MANY VOICES, ONE CALL
Many Voices, One Call is SUNY Schenectady's student-centered podcast for courageous, honest, open, and unscripted conversations about all those things that move us, make us curious, and concern us -- as students, faculty, staff, or simple, as people!
MANY VOICES, ONE CALL
Many Voices - One Call: Season Two/Episode One: Spotlight on DE&I Professional Development, Part I
For over a year now, teams of SUNY Schenectady faculty, staff, and administrators, have been meeting to research and discuss key topics in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. On this episode, join hosts Jennifer Malave, recent SUNY Schenectady graduate, and Babette Faehmel, Professor in the Division of Liberal Arts, to learn about important insights from the work of two of these professional development teams.
This episode features the leads and contributing members of the teams “Microaggressions” and “Decolonizing the Syllabus” Alicia Richardson, Interim Chief Diversity Officer, Rae Doyle, Professor of Communication in the Division of Liberal Arts, and Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski from the Division of Math Science and Technology. Stay tuned for a follow up episode with the leads and members of the teams working on “Allyship” and “Racial Equity” later on in the season.
Books mentioned in this episode include:
- Kendi, Ibram X. How to Be an Antiracist (New York: One World, 2019)
- Emdin, Christopher. For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood ... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2017)
The views voiced on this episode reflect the lived experiences and uncensored opinions of the guests; they do not necessarily capture the full diversity of attitudes within a larger community, nor do they express an official view of SUNY Schenectady.
Jennifer Malave, Co-Host: 00:19
Many Voices, One Call is the podcast you did not know you wanted. It is a space for courageous, honest, open and unscripted conversations about diversity, equity, inclusion, teaching, learning, and all the other things that move us. It is where students, faculty, staff, alumni, leadership, and community guests reinvent higher education—one episode at a time. I'm your host, Jennifer Malave, and I'm joined by my co-host.
Babette Faehmel, Co-Host: 00:33
I'm Babette Faehmel, history professor at SUNY Schenectady and coordinator of the Student Mentoring Program. Today's episode is the first one of our second season, and the second in our Spotlight Series. In each of our Spotlight episodes we highlight the work of a person, a committee, a team, to learn how their work matters for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Our guests today are Interim Chief Diversity Officer Alicia Richardson, professor of Communication, Rae Doyle from the Division of Liberal Arts, and Dr. Maggie McClellan-Zabielski—who goes by they/them—and who teaches Biotechnology in the Division of Math, Science and Technology. They are here today to talk about the work they have been doing for the last year or so as part of two professional development teams to research topics microaggression and decolonization and to come up with recommendations and best practices for all of us in the SUNY Schenectady community.
Jennifer Malave: 01:35
So, let's begin by talking about what started this. Alicia, would you like to talk about the concept behind this—these research teams?
Alicia Richardson, Guest: 01:42
Sure. So, you all know I'm a storyteller—so, there's a story. So, I think it came through with just Rae and I talking about what conversations we weren't having on campus and the things that we weren't talking about. I actually thought about when I was prepping for this episode, I thought about how during an Institute Week session a couple of years ago in the fall I was a part of a panel, and we were talking about the things that we wanted—we needed. This was before the teaching and learning space—so, wow, yeah, a couple years ago—and what we wanted that space to be, and I said, you know, ‘I really want it to be a space where we can talk about things as instructors, like microaggressions.’ And someone in the audience said, ‘what's a microaggression?’
Babette Faehmel: 02:29
Oh, I remember that.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski, Guest: 02:30
I was there for that, yeah.
Alicia Richardson, Guest: 02:31
Yeah, and I was like, ‘oh,’—you know what I mean—‘snap, nobody's talking about these things!’ And it really became an opportunity I thought to really begin to start talking about some things. And so—. Rae and I pitched the idea to someone in upper administration and they had started to put together a re-imagining task force right at the beginning of COVID and sort of thinking about you know, how are we going to start doing some things as a community during COVID? And so, with that team, that task force, the team—and we really started to brainstorm what we wanted this to look like. And my original idea was everyone should be engaged in this work. Everyone should be researching. Everyone should be talking. And everyone should be thinking about solutions. And also coming at this from wherever level of understanding they happen to be, right?
03:28
So, you don't know anything? Guess what you're going to find out. You know something? Guess what you are going to, you know, further learn—right?—and add to what you already know about this particular topic. And so, we thought about how we—I mean we got down to the nitty gritty, right? Like, we wanted, you know, how many people on each team? And how many people in the cohort? And who's going to be the guide, and what's the guide going to do? And I mean, really nitty gritty stuff. How are we going to put people on teams? And it was, you know, it was dicey there for a minute, you know? There were some arguments about how we were going to do it, but we wanted to try it. We wanted to see what would happen if everyone was engaged in this work—at the same time. And we didn't want it to just be—particularly on college campuses, a lot of the stuff just falls to faculty, and we didn't want that. We wanted administrators, we wanted mid-level administrators, faculty, staff—anyone who wanted to engage in this work to be a part of it.
04:27
So, we randomly put people together—regardless of what their place or job happened to be on campus—and wanted them to talk through things and have conversations and hopefully come up with ways the campus could improve upon what was happening regarding the relevant DEI topics.
Babette Faehmel: 04:52
Yeah, I remember when you were putting people into groups, you had the survey out and you asked people to rank topics that they felt most comfortable with. And I remember that I just—. I know I wanted to be in this particular team, and I just—like, I didn't really read the fine print. So, I guess I checked all the wrong boxes. So, I ended up in a team where I'm like, ‘damn, this is, like, the stuff that I've been doing all along. I don't want to do more of this.’
Alicia Richardson: 05:22
And Babette—I remember Babette was like, ‘I didn't want to do more of this!’ I was like, ‘Babette, the point was (laughter) for you to end up being in a team with a topic that you weren't comfortable with.’ That was where we were coming from. That's what we wanted to try.
Babette Faehmel: 05:37
Yeah.
Alicia Richardson: 05:38
We didn't want people to say, ‘oh, I know a lot about microaggressions, I'm gonna go over there.’ No, we wanted people to be in a space where it's like, ‘you know what? I think I'm comfortable with this but not really,’ and switch it up on them.
Babette Faehmel: 05:48
Yeah...
Alicia Richardson: 05:49
You know?
Babette Faehmel: 05:50
And it's really—. I mean considering, like, how you started the podcast, or the first thing that you said when you were referring to this person in the Senate, it was, I believe—saying ‘what is microaggression?’ And now we are not that long, not that far away from that moment and we have professional development teams that have been going on meeting regularly for more than a year.
Alicia Richardson: 06:13
Yeah.
Babette Faehmel: 06:13
Through Covid.
Alicia Richardson: 06:14
Yes.
Babette Faehmel: 06:15
Wow.
Alicia Richardson: 06:15
Yeah.
Babette Faehmel: 06:16
Cool.
Alicia Richardson: 06:16
So, that's exactly what happened. Everyone started to meet regularly, started doing the research, started talking through what they knew, what they wanted to know, what other colleges were doing, what we should be doing, and then really bring this together in a report fashion so that we had this for the campus use. We asked within the report that people—that the teams, the cohorts—tell us not just what the campus should be doing regarding a particular topic, but what individuals should be doing and could be doing. So, for example, I was the team—the cohort lead, for microaggressions, and we thought that there was a very particular thing that the campus could be doing. But as an individual on our campus, you should learn about microaggressions, right? You should understand what that means.
