Education Research

PARTS

The problem is cultural

I still believe the problem is cultural, but it is larger than the children or their teachers •.. the cultural framework of our country has, almost since its inception, dictated

that "black" is bad and less than and in all arenas"white" is good and supe rior. This perspective is so ingrained and so normalized that weall stumble through our days with eyes closed to avoid seeing it. We miss the pain in our children's eyes when they have internalized

the societal belief that they are dumb, unmotivated, and dispensable.

-Lisa Delpit,Multiplication is for white people: Raising the expectations

for other people's children

( Dealing with whiteness to empower students to fight for common good by Mary Alison Burger )

The collective strugg le presupposes collective responsibility ... Yes, every­ body will have to be compromised in the fight for common good ... there are no innocents and no onlooke rs. \,Ve a ll have d irty hands; we a re all soiling them in the swamps of our country and in the terrifying emptiness of our brains. Every onlooker is either a coward or a traitor (Fanon, I 968, p. 199 ).

( l )a m an upp er-middl e-class, college-ed uca ted white woma n. I say that first because it is a vita lly impo rtant signifie r when discussing issues regarding rac e, class, and gender. It is importan t beca use it frames my en tire reality.

It is important because it requires a consta nt, tireless vigilance, to check, and recheck my privilege, my perspective, and my input on issues that do not affect me dir ect ly. It is vital to make sure that I am not engaging in the very oppr essio n I am trying to oppose. I am an upper-middle-class, college -ed u­ ca ted white woman, and I am doing the best that I can to combat, as an ed u­ ca tor, what critica l ed uca tional schola1 Joan Wynne (2012), id enti fies as the "isms," of sexism, racism, and classism, through a tireless advocacy for an "a nti-oppressive" education (Shim, 2012).

If I ever encounter a person of my ethnicity claiming to be completely void of racism, I am immediately suspicio us of them because I believe it is not possible. I t is not possible because the entire premise of our U.S. history is constructed around the ideas of white male privilege, imperialism, and a " pern ic ious" white hegemonic dominance that is pe rvasive in every corn er of our existence, particularly in that of education (Castagno 2013). It is not possible, because as a white person, I am bombarded with both active and passive racist messages, suggestions, and acculturation from the moment I am born. I am surrounded by encryptions of racism in day-to-day life that encourage me to keep in place in st itutiona l st ructures that, every day, lim it peo ple of color's upward mobility and civic participation in a social environme nt. J en na Shim. in her article

163

" P ierre Bourdieu and intcrcultural edu catio n: It is not just about lack of knowl­ edge about others," (2012) notes ' We are not the sole authors of our perceptions, thoughts, and (re)actions because we are all inescapably consti­ tuted within a variety of historically constituted social and political discourses (p. 213)." As extensions of a past full of slavery,oppression,J im Crow and seg­ regation, we arc all age nts in the habitus (p. 213) of racism. It is hardwired into our histo ry, so, it seems to me that probably no white person can truly be "above" racism. T here is no such thing. So what now?

Co ming to terms with my role in the African-America n libera tion movement has garnered some honest and challenging questions: What ca n I do? Where does a youn g white woman fit in this struggle for equity? What can I truly do to join my black broth ers and sisters in this fight to free America from rac­ ism, without getting in their way? Wynn e perfectly captur es an d identifies tl1c "schizophrenic co nundrum," of being a white antiracist, trying to, as she aptly puts, " finding-while-fighting my place in the nation al scheme of white supremacy- snarled in the web of veiled utterances that protect it" (p. xiii). She asks a question I have asked myself over and over. " How do I disentan­ gle my tongue twisted for decades in making sounds sustained for hundreds of years in the dismissive dominant discourse?" (p. xiii). I believe ilie answer to her question is an intensely complicated one beyond the scope of this essay, but th ere are two simple things that I do know that have le d me to some form of ac tion- first and foremost, racism is a white issue, and what I mean by this is, it is an issue of white peo ple, eith er bla tantl y ignoring, or lac king knowledge and sensitivity to the historical mistreatment, discrimination, oppression, liberation, rebellions, and triumphs of African-Americans that arc still pervasive today.

Seco ndly,as a white woman I have white privilege, a tool iliat I can use to my advantage, as it grants me the accessibility to talk to other white people about these issues. Knowing these things, I've develo ped a bound less sense of per­ sona l responsibi lity, to use my acc umulat ed knowledge as tools to attempt to break clown these hegemonic structures, and an und erstanding that it is my duty to use my privilege as a platform for advocacy rather than one of oppression. I feel iliat the most sinister acts of racism arc not iliose enacted out of ignorance, but out of knowing better, and opting instead to stay silent and allow injustices to con tinue. As Fran tz Fanon's quote in the heading states "Every onlooker is either a coward or a traitor."

I feel my role in this struggle is to do what my brothers and sisters of color mi g ht not do, for fea r of being type-cast as the social trop e of " the ang ry black individ ual" (vis-a-vis the symbolism of Richard Wright's (2005) charac­ ter of Bigger T homas in Native Son). It is m y position to be as belligerent and

( 164 WHO SPEAKS FOR J U STI CE )

( DEALIN G W I T H W H ITEN E S S T O EMPOWE R STUDENT S T O FIGH T FO R COMMO N GOO D 165 )

voca l about these issues as possible, to speak out, and speak up, and to int er­ rupt the cult ural pervasiveness of racism at every opport uni ty tha t I ca n.

at urally learning to be an ant i.ra c is t is not an overnight metamorp hosis, but a constant and ongoing learning process that requires a large degree of patience, listening, and humility. T here is an important and necessary amount of research and background knowledge that must be in place, in order to be an effec tive agent for change. Avoiding neo-libera lism, paternal­ ism, projection, and being prepared to own up to an erro r is a studious and ongo ing practice.

I was fortunate enough to have been raised by a mot.her who encouraged me from the mom ent I had a blood-beating heart that ever y human life is of equal value irrespective of any kind of "differe nce" they may have. Although this ideological and egalitarian belief was certainly over simplistic and lack­ ing critical finesse, as my mother was not an academ ic, she was the catalyst that ult imat ely ignit ed, in me, an overwhelming and powerful indignation for bigotry of any kind that followed me into adulth ood.

St.ill though, I have stumbled along througho ut my own journ ey, misspoke n, misunderstood, and made embarrassing mistakes. As an undergraduate, I entered into the University of Florida, staunchly vocal about my oppos ition to any form of discrimination, and quickly began to recogn ize that my pas­ sion and outspo ken ness for social justice issues sac rificed my likability among my white peers. Because of this, I began to gravitate to the blac k

commun ity, sharin g a situa tion simi la r to t he one Dr. Joan Wynne (201 2) ex p lains in her Int roduction to Cor![essi.ons of a W hite Educator: Stories in search of justice and diversity:

Because my parents philosophically stood against racism and segregation, as a family we lived in contra diction to the society we were born into. No one

. . . seemed to sha re the same world view. Although my white skin advan ­ taged and protec ted me, I became accustomed to feeling in te llec tuall y and politica lly alienated ... only in the black com munity could I have possibly found a large number of like-m inded people (p. xi).

As a voracious rea der and writer, whose very soul resides in literature, I even tually found myself in a perform ance poetry organization, to which I was the only whi te memb er. Shar ing an eq ual love for la nguage, the mem­ bers became not just. m y close friends but. my family. We perform ed not. o n ly on campus, but within the Gainesville community, almost always at all Afri­ can-American events. I entered these situations with a common, misguided belief that many young white people harbor, that being an anti-racist means being "color blind," an ignora nt and nai"ve co ncept that if we ignore race altogether, ergo racism will va nish with it. O ftentim es, this subject would

co me up at le ngth, and I was freq uently confront ed with disc ussions, excha nges, questions, and sometimes outr igh t co nfrontations about race. I was blessed to receive tutelage from several African- American mentors will­ ing to explain to me, at length, the things that, as a white woman, I just could never und erstand. It became obvious to me quickly that race was not something that one could just "ignore" and that my concept of colorblind sameness was just as damaging, if not more so, than the acts of blatant rac­ ism to which I was so opposed.

So I liste ned. I listened and I learned. I didn't know it at th e time, but these conversations wo uld become the corn erstone of a platform for equity that I would carry with me for life. O ne that recognized that colorblind sameness was not preventing racism, but promoting it, by pretending it does not hap­ pen; something I could opt to do as a white person, but someone of color ca nnot. O ne that recognized a glaring characteristic of privilege, a blind­ ness to itself; and one that recognized that a truly equita ble world is not one of homogeneousness and uniformity, or co lorbl ind sameness, but one that embraces all cultural identities, while gran ting them equity and opport u­ nity in every conce ivable way. T hese were all powerful lessons, ones that I owe my deepest gratitud e to my friends for having the patience to share with me. It illustra tes that the knowledge that I hold so dear is not informa­ tion that I have come upon by accident and demonstrates the necessity of lis te ning and learn ing in order to truly operate as an agent for change. But even now I am still lea rn in g. T his essay itself is a ca refu l reflectio n and amassment of all I have lea rned so far, and I am not nearly done, I will never be done.

To me, it is a devastating injustice that amongst white communities, our envi­ ronment is so saturated in discriminatory practice that consciousness is more elusive tha n ignorance. It is a loathsome truth that I did not have to dir ectly address race or its social consequences un til I chose to do so. I feel that this is a gross reflect ion of neglige nce that perm eates how we are educating our yo ung people. So I have decided that a second component and responsibility to my role as a white antiracist, is to work towards, as Shim (20 I 2) put s, an "a nti-oppressive" educa tion, or one geared towards deconstructing these damaging narratives.

While I acknowledged above tha t racism is a "white" issue, and that it is imp ortant as a white anti-rac ist to co ntinually reach out to white people, I also feel that another area where I need to explore is why we arc consiste ntly failing our black and brown youth in our schools. So I want to teach, and I want to teach the disenfra nchised. I want to teach 1 OT because I want to "save people." I am not a moral imperialist; I am not "the white savior," and

( 166 ) ( WHO SPEAKS FOR JUSTICE )

( DEALING WITH WHITENESS TO EMPOWER STUDEN T S TO FIGHT FOR COMMO N GOOD 167 )

t his is not a FreedomWriters' essay. T hose notions, I believe, are pa ternalistic. I want to teach because I want young people to have the edu cation they deserve. I want to teach because I have an understanding that education will inspire young people to demand change where it needs to happen and because this kind of educational foundation should be mandatory for all stu­ dents. I want to teach because as Shim (2012) sta tes " T he field of educa tion functions in such a way as to reproduce a nd legitimize class/ racial inequa li­ ties and maintain status quo sin ce the educat ional credentials are held mostly by those already in domina nt positions (p. 214)."

It is my belief that for students to be successful, they need an educa tor sensi­ tive to the obstacles they face. Stud ents need more teacher s that understand fully the societal barriers that arc preventing youth from reaching their potential. There is a despera te need for ed ucato rs who have a detailed com­ prehension of these barriers and an understanding of strategies to overcome them. I believe in explori ng resea rch and practice that provide me with the skillse t to gua rantee tl1e success of my stude nts, not only scholastica lly, but intellectually, and professionally. I am convinced that re mai ning on a per­ sonal and intellectual learn ing curve, I will be ab le to enh ance students' ab il­ ity to self-actualize and overcome systemic limitations through consciousness. I hope that , through my own modeling of life-long learning, I can inspire a passio n for lea rn ing in other students of life and academics that will a rm

them for success for the rest of their lives. As my hero, and favorite autho r, Fanon (1968) stated in his famous ca nonical work, Wretchedef the Earth:

To educate the massespolitci ally does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, rele ntlessly and passionately, to teach the massesthat everything depends on them; that if we stagnate it is their responsibilit y,and that if we go forward, it is clue to them too ... that there is no famous man who will take the responsibility for everything ... the magic hands are finally only tl1e hands of the people (p. 197).

H old ing a similar philosophy as Fanon, Civil Rights icon and President of the Algebra Project, Bob Moses, encou rages gra ssroo ts people, student s, par­ ents, and teachers to make a demand on schools and society to deliver qual­ ity educa tio n to every mother 's child (200I). Again, lik e Fanon , Moses(200I) insists " that in tl1e long run tl1ey themselves are the only protection they have aga inst violence or injustice . . . they cannot look for salvation anywhere but to themselves" (p. 33). I will be using my summer to study,research, and work with local youth in the Algebra Project beca use I want to learn how to empower myself and others to raise our voices and act ions, to work our " magic ha nds," and to demand justice in a society that still secs "constitu­ tional people as co nstitu tional property!" (Moses 20I 0).

References

Castagno, A. E. (201 3 ). Multicultural edu ca tion and the protection of whiteness. Ameri.canJournal ef Education,120 (I), IO I.

Fanon , F (1968). The wretched ef the earth. New York: Grove Press.

Moses, R. & Charlie Cobb (200 I). Radicalequations: Civil Rightsfrom Mississippi

w the Algebra Prqject. Boston: Beacon Press.

Moses, R. (20 I0). Con stitut ional property v. constitutional people. Q,ualiry educatoin as a constitutional right: Creating a grassroots movement w reform publci education. Pe r ry,T ct al. (eds). Boston: Beacon Press. pp. 70- 92.

Shim ,]. M. (20 l 2). Pie r re Bourdicu a nd int crcultural ed ucation: I t is not just abo ut lack of knowledge about others. lntercultural Education23 (3), 209.

Wright, R. (2005). Native son ( lst Perennial C lassics ed.). New York: H arper Perennial Modern Classics.

Wynne,J., Delpit, L. & Miles, R. (eds.) (2012). In trodu ction. Cor!fessions ef a white educator: Stories in searhc ef justice and diversiry. D ubuq ue, Io wa: Kenda ll

Hunt Publishing Co. pp. xi- xxiii.

( 168 WHO SPE A K S FO R JUSTICE )

( Listening to students: Stories from the Education Effect by Maria Lovett )

the Preface of this book requests, let me begin by being specific- I ave so much to learn. Each day I unpack my own white oblivious­ css, q uestion my privileges and a lso a ttempt to, as Bob Moses, Civil

Rights ico n and founder of the Algebra P roject says, " keep on pushin" in the struggle against hegemony: I am part of the Educa tion Effect, a university communit y school partnership in Promise City1 U npacking my privilege is wrapped tightly to the story of being schooled by the brilliant young minds I have been so fortun ate to work with, come to know and learn from.

October 2013. I t was a few days before the ribbon cutting of our new Aqua­ ponies Lab and O rganic Garden- what we now refer to as the "Living Classro om"; and the students were busy planting trees, bushes and vegeta­ bles, feeding the fish and testing the alkaline levels of the water. O ne of the high school students explained to me how the system works, as I, a professor in educat ion, had no clue. He explained:

Aquaponics is the combina tion of aquaculture , g ro wing fish, and hyd ro­ ponics, the soilless growing of plants. We are raising 250 tila pia in each tank, and the waste from the fish is filtered through the system and fertilizes the large crop of herbs and vegetab les gro wing above. \,Ve lest t h e water quality checkin g Ph and ca rbon d ioxide levels and monitor the nitroge n cycle to insure the fish live and the plants grow.

We then walked through the garden of over I 00 p lants representing 1 3 dif ­ ferent species native to Florida. " T his is cluisa- also ca lled the autograph tree beca use you can write your name on the lea ves, this is morin ga, a highly nutritious plant native to Florid a, that we call a super food," anoth er stude nt explained. Two butterflies zipped by and a bee landed on my sleeve. "Yo u

1All name s of locat ion s and in dividuals have been changed except for Bob Moses.

169

know that bee wouldn't have been here a few weeks ago- the butterflies either. T here were no bees or butte rflies a round here. T hey are here now because we planted that milkweed over there. And the lemon grass... "

"T hings arc changing?" I asked.

" Yep.Promise City won't be a food desert for long," a student chimed in.

The back yard of the school- what once was an emp ty lot, occupied by dilapidated portable classrooms and cars lined up for sports practice- was transforming- and so were we all.

