Can We Talk about Race?: And Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation by Beverly Tatum Page A
Authors: Beverly Tatum
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Trying to shortcut the process is a bit like treating a child for an ear infection. The doctor will tell you to give the child antibiotics for seven days, but after the second day of medication, the child’s ear feels better and the child’s fussing is no longer about the pain in his ear but about the taste of the medicine. There’s a temptation to stop giving the medicine—after all, the child feels better. But if you don’t give the whole prescription, the ear infection will return and it will come back more virulently. And the next time that antibiotic is not going to work at all. Diversity training, or antiracism training, can be like that. If you just give a little dose, you simply build up resistance. You have to give enough to make some real progress, to get past the initial discomfort, and persist to the point where you can really begin to see the benefits.
If we really want to have these conversations, and have them in ways that help us, it has to be an ongoing dialogue. It is one reason that I recommend the framework of a course as one strategy—a semester includes adequate time to provide context for important social issues, an opportunity to explore the individual and societal implications of the issue, and even help students strategize about what they can do to effect change.
It may seem that implied in these comments is the assumption that we—faculty, staff, administrators—know how to facilitate these conversations ourselves. The reality is that a lot of us don’t. But we can learn. And we can support one another in the process. When I first began teaching about racism in 1980 I was a novice instructor, and I know I made mistakes. But even in my inexperienced state, my students told me that I was changing their lives by giving them permission to talk about race—powerful feedback for a then twenty-six-year old instructor! That conversation is still needed, perhaps more now than ever.
Although some progress has been made, the road to racial equality is not complete, and it appears that some have abandoned the task. But as a child of
Brown
, I know that change is possible, even if it is sometimes slow and not easily made permanent. My father could not attend the graduate school of his choice. His daughter did, as did his grandson.
More
change is still needed. As the door of school desegregation closes, perhaps a new door of dialogue-driven action can open, enabling us to build bridges across divided communities and meet the educational needs of all of our students. We owe it to ourselves and the generations that follow us to try.
Can we talk about race?
AFTERWORD
THERESA PERRY
Can we reclaim the grand idea—if flawed in initial conception and implementation—of schools as the great equalizer? Will we take the time to understand the role that race has and continues to play in determining who has access to what kind of education?
The Problem We All Live With
. This is the title of a documentary film that a group of students from Boston’s Brighton High School produced in 2004. Graphically and in a dramatic fashion, the students do a comparative analysis of the differences between the education they receive in their city school and the education available to their overwhelmingly White counterparts in a suburban high school. In the film, we are given a tour of a decaying Boston high school, with paint peeling off the walls, leaking roofs, small, dark, and unattractive classrooms. We also see the light, airy, spacious classrooms and facilities of the suburban high school. While the differences in facilities, visually observed, are arresting, what is more affecting are the voices of students, the White students from the suburban school and the Black and Latino students from the city school, as they describe and theorize about the reasons for the discrepancies in curricula, resources, teacher expectations, and support available in the two environments. After you have watched the presentation, it is
If we really want to have these conversations, and have them in ways that help us, it has to be an ongoing dialogue. It is one reason that I recommend the framework of a course as one strategy—a semester includes adequate time to provide context for important social issues, an opportunity to explore the individual and societal implications of the issue, and even help students strategize about what they can do to effect change.
It may seem that implied in these comments is the assumption that we—faculty, staff, administrators—know how to facilitate these conversations ourselves. The reality is that a lot of us don’t. But we can learn. And we can support one another in the process. When I first began teaching about racism in 1980 I was a novice instructor, and I know I made mistakes. But even in my inexperienced state, my students told me that I was changing their lives by giving them permission to talk about race—powerful feedback for a then twenty-six-year old instructor! That conversation is still needed, perhaps more now than ever.
Although some progress has been made, the road to racial equality is not complete, and it appears that some have abandoned the task. But as a child of
Brown
, I know that change is possible, even if it is sometimes slow and not easily made permanent. My father could not attend the graduate school of his choice. His daughter did, as did his grandson.
More
change is still needed. As the door of school desegregation closes, perhaps a new door of dialogue-driven action can open, enabling us to build bridges across divided communities and meet the educational needs of all of our students. We owe it to ourselves and the generations that follow us to try.
Can we talk about race?
AFTERWORD
THERESA PERRY
Can we reclaim the grand idea—if flawed in initial conception and implementation—of schools as the great equalizer? Will we take the time to understand the role that race has and continues to play in determining who has access to what kind of education?
The Problem We All Live With
. This is the title of a documentary film that a group of students from Boston’s Brighton High School produced in 2004. Graphically and in a dramatic fashion, the students do a comparative analysis of the differences between the education they receive in their city school and the education available to their overwhelmingly White counterparts in a suburban high school. In the film, we are given a tour of a decaying Boston high school, with paint peeling off the walls, leaking roofs, small, dark, and unattractive classrooms. We also see the light, airy, spacious classrooms and facilities of the suburban high school. While the differences in facilities, visually observed, are arresting, what is more affecting are the voices of students, the White students from the suburban school and the Black and Latino students from the city school, as they describe and theorize about the reasons for the discrepancies in curricula, resources, teacher expectations, and support available in the two environments. After you have watched the presentation, it is
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