07:07
So, self-education, maybe joining or being the representative for a club group—you know a club on campus—and engaging with the students in that way to better understand their identities. So, you know, we wanted the report to be an accessible place for someone to say, ‘you know what? I really need to know more.’ This report gives you not only resources, but also things that you can do right now. And what that turned into was what we hope will become some library spaces. So—what are we calling them?—library guides that people will be able to go to and say, ‘yeah, decolonization. Let me click here, let me find out a little bit more before I move on.’
Babette Faehmel: 08:00
One more question on that: How did you select the categories or the umbrella terms: decolonization, microaggression? And we are going to have a follow-up episode later in the season with the other teams. But how did you pick those?
Alicia Richardson: 08:14
So, it's six of them: microaggressions, decolonizing the syllabus. It started off as empowering an inclusive community, racial equity...
Rae Doyle, Guest: 08:25
Allyship.
Alicia Richardson: 08:26
Allyship. And there's one more...
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 08:28
Neurodiversity.
Alicia Richardson: 08:29
Neurodiversity.
Babette Faehmel: 08:29
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alicia Richardson: 08:30
I had a teammate on the task force in our little group, and we sat down, and we did some research, and we came up with a list. And then we picked the top six, Babette.
Babette Faehmel: 08:43
Okay! Alright! (Laughter.)
Alicia Richardson: 08:45
It wasn't any—. You know, it wasn't anything crazy. We just—. We said, ‘where are the real gaps? What are the words that people are afraid of...’
Babette Faehmel: 08:53
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Alicia Richardson: 08:54
‘...and aren't talking about?’
Babette Faehmel: 08:55
Oh yeah, yeah, totally.
Alicia Richardson: 08:56
You know, I mean for me—. Like, I remember for me specifically, it was racial equity. I was like, ‘no, not just equity, racial equity.’ So that's what happened.
Babette Faehmel: 09:06
Cool. Rae, how did you get on board—aside from being picked randomly... like us, like all of us? (Laughs.)
Rae Doyle: 09:12
Well, cause the email went out to everyone asking them—with the survey—what their...
Babette Faehmel: 09:19
Oh, yeah, right.
Rae Doyle: 09:20
Yeah, and so I filled out the survey and was put into a group.
Alicia Richardson: 09:24
Yeah, she ended up with microaggressions
Babette Faehmel: 09:25
And then became one of the leads?
Rae Doyle: 09:26
No, I was just a member of the group. Because Alicia was my lead as far as the cohort for microaggressions.
Babette Faehmel: 09:32
All right, and Maggie, how about you?
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 09:34
So, I actually started out as a subgroup lead. My little group was like, ‘hey, you seem to know what you're talking about or at least have the most energy for this topic and are really following through with it the best, and you kind of pull us together to make sure it gets done.’ I’m like, ‘fine, cool, whatever.’ And then one of our former colleagues, the original lead of decolonizing the syllabus—or decolonizing—Eric McCurdy, left the school. And on his way out he was like, ‘hey, are you interested in doing this?’ and I'm like, ‘yes!’ ‘Would you like to, you know, help wrangle all of the people in this group—in this cohort?’ ‘Sure.’ This, you know—I really, really had wanted to get into doing more on campus to address diversity, equity and inclusion, and so it was like this wonderful, like perfect time and place, with that email. So, that's how that happened.
Babette Faehmel: 10:24
Would you say that the teams stuck together fairly nicely, or was there a lot of resistance that never actually—? Or if there was a resistance in the beginning, did it break down? Did it—? (Pregnant pause.) Oh, I see... (Crosstalk and laughing.)
Alicia Richardson: 10:43
People make funny faces...
Jennifer Malave: 10:44
I remember some things.
Alicia Richardson: 10:45
We're like, ‘how do we address this one?’ I think it started off. People were put into groups, and they were like, ‘why am I being put into this group? I don't understand what is happening.’ And then, very quickly, people just dropped away. And we were prepared for that. It was not required. It wasn't something you had to do. It was something you were volunteering to be a part of. And it was supposed to be—again, it was called the Diversity and Inclusion Professional Development Initiative. It was a means of professional development for those who wanted to engage. Simple as that. If you didn't want to engage, they sort of fell off, and then the groups got smaller, and the work became a little bit more concentrated. What were your observations from your spaces?
Rae Doyle: 11:28
Yeah, I think the same thing. We had some group members who were more involved than others, some who really contributed a lot as far as articles and research and all of that. And then some who just for whatever reason—I mean, maybe it just wasn't the right time for them as far as their lives and their schedules. It was the height of COVID. We were all at home, right? So, trying to do this from home while teaching five courses online or virtually. And so, there were a lot of complexities to it and so... definitely mixed amounts as far as participation goes.
Jennifer Malave: 12:00
Yeah, and it kind of sucks, because I feel like most of the people that dropped out are probably the people that would have benefited the most from that, or that might have needed it the most and not have even been aware of it.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 12:12
I'd say that's a double-edged sword. I think that there's—. Honestly, I'm sorry—. I don't know...
Alicia Richardson: 12:16
Go ahead.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 12:18
Because at least in my cohort, the people who are dropping out because, after I ended up taking over, some of them came to me and were like, ‘hey, I can't continue or I can't come back to it I just can't,’ and it wasn't—. At least the people I was talking to, they were not the people who I would think of as, you know—. These are the people who need the support and the, like—the walking through the process kind of deal that, you know, that the professional development kind of flavor—which is interesting to me. I would have thought, I would have thought exactly that, like that would have been my first gut response, but... not in decolonizing, interestingly enough.
Jennifer Malave: 12:56
That's good to hear.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 12:57
Though it was weird, but fantastic.
Alicia Richardson: 13:01
No, you're exactly right. There were people—particularly when we transitioned to coming back to campus—who were like, ‘I can't. I literally have—.’ You know, all the things that had been held up as a result of Covid and being off campus for a year just came crashing down on people. And so, it was like—and I really appreciate it—I had someone really, you know, say look, ‘I'm coming to you. I want to say this to your face. I'm coming to your office. I can't continue. It is not because I don't want to, I simply cannot.’ And I think what's really important for us as a campus is to start letting people do that without shame or guilt, because it's important. You can't do it. You can't do it.
Babette Faehmel: 13:39
Absolutely.
Alicia Richardson: 13:40
Right? You know what I mean? and I was just like, ‘hey, I hope you can join us back, you know, at another time.
Babette Faehmel: 13:44
When you're ready.
Alicia Richardson: 13:45
Yeah! When you have it, when you can...
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 13:47
Put your energy when you can, where you can. If it's literally in your classroom, fantastic.
Alicia Richardson: 13:52
Right.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 13:53
Like, cool, put—if you have this much energy and you can't, you know, put it into a meeting or like research or whatever. Cool. Put that focus into diversity, equity, inclusion in your classroom.
Babette Faehmel: 14:01
Right.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 14:02
Cool, like I respect that.
Rae Doyle: 14:03
Course materials, conversations, yeah.
Babette Faehmel: 14:05
And there can be people who are doing the work now and then when they get tired and when they get too busy then maybe somebody else will take over...
