Hi Colleagues,
My SHINEQuest story relates a diversity-related event about actively embracing and using my own body and voice to verbally and physically communicate my moral disgust and my rational disapprobation with my institution's investments in racist South African Apartheid. During my first year of college I was one of ~60 students who personally, locally, collectively, stood up for the rights of diverse people globally by getting arrested. This story and accompanying infographic (below) demonstrate one way to "forge relationships across distances" (Greater Good Science Center, 2021) and, in the past, how people locally to globally collaboratively dismantled racist South African Apartheid in-part by removing outside institutional funding (divestment). I was part of a personal to global diversity-related event of mass protests and demands that racist South African Apartheid be dismantled. We students embodied the process of listening, learning, protesting, taking action collectively but peacefully, requesting institutional action that was initially refused, getting arrested en masse to protest our institution's investment in racism, building and living in a shantytown in the center of campus to demonstrate solidarity, educating other students and holding debates each evening to explain why we were living in a shantytown, and inspiring others to join us, even in the face of serious and angry opposition. It surprised me that the Board of Trustees and many students at my university did not empathize with suffering fellow humans. Some students did not care. Others were bothered by the shantytown's appearance. Some students were racists. Many I spoke with would not put themselves in the place of those suffering the racism of Apartheid in South Africa. For example, one night a huge group of young men from nearby fraternities threw cold water on us as we slept then tore down our shantytown. We did not resort to violence. When I think back on those protests, discussions, and heartfelt attempts to topple a whole country's government through collective global action from the UN down to individuals like me, I imagine working together with others today to dismantle diversity-related challenges our own U.S. culture faces right now.
Our country should invest in our children by increasing educational opportunities for diverse pre-K- graduate and professional students, faculty and staff. Every child should be able, through education, community, and professional engagement, to optimize and actualize their unique potential. In our own lives we can engage with others in ways that acknowledge and dismantle inequity and microaggression in our own learning environments. Instead of perpetuating the bias and racism that exists in our own classrooms, associations, and society, we as instructors can create equitable environments that demonstrate respect for diversity--including intellectual diversity. I wonder whether if educators were to start looking every child in the eyes (with a smile and deep respect) when they teach, and calling on every child equally, and treating every child as if they might be our next Supreme Court Justice or scientist or business leader, maybe we educators could collectively do our part to give every child the tools to find new ways to overcome the economic injustice that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke so eloquently about just before he was shot. I imagine a world of caring and legislative/ funding decisions that transcend political party, where everyone is an activist in their own areas of interest. I envision multiple evidence-based frameworks customized and applied locally such that our efforts are magnified by consistent threads of inclusive sustainability, health, and equity for each and every. Maybe one of my students will have ideas to solve our culture's problems. Maybe together we can use Connectivism to crowdsource solutions. There are so many possible paths to a more equitable future if each of us in our own life and work would respect (or at least tolerate) others for their unique contribution rather than trying to impose a one-size-fits-all, my-way-or-the-highway approach. Even though our society has huge institutional underfunding, underserving, purposeful exclusion, redlining, segregation/ ghettoization, and unfounded/ unscientific beliefs about racial superiority (that were put to bed when Franklin, Watson, and Crick discovered DNA, the mechanism for natural selection) if each of us examines our motives, we will see that the problem begins and ends, with us.
It is up to each and every one of us to care about not only ourselves but also about others as we are all one great, beautiful, diverse family. Right now, are you discriminating against someone else who looks, behaves, or thinks differently than you? Why won't you let that person be who they uniquely are? Maybe you'll find that you can learn from that person instead of trying to destroy them, undermine them, or put a ceiling on them. In every workplace, educational environment, and situation we each have a choice. Do we stand on the side of equity and learning? Or do we stand on the side of bias and ignorance. I am here in this class to push myself to learn new information that I need at work. I am here because I want to learn what this instructor uniquely has to teach. It is not easy to do the coursework while I work full time, but the value of what I'm learning and how I'm learning makes the effort worthwhile. In order to move beyond our own narrow bias' and transcend ourselves we must be willing to push our own comfort zone, live aware, and embrace the other as a brother or sister who we can learn from and collaborate with to our own, our community and our world's benefit.
