lens. And then how did we get that? And so then tracing it to, like, what is the law or policy that people wrote that is, again, on its face, not is this supposed to doesn’t seem discriminatory, but here’s why it creates this. I’ve done this with so many different we just did this in in one of my courses on taxes and the research that shows that that black people are audited much more frequently. And why is that? And I had them read a thing, and we we looked into that.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:24:05]:

So, I mean, there’s a lot of ways to come at this.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:24:08]:

Oh, that’s so good. So a few other examples of both through your research and your collaboration with other faculty that come to mind in other disciplines where you’re not literally teaching a class about race, but how you might be able to bring it in to maybe some unexpected disciplines or any other ideas coming to mind for you there?

Cyndi Kernahan [00:24:28]:

Yeah. For sure. Like, I mean, I know I’ve talked to my friends who not on my campus, but other campuses who are nursing faculty, and there’s just so many health things that you can talk about this. So, like, the I don’t wanna mess this word up, but it’s like the EGFR test for kidney function. There’s been a lot of recent headlines on this about having different numbers for, you know, one set of numbers for black patients, one set of numbers for white patients. And so then what you end up doing is creating a situation where black people are less likely to get kidney treatment in the ways that they should and you know? So there’s all sorts of things like that in the health field that you can use. Oh gosh. The tax one.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:25:07]:

There’s a lot of stuff in sports.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:25:09]:

You might have given a couple examples on sports since I’m a sports expert.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:25:13]:

Oh, gosh. There’s well, there was there’s been a lot of work that’s looked at. So this is a a journalistic report, but the Washington Post did this excellent series. I think it was last year or the year before that looked at NFL coaches and the Rooney Rule. So the Rooney Rule said that, like, if you were interviewing for the head coach position, you had to you had to interview at least 1 person of color. I’m pretty sure that’s what the Rooney Rule is, but it’s been a total failure. And so you don’t see at all parity in terms of, like, ad coaching positions, and it’s it’s the same research you see in all other sectors of employment where black people in particular are given shorter tenures. They’re given less room in terms of, like, making mistakes and more likely to be fired more quickly, etcetera, you know, less likely to be hired overall.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:25:57]:

So there’s all this. So that students tend to like that. We can sort of talk about, like, okay, how this policy that’s supposed to help didn’t. What are the other things, policies, norms, of the ways that coaches get hired that lead to these huge disparities that you see? So that’s the one that pops in my mind because I just used that actually a couple months ago.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:26:18]:

Alright. We don’t want to leave this conversation, and have missed a huge thing. What guidance do you have specifically for white people as it comes to our role in teaching about race?

Cyndi Kernahan [00:26:34]:

Well, I think for white people, if you’re teaching about race, what’s really important to remember is just how much privilege you hold in doing it. I mean, I can remember when I first started teaching a long time ago that people would say to me, oh, it must be so hard for you to teach about racism because I’m sure students assume you don’t know anything. And it’s like, no. That’s not that’s it’s exactly the opposite. Because when you look at well, just if you talk to people, which I certainly have done, but also if you look at the research on people’s experiences, instructors of color are much more likely to have their credibility challenged. They’re seen as being personally self interested. They’re much less likely to be believed or taken seriously by students, which is one of the reasons why I think a lot of white people should teach about racism. I mean, sometimes I think about it like this, like, racism and white supremacy are largely in a in a US context, especially, like, a white people problem.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:27:31]:

Like, we should be teaching about it. And we’re given a lot of, I think, credibility to do so in a way that instructors of color are different and it’s much more it’s much it requires much more emotional labor on the part of instructors of color. So I think it’s good to keep in mind, like, just how much privilege we hold in doing that. And also, like, when we have colleagues, and research has also shown that disproportionately people of color are tasked with doing this teaching. We we I think we should we should make some allowances for that. I mean, I I first of all, we shouldn’t ask people, the same people to do it all the time because of how much work it takes. But also, like, take those teaching eval with a grain of salt just like we do for people who are teaching statistics, for example, in my field. It’s like, well, stats, of course, students might not like it as much.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:28:17]:

