Michael Bugeja

One day,” said an African American professor at a faculty meeting, “I would like my white colleagues to know what it feels like to be black.” Usually reserved, always gracious, this professor had endured countless meetings on diversity, myriad seminars on sensitivity, and overlooked everyday slights, only to realize that everyday slights were worthy of more debate in academe.

“Just one day,” she repeated. “Then you would know what it is like.”

No one responded, and the discussion soon moved to less weighty concerns—office space, budgets, special events—topics that most of us could debate with customary pettiness and passion.

I made a note to visit my colleague at a future date when we could chat in private. I had some good news about my media ethics class because I had designed an exercise to give white students the experience of being African American.

I teach diversity through ethics. I do not preach about or politicize the subject matter. I try to reach students on an emotional, experiential level rather than on an abstract, philosophical one.
Let me explain.

Telling the truth is a fundamental requirement in a media ethics class. We don’t wax philosophical about it, citing Immanuel Kant; we start with attendance. Students may miss as many of my lectures as they like, as long as they send me an email explaining the real reason for missing class.

The policy requires students to disclose information appropriately. (They tell me about medical appointments, not symptoms.) They also learn about priorities and often experience pangs of conscience upon informing me that they skipped class to watch soap operas, for instance.

The Chronicle of Higher Education actually covered the policy in the May 30, 1997, issue: “Ohio U. Professor Will Take Any Excuse for Students’ Absences.”

There is method (pedagogy) to the madness. After more than a quarter-century teaching, I know that students merely take notes and purge if I preach about the importance of honesty. However, by doing journal exercises, students can experience that importance independently and not only understand the ethics lesson; they also live it.

The challenge is designing an exercise that will yield consistent results, quarter after quarter.

For one week students are asked to keep track of all the lies that they tell others, all the lies that they believe others have told them, and all the times that they were tempted to lie but told the truth. In each instance, they are asked to predict consequences and then track actual ones.

Results each term are remarkably similar. Students underestimate the consequences of their own lies and deal harshly with others who spread lies. Telling the truth when tempted to lie, they feel ashamed or afraid in the short term but relieved in the long term. They sleep at night.

But for one day, just one day, how to make them feel African American?

My colleague had been speaking metaphorically. Some days are more intense than others. Her intent was to communicate to white colleagues how it feels to be a person of color at certain moments. Moments of bias—being ignored in stores or stopped in cars or patronized in committees.

Such incidents happen to us all. They just happen more frequently to African Americans than to Caucasians.

This is part of communication theory, which assesses slices of time. The communication process also is significant, taking into account such variables as sender and receiver of a message and the circumstances in which the message is conveyed.

I constructed an exercise meant to evoke emotions and experiences. Because these can be sensitive and private, students summarize in journals rather than share their thoughts in class.

Instructions are as follows: “When we communicate with others, we also anticipate a response that suits the occasion. An ‘occasion’ is a moment in your life, associated with a place, a person, and a time. It is one thing to discuss bias with a friend on a Tuesday in the cafeteria; it is another to do so with an adversary at a conference on Martin Luther King Day.”

Students are asked to recall:

And, as in the attendance and lying exercises, responses tend to be similar. Here are selected ones from a recent media ethics class:

• “You wonder why you made the attempt in the first place.”
• “You feel worthless or stupid.”
• “You think, ‘Why dream? Why care?’”
• “You cut off ties.”
• “You fight. You want to get to the bottom “of it.”

Those phrases, of course, describe how it feels to experience bias. Students are told, “Although you may not be a person of color or experience racism every day, you can deal with it effectively as a journalist by being able to identify with it on this rudimentary level.”

I approached my colleague a week after the faculty meeting and shared the above exercise with her. She plans to introduce it to her news-writing students and that, coming from someone I so admire, has made me ponder a new exercise: Understanding Diversity.

In this new journal assignment, I will ask students to go through the same process as above, with one variation in Step #3: “Describe the feeling you experienced upon receiving support and approval from that person, group, or figure.”

To understand that is to celebrate rather than practice diversity.

If you are interested in how we celebrate diversity in media ethics class, visit this Website: http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/ ~bugeja /diversity.html.