Jennifer Malave: 14:11
Pass the torch.
Babette Faehmel: 14:12
Because I mean, also, we are creating resources now. We are creating knowledge. (Crosstalk.)
Alicia Richardson: 14:19
That's exactly what I was going to say. So, you know, a colleague was in microaggressions, and they couldn't continue on. They picked up some little things that they could do, right? We have this report, and then they say you know what, next year, I'm going to go look at racial equity. I'm gonna look, go look at that report and I'm gonna see what I can do as an individual and I'm gonna start making that a part of my professional development plan for myself, right? (Someone speaks.) Exactly! That was the thinking, right? So, that you don't have to be necessarily completely married to microaggression, but that you could say, ‘okay, I think I've hit what I need to hit here. This year I'm going to go back to racial equity or I'm going to go to decolonizing the syllabus and make this through this year.;
Babette Faehmel: 15:03
I mean, if you can cultivate an institutional culture of ongoing research and self-evaluation and also questioning what your assumptions are, that is awesome, right? Because I mean in a way when, when Jen was saying, ‘well, aren't those the people who need that the most.’ Honestly that's oftentimes my go-to first, like, knee-jerk reaction. But I was just the other day in a webinar by Alicia—or orchestrated by Alicia—and she asked a question that completely threw me because I realized you know, I can repeat these slogans, but living them and practicing that in your classroom is a different game. So, let's talk shop a little, like microaggression, what is that?
Rae Doyle: 15:52
Do you want a formal definition, or do you want?
Babette Faehmel: 15:54
No, you go, you go.
Rae Doyle: 16:02
So, in lay person’s terms it's speaking or behaving in a way where you're sliding someone from what is considered to be, or what people call, a marginalized group. And so it could be something like refusing to use someone's pronouns even when they've told you what their pronouns are. And it's not because it's an accident, it's because you, full on, don't want to use those pronouns.
Babette Faehmel: 16:20
Is that still micro?
Rae Doyle: 16:21
Oh, wait a minute. (Crosstalk and laughter.) There are different categories of microaggressions.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski:: 16:27
It's pretty macro at this point, right?
Rae Doyle: 16:27
Exactly. And there's been talk in the research about macro versus micro and that terminology, and whether or not things are really micro or if we should just call all of these what they are. And they feel like macro no matter what we're looking at, right? Because it's just... it's like constantly cutting a wound in the same place over and over again and reopening it for the person experiencing it.
Alicia Richardson: 16:51
That's an Ibram X Kendi's book, Anti-Racist...
Babette Faehmel: 16:55
How To Be An Anti-Racist.
Alicia Richardson: 16:57
How to be an anti-racist. He says these are not aggressions. These are not microaggressions. These are assaults. (Agreement.) And he talks about them that way, and that really shook me. What is the term—? You know me, I love this stuff. Who does the term microaggression serve?
Babette Faehmel: 17:20
The aggressor. (Agreement.)
Rae Doyle: 17:21
Right.
Alicia Richardson: 17:22
Right? And so, we're—. Even the terminology we're using to describe these things is baked into this system. (Group agreement.) And so, when I read that in his piece, I was like, ‘okay.’ So, that's what—it's really nice about—. The concept of microaggressions is you're not just talking about what it is, but how did it come to be? How did the term come to be.
Babette Faehmel: 17:45
Yeah.
Rae Doyle: 17:46
And do we want to change it? Because that micro idea just seems so... inadequate, right? Because it is so huge. It is.
Babette Faehmel: 17:56
So, for somebody who's totally new to the topic, how does microaggression—or macroaggression, invalidation, assaults—how do they appear in a classroom and in a college setting?
Rae Doyle: 18:12
Lots of different ways. It can be a student who's having a conversation with someone else and says a phrase like, ‘that's so gay,’ right? And nobody addresses it. They don't call them out on that phrase. They say nothing at all. It can be conversation that a family member of mine has had repeatedly with a person at work who says, ‘I don't understand why we need to change the names of sports teams.’ And my husband says to the person repeatedly, ‘do you hear of a sports team called the white guys? Well then, why is it okay to call a sports team by a native name,’ right? And so just any—. And again, that's not a college classroom, but that's an example of that. Or a faculty member who mimics the speech of a student of color right or tries to connect with them in that way, or that's what they think they might be doing, and that's not what they're doing at all. So, we see it. Course content, right? Not validating other types of relationships.
19:09
I remember back when I first started teaching, I talked about heterosexual relationships only, right? I didn't know any better at that time, but that's an excuse. And then I've learned, like, you can't just do that in a classroom, right? And making sure that you're bringing in topics like intersectionality because there are so many different identities that people are working with every single day. There's an example in my human communication textbook, where it is a woman of color and her child has very light skin, and everywhere she goes they say something to her of the fact of your child's been adopted. And she's like, ‘no, that is my child.’ And she describes it as being cut open every single day with people questioning her. And that's an example that we talk about in my class. And I have my students talk about microaggressions and what they've experienced.
19:59
And it's really scary when you hear the stories, like I've had students tell me that in their high school classrooms that their teacher purposely said their name wrong over and over and over again and did it in an accent to make fun of them. And they've experienced these things, and we don't talk about it. And that high school student, when they were in high school, probably didn't know that they could have done something about that, right?
Babette Faehmel: 20:24
Yeah. Wow.
Alicia Richardson: 20:25
I remember I did a presentation at Institute Week—a presentation on microaggressions one year. And... it was a session where... It was one of those things where it was like a poster presentation where people can come and talk to you. And I remember saying to someone who came up to me that I was reading about how a microaggression can be as simple as: you are a white woman standing up at your desk, a student—a black, African-American male student—comes up to you at the end of class to ask a question and he steps close, and you step back. And that blew my mind.
Babette Faehmel: 21:02
Yeah.
Alicia Richardson: 21:02
Just that simple communication of, ‘I see you as a threat.’ Unconsciously. Probably. Maybe.
Alicia Richardson: 21:12
Right? But that movement—that quick movement back—that is communicating something to this student. And I really, really think it's important, exactly what Rae said, that it's every day—these little cuts, right? One of the videos that I used to show about microaggressions is these mosquito bites, right? All day and you're just scratching all day and at some point, it's just too much, right? So, what are we doing? How are we addressing them? How are we acknowledging them?
Rae Doyle: 21:39
Yeah, and it's really important because the research shows that it physically harms people: depression, self-esteem issues. And, in our broader system, like, it's creating inequities when it comes to jobs, healthcare—and so there are major issues associated with this that are not being talked about enough.
Babette Faehmel: 22:01
I remember reading in the literature that it's like constantly—basically walking around in toxic air, and I don't know, like contaminated water. Are you aware of figures on how much attrition in college could be attributed to, like, students just feeling not validated, not welcome?
Rae Doyle: 22:29
I don't have the exact figures, but I did. There is research that shows that we lose students, faculty, staff—of color—because of toxic environments. Most of which comes from microaggressions.
Babette Faehmel: 22:45
Wow.
Alicia Richardson: 22:45
I was gonna—. So, it's good that you said that, because what I was gonna highlight was, I remember reading this article when we were getting ready to come back to campus about how—remember—about how, like, Black women were like, ‘really? I don't want to go back.’
Babette Faehmel: 22:58
Right.