I am not an agroecologist or environmentalist and until this program and these students I had never heard of "aquaponics." Three and a half years ago, I became the director of the Education Effect- my university's university com­ munity school partn ership with a loca l high school in a neighbo rhood, forced to live in poverty, in an urban city of America. Co llaborati ng with the commu­ nity, sc hools, students, and parents, the partnership aligns university resources and opportunities to address the pressing educational and social needs of stu­ dents at the high school and its feeder schools. The Edu cation Effect resonat es with the mutual understand ing that our university's future and the future of school district's disenfranchised communities an d schools arc connected.

T he goal of the pa rtnership is to support I 00 per ce nt student graduatio n from high school a nd see every stude nt ready to be successful in college and pur sue ca reers of their choice. \,Vhile it is und erstood that not every stude nt may wish to pursue college or university, this should be a result of individual choice- not institutional barriers. To achieve our goals- we believe, as the story above shares, the work often involves us ad ults stepping aside, and becoming student s to such brillia nt young people.

In equi ty in our public edu cation system is evident and pervasive. Access to resources, high quality instruction, a safe and inspiring learn ing environment is not equally accessible for all our childr en (Wynne & Giles, 20 I 0). Low-income students are more likely than middle and high-income students to fall behind in academics, score low on standardized tests and drop out of school. In addition, poor students arc more likely to attend schools that have significantl y less aca­ demic support and per pupil funding (So uthern Education Founda tion, 2013). According to a 40-year study by the Southern Education Founda tion, in 19 70, 40 percent of students from the highest income quartile grad uate d from college. In 2012 , it was roughly 80 percent. For stud ents in the bottom income quar tile in 1970, 7 percent graduated witl1 a B.A. In 2012, it was only 9 percent. In other words, as Bob Moses (20 14) stated, for poor students, it hasn't budged.

In our sta te, 56 percent of public school children qualify for free or reduced lunch, 74 percent in our coun ty, in the community where our par tnership began it is 90 percent, and at our high school it is even higher (SEF 2013,

( 170 WHO SPEAKS FOR JUSTICE )

( LISTENING TO STUD E NTS:STORIES FRO M THE EDUC AT I ON EFFECT 171 )

di s trict da ta). When we bega n the Education Effect in 20 I I, the graduation rate at the school was 64 percent; it now hovers at 80 percent. An accom ­ plishment yes, but our students still struggle to grad ua te "co llege read y" (pre­ pared to meet standard admission requirement s for college acceptance without remediation). While 75 percent of students are now "co llege read y" in reading (up from 52 percent in 2012), only 35 percent of students gradu­ ate "colleg e rea dy" in math. Both reading and math scores are requisites for college adm ission .

T he Education Effec t partnership had been in place for five month s when I bega n. Working with disenfranchised students struggling in a broken system on a daily basis made it impossible to deny that indeed j im Crow was alive and flourishing. In less than one week on the job, I was acutely aware that this work would tra nsform me, and that I had much to learn; but what could be achieved for the students was so uncertain when the institutional barrie rs were so high and the smog of hegemony so thick. Ea rly on, issues of concern ineluded the metaphors we were using and tl1e language we were speaking such as "addressing the achievement gap" and " transfor ming the commu­ nity." T here wasn't an achievement gap; there was an opportuni ty gap. Or mor e accurately, let's stop talking about gaps, and as Moses (200 I) has indi­ cated, change the metaphor all togethe r, and talk about " raising the floor" for all childr en to succeed.

Typical thinking around university engagement too often reflec ts the propen­ sity to lea d co mmunity engagement. Instead, the emphasis should be on allowing the community, tl1e stud ent s in these schools to lead, asking them to pose the questions and seek ilie solutions. I understood we could tra nsform ourselves, but is it our role to tran sfor m or suggest that we are the agents in transforming others? Paolo Freire (I97 0) speaks to tran sforming our wo rld, not theirs. In the Education Effec t, we needed a serious shift in our thinking if we thoug ht our goal was to change the school, the community Lea rning from the Southern Freedom Movement's grassroots organizing tradition (lVIoses , 200I), I began to understand that not only is this view self-righteous, but it objectifies the work already happening. So I sta rted looking deeper, opening myself up to learning from the students on the ground, in the school.

Injanuary 2012, my first week, a colleague and I were asked to cover a dual enrollm e nt class (where high school students take college co urses in high school for college credit ) in public speaki ng. T he disconnect between the uni­ versity aca demic calendar and ilie district's schedule lefl these student s in limbo for three weeks. So my colleag ue and I volunteered to substitute for the remaining weeks, and framed the content of our mini unit around Bob Moses' call for a campa ign to guarant ee quality education as a constitutional right for all children. After I e>',P. Ja ined an activity and the students moved into their groups, Matth ew, a se nior in th e class came up to me and said, with

co ur tesy," With a ll due respect, this is a pub lic speaking class, and I just want to point out that you say ' um' a lot. Not sure if you not.iced th a t s o I thought I would let you know."

" I didn't realize that actually, thanks," I answered, and I am sure, blushed. As I left that class I thought, "Wow, I am about to be the student to these high school kids and I have so much to learn! I've been working on my "urns" in my public speak ing ever sinc e. Lesson #I.

It was not long before I realized what was missing in the parmc rship's dis­ co urse, in its p raxis. 'vVc were ignoring the "elephant in the classroom," or in this case, " the elep hant" in our university communit y school partnership (Wynne, 2005). Fra nkly, the demon in the room that wasn't being named was institutionalized racism. As a white educator, I echo the sentiments of Joan Wynne in Confessions qf a white educator (2012), that we have an obliga tion and responsibility as white reformers and researchers to name the demon of race and racism, and not expect black peop le to do th.is. We need to name the hege­ monic structures that form institu tionalized racism, which cripp les th ese co m­ munities and our kids (Wynne, 2012). If you don't name it, don't face it, you ca n't change it, includin g the changes that need to happen within ourselves.

In an interview with The RealNews program Reali!yAssetrs Itself, Bob Moses explained: "T he Civil Rights movement of the 60 's got Jim C row out of three areas: public accommodation, the right to vote and the national democrat ic party struct ure ... but we didn't get it o ut of ed ucat ion" (2014 ). If , ind eed, the new Jim Crow is a live and flo urishing, and we were to imple ment a partn ership ca lled the "ed uca tio n effect," we needed a very different approach than just making connections between the university resources and the communit y/ school needs and vice versa. To be success­ ful, we needed to reflect the urgency of educational inequality and ineq­ uity in this historic communi ty. We needed to adopt proc esses th at would strategica lly add ress the needs of all childr en, particularly those most often pushed to the bottom. "I think the strongest political idea embedded in this wor k is the idea that if you ca n rea lly bring about any kind of change at the bottom, it is going to change everythin g" (Moses, 200I, p. 188 ). We learned from Moses that the fight for q uality ed ucation for all our children is the constitutiona l a nd civil rights issue of our time. T hus, as we began to implement the Educa tion Effect we adapt ed our model to reflec t the grass­ roots approac h offered by Ella Baker, Mo ses, and the organiz in g tradition of the Southern Freedom Movement.

Alth ough not funded by the seed investment Lo t he Educatio n E ffect, we le v­ eraged the partnership; and in 2012, the district and the high school Princi­ pal committed to build upon the eight-year partnership of the local College of Education with the Algebra Project (AP) by creating a new AP site at the

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( LISTENIN G T O STUDENTS : STORIE S F R O M TH E E D UCA T I O N EFFEC T 173 )

high school with a cohort of 34 in-coming ninth graders, all of whom were low perform ers. In fall, 2013, the high school added three more ninth-grade AP cohorts and in 2014, an additional three cohorts. Because, AP in cities as diverseas Los Angeles to Ypsilanti, Michigan, has a 30-year success rate with students caught at the bottom of academic achievement (NSF report), our coalition agreed that expanding the university/ AP collaborative would be a win-win for Promise C ity. AP's insistence on "serving up accelerated ma the­ ma tics and experiential pedago gy to strugglin g studen ts, instru ctio n typica lly reserved for 'gifted" programs' (Wynne, 20 I 0), caught the imaginatio n of the Principal for the students. That insistence is congruent with the Education Effec t's mission to co-create and give the best to those who previously have been denied academic quality.

Furth ermore, AP's commitment to engage parents and the community in the educa tion of their childre n is totally consistent with our pa rtnership 's vision of engagement. And, of course, the Alge bra Project's insistence that they arc getting youth ready, not just to graduate from high school, but also to be ready to do college math for college credit (PBS, 2006) echoes our desire to propel our community's students toward academic excellence. But collab o­ rating with and learnin g from the Algebra Project, pedagogy and Bob Moses gave the Education Effect much more tha n just the AP program. Moses' ideas gave us a philosophical framework and tangible concepts to inform all aspec ts of the Educa tion Effec t. T hu s, the imp le mentation of our work was guided in particular by the follow ing principles: (I ) H igh quality, equitab le, and equal access to education is the constitutional and civil rights issue of our time. (2) St udents are at the center, making "the demand" for their own qualit) equitable education. (3) T he work is a process, not an event (Moses, 2001). (4) Student s are positioned as " knowledge workers" and ado pting the "Each One Teach One" (200I) pedagogy, instruction that is essential throughout all o ur initiatives.

Quality Education as a Constitutional Right

I was driving with a student to a community meeting about a proposal for a

\,Vi-F i program in the la rgest public housing development in the state, locate d ac ross the street from the high school.J ames is a high school senior and lives in the neighborho od. H e is very vocal about the need for access to the Inter­ net and technology and the impact the so-called digital divide or more accu­ ra tely the "digital desert" has on his education. He was attending the community meeting to speak on behalf of students. As we waited at the traf­ fic light, we were stopped by a convoyof tru cks, th e S\1\IAT team, and over a dozen officer s in full riot gear.

" Gee ze, this is just like a page out of The New Jim Crow f?y Michelle Alexan­ der," I muttered loJohn.

"I'm not sure what you mean by that, but they are about to go bust down some doors,"John said.

"This happen often?" I asked.

"Yep ... (He laughed, I assumed, at my naivete).

"T he use of lhe police as a military force in co mmunities like P romise City was created due to the War on Drugs. See that book I am reading? It is highlighted right there," I said, pointing to the book.

John read the passage. "Dr. Lovett, this isn't new to me, I could have told you that myself."

" Yep," I thought, "Youlive it. I read it in books."

High quality, eq uitab le, and equa l access to educa tion is the conslitutional and civil rig hts issue of our time. Education is a right , not a priv ilege and a sense of urgency and a tten tion to this macro-narr ative dr ives our work. T his framework and understanding speaks deeply to the contemporary crisis of what is so often referred to as " the school to prison pipelin e." l\lioses refer s to today's education as sharecropper education (2001). Poor youth and youth of color ar e given an educa tion that is equivalent to an eighth grade educa­ tion. T his pr eve nts access to college a nd to economi c stability. He sees a par­ allel with registering sharecroppers to vote in the l960s with youn g people today. In an interviewwith PR Mo ses asks:

... Who are the constitutional people in the couno-y? O ver th e co ur se of 2 and ¼ centuries, we have man aged in spite or ourselves, to extend the reach of that concept to larger and larger classes of adults. \,Vha t we haven't fig­ ur ed out is how lo extend that to the youth of our countr y.These kids spe nd most of their time in sc h oo l. So th is is how they relat e to th e co uno -y. So the co untry needs to figure out how it relate s to them ... T he shar ec ropp ers we worked with were the serfs of the induso·ial age. So, if we are turn ing kids out of high schools that have the equivalent of an 8th grade education, then in effect we a re setting them up for the serfdom of the informatio n age. T hose people in the plant a tions, they were hidden, out of sight, and they suffered quietly.T hese kids will not suffer quietly (O 'Conn o1 2014).

If the Education Effec t int ended to focus its mission on a commitm ent to seeing youth as constitutional people, with the rig ht to a quality educa tion, we had to ask ourse lves what does that look like? T his led us to interrogate the next principle: Young peop le making the demand.

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The Demand

Acco rdin g to Moses, young people have to work the de mand. S tude nts are at the cen ter. Our goal is to raise the voices of the heretofore silenced and to am plify students' own languag e (Wynne, 2012). " Young people finding their voice instead of being spoken for is a crucial part of the process... We believe the kind of systemic change necessary to prepa re our young peop le for the de mands of the twen ty-first ce ntury req uir es young peop le to ta ke the

lea d in changing it" (Moses, 200 I , p. 19 ). To support " the dema nd," the Educa tio n Effect shifted from being ad vocates for th e st ude nts. Rat her, we sought to facilitate spaces a nd op port uni ties where the youth could be posi­ tioned to mak e this demand themselves. Students began to see themselves as a part of something bigger, demanding the ability to obtain a high quality education not just for themselves, but to serve their commun ity.

Shanika: I am the first person in my family to attend co llege.Because of T he Education Effect, you sec kids talking about college, talking abo ut being ready to go and start a new life. It's really touching because a lot of people a re like: 'Oh you're not going to be anything, look at where you are from.' And to change that misconception is really, really crood. O\o\\ walking the streets of [the community] and my neighbo rhood where I g rew up, I realize that I am the future of [the city] (personal interview, T he Education Effec t video).

Clea rly for her, it is not about getting out. It is about being a pa rt of the change that young people want to see in their co mmuni ty.

Working the demand is proba bly the most essential aspect of the wo rk, and it is also the most challe nging. Here, the pollution of hegemon y and power dynam­ ics in the schools, in society; are obstacles for stud ents. For example, there was recen t chatter about ga ng activity in the community that was impacting the ninth graders. The kids knew a bout it. Many wanted help. Som e kids were even getting into fights because their names were being attached to a group they were not a part of. But, when a teacher asked why they didn't tell th e adm inistratio n a t the school, th e s tude nts said, ':Ah no, then we might get sus­ pended." Whether that is true or not, that is the perception of the students. T he school system is not a safe space. T he popular rhetoric is that the students are afraid of "snitching." However, maybe, it isn't about snitching. Possibly, once again, it is we adult s who are letting the stud en ts down. Not providing the safe space, not listening deeply, so that students can advocate and make the demand for safety, for an educatio n, for the pur suit o f ha pp iness.

Everyone said sharec roppers were apathet ic until we got them demanding to vote. T hat finallygot attention. Herc, where kids arc failing wholesale through the cracks or chasms; dropping out of sight; beco ming fodder for jails; people say they do not want to lea rn. The only ones who can dispel that notion arc

the kids themselves.T hey, like Mrs. Hame1; Mr s. D ev ine, E. \N. Step toe, and oth ers who changed the political face of Mississippi in the 1960 s, have to dema nd what everyone says they don't want (Moses,200I , p. I 7).

I was reminded of Moses sharecropper analogy one morn ing at the high school when the ninth-grade Algebra Project teacher asked if I was available for lunch. Travis, a student in her third block had requested a meeting. "Sure," I said, "Wha t's it about ?"

The teac her answered, "He has some concerns with the class and wants to talk abo ut it."

I went to McDonald 's (per his request) to pick up lunch, and we met in my office. T ravis, a small skinny 14-year-old didn't say much at first. Nor did he touch his lunch. Anxious about his silence, I asked, "So we ar e here to dis­ cuss some things happening in the class? What is upsetting you?"

Finally he said, it's Ms. K. (Ms. K. is a part of a service corps organization that places young adult s in urban schools as mentors and teacher assistants.) T he Algeb ra Project teacher indicated that Ms. K and T ravis had some con­ fronta tions in the class.

"S he's always 'aggi ng on me. . . and gets too close, and asks me a question and won't even give me time to answer. I need a minute okay?'" he blunecl o ut.

It was importan t to Travis to explain to his teacher why he "was acting up" in class. But, he demanded that his side be heard too. He reflected on what might make the relationship work better. "Maybe if she knew more abo ut me," he offe red. " But she has to be more patient too. It's not like I always have to share my story,you know ?"

