my life to live

Black Students, White Teachers: Trouble in Mississippi

The subject of this article is a friend of mine. I’ve been following this whole drama unfold through his posts on Facebook. He quit a job at Goldman Sachs and left his native New York to teach in the Mississippi Delta through Teach For America; he still works with the students in that small town despite his two-year contract being long over. The last time he was in Philly, I asked him what moved him to stay at his placement school; he spoke of his commitment to his community in the Delta, and his desire to remain there and watch it flourish. I understood the feeling; I myself remain rooted to Philadelphia despite the friends who’ve moved away and the family back in Chicago. Maybe you understand the feeling too.

On living in the borderlands.

When you grow up in a multiethnic household, you have a bird’s-eye view of humanity—the boundary lines drawn between races, religions, colors are cartoonishly clear, yet you remain curiously distanced from the whole affair. Culture becomes even more of the amorphous abstraction it already is, and the irrelevance of our funny little rituals—the food we eat, the traditions we hold, the icons we worship, the clothes we wear, the rules we create—is thrown into sharp relief.

You learn to question. If, for example, I attended church with my Roman Catholic mother, I might have come away learning that Jesus Christ was our savior and that all those who failed to accept this as fact were in fact sinners. If I paid attention during Passover dinner with my aunt, I might learn that the Jews were actually the chosen people. But the Jews did not accept Jesus as a savior, so how could this be? Which parent was the right one? Was one of them lying?

You learn to see yourself as a novelty. You get introduced at parties: This is Anna; she’s half-Asian and half-Jewish, the same way some might say, This is Tom; he plays tennis and works for PwC. Perfect strangers ask you, What are you? as if you weren’t a human being, as if you might be a totally different species. They ask you what you are before they ask you what you do, what you like, what you don’t. You become your ethnicity. You are not a whole person. You are many fractured pieces stitched together. You are pixellated.

Tough Teacher: I am white.

I’m white. I’m as pale and pasty white as they get. I didn’t choose to be white. I didn’t choose to be born into the culture of power. I didn’t create societal standards or perpetuate them. And, I certainly would not have joined an urban teaching program if I was racist. I joined because I believe…

Hiring for a “racial balance” is the reason why the current state of our education system blows. Diversity goes beyond race; in addition, how we define an excellent teacher also goes beyond race. If you are a good teacher, it will not matter what your race is, because part of being a good teacher is connecting to your students.

That said, I do think it is important for racial diversity to exist in a school’s faculty—it is important for some students (I’m not going to say ‘all’—I am technically a minority, I never had teachers that looked like me growing up, but that never kept me from excelling in school. I think it’s demeaning to minority students to insist that they all need another minority leader in order to excel). But a teacher’s background should never be a priority over his or her skill level when it comes to hiring. How education is able to get away with this as a human resources practice is beyond me; I’d love to get some light shed on the topic if you’re more informed.

When will education learn that there is no magic bullet to increase student success? The only one I know of is hiring and training better teachers. Full stop!

because this can’t be said often enough

katoleary:

abbyjean:

notemily:

Teaching relatively class privileged students about why poor people can’t just pull themselves up by their bootstraps can be extremely challenging. One of the things that they harp on is their impression that the poor spend money on frivolous things; somehow they believe that, if the poor just eschewed cable television and Nikes, they would pop up into the middle class.

I try to explain to them that being poor is like living a life of self-denial. To be poor is to be forced to deny oneself constantly. The poor must deny themselves most trappings of an adult life (your own apartment, framed pictures on the walls, matching dishes), a comfortable life (a newish mattress, a comfy couch, good shoes that aren’t worn out), a convenient life (your own car, eating out), a self-directed life (a job you care for, leisure time, hobbies, money for babysitters), a life full of small pleasures (lattes, dessert, fresh cut flowers, hot baths, wine), a healthy life (fresh fruits and vegetables, health care, time for exercise), not to mention all of the must-have consumer goods that are constantly marketed to us (mp3 players, organic food, travel, expensive clothes and accessories). And, since most poor people remain poor their whole lives, they must be prepared to deny themselves (and members of their families) these things, perhaps, for the rest of their lives.

So when my students see someone (they think is) poor walking down the street with a brand new pair of Nikes, perhaps what they are seeing is someone who decided (whether out of a moment of weakness or not) to NOT deny themselves at least one thing; perhaps they are seeing someone who is trying to hold on to some feeling of normalcy; perhaps what they are seeing is a perfectly normal person who just wants what they want for once.

Lisa at Sociological Images: Poverty, Self-Denial, and New Nikes

Once a friend, his boyfriend, and I were all sharing a cab through Chicago’s North side. A bar was letting out, as it was closing time, and the predominantly black crowd spilled out into the streets. They were rowdy and raucous, as any crowd is at closing time. The friend’s boyfriend, who fancied himself quite the progressive, took note of their colorful parkas, skinny jeans, and name-brand shoes. He sniffed, “It’s really too bad that when half of the African-American community is doing so much to pull themselves up, the other half just seems so intent on dragging everyone down.”

I bristled. I said, “What do you mean?”

He said, “I mean, if you’re poor, you shouldn’t be spending all your money on material things like shoes and alcohol.”

I said, “How do you know they’re poor?”

Go. Go Read This. Right now.

fatmanatee:

katoleary:

(via wannablessedbe)

This take from Shakesville is worth a read, too.

This is all very timely for me as I am hoping to go back to school next year with one of my eventual goals being to start an organization focused on educating young men about sexual violence. As a nation, we are failing miserably on this front, partly because every time someone brings this matter up, it turns into a “What about the menz?!” conversation about hurting young men’s feelings. Forgive me if I am less concerned about our sons’ feelings than our daughters’ safety. Ignoring that perpetrators are usually male and victims are usually female isn’t going to make the problem go away. And if good men are sick of feeling unfairly maligned, maybe they should take it up with the members of their sex who are contributing to these statistics instead of arguing with feminists.

Those guys you speak of at the end are probably trolling for an argument and should be dealt with accordingly. That’s just based on what I’ve seen around here, of course.

Oh, and this:

“8) I HAVE AN AWESOME SEDUCTION TACTIC FOR FOOLING OTHERWISE UNWILLING WOMEN INTO SLEEPING WITH YOU. IT IS: (1) Realize that seeking out seduction tactics for fooling otherwise unwitting women into sleeping with you makes you a bad person. (2) Feel bad about that. (3) Become a better person.”

Yeah, pretty much.

Any man who truly respects women and regularly examines his own innate biases regarding gender is a man I hold in highest regard.

Imagine if this was how we taught the history of slavery or the Holocaust in schools. “We shouldn’t really talk about it because it’ll make some kids feel bad.” Well, isn’t that the point? You need to feel guilty for something you didn’t do in order to not do it in the future.

At Teach For America summer institutes, part of the training curriculum involves diversity training. It’s one of the more problematic components of the institute, as TFA is a very feedback-oriented and data-driven organization, and the diversity program itself is, by nature, extremely divisive. I remember many of my white colleagues feeling put out by the conversations because they felt as if they were being made to feel guilty. All I can say for that is, well, in a way it’s kind of the point. I am enough of a minority, and look enough like a minority to claim it as part of my identity, and I would describe the minority experience as feeling guilty all the time. A recent immigrant feeling guilty that they don’t speak English very well. Any of my black female students feeling guilty because a classmate criticized her hair. A woman feeling guilty because she hasn’t pleased her boyfriend. A darker-skinned male feeling guilty because he’s looked at askance by people on the subway, in the store, on the street.