On the last day of my Ethnic Studies class this semester, when the plan was to review for the Final exam, I began the class with a tangentially-related exercise. The previous week Childish Gambino had released the music video This is America, and it caused quite a stir on social media. We knew that freshmen would see the video and we wanted to give them a chance to discuss it in class, in the context of Ethnic Studies, rather than just on their own with peers — or strangers online.
I was nervous though because the video is emotionally charged and quite layered with cultural and historical references that students may not be aware of, limiting their ability to analyze the message of the video. I didn’t want to assign as work prior to showing the video any of the articles, blog posts, or Twitter threads that came out in the days before class because I wanted to give students the chance to engage in their own analysis and discussion, uninfluenced by authoritative figures. I was also worried about students fixating on the violence in the video, and this reinforcing a cultural stereotype of black men as violent or aggressive. I had a lot of nervousness around this activity, and I spoke to five separate colleagues and one 12th-grader about it.
The slide sequence below shows my directions to students before viewing, the video, and after seeing the music video:
Students answered the three questions in pairs and then I led a class-wide discussion — and all went well. I was really pleased by the depth of student analysis, the number of cues they picked up on in the video, and the tenor of their sharing around the experience. Not only did they do a great job of analyzing this video but it also served as an overview of many of the topics discussed in Ethnic Studies over the course of the Spring semester.