T he teacher and Travis ca me up with a pla n to address his needs. Travis took his lunch and headed back to the cour tyard for the encl of t.he lun ch period. " H ow come he didn't eat his lunch?" I asked the teacher.She replied, "Because he wanted to find his sister and split it with her." I am the learner, again,

The Work is Process Based, Not Event Based

"Ella Baker spent her entire life trying to 'change the system.' Somewhere along the way she recognized that her goal was not a single 'end' but rather an ongo­ ing ' means,' that is a process. Radical change for Ella Baker was about a pe rsis­ tent and protracted process of discour se, debat e, consensus, reflec tion, and struggle" (Ransby, 2003, p. 1). In a national, local, school an d university world that emphasizes metrics and outcomes, it is hard not to be disn-ac ted by focus­ ing on " the event." But heeding the works of Baker and Moses, 0 1u- project emphasized that this is a colla borative partnership that fluctuates to meet the

e ver-changing needs of our students and the communi ty. It is sim ultaneously addressing both personal experiences and systemic change. The processesare illustrated not in rhetoric, but in action. And, despite pacing guides and mea­ surable outcomes, as 1vfoses says, sometimes you have to "slow the bus down" (Wynne, 2009, p. 92) so everyone can get on board.

One of the best examples of understanding the concept of the work as a pro­ cess, not an event, includes invo lvi ng parents. I'm pretty certain that every educa tion program has something written about " increasing parental engage ­ ment." But, what does that look like? As an educator working with both pre­ service and current teachers, I am frequen tly frustrated by the repea ted banter of " blaming the parents." As we su·ive to recognize the brilliance and experience of our students, arc we doing the same to recognize the gifts our parents bring to the process? Do we honor their lived experience, so often str uggling against social and economic barriers that prevent what hegemonic institution s typically define as " involvement?" Do we pause, make spa ce, and provide opportun ities to learn from our parent s? Do we visit them in their commun ities or do we demand that they come to the school?

Schools host parent "events" throughout the year, but they are hardly engaging. Outsideof "Back to School Night" where parents meet with their child's teach­ ers, paren t nights typically consist of mandatory meetings held in an audito­ rium where parents sign in and watch a prescriptive PowerPoint on what it takes for their students to graduate, be successful, a nd so on. In true hegemonic fashion , parents and their childr en are talked to, not with, and lit tle space for dialogue is included. Do we ever ask parents "what they thought or wanted to do about their children 's education?" (Wynne p. 230). Typically, no, and after the last slide, everyone scurries out the door; another parent night, check.

At our high school, we tried some alternative methods such as a family night in the garden, where the school jazz band played; the culinary program cooked a meal based on in gredients from the garden; and students, demon­ strating their knowledge, led the guests through the Aquapon ics la bs. We were gathering enthusiasm; the attendance was growing. They were nice events. But that was the problem, they were just events. And only nice. v\le weren't really making progress on eq uity in education, on collaborat ion, on engageme nt, on talking about the tough stuff that impacted their children. We weren't crea ting oppo rtunities to learn from the parents.

We managed to experience sma U successes with the Algebra Proj ect. We were preparing for our third cohort of students. It was the spring of 2014 , and we collabor a ted with the principal of the Midd le School to host an Alge­ bra Project information night for parents and students. Under Moses's direc­ tion, we soon realized tl1at we were not going to host an information session; rather, students would demonstrate the information. About IO c urrent

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( LISTENING TO STUDENTS: STORI E S FR OM THE EDUC AT IO N EFFECT 177 )

Algebra Project students se t up workstations around the school's media cen­ ter. Immediately, before there was a " welcome" or " introductions" or any­ thing else typically found on an agenda, the guests, parents, and students, were greeted by an AP student at the door and were given an expla na tion of what was happe ning around the room. The parents and the students were led to individual stations where they engaged in the math lesson (height char­ ters, polynomials, road colori ng, graphing calculato rs, etc.) taught by one of the curren t 9th or 10th grade AP students. It was mira culous. Pa rents asked probing questions to the students and made comments such as: "Wish I had learned math this way." Or " You really know and understand what you are talking about don't you?" T he event was a success. Over 40 parents, stu­ dents, communi ty members, and teachers attended.

But, we missed the mark again. We didn' t embrace the prin ciple that this is a process not an event. 'v\Tc had hoped to use th is "e vent" as an opportunity to recruit a new in-co ming ninth grade cohort to pa rticipate in our summer indu c tion program. We made phone calls, se nt 0yers, and visited homes asking students to participate in our Algebra Project summ er ind uct ion program. That included facilita tion from Moses, the new AP math teacher, six visiting teac hers from Ireland who were interested in learning more about the Algebra Project and FIU graduate students who would facilitate les sons on science and civics. Despite a ll, our efforts and what we thoug ht sounded li ke a great program, despite many enthu siast ic responses to our invitati on, on the first clay parti cipa tion was minimal. We were missing the parent advocate.

Enter Angela Mays. ' "' hile we have been blessed to know and work with Ms. Ma ys for the last few years, it was in the summer of 2014, when she met Bob Moses that our relationship with her became a game changer. When we began the 2014 summer induction program for our third cohort of Algebra Project students, only five kids showed up. Moses and Ma ys hit the streets, making home visits, and spending time in tJ1e co mmunit y with stud ents and families. By the encl of the week, we had 25 in-coming ninth graders (20 boys and 5 girls) showing up every day, on time, even early and engaged. Angela

:r-.fa ys is o ur city's Fanni e Lou Hamm er. Mays is a resident of the histori cal Black communi ty we serve and grew up in both that community as well as the oldest Black commun ity in th e city. She is a mother, grandmother, and auntie to almost every child in the communit y. Nfays is the foun der of a com­ munity wid e p a re ntal engagement organization, and she graciously taught us tJ1at, " I t's on us to get to know parents." By the end of the week, we had par­ ents volunt eering in the class and asking the football coach to require their football-playing son to come to the summer institute before attending prac­ tice. So, yes, it is a pro cess not an event that will make the change we want to see in the world.

LISTENINGTO STUDENT:SSTORIES FROM THE EDUCATION EFFECT 179

Students as knowledge workers +

"Each One Teach One"

Posilioning students as knowledge worke rs, employed as o rlen as possible, for using their knowledge guided the projecl's work. Stude nts engaged in the "each one leach one" model, originally designed by AP and the Young Peo­ ple's Project, where youth teach their peers, younger stud ents, even parents and other adults. It became the signature of the Education EfTcc ts p hiloso­ phy. Applying this principle contributed to the expon ential growth and reach or our Aquaponics Lab a nd O rganic Ga rden. Suppor ting students' interest and maste ry in sciences and bringing lhe classroom "lo life," we eslablished the mosl comprehensive Aquapo nics Lab in the counl y; positioning students as act-io n researchers addressing urgent issues a round health, food just-ice, and s ustainabilit y

Camilla, a rece nt graduate of the school, who is now studying bioengineer­ ing at another university repo rted:

vVe wo ul d come across plant problems such as nematodes, which destroyed our tomatoes. So, we planted a counter plant [so the tomatoes could grow]. I wen t to ew Mexico to attend the Rooted in Comm unity Co nference, where I lea rn e d skills an d concepts about food justice and protesting, along with the intergenerational richness in education [Referring here to T he Rooted Conference's involve ment in conversations and colla borations with 1ative American elders in the com munity]. We want to see changes in our community, and we desire to have the necessary s kills to do so (persona l correspond ence).

T he lab and garden have become a centerpiece for expe riential learning across a variety or disciplines includi ng scie nce, art, and design, culinary arts and civic engagement. A science teacher wrote:

Stude nts have taken ownership or their projects . . . Parents come up to me and say, 'I know exactly what my son lea rn e d to day because he ca me home and told me all about it and now we are growing our own herbs.' T hey arc not just leav ing their knowledge at the schoo l; th e y have been bringing it home with them to their communi ty and have spread the knowledge they have obtained (personal corresponde nce).

Jerm aine, a recent graduale from our high school who now is employed as the coordinator for the lab and garden explained:

T he oppo rtun ity to work at the garden has expanded my knowledge an d passion. It has given me a chance to reflect on my community and life. How can I make a d iffe rence in this garden? My co-workers have been an

incredible team who have worked hard and with love. And that is reflec ted in the outstanding growth of every plant and tree in our beautiful garden.

As knowledge workers, our studen ts are leading the way in challenging the cripp ling representations and misrepresentations of their community (Lovett and Sq uier, 2010). "T he ac tivities gave our school a name for itself Proving for a fact that we are more than the stereotype of violence and lack of educa­ tion ," said Anthony (personal c orr es pon dence).

Student s like Anthony made me aware that confronting those misrepresenta­ tions do not only take place in the realm of media or the greater community, they also take place in the classroom. As, I was preparing for our presenta­ tion at a national conference with two nin th-gra de Algebra Proj ec t stud ents, Alvin, a q uiet tho ugh tful young man with a grin that covers his whole face, when you are fortunate enough to catch it, was very hesitant to speak. His best friend, Terrell, was trying to encourage him to get over his shyness. " Lis­ ten, when I was in elementa ry, I wou ld n't speak up eithe r. Even if I knew the answer, and usually I d id, I ju st didn't want to say anything. T hen, I don't know, in middle school, I ju st realized I had to show 'e m'." While the pur­ pose of his words was to encourage his friend , once again, it was I who learned. Terrell, who is 16 and in ninth grade had been held back twice. As I hea rd his story, I thoug ht: that is why he was held back, not becau se he didn't know, but because we, ed uca tors in his path , didn't listen. We did not deeply liste n to his silence; open ourselves to lea rn ing from him.

When it came time for the student s to speak in the conference, I was nervous. Actually, I was nervous the whole time, I always am when I present. Did I say "um" a lot? I think of Matthew. Terre ll knew this about me and from his place in the front row, kept giving me the " thum bs up" sign of encourage ment. So, when it was time for the students to speak, I wondered if they were nervous too. I didn't want our kids to feel put on th e spot. Most of the other students participating in the conference were seniors in high school or in college or a university. Our kids were in ninth grade. Yet without hesita tion, when I paused, Te rrell stood up. Terrell, at over 6 feet tall and 200 pound s and a star on the football team, which is what he is "known for" in the school, said:

This work has given me the opportunity to showwhat I kno\v. T o be in the Algebra Project class and talk about the math; to learn and showwhat I am le arning and what I know.And help my classmates.It's given me co nfidence to speak up. T hat's made a big difference in my life.

When we were headin g home from the confere nce, I asked Terre ll what he liked most from the weekend. T he weekend was filled with workshops on hip hop, at hletics, dinners out, time spent with his mentor, and his first time on an airplane. "My favorite part was our speech in the presen tation," he said.

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LISTENING TO STUDENTS: STORIES FROM THE EDUCATION EFFECT 181

Il 's not what I expected him to say. And that's the poin t abo ut my being spe­

cific; I keep on pushin' but mostly,I keep on learn ing.

I encl with one last sto ry. One a fternoo n, in their closing circle, the Algebra Project teacher was lead ing the "shout outs." O ne student next to me asked, "Where is Mr. Bob? W here did Mr. Bob go?" T he AP teacher explained that he was preparing for a talk to be given in a few hour s, and he would be back tomorrow. Students proclaimed: "Shout out for Mr. Bob! For being here and teaching with us." Later that evening, I shared the story with Moses: "T hey missed me, huh ? That's nice." He smiled big. A big q uiet, smile like Alvin sha res.

Like Moses, I too, feel that " It is th e voices of the young people I hear every day, more than anything, that give me hope" (Moses in Wynne p. 236, 2012). T hose voices, along with our teachers' voices, now, give the Education Effect hope too. If that hope becomes a reality, then, we will be effec tive after all.

References

Freire, P (1970 ). Pedagogy qf the Oppressed. New York: H erde r and H erder.

J ay, P (Senior Editor ). (June 20, 2014). News Program. Balt imore: Real ews. The Mississippi FreedomSummer - Bob Mo ses on Reality Asserts Itself. http:/ I thereal news.com/ t2/ index.php?option =com_co nten t&task= view&id= 3 l&I emid= 74&jumival= 12034

Lovett, M. and Squier, J. (20 I 0 ). Writing with video. In Cope, B. a nd Kalan tzis, M. (E els.). Ubiquitous Learning. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Moses, R. P (20 I0). Constitutional P roperty v. C o n stitutional People. In Perry, T Moses, R. P, Wynn e, ]. T , Cort ez, E., and Delpit, L. (Eds.). Qyaliry Education as a Constitutional Right: Creating a Grassroots Nlovemenl to Traniform Pubilc Schools.

Mo ses, R. P (2014). Keynote address. Educational Testing Service: Institute for Student Achieve ment, Summe r Institute. Princeto n.

Mo ses, R. P and Cobb , C. E. Jr. (2001). Radical l!,quations: Civil Rights from Mississippi lo the AlgebraProject. Boston: Beacon Press.

O 'Connor , J. (Host). (2014, J uly 28). Stale Impact: A Q & A With Activist And Algebra Project Found er Bob Moses [Radi o broadcast episode]. h ttp: / / sta teim pac t. np r.o rg / Oo rid a / 20 14 / 0 7/28/ a-q-a-with-ac tivis t­ and-algeb raproj ect-found er-bob-mose s/

( Living with the tensions of hope and despair by Joan T. Wynne )

( T )he United Stat es is a racist countr y and because of that, I, as a White person, am the bene ficiary of power and privileges t hat have an adverse effec t on citizens of colo r" (20 14, p. l 0). I have begun open­

ing presentat ions I make to any audience, at nationa l co nferences or in uni­ versity classes, with that sentence, one that a young writer for The Nation, M ychal Denzel Smith, has persuade d me is a necessary starting place for any

\,Vhite person who wants to unravel racism in our society.

Because of my life-long jour ney of " un-learn ing" racism, I find his sentence to be essential and pertinent also to my writing for this book. The sentence reminds me that a south ern White woman, creating a chapter on the impact of racism on the college expe rie nce of Blac k stud ents seems arroga nt and a bit prepostero us. So before I ca n addre ss the topic, I must ad mit th at any­ thing I say comes tempered by the reality tha t I can never fully understand the impact of racism on these students. I can read and cite the research about it. I ca n do my own research abo ut it. I can observe it in my class­ rooms; but, beca use of my unearned power and privilege, I can never really kno w it as my Africa n-Amer ican and Black students do. In this chapte r, though, I will de sc ri be what I do know in hopes it might be valuab le to prac­ titioners, espec ially Lo p eo p le who loo k like me and who care about eliminat­ ing racism- not only to better teach Blac k stud ents, but also to rid ourselves of the pathology that we, not African-Americans, have carried within our national Dr A for centuries.

T he late singer and stalwart activist, Pete Seeger, once said in an interview that 'T he key to the future of the world is find ing the optim istic stories and let ting them be known" (2014, p. A20). I in tend to do just that. Yet, before tellin g those stories, I'm dr iven to dep ict ano ther facet of o ur dilem ma as act1v1sts. That dilemm a seems Lo demand a recognitio n of the tensio n between the hopeful and the discourag ing. For, to fully understand the

183

op timistic stories, we, first, must wrestle with the difficu lt and so metimes sin­ ister things that confront us all in a hegemonic world. T hus, the beginning of th is chapt er addr esses my observations of the negative consequences of the dominant culture's institutions on Black students. Later, the optimistic stories emerge illustrating the philoso phy and pedagogy that can be effec tive in cre­ ating environments that support the intellect ual ac hievements of Blac k stu­ dents, stories that also include the wisdom of students (Focus, 2014 ) who have inform ed my explora t ion of the dilemma.

The Ominous

Beca use I now live in Flo rida where within an 18 month span, two unarm ed Blac k tee nage boys were murd ered- one, T rayvon Martin (Robles 2012 p. A2), for walking while Blac k in a mostly a ll-W hite neighbor hood, and another, Jordan Davis (H sieh, 201 4 ), for playin g loud music in a car- I am more dedicated than ever to und erstanding how racism plays a part not only in the mis-education of our African-American children, but in the mis-educa tion of our Anglo children who are schooled to become adults who can "sta nd th eir ground" to murd er Black boys or who ca n serve as maste rs of judicial syste ms that legitimize these murders.