We need to do the same thing with topics like this and be understanding as colleagues about how contextual this is and how different it is. And I think also just being careful as a white person to be clear. I’m always clear with my students. Like, I’m very intellectually knowledgeable about this. I’ve read a lot about racism. I know a lot about why it happens and how it works, but I don’t have the daily lived experience of experiencing race racist discrimination. I don’t. And I say that to all of my students.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:28:46]:

And and I also say, like, if you are a student of color, you do not have to share what you don’t wanna share. You’re not representative of your race. Like, I I kind of send this out in a in a message to the entire class to just kind of make sure everybody knows. Like, I know there’s a difference between the daily lived experience and then what I know as someone who is a scholar of these things. I try to make that distinction.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:29:11]:

In that last thing that you just said, and and we’ll have this as the last part before we get to the recommendations segment. Mhmm. I started to discern a cadence from what you just shared. So you’re sending out emails. You’re you’re preparing, trying to get that fertile soil up there. Would you describe a little bit about your cadence in terms of what you might do before having some of these perhaps more difficult dialogue? And then Yeah. Maybe what comes after? And I don’t wanna be as over simplistic as before, during, and after, but is there anything coming to mind for you for advice that way?

Cyndi Kernahan [00:29:47]:

I just it’s so important to set up trust and community to try to find as many points of connection with students as possible. I mean, I have a lot of stuff that I do in the 1st days around, like, getting to know them. I just thought of the good inclusive teaching advice that, you know, that you can you can find particularly in and Kelly Hogan’s work, you know, their great work on inclusive teaching. But a lot of people have written Brian Dewsberry’s talked about this, Tracy Addie. Like, really trying to do those things where you’re connecting with students as much as possible. They feel that they can trust you. That’s very important. So I I try to that, you know, we’re gonna have some positivity that I’m gonna try to be authentic and real with them.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:30:26]:

Like I said, I’m self deprecating. So I try to do all of those things as a as a way to set up. I bring snacks. I think that helps. Like, you know, if you can do that, that’s a nice thing to do. So those sorts of things where they I want them to feel like they can trust. I’m I’m very picky about the course structure I want it. You know, if I say I’m gonna do something, I do it.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:30:46]:

All those things really matter to me because I know that that’s gonna help them to trust me when I have to talk about the bigger things. And I try to be that way all through it. Like I said, emotional labor. And I’m a white person teaching this, so it’s easier for me. But but I think these courses require a lot of really being tuned in and as connected as possible to the feelings in the room and and trying to think about that as you’re doing the work.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:10]:

Alright. I can’t resist. I said that was my last question, but now I’m so curious. Well, you keep talking about, you know, being your your identity as a white person. I’m curious how much you talk about intersectional identity in your teaching and then the extent to which then you you bring in your intersectional identity into those conversations.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:31:28]:

I don’t always bring my own in. I I try not to use myself as an example too much, but, yes, on the intersectionality, that is super key because there’s a lot of psych research that shows that it’s easier for people to think about their own social privilege when they can also think about other parts of their identity that may not hold as much privilege. I mean, it’s just a it’s just a a common finding and there’s some problems with that. Right? Like, if I talk to you about white privilege and you start thought and if someone says that to me and I start talking about, yeah, but I’m a I’m a woman and I experience sexism. Like, I’m trying to deflect. Like, so that’s a that that’s a problem as people try to distance themselves. But it also can be useful in the classroom and helping people open up a little bit to accept. So there’s some work that shows that, like, as people can reflect on the spaces in their identity where they don’t hold privilege, class, gender, whatever it is, they become more open to understanding their racial privilege.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:32:25]:

And so I try to use that intentionally in class because I think I talk a lot about how we’re a collection of identities and some of those parts of your identity are gonna provide advantage. Some of them are gonna provide disadvantage depending on the context. And I think just helping them think about different context and different parts of ourselves that are important or or less at different points. I think that helps them to not feel again, especially white students to not feel like it’s all about white privilege and you’re, you know, this is attacking to me personally and all of that. Like, it helps to get around that.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:32:58]:

So much of what you’re saying reminds me of reading Tressie McMillan Cottom’s work and because it it was actually the opposite of what you were saying where she has admonished us that when you’re looking at health disparities, for example, and you’re looking at it only on gender Mhmm. You’re really only looking at it on white women. And then

