Rampant Racism
Just like last year, my final class of the day is the most difficult to manage. Students are hyper because they have either just had lunch or really want to go home, or both. They want to talk, to touch each other, to hit each other, to wander aimlessly around the classroom until I throw them out (which I will only do if I think they are posing a safety hazard, as was one girl who kept telling me to “shut the hell up” as I kept telling her to sit in her assigned seat).
And since yesterday was Friday, the level of student restlessness was about 10 to the 100th power worse than usual.
So there was that girl who kept wandering the classroom and telling me to shut the hell up. There was the other girl who kept arguing with me about the rules: “There aren’t any cell phones allowed in school, so take yours off,” she said. Sure it’s a double standard, but I’m the teacher, and I use that cell phone to sometimes call parents on the spot. Then there were the two guys who actually wanted to learn, who kept yelling at everyone else to “shut the fuck up.” And did I mention the other guy who was probably sexually harassing another girl in the back of the classroom? I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but whatever it was, it was getting her upset. I can tell him to stop, but I can’t duct tape his mouth shut.
As should be clear by now, there wasn’t much learning going on in the classroom. Shouting at them never helps, so I have adopted a policy this year of simply waiting, or saying student names individually and firmly to get their attention (although this is admittedly less effective when I have to say 15 names in a row: by the time I’ve said the name of #15, #1-10 are talking again).
I was getting frustrated, but I was also managing to keep just enough emotional distance to not feel completely dragged down by it all. And then D’Gray said something that really concerned me:
“You know how black kids are . . .”
I rounded on him immediately. “D’Gray, please don’t ever say anything so racist in this class again. I find that highly offensive”
“It’s not racist.”
“Yes, it is. Any time you reduce a person to a color, to one aspect of who they are, that’s racism.”
“But I’m not racist. My grandfather was white.”
“I didn’t say you were racist. I don’t think you are racist, but you said a very racist thing.”
“But I’m not racist.”
And so on.
At one point I mentioned classism, and Demane, one of the frustrated “I want to learn but these other asses are screwing that up” students, said “What does that mean? Please, I’d like to learn at least one thing in class today.”
So I explained it. And he learned something.
And then I went back to telling Jorry to sit down, and she told me once again to “shut the hell up and leave me alone.” This is the same student who, after I called her grandmother to inform her that Jorry had walked out of my class twice without my permission, said to me “Why do you bother? I never get in trouble.”
Of course there are differences between black culture and white culture. One has only to look as far as conventions for naming children, a trend which Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer has studied as part of his examination of “where blacks went wrong,” as he puts it (and which Steven Levitt outlines in his fascinating book Freakonomics). But many, perhaps most, of these students have internalized the idea that D’Gray made explicit yesterday: black kids are unruly and don’t care much about school.
Here is a thesis that bears some research: where do these attitudes in back culture come from? It certainly doesn’t help that President George W. Bush’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina makes him look like a racist bastard (although I’m sure the oversight was more an issue of socioeconomic blindness than racism), and makes many blacks in this country feel marginalized, even if they’ve never been within 500 miles of New Orleans (all of my students are convinced that George W. Bush is unrepentantly racist).
But here is the thing that scares me the most, the thing that bears the most research (or maybe Fryer or others like him have already done it and I’m just not aware of it): to what extent are these attitudes being disseminated within black culture by other blacks? Research—and even casual observation—has shown that black audiences statistically prefer black music, black television shows, black movies, and anything else that somehow becomes associated with “black culture” (Levitt notes on page 182 of Freakonomics that Newport cigarettes enjoy a 75 percent market share among black teenagers, for example, while the same cigarettes have only 12 percent of the market share among white teens, who statistically prefer Marlboros).
Although it is illegal to create any kind of forced segregation in this country, de facto segregation does exist, the kind imposed from outside (group A moves out of the neighborhood as group B moves in, for example) and the kind imposed from within (group A flocks to see the opening of a new movie starring a member of their ethnicity, while group B statistically ignores it). This being the case, my very unscientific but extremely gut reaction is that blacks get most of their negative stereotypes about blacks from other blacks.
Something I learned when I started teaching here, for example, is that skin shade carries with it all kinds of social value: light-skinned blacks are often more high-status than dark-skinned blacks. Maybe I was just sheltered and naïve, but I found that truth rather shocking. Maybe I had just seen too many documentaries about the civil rights movement, films like Eyes on the Prize that made the “black cause” seem monolithic in its unity.
But again, the real issue isn’t race, it’s socioeconomics. Statistically speaking, poor kids go to poor schools and do poorly in school. The poor, regardless of their ethnicity, often have narrow views on things like ethnicity and politics and sexual orientation. The poor and disadvantaged usually see the world in stark black and white; they haven’t learned to recognize, appreciate, and savor the shades of gray that make up life. Only education will broaden their minds and their horizons, but the drop-out rate among blacks and Hispanics in this country is astronomically high.
I’d like to end this post with a suggestion for improving this mess, but frankly, all I can think to do right now is finish grading papers and plan for Monday’s class.
-----------------------------------
Two related stories about teaching from the New York Times:
"As Test Scores Jump, Raleigh Credits Integration by Income"
and
"Tenure, Turnover and the Quality of Teaching"
Thanks to Barbara S. for pointing these out to me.
And since yesterday was Friday, the level of student restlessness was about 10 to the 100th power worse than usual.
