Yesterday, I began my first full day of teaching a summer graduate course on research design. During the middle of the class, I began to talk to the students about writing solid research questions. As an exercise, I had the students break into groups and evaluate potential research questions that I wrote on the board and then report back to me.

When the class reconvened, I asked the students to evaluate the first question that I wrote on the board, which said “Why do African immigrants do well in math?” Of course, in terms of research design, this is a problematic question for many reasons. For this reason, I was interested in the various ways the students would respond.

One student, a middle aged White woman, raised her hand and said, “This question is bad because it assumes things that are not true.” She explained that she found it unlikely that African students would be good at math. Although I was certain that she hadn’t looked at any data on African achievement and was instead relying on her own assumptions, I didn’t trip. Instead, I said “Let’s assume, for the sake of argument that all Africans were in fact good at math. Would this be a sound question?” She replied:

“No. Even if we could believe that African immigrants are good at math, there could be a lot of reasons why. They could’ve gotten good at math back in Africa from, I don’t know, CLIMBING TREES!”

There are few moments in my life when I’m rendered speechless. This was one of them.

After a long and awkward pause, I instinctively scanned the room for sympathetic Black eyes. I found three. I then focused on one Black woman in the class, who was mouthing “No, she did not just say that shit in class” to herself. I also noticed three or four embarrassed White faces in the room. The remainder of the class, including the first woman, looked at me baffled, as if they couldn’t understand what was going on. I tried to speak but all I could manage was something that sounded like, “Uhh. Okay. Wow. Ummm. Hmm. Wow. Ok.”

I was immediately reminded of a Dave Chappelle routine where he said, “Sometimes White people say shit that’s so racist you can’t even say nothin’. You just be like ‘Damn that was racist’”. That was exactly how I felt. I literally didn’t own the appropriate words to respond to her comments.

In order to buy time and collect my thoughts, I moved on to another student who echoed the spirit of her claim, but did not refer to her tree climbing example. I couldn’t, however, focus on what the student was saying because I was still thinking about the first woman’s comment. How could someone say something like that and think that it’s okay? I turned to the board and began to write meaningless notes to hide the fact that I was laughing, which I sometimes do in the face of such absurdity.

A few moments later, I regrouped and returned to the class discussion. I revisited the woman’s comments by saying, “Let’s return to your point. I’m going to use a different example that’s more appropriate. Let’s say there are many factors that could lead to math success, such as community involvement, which really is a feature of many African cultures…”

Immediately after class, I began to regret the way I handled the situation. I’m still not sure what the “right” thing to do is, but I certainly wish that I had said and done more to create a “teachable moment” for her and the rest of the class.

I’m really curious to know what y’all would do if you had been in that situation.

HELP!