Cyndi Kernahan [00:33:18]:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:33:19]:

How vital in that type of research it is to have the intersectional lenses to see those disparities more clearly.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:33:26]:

Yeah. And I we we talk about that too. Like, I definitely bring those things up. And so in that case, obviously, that’s a double disadvantage. And so we and and I talked to them about, like, why the the concept of intersectionality, what came to be in the first place because you have both of these I mean, it’s not an accident that Kimberly Crenshaw is the person who coined all of this. Like, look at black woman scholar talking about this because there are these multiple avenues. And so I’m just, you know and as far as teaching goes, if a student has a vector a lot of their identity which provides them with some advantage and one that provides some disadvantage, I think that helps them to move between them. So I think for teaching that can be useful.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:34:09]:

But certainly, for for lots of people, like, there’s not going to be necessarily lots of advantage. It just really depends.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:34:17]:

And tell me a little bit more about leaving yourself out of it, yet you’re also in it and using your humor and the things that you enjoy, you know, to to bring people into the conversation. So why is it important for you to leave yourself out of more of the examples?

Cyndi Kernahan [00:34:33]:

Just the examples around I I don’t know that I would talk about like, I’ve I’ve talked about when I’ve made mistakes. So there is a place where I do use Mhmm. Examples of myself. I like to model the fact that I have said the wrong words. I have certainly said boneheaded things. I mean, my first great example is, like, exhibit a. Right? So, like, I definitely talk about those things as a way to model that. What I don’t think I would do is talk about, like, experiences of sexism or ageism.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:35:05]:

I I don’t know. I just feel a little uncomfortable covering those sorts of things, but I maybe it’s just my natural way of being as more self deprecating anyway. But I do think it’s useful to model those mistakes as a way, particularly for white students. So I’m just always very aware that I have a lot of power as their professor, but also as a white person given my position. And so I don’t ever want to say things that are like, oh, poor me. I’ve experienced these things. I just don’t I feel very uncomfortable about that. So maybe that’s more what I meant.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:37]:

And I’m thinking perhaps it would change if you were teaching a class called sexism or a class called ageism. But since you’re teaching about race, then you don’t wanna be in a position where you’re going, I know exactly how you feel because no. No. No. No. No.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:35:51]:

Because I don’t. Yeah. I definitely definitely don’t. And so, yeah, that’s that’s probably where that comes from for sure.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:57]:

Yeah. Well, I don’t want this conversation to end. But I’m gonna I know. I wanna take us over to the recommendations. And my recommendations have nothing to do with what we’ve been talking about. Actually, the I could find ways to connect them, but I won’t. I have 3 television shows that I wanna recommend. So the first one is a drama kind of spy sort of, and it’s it’s on the, streaming service called Apple TV plus, and it is called Slow Horses.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:36:27]:

And I had heard about this forever and ever and thought, well, those aren’t exactly, you know, my kinds of shows or whatever. I really need to stop telling myself because it’s just it’s just good. It’s really, really good, and it I like one of the things I like about it, the acting is exceptional, the directing is exceptional, and I like when characters are complicated. So there’s it’s very complicated as to there’s no such thing as the good guy and the bad guy and everything. It’s it’s just Always good. Really rich, rich, deep characters. The second one is an entirely different universe, so my daughters particularly likes to watch We we watched, like, all the seasons of the kids’ baking championship, and we have gone through all of them. And so we were very excited about a new show that came out called Harry Potter Wizards of Baking.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:37:16]:

When I watched the preview, I didn’t think I was going to like it because it seemed that it was so over the top. Because it to me, I’m like, well, at some point, if you’re never gonna eat these things, you’re like, okay. Well, I was so wrong. I will just I’m not gonna spoil anything other than to say I love the imaginative capacity of these bakers. One quick example is they build this scene to one of the teams builds a scene of something in Harry Potter, and it involves glasses, and I I forget what they’re called in the books, but because it’s been way too long since I read them. But you could literally take the glasses off of the cake, and they became a like a decoder ring, but instead of a decoder ring, it was like a decoder glasses. And the side of the cake, if you held the glasses up, would reveal the code, and I just thought, oh my gosh. I love the unexpected they all have some sort of unexpected element, and so it’s so, so much fun.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:38:07]:

