Inferior Schools for Minorities

Our View - Deteriorating urban schools compounding student hopelessness
49er Staff

While we technically don't really need a study to tell us that many Latino and African-American students in Los Angeles feel depressed from being ignored and receiving substandard schooling in comparison to their white counterparts, we continue to believe that separate is still not equal.

A recent Los Angeles Times article reported that depression is rampant among South Los Angeles high school students. Of the 6,008 students surveyed, many claim to be "frightened by violence in school, [and] deeply dissatisfied with their choices of college preparatory classes."

A history of segregation and white flight has made South L.A. neighborhoods synonymous with poverty and crime. The schools are not viewed as any better.

South L.A. is an example of our country's history of racism, legal and social segregation, and an increasing financial disparity between rich and poor. The children in urban schools are products of societal factors they have little or no control over.

The results are neighborhoods with rising levels of violence, deteriorating schools and many students who have a hard time envisioning a future, let alone an optimistic one.

One student reportedly felt that racial tension and gang violence in her high school made it feel more like a prison.

These students have every reason to feel depressed because their country has a track record of abandoning them. The United States' history of institutionalized racism has created public policy that has overlooked inner-city neighborhoods.

The California State University system is the largest manufacturer of K-12 educators in the state. It's not a tremendous leap to assume many Cal State Long Beach-trained teachers will enter the workforce in these same distressed schools.

The onslaught of budget reductions to all levels of education and social services will only exacerbate problems and, consequently, create deeper depression and hopelessness for these students.

Often, the most positive reinforcement these children receive from the education system comes by way of tracking or military recruiters. And at worst, they always have the school-to-prison pipeline to count on.

South Central Youth Empowered Thru Action, the youth organization that conducted the survey with help from Loyola Marymount University's psychology department, says the word "pushout" is more fitting than "dropout."

Education is a necessity and a right that these students have been deprived of. As students, we understand the importance that every child/person is educated to reach his or her fullest potential, and this means equally.

Time and again Supreme Court rulings have mandated the system to provide just that - equal educational opportunities for all.

The 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka declared that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." This sparked an integration movement that would still fall short 54 years later. As we have seen, many of these rulings have set precedents but don't always achieve the intended results.

Today, we are smacked with an achievement gap defined by gender, race and socioeconomic status. Standardized testing and dropout statistics have seemed to fine tune observation of the problem, while not actually addressing or fixing it.

There is said to be no one clear cause as to what contributes to the achievement gap, but we can guess that it may have something to do with historically disenfranchised groups being pushed into communities to be stigmatized, overlooked and passed by.

The depression found amongst the South Los Angeles students clearly indicates one thing - our public institutions have ignored red flags for much too long.

Works Cited

Daily 49er Staff. “Our View - Deteriorating urban schools compounding student
hopelessness.” Cal State Long Beach. 6 May 2008. The Daily 49er. 14 May 2008
64b702-05a2-49a0-b6d7-475523d2bce8&page=2>.

Jena 6: Racism Against African Americans in Louisiana School

"It's still about race in Jena, La."
AMY GOODMAN
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

Last week in Detroit, the NAACP held a mock funeral for the N-word. But a chilling case in Louisiana shows us how far we have to go to bury racism. This story begins in the small, central Louisiana town of Jena. Last September, a black high school student requested the school's permission to sit beneath a broad, leafy tree in the hot schoolyard. Until then, only white students sat there.

The next morning, three nooses were hanging from the tree. The black students responded en masse. Justin Purvis, the kid who first sat under the tree, told filmmaker Jacquie Soohen: "They said, 'Y'all want to go stand under the tree?' We said, 'Yeah.' They said, 'If you go, I'll go. If you go, I'll go.' One person went, the next person went, everybody else just went."

Then the police and the district attorney showed up. Substitute teacher Michelle Rogers recounts: "District Attorney Reed Walters proceeded to tell those kids that 'I could end your lives with the stroke of a pen.' "

It wouldn't happen for a few more months, but that is exactly what the district attorney is trying to do.