Alicia Richardson: 22:59
Because it's not just the microaggression itself, it's the anticipation of the microaggression. (Group agreement.) The constant worrying about who is going to say the thing today. And so, I was like, ‘you know, at home I can live my life,’ you know what I mean? ‘Have my meetings, and I have my minutes after my meetings to myself,’ and you know what I mean? I went on with my life. And this is sort of, you're going from one opportunity to another opportunity for someone to slight you or micro-assault or invalidate you in a given space.
Babette Faehmel: 23:29
And it was probably also the experience of being out of that space that made you realize how toxic that other place can be. (Crosstalk.)
Jennifer Malave: 23:42
I just read a paper on that, and it's true. People don't really realize it's not just a daily assault, it's that, it's the anticipation of these moments. So, you walk into a room and you're thinking, ‘oh God,’ like, you look around the room and you're like, ‘oh God, I wonder how this is going to go. Who's going to say what now?’ Yeah, it's serious.
Alicia Richardson: 23:58
I remember very early on in my time at the school. I don't think I've ever—. I've told this story so many times, but never in a recorded fashion for everyone to know forever. But I remember, I walked into an elevator, and there were some African American young men in the elevator and there was a white woman, an older white woman who was an employee here. And the students—I had my hair in twists at the time—are like , ‘miss, your hair!’ Like, I love it, like when are you going to do mine?’ And you know, we joked about it and this woman was like, ‘oh yeah, it looks so good.’ And she reached up and she was like... (Crosstalk.) Remember I told this story so many times?
Rae Doyle: 24:39
I remember.
Alicia Richardson: 24:40
And it blew—. I was like, did that just happen to me?
Jennifer Malave: 24:43
Y'all haven't seen the t-shirts yet? The ‘don't touch my hair.’
Alicia Richardson: 24:46
Don't touch my hair.
Jennifer Malave: 24:47
It’s not okay to touch my hair.
Alicia Richardson: 24:49
She touched my hair. She felt so comfortable to just reach up and pull on my hair.
Babette Faehmel: 24:53
Yeah.
Alicia Richardson: 24:54
And it was a defining moment for me. I go back to it regularly.
Babette Faehmel: 25:00
Were the students still on the elevator?
Alicia Richardson: 25:03
Yeah.
Babette Faehmel: 25:04
Oh my god.
Alicia Richardson: 25:05
Yeah. And I think I was so distracted by them we were—I was talking with them, and she was just you know...
Babette Faehmel: 25:10
Did they react?
Alicia Richardson: 25:12
I don't remember them reacting.
Babette Faehmel: 25:14
Okay.
Alicia Richardson: 25:15
I think because we were so engaged in a conversation about you know, hair, that I don't remember them reacting, but that stayed with me. So, how micro is something like that? Not micro at all, right? And it's those kinds of things that I was concerned about the, you know. I've been in meetings where people want to talk about my hair. I'm like, ‘we're supposed to be talking about...’ So, I'm gonna stop talking. But! It's this, this, this—. If I'm feeling like this—and I constantly say this—if I'm feeling like this, and I’m a faculty member, or you know what I mean, administrator on this campus, what are students experiencing?
Babette Faehmel: 26:00
Yeah, yeah. Well...
Rae Doyle: 26:01
I go back to the AALANA meeting, right? Where students talked about the fact that they have faculty members doing this to them all the time, and that was—was that right before COVID, I think? I think it was the fall semester, right? So, fall 2019. And we started talking about the fact that we need something to do. It was the circle. (Crosstalk and agreement.) Yeah. Yes. And I wasn't even in that meeting because I was teaching, but I heard about it and as soon as I heard that, I was like, ‘wow, like, where are we?’ Faculty should be more educated than that. And that's what I think that this comes down to is that we need to take it upon ourselves to educate ourselves, right? And not ask the person of color in the room to educate us?
Babette Faehmel: 26:42
Oh my god, yeah.
Rae Doyle: 26:43
Right?
Babette Faehmel: 26:44
Absolutely.
Rae Doyle: 26:45
Which happens all the time, right? Or any person in a marginalized group to teach us about that, right? We need to do the work ourselves and figure it out.
Babette Faehmel: 26:54
So, is that part of decolonization, Maggie?
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 26:56
The short answer is yes. The short answer—. Decolonization is so broad a thought and a topic that I actually, like, sat and thought about all of these pieces of it to be able to be more concise and also share the layer of decolonization that it is and the complexity of it. Because to even start thinking about what decolonization is is a challenge. So, when you're talking about it—if we talk about colonization to be able to talk about decolonization. So, you're talking about the impact of a new culture coming in and taking over and optimizing for that group. And then all of the implications thereof. So, displacement, destruction, death, things like that. And that could be, you know, little things, large things—varies hugely.
27:58
So, when you talk about an education context, it really starts to have to think about how... education was designed, developed and implemented. And look at who did it and who it benefited? Because that's what really always the question is, who does this benefit? Who is it designed for? Who gets the best out of this? Who gets the most out of this? And especially in higher ed, when you talk about education, you're talking about... rich white men. Ninety-nine percent of the time, you're talking about men and rich white men. Okay. And it's very much the elite group, it's the—especially in the context of the information that they're looking at and the lens that they're looking through. So, again, it's history through their eyes, it's information through their eyes. So, that's the kind of thing that's being applied and propagandized. So, again, it's almost—and this is funny because I'm the science teacher giving a tiny history lesson and I'm laughing at the (unintelligible) of that, and going, ‘uh.’
29:02
But the point is, so, when you're talking about this—and I know about science history especially—you're talking about... what am I thinking about? That their way is the best way. That what they do is the best thing. That, you know, how we are going to talk about how they get their information is, you know, the only way we're going to give information or make it available? Yeah, it's changed since the beginning, but the idea is built upon that bedrock. So, before I go any further, I wanted to say and mention this, because this is really important talking about decolonizing. Decolonizing hits like almost every single one of the groups that we talk about here. And it is kind of this weird, like... this spider web of interconnected pieces. But also like the bedrock of all of it, which is a lot and it's intimidating—and I'll talk more about that when we talk about, you know, what we're doing and our goals and so on—but it's also because of that it is very emotional.
30:05
And it's emotional for everyone. It's emotional for, you know, little ol’ me. It's emotional for every person in this room. It's not, you know... it's not without some kind of impact on life, on your view of yourself, on your view of things you do, and things you've done and your beliefs and so on. So, the biggest and hardest part to accept—especially for me and you know, not especially for me, but me included—is that, you know, colonist behaviors are really the norm. Okay, they are the norm in that, again, that's how this, how society is designed to work. And they're very hard to avoid if they're not the norm and, like, you might not even identify as a colonizer for so many reasons. Like, okay, I'll put myself in this position and be like, ‘I didn't identify as a colonizer.’ I was raised by two very hippie parents, okay? One artist, one musician—literally.
31:08
And you know, dad had the classic super curly hair, long hair and super cute, super funny in the 70s and mom with a long straight hair and her bell-bottom jeans—yeah? Okay. So, they were like, ‘oh, so liberal,’ and I'm like sure. And I thought that for so long and then started doing, started reading more, started, you know, listening to people more, and taking classes and paying attention, looking at you know various pedagogies. And I'm like, ‘oh no, I have no idea what I don't know, I have no idea what my words are saying, or my biases are doing... wow.’ And so then, you know, that's one of the pieces and that's understandable. But you don't necessarily want to embrace that because it's a heavy, hard, and painful and dark truth. Like, I think a lot of the reason that it's really hard to get into some of the diversity work is that you have to accept a certain amount of...