What kind of schooling is needed for White Americans to sta nd up for protect ing the lives of all child re n? Racism is a blig ht on this na tion, and a blight on any intellectua l who sits silen tly as her Black stud e nts' very lives are daily threa tened . T hat threat never seems more clearly sta ted than in the words of Ella Baker, who said: "We who believe in freedom cannot rest, until the killing of Black men, Blac k mother s' sons is as importa nt as the killin g of White men, W hite mot hers' sons" (R a nsby 2003, p. 335). T hose words consta ntly challenge me to dig d eepe r, to exp lore a b usive schooling more urge ntly, whenever I write about the ed ucat ion of Blac k students, and, ind eed, a bo ut the education of any mother's child. For, all of our children are at sta ke at differen t levels- those who are being vic­ timized by demoralizing education and violence, and the integrity of those whose educa tion is so severely distorted that many later become either the perpetra tors or the pro tecto rs of viole nce against Blac k chi ldr e n. If not addressed in the classroom, the tent a cles of White Supremacy, that stra ngle the K- 1 6 s ystem of public and pri vate ed uca­ tion, leave no one und im inished by the destruct ive powe rs of the domina nt cultur e. And the dear th of disciplined discussion abou t it allows and encoura ges a divisive nation.

Civil Rig hts icon and President of T he Algebra Project, Bob Moses, in a key­ note add ress at a public forum explained the dire conseq uences of bad

( 184 WHO SPEAKS FOR JU STICE )

LIVING WITH THE TENSIONSOF HOPE AND DESPAIR 185

e du ca tio n for our Blac k, Brown, and White, poor childre n. During his addr ess, M oses reported,

T he Southern Educational Fund looked at a 40-year pe riod from 1970 to 2010 and asked the question who gets a B.A.? Not who goes to college, but who gets a B.A.? T hey answered it in terms of the qua rtiles, the lop eco nomic quartile and the bottom economic q ua rlile. ln 1970, 40% of the top eco­ nomic quartile got their B.A.s. Forty years later 80% received it. It doubled over this 40-year period. In 197 0, 7% of the bottom quartile got B.A.s. For!J

years later in 2010, on{y 9% ef the bottom quartilegraduated.from college(Mo ses, 2014).

With that grim 40 year record of sorr y ed ucat ion delivered to our students at the bottom, can we continu e to pretend that we ar e a democratic na tio n who offers q uality educa tion to all its people? Or will we continu e to blame the victims for this travesty of unequal opportunity?

In other chapters of this book, K-12 racist realities are addressed, especially the horrific criminalizing of our young children, paving the way for a corporate school-to-priso n pipeline. So my chapter is not intended to address K-12 school­ ing. Yet, I must share here one of the more shocking statistics, that I only recently discovered. A Department of Education report in Mar ch, 2014 d eclared that "Blac k childr e n represent 18 perce nt of preschool enrollment, but 42 percent of the preschool childr e n suspended once, and 48 percent of the preschool childre n suspended more than once" (Civil Rights Data 2014). Really? Suspending vir­ tual toddlers? What is wrong with a nation that cannot deal with three to five year olds? And what kind of nation keeps tl1c doors open to prc-scl1ools that don't know how to nurture or discipline children who not too lo ng ago have just lea rned to talk and walk? But still a stunning sile nce exists in mainstrea m corri­ dors of this coun try about the exploitatio n of our children of color.

With these kinds of child abu se, institutionalized racism is crucial to an y legitima te study of quality educa tion for all childre n. Moreover, these deba­ cles in K-1 2 severely impact the opportuniti es for African-American students to attend and succeed in college, long before they arc of age to enroll. R ec e ntly, California published a snapshot of their state's manifestations of systemic racism on Blac k stud ents in their universities (Rivera 20 1 3):

· Blac ks have the lowest completion ra tes for freshm an and transfer students at all three higher ed ucation segments: community colleges, Californ ia State Un iversity and the University of Californ ia.

· Blac k stu dents arc more likely tha n any other group to att end college with out ever ea rn ing a degree.

· T he achie vement gap between Blac ks and \Vhites ea rn in g a bachelo r's degree o r higher has narrowed byonly a percentage point over the las t d eca d e. I n 2011, a b o ut 24% of Blac k adults had obta ined a bachelor's compared with 41% o f Whites. [O pportu nity gap, not achievement gap, probably more ap tly describes this d ilem ma.]

· Blac k student s appear to have been dis prop o rti o nately affected by policy dec i­ sio ns su c h as the state ban on affirmative action in education and budget cuts in recent years that resulted in signi fica nt declines in enro llmen t at communit y colleges and Cal State campuses.

· Reluc ta nce on the part of policy ma ke rs and edu ca tor s to tackl e rac ial dispari­ ties head-on is one factor in the persistent gaps, said Michele Siqu eiros, execu­ tive dir ecto r of the Campai gn for College O pportuni ty.

· "I've come to be more convinced of an inabilit y to rea lly add ress these iss ues more openly in a way that forces state policy makers to come up with ideas and colleges to find solutions," Siqueiros said. " Especially afte r the ban on affirma­ tive act ion, we don't feel com fortable talkin g about race and nothin g really happens."

So where do we go from here? How do we more effectively consider the dif­ ficult issues in order to integra te our sense of humanity into the optimistic and the hopeful?

Focus Groups

Thinking about that challenge propelled me to first elicit the wisdom of my Black students, to include their voices in the publication. Sixty-seven percent of the students in the university where I now teach arc Hispanic/ Latino stu­ dents. But many of my Blac k student s come from the Caribbean Islands­ Cuba , Trinidad , J amaica, Hai ti. Som e are African-Ameri can. However, because of scheduling conOicts, (two mon t.hs to finali ze resp ond ents' avail­ able dates) and because of a fear by some students that this confident ial con­ versation might somehow, by some participant, be revealed, only seven students joined the focus group s. T heir fear of disclosure reminded me of the treacherous terrain that many of our students travel. Finally, though, four of the seven students who were able to participate in focus groups were Black stud ents from the Caribbean and three identi fied themselves as African­ American. Some were still a ttending my present university; some had attended Prin1arily White Universities (PW I) in other parts of the state.

J ames Baldwin once insisted that "... while the tale of how we suffer and how we are delighted and how we triu mph is never new, it must be heard. There isn't any other talc to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this dark­ ness" (1995). Guided by his perspective, I invited the focus students to share their stories of naviga ting the university system. I wanted to hear their insights about the challenges of dealin g with covert and/or overt racist behavior and attitude s while attempting academic success in a PWI. T hough this university is considered a minority institution, the majority of its His­ panic/Latino population describe themselves as Whit e Hispani c and in the

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pa rticular city where most of them live, they hold power and privilege that doesn't exist for them elsewhere in the state. T herefore, many of the Hispan­ ics in classroom discussions originally report that they never think about themselvesas victims of racism.

T hough, like Beverly Tatum (199 7), Prcsident of Spelman College, I believe the darkness of racism and its consequences in schools is a!J aro und us. It 's the elephant in the classroom that no one wants to talk a bo ut out lo ud. And , like Bald win, I think the stories of those who suffer racism in our schools must be hea rd. T hey must be heard over and over until the nation commits to reckoning with its 400 unrelenting years of bloody, racist history. As a developing democracy, to move forward from the darkness of that history into the light of liberation may lie in our willingness to listen deeply and well and to lea rn from the collective stories of "s uffering, delight, and trium ph."

Therefore, my goals for initiating these focus groups were:

1. To explore the dynamic of and discove ries from intentional con versa­ tions among those who have experienced overt and/or covert rac ism in schools and universities.

2. To listen for any mention of schisms that often occur between African­ Americans and Caribbean Blac ks in my classroom and in many U.S. urban univer sities.

3. To learn from students' stories of specific challenges they have faced tha t I may not have recognized as a professor from the dominant culture.

Conversations involving the two focus group s began with the same guiding questio n: Can you describe any specific c hallenges that you faced because of overt or covert racism in your university ex perience ?

Emergent Themes

Four themes seemed to evolve throughout the dialogue among respondents in both groups: Isolation ; Stru ggles to name racism; Exhaustion from playing expected roles; and Sc hisms between Black cultures.

I. Isolation

O ften, the sense of isolation was addresse d, a n isolatio n that Blac k students felt as a consequence of being in a PWI, where no one, professors nor stu­ dents, assumed a responsibility to reach out to them. As one respondent explained about the classroom , ''And so it seemed like you were just kind of

b y yourself, just doing yo ur own thing. Everybody would kind of group up togethe1 peop le that weren' t Black or wha tever, and you would just kind of be sitting there on your own."

One of the doctoral candidates told the story of attending an educa tiona l conference, sitting in a restaurant talking to two White female participants. While she sat with them, a White male la ter joined their table, spoke and looked directly at the other women, yet never acknowledged her presence, as though she were invisible. T he other women shifted their attention to him and never again spoke to her. Similar stori es were cited by a ll seve n focus par­ ticipants, describing this isolation in classrooms, in cafeterias, at social events, at professional meetings, etc. However, their stories of determination to forge ahead and, indeed, achieve, might startle those who sec tl1ese students only as victims, or incapab le of academ ic achievement, or too sensitive about racism, or worse, somehow guilty for the nation's institu tionalized racism.

II. Struggles to Name It

Yet, in the opening of each dialogue, an unexpected response emerged in the group. The respondents seemed initially somewhat unconscious of racist atti­ tudes or behaviors at tl1c university. I t to o k the telling of many stories among them Lo unravel the obvious. As one student explained, "Because it hasn't been so overt, it is hard for me to think of an incident." When stories began to unfold in the conversation abo ut specific encounters they had experienced when relating to White professors and students or White Hispanic/ Latinos eiilicr at the university or at their employment, all respondents initially used expressions lik e " I do n't think this was racist; it may have just been ignorance."

O ne of the students' reflection s of an experience durin g her undergraduate program expla i ned her strugg le to und erstand the motiva tion of the advice of her Anglo professor / ad visor:

For the djetitia n program you put in bids for an internship . . . So you pick your three and you pray that you get into one of those three. O kay.And so to the professo r, I was like well this place givesa voucher so you get a cer­ tain amo unt of money every month. She kept saying, " lo, no, don't pick that one You're definitely not going to get into that one." O kay. \,Ve il,

what about this one? " No, no, no don't do that one." And you know you're thinking that the professor knows best but then kind of in the back of your head you' re like is she being racist? You're not really sure because this is a person that's above you your professor that you've been wit h for the lasl

year. So you're like well, r guess I'm just going to pick these three tha t she

thinks are the only ones I can do- not really knowing if, maybe, I could have done one of my first three choices Maybe it was racism. Maybe

it's not. I still really don't know.I kind of feel like maybe it was though.

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Another stude nt told a s tory about White stud ents from her high school whom she knew well, but who once on the same P\iVI ca mpus with he1 went their separate ways and never befriended her again. She commented that she didn't "know if this would be called racism, but I never had any White friend s approach me in colJegc." La ter s h e told a story of being one of three Black student s in a majority "White Hi spa nics" graduate course, where stu­ dents were encouraged to complete r esea rc h projects with others who were interested in the same research topic. She said that the three Black students remain ed alone in their gro up with no one else grav itating toward their research. Again, she said she assumed the Cuban Americans still were uncom fortable working alongs ide Black students, but insisted it might have been for other reasons. She seemed unwilling to suggest that the reasoncould be an unconscious undercu rrent of racist "o thering" by those students.

Her ambiguity about how to describe a reality that society denies exists, echoed previo us co mments from other Black stud ents in my classrooms after they finish reading, Other People'sChildren (Delpit 1995). In the 16 years I've bee n using that book in co urses, most of my Black stud ents react simi­ larly to it. Each, using di!ferenl words or phrases, confirms what one Ph.D. studen t succinctly remarked, with tears rolling down her checks, " I tho ught I was crazy until I read her book. She says what I have been feeling all of my life, but I tho ught I was crazy." T he waltz forced on Bla ck students to dance around covert racist attitudes and behaviors sometimes makes them feel schizophre nic. They want Lo achieve in college. Ind eed, their families ex pec t them to. Yet these barriers Lo exper i e ncing a "typical college life" often makes Black studen ts question their judgment of reality; sometimes making them feel "crazy."

One respondent expla ined, "You don't know what that is so you question yourself. you've co me from a school where everyone is Black and all of

the teachers around you arc Black, and the adm inistrat ion is Blac k. So you don't know what racism is. You've seen it on TV You've heard about it before but Lo act ually expe rien ce it in a White college "

A graduate student suggested, "T here's an undercurrent working behind the scenes all of the time that we have kind of figured out it's there. We don't see it exactly but we also know that you have to do certain things when you navi­ gate that curr ent. So even if you don't sec the curr ent happen ing you

know you've got to perform bette r. You have to be sure everything is on the up and up."

In one group session, respondents discussed how they often ig nore or men­ tally question assumptions that other cultures make about them, whenever Black students are in a room with predominantly White people. One Ph.D. student/ respondent suggested:

And it's more mic ro aggressive,I guess Not on ly am I here for some of

my degree, but I'm working here. And a lot of times I walk into a room, and I just feel this automatic assumption arises that "yo u don' t know as much as we do." And I look around as to who else is in the same position as I am , and I think I can count on one hand how many Blac k desce nded indi­ viduals who arc !Ts [Instructiona l Tec hnicians]. So J j ust wonder a lot of times with them, are you presuming that I don't know this because I' m Blac k? Or are you just presuming I don't know this because I don 't know it

... I look at my resume and I' m like, well, I think I pretty much accounted for what I know. And, I think, you guys have tested me enough by now. You still should n' t be looking at me and wondering those types of things as to what it is I' m capable of. So I experie nced more tha t than anything else on this campus.

An ot her respo ndent, who also works at the university, explained a furth er dimension of work experiences for Blac ks in a v\Thit e e n vironm e nt:

....Iprobably wouldn't call some of the things that I' ve experienced rac­ ism per se vVhat I think in terms of experience here, what I've noticed

for myself, my assistant is Hispanic, White Hispanic. And I know whenever we go out toget her if we have an appo intment to go somepla ce to a meet-

ing they assume she is Dr. . Or if we' re both in my office and we're

expecting someone to come in, they assume that she is Dr. ,

although I'm behind the desk, and she's sitting in front of me. So I find it very interesting.

H er co m ment sugges ts the co nvolutions that students me ntally juggle as they try to naviga te a system where in s titu tio nal racism pervades, yet is alwa ys masked as the victim's problem, not an instituti onal stru ctural trap.

Nevertheless, in both focus gro ups, as the co nversations evolved, tales of overt racism unfolded , but most were insta nces th at had happe ned at PWI' s th at they had previously atte nded in another part of the state. One respon­ dent mentioned, ''And so the newspa per there, th e cartoo nist did this little ca rtoo n with Condolc ezza Rice and Kanye West a nd basica lly pain ted th em mon keys." An o ther stude nt repo rted the una bashed and pervasive 0 ying of Confedera te 0ags on homes and cars in ano ther city in the state. Many, however, cited instances of racist pictur es or discussions on Facebook pag es of W hit e stud en ts with whom they now attend classes. Several men­ tioned their sur prise when their· w hite peers " befriend ed" them on Face­ book yet sooner or later posted unm istaka ble, ra cist co mments: " Sa lly is alwa ys nice to me and stuff. But th en I loo k o n her Facebook page and she's got some racist monkey picture of Obama and I'm like, 'Man, I never would have thought Sa lly was thinking like tha t."' An other respond ent comm ented, " I don't know. It see ms like social media to me is helping to refue l rac ism."

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cver thelcss, in an e-m ail, se nt afte r her participat ion in the focus gro up, a responden t unknowing ly corrobo rated my observa tion of the respondents' struggles to clearly identify racism. She remarked that "T hroughout the con­ versation we reflec ted on multiple incidents and wrestled with being able to say it was covert, overt or simply racism at all. As college students we experi­ enced both types of racism, weather ed all of the side effects and still co uld not nam e or simply ca ll it out. If we can't nam e it, how can we change it?"

Ill.Exhaustion from Playing the Role of Hostess

In one focus group , the meta phor of hostess, one also introduced in bell hooks' tcxt,1'' emerged as a thread to expla in the mainstream cultur e's imp licit expecta tio n of the chief role o f Bla ck stud ents, and Blac k peop le in genera l, whenever they are in the room with vVhite Ameri ca ns.

Respondent A: But that every time you go to a new gro up the re is that constant need to prove yourself. Yeah, it does a toll emo tiona lly as far as

being tiring beca use then once you realize ain' t nobody else hosting. obody else cares about what they say to people around here why should I

care about what I say?