So there was that girl who kept wandering the classroom and telling me to shut the hell up. There was the other girl who kept arguing with me about the rules: “There aren’t any cell phones allowed in school, so take yours off,” she said. Sure it’s a double standard, but I’m the teacher, and I use that cell phone to sometimes call parents on the spot. Then there were the two guys who actually wanted to learn, who kept yelling at everyone else to “shut the fuck up.” And did I mention the other guy who was probably sexually harassing another girl in the back of the classroom? I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but whatever it was, it was getting her upset. I can tell him to stop, but I can’t duct tape his mouth shut.
As should be clear by now, there wasn’t much learning going on in the classroom. Shouting at them never helps, so I have adopted a policy this year of simply waiting, or saying student names individually and firmly to get their attention (although this is admittedly less effective when I have to say 15 names in a row: by the time I’ve said the name of #15, #1-10 are talking again).
I was getting frustrated, but I was also managing to keep just enough emotional distance to not feel completely dragged down by it all. And then D’Gray said something that really concerned me:
“You know how black kids are . . .”
I rounded on him immediately. “D’Gray, please don’t ever say anything so racist in this class again. I find that highly offensive”
“It’s not racist.”
“Yes, it is. Any time you reduce a person to a color, to one aspect of who they are, that’s racism.”
“But I’m not racist. My grandfather was white.”
“I didn’t say you were racist. I don’t think you are racist, but you said a very racist thing.”
“But I’m not racist.”
And so on.
At one point I mentioned classism, and Demane, one of the frustrated “I want to learn but these other asses are screwing that up” students, said “What does that mean? Please, I’d like to learn at least one thing in class today.”
So I explained it. And he learned something.
And then I went back to telling Jorry to sit down, and she told me once again to “shut the hell up and leave me alone.” This is the same student who, after I called her grandmother to inform her that Jorry had walked out of my class twice without my permission, said to me “Why do you bother? I never get in trouble.”
Of course there are differences between black culture and white culture. One has only to look as far as conventions for naming children, a trend which Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer has studied as part of his examination of “where blacks went wrong,” as he puts it (and which Steven Levitt outlines in his fascinating book Freakonomics). But many, perhaps most, of these students have internalized the idea that D’Gray made explicit yesterday: black kids are unruly and don’t care much about school.
Here is a thesis that bears some research: where do these attitudes in back culture come from? It certainly doesn’t help that President George W. Bush’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina makes him look like a racist bastard (although I’m sure the oversight was more an issue of socioeconomic blindness than racism), and makes many blacks in this country feel marginalized, even if they’ve never been within 500 miles of New Orleans (all of my students are convinced that George W. Bush is unrepentantly racist).
But here is the thing that scares me the most, the thing that bears the most research (or maybe Fryer or others like him have already done it and I’m just not aware of it): to what extent are these attitudes being disseminated within black culture by other blacks? Research—and even casual observation—has shown that black audiences statistically prefer black music, black television shows, black movies, and anything else that somehow becomes associated with “black culture” (Levitt notes on page 182 of Freakonomics that Newport cigarettes enjoy a 75 percent market share among black teenagers, for example, while the same cigarettes have only 12 percent of the market share among white teens, who statistically prefer Marlboros).
Although it is illegal to create any kind of forced segregation in this country, de facto segregation does exist, the kind imposed from outside (group A moves out of the neighborhood as group B moves in, for example) and the kind imposed from within (group A flocks to see the opening of a new movie starring a member of their ethnicity, while group B statistically ignores it). This being the case, my very unscientific but extremely gut reaction is that blacks get most of their negative stereotypes about blacks from other blacks.
Something I learned when I started teaching here, for example, is that skin shade carries with it all kinds of social value: light-skinned blacks are often more high-status than dark-skinned blacks. Maybe I was just sheltered and naïve, but I found that truth rather shocking. Maybe I had just seen too many documentaries about the civil rights movement, films like Eyes on the Prize that made the “black cause” seem monolithic in its unity.
But again, the real issue isn’t race, it’s socioeconomics. Statistically speaking, poor kids go to poor schools and do poorly in school. The poor, regardless of their ethnicity, often have narrow views on things like ethnicity and politics and sexual orientation. The poor and disadvantaged usually see the world in stark black and white; they haven’t learned to recognize, appreciate, and savor the shades of gray that make up life. Only education will broaden their minds and their horizons, but the drop-out rate among blacks and Hispanics in this country is astronomically high.
I’d like to end this post with a suggestion for improving this mess, but frankly, all I can think to do right now is finish grading papers and plan for Monday’s class.
-----------------------------------
Two related stories about teaching from the New York Times:
"As Test Scores Jump, Raleigh Credits Integration by Income"
and
"Tenure, Turnover and the Quality of Teaching"
Thanks to Barbara S. for pointing these out to me.
posted by Christopher at
11:59 PM
1 Comments:
Wow--very interesting post. I also read the two linked articles and found they challenged my thinking. As a parent of 2 small children not yet in school, I have been searching for the "best" public school, which often means the lowest percent of low-income and non-english proficient students, according to published school report cards, which of course correlates to the statistics in the first article (poor students=poor test results). How could public education change if all schools were economically diverse? It is a subject I had never explored before, and it boggles my mind. Keep up the good work and don't lose faith. You are teaching, the students are learning. . . you are making a difference for these kids and I know you'll go on to make further changes in the schools. And most of all, you are learning from them every day, too!
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