Babette Faehmel: 32:06
Complicity.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 32:06
...complicity and, like, not just heritage complicity, but your own complicity. And it's painful. It's a lot of painfulness, it's a lot of self-reflection and it's—.
Babette Faehmel: 32:20
Yeah.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 32:21
It can be very in your face and it's very hard to not be—especially when it affects you personally, when it affects your loved ones, affects your students, it affects your colleagues. If you, you know, you find your student crying for the fourth time in a week and you're like, ‘why are you upset?’ And they won't talk to you because they see you as a white woman, and they don't trust you. And I'm like, ‘oh, that's valid and I understand where that's coming from, but I really want to fix that.’ So, like, the whole point is that, like, it's the—it’s similar to the idea how white people don't understand that some of their inherent behaviors are racist. In a sentence. Like...
Babette Faehmel: 33:01
Yeah.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 33:01
It's how—. It's the practices and the behaviors and absorbing that, and figuring out, ‘oh crap, like that was racist, I gotta fix it and not do that next time,’ is so hard and it's—. So, our feelings and our perspectives as the people who are not the marginalized group... don't matter. That's the oppressed, the people who are being oppressed, and their perspective and their feelings, that's what matters. And that's the whole point of—like, it's really hard to divorce your emotions from understanding that it's not about you.
Babette Faehmel: 33:37
Yeah, I can see how you—how it adds up to this web that is everywhere and at the same time the foundation. Because, I mean, that there is also so at the root of micro microaggressions, right? That we—that you need to turn the focus on: how does it impact the aggressed upon? And not what is the intention of the aggressor, right?
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 33:59
The intention does not matter.
Babette Faehmel: 34:01
Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 34:01
It doesn’t matter.
Babette Faehmel: 34:02
And a lot of what you were saying was also reminding me of the beginnings of the discussion about implicit bias and, like, how defensive people got—immediately. And then there is the invisible whiteness that we, as white people, benefit from. Like, we don't have to think about our race. And I had a Black friend from the community once said to me, ‘you know what, I would love a day when I can get out of bed and I'm like, I'm not going to think about racism and being black all day long.’ It just never happens. Just not a possibility. So yeah. That's the web and the bedrock.
Alicia Richardson: 34:38
I keep thinking. I think something that you said, Maggie, really stood out for me is that really, what this comes down to in many, many ways is pain. (Agreement.) And what we're seeing in our society right now is the way in which—I think it's very, very human to avoid pain. Yes, and so what we're seeing in our society right now is a lot of people trying to avoid pain—systemically. (Laughs.) Like literally putting in legislation to avoid pain.
Babette Faehmel: 35:11
Don't make me uncomfortable.
Alicia Richardson: 35:12
Don't make me uncomfortable. Whereas, at any given moment, marginalized groups are consistently and constantly in pain.
Jennifer Malave: 35:22
That's what I was going to say. It comes back to what I always say: that if it makes you feel uncomfortable, discussing this or admitting it, how do you think it makes the person that's being picked on or spoken to or dealing with the microaggressions feel? How uncomfortable are they? And, like you said it, that's what we should be focusing on. But also, one thing I love that you said is, it does come down to accountability. It does come down to looking ourselves in the mirror and even us people of color like (Agreement.) and being very honest with how do I contribute to this without even realizing, maybe not intentionally. But what can I do to do better? (Agreement.)
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 35:59
And that's you know, that's—. I think some of the biggest challenge is, like, seeing that it's not... one piece where people have to take responsibility. Yes, there are people who need to take more responsibility than others, believe in others, but at the same time, if you have privilege, it is more your responsibility to push the change, to push the information, to be like, ‘hey, maybe it's time to think about this,’ and more than just the way that you thought was okay about the world. More than, you know, the shiny, shiny version of, you know, whatever was told to you as you grew up. (Agreement.) Like it—. So, it's, you know, and it's—. And it's interesting because if you had asked me 20 years ago how much I'd be interested in history and, like, all of these pieces, I'd be like, ‘history is boring.’ And now I'm like, ‘no, no, we gotta involve the history.’
36:56
Because the history, like, really puts so much into what comes from it. Okay? And like, again, I come from a science focus, so my look at history and science is: so much of the information that we have and so many of the amazing advances we have are based on the exploitation of marginalized groups. And that hurts. That burns. You want to talk about—. ‘Yay, we had this amazing polio vaccine.’ Do you know how we got it? Thousands of people died in the original dose because it wasn't actually deactivated. Thousands of people died. And again, who could they get to take it? People they lied to, people who were poor and, very often, people of color.
37:49
So, like, I bring in the science context—because, again, that's where all of my stuff comes from, all my major education comes from. But, like, it's in every part of everything that we do and it's hard to escape. And, like, when we talk about, you know, how is it in our schools and how is it, you know, here—there's so many pieces where the system is just designed for White people. White people with money, or people who don't need to have a caretaker stay home with somebody, children, adult, whatever who have a flexible schedule, who aren't working three jobs to make sure they can actually pay rent, let alone put food on the table. There's so many different pieces that are designed to this—and then that's just talking about higher ed—and to get to higher ed... oh my gosh.
38:47
One of the really striking things that I was reading in one of the wonderful courses that SUNY Central had offered, and I took them up on, was about the school jail pipeline that still exists for young Black men especially. And, like, how much I just, like, it—. Just, like, I sat in my chair for, like, 10 minutes the first time I read it. I just sat there and shook, like, looking through the groups of students I'd had and how few young black men I had. And the few that I had it was just like they were really young, or they'd been through jail, or they'd been through a hell of a thing before they got to my classroom.
Babette Faehmel: 39:35
Yeah.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 39:36
And I was just like, ‘How did I miss that before? How did I miss that as an educator?’
Babette Faehmel: 39:39
Yeah.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 39:40
So, it was like—it was one of those like big moments for me where I was, like, ‘okay, I need to start changing my expectations and my thoughts about this and my approach to this.’ And of course, it goes back to teaching, (Laughs) because it's what I love.
Babette Faehmel: 39:55
Yeah totally. I mean, I'm just—. I keep thinking back about, like, a couple of things that were being said, like first, when you said we are challenging the version somebody grew up with—right?—when we are discussing these topics. And how much this is related to identity, like how you are really, really invested in. And then, if you are arriving in college and it's the first time that there's a challenge to it, and how—. Well, that's definitely not comfortable, right? You still have to like get through it, but you also need to get through it with our help. I mean, like—. Because that's, I think, where pedagogy and awareness and self-reflection really comes in. Because, I mean, like, I talk a lot about White supremacy and neo-Confederate beliefs and stuff like that, and some of my students find that really difficult to deal with.
Alicia Richardson: 40:46
Yeah, I was going to say language is so important. Understanding, like, having the terminology to describe what you're experiencing is so important, and I also think it's—. I'm not quite sure that all of our students subscribe to the, you know what I mean, the ideas that we think of—they don't really believe in, you know what I mean, in racial equity or decolonization or white supremacy. But that's—. My goal is not to convince them. My goal is to expose them to the information. To have them think about it, and you know, I always tell people. I was at a conference once and I raised my hand and I said, “my goal is not to, you know, get all of my students to get on the bus. My goal is to say ‘there's this bus, there's some stuff on it you might want to see,’ you know what I mean? ‘I'm going to tell you a little bit about that stuff. If you get on, you get on. If you don't, you don't.’”