Respondent B: Right. And it's tiring, right ... the fact that sometimes you're put in the positio n to make people comforta ble. Yea h, it is lik e b e ing the hostess. I have to make you com fortable so yo u can be co mfortab le with me. That 's tiring. So it's like you're at a party and you have to host everybody. That would be tiring. I mean you want to be a guest. You want to be a guest. So that sometimes you do and sometimes you don't , I'm not tired today. O ther time s I'm tired, but I'm not doing it today, so I'm not hosting, I'm a guest.

Respondent A: And tha t's when problem s usually start.

Respondent B: Right. Who does she thin k s he is? She thin ks she belongs . I mean no one is saying this, but the loo k is li ke, ' O h she loo ks comforta ble here. W hy is she so comfortable here?' Beca use you know wha t, I'm a guest today. I'm not hosting.

(Group Laughter)

Respondent C: I'm telling you we can't have a day off.

Respondent B: o. And then people wonder why people arc so com fort­ able, and they let their hair clown with people from their own cultures­ beca use [when you're with your own culture) you don't have to host. We a ll ar c guests. But we need to be able to interm ingle with otl1cr cultur es as guests, not a host and a guest, a host and a guest, a host and a guest.

Respondent A: How can we all get invited to the party? ... And leave som ebody else to host? Or why have a host at all? Let's just all show up.

T he act of hosting, (a flip of the use of the metaphor by hoo ks) of having to make everyone else feel comfortable in a room, seemed to speak to the main­ stream notion that Bla cks should not show competence nor aloofness, irrita­ tion, and certainl y, not anger. To the contrary, the unspoken and maybe unconscious notion is that Blac ks sho uld co ntinue to take care of people, as the y for centuri es in the south were demanded to do. T his unconsciou s yet structur al racist belief system continues to wear many Blac k stud ents down; to make them " tired."

IV. Schisms between Black Cultures

During the focus groups, subt le tensio ns surfaced between those who ide nti­ fied more with African-American culture versus those who identified primar­ ily with a C aribbea n Island culture. In each group, students acknowledged those tensions existed at the university and in the city. Exploring some of the assumptions that created the divisions shaped a great deal of the conversa­ tion. At Morehouse Co llege, I had noticed the same division between Afri­ can-America n stud ents and students and professors from various countries in

Africa. In her book, Teaching Communiry: A Pedagogy ef Hoj1e,hooks explain s:

" Domin ator culture has tried to kee p us a ll a fraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity" (2003, p. 33). That fear and practice bubbled up in each focus gro up aro und attitudes of Car ibbean and Africa n-Americans toward each other.

An African- American student explained: "That's kind of what we were talk­ ing about earlie r about Caribbcan's not associating themselves with African­ America ns. Like oh , no I'm not Africa n-American, I'm Haitian. I'm not African-An1erican, I'm J amaican. So it's like still separatin g ourselves while we should be cohesive."

One respondent exp lained her epiphany as a J amaican-born student who attended K-16 schools in Florida:

My family isJamaican and I was taught you arc not African-American and neither do you want to be African-Amer ican. You want to make sure that folks know that you're Caribbean; you're Jamaican; you're other. And, of course,I think going to _ U definitely snapped it out of me because when people looked at me and they le ft two seats empty they weren't saying, 'O h there's theJama ican girl.' No, they're thinking, 'O h she's Black. She's got a big afro; we don't want to sit next to her' that's a conversation on a

whole that we need to have more as a people and what doesit mean to actu­ ally be Black in America period.Like I said, after seeing myself for 12 years

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of schooling here as a Jamaican, and socializing only with J amaica ns, I experienced a rude awakening when I attended _ U. That's when I began to identify myself differently,as a Black woman ... devoted to the struggle.

In th e o ther focus g ro up, a Ca ribb ea n stud ent explained, "You hea r all of the bad thin gs about Africa n-Am ericans, they're lazy. T hey don' t want to work. T hey use public assistance, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to be honest with you, we come with those thoughts. v\lc come with those thoughts ... What we did n't understand is the struct ure of ra cism, beca use we didn' t have a stru cture of racism where we came from that imp eded our devel­ opment. So we d idn ' t get it. And I didn't get it eith er . . . I don' t think my par ents eve n got it yet.

Late1; the same respondent co mme nted, " Yes, sometimes betwee n Afri­ can-Am erica n and immigra nt Blacks there's some kind of division ....

Like we're potentia lly better or we think we're better than other Blac ks, especia lly Africa n-Americans, right. But I think it's not a bou t being bet­ ter. I think it's just the fact that we're coming from an environment tha t's all a bout you e thn ically. Yo u've seen eve ryone who is powerful, doc tors, la wyers, nur ses, eve rybod y is Black, and I rea lly don' t see tha t in this coun try. So [un like Africa n-Americans] I'm not yearning to see it beca use I' ve see n it before."

Several respondents suggested that student clubs that designated themselves as a specific ethnic cult ure such asJ amaica n or African-American or Baha­ mian , etc. further complicated this issue of sepa ration among Black stude nts.

Yet, during these portions of the conversations, everyone seemed barne d by the oppressive behavior of White H ispanics/ Latinos when int erac ting with Blac k stud ents. All respond ents insisted that whether they were from the islands or from America, if they were Black, the H ispani c culture did not ac cept nor befriend them. v\Th c never sharing scenarios about the deliberate choice of "White" Hispanic/ Latino peers or professors to avoid them, the Blac k students all seem ed to wonder what one respondent voice d, " H ow could yo u be participa ting in the very thing that other people arc imp osing on you?" Many insisted that they had hea rd Hispanic/ Latin o peers mention the shock of oppressive attitud es and behaviors they experienced when trav­ elling outside the city into other parts of the state. T he respondents sug­ gested that the city seemed to provide a protective cocoon for its Hispanic/ Latino popula tion, and unless W hite Hispanics travelle d be yond the city's boundari es, they were una ble to see themselves as ca ught in the vice of hegemony. O ne of the focus participants insisted, " If they co uld just und er­ stand that if we all stood together, stood united, we could se rio usly change this system that oppressesall of us."

The Optimistic Stories

A week after the dialogue , a co uple of respondents, when seeing me in the eleva tor, mentioned that they had continued to talk a bout the conversatio ns from the foc us group. T hey asked if we might reco nvene, maybe meet with other students, and continue the conversation. T hey also mentioned that they had experienced a few epiphani es as a result of the dialogue about rac­ ism. Vl•c agreed to meet during the fall semester and talk aga in about how we might fit future dialog ues into their busy university schedules. I also asked if they might e-ma il a se ntence or two describ ing those epipha nies. The follow ­ ing are their e-mailed responses:

Epiphanies

E-mail Respondent 1: A dialogue abo ut racism can be diffic u lt to have, consider­ ing in America we live in it constantly. It is often such a complex issue that it cann ot be separated from everyday life. It can be blatan t and obvious, but most of the time it is subtle and unclear. From the discussions I began to understand more about how I navigate the world- I recognize covert racist actions may be happening around me, but I do not give it much thought. If I do, it is often in the form of co unter narrative stories that I run down as a list of why this actio n may have occurred. O ften after reviewing the counter narra tives list, it does come back down to " probably because I am Black." T he dialogue discussion also provided me, a Black American, witl1some of the perspectives of Carib­ bean Blacks living in the U.S. T he no tion of cultural capital that Caribbean people gain from growing up in a society that is predom inantly Black helped me und erstand what is often perceived by Blac k Americans as a " better than you" persona; it is simply a greater amount of cultural ca p ital they are ingra ined with from living in a society where they arc not told they are " less than."

E-mali Respondent 2: Basica lly, the dialogue rem inded me how " targeted" my social iden tities (race, gender, etc.) are here ... and how psychologica lly exhausting it is to be a Blac k-female-professional or simply a hum an being in the U.S. T his exha ustion, I think results in racial/ ethnic minorities becoming hypersensitive to their environment, as a defense mechanism, to combat this racial-p sychologica l warfare th at exists in the U.S.

E-mail Respondent 3 : . . . beca use of the dialogu e I did remind myself that I have a voice; that I do not have to be bound by the contingencies or the con­ structs that others create for me. Nor do I need to subject myself to the one I created for myself So, for that ... I sincerely thank you!

T hese comm ents as well as the dialogue in both focus gro ups seemed to echo the concerns of many of my African-American and Blac k students du ring

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th e 12 years of leaching at the pre sent univers ity. R e-r ea d ing the tran scripts from this d ialog ue has helped me rethink my pedagogy and assum ptions about tensions between stud ents here. Reading the respondent's e-mails reminded me tha t, as Baldwin suggests, having space and time to tell the " tales" of struggle and trium phs aro und the issues of racism might be a nec­ essary journ ey for many of our Blac k stude nts at the university. And because such a space and time happens so ra rely in classrooms, I've committ ed to co­ create with intere sted students a professio nal lea rning co mmunity, where Black students can come together once or twice a month and address these issues by telling their stories.

Yet, having worked with Black students at a num ber of universities, the conversations during the focus groups ofTered no surprises about the racist culture in PvVls. Ex ce pt when teac hing at Morehouse, I have witnessed institutiona lize d raci sm on eve ry pla nt a tio n where I have taught . T he sur­ prise for me at PWi s has always been, not the abuse of stude nts of color, but mains tream professors' unco nsciou sness of that abuse and of the hege monic stru ctur es that und ergird their own universit y life. My students have consistently validated this observation when they, during and at the end of my courses, challenge the nature of their college educa tion with commen ts such as, "\1Vhy a m I a grad ua ting senio r, and I have never engaged in conversa tio ns abo ut rac ism and classism in any other courses?" or "I' m at the end of my Master's Progra m, and no o ther class has ever addr essed issues of justice."

T hu s, the dialogue with the focus groups seemed an affrrm ation of the prac­ tices and curriculum used in my classrooms. Both investigate the impact of institutionalized racism, classism, sexism, homophobi a, etc. on education. Like Paulo Freire (200 I), I believe that educa tion is never politically neutral; it eith er supports the statu s quo or enco urages tran sformation of our worlds. Includ ed in that belie f is the notion that anything we want to change must be addressed intentio na lly and directly within the classroom. If we don' t name it, it sits there in defiance. Mor eover, confronting justice issues ca n lead toward elim ina ting the structures that diminish our mar ginalized students and that also trap mainstream students into destructive notions of White Supremacy, mocking the nation 's drea ms of democracy.

Due largely to my experiences at Morehouse Co llege and to my African­ America n mentor s, who have over 30 years modeled for me a different way of being and of teaching in a co mp romised world, I have over the las t 30 years developed course co ntent and practices that many stud ents have evalu­ ated as successful. T hey claim the curri culum and the pedagogy have raised their consciousness about hegemony and have paved a road for them to become better teachers in their public school classrooms. Like bell hooks, I believe that "Moving through fear, findin g out what connects us, revelling

in our di ffe re nces; this is lhe process thal brings us closet that gives us a world of share d values, of meaningful co mmunily" (2003, p. 197 ).

One of lhe college's C uban -American graduate students, who was grad ua t­ ing from her Master's program at the university thal semester, when respond­ ing to a n assigned reading in one of my courses, posted the following on the on-line discussion site:

... the process of unlearn ing racism is a mind blowing experience. From the readings I've begun to realize the hidden truths about the way I treat some of my students. I had never considered myself rac ist in the past and yet like the teach ers from this article, I woul d have never known the harm I was ca using without taking a course like this and realizing I had to take a deepe r look at my actions and thoughts. I know I still have a lot to learn but I have begun to sec a change in my attit ude towa rds my students and par­ ents. I think that all teachers' especially new teachers coming into the class­ room should be required to take a course like this... teachers arc never truly prepared of how to deal with our underlying attitudes abo ut students and parents Ihave lived it as a teach er in an urban school. In a city like

where almost all the schools have such diverse popula tions of stu­ dents, why is it that undergraduate students arc not required to take an Urban educatio n course? T he article also states, "T he teacher loses sight of her 0 \, 1 power to teach all childr e n , and s he, unconsciously, se nds messages to her student s that they are unteachab le" as an exper ienced teache1; I

have been there as well and these types of courses are the ones that readjust our think ing and remind us tha t we arc not ') ust" teac hers ...

Her comment is typical of other student responses about awakenings m these courses versus their disappointments in the curriculum of other col­ lege co urses. H owever, I take little credit for these transformations beca use my conte nt and practices come not from my own wisdom but the wisdom of my African-Amer ica n mentors. T hey have deeply influ enced my research and teach ing.

Because of Asa G. Hilliard, Ill 's work (H illiard, 1995, 1998, 2014, pp. 25- 38) and mentoring, I began to consider that no matter what I taught, I must add ress the hegemonic structures, policies, and practices of schooling; that it was not enoug h for me to discuss with my pre-service and in-service students the " how" of teaching, but I must also consider the "what" of teac hing. Co n­ sequently, I integ rate into all of my courses an histo rical per spec tive of how race was and is st ill being lived in Ame rica in orde r lo invite my sludents into the su·uggleto liberale themselvesand their sludents from the deslruction of hegemonic systems.

From Lisa Delpit (1995, 2012; 2002), I lea rn ed the language to add ress issues of power and privilege that manifest themselves in schools and that cripple the achievement of our Black, Brown, and poor students in K- 16 p ublic and

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pr iva te schools. F rom observing her lea de rship style, I lea rn ed th e value of deep listenin g to the "other"; of believing in the brillia nce of every mother's child; of exposing W hite students to the reality th a t White Supremacy dimin­ ishes us all; of how to turn my anger toward racism into more creative, exploratory conversations; of understanding the value of humor and laugh­ ter while resisting hegemony; of taking no one too seriously, especially myself.

From Bob Moses (Moses, 200 I; W ynne, 2012), I discovered the value of investiga ting the nation's histo rica l recor d s a nd th e orga n izing tools of the Southe rn Freedom Movement (Hard ing, 1990; Wynne 2002, pp. 215- 2 16 ) to teach the power and int ellec tual ca pac ity of the peo ple pushed to the bot­ tom of society's academic and economic ladder. Through him, I learned the wisdom of Ella Baker and Fanni e Lou Hamer, who believed that the people at the bottom often offered th e most ingenious ideas (Ransby 2003). And through Moses, I realized tha t my respo nsib ility incl uded teaching teac hers how to allow space and time for students at the bottom-qua rtile to wrestle with abs tractions and to use their la nguage, not their op pressor's, to demys­ tify mat hematical and interdisciplinary concepts, process, and design. From Moses, I also lea rn ed the "demand" side of education- that the childre n at the bottom, through disciplined study, must earn their right to become insur­ gents, to demand what the country says they don't want, a quality ed ucation; that advocacy is useful, but ultim ately, significa nt change will only come when those at the bottom demand their co nstitut ional rights as "constitu­ tional people" (Moses 2014).

From T heresa Perr y, I lea rn ed the imperative of teaching the " coun ter-nar ­ ra tive" to the nation's story of the history and ed ucation of African-Ameri­ cans (Perry, 2004). Beca use of her retelling the history of Africa n-Americans' passion for education, I began to flip the image of African -Americans from victims to libe rat ors, engage d in a 400 year old struggle to educate them­ selves and to free the natio n from oppressivepolic ies and prac tices . T eac hing that historical context in classroo ms seems to create possibilities for a libera ­ tio n jo urn ey for the teachers I teach and for the stude nts they teac h.

Pedagogy

For deca des, I have designed prac tices that ca n mirror anti-hegemonic con­ tent. Instead of a "sage-on-stage" methodology, my co urses ofTc r studcnt­ centered, participatory engagement with each othe1 with me, and with the content. T hese practices are validated in most research about sound peda­ gogy for the teaching and learning of new ideas and skills (Weimer, 2002; Moffe tt, 1988; Becvar, 1997; Pa lm er, 2007). Nevertheless, these strategies primarily interest me as an intentional c hallenge to that which buoys

a uthoritarian power in the classroom. Yet, at the same time, I insist that no one is force-fed any belief system or ideology, most especially my own. Refut­ ing hegemony demands a delicat e and clisc ip linecl d a nce of avoiding prosely­ tizing and of honoring the organic nature of individual intellectual discover y. It demands a tolerance for ambiguity, for nuance, for living the question instead of the answer.

