A Moral Educator Reflects on Teaching a High School Class on Race and Racism to a Diverse Group of Seniors

CMEI Colloquium
Larsen Hall, Harvard Graduate School of Education
February 12, 2014

On four occasions I taught a course called Race and Racism at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, and arranged with the school to control the demographic of the class so I always had a very diverse group, and never had a majority of white students. I describe the course and the class and reflect on some of the particular moral education challengessuch as the impact of teaching that race is not a scientifically sound idea on students of different racial groups; the use of moral questions to enhance understanding of historical material such as slavery; and the importance of recognizing "racial asymmetry" in moral issues discussed by the class (for example, does excluding a white student from a Latino-dominated venue, like a dance, have the same significance as excluding a Latino student from a white-dominated venue).

Speaker Biography:

Lawrence Blum is Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education and Professor of Philosophy. His scholarly interests are in race theory, moral philosophy, moral psychology, moral education, multiculturalism, social and political philosophy, philosophy of education, the philosophy of Simone Weil, and, more recently, philosophy and the Holocaust, and ethics and race in film. He has taught at UMass-Boston since 1973, and has been a visiting professor at UCLA (in Philosophy), Stanford (in Education), and Teachers College, Columbia (in Education). Blum has written four books: “I’m Not a Racist, But”: The Moral Quandary of Race (Cornell UP, 2002) (which was selected Best Book of the year in social philosophy by the North American Society for Social Philosophy); Moral Perception and Particularity (Cambridge UP, 1994); A Truer Liberty: Simone Weil and Marxism (co-author: V.J. Seidler) (Routledge, 1989); Friendship, Altruism, and Morality (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980).