Jena, a community of 4,000, is about 85 percent white. While the black community gathered at a church to respond, others didn't see the significance. Soohen interviewed Jena town librarian Barbara Murphy, who reflected: "The nooses? I don't even know why they were there, what they were supposed to mean. There's pranks all the time, of one type or another, going on. And it just didn't seem to be racist to me." Tensions rose.

Robert Bailey, a black student, was beaten up at a white party. Then, a few nights later, Robert and two others were threatened by a white man with a sawed-off shotgun, at a convenience store. They wrestled the gun away and fled. Robert's mother, Caseptla Bailey, said: "I know they were in fear of their lives. They were afraid that this man was going to shoot them, you know, especially in the back, running away from the scene."

The next day, Dec. 4, 2006, a fight broke out at the school. A white student was injured, taken to the hospital and released. Robert Bailey and five other black students were charged ... with second-degree attempted murder. They each faced 100 years in prison. The black community was reeling.

Independent journalist Jordan Flaherty was the first to break the story nationally. He explained: "I'm sure it was a serious fight, and I'm sure it deserved real discipline within the school system, but he (the white student) was out later that day. He was smiling. He was with friends ... it was a serious school problem that came on the heels of a long series of other events ... as soon as black students were involved, that's when the hammer came down."

The African American community began to call them the Jena Six. The first to be tried was Mychal Bell, 17 years old and a talented football player, looking forward to a university scholarship. Bell was offered a plea deal, but refused. His father, Marcus Jones, took a few minutes off from work to talk to me: "Here in LaSalle Parish, whenever a black man is offered a plea bargain, he is innocent. That's a dead giveaway here in the South."

Right before the trial, the charges of attempted second-degree murder were lowered to aggravated battery, which under Louisiana law requires a dangerous weapon. The weapon? Tennis shoes..

Mychal Bell was convicted by an all-white jury. His court-appointed defense attorney called no witnesses. Bell will be sentenced on July 31, facing a possible 22 years. The remaining five teens, several of whom were jailed for months, unable to make bail, still face attempted second-degree murder charges and a hundred years each in prison.

Flaherty, who grew up in New Orleans, sums up the case of the Jena Six: "I don't think there is anyone around that would doubt that if this had been a fight between black students or a fight of white students beating up a black student, you would never be seeing this. It's completely about race. It's completely about two systems of justice."

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco gained national prominence during Hurricane Katrina. There's another hurricane that's devastating the lives of her constituents: racism. The families of the Jena Six are asking her to intervene. The district attorney says he can end the boys' lives with his pen. But Blanco's pen is mightier. She should wield it, now, for justice for the Jena Six.

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour

Goodman, Amy. “It's still about race in Jena, La.” Seattle Pi. 18 July 2007. Seattle pi. 19 May 2008 .

Racism in Colleges (a bit off-topic)

Georgetown Students Protest Racist Incidents

WASHINGTON -- Hundreds of students at Georgetown University held a protest Friday, showing their solidarity against what they call a string of racist incidents.
The latest incident was a racially charged e-mail that was sent to members of the Black Students Alliance. The letter repeatedly used the N-word.

The letter also included lines like, "Go back to Africa, and don't come back," and, "Worthlessness is your ambition."

University officials said they were troubled by the e-mail and they investigated it. Georgetown's Internet security officers traced the e-mail and determined it did not come from a computer on the Georgetown campus.

The letter follows other incidents, including a report in which two white men yelled at a black girl, telling her to, "go pick up your welfare check."

In another incident, a professor apparently asked a class to name some of the ways to get into Georgetown University. One of the students mentioned something about being a minority and the class laughed, including the professor.

The students at Friday's protest said they want a stricter code on bias at the school. They also want sensitivity training and more African studies classes.
School officials said they want to meet with the students and plan to do so next week.