Circles as the Primary Instructional Structures

Typically at the university, most classrooms are set up with rows of desks fac­ ing th e fro nt of the room. On the first clay of every class, before I introduce myself, I ask if anyone has ever heard the word "hegemony." Most often the collec tive a nswer is " o." Afte r I expla in what the word means, we explore the alig nment of their desks as a hegemonic structure. T hen, we, move the desks into a circle, while discussing the issues of power that the two distin ct physical stru c tures symbolize.

Afterwards, we introduce ourselves as peers in the teaching/ lea rn ing process. T hough, I admit dur ing this portion that the power of the le tter grade demanded by the university, st udents, and parents, hands the professor an unequal tool of power (Later in the course, we explore how to banish or trans­ form this evaluative, subjective "so rting " tool.) We continue by discussing mutual course expectations; what we each hope to lea rn; what must happen in the class for them and me to feel that the class tin1e has bee n well spent.

Collaborative learning and teaching

To co unt e ra ct institutiona lized isolation, self-aggra nd izement, unhea lthy competition, I introd uce th e value of collabora tio n in int ellectual explo­ ratio ns. T ime is spent inviting studen ts to compl ete a G ro up Pro cess form that ad dresses their pas t experience with groups; their fru stra tio ns; the expectations for each memb ers' pa rtic ip a ti o n; the strengths each brin gs to the gro up; a nd what must happen for the group experien ce to be valu­ able for them? After completing the form , students create gro ups of 5, charged to include peopl e from unfamiliar cultures. Group s then arc asked to go a nywhere inside or outside the classro om for 20 minu tes and disc uss th eir qu estion na ires and create a group na me. Afterwards, group s re po rt the ir expe rie nces to the class, discussing roles that can lead to high perfor ming team s.

Beca use in most cultures, "breaking brea d" togeth er is a sacred ritual that helps create communit y, an out-of-cla ss assignment is to dine together with their small group, while discussing the theme of their collaborati ve resea rch

( 198 WHO SPEAKS FOR JUSTICE )

LIVING WITH THE TENSIONS OF HOPE AND DESPAIR 199

p rojects, data collect ion and analysis, and respons ibilities of each resea rcher. Also because I believe this ritual is significa nt for crea ting com­ munity, I bring food to share each session. Our last class is spent sharing dinner at my home.

Written Responses to Selected Readings

T he content of the course is partially ground ed in the readings that require written responses posted on an on-line site, where participants can offer feed­ back. T heir guid elines for the responses arc to consider: Wh ich idea s see m comp elling and why; which ideas made them uncomfortable and why; what questions arose as a result of the reading? This practice of writin g and response seems to foster the growth of their critical thinking skills; deepens their knowledge of issues; and support s the philo sophy that their classmates' responses to their ideas arc as significant as the professor's. They arc also asked to reco mmend ar ticles that they feel are pertinent for us to read con­ cern ing the issues being st udied.

Music

From teaching in high school, at Mor ehouse Co llege, and stud ying the Southern Freedom Movement, I learned that music is an integral part of the African culture (v\Tynne 2002). A number of studies also indicate that the use of mu sic effectively facilitates the discussion of dillicult concepts and skills (Moffett, 1991; Gardn er, 2008). To create a welcoming space for all cultures as well as to use effec tive tools to study abstractions, I share music, whose themes I believe relate to concepts we arc explor ing. Later, stude nts bring their music to explain conce pts being investigated. Students repeatedly insist that music helped them better explore and remember theories like " C ritical Race T heory" or "Culturally Respon sive Pedagogy."

Videos

To keep ideas current, and because we live in a digital age, I include videos that are relevant to many issues being studied, from educational sites, Youtube. org, and TED.com. Videos like Howard Zinn 's, the Peopl.e Speak (Zinn, 20 I 0) have become a staple in my curriculum. \!Vithin such videos, stude nts can lea rn the variety of fi·ec d o m struggles in this countr y and can begin forming their own sense of social age ncy. T he videos are always followed by open-ended questions that students consider with their small g roups. They continuously evaluate the videos, suggesting the "good, bad, and ugly" of each.

What Worked? What Did Not Work?

T he last five minutes of each session is devoted to the students anonymously writing what activities or discussions worked for them; and what did not work. T his e valu ation helps us und erstand that Leac hing/ lea rning is a con­ tinuou s cycle of success and failure. And that my growth as a professiona l is tied Lo th e ir honest reflection on how the class either facilita ted or hindered their learning. T his mechanism, I believe, reminds me and my students to see ourselves mo re clearly as peers in the struggle for truth.

Mantra at the End

From studying Africa n-centered cu rriculum and practices, I became a believer in the power of affir mations. Beca use that and studying the South­ ern Freedom Movement convinced me of the value of communi ty building in educa tiona l spaces, I end all sessions, with us stand ing in a circle, repeating the mantr a, " None of us is as strong as all of us." On the first day, I explain the history of choosing to end my classes with the ma ntra ; what standing in solidar ity might mea n for us as ed ucators and for disman tling hegemony. T hereafter, I invite students Lo volunteer to lea d the man tra at the encl of ses­ sions. I've also experimented by asking stud ents Lo crea te man tras. One stu­ dent's creation that I particularly liked was " No ne of us is free until all of us are free." But student s, most often, later choose to end the class with the same mantra we used on the first day. Many students have reported that they late r have used this mantra in their K- 1 2 classrooms.

In Conclusion

This m(9' be the last time a spiritua l sung during the So uthern Freedom Move­ ment (1961; Freedom Song), still compels me to understand the sacre d nature of each moment of instruction. T he power of that song and that moment in time it was sung in the building of this nation remind me of how fragile the experience of building comm unity is. It reminds me that each semester prob­ ably is the last tim e that my stude nts and I are together, explo ring the depth of oppression and the breadth of possibilities for transformation. So each classroom mom ent must be grounded in the integrity of discovery,a willing­ ness to explore the unknown. Philosoph er Martha Nussbaum indicates that this kind of exploration "says something very important about the hum an condition of the ethical life: that it is based on a trust in the uncertain and on a willingness to be exposed; it's based on being more like a plant than like a jewel, something rather fragile, but whose very par ticular bea uty is

( 200 WHO SPEAKS FOR JUSTICE )

LIVNI G WITH THE TENSIONS OF HOPE AND DESAPIR 201

inseparable from its fragility (Nussbaum, 1989, p. 448). Because of this ethical conundrum of beauty and fragility, maybe no classroom moment should be corrupted by the tyranny of grades, of sorting students, of rigid adherence to syllabi or bell curves or boring lect ures. And possibly, the space and time for story, for expressing feelings of isolation and cultural separation, time for tales of victimization an d libera tion, along with candid confessions of denial, ulti­ mately,can help us efTcc tively juggle the ominous and the optimistic.

Who knows- if we have the courage to face our collec tive stor ies, they, like the wild geese in Ma ry O liver's poem, may lea d us toward "o ur place in the family of things" (Ol iver, 1996).

References

Baldwin,]. (1 995 ). Sonny's Blues. cw York: Penguin Books Ltd. p. 87. Becvar, R. and Canfield, B. (199 7). Group W ork: Cybernetics, Consrtuctivist, &

Social Constructionist Perspectives. New York: Lov Publishing Co.

Civil Rights Data Collection. (2014). " D ata Snap shot: Sc hool Discipline." US. Department ef Education Office for Civil Rights. March. Accessed J une 16, 2014 from http:/ / www2.eel.gov/a bout/ offices/ list/ ocr / docs/ crdc-disciplin e­

snapsho t.pdf

Delpit, L. (1995 ). Other peo/Jle's childre:nCultural coriflict in the classroom. N e w York: T he ew Press.

Delpit, L. (2012). Multiplicationis for W hite People: RaisingExpectationfosr Other Peopl.e's Children. 1e w York: T he Iew Press.

Delp it, L. &Joann e Dowdy (Eds.). (2002). The skin that we speak: T houghts on language and culture in the classroom. Delpit. New York: T he 1cw Press.

Freedom Song. (2000 ). Alph aVille with Carrie Productions, Danny G lover.

TNT DVD.

Freire, P. a nd l\liacedo. D. (200 I). Literacy: Reading the fV! ord and the World.

London: Routledge.

Focus Group T ra nscripts. (2014 ). Student e-mails, 2014 ; St udent on-line responses to readings, 2013- 14.

Gardn e r, H . (2008 ). Multiple Intelligences: New Hori.zons in Theory and Practice.

Boston: Basic Books.

Harding, V (1990 ). Hope and History: Wiry Mi Must Shaer the History ef the Movement.Maryknoll, New York: O rbis Books.

( The dark & the dazzling: Children leading us back from the edge 1 by Joan T. Wynne )

( 0 )nc of my favorite activists, Bryan Stevenson, Director of Equal j us­ ticc Initi ative, in a TED talk, said to an audience interested in inno­ vatio n, that "It's the mind-hea rt connection that compels us to not

just be attentive to all the brig ht and dazz ling things but also to the dark and difficult things" (2012).

For ed ucators, part of the "dar k and d iffic ult" is th e huge growth of the school to prison pipeline and its impact on our black, brown and poor children- an d on our society's dream of becoming a real democracy. Anoth er difficult part is exploring strategics and taking action that will change public policies which continuo usly create the inferior schools where these childr e n arc forced to attend. Schools where guards stand at the doors and roam the halls; where bathrooms hold no toile t paper; where rain water leaks down stairwells; where exhausted teachers have lost faith in our chil­ dren's hunger to learn. As teachers we must collectively grapple with the real­ ity that we live in a racist country, where too many of us rea p benefits from our unearn ed power and privilege that negatively impact childr en of color. Because a pprox imately 76 percent of public school teachers are white and mostly female (Characte ristics 2013), our responsibility is to use that power and privilege to confront and eliminate injustices and ineq uities in sch oo ls.

Writin g to teachers years ago, my la te friend and mentor, Asa G. Hillia rd, III , ed ucator, psychologist, and historian, insisted that: " Revolution, not reform, is required to release the power ef teaching. Virtual!}, all teachers possess tremendous

1 K eynote Address, T he 14 th Annual South Florida Education Research Conference, June 6, 2015. A version of this speech was earlier published as v\lynne, J. (2014 ). Foreword. [n Tra11S.fon11i11g the School Iii Prison Pipeline:Lessons from the classroom. Debra Payne

& Tonette Rocco.Rotterdam, T he etherla nds:Sense Publishers.

205

power which can be released, given the pro/Jer ex/Josure.M lt! can'tget lo that point by tinke­r ing with a broken system. Mlt! must change our intellectual structures, definitions and assumptions; then we can release teacher /Jowei' (H illia rd 1997 ).

Hilliard 's clarion call seems vital if we ever hope to crea te schools worthy of our childre n and o ur teacher s. As did Hilliar d, we must question current belief systems that:

· establish racism in schools;

· deliver authorita ria n pedagogy;

· foster an obsession with student behav ior in lieu of the pursuit of academic excellence; and

· institutiona lize t he blam ing of stude nts and parents for the consequences of demoralizing instru ction.

We must openly challenge the arcane and dan gerous "s tru ctures and assumptions" that prevail in sc hools, pushing our Blac k and Brown children int o the siniste r, corpo ra te "school to prison pipe-line" and, by doing so, bankrupt our nation of the benefit of these young, untap ped brilliant minds.

T his is a huge issue in Florida , sin ce its schoo l to prison pipeline as of 2013 was the largest in the nation (Hing 2013). Another disturbing reality in the state is th at Black students arc just 21 percent of Florida youth, but make up

46 percent of all school related referrals to law enforceme nt (Hing). So, add ressing racism is c rucia l to any legit im ate study of the pipeline or the demand for quality education for every mother's child.

M a ny of the urban schools, where I observe an d where my grad uate stu­ dents teach, carry the same stench of offensive and obsole te cu rriculum and pedagogy.Too many of these schools, in fact, operate like prisons, where stu­ dents of co lo r- es pecially those forced to live in poverty by an economic sys­ tem that demands there be " lose rs"- a re daily malig ned and rigidly controlled as th ough they alrea dy wore orange jum psuits. Because of th is badg ering of certain youth, I ofLe n thin k that the school to prison pipeline is in reality a prison to prison pipeline.

Affirming my experiences in public schools, Henry Giroux in his latest book, Youth in Revolt, asserts that we are criminalizing the behavior of young people in schools" (Giroux 2013, p. I 0). Giroux declare s th at "yo ung children ar c being a rrested and subje cted to co urt appeara nces for behaviors that ca n only be called trivial" (p. 10). In Florida, even a 5 year old child was hand­ cuffed and a rreste d for a temper tan trum (CBS 2009). Given the state's racist history and policies (King 2012), no surprise that this 5 year old was black.

But we should explore as well another facet of this assault on childr en in schoo ls. T he privatized prison system is one of the fastest growing industries

( 206 ) ( WHO SPEAKS FOR JUSTICE )

THE DARK & THE DAZZLING: CHILDREN LEADING US BACK FROM THE EDGE 207

in the nation (Rap ple ye 201 2). T he ind ustry needs a continuous flow of pris­ oners into these jails to captur e the public dollar s; thus , here, enters the demand for criminalizing you th for the least infraction while also increasing the detention of the immigrant poor in these prisons. The GEO Group and the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) arc the two largest priva­ tized prison companies, with profits per year of 3 billion dollar s (Rappleye 2012 ). Not only do these compani es demean society by receiving such ab un­ dant profits for incarcerating people, they also d rive local and na tional poli cy about immigration and criminal justice. Riding t.he waves of this corpora te tsunami catching our poor children in its unde rtow ar e banks like Wells Fargo who hold significant equity shares in CCA (R appleye 2012). T hese shares furth er the national economic interest in pushing students out of school and into prison. It's another case of "follow the money" and you find out who is driving the policy.

Con sciously or not, the structure and practice of "inner-city" schools aids the corporations in dictating these policies. In these schools situated deep in the belly of most cities, obedience, not acade mic exce llence, is the pr ime attribute desired for their students at the bottom. Obedience prepares them not just for prisons, but also for the military and for low paying jobs. In the schools where most poor children attend, scripted curricula and stupidly designed testing, all delivering multi-billion dolla r pro fits to corpo rations, sti­ fle the creative curiosity of our young children kicked to the curb by a society who doesn't believe in them, nor care about them.

H undreds of years ago, G reat Britain created a colonia l educational sys­ tem to sustain its e mpire. And it worke d extr emely well to keep everyone in th e proper place in a well-structured , hegemonic hierarchy. Teachers at the front doling out in forma tion , stude nts sitting in rows powe rless and obed ie nt, sucking up filtered inform ation that the elite chose for them. That system is still alive and well in ma ny co untrie s across the globe. A nd, yes, the U.S.A. co ntinues to use it. Yet it mo st often colonizes only black, brown, and poor white stud ents. And what better colon y than a school-to-prison p ipeline. All of these " da rk and diffic ult thing s" that Bryan Stevenson challenges us to examine, I hop e we can explore durin g this conferen ce.

But as promised, I will also talk today about the things that dazzle: like student-centered, creative, non-p unitive teaching. I want to talk about mod­ els of ed uca tion that arc right now in schools interrupting the cycle of tyr­ ann y, mediocrity, a nd warehousing of young, im aginative stud ents who daily suffer the slings and arrows of society's outra geo us failure to provide quality ed uca tion for all of its childr e n. I have been lucky to experience first-ha nd two of those models. Since 1997, I have visited and/ or worked with the

c hildr en that Bob Moses leads. I have met with them in M ississippi, in BosLo n, in New York Ci Ly, in Los Angeles and in Miami. Many are Lhe s Luden Ls whom this nation has ignored or punished.

Yet Mo ses' youngsters personify hope for ed uca tion. They are part of the Algebra Project (AP), a program dreamed up, founded , and delivered by Moses (Ci vil Rights icon and MacArthur Genius Fellow) and his regional teams. His project takes the a lienated and underp erform ing kids- a nd serves up accelerated learn ing in mathcmaLics, not remedial pabulum. Its primary inLe r es L is in the sLUd e nts' inte llecL, not their "good behavior." Contrary Lo Lr aditio nal maLh co ntenL, AP's curriculum changes as the need of the sLu­ dents change. AP teachers must learn how to quickly modify their plans for teaching tomorrow according to what was learned today. T his kind of cre­ ative cur riculum flies in the face of test-driven, standardized, static, regurgi­ ta ted models in use most often today in failing schools. Yet because of AP's demand for creat ivity, not only student s, buL also their teac hers begin Lo think more critica lly and imagina tively about their work.

