Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 10 | Page 98

ARTICLE #7 | 99
98 | JADE
MARIA FLOOD THE CHALLENGES OF A DIVERSE CURRICULUM: A CASE STUDY FROM THE HUMANITIES
economic conditions of African Americans. This confirms Britzman’s
suggestion that ‘students, at least subconsciously, want learning that
affirms their identities, experiences, perspectives and values’ (1998,
p. 12). is taught on the third-year course ‘Race and Sexuality on Screen’ and
as such, the students were ‘self-selecting’.
Example 2: Dear White People, Season 1, creator Justin
Simeon, 2017
The series was not a particularly popular choice in class, but many
students wrote essays about it, suggesting that some did not
perhaps feel comfortable expressing opinions about the show in
a public context. I will assess the factors that contributed to the
student’s differing engagements with the series, with reference to
factors one to three cited above.
1. Relatability and relevance
The question of intersectionality may help explain why some students
found the series difficult to engage with. Many of the students in
the class were from working class backgrounds, and some found
the elite university context alienating and pretentious. Many of the
characters express themselves in extremely sophisticated prose,
while also employing a lot of terminology that is specific to the
context of an elite American college. The series is also a satire, a
form which is often not very familiar to students and which relies on
a certain amount of knowledge of the social context that is being
lampooned, a context that as shown below, was not always clear to
students.
2. Cultural and Historical Context
Dear White People is a recent Netflix series based of the film of the
same title by African American director and screenwriter Justin
Simeon. The series examines the lives of a group of African American
students at a fictional Ivy League college in the North East of the
United States in the present day. The series deals with contemporary
racism on American campuses, looking at issues around blackface,
cultural appropriation, histories of slavery, divergent responses to
injustice within the African American community, light-skinned
privilege, mixed-race individuals, stereotyping, and social class in the
African American community. The series was generally well received
in the liberal press in the United States, but it launched the alt-right
hash tag #BoycottNetflix on Twitter. Before the series was even
released, this hash tag called for the boycotting of the streaming
service based on the title of the show and two minute trailer. The film
Although the show is titled Dear White People, the creator has
stated that this is misleading: he wants the series to speak principally
to a black community. As such, many of the references in the series
speak to African American cultural contexts, both pop culture as
well as intellectual histories of Blackness and histories of Black
resistance. As such, white British students did not understand some
of the jokes and cultural references that the series employs, and a full
exploration of the numerous and nuanced cultural expressions that
the series evokes would certainly be beyond the scope of one class.
Moreover, the student’s lacked familiarity not only with the context
of elite American educational institutions, but also with the African
American upper class.
3. Emotional challenges
The series addresses not only ‘visible’ racism among far right groups
but also white liberal racism, which can be an uncomfortable topic
for white audiences. Issues around identity politics, reverse racism,
white or black ‘only’ spaces, cultural appropriation and institutional
racism are highly contemporary debates that are evolving rapidly.
The discomfort generated by these topics may have been increased
by the fact that the show does not attempt to ‘translate’ black