the crippling effect racism has on us personally and socially

[Skip Zilla]

This posting is aimed at accumulating replies to it which can help us better understand how racism plays a major, yet often unacknowledged part in our lives and in how the world works as a result.

Replies to this post are intended to provide resources for seeing and beginning to understand the effects of racism on us as human beings and the world in which we live.

[Skip Zilla]

(The following was excerpted from pages 140-141 of Teaching With Fire: Poetry that Sustains the Courage to Teach, Sam M Intrator and Megan Scribner, Editors, Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, CA, 2003.)

"Discussing issues of inequality is difficult work. Everyone has a personal story abour racism and injustice, but some feel anger while others feel guilt. Students who are members of oppressed groups feel resentful when they have to explain racism to white students. Students from privileged backgrounds often feel they are being blamed for the legacy of inequality in America. I have found that using poetry in the college classroom is a powerful tool for bringing new perspectives into the setting. Poets give us a different way of seeing things and allow us to think with our hearts."

"This poem speaks to me about humanity and our imperfections. Every semester when I teach a new group of teacher education students about the inequities in our schools, I read this poem and suggest changing the first line to "Out of a hundred families." The response is usually a softening of the hard thoughts of blame and a realization that we are indeed all worthy of compassion."

"For me, teaching for social justice is a collaborative practice in which all of the voices in the classroom are valued and affirmed. As an educator, I try to bring those voices out and to learn from them as much as they learn from me. Out of every hundred people--good and bad--black, brown, and white; afraid and in pain; and wise in hindsight--we are all one another's teachers."

--Elizabeth Meador, Teacher Educator, California and Colorado

A Contribution to Statistics

Out of a hundred people

Those who always know better
--fifty-two,

doubting every step
--nearly all the rest,

glad to lend a hand
if it doesn't take too long
--as high as forty-nine,

always good,
because they can't be otherwise
--four, well maybe five,

able to admire without envy
--eighteen,

suffering illusions
induced by fleeting youth
--sixty, give or take a few,

not to be taken lightly
--forty and four,

living in constant fear
of someone or something
--seventy-seven,

capable of happiness
--twenty-something tops,

harmless singly,
savage in crowds
--half at least,

cruel
when forced by circumstances
--better not to know
even ballpark figures,

after the fact
--just a couple more
than wise before it,

taking only things from life
--thirty
(I wish I were wrong),

Hunched in pain,
no flashlight in the dard
--eighty-three
sooner or later,

righteous
--thirty-five, which is a lot,

righteous
and understanding
--three,

worthy of compassion
--ninety-nine,

mortal
a hundred out of a hundred.
Thus far this figure still remains
unchanged.

--Wislawa Szymborska

[Ellen Pham]

Skip, I think you watch Charlie Rose... do you remember the name of the man on a few weeks ago, he was old, maybe 80, African-American, a professor, and had been in the Clinton administration, a committee or department on racism?

He was so intelligent and full of understanding... and he brought out the point that racism is rarely discussed in classrooms in the context of the present. People were very uncomfortable with his commission, and could barely tolerate its existence. Maybe I could look in the Charlie Rose archives...

This subject speaks to my heart. My daughter is filming a documentary on racial identity, the significance of which I blithely ignored while raising my children. It hasn't been until very recently that I have grown to understand that better. Anyway, carry on!

[Mike]

Hi.... another cool place i have stumbled into :)

Some thoughts....

"We owe a definite homage to the reality around us and we are obliged,at certain times, to say what things are and to give them their right names." ( Thomas Merton)

Some of my work takes me into the urban school districts of New Jersey.

Shame of A Nation: By Kozol so eloquiently put it:

"Virtually all the children of black and Hispanic people in the cities that I visited, both large and small, were now attending school in which their isolation was absolute..."

Some Statistics: 2000-2001 School Year

Chicago: 87% black/Hispanic
Washington, D.C.: 94%
St. Louis: 82% "
Phila: 78% "
Detroit: 95% "
Baltimore: 88% "
NYC: 75% "

The story is really worse then even these dismal statistics. For example, Kozol talks about PS 65 in New York city were they have 11,000 children enrolled k-8th grade in 1997. Of the 11,000 only 26 were white....a segregation rate of 99.8 %..... "two-tenth of one percentage point now marked the difference between legally enforced apartheid in the south of 1954 and socially and ecconomically enforced apartheid.

