Black Like Virtual Me: Student Reactions to Online Cultural Diversity

1. The Simulation

During the fall of 1999, two of my sections of US History to 1877 (Simpson College's version of the American History survey) used the web to role-play people of various ethnic backgrounds in a historical context. This was as part of a web-based historical simulation that was an extension of my interest in having students write about various historical issues from the "historical first person."

Assignments that read: "You are a colonist in 18^th century Virginia; write a letter home to your relatives telling them whether they should immigrate or not" had always resulted in an inordinate number of thoughtful and engaging essays. This simulation took this approach one step further by assigning students various roles and allowing them to interact with one another in a coherent historical context throughout the course of the semester.

2. Families

At the outset, students grouped themselves into teams of two.

Since the simulation followed the course from the late 17^th century through the end of Reconstruction -- rather than dipping into certain lives at discrete points -- families provided the most effective way to deal with cohesiveness in this multi-generation stretch of time.

3. Croatan

The specific historical context for these families was a fictional colony of British North America named "Croatan."

Creating and using a historical composite instead of an actual colony allowed me some leeway as far as introducing new factors, but more importantly, it gave the students greater freedom of action. They could chart not only their own history but, to some extent, the history of their community. This was a very important aspect of the simulation because I wanted to remind students that history is constructed by individual decisions rather than abstract forces.

4. Actions

Within this context, students were responsible for making key decisions for their family (where to live, how to eat, how to engage in social, religious, and political life, etc.). Each team submitted its family's actions every Friday.

5. Precedents & Decision-making

In order to take an action, students needed to find a historical precedent. Therefore: students were free to take whatever historically accurate actions they might desire. Although Croatan is a fictional place, it is based upon fact. Everything that happened there happened somewhere. And students had to prove that.

By providing participants with the opportunity to choose their family's actions from a broad spectrum of options, the simulation shifted decision-making into the present, while remaining fairly historically accurate. Indian wars, the development of the market, the adoption of slavery, the coming of the Revolution, and the advent of industrialization all seem abstract and inevitable when presented in textbook form; I tried to restore a sense of the dynamism and diversity of the people who made the decisions that drove these developments forward. This worked fairly well.

6. Points of View

Race proved more complex.

7. Student reactions to assigned race

The classes that participated in the sim were both almost entirely white.

And for the most part, students expected the course to be a revisitation of the familiar survey of the political accomplishments of great white men. When I explained the simulation to them most revised their preconceptions but they still expected to receive white families.

A few were taken aback when confronted with the challenges of taking the role of an enslaved Ibo woman or a family of Senecas. At first, some students were paralyzed by this exoticism. One student admitted, "I can't think of any black women before Rosa Parks." Another asked, "What can I do as an Indian, die?"

7A. Indian families

Refreshingly: A few of these students became so excited about examining the cultures of their virtual families that they began hunting through the stacks and the internet for additional information about religion, burial customs, trade, and gender relations in Indian communities. Still: several students were simply marking time until the next smallpox epidemic. Then, anticipating the demographic changes of the 18^th century, they hoped to pick up a white family so they could start building an empire.

7B. African families

Students with African, Afro-Caribbean, or Afro-American families had greater difficulties. They rarely progressed beyond a simplistic understanding of slavery and few pursued independent research. They never examined their families' African cultures. A few students explained that while Indians possessed some "romantic allure," the black experience seemed dull and uninteresting.

For example:

After losing their initial European family to disease, I assigned two students a new family that consisted of a recently enslaved Angolan woman. One of them approached me after class and asked, "Was this kind of punishment really necessary?"

I asked him what he meant.

He clarified his question: "I know you killed us off because we built our farm in a malarial swamp and everything, but was it really necessary to saddle us with a family that can't do anything? I mean what is the point of playing this game if we can't take any actions?"

I asked him why he thought he could not take any actions.

He answered, "Because we're slaves," but a momentary expression of uncertainty crossed his face.

Since the simulation is ideally a catalyst for self-directed learning, I wanted to step back a bit so I just told him: "Why don't you look over the reading for this week again [it included a discussion of slave culture] and make sure that slaves were as powerless as you think they were."

