White People...

Last Wednesday (6/27/2007) was the last day of school. Students were full of excitement and anxiousness for the carefree days of the hot, humid climate of NYC. On my block in the Heights, stickball will fill the street blocks along with the cool water being spat from the wide-open fire hydrants. Dominoes will be played by los abuelos and sounds of merengue and bachata will fill the thick air until the early hours of morning. Around 4 or 5 pm folks will head down to the Riverside park and la fiesta will expand, encompassing not only merengue and bachata, but Raggaeton, mariachi and salsa, not only stickball, but el futbol, roller skating, and basketball as well. And yes, more dominoes. Summer’s a wonderful time to be a kid!

One of my fondest and most striking memories of teaching during the last two years in the Bronx comes from last year. I taught Global History I and II to 9th graders. For those of you who don’t know, Global History is usually taught during grades 9 and 10 in the state of New York. It’s a two-year course and at the end of grade 10 students take the Global History state Regents Examination, which is a comprehensive standardized test. Students in New York must pass a certain number of Regents examinations to qualify to earn a diploma. There are two types of high school diplomas. One is the local diploma, which is based on school-wide grades. The other is the Regents diploma, which is based on Regents scores. The Regents diplomas hold more “value” in the eyes of JoCos and four-year universities and colleges.

Global History is an overwhelming subject to teach. The curriculum for Global I and II covers Paleolithic life until the Enlightenment era. That’s a span of about 10,000 years, give or take some. And that is to be covered in ten months. I was advised by teachers and teacher mentors to cover general topics and focus on units that I found most interesting and from those units connect themes to other time periods and eras. I was like, “yeah,” and ended up spending about two months on Ancient Egyptian life. I had a lot of good ideas, but the lack of teaching experience and lack of organization skills slowed my pace. We went in-depth into the lives of the pharaohs and power structures of the dynasties. The kids were able to explain, among other things, how King Akhenatan changed religion for the people of Egyptian times. However, come to find out the Regents examination for that year had one question on Ancient Egyptian life…and it was about identifying the major river of Ancient Egyptian life.

During another unit of study we were analyzing the Roman Empire. We read and studied about how the Empire changed and influenced the world. The kids were kinda into it, but as I have found with teaching (and learning for that matter) in general, it’s sometimes only as interesting and captivating as how it relates to you. This isn’t with every subject, but these are teenagers, and they have quite different motives for studying ancient Roman life than advanced academia scholars. So, I tried to bring it to them. I asked them one day if, in light of how we had defined Empire in terms of the Roman era, they thought the United States was an Empire. Hands down they responded yes.

I asked them to prove it and they brought up Iraq and said that was a clear example of how an Empire works. The majority of my kids believed Bush was in the wrong in changing the Iraqi world with false accusations of weapons of mass destruction. Their response wasn’t a surprise. Neither was their adamant disapproval of Bush. We had discussed this issue previously in class.

I wanted a little more from them, however. I asked them to explain in terms of American life how the United States is an Empire. They responded that it was even more obvious in the land of the free. At this point a few of the more out spoken students took the lead with this debate, which became more of a discussion. The students said that it was an Empire because certain people held the power, the money, the resources, while others lived in their shadow. They gave examples. They said, “look at our neighborhoods and the ones in Manhattan.” They said look at our school with hardly a class set of books and look at the schools in the suburbs. They went on to say that even people behaved differently based on their caste role in the Empire. I asked them to explain. They went on to explain how white people had it made, while blacks and latinos had to work a little harder, “to get theres.” The discussion got more heated. One student called out that white folks were racist. The class cheered and agreed. I said, hold up, I’m white. They said, “mister, you are not white.” I’m pretty white. For those of you who know me, you know how white I am. I’m German-Irish. It don’t get much whiter than that. I asked them to think about what they were saying. Yeah, yeah, they said. They thought about it. They said they didn’t like white people, often thought they were racist, didn’t think they could trust them. But, I wasn’t white, so they said.

My kids trust me. I trust them. I respect them. They are in-tune to their world and to this world. I can’t help but to agree with them on many levels. I don’t think all white folk are racist. But, I do believe they (my kids) are right. We do live in a world where the power structures that be separate the haves from the have nots. It can, in some form or fashion, be traced to race. Is it a malicious separation, not in many cases. But, there has been a conditioned mindset here that has been passed on from generations past. Slavery plagued this nation, as did Jim Crowe. There are still remnants of that past prevalent today. We have to find those and bury them for good.

So, how did it end? I ran out of time teaching. That has been my fatal flaw in the classroom – the dreaded bell. Did I convince them that all white people didn’t selfishly relish in the empirical fortunes of America and that even some were attempting to break down that empirical power structure? Not sure. I’m not a mind reader. Plus, if this white privileged mindset is a product of conditioning and hard to break, it must mean too that the “other” underprivileged, underestimated, and often times ill-respected mindset is a product of conditioning as well and just as hard to break. It is only through the open, sincere, and compassionate dialogue across races, beliefs, opinions, and ethnicities that will break the conditioned mindsets of America. Thoughts?