So that’s just kind of fun if you like baking, even if you don’t like baking, if you like imagination. So, so fun. And then the third one I wanted to recommend is the 3rd season of a television show called somebody somewhere, and this show takes place in it’s somewhat autobiographical, not exactly, but but it’s based on the writer and one of the main, actors’ life in Kansas, in rural Kansas. And it’s just so funny, and it’s so heartbreaking, and just people dealing with grief, the main character’s dealing with the loss of a parent and one and her close sister dealing with a divorce and that changing her identity of becoming you know, having there be a need for her to become a have a start her own business, that kind of thing. It’s just so relatable. And I I find every episode, I’ll find myself laughing. I’ll find myself crying and really hoping for these people in their lives and pursuing their dreams and being able to find some healing out of their stories of grief. It’s just wonderful.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:39:14]:

And I I think I’ve recommended the first two seasons already too, so I don’t know what I’m because this is the 3rd and final season, by the way, too. So this is not a show that you’re gonna have to be super committed to beyond because they’re also short seasons, but it’s so good. It’s such a great show.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:39:27]:

It is really good. I love it too. It my my mother’s family comes from Northwestern Rural Oklahoma, and I spent a lot of time out there. And it’s just so familiar. So I I really like that show too.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:39:39]:

Yeah. So you know the heartbreaking parts too. So bittersweet for sure. Alright. Cyndi, what do you have to recommend for us today?

Cyndi Kernahan [00:39:46]:

Well, I have 2 books, and so one is really good and one is just more fun. But the a book that I really love that came out a couple years ago is called broke the racial consequences of underfunding public universities. It’s written by, 2 sociologists, Laura Hamilton and Kelly Nielsen. And I just think it’s an excellent, excellent book for pointing out the ways in which racism is really harmful to our public institutions and the ways it’s led to very racialized consequences, but also harmful to white students as well in terms of the, as it says, the underfunding of public universities. So I learned a lot from that book. I really loved it, and so I would really recommend that one too. It’s a University of Chicago Press book. And then, if you’re a novel reader, which I am, and I’m always have, like, a novel going versus, like, some work ebook, you know, that’s either about teaching or racism depending.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:40:38]:

So one of my favorite novels this year is called The Wedding People by Alison Espach, which I strong. I think that’s how you say her name. I really recommend it. It’s just it’s really beautiful, and it’s really about the characters really learning a lot about themselves, and I just really enjoyed it too. So those are my 2.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:40:56]:

It is so interesting that you recommended that book, Cyndi. When I got to see Sarah Rose Cavanaugh, since you mentioned her work earlier, I got to see her recently at the pod conference. Yeah. She also recommended The Wedding People. I’m feeling like this is definitely one of those books that is screaming out to many of us that need to read some more fiction that we should

Cyndi Kernahan [00:41:16]:

I loved it. Yeah. I thought it was great. It was a good escape too from from a lot this year, so I loved it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:22]:

Yeah. I kinda feel like with my reading right now, I need a little bit of an escape.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:41:26]:

Mhmm.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:26]:

There’s so many good books out there, and then you can tell with my television stuff. I don’t know if you saw the expression on my face. You can only see half my face because half of it’s covered by a microphone. But I, you know, I’ve needed a little escape on my, television watching, and I probably do with my reading too. Well, Cyndi, it’s been so great connecting with you today, talking about this such an important topic, and thank you for all your wisdom, not just today on the show, but through through all of your writing, your research, and your teaching. So grateful for you.

Cyndi Kernahan [00:41:53]:

Oh, thanks. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:58]:

Thanks once again to Cyndi Kernahan for joining me for today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak. It was edited by the ever talented Andrew Kroeger. Podcast production support was provided by the amazing Sierra Priest. Thank you so much for listening and being a part of the teaching in higher ed community. If you bet to sign up for our weekly emails, head over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe. You’ll receive the most recent episodes show notes as well as some other resources. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time on Teaching in Higher Ed.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.