THE PROBLEM OF PRIVILEGE: LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL SENSITIVITY TRAINING

Museums that wish to be inclusive must encourage docents to speak to a multitude of audiences who do not approach history through “the heroic, white, male- dominated narrative.” Historic Columbia’s attempt to prepare docents for this best practice resulted in the creation of an interactive training session on cultural and language sensitivity. Both the volunteer base and the weekend staff, often pulled from the ranks of public historians trained at the University of South Carolina (USC), were required to attend. This training was necessary in part because Historic Columbia lacked a diverse volunteer base to facilitate naturally a conversation about these issues among docents. Of America’s 86,000 nationally designated historic sites, just three percent openly represent minorities in their staffing across racial, ethnic, gender or sexual orientation lines.1 The two women of color volunteering at the time of the reinterpretation embraced the exhibit and tour and participated in training. Timing and outside obligations detoured them from becoming WWFH docents. Historic Columbia offered the hour long inaugural version of the workshop twice to accommodate docents’ schedules. Eighteen volunteers and five paid docents completed the first sensitivity training offered before the museum’s reopening in February 2014. The organization ultimately extended the session to ninety minutes because of the lengthy conversations guided activities generated. Thirteen volunteers, eight of them new inductees, and two paid docents attended the second

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workshop held in April.2 For later sessions, participation declined to a handful of recently recruited docents.

Historic Columbia asked Daniella Cook, assistant professor in the Department of Instruction and Teacher Education at USC, to craft and lead the first session two weeks before opening.3 Cook specializes in understanding how students, teachers and

communities underserved in public education are affected by class, race and power. These themes manifested themselves in the training, but inclusivity stretched beyond them. Before meeting, she assigned “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh, which listed the ways McIntosh herself had benefited from her whiteness. Cook also circulated a link to the second episode of Race: the Power of An Illusion discussing the construction of race and the contradictions of American

independence and equality in the context of slavery.4

Given that the WWFH’s interpretation heavily emphasized the black experience during Reconstruction, materials and discussion revolved frequently around interpreting history that was not focused solely on white narratives and interacting with visitors self- identifying as people of color. However, topics centered on race opened the opportunity to ask docents to consider audiences they may unknowingly exclude with their language.

2 _{Ann Posner, “WW Training Class April 2014” (Historic Columbia, April 29, 2014); Posner, “Training} Attendance,” January 15, 2014; Taylor, email message to Bacon-Rogers, “Evaluations”; The details of the cultural and language sensitivity workshop have been modified from a History@Work blog for the National Council on Public History. Jennifer Whitmer Taylor, “Inclusive Training at Historic Columbia,”

National Council on Public History History@Work, March 6, 2017, http://ncph.org/history-at- work/inclusive-training-at-historic-columbia/.

3 _{Waites, email message to Interpretative Team, “Dialoging about Race.”}

4 _{Cook, email message to Waites, “Follow Up”; Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the} Invisible Knapsack,” in White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism, ed. Paula S. Rothenberg and Soniya Munshi (New York: Worth Publishers, 2016), 97–101; California Newsreel, Race the Power of an Illusion, Episode 2, Digital, 2003,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UZS8Wb4S5k&feature=share&list=PLTFtnXiHqi_Dsunty4Z5JKDDi gkhxGi_j.

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Cook built on her pre-session materials with activities and handouts. “Ten Things Everyone Should Know about Race” succinctly explored race as a modern social construct.5 She distributed a document entitled “Tour Guide Etiquette: a Guide for the Well Intentioned Volunteer,” a modification by Allison Bailey and Maura Toro-Morn of the pamphlet “Cultural Etiquette: a Guide for the Well-Intentioned” from Amoja Three Rivers. “Tour Guide Etiquette” offered thirteen tips for docents to make visitors feel included and welcomed. These ranged from not asking visitors to speak for their “race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or nationality” to not letting “racist, sexist, or homophobic language and comments go unnoticed.” The tips also stressed the

importance of body language, such as spreading “eye contact around” rather than looking at women when addressing reproductive rights or black visitors when discussing slavery.6 “Challenging Your Assumptions,” modified from Teaching Intolerance: Writing for Change, asked docents to locate the normative language in a series of thirteen sentences. The exercise illuminated ageism, sexism, racism, and classism as well as biases against the disabled and non-Western cultures. Docents circled the “assumption/s” in sentences, such as “Fashion Tights are available in black, suntan, and flesh color” and “Our

founding fathers carved this great state out of the wilderness,” and defended their answer.7

5 _{California Newsreel, “Ten Things Everyone Should Know about Race,” Race: The Power of an Illusion,} 2003, http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-01-x.htm.