The infographics below represent my visual narrative with personal reflections about this and related transformative diversity-related events in my life. Instead of pathologizing someone who is different or has a different way of thinking or doing things, let's learn with and from one another and as instructors and instructional designers set up learning environments that push everyone to work together to go beyond what we think possible into new realms of equity, health, and sustainability for not just me and my type but for our bigger family, inclusively, with tolerance, respect, resilience, and responsibility to accept and nurture one another as would a healthy family.
In regard to the attached graphic version of my story (Jsero2, 2021), as Malcolm X was quoted as saying, "that's not a chip on my shoulder, that's your foot on my neck," and "hatred and anger are powerless when met with kindness."
References
Greater Good Science Center. (2021). What Is Diversity? [Definition of diversity]. University of California, Berkeley. https://www.greatergood.berkeley.edu/topic/diversity/definition
Malcolm X. (n.d.). AZQuotes [Quotes by Malcolm X with photos that were not included here]. https://www.azquotes.com/quote/759780 and https://www.azquotes.com/quote/800043
Jsero2. (2021). Apartheid Ended [Images and graphic framework from Canva for educational use only; design and writing by jsero2]. https://www.canva.com/
U.S. Department of State. (n.d.). The end of Apartheid. Office of the Historian. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1989-1992/apartheid
Videos for Use as Teaching Resources
Biden, J. (1986, June 23 speech). Joe Biden makes impassioned speech on apartheid in resurfaced 1986 footage [Video posted on posted 2020, June 3]. The Independent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_v00iGJCLY
Campus Images. (2016). Berkeley anti-Apartheid movement - Excerpt from “CAL on Video 84-85: The Video Yearbook” [Video about Apartheid protest that happened at Berkeley beginning 1986, April 9]. https://vimeo.com/156597542
CBS News. (2013, December 17). Sharpeville massacre was turning point in anti-apartheid movement [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2EvZ8cYcC8
Global News. (2019, April 25). Apartheid: The rise and fall of South Africa's 'apartness' laws [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJOU9YYMzpw
Motwani, H. (2014). HD Stock Footage Apartheid - South Africa [Video]. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/86365792
Pienaar, L. (2016, September 14). South Africa in the 1980s [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUjOOpPvUro
Written Resources for Teachers Contreras, R., (2011, June 2). University of Illinois students gain partial divestment from apartheid South Africa, 1985-1987. Global Nonviolent Action Database. https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/university-illinois-students-gain-partial-divestment-apartheid-south-africa-1985-1987
Dold, R.B. (1985, May 23). 28 at NU Apartheid protest arrested. Chicago Tribune. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1985-05-23-8502010914-story.html
Dold, R.B. (1985, October 17). Apartheid protesters surrender. Chicago Tribune. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1985-10-17-8503100949-story.html
Greenbaum, K. (1986, April 13). U. of I. students raze 'shantytown.' Chicago Tribune. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1986-04-13-8601260814-story.html
Nessen, J. (1986, Spring). National weeks of anti-Apartheid action spark spring campus upsurge. Student Anti-Apartheid Newsletter. http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-E63-84-AA%20AF%20SAAN%20S%2086%20opt.pdf
Resources Created for K-12 Learners
Apartheid Museum. (2021). Resources [South African museum's Educational e-books, workbooks, comic e-books for grades 6-12]. https://www.apartheidmuseum.org/resources
BBC. (2021). KS1: Who was Nelson Mandela? [Teacher resources for ages 5-7]. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zjkj382/articles/zj3p8xs
Wiley, D. & Kornbluh, M.L. (n.d.). South Africa: Overcoming Apartheid, building democracy. Michigan State University's African Studies Center, Matrix & History Department. [Lessons and resources for educators]. https://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/listeducationalactivities.php
Thanks so much to both of you for your thoughtful comments. It is nice to know that there are people who likewise care. You are right, AT, that we have more work to do! When I taught college students as an adjunct I would tell this story then ask students to think about their own evidence-based beliefs. "For what cause or reason would you get yourself arrested?" We all are responsible to one another and to the other beings and world itself because our lives are intertwined with all of the stuff we need to survive. Reciprocal survival and equity for all! Happy questing to you, too, eweis3!