In the spring of 2007, more than 40 years after the advances made by the civil rights movement, and more than 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court "Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education" decision, white radio talk-show host Don Imus taught us a lesson about racism--but it was not the lesson he thought he was teaching. His "lesson"--that black women better mind their place--backfired. While most of white students would argue passionately that racism is a thing of the past, that it's time to move on, Imus was a reminder that just the opposite is true. As a white teacher invested in African American students' academic success, the author works toward racial justice in his first-year writing classes by assigning an autoethnography, which invites students to position themselves as subjects rather than as objects. In this article, the author Autoethnographies and Ethics related to his classroom teaching.