Spanish Speakers Serving (SSS)Footnote 1 is a nonprofit organization based in the western United States that recruits elementary, middle, and high school teachers to teach a class or organize a club for Latino/a students, with the explicit goal of decreasing the White/Latino/a “achievement gap,” increasing Latino/a access to higher education, and in general empowering Latino/a students through leadership training, cultural exploration and service opportunities.

In Atkinville, Idaho, the SSS class is led by Mrs. Christine James. Atkinville has experienced a drastic and fairly sudden demographic shift over the past 10–15 years. Whereas two decades ago it was almost 100% White, over that time the dairy industry exploded in this small town and Latino families moved there, mainly to seek employment at the large dairies. Today, the town and high school are approximately 50% White, 50% Latino/a. Many of these Latinas/os are considered “undocumented,” meaning they lack the documentation to be considered to be living legally in the United States.

My experience and anecdotal evidence show that this kind of ethnic/racial makeup can be fairly common in rural areas like this, where the influx of families with school-age children dramatically increases the population of Latino/a students in a short amount of time but the local schools have not yet caught up by hiring Latino/a teachers and administrators. Atkinville High School, for example, had only two Latino/a teachers and one Latino administrator, even though 50% of the student population self-identified as Latino/a. This kind of situation has the potential to cause significant racial tensions as well as unhealthy and unjust power dynamics at the school and within the community, as it did in Atkinville.

I was drawn to Atkinville because of this interesting context. I worked with the SSS class from 2012 to 2014 on a project through which we explored, questioned, and confronted the racism that had been experienced by Atkinville’s Latino community. In order to focus the project, the SSS students, Mrs. James, and I worked together to identify a primary question that concerned us and that we wanted to answer. The students asked, “Why are our teachers racist?”Footnote 2 This question immediately and clearly identified concerns about racial and ethnic inequity, a topic I did not feel particularly adept at pursuing as a White female with, at that time, very little background in scholarship on racial inequality. For this reason, and also because I was interested in pursuing more participatory and collaborative forms of knowledge production as a methodologist, I approached the project from a participatory action research (PAR) perspective.

From the very beginning of the project I noticed moments during which one or many of our group were “silenced” because of the topic we were pursuing and the methods we used. We were told—both overtly and covertly—that certain topics were simply off limits. I was troubled by this, but, unsure of how I should handle it—or even whether I should, or what it meant to “handle” it—I often remained quiet, noticing but not acting. Upon completion of the project and upon critical reflection of all that occurred and of my role within the collective, I have put some thoughts on paper about this silencing, what it might have meant at the time, and what it means for education and participatory forms of research and knowledge production in classrooms and schools.

Moments of silencing

Overt silencing of the “political”

During the initial stages of the process we were told and reminded by Mrs. James, school administrators, and even one another that our project should not get “too political”:

I was giving Mrs. James some suggestions about how we could approach this, when she told me a long story about [a state-level education administrator] who does not want anything political going on in classrooms or with teachers—even outside of school time. Mrs. James is worried that if this project becomes too political, it will backfire. (Researcher notes, 11 October 2012)

When Mrs. James told me that this administrator had essentially barred our group (and seemingly any school group or individual) from having “political” conversations or asking questions that could somehow be deemed “political,” that would question or be critical of the status quo, we both felt hamstrung. Neither of us wanted to risk her job or SSS’s reputation, and so we felt like we had to abide by what felt like a policy of silencing throughout the project, shutting down, redirecting, or coding any speech that could be considered “political” or, as we interpreted it, anything that was possibly critical of the status quo treatment of issues like race, immigration, or homosexuality.

