4 Emotional, Social and Physical Health Impacts

What students of colour have consistently called for is intervention and advocacy in the classroom when interpersonal and systemic issues are identified. The acknowledgement and investment in safer spaces for students of colour should no longer be at their expense and labour; rather, it is the responsibility of instructors, faculty, and administration to intentionally address. Students of colour were direct in detailing anecdotes and experiences where instructors could have proactively intervened in racist discourse and dynamics in the classroom; however, attempts to identify this process were met with claims of ignorance or discomfort in intervening.

What this is indicative of is the centralization of protecting and upholding whiteness in the classroom; choosing to ignore or minimize racialized students’ experiences of harm in the classroom is indicative of white preservation as one is consciously or unconsciously choosing to prioritize the protection, learning experience, and emotions of a majoritarian identity over a marginalized identity. The prevalence and persistence of whiteness in the classroom was found to:

• Create nuanced experiences of harm, which have specific long-term implications for students of colour as detailed above,
• Facilitate ongoing microaggressions and racist discourse in the classroom through ideological liberal values of free speech, market, and freedom of expressions,
• Frame experiences of harm as “learning opportunities,”
• Maintain the fallacy of multiculturalism and race neutrality in the classroom, and
• Centre white epistemology and knowledge.

A lack of faculty and instructional support in creating safer spaces and intervening in harmful experiences targeting students of colour is rooted in discussion around “intent versus impact.” Administrators and faculty must be intentional about supplying and seeking out educational tools to mediate and navigate conversations about race from white positionality, and they must become comfortable with seeing and addressing colour in the classroom. It is clear that a primary factor in creating safety and safer spaces within academia is to facilitate space in the classroom for educational, proactive, and progressive conversations around race and racism that do not involve harmful rhetoric or uncompensated labour.