Tag: ethnicity

It’s about time to show we’re #wellrED

#wellrED logoEarly February, I announced that Jose Vilson and I were starting a book group through GoodReads for folks whose lives are entangled with education. We saw a general lack of conversation around the tough issues we face in districts, schools, and classrooms, and thought maybe there was something we could do about that.

A little over a month later, and we’ve got about 50 members of the #wellrED group, and are about to start our conversations around Lisa Delpit’s Other People’s Children. Just looking at the group members, I know this is going to include some great dialogue. Folks from all over the US have signed on to think deeply and listen to understand other people’s thoughts around the book.

You should too.

Pick up a copy of Children today. You’ve got plenty of time to read the introduction and forward by the time we post this week’s questions Wednesday. Then, join us Thursday from 7:30-8:30 EST for an on-air Google hangout discussion of what we’ve read and/or join us for a twitter chat at the same time with the hashtag #wellrED.

Being connected gives us a chance to create the type of professional learning we’ve been looking for. Hopefully, this discussion is something you’ve been hoping for.

If you have any questions about any of the above information, leave a comment below, and I’ll be happy to help you get connected.

52/365 What Do These Pictures Do to Inform our Conversations about Race?

In a recent class, a colleague was describing the Chicano civil rights movement here in Colorado. As she detailed the events, she ended with, “…and then it went nationwide.”

I paused for a moment. Why hadn’t I heard about this movement when I was growing up in Central Illinois? Had it truly gone nationwide?

Then I got curious as to what the Hispanic population looked like by the numbers near my hometown. I’d several friends who identified as Hispanic when I lived in Florida, but couldn’t remember any from my time in Illinois. I took to the Internet. Here’s what I found:

Hispanic PopulationIt seemed from this picture that I had a reason why the movement going nationwide hadn’t resonated as profoundly in the Midwest. This got me curious. Here’s what else I found:

American Indian PopulationAnd…

African-American PopulationAnd…

Asian PopulationThese were things I could probably have described generally if handed a blank map and asked to color in the distribution. It wasn’t until I started considering these maps with regard to the “national” conversations we have about race, ethnicity, and culture I’ve witnessed and participated in as I’ve moved around the country. Some things I’m thinking:

  • While general patterns of cultural dominance and oppression appear regularly across the map, the cultures in question, how they interact, and how they shift those patterns is vastly different.
  • A person with limited geographic mobility living in any of these spaces of greater density of the ethnicities reported above is likely to live with a skewed perception of race in America and limited access to people of other backgrounds, thereby limiting the fulfillment of Allport’s Contact Hypothesis.
  • When we talk about race in America, we’re all having different conversations and are rarely aware of those differences.
  • Integration, equity, and civil rights are going to require varied approaches if we are to find that “more perfect union” we talk about so much.

If I were in a social studies classroom, I’d be building a unit around these maps and the questions they raise for my students and me. If I were in an English classroom, I’d be asking how these distributions might influence my selection of texts and how I approached helping students access them. If I were leading a school, I’d open a faculty meeting with these images and ask how they might help us think about how we are preparing students for the larger world and their citizenship in it.

And, I’d throw one more map into the mix to make it interesting…

Poverty

 

 

 

 

Things I Know 76 of 365: Good conversation can be self-sustaining

Conversation would be vastly improved by the constant use of four simple words: I do not know.

– Andre Maurois

Thursday’s advisory began with a question. Actually it was a statement first, “Now, I don’t mean to sound racist.”

I turned to Matt, my co-advisor, and said, “We’re about to hear something racist.”

“Why is it that caucasian people can’t handle spicy foods?”

I was wrong.

The next 45 minutes ended up being one of the best advisory periods I’ve ever had.

We wound through racism and stereotypes and what separates the two. We talked about possible sources of those beliefs. We talked about some of the roots of American cultures and asked questions of the kids as to what they understood.

I explained my family had no discernible roots in the Caucasian Mountains and that it was okay to call me white.

When one student said, “Let’s say someone calls someone else the ’n-word’ for no good reason, what do we do?” we worked toward an answer to the question and dealt with the idea that “for no good reason” implied there could be a good reason.

From a bean bag chair, one advisee added, “The ’n-word’ was just a way the slave owners oppressed black men.”

I’ve had this conversation or some off-shoot of it many times. This was the best version.

“What about when you hear someone say something and you think it is racist? What’s the best way to deal with that?” I asked the advisory.

I called on a student who didn’t have her hand up, but whom I could tell was working through her answer by the look on her face.

“Tell us what you’re thinking,” I said, “Even if you’re not sure, tell us what’s playing through your mind.”

A little shocked at first, she said, “Well, I guess I’d ask them questions. When she asked her question,” she said motioning to the student who had asked the initial question, “you didn’t jump on her or anything. You just asked her questions. That seems like the best thing to do.”

I challenged a little bit, suggesting it was one thing to offer that answer now, but another to remember it in the heat of the moment when one feels offended. The advisee agreed and we continued thinking and talking.

We continued, as luck would have it well past the dismissal time for advisory.

No one made a move toward their book bag.

No one asked if they could leave.

No one departed from the conversation.

Because the conversation started from a place of curiosity and the topic we were discussing was rich with no clear answers, no one seemed to notice we’d tripped over the end of our mandated togetherness.