Aware of both the policy of silencing that the state administrator had invoked and my responsibility to invoke it in this instance of “political talk,” I was conflicted. I didn’t want to cower, yet I was sensitive to the risks the students and Mrs. James were taking in even asking a question about racism in this setting. My notes reflect the questions I was asking myself at the time:

So, how can I tone down my approach to be less “political”? So, for example, if they want to do photovoice—instead of saying “take pictures of racism” (clearly not acceptable to the powers that be) how can we answer our questions but be more covert? (Research notes, 11 October 2012)

My adviser responded to these questions:

Now, it will be difficult to do photovoice and not be political to a certain extent. … But I would encourage reframing the question to something like involving (1) trying to understand how teachers perceive students, including what their expectations of students are and (2) how students perceive teachers … then looking for similarities and disjunctures across these. (Personal communication, 11 October 2012)

I followed this advice. Seeking to “be more covert” in our work together translated to reframing the students’ question(s), and while at the time Mrs. James and I both felt like that reframing was necessary to get anything accomplished, in hindsight I see that that seemingly slight shift silenced dialogue that had the potential to be more critical and perhaps more closely connected to the needs and desires of the students involved in the process. This ostensibly small act of silencing through the reframing of questions and ideas opened the door for further silencing.

Our first step in both reframing and exploring our initial question was to engage in an approach known as Theatre of the Oppressed. Generally speaking, the Theatre of the Oppressed begins with authentic stories of oppression (either from oppressed or oppressor positions). Then the stories are acted out. Reflective opportunities are built in to the stories, in a variety of ways. The idea is to raise awareness and disrupt the mechanisms that keep oppression seeming sensible or unavoidable (Boal 2000). This was our hope in doing this with the students.

All the students wrote about experiences they had had with racism at the school or in their community and then acted some of them out during class time, pausing the scenes to ask each other questions, challenge how a student or teacher acted during the scene, and propose alternative ways to act both in that immediate scene and in similar situations.Footnote 3 Reflecting on the experience, one student, Suehey, said,

After the whole process it kind of opened our eyes that it wasn’t racism it was more misunderstanding. … It made me realize that there are different sides, that like teachers do have a life, I never really pictured that. … It’s taught me that the way some teachers say things negatively, or the way they say things but they don’t mean it that way, we can also do that. … I realized that they are human that you can’t just like, “Oh, well, she’s this, she’s that.” No, you kind of have to give them a chance, you kind of have to give it some effort. … We thought it was racist but now that I see I don’t really think it’s a big deal, I think it’s just misunderstanding and we should start communicating with our teachers. (Interview with Suehey, March 2013)

While we thought Theatre of the Oppressed would allow the group to explore experiences and feelings of racism while toeing the no-politics line, after hearing these types of comments from students I became concerned that our theatre-based explorations were leading to a perhaps misguided, albeit empathy-infused, silencing of the students’ original convictions about the presence of racism at their school, felt and experienced in acute ways. Quiroz (2001) made similar conclusions about the eighth-grade Latino/a students with whom she was working, as she noted the “self-denigration, internalizing failure in school and directing anger at themselves instead of at those responsible for their failure” (p. 340). I saw echoes of this self-denigration in the empathy in Suehey’s remarks and started to see how silencing could work in almost imperceptible, yet deeply troubling, ways.Footnote 4

Overt silencing of the “inappropriate”

After several meetings discussing our collective’s experiences with racism, we decided to conduct a photovoice exhibitFootnote 5 as a kind of end-of-the-year, end-of-the-project culminating event. Because of the rule of “no politics,” I felt I could not ask students to write about their experiences with racism, as that would be deemed “too political.” So, again submitted to another layer of silencing, students composed short stories or essays about themselves, their families, or some aspect of their lives, and took pictures of everyday events, situations, people and objects that they felt represented them and their life stories. Instead of asking their peers and teachers to learn about racism, the SSS students were hoping that these stories would lead others to understand them better, whatever that meant to each individual who attended the exhibit. Although this change in purpose was seemingly small, we later saw that it had a large influence on the effects the exhibit had on the school and community.

Our group was busy and excited about the project. One member of our collective, Juan, came to me during a session we had devoted to working on the logistics of our exhibit. He said he was concerned and upset. Juan explained to me that he had just come outFootnote 6 as gay to his family and friends that year. His process of coming out was not only very important to him, it was also important for him to share during our photovoice exhibit (interview #1 with Juan). Because the goal of our exhibit was to help White students and teachers at the school get to know these students and their culture, he felt his artwork and story should center on his process of coming out and what it meant for him personally and for his culture.