Works Cited

“Georgetown Students Protest Incidents.” Nbc4.com. 27 February 2004. NBC Universal,

Inc. 30 April 2008 .

Age Discrimination in Hiring Teachers

EEOC files age discrimination lawsuit against school district
By Shannon Fiecke Winona Daily News

The Lewiston-Altura school district is being sued for age discrimination.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed lawsuits against the district and nine other Minnesota districts on Monday, alleging they reduced early retirement benefits because of age, thereby violating the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967.
"The law says when a decision is based purely on age, that violates the age discrimination act, which says you can't determine benefits based on age," said Jean Kamp, a regional attorney for the commission.

She said while a district can wait to offer a retirement incentive until a certain age, it can't reduce amounts after that.

"Once you turn 55, you can't say the older you get the less you get," Kamp said.

The commission reports that the districts had plans which offered a benefit to employees who retired, either based on a lump sum or a formula with factors such as years of service and accrued sick leave. However, it says the benefit was lowered according to how old staff where when they retired.

The Lewiston-Altura suit names Gene Olstad, who retired in June 1999 and had his benefit reduced by $8,000 because he was 61.

Kamp said the commission knows of at least four other retirees who also were penalized for their age from at least June 1999 through June 2000.

The district's current master agreement only includes $12,500 in severance for staff who started prior to 1980, said Lewiston-Altura Superintendent Bruce Montplaisir, but it does not change based on age. The same amount can go into 403(b) retirement accounts for other employees, he said.

"We just try to do everything we can to treat everybody equitably and fairly," he said.

The superintendent, who started in July of 1999, said the current agreement was negotiated after he started. He said neither he nor other current school board members served in 1981 when the teachers' association asked for an early retirement incentive, which the board approved.

Olstad, who said he wasn't directly involved in teacher negotiations since the '60s and '70s, recalled a few staff complaining about the age penalty in the early retirement incentive, but said most teachers were unconcerned because they weren't of retirement age.

The former school band director said he recalled somebody in the late '90s, possibly from the state, telling districts they couldn't reduce retirement benefits according to age because it was discriminatory, which is why Lewiston-Altura changed its policy.

When somebody approached him and other teachers to tell them their benefits were discriminatory, Olstad said he was encouraged to file a complaint with the commission. He doesn't remember exactly when that occurred, but the Winona resident said he hadn't heard much about it until the commission recently contacted him to tell him it was still working on the case.

Though the commission said it made conciliatorily efforts before filing the suit, Montplaisir said the district hadn't talked to the commission since about 2000.

The superintendent said he didn't know about the lawsuit until he heard the story through the news media. In fact, when he called superintendents at other districts being sued, most had either learned of the lawsuit through him or the news media, he said. He knew of only one district whose legal council had been in contact with the commission.

Kamp said it is illegal for the commission to reveal the consolidation efforts it made, but it did have to make them in order to file.

The other districts the commission is suing are Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan, Pine River-Backus, Chisago, United South Central Public Schools (Wells), Bloomington, Blooming Prairie, Owatonna, Little Falls and St. Clair.

The commission filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. It is asking that Lewiston-Altura compensate retirees for what they lost because of age penalization, as well as the same amount in damages, and cover the commission's legal costs and any other amount the court deems necessary.

Works Cited

Winona, Shannon Fiecke. "EEOC files age discrimination lawsuit against school

district." Winona Daily News. 15 September 2004. City of Winona,

Minnesota. 1 May 2008
lead.txt>.

Another Case of Hate Crime Against Gay Students

Boy’s Killing, Labeled a Hate Crime, Stuns a Town



A makeshift memorial at E. O. Green Junior High in Oxnard, Calif., honoring Lawrence King, 15, who was killed at the school.

Correction Appended

OXNARD, Calif. — Hundreds of mourners gathered at a church here on Friday to remember an eighth-grade boy who was shot to death inside a junior high school computer lab by a fellow student in what prosecutors are calling a hate crime.

