On Emotions and the Classroom—A Forbidden Combination?

Hola my wonderful Gente

Here is another post that my Xicana sister, Elene Ruiz wrote for Deaf Echo. We are reminded of the constant struggle that communities who have been oppressed and marginalized must go through. Thanks for fighting "The Good Fight" Elena, and let's all keep doing the same thing.

Si Se Puede!

Gil

On Emotions and the Classroom—A Forbidden Combination?
By Elena Ruiz on February 17, 2012

After vehemently protesting a classmate’s opining on how Latin@s*–“illegal” ones, to be exact—have more language rights than Deaf U.S. citizens do, based on the availability of the “press 2 for español” telephone option. The professor emailed me later in the day, urging me to remove emotions from classroom discussions.

When I name statements rooted in oppression from classmates, professors have asked me to go back on track and cite “research” to support my claims.

What to do? I cannot, based on principle, allow an –ism to be said without naming it for what it is for the aim of community accountability.

I have been labeled as “too much,” “pompous,” “bitchy,” “not safe” and god knows what else when it comes to my dialectic style. In the past two years, I’ve attempted to tweak my approaches so that the message remains true, and deliverable within the classroom—but the status quo, adept as ever, counters with numerous refutations.

~

Academia has long been my intellectual refuge—a place where I could declare my innermost politicized ruminations, engage in hearty, challenging, and sometimes heart-wrenching dialogues that transformed into greater consciousness.

But this refuge is being threatened by the sweeping dismissal of emotions’ place in the classroom. To be told that you are being emotional—ESPECIALLY as a woman of color—is to experience a steel door slammed in your face, its metallic properties reverberating in your thoughts, your spirit even as you walk far, far, far away from the site whereupon such occurred. It remains within you, a heady rejection that makes you feel as if judging eyes are omnipresent, as if your thoughts must be contained, sealed, labeled for the protection of others. It, in short, makes you lonely.

We are reared to believe that emotions are automatic invalidations of academic discourses. But—discourses without emotions are direct contributions to the power systems that dictate our unconscious obedience. And through such unconscious obedience, many of us go on to create micro-scale systems in our classrooms, hierarchizing, organizing permissible and condemnable behaviors. When we permit such micro-scale organizations to occur, we perpetuate very real social categorizations based on the disenfranchisement of specific experiences that historically and currently have no solid place in academia.

In short, we become complicit with oppression.

~

Professors and students who turn their back to this reality take part in the continuation of monochromatic, monolingual, monosexual, monogendered (and so on) paradigms of the white, straight, male, able-bodied, wealthy dictations of what constitutes of “true” academia. The experiences and realities of other groups go on to endure repetitious stampedes that trample out their validity—and it all happens with

“You’re getting too emotional”

“I’m keeping emotions out of this”

“Don’t get angry”

“I can’t even listen to you now because of your behavior”

“Emotions aren’t the way”

“Just calm down.”

I won’t calm down. Instead, I’ll continue to follow the doctrine of the great Audre Lorde, who gave us words of wisdom that live on through those who engage in the struggle.

When we turn from anger, we turn from insight, saying we will accept only the designs already known, deadly and safely familiar…

My anger is no excuse for not dealing with your blindness, no reason to withdraw from the results of your own actions.

-The Uses of Anger

1981

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How do I go on? I have not found neatly packaged answers yet. My insides remain messy, turbulent. I dredge through, trying to find seeds of love amid the destruction.

Despite this chaos, I know, I do know: we have to find the seeds whereupon we can plant the roots for a community of love, roots that can uphold us through the discomfort of decolonizing processes. While academia represents a multitude of colonizations, we owe it to the unseen/unheard to plant these seeds, so that our personhood can be fully realized through the human experience of sharing our emotions in the Ivory Tower. Only then can we reconstruct learning as for everyone, in all places of anger, struggle, joy, and peace.

-Dedicated, as always, to those who fight the good fight, tirelessly and constantly. this is for all of us.

[Editor's Note: The term "Latin@s" is derived from the use of gendered nouns in Spanish (Latino and Latina) and is meant to promote gender equality. This article first appeared in the author's blog on 2/16/12.]

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Elena Ruiz
Elena Ruiz is a quintessential over-politicized graduatestudent in Gallaudet University’s Deaf Cultural Studies program. Born and raised in Sacramento, CA, she taught at California School for the Deaf, Fremont for two years before uprooting and making the move to D.C. in pursuit of reversing the effects of her ‘hearingized’ upbringing. Adopting the handle of ‘sordaradical,’ loosely translated as ‘A Radical DeafXicana-Latina,’ she draws upon socialism, feminism, and the academic field of Ethnic Studies in order to broaden our collective understanding of what it means to be “Deaf.” You can find her in various coffee shops in metropolitan areas sitting and thinking for long periods of time, chasing moments of written inspiration. Her other work can be found at www.sordismaradical.com and short bursts of cogent fury can be found via @sordaradical on Twitter.