Recently, a colleague and I were in a meeting and the person we were waiting for walked in, looked at me, and said, “How you doing, Dr. Microaggressions are similar to stereotypes they are more subtle but equally painful. Moore offers six specific steps that white Americans (and other non-Black people) can take to improve America’s racial climate. Moore is a popular professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches a course called “Race in the Age of Trump.” He has also addressed racial tensions campuswide in his role as the university’s Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement.
In this timely book from the University of Texas Press, Moore guides readers-many of whom Moore, who is Black, presumes will be white-through Black history and his own personal experience in academia. That’s how Moore, a professor of Black history at the University of Texas, opens his new book, Teaching Black History to White People. Moore thinks every white person in America should be required to take a Black history class. If you want to really be an ally, to do something radical, ask Black people a simple question: “What can I help you fight for?” This is what happens when you assume you know what Black people really want. They got caught up in symbolism and not substance. In defense of the law students, I believe they meant well. After listening to their complaints, I said, “This has y’all really upset, huh?” They said, “Yes.” Then I asked the following question that changed the entire trajectory of the conversation: “How come you all aren’t equally upset that this law school enrolled only ten Black students this year out of an entire class of three hundred?” The room fell silent. They also demanded that the professor be banned from teaching first-year students and that a committee of faculty approve all of his exam questions moving forward.
During our meeting they said the question was “traumatizing” and “triggering” and that they should not be forced to answer it. The spokesperson for the group was a white male student who seemed rather happy that he was able to call out his Black professor. In the group of students I met with, only one was Black.
Before I arrived at the meeting I predicted that the group of angry students were largely white liberals.
On the exam the professor asked the students to provide a legal defense of school segregation. A few years ago, I was asked to mediate a dispute between a Black law school professor and his disgruntled students, who were upset about a question on an exam.
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