For thirty years, in the Algebra Project classrooms, the progeny of slaves and shar ecropper s, children of new immigrant s, and youth from Appalachia enjoy the instruction typically reserved for what socieLy de e m s " the gifted." Steeped in an experiential, student centered pedagogy, AP listens deeply to the voices of the youngsters they educate. And it raises those voices into the public sphere . In cities and towns around the country AP students talk about mathema Lics at national and state conferences, local sc hool board s, college classrooms, and community evenLs .

Explaining Lhe need for AP's work, Moses insists that "The absence of matJ1 litera cy in urban and rural communit ies is as urgent an issue today as the lack of registered voters was 40 years ago ... solving the problem requires the same kind of communi ty organizing that changed the South then. For, if we can succeed in bringing all childr e n to a leve l of math lit e ra cy so they can participat e in today's econom y, that would be a revolution (Cass 2002)." AP isn't waiting for a "s uperman " or for socie ty to clean up its act; rather, AP continu ally finds what Moses calls tJ1e "c ra wl space" wilhin and outside schools to reach the students that society has chosen to leave behind or send to jail. AP is grounded in a history of grass roots organizing that understands clearly that those at the bottom must demand the education they deserve. Consequently, AP develops stud ents as a cohort, foster ing a communi ty with tJ1c ir teachers and Lhcir par e nts.

Another beacon for hope is AP's offspring, the Young People's Project (YPP), desig ned, run by and for young people. Dir ected by Maisha Moses, it devel­ ops students into math literacy workers who go into their communities dur­ ing after-school hours to teach younger children that math is interesting, fun,

( 208 WHO SPEAKS FOR JUSTICE )

THE DARK & THE DAZZLING: CHILDREN LEADING US BACK FROM THE EDGE 209

and d oab le. YPP uses the youth cult ure, its rhythm s and rhymes, drums, hip­ hop, videograp hy, youth participat ory action research, math games, all as vehicles to teach- and to extricate youngsters from the colonial vise that holds them tightly to the bad education that gets them ready for prison.

In its sixtee n year journey, YPP continually evolves as its prestige and loca l po wer grows. Because of its openness to the organic natur e of change - and as a result of gra nts awarded by the National Science Foun dat ion , it has begun to develop young leaders to challenge and influence public policy. These youth are engaging our alienated students.

YPP's capacity for authentic encounters that can shift quic kly into the urgency of any cur rent event is illustra ted best with their "Finding our Folks" campa ign. Within weeks after the debacle of Katrina, these disenfranchised youth began organizing student s an d young adu lts from across the south to "Find our Folks." Along with the New O rlea ns Hot 8 Brass Band, YPP went to Atla nta, Bato n Rouge, J ackson, l\1obile, 1cw Orleans, and Houston to find the hurricane's dispossessed. T hey netwo rked with com munity age ncies, churches, schools, co lleges, friends in each city who might suppor t the tour and its work with dispersed populations (\1\/ynne 2012). T heir vision for this tour spoke to our demands for educational tran sformation. T heysaid:

seek to raise the voices ef Katrina's survivors and connect them with the voices ef America's survi.vors, the brothers and sisters in all corners ef the country who remain on the margins ef citizenshiJ/. J;Vt: seek lo use the tools ef education, documentation, healing, and organizing to explore and discuss the conditions that led to the devastating im/Jact ef Katrin;ato join the voices ef resistance, the veterans ef past and continuing movements, with the voices ef Hip-Hop, Blues and Ja zz; to celebrate African and indigenous cultures

as they have been expressed in New Orleans and throughout the world; to find our folk, to reconnect the individuals,Jamilies and communities that are scallered across the country, liv­ ing in exile. In.findingour folk, we hope to.find ourselves (YPP 2007).

What better antidote to oppressive mode ls of education might we fmd than the YPP's visionary alternative to the school to prison pipeline young peo­ ple leading youth, using their imaginat ion and skills, their art and music, inVlt in g tl1c wisdom of their ciders, reaching back to a ll of the nation's cul­ tural roots, in order to lea d America into a more just, equitable, and crea tive twenty-first century ed uca tion. This is a paradigm shift that I could easily wrap my brain around.

Might this shift also be needed to shake the foundations of Co lleges of Edu­ cation (CO E)? Shouldn't every Teacher Ed program in Florida , indeed, in the nation delibera tely and emphatically address these diflicu lt issues of hege­ mony within their courses?I implore all COE's to investigate AP's and YPP's work; to invite the young into their "classroom management" courses to

teach teachers how to libe rate students from the archaic systems that enslave both teachers and children. And isn't the very notion of "management" an an tiquated concept? Dan Pink insists it is, when talking to business owners who desire innovation. Drawing upon his behavioral science research on what motivates people to think new, Pink suggests that "management" is a tool for complia nce and, thus, is contrary to autonomous, creative thinking and inno vation (Pink 2009). If Pink is co rre ct and if we want to engage youngsters in critical thinking, sho uld n't we stop managing them and start delivering instruction that inspires them to create the new; tJ1at e ngages their intellects; that amplifies their voices?

Or better still, maybe we simply get out of their way and allow them to learn how to act like citizens of a democracy, willing to grapple with the hard ques­ tions as well as attend to "all of the bright and dazzling things." In such a scenar io, might teachers, then, become inspirationa l g uid es, "living the ques­ tion ," not giving the answers- and certa inly not relegated as police, meting out punishment in dreary urban "inn er-city" schools?

But if we are honest, maybe tJ1e real q uestions we must ask ourselves are:

· Do we really want to inspire the progeny ofslaves and sha recropper s, the chi ld re n o f rece nt Black a nd Brown imm igra nts, the children in Appalac hia?

· Or is our real desire to keep th em in a system that will guara ntee someone else will pick up our garbage , flip our burge rs, dig in the bowels of our m ines, pluck the fea thers off our chickens, pick our to mat oes sp rayed with poiso ns, and oth­ erwise work for slave wages? ls that the hidd en agenda of what we require for "other people's" c hild re n?

· Or might we just get out of the way so that our children ca n lead us bac k from the edge of the da rk?

References

Cass, J. (2002 ) The M oses factor. Mother Jones, M ay/J une 2002 issue 3. http:/ / motherjones.com/ politics/ 200 2/05/moses-factor

Cha racteristics of Pub lic and Pri va te Elementar y and Secondary School Teac hers in the United States. (201 3 ). In stitute of Educa tion Scie nces : Natio nal C enter for Ed ucation Statistics. US Depa rtment of Education. https:/ / nces.ed.gov/pubs20 13/ 20133 14.pdf

Giroux, Henry, In trod uction to Youth in Revolt on Tru thdig.com, Feb 2, 2013 p. I0. http:/ / www.truthdig.com/ arts_culture/i tem/ youth_in_revolt_20130202/

Handcu ffed 5-Year-O ld Sparks Suit CBS/AP/ February 11, 2009, 7:27 PM. http:/ / www.cbsnews.com/ 2 I00-500 202_ 162-69060 1.html

( 210 WHO SPEAKS FOR JUSTICE )

( Voices of those we cage -and a different kind of witness by Chaundra L. Whitehead )

( I )f there is anywhere in the world where there is a predominance of not only con trol and subjugation, but also the caging of human s, it exists in priso n s in the United Stales of America. It might shock some of our cili­

zens of lhe USA that our "lea d er of the free world" is a lso the lea der of incarce ratio n. The United States has the highes t inca rcera tion ra te in the world (Tsai & Scommegna, 2012). At the encl of 2011, there were abo ut 7 million offend ers under the supervision of the adult correctional systems in the United States. This equates to about one in every 34 adult residents in the U.S. being under some form of correctional supe rvision, which includes incarce ratio n, probation, and pa role (Glaze & Par ks, 201 2). M an y of the impr iso ned have very li ttle hope to be seen or hea rd from again, with abo ut 50,000 serving life sentences without the possibility of parol e. About 3,000 people are sentenced to death. Given the rates of mass inca rcera tion in the United States, the voices of many, who have su!fered unjustly in a cou rt sys­ tem that is stacked against them (Alexa nd er, 20 IO; Ste venson, 2012), are missing eac h clay from our workplaces, schools, and communities. T hese voices are to be found behind bar s, unseen and unh ea rd by socie ty because of either frivolous or minor infractio ns aga inst the laws of a lega l system tl1at far more often prosecutes the poor than it does the rich for tl1e sa me or worse crimes. Too few can or do speak for the imprisoned poor.

For almost I O year s, I have been telling the stories of imprisoned people, as just that, people who are confined to prisons, not inmates, degenerates or criminals, but people. I tell their stories with a distinct inability to do it jus­ tice. vVitncss ing is an act of caring for your fellow hum an being. Being a true witness requires co urage in the face of those who wish to continu e to sile nce the stories of cage d individuals.

M y first teaching position al a correctional facility arose from a series of for­ tunate occurrences. I was in a lelephone customer service position I greatly

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d isliked , when we were informed that we were going to be la id off in a cou­ ple months. I was excited and saw this as my chance to look for full-tim e work in adult ed ucation. I had been a volunteer tutor at the public library an d worked part time at an adult read ing cente1 but now I wanted to find a full-time job that could use the same skills. I saw an advertisement in the local newspaper for an Adult Basic Education Instructor at a nea rby prison in the next county. I applied an d was offe red the position soo n afte r.

I was a novice teacher to say the least. I had only taught in one-on-one set­ tings, now I was going to be responsible for reading, math, and language arts for two classes a clay, eac h three hours long with about 25 inca rcerated women on a 4th- to 6th-gra de perfo rmance le vel. T his was my Adult Basic Edu catio n II (ABE II) class. Now what was I going Lo do with them? I o one really told me what to do. T here was a two-week training on correctional facility policies and procedures, such as safety, s uicide pr eve ntion, and key control. T hat is the typical employee-t raining program at most correctional facilities. T hen I was given a week to do lesson plans and prepare my classroom. Luckily another teacher was hired for ABE II at t.hc same time, so we had eac h other to bounce ideas around and come up with a plan. 'VVc a lso had to share materials.T here was only one classset of most of the books that we both needed, so we coo rdi­ nated a sched ule for the dictionaries and other important books. No matter how much planning a new teacher docs, however, we arc hardly ever ready. Being ready for my incarcerated students seemed like a clifTe re nt type of ready. Was I truly ready to be a nonjudgmental promoter of learn ing?

For the first few months I was overwhelmed ,vith lesson plans, grading, atten­ dance form submissions, classesinterrupted or cancelled by institutional inci­ dents, standardized test scores, and the general management of 25 personalities a t o nce. Eventually I found my way, and I relied heavily on ha nds-on-ac tivities with limited supplies, watching videos and having disc us­ sions or worksheets to accompany them, division of the class into small groups for activities, plays, and reading aloud. Essentially I tried to do every­ thing, but lecture. If I did need to do whole gro up direct instruction, it was limited to 20 minutes. With such diverse learning needs and levels in one class, lecture was not the most productive means of instruction. If lecture was the least effec tive, quiet inde pendent work was a close second. T his was the me thod of choice for many other teachers at the institution, but with low lit­ eracy levels, short attention spans, and ad ult women who may take various medica tions that cause drowsiness, quiet-time work was limited. But I did find that classical or new age music could lesse n the pain of "quiet-time" work.

In my class, there were also lessonson topics that were not in the books on the shelf such as a lesson on propaganda during election time. When each holiday cam e around, we lea rn ed its history and mea ning. I offered inform a tion that

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VOICES OF THOSE WE CAGE- AND A DIFFERENTKIND OF WITNESS 21 S

I believed mig ht broaden their under standing of what was happen ing in the world aro und them. I also served as the Literacy Coor dinator, providing train­ ings for those inca rcerated women who wanted to become tutors. I created and managed the Lunchtime Tutorin g program, which was successful a nd well received. My position as an ABEii instructor was instrumental in devel­ oping my under standjng of correctional facilities, criminal justice, and crime.

I enjoyed my work so much that I had the cra zy notion of becoming a direc­ tor or principal of a schoo l in a prison. I was told by my supervising princi­ pal, who was retiring, though , that I would need a master's degree to take on the position. Off I went to get a master's degree. T hen all of this "prison stuff" I did, took off For the past five years, I have been a volunteer with Altern atives to Violence Project (AVP), a conflict resolution training program offered to inca rcerated people. \1\Th c thcr conduction research or being a vol­ unteer, AVP is an organization for which I would choose to work precisely beca use whatever the ro le, t he AVP program promotes dialogue, empa thy, and community building. T hey engage the prisoner as a fellow huma n being.

Many peo ple do not feel comfortable working in or visiting prison facilities. Some AVP volunteers have come once and not return ed. \,Vhen teaching at a prison full time, I remember the high teacher turnover rate. I always felt that some of these people who chose not to return, did so not out of fear, but because they recognized the hypocrisy and ineq uality which existed inside the prisons. othing like the society script they had been told about prison turned out to be true. T he prison was simply not the humane rehabilitation facility the y had expected.

Why do we believe that we should be fearful in a correctional setting? Because that is the script that has been told to us. Certainly, timiclj ty is not a useful quality for worbng in a correctionalsetting, but when has timidity been useful anyw here? People respo nd to bold authenticity. Some qualities that arc val­ ued in corre ctional facilities, much like anywhere else in society, see med most often to be honesty, sincerity, and hum or. As an educator moving and working in that space, I became aware of the contradictio ns and fla ws ever present. Yet I bega n to understand that I was accountable to the people who live in those cells, to tell their stories as a counter narrative to the dominant script. I have visited several prisons in different pa rts of the country, and they can be quiet or loud. In either scenario, though, no one's rea l voice is hear d.

Way too often I sec the phrase "Lock them up and throw away the key," in news story comments online. I wonder if the people who use this phrase have ever really stopp ed to think of the implica tions of remov ing someone from society for life, especially for nonviolent offenses or even worse, conspiracy charges, which often equates to no real charge, just a suspicion of involve­ ment in something the power structure finds oITensive.

H o w has Am erica become number one in har sh, often inhumane, pun itive trea tment of fellow human beings, without the public registering ourt age or demonstrating shame by this sta tistical abomination? Of course, after the pictures of our nation's torture of intern ational prisoners suspected as terror­ ists, why would I ask that question?

Nevertheless, as a nation we seem to choose to believe the scripts we have been told over the years abou t crime. We choose to believe that we arc safer locking everybo dy up; that crime is out of control; that harsher punishments are need ed. And, of course, the best story ever told is that we needed a war on d rugs. But the media seems to be rampant with deception, misinforma­ tion, covering up of injustices, pand ering to privilege and oppression.

Experience in a correctional facility and dialogue with an incarcerated person or someone returning home after incarceration often reveals the truth that many of them are not much different from us. The domina nt language we arc accustomed to hearing and speaki ng has been used to diminish the stories of incarcerated people and reframe them as less t han human, revolting, unintelli­ gent. For, often we hea r the adage that if the im prisonedwere intelligent, they would get away with "it" as many o ther Americans do each day- like the gang on Wall Street. I would argue that the defining factor is not intelligence but power and monC), As Bryan Stevenson, lawyer,Founder and Executive Direc­ tor of the Equa lJ ustice In itiative, said in a Ted Talk (2012), "We have a system of justice in [the US] that treats you much better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent. Wealth, not culpab ility, shapes outcomes".

T hose outcome s lim it the ab ility of millio ns of people to think and create. In ou r natio n's prisons, indi vidual needs, thoughts, and ideas are not valued, encouraged, or rewarded. How is this rehabilitation? When thinking skills arc continually reduced, how is an incarcerated person to develop the skills they need to have a successful re turn to society? Contrar y to society's distor­ tions about the humanity of people it c hooses to cage like ani mals in a zoo, worth and value are actua lly abundan t in the priso ns where I've worked. Surpr isingly, in the most oppressive and repressive human conditions, cre­ ativity still manages to flo urish. I hear the voices of incarcerated people who find a way to write and speak from behind the walls. I see them read and reflect. I witness acts of kindness between them.

