Thus, what emerges from this multi-layered experience of conflicting ideas, emotions,
aptitudes, and sensibilities is what Ansley (1991) refers to as an above-ground and underground
classroom, or what I prefer to describe as competing classroom "scripts" written alternatively by the
faculty, the class in public, and by the students in their own private encounters. As such, women of
color teaching the complex range of racially and gender conscious courses must deal with managing
and attending to the above-ground script of the course (that which they present formally in the
syllabus, class-lectures, and choice of materials), the public script that is written collaboratively
(and undoubtedly at times coercively) with students in the course, and the private/underground
script written between students as they grapple with complex issues rarely broached in other
academic settings. All too often, the university's failure in approaching this dynamic, is in only
evaluating and understanding the formal and public script of the course, and doing so with the same
standards applied to other courses that never approach this range of complexity.
In addition, there is a larger script into which the faculty member is imbued that albeit less
directly related to the daily operations of the course, weigh heavily upon those faculty who are
marginalized to the discipline. Specifically, every faculty member is charged with serving as both
an official representative of the institution where they work, as well as their home department and
their discipline. However, for women of color, who've often borne the weight of exclusionary
tactics from these sectors, serving as the ambassador to other women and students of color is no
easy task. Over and over in narrative accounts, women of color express uneasiness with
'representing' these domains in ways that replicate the logic and practice of exclusion which
operated upon them. As such in choosing to "do the right thing," for themselves and their students,
they can become an oppositional force exposing and challenging the inequalities which have existed
and continue to exist. For many women of color, thoroughly interrogating and transforming these
domains in the context of their research and teaching is an impossible task, but one that cannot
readily be abandoned.
9
Convention