Skip to next paragraph Lawrence King in December 2006. A 14-year-old classmate has been charged in his death.



Oxnard is known as a laid-back beach community.

In recent weeks, the victim, Lawrence King, 15, had said publicly that he was gay, classmates said, enduring harassment from a group of schoolmates, including the 14-year-old boy charged in his death.

“God knit Larry together and made him wonderfully complex,” the Rev. Dan Birchfield of Westminster Presbyterian Church told the crowd as he stood in front of a large photograph of the victim. “Larry was a masterpiece.”

The shooting stunned residents of Oxnard, a laid-back middle-class beach community just north of Malibu. It also drew a strong reaction from gay and civil rights groups.

“We’ve never had school violence like this here before, never had a school shooting,” said David Keith, a spokesman for the Oxnard Police Department.

Les Winget, 44, whose daughter Nikki, 13, attends the school, called the crime “absolutely unbelievable.”

Jay Smith, executive director of the Ventura County Rainbow Alliance, where Lawrence took part in Friday night group activities for gay teenagers, said, “We’re all shocked that this would happen here.”

The gunman, identified by the police as Brandon McInerney, “is just as much a victim as Lawrence,” said Masen Davis, executive director of the Transgender Law Center. “He’s a victim of homophobia and hate.”

The law center is working with Equality California and the Gay-Straight Alliance Network to push for a legislative review of anti-bias policies and outreach efforts in California schools. According to the 2005 California Healthy Kids Survey, seventh-graders in the state are 50 percent more likely to be harassed in school because of sexual orientation or gender identity than those in 11th grade.

That finding is representative of schools across the country, said Stephen Russell, a University of Arizona professor who studies the issues facing lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual youth.

Mr. Davis said “more and more kids are coming out in junior high school and expressing gender different identities at younger ages.”

“Unfortunately,” he added, “society has not matured at the same rate.”

Prosecutors charged Brandon as an adult with murder as a premeditated hate crime and gun possession. If convicted, he faces a sentence of 52 years to life in prison.

A senior deputy district attorney, Maeve Fox, would not say why the authorities added the hate crime to the murder charge.

In interviews, classmates of the two boys at E. O. Green Junior High School said Lawrence had started wearing mascara, lipstick and jewelry to school, prompting a group of male students to bully him.

“They teased him because he was different,” said Marissa Moreno, 13, also in the eighth grade. “But he wasn’t afraid to show himself.”

Lawrence wore his favorite high-heeled boots most days, riding the bus to school from Casa Pacifica, a center for abused and neglected children in the foster care system, where he began living last fall. Officials would not say anything about his family background other than that his parents, Greg and Dawn King, were living and that he had four siblings. Lawrence started attending E. O. Green last winter, said Steven Elson, the center’s chief executive. “He had made connections here,” Dr. Elson said. “It’s just a huge trauma here. It’s emotionally very charged.”

Since the shooting, hundreds of people have sent messages to a memorial Web site where photographs show Lawrence as a child with a gap in his front teeth, and older, holding a caterpillar in the palm of his hand.

“He had a character that was bubbly,” Marissa said. “We would just laugh together. He would smile, then I would smile and then we couldn’t stop.”

On the morning of Feb. 12, Lawrence was in the school’s computer lab with 24 other students, said Mr. Keith, the police spokesman. Brandon walked into the room with a gun and shot Lawrence in the head, the police said, then ran from the building. Police officers caught him a few blocks away.

Unconscious when he arrived at the hospital, Lawrence was declared brain dead the next day but kept on a ventilator to preserve his organs for donation, said the Ventura County medical examiner, Armando Chavez. He was taken off life support on Feb. 14.

Brandon is being held at a juvenile facility in Ventura on $770,000 bail, said his lawyer, Brian Vogel. He will enter a plea on March 21.

