Background context: middle school in rural area of Georgia, historically known as a place where some of Sherman’s officers swung by with their troops on the way to Savannah to have a bon fire, but they thought the town was too pretty to burn so they just beat up some people, stole some stuff, and rested a bit. Good, rich history in this place. Beautiful antebellum homes located in the Historic District; lots of families who have been there for generations, both black and white. I’m visiting a classroom of 20 8th grade students, about 9 whom are African American and the rest are white.
So there I was standing in the 8th grade social studies classroom observing one of my student-teachers deliver a lesson on Reconstruction after the Civil War. The date today was (supposedly) February 9, 2010. The day I felt I was in when I left: February 9, 1953.
I am minding my own white business, glancing over an African American male 8th grade student’s shoulder to skim the article he is reading on the internet about Henry McNeal, an African American preacher/politician who did a lot of cool stuff during the Civil War and after (to sum it up). The students are in centers today, which I like, learning about lots of different and interesting things pertaining to Reconstruction in the US and Georgia: amendments 13, 14, & 15 in one center; analyzing a political cartoon which included a KKK member shaking a white government official’s hand, some black folks who look sad, schools burning, etc. in another center; reading about good ol’ Abe in another….you get the drift. And I am wondering to myself, does this kid think it’s cool that he’s learning about an African American political and spiritual leader during the Civil War? Because I’m glad he’s not reading about one of the plethora of white guys during the Civil War. How refreshing…(and I really was thinking this…I didn’t just add it for re-telling affect of the story)
The (white) classroom mentor teacher (not my student teacher) comes up behind me while I’m minding my own white business reading the article about Henry McNeal and begins whispering in my ear. She laments her frustrations about social studies standards and pauses for my response. Still looking at the computer, I agree with her thinking we’re about to have one of those “our hands are tied as educators by standardized tests” exchanges; instead, she begins to tell me how “random” these standards can be and how she just doesn’t understand how some of them even get included. I diplomatically agree and add how nice it is, though, that they don’t tell us HOW to teach them, just what they want covered, and how we can add whatever we want and teach it however we want. I feel pleased enough with my response until I soon realize this 8th grade social studies teacher and I are not having the same conversation about “standards.”
“Yes, but they’re just so random,” she continues,” I mean, take Henry McNeal for instance. He did nothing that was significant during this time period and we still have to teach him. Just because he was one of the only black men, we have to teach the kids about him and he didn’t even do anything.” I lift my head up from reading the internet article and stare at the wall as if someone has just poked me in the back with a gun. She continues, assuming I am member of her secret club. “I mean, what about the really important men like Stonewall Jackson or Robert E. Lee? Men who actually did something significant during the Civil War. Or what about Jefferson Davis? He was the president of the confederacy and he’s not even in the standards. All of these men did something” she says with conviction in her hushed voice, “and this, this Henry McNeal is only in there because he’s black. You know?”
No. No I don’t know.
Hours upon hours I spend talking to my preservice students about helping middle school students feel included in their history: don’t let the standards rule your life, I plead. If there are “important people” you have to teach who are in the standards and they do not resemble the children who sit in your classroom, then either teach through a critical lens (e.g., Why do you think all of the people included on this list are all white and all men? Or ask who is not being represented on this list of “important people.”) Or I tell them to teach the “important people AND the others who are often left out of the texts---women and people of color. Multiple perspectives of history. Why not? Why not teach students to question and think and want to learn as much as they can?
(I guess this teacher was absent during those lessons in her education program at UGA 15 years earlier.)
It was one of those moments. Those knife-in-the-gut, missed-opportunity moments that keep my head spinning when I go to bed.
My response to the disgruntled social studies teacher? “Well, I guess someone thought Henry McNeal was important enough to put on this list, so he must have done something to deserve it other than being black.”
Lame. Copout!
What kind of social justice model am I being for my preservice students if I can’t even call a cracker a cracker?
What I wanted to say but instead wrote down in my observation notes one minute later:
Please don’t mistake me.
I may look like you
but I am not you.
We share a history:
a history of violence, inequity, and oppression.
But I am not you.
Don’t mistake me as part of the club,
the secret club to which you belong.
Because I am not you.
I believe in justice
and equality
and civil rights.
You?
You believe the battle is not over—
and you wage this secret war in your classrooms—
implicitly and explicitly through biased texts and silence,
you reinforce the institution of our shared history
which I am trying to disrupt.
You, a recycler of our unjust past,
Me, a hopeful disrupter of the present.
I am a liberator of oppression; you, simply a perpetrator of regression.
So please don’t mistake me,
because I am not you.
My whiteness may imply
some shared connectedness,
but my skin is off-white;
while yours resembles those to which you refer:
cloaks of stark white,
oppressive skin.
Anxious because “important men” aren’t included on some bullshit
Your men
Your leaders. Not mine.
You lament your bigoted discontent in my ear
as if I should be of the same mind as you
because my cause is masked by the white layers of southern skin,
unlike yours which you wear proudly.
But we are not having the same conversation, you and I.
Our unhappiness with how history is preserved
in a book—
yours longing for a war lost long ago,
mine longing to wage an intellectual war with those like you.
Your whispers echo in my ear,
your truth
your oppressive truth
assuming I am like you.
But I am not you.
So please don’t mistake me.
I guess I could email it to her later.
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