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Journal article
Geography education and racial literacy
Teaching geography, Vol.48(3), pp.97-99
10/01/2023
Abstract
Even more than asserting that geography matters (in the sense that the unique features of place and spatial context directly shape the outcomes of general ('universal') economic, social and cultural processes) geographers have shown the iterative dynamic of place – not just as a container, but as a process. [...]the apparent neutrality of categorisations which we have used 'objectively' to classify place in the past is now understood to be false: terms like 'inner city' are not descriptively neutral, but carry connotation and meaning which need to be examined with care: because the way in which racialised perspectives become sedimented in our minds is the way in which racism becomes normalised. Teaching geography with racial literacy In summary, our argument is that teachers' racial literacy involves a body of knowledge and the ability to understand how race and racism work in shaping society – and that for geography teachers, this has implications for their curriculum making. In other words, through neglecting the unequal distribution of power, diverse perspectives and the agency of ordinary people, geographical patterns and processes will appear to students as natural, inevitable, logical – and therefore legitimate. [...]a great advance in school geography would be more overtly to recognize the historicity of geographical patterns – the history behind the geography. Principles To conclude, we outline six principles that, we argue, underpin a racially literate geography curriculum: * People and places are dynamic and always changing as a result of the interplay of economic, social, cultural, political and environmental processes; furthermore, these do not operate neutrally and in the same way for all people. * Geographical facts are nearly always contingent: they are selected, prioritized and can frequently be contested; and there is nearly always another way of looking at them (the 'danger of a single story' – Biddulph, 2011). * Human agency is rarely unfettered and frequently involves disagreement, tension and struggle: human processes always involve politics (the process by which limited resources are allocated). * Race is not a biological fact, attribute or phenomenon, but it is a real and 'felt' social construction that both produces and is a product of economic, environmental, political and social processes that
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Details
- Title
- Geography education and racial literacy
- Publication Details
- Teaching geography, Vol.48(3), pp.97-99
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publisher
- Geographical Association
- Identifiers
- 99380577423906600
- Academic Unit
- Hal Marcus College of Science and Engineering ; Earth and Environmental Sciences
- Language
- English