Juan showed me his picture. I had seen the picture the day before, when Mrs. James showed it to me. She had received it from Juan via e-mail, as she had received all the students’ pictures they would use in the exhibit. She showed it to me to ask what I thought about it. The image was amazing. It felt raw and honest. It was of Juan with no shirt on, with words he often heard hurled at him, like “faggot,” “mistake,” “sin,” and “wrong,” scrawled on his body in what looked like bright red lipstick. His arms were down, palms facing the camera, in a submissive but open position.

Mrs. James expressed her concern about the photo because she expected it might start conversations other students at the school might not be prepared to have. In short, she said she thought it might be “inappropriate” for both the school setting and for inclusion in a project with the SSS name on it. Again, she did not want anyone to associate what she saw as “political” (disruptive, questioning, critical) with the school or the SSS class:

Mrs. James kept mentioning today—in reference to the issue with Juan and his picture—that SSS is an explicitly non-political organization and that that’s why we can’t push buttons with Juan’s picture. Because it’s too political. (Research notes, 7 May 2013)

It seemed like even Mrs. James, who self-identified as progressive, and whom I saw as wanting to have conversations that provoked social change, would join in this silencing out of fear. When Mrs. James asked the principal if the photo could be included in the exhibit, she was told no, that he thought it was “inappropriate” for the school setting.

Juan reflected on his experience afterward in a one-on-one interview:

Juan: I think it’s selfish. He’s censoring me because his name’s going to be out there and the school’s going to look bad. I feel like he completely basically said he would cut like, he would censor everyone if he had to keep the school in its safe little happy flower prairie state that it’s in, which isn’t, it’s not true life. I mean, I don’t care. … I like, everything’s controversial and I feel like people just try to throw it under the rug or kind of make people this and that or people are going to react in a certain way. … I just think it [the SSS class] should be a source of knowledge and education for people and it should be a place for you to express yourself really so other people can learn. Maybe people that aren’t so comfortable with the Hispanic world, you can, you have the knowledge and you can educate them on it, same with homosexuality. (Interview #2 with Juan, May 2013)Footnote 7

In our efforts to reflect on the meaning of his experience being censored, Juan hits on several key points. First, he identifies the silencing that, according to Fine and Weis (2003), is meant to keep dominant voices comfortable and feeling secure; as Juan puts it, “to keep the school in its safe little happy flower prairie state that it’s in.” Second, he reflects on how he sees silencing implemented: “people just try to throw it under the rug.” Third, Juan argues that this silencing is wrong, that nonpolitical goals will not lead to consciousness- and awareness-raising, and that it is actually an “un-silencing” that will allow for greater understanding and equity: “Maybe people that aren’t so comfortable with the Hispanic world, you can, you have the knowledge and you can educate them on it, same with homosexuality.”

Covert silencing: Teacher talk

As I perused data collected from the interviews of teachers that SSS students conducted during our work together, I noticed that before each group interview Mrs. James set the scene by introducing our group’s topic and giving a little background about why our collective was interested in asking these questions and working with the teachers to arrive at answers. Before one interview with two White male teachers, Mrs. James gave this same speech:

And we’ve been talking as a class in SSS about how to communicate better with teachers and about what misunderstandings between teachers and students exist, and if ethnicity plays a part in any of those misunderstandings. And we’ve tried to teach the kids how to be proactive in dealing with miscommunications, or lack of understanding. And um, we thought we would interview teachers to see if we could understand better where everybody’s coming from. (Mrs. James’ Introduction to Student–Teacher Interview #1, March 2013)

Mrs. James, possibly unknowingly, names what the students had initially identified in our work together as racism and playing favorites based on race as “misunderstandings,” “miscommunications,” and “lack of understanding.” She subtly casts doubt on students’ claims of racism as she questions “if ethnicity plays a part in any of those misunderstandings,” and she joins the process of implicitly placing blame on the students for these “misunderstandings” as she talks about how “we’ve tried to teach the kids how to be proactive in dealing with miscommunications.”

As one particular group interview continued, students worked to reclaim their right to refer to our questions on their terms as they use “political” words like “ethnicity” and “religion”:

Victor: How do you guys, like knowing you’re going to deal with different types of ethnicities, and religions, do you guys allow that to affect your teaching in any way. I mean maybe not saying something that might offend them or do you guys just kind of push that out of the way?

