Chapter 3

Concealed Stories

  • Challenge stock stories about race and racism

  • Include stories told by people in marginalized communities invisible in mainstream culture

  • Tell of marginalized community lives, values, and struggles, and perspectives on white dominance

  • Expose dominance and privilege in society

  • Provide pride and sustenance in cultures and communities missing from the mainstream

 

Chapter 3: Overview

Main Objectives : 

  • Students learn how implicit stereotypes shape perception and can inform a reading of an image or story

  • They understand that racial stereotypes can shape and form reading of an image or story

  • Students learn how to critically analyze stories to unearth concealed stories

 

Guiding Questions:

  • What are the questions about race and racism that we don’t hear?

  • Why don’t we hear these stories?

  • How are such stories lost or left out?

  • How do we recover these stories?

  • What do these stories teach us about race and racism that the stock stories leave out?

Chapter 3: Lesson 1

Race and Rights in U.S. History

Learning Outcomes: 

  • Students learn how public and private memory of the past affects how we think about the present

  • Students see the way that implicit stereotypes shape perception

 

Lesson Outline: 

  • Define Concealed Stories

  • Look at provocative visuals of people and historic events

  • Students discuss what they recognize, remember, and imagine are the stories related to those images

  • Students compare their recollections with textbook explanations and with the alternative side to those historical events

Chapter 3: Lesson 2

Media and Culture

Learning Outcomes: 

  • Students will be able to learn about their own and each other’s experiences in regards to race and racism

  • Through movement and placement within a continuum students will be able to visualize the degree of impact that race has in their own and other people’s lives

 

Lesson Outline: 

  • Students imagine a comedy television show 

  • Students analyze and discuss potentially misleading imagery that evokes discussion of stereotypes

  • Whole group discusses the similarities and differences between the imagined tv shows, the first impressions of the images, and the reality of the images

  • Whole group discusses concealed stories in mainstream media and news

Chapter 3: Lesson 3

Mainstream Othering Narratives for Current Events

Learning Outcomes: 

  • Students learn about white privilege or advantage and its historical roots 

  • Students look at how discriminatory policies that advantage whites challenge the American ideals of meritocracy and colorblindness

 

Lesson Outline: 

  • Students read two articles and compare the narratives offered, questioning what is missing from those two articles as well as from their understanding of current events

  • Students read a concealed story and consider why the author felt it was necessary to tell

  • Students look at artwork that expresses experiences of culture and identity

  • Students write their own concealed stories