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Talking About RaceThursday, November 5, 2009Posted by OSI-Baltimore, Talking About Race series, under Race Post the next comment (2 so far) |
Editor’s note: At Monday’s Talking About Race event “Can we talk about how race affects our classrooms?” with Beverly Daniel Tatum and David Hornbeck, we received an unprecedented number of questions from the audience. It was clear that audience members wanted to continue the conversation. Towards that end, we’re posting some of those questions here to start the dialogue. Every day we’ll add a new question. Feel free to respond and give us your ideas and comments.
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1. Baltimore’s public school system is vastly majority African-American. The private “independent” schools are vastly white. But no one ever points this out or discusses it! It is purposefully avoided. What can we do to engage in this conversation? Can we ever envision that all these schools would be integrated?
2. How do you begin the conversation about the impact of race in education when there is a perception/belief that colorblindness is the way to think and be, and that raising the topic of race creates dissension?
3. How can we change the attitudes of white communities who seem to react to “tipping points” which, in my mind, are relatively low, i.e. white flight takes place when “too many” people of color move into the neighborhood or enroll in school?
4.How can we bridge the divide between very young, white teachers teaching a predominantly, if not all, black population? Particularly with programs such as Teach for America recruiting mostly young, white, ivy league students with no substantial interaction with the population?
5.When the topic of race comes up, it seems that the majority of people only think of black/white relations. Do you think that it is important to change people’s perspectives on race to encompass multiple races? If so, how do you do this in a classroom setting that may be a poor example of racial diversity?
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Friday, November 6, 2009 at 11:48 am
Consider the facts, Baltimore City is a predominate African American city. The schools are a reflection of this fact, so how could we have integration when African Americans are the dominate population? When it comes to independent schools, those with disposable resources have choices and they usually exercise thier choices. What are the “truths” and the facts related to public education? Is the quality of public education and/or the array of resources needed for quality education related to the demographic economics of a district or not? If it is related to demographic economics-then is it a race issue or an economic issue?
Friday, November 6, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Baltimore City essentially has a dual school system — almost entirely African American public schools while almost all whites (even those of modest income) send their kids to heavily white private and parochial schools. This is obvious to anyone who comes here from another part of the country, but Baltimoreans seem to accept it as some kind of natural state of affairs. No one wants to talk about it because almost everyone accepts it and participates in it — but at a deeper level feels uncomfortable about it.
As if we needed any further evidence that separate can not be equal, the state of the Baltimore City school system for the last several decades offers more proof. For starters, just compare school facilities in the city with those of the counties and the private schools. So the other, and closely related question that no one wants to ask is — can the Baltimore City school system reach equality as long as this dual system remains?