I’ve probably been stalling a bit to make this post. At first I stalled because of the subject, and then later stalled because of the writing. I’ve also been debating the merits of using Facebook for my posts moving forward, so today marks the transition back to my blog page.
I hope I will be able to look back on this moment in history and recognize it as the turning point it should be, the moment when we realized how more than 400 years of systemic racism brought forth this reckoning and subsequent, sustainable change. To assist in a kind of personal reckoning, I’ve been recalling the moments when race entered a classroom where I learned or taught.
In 6th grade, I wrote the N-word on a sheet of paper. My friend Samantha (I’ve changed her name) and I had been walking through our neighborhood (a very white one) and heard someone use the epithet. I can’t remember all the circumstances of the encounter, but no matter because I do remember that we knew it was a bad word, something you don’t say in public, something we’d never heard people really use. I imagine its forbidden nature might be the reason I wrote it down in a note to my friend later that week. I knew the word had power, but sometimes that power eludes us unless we share it, we say it, we write it. But the real story happened when my teacher Mrs. Ater found the slip of paper, recognized my handwriting, and confronted me about the word I’d chosen to repeat. Looking back, I suspect Mrs. Ater was a good Christian who, despite having dealt with an incredibly difficult group of students that year, remained dedicated to the end that we would all walk out of her class decent human beings. In line with her personality, she didn’t scold me or reprimand me; instead, she spoke to me as a precocious kid who should have known better–let’s be honest, who did know better–but for whatever reason had written the word. Perhaps some sort of divine providence had ensured she find it. She wielded her disappointment in me to effect. She explained the crushing history of that word (at this point, musical artists had not quite reappropriated it), and she left an indelible mark on me, helping me realize how language shapes and alters us, convincing me that the words we use matter, and ensuring I’d never say nor write that word again.
In the 8th grade, I decided to run for class president. That summer, Spike Lee’s masterpiece Do the Right Thing had been released to wide acclaim. Now, I’m not claiming to be some sort of “woke” teenager in 1990 because I’m fairly certain I didn’t see the film until I was in high school, but I do remember the film poster and its colorful logo with geometric shapes seen everywhere. In true running-for-school-office fashion, I co-opted the film’s logo and title for my own campaign slogan, as in “Do the Right Thing–Vote for Carlye” or some such crap. Until just now, I’m sure I never considered the cultural appropriation at work in that act, but I did know at the time something about my choice struck others as odd. One afternoon I was at school for a volleyball match, and students from another junior high had come to play and spectate. My school had very few students of color (but in comparison to my elementary school, we were downright diverse), and our opponents came from a different part of the city where obviously more black students attended. I happened to be in the hallway, and a couple students from the “away” team stopped in their tracks when they spotted one of my campaign posters. One girl reacted, “I didn’t know black kids went here?” and…..I didn’t know I’d signaled some kind of blackness by referencing a Spike Lee Joint film. See? I wasn’t woke at all, just naive and ignorant. At the time, I didn’t know if I’d crossed some line, but my poster felt like a transgression. A couple years later, after watching the movie, I knew those girls would have felt cheated somehow to learn a white kid had used that logo, had–in the lame economy of junior high politics–tried to profit from a black man’s art. Even now, I wonder about the fine line between celebrating black culture and objectifying it.
Years later, I learned to become a teacher in Washington, D.C. Prior to my official student-teaching semester, I had the chance to participate in a practicum experience where I observed a masterful teacher and dabbled a little in leading some lessons. For my practicum, I opted to volunteer in a tony Bethesda, MD, neighborhood just across the district-state line so that I could student-teach in the D.C. public schools the following semester. While I attended a school of education that was fairly progressive when it comes to racial and socio-economic equity in schools and had read extensively about the disparity in education provided to students, I was not prepared for the reality of it all. Driving the three-mile stretch from Pyle Junior High in Montgomery County to Woodrow Wilson High School in D.C., you could probably see the color spectrum shift before your eyes. During my practicum, I’d taught wealthier, more polished versions of myself and my friends growing up. And then when I walked into my classroom where I would student-teach for 15 weeks, I saw a range of students I’d never encountered before. For the first time in my life, I was a minority in the classroom, but still a minority with authority, which speaks to my relative privilege in most situations, even the uncomfortable ones. While my students didn’t identify with me and my experiences, a white girl from Kansas as opposed to black students who’d lived in D.C. their whole lives or the myriad others whose parents had immigrated here, I represented a youthful hope that I wouldn’t be like all the other teachers they’d had. We made it work, but those kids’ zip code certainly diminished their future prospects and potential success. For so many reasons, those students taught me more than I taught them, including the lesson that institutions can and do damage children–even the ones designed to help them flourish–and that the damage often runs along the fault lines of race.
