Service Learning: Racial Projects For and Against Ideal Citizenry Each of the service learning sites detailed in this study paired well with the curricular content of the Ethnic Studies Department, which examined race and ethnicity, particularly with social justice in mind. As such, the service learning opportunities easily could be seen as another “text” of sorts (Varlotta, 1996, p. 27). As with all curricula, this “text” was shaped, in part, by the context in which it was created. Renderings of white supremacy, capitalism, and colonialism were inescapable. Even though much of this unjust triptych in the U.S. context has been perpetuated through the beliefs and actions of white people, even people of color can embody and enact the values associated with these systems (Smith, 2006). In the case of service learning, just because the
racial/ethnic background of participants in Hawai‘i was drastically different from many colleges and universities on the U.S. continent, this did not mean that the power
dynamics automatically shifted. Due to the ways that dominant society socializes its members, the stratification and exploitive factors of unjust systems are enacted through bodies of color in ways that can be damaging—perhaps in different ways than when they are performed by white bodies.
Fortunately, the “text” was also influenced by the stories and practices of communities who have (imperfect, yet noteworthy) histories of fighting against
hierarchical valuations of bodies, knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors. And many of those struggles included people from a vast range of racial and economic backgrounds fighting in solidarity with one another. As mentioned previously, the dynamics of identities and how they were carried out could be extremely complex. Who was in what role
(university, community organization, community member, site coordinator, instructor, student) and the politics they enacted not only shaped the experiences of those around them but also influenced the discourses and interactions of the racial projects.
Additionally, what community projects students were asked to engage in and how their participation was framed was instrumental in students’ learning as well as any change that may have occurred. Thus, each service learning site as “text” offered different possibilities of and limitations to social change efforts. Detailing the contours of each service learning project reveals the how the processes behind the pedagogy were involved with racial formation. These processes also did the contradictory work of supporting and resisting neoliberal constructions of ideal citizenship.
Bright Horizons Tutoring
Bright Horizons Tutoring was an after-school program for elementary and middle school students wherein college students offered tutoring and facilitated activities. With a specific focus on educating low-income immigrant children in
dominant knowledge systems, this educational program most closely mimicked colonial and missionary efforts to construct racialized, ideal citizens for the nation and the
economy. The college students were positioned as responsible, young adults who helped with homework, held the expected knowledge of basic English reading and math, and pursued college education for their chosen careers. Their bodies and behaviors were framed as models to imitate. Additionally, their bodies and material possessions were to be protected (e.g., they received instructions on where to park and how to keep their possessions safe in the neighborhood). The arrangement situated the college students as ideal citizens and the younger students as those who lived amidst deficiency—the
neighborhood was “unfortunate” and “dangerous;” the students’ families did not have the preferred knowledge or skills for helping their children with homework; and the families did not have accepted ways of interacting with their children (e.g., families’ forms of affection for children was questioned, and they could not provide the material resources for adequate food, clothing, and hygiene). As the elementary and middle school students were “rowdy” but “loving,” they were framed as needing assistance from people outside of the community in order to get on the path of ideal citizenship— the path that would lead them to college and possibly out of the neighborhood.
Akin to missionary education efforts, discourses about and interactions within Bright Horizons Tutoring worked to assimilate low-income immigrant children of color into acceptable forms of knowledge and behavior. Dominant race and class-based rhetoric (including those from site supervisors and faculty) about low-income immigrant neighborhoods influenced service learners’ interactions and imaginations about the neighborhood, particularly curiosities about what the younger children experienced at home. Despite the children’s happiness at school and in after-school programs, service learners imagined the children’s home lives to be negative. Puzzled by this
incongruence, the service learners justified the children’s excitement and joy in school and after-school spaces by reasoning that the younger students were “making the most of it” and were grateful to be in the safe and nurturing space of school-related
environments. Of course, another way to interpret the children’s happiness was that they were extremely well taken care of at home, but that the interconnected systems of education, housing, food, health care, employment, and immigration were not up to par in order to provide suitable material resources for families in the community.
This racial project worked to shape both the service learners and the young children. Engaging in service learning in the Valley neighborhood implicitly reinforced to college students that their bodies, their knowledge, and their college going behaviors were valued more than those who lived in subsidized housing, did not have college degrees, and had jobs that earned low wages. A message about remaining in college was tacitly in the background as college students compared the differences between their home environments and those of the Valley Housing community. This racial project allowed service learners to slightly alter circumstances for younger individuals as they learned about stratified social conditions, but did not offer any clear opportunities to join with others to imagine and create different conditions. Instead, service learners were exposed to—and mostly followed—the rhetoric of faculty and site coordinators who reiterated dominant stereotypes about low-income immigrant neighborhoods.
The younger children and their families were also racialized through this project. As people who had immigrated from Micronesia, they were encouraged by Bright Horizons Tutoring to learn English and assimilate into norms of U.S. formal education. As mentioned in one example, their language and knowledge were underappreciated so much that young students were told that they were not supposed to communicate with one another in their primary language in the classroom.
Even though there were moderate disruptions to the dominant rhetoric and interactions (which further illuminated the typically unspoken awkwardness of the missionary-style project), the overarching frame of Bright Horizons Tutoring reveals how exposure to the “other” was intended to build college students’ empathy while encouraging younger students to conform to behaviors associated with upward mobility.