In retrospect, I should have taken the time to speak with him at length because later in the semester his paper on a full-length slave narrative revealed an excessively bipolar understanding of slavery -- in his eyes the only possible actions were futile violent resistance or docile obedience. Looking back over his turns, I realized that gender might have shaped his responses too -- in his hands the slave woman remained essentially inert--an object. She did not even have a name.

But they too gradually focused upon armed resistance.

For example:

In the second third of the semester, two students had carefully built up their slave family. They had managed to become literate, influential, and skilled in several crafts. After a few excellent turns, they decided that they had explored the possibilities of slavery. Consequently, they attempted to initiate a slave uprising. They carefully researched their actions and came to me for books and advice. I let them know that their chances of escape, while low, were better than their chances of surviving a rebellion. They said that they understood this, but:

1. They wanted to kill some whites (except their real world fraternity brothers)
2. If they died, they would be reincarnated, so they had little to lose.
3. If they escaped they would be beyond the parameters of the sim and therefore reincarnated anyway -- so why not go out in a blaze of glory?

Despite these somewhat contrived motives, the uprising still provided a useful teaching moment. The uprising was bloody, the initiating family was killed or sold off, and the brutal suppression that followed came down hard on several African-American families who knew nothing of the conspiracy. Their outrage in the classroom -- "why are we being punished just because we are black?" -- brought a taste of the injustice of slavery and racism home with dramatic force that ordinary lectures, class discussions, and readings rarely equal.

Still: It was frustrating that all of the students who became deeply involved in their African-American families embraced violence as the ultimate expression of their virtual blackness.

Interestingly, the students playing these particular families were all white males.

8. Assessment

8A. What worked

At the end of the semester I administered a written assessment and was pleased that most students reported that the simulation had helped them develop what one student described as a "more humanistic look at history."

• Clarifying this position, another student wrote that "The people became real as I played my role, thus history became real for me, not just names and dates of yesterdays."
• Another reported that it "adds another dimension to learning and makes the information seem worthwhile." Yow!

This feedback convinced me that I had accomplished my three primary goals:

1. Students discovered that events looked quite different depending on your position in society.
2. Events were the product of contextualized human decisions rather than abstract "historical forces."
3. Finally, and perhaps most importantly: They had a firmer grasp on the material.

As a bonus: I was surprised at how many students reported learning more about historical research. This was particularly gratifying since outside research was purely optional. Unsolicited extra work on the part of students is a perplexing development. In attempting to understand it, I concluded that it is the product of the simulation. It was apparent that developing a family encouraged a level of pride and emotional involvement that ordinary papers and reading often cannot equal. It seems a reasonable assumption that the connection that some students developed with their virtual families encouraged an extraordinary degree of extra effort.

8B. What did not work

Still, there were some problems -- particularly with questions of race.

1. In the first several weeks, many families became multiethnic as a result of intermarriage between Europeans and Indians. With few exceptions, students did not address this situation. They simply tried to live their lives as whites.
2. With some exceptions, students managing slave families remained unable to perceive the complexity of slavery -- you were either an Uncle Tom or a Nat Turner.
3. Similarly, there was no acknowledgement of free people of color, even though they were addressed in readings and in class.
4. Finally, and perhaps most troubling: students with white families tended to submit the most thoughtful and detailed actions even though a good deal of classtime and many of the outside readings were about African-Americans and Indians.

Students with Indian and white families brought in outside sources more often than those with African-American families. When students with African-American families cycled into white families, their involvement and search for precedents often picked up. Part of this is doubtlessly due to familiarity, but in speaking with several students, I think it is also because they tend to associate whiteness with dynamism and activity. In their minds, it is whites that do things -- they build farms, cities, and factories. They legislate. They adjudicate. They buy and sell. Other people can resist, knuckle-under or attempt to insulate themselves, but they cannot take constructive action. Readings, papers, and the simulation took some of the edge off of this sentiment. Before this course many of the students had not thought about African-American or Indian agency at all, but the core sentiment remained.

9. End

I have some thoughts about how to address this problem, but they are hazy. Since I hope to tap the members of the panel and the audience for comments or suggestions for improvements, I will end my formal remarks here. Thank you.