Mr. Blunt: I, I teach history. We deal with everything, regardless. So, I mean I. there’s no way around it for me, from what I teach. I mean it’s just being a teacher. You don’t. I don’t, I don’t look at anybody differently because of ethnicity or religion or gender or anything. I just, I teach. So.

Here Victor reframes what Mrs. James called “misunderstanding” in political terms and asks the two White male teachers to respond. Mr. Blunt references a belief that he is “color-blind,” that he does not see race or ethnicity, it does not matter to him, and it does not play into decisions he makes as a teacher or person. This color-blind ideology is commonly referred to in an attempt to argue that we live in a postracial society and that racism no longer exists in the United States (Gallagher 2012; Guinier and Torres 2012; Call-Cummings and Martinez 2016). Here Mr. Blunt references color-blind ideology covertly as a way to implicitly urge students toward an acceptance of the same belief.

Later during this group interview other SSS students move further in their attempt to reclaim the critical in their questions about racism at their school:

Maria: um, well Atkinville is like highly populated with Latinos and I believe there are people that don’t like that Latino population, so what do you do when you have students like that in your class?


Mr. Blunt: That don’t like Latinos?


Maria: And they make it obvious and clear.


James: How do you deal with racism?

Mr. Blunt: How do I deal with racism? Well I in my class it’s not acceptable first of all. Any, any type of belittling of any student is unacceptable in my class. I’m going to be sarcastic in front of my class not the other students. And I’ve, when I teach civil rights I really try to make that a focus point that you know everybody’s struggling and I think we need to treat each other with respect is a, is a big thing for me. I think it’s important to teach students to respect each other. And I don’t I don’t tolerate racism in my class. So it, it doesn’t come up.

Again, Mr. Blunt works toward covert silencing, insisting racism does not exist in his classroom: “it doesn’t come up.” He equates racism with “belittling” and says “everybody’s struggling,” suggesting that this issue of racism is no more important than many others. He is also suggesting that racism is an individual issue, not one that is systemic or indicative of structures of inequity. By doing this he is denying critical reflection around issues of racism. This immediately removes students’ ability to call him or his actions into question, because doing so would be a personal and individual attack, something difficult for any student to do, particularly students who already feel marginalized and disempowered. He is silencing.

Reflections and recommendations

Possibly with roots in good intentions, overt and covert silencing was used at Atkinville High School to make sure that these students and conversations would not disrupt the control dominant voices felt they needed to maintain. The goal here is not to paint Atkinville High School, Mrs. James, or other teachers at this school as racist, ignorant, or somehow “bad.” Rather, the goal is to direct critical attention to silencing and argue that it can be much more routinely and unknowingly used than we might imagine, and that it has the potential to severely stymie critical conversations of change and eventually disempower in subtle ways.

More work needs to be done in and with K–12 schools and teacher education programs to promote an understanding that “political” topics are necessary pedagogically and curricularly because they are not really about politics, per se, but about fostering critical consciousness and reflection among all students. One way to do this might be to engage in more participatory knowledge production in schools, as exemplified by this case in Idaho. Production of knowledge that begins at the grassroots and allows, even encourages, students, teachers, and administrators to discover the benefits of engaging in these types of “political” or uncomfortable discussions together might be valuable in beginning to break down—or at least question—a status quo that does not foster such reflection. Another possibility would be to address the issue in teacher education and education leadership programs through courses or field experiences. Another option might be to create mandatory professional development courses that would focus on themes of equity and social justice in classrooms and schools.

However, all these possible paths toward consciousness-raising hinge on some risk-taking on the part of the students, teachers and administrators who “dare” to engage in the difficult work of equity-building. If practices and policies of silencing are at work within a school or district, those nurturing these “political” conversations risk their anonymity, reputation, even career. Unequal power relationships will still play a role. This is why the work of consciousness-raising must be done at all levels and from all angles to begin the slow but necessary process of “un-silencing,” which will hopefully lead to a breaking down of a status quo of inequity and a redistribution of power in both schools and society.