At a vigil for Lawrence last week in Ventura, 200 people carried glow sticks and candles in paper cups as they walked down a boardwalk at the beach and stood under the stars. Melissa Castillo, 13, recalled the last time she had seen Lawrence. “He was walking through the lunch room, wearing these awesome boots,” she said. “I ran over to him and said, ‘Your boots are so cute!’ He was like, ‘Yeah, I know.’ ”

She raised her chin and arched an eyebrow in imitation. “ ‘If you want cute boots,’ ” Lawrence had told her, “ ‘you have to buy the expensive kind.’ ” His boots had cost $30.

“So, for Lawrence,” Melissa said to five girls holding pink and green glow sticks, “we have to go get the expensive kind.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 27, 2008
An article on Saturday about the death of an eighth-grade boy in Oxnard, Calif., whose killing is being called a hate crime by prosecutors, misidentified the group that is pushing for a legislative review of anti-bias policies in California schools. It is the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, not the Gay-Straight Alliance. (The network coordinates clubs in California schools that operate under the name Gay-Straight Alliance.)

The article also misstated the margin by which a seventh-grade student in the state is more likely to be harassed in school because of sexual orientation or gender identity than an 11th grader. It is 50 percent higher, not 3 percent. (According to the 2005 California Healthy Kids Survey, nine percent of seventh graders and six percent of 11th graders were victims of such harassment.)

Works Cited

Cathcart, Rebecca “Boy’s Killing, Labeled a Hate Crime, Stuns a Town.” NY

Times. 23 February 2008. NY Times. 19 May 2008
2008/02/23/us/23oxnard.html?scp=1&sq=gay%20crimes%20in%20school&st=cse>.

Some Ideas for Solving Racism in High Schools

Racism at school is hard to measure and correct
One view: Some minorities say taunts let hatred grow Another: Districts say racial incidents are isolated
March 22, 2008 - 3:58PM

By PERRY SWANSON and SHARI CHANEY GRIFFIN

THE GAZETTE
Two boys taunted one another with racial slurs, including the N-word. Then one threatened the other.

"Touch my stuff and I'll punch you," the boy told Deshawn Shepherd, then a 10-year-old student at North Elementary School. Deshawn ignored the warning, and a fight followed, according to police and school reports.

It was more than a harmless schoolyard scrap, said Deshawn's aunt and guardian, Felicia Wingo. She said it's one of numerous incidents spanning nearly eight years in which her six children, who are black, have been attacked verbally and physically because of their race.

A spokesman for Widefield School District 3 said the 2005 episode was an isolated case and that racial discrimination is not a problem in the district. Other area districts also said such incidents are not indicative of widespread racism.

Wingo and other parents of minority students across the Pikes Peak region disagree. Even if taunts and other behavior come from misguided, childish rambunctiousness, rather than deep-seated racism, downplaying or ignoring such behavior enables dangerous hatred to fester and grow, they say.

Racial discrimination against schoolchildren is a difficult problem to measure and correct, experts say. Unlike cases with weapons or drugs, schools don't track the number of racist incidents, except the few that end up reported to police and designated as bias-motivated crimes. In addition, the law forbids school officials from publicly discussing the behavior of individual students.

"These kinds of things are difficult to prove because people will always say ‘That's not what I meant,'" the Rev. Promise Lee said.

Lee said his three children, who attend classes in Falcon School District 49, are frequently targets of racist remarks.

Some say more minority teachers and better diversity training would reduce discrimination. School officials agree those steps are important. But what would show that efforts to combat discrimination are working?

"You'll see growth, you'll see more diversity, you'll see ethnic minorities in power positions, decision-making positions," Lee said.

Alleged incidents

Lee and others said area schools have a long way to go before such goals are realized. Among the incidents they cite:

• At Creekside Middle School in Monument on March 6, at least one boy hurled the N-word at a black classmate, 12-year-old Kenyan Clay, who retaliated by putting the boy in a headlock. Kenyan faces a possible assault charge. Two other boys could be
charged with harassment.

