Many people are surprised to find out that 65% of my students are white, 25% African-american, and 10% Hispanic. These numbers fall far short of the stereotypical image that creeps into people's heads when they think about inner-city schools. It is true that minority students are more likely to be grade levels behind their white peers in school and many minority students attend urban, inner-city schools. Therefore, this stereotype is not completely unfounded. However, I ended up in an unique situation this year where I am a part of the ethnic majority and cultural minority and this experience has opened my eyes A LOT!
At institute, TFA held a lot of diversity sessions for its corps members. There is a fear that with so many middle to upper-class, white teachers going into inner-city schools we will be culturally insensitive, biased, and unconsciously judgemental of our minority students and their families' backgrounds. And I think it is interesting that our diversity training focused around ethnicity instead of the larger umbrella of cultural differences. Ethnicity is not the only defining factor in cultural diversity yet people have tied the words "ethnicity" and "diversity" together so much that people begin to think of them as a package deal. Additionally, our differences in culture are not only defined by our ethnicity. We do not assume the white Americans are the same as white Europeans so why would we assume the middle-class, white Americans are similar to impoverished white Americans? Because we are all from the same country? Because we don't want to admit the class system that does exist in this country? Why don't we touch on this aspect in diversity training?
My year at Manual has been spent looking at students who are my skin color but live in a culture so foreign from the one I grew up in that I clearly see why there is so much political tension in this country. It is really difficult to describe this culture so I will just spell out a few things I have noticed that are completely different from the way I grew up.
1) People do not take care of themselves, physically. I was at a school baseball game the other day and 95% of the parents/guardians in attendance were obese and looked run down. They just did not look healthy whatsoever. These people looked like they had been eating processed or fast food all their life and they did not know how to live a healthy lifestyle. Which explains why their children act the same way.
2) Little kids cuss like sailors and act like they are grown adults. There is no rule that kids must act respectfully towards an adult just because that person is older or has an authority over them in any way. I have heard kids cuss out our school's librarian to her face; she is a 60-something ex-nun. Now I don't know about you but I would never have even dreamed of cussing someone out who was 50 years my senior! The only explanation I can give for this is that they learned the behavior from their parents, who may only be 15 years older than them. I heard a parent almost fight one of my freshmen because she didn't like what he was saying. On what planet does a grown woman fight a kid?!?
3) They know more about tax refunds, food stamps, gas money, sales taxes, etc. then I knew at their age and probably even now. My kids can tell me the difference between buying a hamburger at McDonald's on the northside versus southside of Indianapolis. They knew how much money their parents would get in tax returns and, therefore, what they believed their rightful share of that money was. One kid offered to sell me food stamps and I had to give another a ride home because his friend's dad didn't have enough gas money to drive him home. These are all things I did not and, presently, do not have to worry about, yet they are every day realities for my students.
4) Violence, injury, and death seem to be natural parts of life that are not expected but are dealt with on a daily basis and are so common that they have lost their shock factor. I took an informal poll of my classes the other day and in EVERY class 75-90% of the kids had seriously punched someone (not in a "messing around" kind of way) AND had been hit by someone else. I shouldn't have been surprised by this but it was a little overwhelming. When I said that I had never hit another person or been hit my students couldn't imagine a world where someone didn't want to hit me or mess with me enough that I would want to right hook them. A week or so ago one boy from our high school was "car hopping" (breaking into cars and stealing what was inside), the owner of a car caught him while he was robbing it, and shot him four times. The boy died...and we continued on at school like nothing happened. One boy was gone for a day and then told me he was at the hospital because his grandfather had gotten jumped, beaten up, and mugged the night before. His response to all of this was "people are silly".
All these stories come from my observations of my white students, however I have heard similar stories from my black and hispanic students as well. I think individuals want to feelconnected to those around them and if you do not know a person then the easiest way to find common ground is based on similarities in appearance, race/ethnicity being the most obvious. It would be like if three strangers stood before you and only one belonged to your race, you might naturally be inclined to approach them because you figure "well we at least look the same so we can use that as a jumping off point to find more similarities". But what I would challenge people to do is steer clear of this type of thinking as much as humanly possible. I love all my students however I get along with some better than others based on the type of people we are. And what I have found is that the students I can talk to for hours has everything to do with their character and personality and nothing to do with their race.
This might seem like a relatively obvious conclusion to come to however I wonder how truthful individuals are with themselves about the influence race has on their minds? Some people have commented on how it must be easier or, my personal favorite, nicer for me to be teaching students who look like me. The only thing I can say to these people is that there is nothing easy about it and I would even argue that it is more difficult than teaching only minority students would be. As I mentioned with TFA's diversity training, no one expects me to have anything in common with minority students but what if I don't have anything in common with the "majority" students? It is these assumptions about racial similarities transpiring into cultural similarities that I am fighting on a daily basis and have readjusted the lens through which I view the world and the people who are a part of it.
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