If you ever want to witness racism, watch the reactions of white teachers in an urban school when a student is killed.
When one of my former students was killed last year, I was devastated. I hadn't seen him in almost two years, but it felt like yesterday that he had proudly shaken my hand at graduation or embraced me when I returned from the hospital a few weeks prior.
The student was Latino and the responses that I heard from my (white) coworkers included statements such as: "I felt bad until I looked at his Facebook page", "What did he expect", and "Well, that's what happens when you're a gangbanger".
Regardless of the choices a student makes and regardless of the socioeconomic conditions of centuries of genocide that has shaped communities of color to this day, I think it should be pretty obvious to that when a minor dies, you should at least give some time before you espouse anything remotely negative. It's just basic human dignity- unless that person is black or brown.
Amelia Shroyer's post generated much discussion. Write fragility can be exemplified with the violent responses to the very concept of white privilege including the following:
White fragility can be defined as "a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress be- comes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation."
Nothing epitomizes white fragility more than the call to fire Jesse Williams after his speech at the BET awards. This is a reactionary move by those who benefit from a racist system as a repudiation of the acceptance of those benefits.
Sadly, I have witnessed such behaviors amongst teachers. One teacher I previously worked with constantly asserted the need for colorblindness, one of the most common forms of white fragility. He was constantly talking about how we should look at our differences and not our similarities. I bit my tongue; the mothers of Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, and Eric Garner did not have that privilege of pretending that "we're all the same." We are not, and trying to prop up this illusion under the guise of "equality" is intrinsically oppressive. The same instructor would quote Dr. King in saying that we should be judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin. Misappropriating quotes such as these is twisting the narrative to benefit whites and to attempt to shut up people of color. (Additionally, the teacher seemed to have mysteriously forgotten about King's statements on poverty, police brutality, the disproportionate accessibility to education and basic resources, etc.)
Once a black student came to me nearly in tears, after a teacher had referred to the class as her "slaves". When I spoke to her about the student's claim she rolled her eyes and couldn't believe that our society had become so politically correct. She clearly could not see that a descendent of slaves would not prefer to be referred to as such.
Another teacher referred to materials an experiment demonstrating surface tension as "we were the pepper and the soap was a negro." She then chuckled and had to defend herself by saying that she "wasn't racist". She later pointed out about a black friend at her wedding, as if this gave her some kind of "get out of jail free" card to make such disgusting comments, although she later added that she was tired about hearing about "blacks matter".
White educators: We need to confront our privilege. We need to reject white fragility. We need to have honest and frank discussions about our students and in the communities where we teach. We need to confront our biases, however unconscious we may be of them. We have to admit that we live in a system that benefits us and harms people of color. If we do not do these things, we need to leave the classroom.
White teacher fragility is racial student violence.
