Pink Like Me

As a teacher, the Solipsist has been exploring the seemingly limitless potential of groupwork. We figure we can get it down to a science, whereby we will simply walk into the classroom, yell "Start!" and then sit back and check out Facebook for the next hour and twenty minutes whilst our charges toil happily and productively in their little work-teams. We're not quite there yet, but every day brings us closer.

At any rate, one thing we ask of students, after dividing them randomly into teams of six or seven, is to come up with a team name. Childish? Maybe, but in college that's not necessarily a drawback. We've found that there's a somewhat tidal quality to student attitudes: What one loves as a child, one disdains as a teen, but then finds delight in again as a young adult (or old adult, for that matter). Thus, while a high-schooler will roll her eyes in disgust if her teacher returns a homework assignment festooned with a congratulatory Garfield sticker, a kindergartener will love it, and a 36-year-old single mother of three will squeal with delight. In other words, the students kind of get into the whole team-name activity.

In the years that we've done this, the team names have ranged from the "hip" ("Team Fresh") to the aspirational ("The Scholars") to the literal ("Five Chicks and a Dude") to the postmodern ("Team"). Today, however, we heard what may be our favorite team name yet.

In our current class, there are a number of African-American students. Some members of one team of seven girls suggested the name "The Black Panthers." Given their relative youth, the students probably meant this not so much as a militant statement but as something that sounded kind of cool: One is unsure if they even know who the Black Panthers are, but they'd probably heard the phrase and thought it sounded good. At any rate, a few of the girls raised a small objection: "We're not all black." Good point. Well, another girl observed, in that case, you guys can be "The Pink Panthers." Everybody laughed, and the group, "The Pink and Black Panthers," was formally chartered.

Some might look at this and see subtle racism--or at least separatism. We don't. If anything, the ease with which these kids discussed, negotiated, and, ultimately, laughed about their racial identities strikes us as somewhat promising. We're not a postracial society yet. But this often divisive issue is definitely becoming less incendiary.

Plus: "Pink and Black Panthers"? If you ask us, that's pretty damn clever.