My adult life has in a lot of ways been about realizing my whiteness and coming to terms with it. I worked 9 years in a 75% Latino/ LatinX community that was also 20% black. I grew up in a 54% white community 30, 20ish. So growing up, Texas white was the predominate culture, in the house college educated blue collar values first. Were definitely in the camp that systemic racism is just lack of personal will, racism is bad, but liberals are worse. By being around POC, learning superficially about other cultures, and loathing Racism I fell into this weird sense of inoculation against racism. I felt like if I was sincere and supportive and called out RACISTS. I couldn't be perpetuating racism. As I got older, I kept seeing instances and reliving memories after reading listening more of how much racism was part of my daily life, language, ways of thinking. It was part of the culture.
Working at Chavez HS, with Hispanic and Black bosses, surrounded by Hispanic and Black students I had plenty of hard lessons about how universal ideas about values aren't necessarily universal and how you approach them isn't necessarily universal. I still have trouble with reconciling how white people are somehow uniquely racist. I just don't see it. Some of the most racist stuff I've witnessed, experienced, etc, have had zero white people around. (It should be mentioned that white flight and Houston zoning laws created and exacerbated the minority heavy communities I lived in. But that doesn't indicate personal beliefs /behaviors.)
I spent long enough in Pasadena that, I still feel more at home there than my new very diverse Suburb after 2 and a half years. There was something okay in learning that my whiteness was real and a thing and I need to be consciously aware that my perspective is not something objective. I feel it keeps me in check. I am generally ashamed of how little anti- racist I am I don't do much. Vote, give to causes that will promote progressive causes, uplift underrepresented populations.
This leads to a strange dynamic in my classrooms. We currently have a community where it's very likely that when a black student is in my class, they are the only one. It exposes the rawness of even addressing the issue of race and bias in a classroom, and the potential victimization of Black students while trying to create a space for them to not be uncomfortable.
When I first came to this new school there was a sign in the classroom that read Techie Lives Matter. The eternal war between theatre technicians and Actors wrapped up in a "cute slogan". I had pretty much one black student in each class and none of them would have said anything publicly. I quietly took it down the first time. A new one replaced it and I addressed the class that did it. The young black student in the class the second I mentioned the post tensed up and likely felt like the absolute center of attention. I hadn't even said the phrase looked at her or mentioned race. I referred to the poster, the fact that it was attached to an organization that promotes justice and protests (something something vulnerable populations. Sorry it was three years ago). I asked them why it was an inappropriate sign in a public school and safe space (theatre rooms have been " safespaces" for decades). The diverse class didn't speak up. The one young woman did, and beautifully articulated the disrespect and discomfort that might be felt by someone who believed in the things Black Lives matters stands for. She didn't mention race or racism either if I recall correctly. The idea that this young woman, felt she needed to tiptoe around a blatantly casual racist sign, felt she needed to step up and tell the class, was put in that position because it was both unfair of me to ask her to do it, and to not address it, still stings me. As it should. It would be easy to be proud and point at it. "Look I gave her a voice, and did my best." Really it just makes me feel inadequate and gross.
This year I have a class with a young man who is not the only Black student but that's a different story. I teach language, how to use it interpret it perform with it. I try to teach a variety of cultures and cultural empathy. I enjoy a variety of hip-hop casually, as much as most teens from the 90's. I have since before I was a teacher connected hip-hop to Shakespeare. There's a fantastic video on you tube of the British rapper, Akala, doing a TED talk about Shakespeare and hip-hop. He talks about Shakespearean rhythms class comparisons and the custodians of knowledge problem. He's a mediocre rapper, but an excellent presenter. I've shown it every year almost since I've started teaching. It's not a gimmick, or a point or anything. It's a beautiful summation of the working class feeling that Shakespeare would have and ties that idea to modern communities and cultures that put lyricism and a culture of knowledge into poetry. African Griots and Wu-tang and such. Every time I use a even passingly black pop culture reference I feel like I'm singling this student out. He even mentioned one day "why'd you look at me?" ( because you're in my class and it's just as awkward if I specifically avoid looking at the one black kid in class) The same lessons I've used with thousands of black and Hispanic student. Because of my own whiteness and the whiteness of the culture that he is alone in, it is palpable when even things unappropriated feel appropriated.
Anyway, I have to get back to work. that's my two cents on what it means to be aware of whiteness and white culture.
That became another running joke. "Sorry can't make it I have a vendor call." "Ok, just make sure he doesn't shoot Mexicans."
But when people make broad overstatements about slavery or any other thing, it doesn't help either. What I do see is people using slavery as a club to bludgeon the US or the West, while refusing to use that same club on other civilizations, as if the US/West were uniquely evil. Sometimes I think they use it for pure ideological reasons, rather than actually caring about slavery and the people who suffered under it.
