Negotiating Race

Race is always a problem. Especially in the United States and particulary in the academic world. It's a slippery subject.

Todd Taylor's essay 'The Persistance of Difference in Networked Classrooms" discusses the idea of "non-negotiable difference" focusing on African-American students and literary education, asking the question "whether or not difference... can ever be resolved or negotiated." Taylor goes on to recount the "widely debated assertion that a white person in America cannot ever genuinely understand the experience of being black in this country and that as progressive as a white person may be, he or she can never get beyond at least subconscious racist thought and action."

Taylor's analysis of race and difference is focused on the usage of computers in the composition classroom and how this "non-negotiable differences" can be accounted for and taken into consideration when teaching writing. Taylor concludes that educators must not let racial "presumptions dominate perspectives" and that teachers "need to consider individuals as individuals who defy tight demographic or cultural grouping".

Taylor's seemingly well-informed and logical position somewhat defuses the race bomb. But reading the article leads my attention to a basic observation and critique of CSUP's English M.A. program regarding the low number students of color in the program.