41:43
And what ends up happening? I think, a lot of times, because I remember as a student, you know, hearing these concepts in sociology class and being like, ‘all right.’ And then being out of college and being like, ‘oh right, that's that thing that my sociology professor was talking about.’ And being able to make that connection to a life experience, and sometimes, you know, when you're 18 you haven't experienced anything, you know what I mean? (Agreement.) And you don't know, right? And then you're 32 and you're experiencing discrimination, and you are finally understanding what white supremacy looks like in a corporate environment. And you're like, ‘oh right, that's that thing that Professor Faehmel was talking about in class,’ right? ‘And that I heard on the news, but I really didn't connect to it, or I read in an article, but I really didn't connect to it. I'm experiencing it right now.’
Jennifer Malave: 42:32
And that's because it's so normal, like coming back to what you said earlier like—. It's so normal that sometimes we don't even realize that there's something wrong here. That's not the way it should be. That's what we're used to, though. And yeah, it's unfortunate.
Babette Faehmel: 42:46
And at the same time, I find that oftentimes it's my students of color who are also having, like, really big struggles with the topic. Because, I mean, I know that in feminist—or in women's history—there's like this term, ‘willed equality,’ like women who are breaking into gendered spheres of power and whatnot, and they're like, ‘I'm equal now, I made it.’ And oftentimes I think, like, for our students similar, like, they made it to middle school, high school. They are now in college. They don't want to feel they are members of a marginalized, oppressed group. And then...
Jennifer Malave: 43:19
Because it sucks.
Babette Faehmel: 43:20
Yeah, exactly! (Laughter and agreement.)
Alicia Richardson: 43:30
Because it goes back to pain. It goes back to pain, the pain that I don't want to—. I think a lot of times what this work ends up being for marginalized groups and spaces is a trotting out of trauma, and they're tired of that. (Agreement.) Nobody wants to do that anymore, right? It is not productive. You get to feel something, and I get to feel like crap for the next two weeks because I tried, you know what I mean? And so, it's moving away from that thinking—moving away from that focus to something else.
Babette Faehmel: 43:51
Right, right.
Rae Doyle: 43:52
And then having to deal with the white fragility on top of that.
Babette Faehmel: 43:54
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jennifer Malave: 43:55
I just toured at Sienna, and I didn't even realize why, and somebody was asking me, ‘like why don't you want to go here, why would you rather go to UAlbany?’ And I was like, ‘honestly, I'm tired of standing out.’ I want to go somewhere where I kind of get to blend in and just be freaking normal, like, I don't want to be the one that always gets picked on to answer this question or to explain this or to be the example of this. I was like I kind of just want to be normal for a little while.
Alicia Richardson: 44:19
But do you see how that goes back to something I said about anticipation? How you're anticipating that behavior. (Agreement.) It might not even happen but you're like, ‘I'm not even ready to sign up for that.’
Jennifer Malave: 44:31
Thank you, thank you.
Alicia Richardson: 44:32
I’m not—. If it's even an option, I don't want it. (Agreement.)
Babette Faehmel: 44:38
So, how do we create spaces in which we mitigate these systemic forces? How do we act as educators, as student support, as—everywhere—in every part of the college? What are some practices that you came across?
Alicia Richardson: 44:59
Before we get to the practices, I think what's really interesting for me, as being one of the main cohort leads, is that what we saw in a lot of the reports and the findings and what came out of the cohort work was a lot of the same things. Training—what was the third thing? Surveys, finding out what students are actually feeling, right? And then actually talking about these things more, right? Having activities, recognizing the terms, having the discussions, all of it. I mean, it literally was like you would go from one report to another, it was like: training, training, training, survey, survey, you know what I mean? And some of the same things come out of these ideas—this research. The same ideas of what we need to do sort of came through, which was really interesting.
Babette Faehmel: 45:53
And that's why you are having these regular events now? Is it every two weeks or—?
Alicia Richardson: 45:58
I think it's two a month—through February, March and April—and it's really just—the series is, let's talk about it. We're not talking about it, so let's just talk about it.
Babette Faehmel: 46:07
Yeah, and it's on the college calendar. I saw it.
Jennifer Malave: 46:10
Make the uncomfortable comfortable.
Babette Faehmel: 46:14
Yeah, or make it the norm, right? (Agreement.)
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 46:17
Shift that norm. And that's really the biggest response was, it's a paradigm shift. It's not just a little like, ‘oh, we can't just put up more flags and make sure that we have more food in the cafeteria for different cultures.’ It's not just that. That's more—. To me that's window dressing and lip service. (Agreement.) That's, you know, ticks the boxes for maybe somebody else. But when you talk about how do you address this and work on it—it's a big systemic change. Like, and you know, my groups, the various groups within decolonizing, like the one I was in—not just the one I was in, but also the other ones that I'm now in charge of—like the group as a whole was just kind of... Like, once they started getting into the material, they were like, ‘how do we change this? Because it is so big.’ And so, we start putting it out there. We have to talk about going from decolonizing the syllabus—which is what we started with. My group took that literally and it was a really fascinating discussion because two of us are really, really, really into the details of everything. So, it's lovely. Which is usually my focus.
47:30
But talking about, you know, the language you use in the classroom. Setting up expectations the first day, explicitly, without any implicit content, so you're not going, ‘oh, you need to behave in this classroom.’ Well, what does behave mean in this context? Well, what does behave mean in this context? Because one culture’s behave as another culture’s aggressive, and the other—another culture’s, like, perfectly silent. And then that's another culture’s not participating. So, you go back into this, you know, what are you actually expecting? Okay? Is that reasonable, is it not? And so, it was, you know...
Babette Faehmel: 48:11
Is it just to make you as the instructor comfortable, or is it actually leading to learning?
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 48:16
Is it actually leading to learning? Is it actually helping the students? Like, that's the whole point. And then, like, you know, little things like asking the students their first names and their pronouns before they come to the classroom. Yeah, and that's, you know, a big, big, big thing, but it is not something that's being widely done yet. And that is kind of painful... as someone who continually gets mispronounced, deliberately... it's pretty painful. So, but, like, the whole paradigm shift is things like attendance policies and sick policies that don't, you know, get you kicked out of the courses of the college. Because you got a sick kid, and you don't have the money for daycare, and you don't have the money to take days off work... you're gonna drop school. (Agreement.) Like, in a sentence. Classroom expectations as a collaboration instead of as a dictatorship.
49:15
Like, that one's a big one. Like, you know, ‘what are we gonna do in this class,’ in the classroom. Like, you know, ‘are we gonna have a chat? Are we gonna sit in a circle and have a chat? Are we going to, you know—am I going to go blah, blah blah and give you problems and check around. You know, with that—what are we going to do?’ Drop in child care access is huge. Or just care access is huge and, like, this is something that everyone's saying, like every group is pushing this.
Rae Doyle: 49:43
Yeah, well, no, we just discovered we actually have drop-in childcare, but it's not advertised.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 49:48
No, it's not advertised.
