I am hoping to use this space as a place to post my relections, questions, trials and troubles as I try to teach this course for the first time. I have been reflecting constantly on my goals in this course: to engage students where they are at and to move them toward the realization that race is an issue for all of us, to address the fear that all of us feel and put it in a larger context of local and global power relations and come to understand that this is where real learning can take place--if we let it.

I am sure that I am never going to be totally satisfied with what happens in class. And--I have to deal with it. Someone will be hurt, many will be angry. I keep my focus on what they might learn from their anger and their fear. Mine too. I have already learned that I still hang on to some of my privilege--especially where it feels comfortable. But I have lost something being white, something that goes along with that invisibility of privilege--the sense of truly appreciating the worth of commnuity