6 _{Alison Bailey and Maura Toro-Morn, “Tour Guide Etiquette: A Guide for the Well Intentioned}

Volunteer,” n.d.; Amoja Three Rivers, “Cultural Etiquette: A Guide for the Well-Intentioned,” SOA Watch: Close the School of the Americas, http://soaw.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=626. 7 _{Ann Posner, email message to Jennifer Taylor and James Quint, “Monday Afternoon Presentation with} Portia,” April 9, 2014; James Quint, email message to Jennifer Taylor and Ann Posner, “Monday Afternoon Presentation with Portia,” April 9, 2014; Southern Poverty Law Center, “Challenging Your Assumptions,” Teaching Tolerance,

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As new volunteers joined Historic Columbia and committed to conducting the WWFH tour, the language and sensitivity training resumed under the leadership of Porchia Moore, a PhD candidate in library sciences at USC who studies museum

inclusivity. She continued with the activities and handouts selected by Cook but brought her own unique insight as a public history practitioner and frequent visitor to museums.8 She opened sessions with a fifteen to twenty minute presentation of her own research on museums and inclusivity. She generated complex conversations, particularly when she asked docents to identify appropriate terms for referring to enslaved peoples and people of color from a larger list. These issues surrounding language choice initially prompted Historic Columbia to develop the workshop. The organization was concerned that several docents were “old enough to have learned racial language in their youth that is now antiquated” and may use inappropriate language.9 Moore insisted that docents know why they use a specific word and be able to defend that choice. When attendance swelled beyond two or three docents, Moore initiated an interactive component that visually presented privilege to participants through the privilege walk. Docents took steps forward or backward based on a series of questions that illuminated various forms of privilege.10 For smaller sessions, docents answered these questions on their own and then spoke about their individual results.

8 _{Posner, email message to Taylor and Quint, “Monday Afternoon”; Quint, email message to Taylor and} Posner, “Monday Afternoon”; Porchia Moore, “Radical Trust,” The Incluseum, May 7, 2014,

https://incluseum.com/2014/05/07/radical-trust/. 9 _{Posner, email message to Waites, “WW Volunteers.”}

10 _{Examples of Privilege Walk Activities can be found here: “Privilege Walk Activity” (Inclusion and} Diversity Education, Lakeland College, n.d.), https://www.lakelandcollege.edu/cm/diversity/content/ documents/Classroom_Activity_Privilege_Walk.pdf; “Module 5: Privilege Walk Activity” (School of Social Welfare, University of Albany, n.d.),

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The language and cultural sensitivity session combined with content training eased fears related to discussing race among some docents. Before and after the first training program, Historic Columbia administered a survey to gauge docents’ comfort level “talking with museum visitors about historical issues related to race.” After training, the six and half percent of docents taking the survey that previously were “not

comfortable at all” dropped to zero. Those “somewhat comfortable” remained nearly unchanged at just over thirty-five percent but those “very comfortable” rose six percent to sixty-four percent. However, these statistics are not conclusive. Thirty-one docents

completed the pre-training survey but only fourteen of the twenty-three docents who completed all training took the post-training survey. Furthermore, three volunteers during their formal staff evaluation displayed obvious discomfort with taking about historical

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issues connected to race. They compensated by ignoring racial aspects of Reconstruction and focusing on Wilson content instead and did not pass those attempts.11

However, of the 628 visitors who visited WWFH in 2014 and completed a survey on their experience, nearly eighty-four percent thought docents handled sensitive issues “extremely well.”12 Survey results and the high standards set for the docent’s tour

evaluation built into the training process demonstrate sensitivity programming is valuable for museums dealing with complex issues of race and creating inclusive environments for all of its visitors.

Table 4.1 Visitor Evaluation Question on Sensitive or Controversial Issues

11 _{Jennifer Taylor, email message to Betsy Kleinfelder, “WWFH Tour,” October 21, 2014; The subject of} the following email has been changed to keep the evaluation process confidential. Jennifer Taylor, email message to Ann Posner, “Docent A,” February 26, 2014; Jennifer Whitmer Taylor, “Docent A Tour Review” (Columbia, SC, February 10, 2014), Historic Columbia; Ann Posner and Jennifer Taylor, “Docent P Tour Review” (Columbia, SC, February 11, 2014), Historic Columbia; Daniella Cook, “Historic

Columbia Foundation WWFH Tour Observation Report” (Columbia, S.C., March 13, 2014), 2; Annie Wright, “Results of WWFH Volunteer Training,” PowerPoint (Columbia, S.C.: Historic Columbia, March 10, 2014), Historic Columbia Collection.

12 _{Jennifer Whitmer Taylor, “Woodrow Wilson Family Home Trends,” PowerPoint (Historic Columbia,} January 12, 2015), slide 9.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Not well at all (7) Somewhat well (56) Extremely well (527) I did not feel any senstive or controversial

issues were raised (38)

Not well at all (7) Somewhat well (56) Extremely well (527)

I did not feel any senstive or controversial issues

were raised (38)

Percentage 1.11 8.92 83.92 6.05

How were sensitive or controversial