But it was more than a decade into my teaching career when I made an error in judgment that I shall not forget. At the time, I was teaching in a suburban (i.e. overwhelmingly white) high school, and there was one young woman of color whom I’d taught in an honors English course a couple years before. She had been a gifted writer, an astute thinker, and likely the hardest-working student I’ve ever had. She was the student who would write 10 pages when you’d asked for 5. She was the girl who came to me after school for unnecessary extra help to ensure she was ready for whatever would show up on the next day’s test. She had been raised by a strong woman who not only ensured she receive a quality education, but who also ingrained in her daughter the notion that she would have to work twice as hard and thrice as smart to shine among her white counterparts.
And, oh did she shine! But at what cost?
I can’t help but wonder these days what parts of herself, her culture, her identity did she deny in order to succeed in all-white classrooms? What injustices, both large and small, did she endure, and still endures, to graduate in the Top Ten, to attend an exclusive undergraduate degree program, and to begin practicing medicine? I know of one such injustice because I committed it. She and I had been chatting after school, discussing some topic that bordered on the issue of race. I can’t remember if it was Obama’s presidency or blues music or something else entirely, but we landed on a tidbit of information about African-American history that I knew and she didn’t. Before I even knew what I was saying, I had made a joke about whether she was really black, given her ignorance of this minutiae. Knowing her, I’m sure she sloughed off the comment with a polite response and then went home to process what we would now term a “microaggression.” I don’t recall the exact words I said, but I worry still that she remembers precisely what I told her that day. I do not share this story because I’m seeking someone to forgive me or to assuage my guilt; in fact, I call upon this moment often, in my private thoughts, as a way to remind me to do better because at that moment I could not have done worse. More importantly, I share this story because it illustrates the tacit racism too many of us ignore and so many people of color have been trying to highlight. Obviously this moment cannot compare to a police officer crushing the breath out of a black man in handcuffs, but we need–okay, maybe I need–to acknowledge these examples of racism also exist and deserve our attention. I need to own the choices, both conscious and unconscious, that I’ve made if I ever hope to move forward in support of my black students, black colleagues, and black friends.
As I look back at these different moments, I see an education of sorts, or at least a progression. We all can point to obvious examples of racism in our schools and our communities–we see them on the news all too often–but it’s those more nuanced acts that require our energy now. By ignoring the jokes, the off-handed comments, the miscues, the discomforting discussions, we have missed the opportunity to grow from this moment. I’m reminded of Maya Angelou’s words, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” I can’t continue to tell myself or enable others to tell themselves that we didn’t know any better because my memories prove we do. As our understanding of systemic and structural racism evolves, so too should our responses. And while I am embarrassed and ashamed of my behaviors–I shudder at the thought of my students, colleagues, and friends reading this–the shame and embarrassment of not acknowledging any of this would be far worse. So, I’m here to witness and participate in a beginning…..that will finally bring about change.
Note: Writing about myself always feels like a selfish act of sorts, and this particular issue of race begs the question whether writing about my experiences really does anything. I just hope any readers see this for what it is, a personal meditation made public because that’s the only way I learn from what I write. If you’re looking for something else to watch or read, may I suggest the following works created by people of color who speak much more eloquently to the issues at hand:
Black-ish, Season 4, episode 1, “Juneteenth”–The Juneteenth holiday is coming up this week. If you, like me, had no idea of this date and its significance, watch this excellent episode.
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates–Coates offers an argument couched in very personal circumstances about how history and society have treated the black body.
Master of None, Season 1, episode 4, “Indians on TV”–While Aziz Ansari explores a slightly different kind of racism, it’s racism all the same. He digs into why representation matters, all while offering his usual charm and wit.
When They See Us, 4 episodes–Ava DuVernay’s realistic depiction of the young men ruined by a corrupt judicial system forced me to recognize how powerful stories are in convincing us that what we’ve been told about someone must be true.
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid–This novel set at the tail-end of Obama’s presidency captures the ways in which we naively believed we couldn’t be racist anymore because we’d elected a black man to be President. Reid highlights the weird ways race shows up in our lives and interactions, even when we’re trying really hard not to be racist.