• In Academy School District 20, Carrie Matoke alleges her son's language arts teacher stumbled over how to talk about the man who started Black History Month. The teacher first used the N-word, then "negro," then "black," Matoke said. The district said no one corroborated the allegations. Matoke said the district staff should include more minorities, to serve as role models, and it should teach more about black history and accomplishments.

• In Falcon School District 49, Darryl Murphy said his children have been called the N-word, but a bigger issue is the lack of black employees. He has offered to give a presentation on why the N-word is inappropriate, with no response. He worries racist incidents could become worse if they're allowed to stand.

The Rev. James McMearn, president of the Black Pastors Union and pastor of New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church, expressed frustration after working for civil rights reforms since the 1960s.

"The laws are probably colorblind, but so many people, too many people who live in our culture, are not colorblind," he said.

A safe environment

Area district officials say they want an environment where every child feels safe and accepted. They said they're working for that goal by being vigilant for racist behavior, training students and staff members about accepting cultural differences and recruiting diverse people for staff positions.
District 49 administrators have worked to make anti-discrimination and anti-bullying policies stronger, Superintendent Nancy Wright said, and those will come before the school board in April.

The district added a link on its Web site to the federal Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, so parents can easily file a complaint or contact the office for advice.

Wright also wants to create a community advisory committee to tackle complaints, if the school board approves.

The district is working with officials at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs to teach employees about instruction methods that respect students' background, knowledge and experiences.

That's also happening in D-20, which is working with Shelley Zion, director of the Culturally Responsive Urban Education Center, part of University of Colorado at Denver.

Some of the tips Zion offers are subtle. Students need to see people like them in the curriculum and on the walls.

If a student named Joaquim reads about only Bob and Susie, he's hearing a subtle message he doesn't belong, Zion said. If pictures of scientists in the science book are all white males, girls and minorities might believe science isn't an option for them.

Ultimately, districts must consider whether the experiences of all students are fair and equitable, Zion said. If students aren't succeeding, something is probably going on, she said.

It might not be as dramatic as racist taunts on the playground, she said. "The small things are the ones that really add up."

A different view

Not everyone sees rampant racism or danger for minority students. Cynthia Wusk, who has nine children in Falcon schools, said racism is present, but it's not an imminent threat.

Wusk said her children, who are Hispanic, American Indian and black, scoffed at the idea that Falcon schools are particularly racist. Her children told her students are taunted for any number of characteristics, such as obesity.

"Not all families are experiencing these issues," she said. "Yeah, they run into grief, and they just keep right on going."

In Widefield, spokesman Drew said outside investigators have looked into Wingo's allegations and "in every case District 3 has been exonerated of any wrongdoing."

"We revel in our diversity," Drew said, citing the district's large population of minority students (39 percent in 2006), and various district leaders who are minorities. "I have been here 14 years, and I can recall very few race-related complaints in that time. Race issues definitely do not in any way, shape or form represent Widefield's culture."

The 2005 case involving Wingo's nephew led to a disorderly conduct charge filed against Deshawn, but it was dropped after a request to prosecutors by Executive Director of Curriculum and Instruction Beth Salvo.

In a letter requesting withdrawl of the charge, Salvo acknowledged Deshawn reported the name calling to a teacher the morning of the fight and that no action was taken.

The fight happened that afternoon.
Wingo said similar incidents with Deshawn and her other children have continued and are a distraction to students.

"In all of this, my problem is ‘How much education have my children got?'" she said.

Calls for a diverse staff

Several districts said they are aggressively working to add minority employees. The percentage of minority teachers has not risen substantially in any of the area's largest districts in recent years, according to data from the Colorado Department of Education.

"I think we're always looking for candidates that more closely match our population," said Nanette Anderson, D-20 spokeswoman.

The district has increased from 15 percent minority students in 2002 to 18 percent in 2006.

Teachers from diverse backgrounds aren't easy to find, Wright said, especially in subjects where there are shortages, such as math and science, or in special education.

