White Teachers of Black Students
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getting in costume for our performance of Shakespeare’s twelfth night. i can only imagine what i asked or suggested that earned such a speaking glance. It was probably something like, “If you let me take your picture, I’ll try not to overuse it.”
As a white person raised in the US, I can’t help but be a product of my environment, which is a society where “whiteness” is tantamount to power, privilege and supremacy. As much as I cringe to write it, simply by virtue of benefitting from this system, I am racist.
As an anti-racist white person, which is how I describe myself to my students, I continue to work toward understanding and dismantling the underpinnings of systemic racism. I do this by learning more and I do this by teaching more. Teaching my students about racism strengthens their critical-thinking skills and helps me create a belonging classroom. My learning about racism means examining how my whiteness affects how I relate to my students of color.
I recently re-read So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo. It’s a great book for white people who find themselves in situations where something happens that feels gross, and you think it’s probably racist, but you don’t want to be impolite by naming it and—even if you did—you are afraid that you wouldn’t be able to articulate why it was racist, or handle the indignant response you might receive even if you did know. In the section about white teachers, she discusses how our unconscious bias is manifested in schools. “The vast majority of teachers are white females and many are unfamiliar with and not trained to work with the different ways in which Black and Brown children—especially Black and Brown boys—can interact with each other and with adults.” This lack of cultural understanding contributes to the grossly disproportionate amount of misdiagnoses and punitive referrals, which, in turn, grease the school-to-prison pipeline.
In her book What Does It Mean to Be White? Developing White Racial Literacy, Robin DiAngelo (no relation) writes about the ramifications of a teaching force that’s 90% white. “The overwhelming majority of whites in the teaching field, particularly as classrooms are increasingly filled with children of color and immigrants in a country marked by racial inequality, has profound implications for the role white teachers play in reproducing racial inequality.”
So how do we, as white teachers, move from perpetuating this inequality to eradicating it? The first step is acknowledging that it’s a problem. The end goal is culturally responsive pedagogy. Here are some strategies that have been helpful for me along the way:
Take Harvard’s Implicit Association Test. All of us possess unconscious biases, which we can assuage, to a degree, by identifying and examining them. Knowing that you have a bias provides you with the opportunity to seek out ways in which you can mitigate its effect on your relationship with your students. Jennifer L. Eberhardt, PhD, discusses this in her acclaimed book, Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do, writing, “Confronting implicit bias requires us to look in the mirror. To understand the influence of implicit bias requires us to stare into our own eyes…to face how readily stereotypes and unconscious associations can shape our reality.”
Talk openly about unconscious bias in the classroom. Acknowledging our struggles and our own journey as thinkers, rather than undermining our legitimacy, creates a platform for relationship-building and for modeling what it means to be a lifelong learner. Believe me, this news will not come as a surprise to our students. They are already well aware that we are flawed and fallible.
Establish student-centered classrooms. When white teachers are the primary voice for every lesson, it further cements the association of “whiteness” and “authority” for our students of color as well as for our white students. The less we are “standing and delivering,” the less likelihood of our teacher-student interactions being a vehicle for our biases. In Project-Based Learning, instead of depositing information into the minds of our students, we are the coach and curator. This also means removing the pressure to keep track of how many times we’ve called on a student, how many times we’ve followed up on a student’s answer and how many times we’ve smiled and nodded at a student’s response. That said, using name-sticks or having an equitable system for who gets to do what in your classroom is a great addition to any teacher’s tool box.
Look it up. The burden should not be on Black students and families to educate us about our own ignorance—especially when a 30-second internet search can yield such bounty. Lately, I’ve been especially appreciative of Bettina L. Love’s writing, including articles such as How Schools Are “Spirit-Murdering” Black and Brown Students.
Most importantly, we can recruit and support teachers of color. This doesn’t lessen the vital importance of our work. Dismantling systemic racism in schools and fostering culturally responsive teaching will always require white teachers to harness our privilege and agency. As I tell my students, if 10% of our community is Black, then 10% of our brain surgeons and 10% of our politicians and 10% of our students and 10% of our teachers and 10% of our criminals and 10% of those imprisoned should also be Black. Anything other than this means that institutionalized oppression is still in effect and there’s still work to be done.
To focus on Black students is certainly not to say that teachers don’t also possess unconscious biases about other students of color, girls, immigrants, gender non-conforming students and so forth. I think we can all agree that there is plenty of bias to go around. Still, the reality is that the skeleton of our dominant culture is the subjugation and exploitation of Black people. If we, as white teachers, focus on understanding and mitigating our unconscious biases about Black children, these efforts will benefit all of our marginalized students who have been disserviced by our schools. Furthermore, any promotion of justice and equity improves the learning experience and learning environment for all of our students.
After working in partnership with Black students and families for 20 years, my thinking continues to evolve. What hasn’t changed is a precept that anchors me. It comes from one of my favorite poems by Pat Parker, For the white person who wants to know how to be my friend, which begins, “The first thing you do is to forget that i’m Black. Second, you must never forget that i’m Black.”
A tall order, but so is anything worth doing.