Abolition of Whiteness
 

It's a class I'm taking this semester. It is a class from the gender studies department.

The class was ethnically diverse to a degree. Half the class was white and that half was a majority of women. The other half was a mix of different ethnicities.

When it came to discussing whiteness, I saw a very disconcerting thing happening. We were discussing things in a gradation of colour. First it was white women who spoke, then asian women, THEN (as if the white men knew their place) started to speak, then the light brown women and men spoke, and then the last to speak and who was mostly ignored was the darkest in colour in class. I sat back and watched as one of the darkest coloured women in the class was constantly ignored for the voice of an asian woman, a white woman, a light brown woman, or even the voices of the white men in constant consecutive fashion.

I dunno what to really say about it, but it was driving me crazy to see it happen. I was even pointing constantly at the girl who was being ignored and there were several times where I saw the "fuck it" look on hers and other black people's faces in the room. I'm going to have to sit back and see if the trend persists as class goes on and if it does, I'm going to have to pull the teacher to the side and speak to her about it.

Don't wait, talk to the teacher as soon as you can and if the trend continues speak up during the discussion and just say something along the lines of "hey I think (name) wanted to say something". I've seen studies in the past about how much men perceive discussions with women, when women spoke only 30% of the time men estimated that women dominated the discourse, when women talked 13-20% of the time men thought the discussion was equal, this was also true of the teachers leading discussions so even with the teacher making an effort to involve women the men still seriously dominated the conversation. I've never seen a study as to how people perceive participation that deals with ethnicity but I wouldn't be surprised if the findings were similar.

I've definitely seen it happen, and I second approaching the professor. Also, while I wouldn't be like EXCUSE ME EVERYONE SHE IS TRYING TO SPEAK, which could potentially embarrass her, maybe use the privilege you have to try and bring attention to what she said, like "So-and-So brought up a really good point just now, and I want to ask..." or something like that. I've seen guys do that to make sure women weren't getting talked over and I really appreciated it.