Rae Doyle: 49:50
We are doing something about that.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 49:51
So that's yeah, that's a big thing. Like, the access to it is really a big thing. And then the food access is huge, and yes, we're working on that already. We have the wonderful food pantry. Okay? Students can drop in. What is it? Three times a month, if I remember correctly?
Jennifer Malave: 50:09
Three times a month.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 50:10
But not necessarily everything in there is ready to be eaten. If you're on campus all day and you need a snack and you get a pound of dry pasta and some red sauce, you're not going to be eating lunch. (Agreement.) And so, that's, you know, another piece. And, like, the current hours that, like, the food is available and what food is available is so limited. It's really hard for the students, like, especially night students. Oh my gosh, imagine if you worked your butt off all day and came here and tried to get dinner and it wasn't open. Every class and you had to try to stay awake starving. I don’t know about you, but I’d pass out. Yeah, I'm like (Snoring noises) full on. Just you know, snoring, leaning, can't wake me, kind of fun, like, no, I can't pay attention. I can't get the information. (Agreement.) And then the behavior rules and policies, especially with, like, related to aggression. Like there is a huge, huge social aspect to aggression that is often racialized as well, which you're well aware of.
51:14
And I see it most in my classes with Hispanic women and Black women who are outspoken and have conversations with me in front of the classroom while the whole class is going. I love it. Some people think that that's talking back, and I'm like, ‘no, those are verbal processors trying to make sense of the crazy science content when they haven't taken science before.’ So, like, that's an issue, and then the communication bombardment to the students is also problematic. How many emails a week do they get?
Jennifer Malave: 51:48
Thank you.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 51:49
How many emails a week do you get from administrators versus teachers, versus auto-sent, versus—? Oh my gosh, I drown in them. I can't even imagine how students are doing, (Laughter) because I'm super comfortable with technology and emails.
Babette Faehmel: 52:03
And then we are clueless why they are not responding to our one important email, and we're blaming them.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 52:11
Please read these 17 things before you come to class, exactly. But there's 800 emails before I get to your (inaudible).
Jennifer Malave: 52:18
It's rough, honestly, I struggle with that. I'm like a week behind on my emails. It would just be a full-time job just answering all the emails that we get.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 52:25
Or just reading them, or just making sense of them, and that's why it's, like, you know—. And then the last one I really wanted to mention is, like, support and access to it. And, like, everything from higher ed vocabulary help to mental health services that are not more than one person on campus doing mental health services. Because, let me tell you, my students are struggling. Right? Before the pandemic or the panini, as my friends call it, they were struggling. Like, we're struggling. Why wouldn't they be struggling even more?
Babette Faehmel: 53:00
Yeah, exactly. So, as a step—as a first approach to the topic, what would you recommend? Alicia, I believe there is a syllabus review tool that you have made available.
Alicia Richardson: 53:14
Yeah, there is a racial equity syllabus review tool for those who want to really deconstruct and rethink their syllabus. But the thing that I was thinking of actually was, I think decolonization requires, particularly in higher education, a rethinking of power dynamics. And why is it that I have the power in the room, and how can I yield some of that to create a better learning environment for my students? And so, that takes work, that takes unlearning, that takes relearning...
Rae Doyle: 53:50
And courage.
Alicia Richardson: 53:51
Oh my gosh.
Rae Doyle: 53:52
Right? (Agreement.)
Alicia Richardson: 53:53
Serious courage.
Rae Doyle: 53:54
Yeah.
Alicia Richardson: 53:55
Right?
Rae Doyle: 53:56
To relinquish that control.
Alicia Richardson: 53:57
Oh yeah, it's huge.
Rae Doyle: 53:58
Students have some of the driving force. It's hard.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 54:01
And again, it's a fear of pain.
Alicia Richardson: 54:03
And you better believe that they're uncomfortable with it too. Oh my gosh, they don't want to do it! Right? Like, they don't want—. They're so used to having someone be in the front. When you get into it a little bit and you help them understand this is a relationship, this is a—. We are doing something together. We are achieving something together. Then they start to break down and realize how differently education can look. But decolonization, I think, is so, so... complicated and deep-rooted, just like you said, and involves so many different things. But I think the easiest thing to do is to start—it's not easy. The simplest thing to do is to start to think about power structures and who gets to say what this looks like and why.
Babette Faehmel: 54:53
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's actually—. Honestly, the first thing that I think about when I hear the term colonized spaces, and I mean, nobody asked the colonized what they want to do with their day, right? And how they want to spend their workday and whatnot? And that's actually—I mean you are absolutely right. Sometimes it's really hard for us to let go of that sort of professorial authority because, man, I've studied this for decades.
Alicia Richardson: 55:26
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did the work! And that should be celebrated. There's nothing wrong with that. You did the work. But how you go about developing a relationship with the students in which they learn—and you learn too, right?—is so caught up in this way that it's always been done. I think decolonization and colonization is along with White supremacy is the most insidious. The most insidious. It's so deeply rooted. My dad and I argue about it all the time because he's born on the island of Antigua, and it's a British colony and we talk about—. I'm like, ‘Dad, you like biscuits and tea, but did you really?’ I mean, where did that come from? You know what I mean. Give me a break. And he's like, ‘but there were wonderful things that happened.’ I'm like, ‘give me the entire break.’ Because think about it right? He's defending this thing. This man is defending this thing that literally stripped him and his family of deeply—you know what I mean?—of culture, of personhood. That's how insidious colonization is and so decolonization, some painful stuff, man, right?
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 56:45
It's so huge, and it's so hard, and so many layers, and it's all of these things you don't think about. Like, I think I had mentioned, I was talking at a presentation in Institute Week this semester, and one of the things that I was saying—because someone asked, ‘well, you know, I don't have white skin, why should I put anything about decolonizing in my syllabus, why should I focus on this?’ And I'm like, ‘well, let's talk about where this building is built, let's talk about the land that we are on.’
Jennifer Malave: 57:15
Thank you.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 57:16
And we go back to the literal translation of decolonizing, for specifically this location in the world. This land was Mohawk, okay. This land was Mohawk. How did they get removed from this land? Torture, death, lots of bloodshed, lots of displacement, lots of loss of everything about themselves. Just like you were saying, like, it's so huge. Like, yes, the culture exists, and it exists in a complete form, but not here anymore, completely displaced, shoved in a very small reservation—okay?—compared to the original land that they occupied. Like, how much loss had to happen for this space to be taken over by White people and have buildings built here—like a hotel and whatever it was, way before the hotel. And that's where I was like, ‘hey, you know, it's not just who you are, it's where you are and what you're doing.’
Babette Faehmel: 58:17
Yeah, and coming back to the power relations, where for me, it's a little more concrete and more closer to what we're doing. As a science educator, I'm pretty sure you know Chris Emdin, like, who wrote the book is called For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and for all the rest of you too, or something like that. So, he's an educator—and in the sciences—and he basically writes this book about, like, all kinds of, like, pedagogy for a very diverse classroom. And he starts out with an introduction where he talks about the Carlisle Indian Boarding School and compares that kind of setting where those children were put into a school run by military officers and missionaries and assimilated forcefully. They were actually forcefully taken from their parents—were assimilated to American—Euro-American culture—and he compares that to the high school classroom. (Agreement.)
