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Violence motivated by racism and anti-Semitism, in particular, first came to be called hate crime in the late 1960s, but the idea of “hate” as a legal construct, social condition, and media buzzword exploded in the 1980s, expanding in places to include violence against people with disabilities and queer people, among other groups, as well. The 1998 killings of James Byrd, Jr. and Mathew Shepard, along with the release and success of films like Boys Don’t Cry and The Laramie Project a few years later, reignited a national dialogue on the issue of “hate” and the problem of what gets called “hate crime” in the United States.
In the face of this violence, more often than not, we educate. We “teach tolerance.” In K-12 and university classrooms, and in other educational and community venues, we look at other examples of similar violence, and hope that this revisiting will give us answers or encourage individual change. But what else might we teach? As educators (and activists) how can we move beyond the limits of “tolerance” as a goal and foster challenges to the systems that produce controlling violence? How might we broaden the questions asked in the wake of this violence and the strategies used to make sense of it, address it, and prevent it? How will we shape pedagogical strategies for resisting and protesting both specific acts of violence and the construction of those incidents as historically or geographically specific or isolated?
This issue of Radical Teacher is seeking articles, examples, and discussions that propose ways to think and teach through, about, and beyond the idea of “hate” and the violence of domination in all its manifestations, including especially verbal and physical violence. Articles might:
--focus on strategies for teaching about the structural foundations of racist, sexist, homo-and transphobic, xenophobic, class-based, religious, nationalist, and ableist violence;
--engage the educational and pedagogical struggles we face in finding ways to talk about this violence in context;
--examine current educational models and messages (in both official educational environments, like schools, and more general contexts, like the media);
--discuss risks faced by those who attempt to teach about dominating violence and the circumstances that give rise to it or consider responses to instances of violence that create a need for un-planned, but crucial, teaching and intervention,-- present ways to teach about social movement histories or analyses of efforts to address such violence that embrace or develop alternative strategies.
Send proposals, ideas, and manuscripts to Shana Agid, 284 Eastern Parkway, Apt. 5J,Brooklyn, NY 11225 or rindpress@earthlink.net and Erica Rand, 112 Sherman St., Apt. 2, Portland, ME 04101, erand@bates.edu. If you have an idea for an essay, we encourage you to send a proposal before you write. Manuscripts are due by September 15th 2006.
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