Creating a more diverse work force is a push "across the country," said Mary Thurman, deputy superintendent for personnel support services in D-11.
Lee, who's leading the effort in D-49, said a more diverse staff is important to show students examples of minorities they can admire and emulate. It's also a statement to the community that school leaders embrace diversity and oppose discrimination, he said.

But Lee said his children can't afford to wait for change in Falcon.

"We're looking for other schools. I don't believe that it's a safe learning environment for my kids. We've taken just about as much as we can take," he said. "We're pulling out, and it's not that we're running, because I'll stay there and fight for justice, but I don't want my kids subjected to these things."

Works Cited
Swanson, Perry and Shari Chaney Griffin. “Racism at School is Hard to Measure and

Correct.” The Gazette. 22 March 2008. Red Orbit. 12 May 2008


_measure_and_correct/index.html>.

Common Racist Stereotypes in American High Schools

“A High School on Race and Racism” by Lawrence Blum

Let me illustrate with just one fairly typical class discussion. We had read an article about three girls of different races who were friends in junior high but started drifting apart in high school. (8) This led to a discussion of social separation by race and also about kids acting in ways associated with racial groups other than their own, especially white kids "acting Black" and Black kids "acting white." (Later, we questioned this way of talking.) Here is some of the conversation (9):

Lauren (white): It isn't that white kids really like different kinds of parties than Black kids; but they are expected to like that kind of party, so they are told who they should hang out with.

Grace (Black): If someone [Black] comes down on you for "acting white," you can just ignore that if you are comfortable with yourself.

Angela (Black): I went to Boston public schools until the 5th grade. When I came to Cambridge was the first time I was told I was "acting white." I knew what I was [i.e., Black]; I had been that way for 11 years. [class laughs]

DeAnna (Black): It is easier for a white kid to hang out with Blacks if he doesn't act Black; same for Blacks with whites ... Black kids who act white aren't as accepted by other Black kids; like if they speak proper English. (10)

Waheed (Middle Eastern): Sometimes people just unconsciously talk the way the people around them are talking, not because they are consciously trying to get in with that group. My father is Iraqi and when he is with other Iraqis he goes into this heavy Arabic accent; I can't even understand him. It isn't a conscious thing.

Angela (Black): The first time I saw Lauren in 10th grade, she looked white but she acted Black. [Lauren blushes.]

Jeanie (Black) (affably says that Angela shouldn't run Lauren down [although Angela was actually praising Lauren].)

Efriem (Black): A lot of time, a person who is acting a certain way is only trying to make sure the other group understands him; he isn't trying to be a certain way [i.e., not trying to get in with that group].


Grace (Black): I think Blacks sometimes feel that whites are taking their culture away, when they act Black.
(I suggest that white kids "acting Black" is a sign of the power and influence of Black culture.)

Lashawna (Black): I see whites acting Black not as influencing but mocking. Like when we read about Native American team names ("Braves," "Chiefs") at the beginning of the course. Native Americans were insulted, but the people who made up the names thought they were fine or even flattering.

Jeanie (Black): Like Justin Timberlake of N'Sync putting Black females in his videos. That isn't Black culture influencing anything; it's whites ripping off Black culture to make money.

Carl (white): mutters [but I make him say it out loud] that White people have to steal other people's culture, because they don't have any of their own.)
It is fascinating to see the Black students struggling with these issues and coming up with such divergent views. They are trying to analyze their own practices of inclusion and exclusion, with value judgments about those practices hovering close by. The white students are as well. All are speaking from a distinct, race-related experience, though their resultant opinions are quite diverse. This sort of discussion is very unlikely to take place in the kind of classes the white educated parents envision, and both the white and the Black and Latino students, indeed all students, thereby miss an intellectually enriching experience. (11)

Works Cited
Blum, Lawrence. "A High School Class on Race and Racism." Bnet Business
Network. Summer 2004. Thomson Gale. 5 May 2008
.