Dave Chappelle's role in our general education

When I asked Prof. Rachel Watkins how she believed she was reaching the general education goals in her Roots of Racism course, she told me she had many techniques to incite critical thinking and develop student’s intuitive, creative and aesthetic faculties.

She focuses on getting students to take a second look at ordinary things, and getting them to reflect on their effect on our perspectives and our values. At the beginning of the semester, she will teach her students on racism in general. Towards the end of the semester, she will make her students apply their knowledge to the world around them, therefore making them use their critical thinking capabilities. Students will look at TV shows, such as Comedy Central, and address the issues related to racism that this show portrays. They specifically discuss Dave Chappelle, a popular comedian amongst the students. Prof. Watkins will then encourage her students to look past the jokes, and, instead of looking at it mindlessly to get a good laugh, they will investigate on the critique of race relations this show discusses. They will look at the different layers that Dave Chappelle puts into his sketch, and demonstrate how this affects the audience through its racist comments.

Prof. Watkins also devotes a whole module of her class to talking about how celebrities, being an important influence to our society, also demonstrate racist behaviors. They will look at cases such as Mel Gibson or Michael Richards to demonstrate that racism is still part of our society, and to analyze its different representations.

To teach students intuitive, creative and aesthetic faculties, Prof. Watkins separates the class into small groups and requires them to develop their own research project. They will have an in depth study of any concept or idea that they see fits with the topics discussed in class. This, as Prof. Watkins believes, “will facilitate their own, self directed second look”.

Prof. Watkins believes that one of the most important parts of her class is getting rid of the students’ tendency to believe that racist ideas have been around for a long time. Her main goal is to make students realize that these racist processes are not natural, but created by specific social relations, political situations and economic conditions. This will enable students not to take things for granted, and question everyday events. They will eventually develop a method of thinking, where instead of saying “this is just how it is”, they will question processes by asking themselves “how did this stuff come to be?” or “ where did this process come from?”.