59:16
Like the normal high school classroom—where we assume that everybody will now conform to Euro-American standards of culture, of behavior. I'm kind of like lower middle class. My parents didn't have money, but they had a house. I did not feel privileged, but I have all that stuff that has been indoctrinated, all those values, all the value judgments, what matters in education, what matters in life, how to measure success. That's inside of me. That's internalized. I have to externalize—I have to make that explicit so that I do not impose that on others. And that's where decolonization—decolonizing the self, decolonizing your own classroom, for me would start.
Rae Doyle: 01:00:03
Yeah, the research says that about microaggressions too, that we're all biased and the place we have to start is recognizing that we're biased. Because we've been socialized this way, and we can't make those changes until we accept the fact that we have these biases. Like the person who, hopefully, unconsciously steps back—right?—or clutches their purse. Yeah, we need to make that conscious and resist that urge and figure out where that urge is coming from, right?
Alicia Richardson: 01:00:29
James Baldwin—my favorite—I think it was. You know, I totally could be getting this wrong, but I think he said, right, like, ‘you can't change what you're not willing to face.’ You can't, right? And people have to be willing to face these things straight on, right? And I think it's also really important to understand that this is not—I think it's easy for us to lend, to go straight into race, but we're also forgetting, you know, ableism and, you know, cisgendered, you know, focus.
Rae Doyle: 01:00:59
Socioeconomic class. (Agreement.) Like, all of that is part of microaggressions too.
Alicia Richardson: 01:01:04
Right. Religion. You know, we're forgetting those things. But they are just as important and then when you start to talk about intersectionality, you know what I mean, then you really see some stuff. But it is about opening your eyes, yeah, or recognizing, seeing, not staying— and I think that's one thing I wanted to say too is, I mean, the issue is people stay in the pain. They stay in the guilt. That's the problem. They can't push through it to the other side. You feel it—and I'm, I mean, I'm totally talking about someone who will literally stay in the pain forever, like, ‘I will live there.’ But you acknowledge it, you experience it, and then you move through it to the truth, right? (Agreement.) So, I'm just gonna be, you know so honest. You know, I have totally used the wrong pronouns with Maggie, multiple times, right? And I can feel myself getting defensive, and I can feel myself, you know, (Mouth noises.) I can feel myself moving through. I know what the right thing to do is. I will continue to try to do the right thing and that's what it has to be. That's it!
Babette Faehmel: 01:02:14
Absolutely. I mean that's another thing that came up in another webinar this week that where you were at too. Like, we do not—it's. You don't change your mind and then you change. Like, the practice changes as a follow up as a next step. You change your mind a little bit, then you change your practice, and you practice living with a new practice, and then your mind will change. And then it's just, like, kind of, like, sinks in, right? So, it's just—it's a lifetime commitment.
Alicia Richardson: 01:02:45
It is! (Agreement.)
Babette Faehmel: 01:02:46
It's a daily spiritual practice.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 01:02:50
I think the biggest thing is fighting through a lot of, like, inherited trauma and not passing it on. (Agreement.) And even if, you know, even your like—you were talking about before the things that we have like absorbed into ourselves as like, if you work hard you can get a good job and get a good house and get a good, you know, tenure track job where you're not going to want for anything and not, you know, worry about anything. But working through that trauma is hard, so you could rather stick in the stay in the pain—like you were saying—than get to the other side. Because you're used to the pain now. You're like, ‘yeah, this is the sucky part. We'll just stay here.’
Alicia Richardson: 01:03:28
Right!
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 01:03:29
Like it's going to get harder if I go through it. Which, yeah, it does, but then it also gets better.
Alicia Richardson: 01:03:34
It gets better! Yeah.
Babette Faehmel: 01:03:35
So, I could go on forever with this conversation, but we are coming up on the one hour mark. And I expect that we will reach out because I think we want you back. But are there any final thoughts, any recommendations for further reading? Or for a young instructor just starting out in education, where to go next?
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 01:03:59
I mean, one of the things that we've talked about is—for decolonizing, there's a really great, like, words to lose from your vocabulary.
Babette Faehmel: 01:04:06
Oh!
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 01:04:07
Like, you know, just look up some words that you should stop using. One of my friends and I were talking yesterday, and I was so excited because I'm wearing a new—. I remember that I own lipstick that's nice and moisturizing—my lips are really dry. I was like, ‘yeah, I want to wear my lipstick.’ And they said, ‘yeah, put on your war paint.’ And I went, ‘oh, got to remove that one from my vocabulary.’ This is a direct reference to Native peoples, and it is very—yeah. So, it's, you know, things to remove from your vocabulary. There's a million different short lists, long lists, discussions of why and why not to use words, things like that. So, it's—. That's a good, easy, like...
Babette Faehmel: 01:04:43
That's a good first step.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 01:04:44
...way to start diving in.
Babette Faehmel: 01:04:45
Right.
Dr. Maggie McLellan Zabielski: 01:04:46
Get your toes wet.
Babette Faehmel: 01:04:47
Right.
Rae Doyle: 1:04:48
Accept that you're biased. (Agreement.) Figure out what those biases are.
Babette Faehmel: 1:04:52
Yeah.
Rae Doyle: 1:04:52
And analyze everything, right? Like, think about what you're teaching in the classroom.
Babette Faehmel: 01:04:56
Oh, I love that!
Rae Doyle: 1:04:57
Yeah. And say to yourself, ‘am I doing everything that I can do to decolonize, to look at different perspectives, to make sure that I'm not inflicting more pain?’
Babette Faehmel: 01:05:07
Analyze everything.
Rae Doyle: 01:05:08
Yeah.
Jennifer Malave: 01:05:09
I like that.
Babette Faehmel: 01:05:10
A good motto.
Alicia Richardson: 01:05:12
I think my advice is to start where you are and don't be worried about where the person next to you happens to be in terms of this work. If you're not where they are, that's perfectly fine, right? You are where you are, and you are moving towards being better and being stronger and knowing more. And so, if you're at the bottom of this knowledge base, just read. Just watch. Lean into what feels right in terms of how you learn this thing. Some people really enjoy reading. Some people really enjoy music. Some people really enjoy, you know what I mean, videos...
Babette Faehmel: 01:05:52
Podcasts.
Alicia Richardson: 01:05:53
Exactly! Podcasts, right? In the podcast, right? Like, there's—. Like, lean into that and engage in the work.
Babette Faehmel: 01:06:01
Absolutely. That sounds good. That's a good—that's something good to end on. So, Alicia Richardson, Rae Doyle, Maggie Zabielski. Thank you so much.
Alicia Richardson: 01:06:13
Thank you for having us.
Rae Doyle: 01:06:14
Thank you.
Alicia Richardson: 01:06:14
This was a lot of fun.
Rae Doyle: 01:06:15
It was fun.
Jennifer Malave: 1:06:16
We look forward to having you back on soon.
Babette Faehmel: 1:06:18
As always, we want to thank the School of Music, and especially Sten Isachsen, for making possible the recording of this episode. Special thanks for editing goes to Michaela Stay. Many Voices, One Call is made possible thanks to the financial support of the SUNY Schenectady County Community College Foundation and because of assistance and contributions by the REACH Initiative Leadership Team, the Student Mentoring Program, the Student Government Association, and the Student Activities Advisor.