1. Racial Spotlighting
     Microaggression    Education  

2. References

Racial Spotlighting

Racial spotlighting is the act of directing attention to an individual based on racial differences and perpetuating that individual as the speaker of their race. Also known as hyper-visibility, racial spotlighting is a type of microaggression occurring most commonly to subdominant students in the educational setting.

Microaggression

Racial spotlighting is a racial microaggression. A racial microaggression is a “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color”..^[1]

During this experience, the highlighted person is singled out based upon an apparent difference between themselves and the individual who has selected them. Use of this practice is professed as culturally insensitive and irresponsible assuming that the spotlighted person’s race is monolithic^[2]

Those in opposition to existence of racial spotlighting may link the occurrence to the psychological phenomenon known as the spotlight effect. Although the term derives from the theory, there are specific differences validating racial spotlighting and its existence. The spotlight effect is a social phobia where individuals believe that the “spotlight” reflects on them more than others^[3]. This effect allows individuals to anticipate perception of other people in effort of protecting their own core experience. As with other phobias, the spotlight effect stems from fear that is internally imposed. Often, no additional focus is actually placed on the individual. Unlike the spotlight effect, during racial spotlighting the attention is explicitly placed on a person, drawing attention to their differences often creating an unwarranted stress on the selected individual.

This act commonly occurs in situations where there may be racial bias and a disproportionate range of cultural diversity resulting in cultural misalliance. Instances of this practice are commonly found in social institutions, such as the school setting.

Education

           Proceeding the Brown v. Board of Education verdict schools were required to integrate. Many black schools were boarded, and black staff often replaced. To combat the progression of integration some schools, in states such as Virginia for example, closed to keep minorities away. Some white families placed their children in private schools as another integration avoidance tactic. Ultimately in 1959, Virginia’s Supreme Court mandated that closed schools were reopened and twelve black students were allowed to attend the historically white school^[4]. The influx of integration in American public school changed the visual image of the typical American classroom. However, in many situations white students are still the majority in American classrooms allowing for racial spotlighting of students who are not members of the homogeneous race.

Racial spotlighting is prevalent in classes where there is little diversity and often little cultural exposure of the homogenous teacher. Instances of racial spotlighting in education directed towards black and brown children is a likely occurrence since 91% of American teachers are white^[5].  With an overwhelming number of teachers needed in various settings, it is common for white teachers to fill positions in urban neighborhoods. The teaching from white teachers with little in common with their diverse and urban students may result in racial spotlighting at the hands of the students. Students of this background may have minimal exposure to races outside of what they have grown accustom within their community. These students may seek the perceived expertise of their white educator for knowledge of his or her race. Linking the educator as the spokesperson of the entire white population. A similar example would be apparent of a minority student learning in a predominantly white educational setting. Due to the teachers, or the students, inexperience with members of unfamiliar communities, seeking racial expertise from the marginalized student would depict racial spotlighting, and like the first example, racial thoughtlessness.

The linking of these unlike entities results in a cultural incongruity.  Studies expressed how black students in non-diverse classrooms often feel obligated to take on the role of race expert because of evident social injustices. Students who are victims of racial spotlighting endure a heightened sense of academic pressure to perform. Studies have shown that students who are forced into the role of the race’s spokesperson often feel pressured to outperform other students. Particularly for black students, racial spotlighting often increases the desire to succeed to eradicate preconceived notions of the spotlighted student’s race^[6]. Spotlighted students are often critically aware of social injustices in society that trickle into their education. Black students are typically privy to the lack of representation or “complete absence of the black experience in textbooks ^[6]. Teachers of differing cultural groups are, too, apparent of the lack of cultural diversity in educational resources which explains their need to spotlight.

Racism is deeply embedded in African American students. The concept of race has created a hierarchy of dominance in American society.  This dominance suggests that black and brown students are subdominant and culturally habituated to under perform when compared to other groups and their academic successes^[7]. The social narrative of the consistent under performance of minorities, academically, is not always factual. Often blacks refute racism by overachieving in academic settings to create a sense of racial consciousness and pride within education. However, overachieving has its costs. While attempting to fight hegemonistic ideas of whites, blacks often must defend their blackness by peers when they are ridiculed for acting white. Black students taking on the mainstream, cultural behaviors relating to academic success are often illustrated as traits associated as “white, middle-class behaviors” (Carter Andrews, 297, 2009). Racial stigmas, microaggressions and racism have led to beliefs of minorities beings, specifically African Americans, as being “inherently intellectually inferior to whites^[6]”.  Blacks who attempt to be high performing students in a context that some see as a tool for, and supported by, the hegemonious may be looked down upon from members of their own community. In a “presence of whiteness in education acting white was a form of resistance in which black students performed whiteness as an act of collective self-assertion, claiming as rights what has previously been reserved as privileges for Whites only.^[6]

References

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/us/charlottesville-riots-black-students-schools.html

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/are-we-born-racist/201206/the-spotlight-effect

https://www.dailyprogress.com/125yearsofprogress/charlottesville-schools-integrated-this-day-in/article_1b30a9ee-94ad-11e7-aa43-1b472736a8be.htm

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