Certainly matches up with my look at urban new jersey.... how about your part of the world?


MORE KOZOL.....


" During the 1990's, the proportion of black students in majority white schools has decreased....to a level lower then any year since 1968...Almost three fourths of black and Latino students attend schools that are predominantly minority," and more then 2 million, including more then a quarter of black students in the Northeast and Midwest,
"attend schools which we call apartheid schools" in which 90-100% of students are non-white."

"If you want to see a really segregated school in the United States today, start by looking for a school that's named for Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks."

"Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other 'tangible' factors may be equal, asked the court in 1954.... deprive the children of the minority race of equal educational opportunities? WE BELIEVE IT DOES."

I believe it will be an extremely uphill struggle when we are so seperated....

be well.... look forward to more discussion.... mike

[Ellen Pham]

What I see in my misadventures as a sub are.. the Rosa Parks and MLK schools exclusively focused on testing, compliance and control, such as the entire school standing at attention in the cafeteria as the principal drones on for at least 20 minutes at the start of the say, such as no talking in the halls, in the Rosa Parks Elementary School, in Portland, OR- no talking during LUNCH! ~while the wealthier schools have writer's workshop, literature circles, science labs, school plays and festivals... technology classes, google earth, morning recess, a refusal by the teachers to implement the new standardized reading curriculum, which is mind-numbingly boring, and a basic courtesy towards the students, because the parents won't tolerate it any other way... the discrepancies are distressing....

[Skip Zilla]

[Connie Weber]

Thanks, Skip, for this group, and for the posts.

What do people think of the bumper sticker "Eracism"?

What does it mean?

[Ellen Pham]

It means erase racism, Connie! My school once did a project-based learning summer session that the kids named, "Erase Racism"- took some guts to get all the adults on board : )))

[ddeubel]

"For me, teaching for social justice is a collaborative practice in which all of the voices in the classroom are valued and affirmed. As an educator, I try to bring those voices out and to learn from them as much as they learn from me. Out of every hundred people--good and bad--black, brown, and white; afraid and in pain; and wise in hindsight--we are all one another's teachers."

Wow! What a statement and for me, this really nails down my own philosophy of teaching....

In Toronto where I taught for quite a few years, they are also considering "segregated " schools. Schools for Black students, so they can find strength in their racial identity. Trouble is.....they don't want it but will be forced to attend. By who? The parents and teaching authorities who think they know better......

I smell a rat in all talk about "race". There is culture and let's leave race out of it. Like the old saying, "don't judge a book by its cover".....(but each book can be different and groups of books different, it is the content/the culture that matters. NOT the colour.

Creating a school based on colour is the most stupid thing I've ever heard. Yet there are Phduhsssssss doing and proposing. Oh my god! Who wiped away the sky?

David

[Ian Carmichael]

Yes, indeed.
Thanks David.
I'm reminded of a story of a language group, with whom a school was having trouble. They used the obvious solution and found some same-language speakers who they'd use as interpreters/helpers/contacts. You know the end of the story...

Yes - the two groups spoke the same language - but they didn't speak the same culture! (In fact the cultures hated each other and had no inclination to be co-operative at all!)

Culture and content matter - and keys to how they matter is respect and relevance: who remembers ability streaming debates in education? So what on earth is happening if there is culture streaming, etc. (And are the schools and educators culturally matched as well? - or are WE doing some good educational actions for THEM?)

And, if pluralism is in fact a good thing, the practical parting question is how pluralist can mass schooling actually be? Indeed, how mass can schooling properly be, if learning is to happen through it rather than despite it?

[Laura Gibbs]

Reading the wonderful Szymborska poem which Skip posted here reminded me of a wonderful project that I've been following online - the 100 People Project. Do you all know about this? It takes the premise "if the world were one hundred people..." and then provides statistics, interviews, videos, etc. on that basis. You can see their very nice website here:
http://www.100people.org/

I think it is a way to help people relate, in a positive way, to the sheer HUGENESS of the global community and how we almost inevitably overlook the "otherness" of the world - it's eye-opening in a great way, I think!

[ddeubel]

O! My! God!

This is revelational for students and may I say ME. Thanks....

We are soooo much more similiar than the differences we adhocly propose.

David