Squandering talent through the use of serving long sentences seems unproduc­ tive and a waste of human potential. I experienced this waste once when I was assigned a teac her's aide, H eat her, who was a profession al woman, excelle nt with accounting and convicted of some fraudulent activities which gained her a 10-year sentence. At the encl of the 10 years, she was expected to find a job, hope her skill set was still relevan t, and ear n enough money to pay restitution. She was an excellent teacher's aide, managed my gradebook, helped students one-on-one, and kep t the class tidy. Yet I always thought it was such a waste of

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VOICES OF THOSE WE CAGE- ANDA DIFFERENT KIND OF WITNESS 217

ta len t th at she was there grading the student papers instead of contributing to the larger socie ty outside the prison walls. I was thankful, though, that she was able to maintain some of her professional skills. At the time, I truly felt that she could teach the class, so why was she incarcerated for 10 years, rather than a shorter sentence, and more community-based restorative justice strategies?

I learned that she was there because the more money a person steals, the lon­ ger they are expected to be banished from society. Fortunately she did her time and was released. Soon after release, she contacted me to tell me she was on this side of freedom, and within two weeks, she had a job and pur­ chased a ca r. As we cha tted online, I was so excited to read that she had bee n given an opportunity. Hea ther was motivated and she had a great supp ort system. She also provided a glimmer of hope for the work I do by statin g "You had an impact on me at the very beginning. I always told my family how much I enjoyed working for you because it felt like a nor mal working relationship. I enjoyed our lunchtim e discussions. Having just come to prison is was nice to be able to have intellige nt co nversation s." Incidents like this continually persuade me that most people want to be acknowle d ge d and hea rd, regardless o f their circumsta nces. Why should a cr imin al conviction render a perso n unworthy of the most basic conversationa l exc hange?

When I left working at the prison, I tried to make a qui et ex it. I told my class one day before I pla nned to leave that I did not want them to plot a su rprise party, or have time to get too sad. But tha t plan failed. On my last day,at the end of class, I had one student who stood there looking at me, crying and asking why I had to go. Who, she asked, was she going to talk to? And who would fill the void. As she stood there, with the heavy weight of sadness, I violated my emp loyeeprotocols and gave her a hug.

T he AVP program had the opportunity to hold a full clay workshop inside the prison, where dozens of outside AVP people came to have tra ining and dia­ logue with the inside people. I overheard one person questioning ''.Arc they always this happy?" Soon she got up the nerve to comment to one of the insid e facilitators about how happy everyone seeme d and the response was ''.Just because this is pr iso n doesn't mean we go around sad every day." Soci­ ety would have us believe the people who have made mistakes do not deserve happiness,joy,accomplishment, or any of the other positive emo tions repre­ senting the human condition. Some people do have hard days, great sadness, remorse, and regret, but we will never know the dimensions of their human­ ness unless incarcerated people are allowed to have a voice. Stevenson insists that he believes that a murde rer is not just a murderer; a thief is not just a thief. Most humans, he suggests, are multifaceted, complex beings. Certainly those were the ambiguous dimensions that I observed in the prisons. Granted there are recalcitrant, who proba bly might cause us to challenge this belief, but those were not the people with whom I came in contact.

R ede finin g the narra tive of voices from prison requires redefi ning the script of fairness and integrity in our crimin al justice system, which continues to cru mble before the eyes of Americans and the world. While the evidence exists that justice for some happens, many in our country still hold on to the no tion that there is a fair and equitable punitive system for all. ff only those who still believe in the fairness of the crimi nal justice system had a chance to hea r the voices I hea r regu la rly, they mig ht reconsider the sc rip t that has duped them in to distortio ns of prison rea lities, of erroneous notions of fair­ ness and lega l eq uity. To really understand the hor rors that our de mocracy has created inside its jails a nd p risons, everyone should rea d, TheNew Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (20 I0).

In the Marvin Gaye tune " Can I get a Witness," he inquires "Is it right to be

trea ted so bad,, !\The n yo u've given everything you had?" Return ing citizens

can echo this sa me refrain post release as they are continuo usly s ubjecte d to exclusio n from voting, housing, employ ment, and oppo rt un ities (20 I 0 ). How long must punishment con tinue after punishmen t has been com plete d? O nce aga in, there is a scrip t ex pressing that those who have been convicted of committing a crime are not worthy of rein tegra tion, that their penitence must last their natural life. Sharing the stories of those who are denied voice, silenced, unhea rd has been a valida ting experience for both me and my impriso ned studen ts. T he sharing has allowed the sile n ce d to know, " I am lis­ te ning, I hear you" a nd it lets the sile ncers understa nd that, "I know you are try ing to sile nce them, but their stories will be told."

References

Alcxa ndc1 M. (20 I 0). The New Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age ef

colorblindness. New York, NY: T he 1 cw Press.

Glaze, L.E. and Parks, E. (201 2). Co rrectional pop ula tions in the United States, 2011 . (NCJ 239972). Washing ton, DC: U.S. Depart ment of J ustice/ Bureau of J ustice S ta tistics, 2012 November.

Stevenson, B. (2012). We need to talk about an injustice. Ted Talks. T e d. co m. Retrieved from: http:/ / www:ted.com/ talks/ bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_ talk_about_an_injustice?language=en

Tsai, T & Scommcgna, P (2012, August). U.S. H as World's Highest Incarceratio n R ate .

Pop ulat ion Refere nce Burea u. (2012 ). R et rieved fro m http:/ / www.prb.org/ Publicat ions/ Ar ticles/ 201 2/ us-inca rcera tion.aspx

( 218 WHO SPEAKS FOR JU S TICE )

( Let the human spirit in the room 1 by Joan T . Wynne )

( ' ' A n )important component of African indig eno us pedagogy is the vision of the teacher as a selfless healer in tent on inspiring, trans­ forming, and prop elling stud ents to a higher spiritual leve l."

When I first read this passage by Asa G. Hilliard, III (SBA, 199 7, pp. 69- 70), I felt as I did when the Berlin Wall fell or when Nelson Mandela walked out prison doors. I never thought eithe r would happen in my lifetime. Neither did I think that anyone with a respectable reputatio n, ind eed, a renowned scholar like Hilliard, in a white university would ever have the courag e to publicly frame education within a context of spiritu al transformation. See­ ing that in prin t, I felt as though somewhere in my psyche, walls had falle n down and a libe ra tor had bee n set free.

My years in white universities as a student and as a professor had indicated to me that matters of the imellec t and matters of the spirit are as separat e as church and state. T hat the purpo se of my education might become the " tran sformation toward a new spiritual level" was certa inly never remotely discussed or assumed. Typically, sc holars who entertain such ideas are rele­ gated to fringe groups in their discipli ne s. Because of the distortions of fun­ damentalists a nd most religions on such issues, many of us academ ic s may feel ju stifiably uncom fortabl e. Nevertheless, for fear of being thought anti­ intellectual, or worse, unworthy of academia, I kept the idea of a connec tion between spiritual ity and intellectual pursuits suppressed in my conversations with other mainstream professors. My experience in colleges and universities

1 A version of this essay was first published as Wynne, J. (2005) Educa tion, Liberation, and Transformat ion: Teaching African American Students within a context of culture. In Instructingand mentoring theAfricanAmercian collegestudent: Strategies for Success in higher education.Louis B. Gallien, J r. & Marshalita Sims Peterson (Eels). Boston: Pearson Education, In c. (pp. I O1- 121).

219

a round this issue taught me that Paulo Fre ire (198 7) was probably rig ht when he suggested that "T he in tellec tual activity of those wit hout power is always characterized as non-intellec tual" (p. 122). I found that scholars who openly spoke of the spiritual within a context of intellec tual discourse typically were outside the acad emic circles of power. I remember back in the 1980s attend­ ing a conference in Denver, Colo rado , called Exp loring the Spiritual in the Teaching of En glish. It highlighted the work of Language Arts schola r and rcsearcher, J amcs iVIo flitL, who was a giant in the Language Arts field at the time and an active member of Ja tio nal Council of Teachers of English CT E). Only 80 teachers and professors showed up from the associa tion that, in that era, boasted 10- 15,000 active members or 43,934 paying mem­ bers (Hogan, NCT E). So, many noted scholar s ar e often ignored if they

speak of the spirit!

Yet, as I thought about the writing of th is c hapter, I kept comin g bac k to Hill­ iard 's wisdom as one of the dis tinguishing characteristics of effec tive pedago gy with African-American students. I learn ed it when teaching Afric a n-American students at an inner-city high school. I learned it when teaching at a premier, all male, historically black college (H BCU); and I learn ed it again when work­ ing with African-Am erican teachers in an urban teacher leadership master's degree program. In all three experiences, there seemed to be an innate sense of the "spiri tual" aspiratio ns of a n entire people b e ing integr al to educational journ eys. J acob Carruthers (19 9 9), a professor of Inner City Studi es, concu rs in lntel/,etcualWaifclre, sa ying that the " Restora tion of Africa n civiliza tio n is not possible without a return to African spirituality" (p. xv).

As a white woman, I feel presumptuou s writing about effective pedagogy for African-American students. So, I can only offer my story from the perspective of one who first learned about "good teaching" from African-American teach­ ers and schola r s. Ma s te r teac hers like M attie William s, D orot hy McGirt, Baby Ruth Brantley and Oliver McC lcndon took me und er their wings my first year out of college, teaching at an African- American high school. T hey taught me how to expect and demand the best academic perform ance from all students, especially tl1ose living in poverty. Later on, scholars, teachers, and leaders like Lisa Delpit and Asa H illiard , III ta ught me the theory that explained the prac­ tice that had been modeled at Howard High School. Alonzo Crim, Robert Dixon, and Bob Moses taught me how to hone my practice when teaching dis­ enfranchised students. T hus, any wisdom I share came from those educators and those pla ces where, no matter the physical stru cture, the educa tional pro­ cess beca me a "sacred space" (Hilliard SBA, 1997).

T he resea rch literature and my experiences in the classroom indicate that there are specific stra tegies tha t create op timum learn ing conditions for Afri­ can-Am erican students. Yet, some of those studies and experiences have also persuaded me that regard lessof the strategics, something far more profound

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( LET THE HUM AN SPIRIT I N THE ROOM 221 )

than methodology connects students of African descent with the pursuit of academic excellence. For, along the way as I worked with Africa n-America n students, I did observe, and probably engaged in as well, some " bad " instruc­ tion that seemed antithetical to what is considered pedagogically sound. ev­ crthclcss, many African American student s survived such instruction.

It is only recently, however, that I've begun to und erstand the reasons that students of African descent can endure ineffective teaching strategics in HBCU 's when they often cannot in mainstream colleges. T hat is not to say that there are not thousand s of Africa n-America n students who, nonetheless, achieve in mainstream colleges without these conditions being present. Ratl1e1 they excel in spite of those colleges, not because of them.

Some of the condition s, beyond pedagogy, yet, bound within the culture, that I believefacilitate academic success for Africa n-American students arc:

· the assumption of the spiritual con nect ion to educa tional pursuits;

· the infusion of music into t he educat io nal e xperie nce;

· the explicit discussions of challenging an oppressive society;

the expec tation and demand for excellence in the midst of a nu rt uring environment;

· the developing of personal relation ships with faculty;

· the belief in the collabora tive na tur e of the educat ional journ ey.

All of these were in tegral parts of tl1e total Morehou se Co llege experien ce, an HBC U where I taught for 10 years. Much of what I now consider a qual­ ity ed ucational exp e rience for any student, but especially for Africa n-Ameri­ ca n students, was crystallized for me at that coLlege .

Spiritual Connection to Educational Pursuits

When explaining the ancient, education tradition s of Africa, Hillia rd (SBA, 1997), who often spoke al the college, said, " O ur ed uca tional and socializa­ tion process was always situated in a sacred space. T his space served lo clar ify purpo se a nd emphasize tl1c divine nature of the process." At More­ house, part of that "e duca tional and socialization process" was obliga tor y attenda nce at chapel twice a week. In that spa ce, stud ents hea rd renowned persons of Africa n descent- ministers, schola rs, po liticia ns, or heads of sta te- spea k of the ancestral spiri ts who gave their all so tha t these young men could be at that college. At t.he e nd of such meetings at chapel, stu­ dents resoundingly sang together the ''Alma M a te r." When the song's refer­ ence to the "Holy Spirit" emerged, all reverently lowered their voices and bowed their heads as they whispered tl1e two words. I had never before

e xper ienced, first, a stude nt body who a ll knew and sang the ir ''.i\Ima Ma ter," nor, secondly, a secula r college that made reference lo the " Holy Spirit." T his attention Lo th e d iv i ne, outside a specific religiou s contex t or denomina tion, poured out beyond the chapel walls. T he legacies of spiritu­ alists/ educators like Howard Thurma n, Martin Luther King ,J r., Benjamin

E. Mays reverberated not oniy in the chapel but also in the halls of the acad­ emy. The memorializing of those legac ies is a ri tual co nsider ed part of the "Mystique" of the college.

Ma ny of my stud ents, whether the y were in the writing , literatur e, speec h, or education seminars, unabashedly found appropria te ways to connect their personal spiritual experiences to their writin g, their speec hes, or class­ room discussions, no ma tter the assigned topic. I lea rned early in my career at Morehouse that "touching th e spirit" was a collective assumption throughout the camp us. Io hesitation there to co nnect the intellectual with the spiritua l. Caruthers insists that, "T he road to Africa n liberation begins at the door of that 'Good Old African Spirit"' (p. xv). And if education is not "liberating," then it becomes, more often tha n not, propaganda for maintaining the societal status quo.

For mainstream professors in colleges or universities where the spiritual is ignored or shunned, creating opportunities for student s to connect their spir­ itual heritage to disc ussio ns of content in a specific disc ipline is a cult ura lly responsive strategy that can be quite effective in fostering stronger engage­ ment of African-America n students in college classrooms. In such discus­ sio ns, the professor is not obliga ted lo validate or dismiss any particular belief system- only to establish a safe space for the students to bring those spiritual analogies into classroom conversations. I once observed a mainstream pro­ fessor, who was a professed atheist, sit respectfully quiet as student after stu­ dent began to connect her spiritual beliefs to the topic at hand. T he ene rgy in the room, due to his acquiescence to their desires to connect their own spiritual sto ries to the abstraction being g rappl ed with, grew into a vigo rous, synchronized exploration of the self and the disciplin e.

Infusion of Music

Part of the spiritual experience at Morehouse was music. The college's award-winn ing Glee Club , usua lly opened and closed every chapel session. Their sometimes thunde ring rendition s of old spiritua ls often left me so charged that I, Loo , fell the call of their an cestors to produce the best Leac h­ in g p e r formance possible for those who had inherited these heroes' struggle. Moreover, I became convinced, after a number of years attending chapel, that the messages and music, the total ed ucation expe rienced within that

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( LET THE HUMAN SPIR I T IN THE ROOM 223 )

"sacre d s pa ce," see med to increase student determination to " hang in" with those difficult co urses or the ones that mig ht bore them in to distraction. And, because of those chapel experiences, some students, who might have just barely slipped through the admissions door, seemed to get the extra boost they needed to study more diligen tly. I t's what Delpit (1997) see ms to inti­ mate when she suggests that Africa n-American student s learn best when they "co nnect to sometl1ing greater than themselves."

Using music as ritual and as a collect ive everyday experience is deeply rooted in the Africa n cult ural experience. I was reminded of that when working in Alexandria , South Africa one summer. I liste ned often as black South Afri­ can workers, building homes in a Habitat for Humanities project, spontane­ ously burst into song when passing bricks to one another or when carrying food from one home to anothe r; at the beginning and end of informal social gatherings; or in the mjddle of any mundan e task such as washing dishes together. In that same trad ition, durin g the Southern Freedom Movement, freedom fighters burst into song together in buses, churches, ma rches, and ja ils whenever fear became intense, su·uggle became burdensome, or short­ term victory was won (King, 1986;Reagon, 1998). Regardless of the song, it seemed to invite the "spirit" into the human space. Music in the collec tive seems an integral part of African lives and struggle. Ho w sterile our white institutions of learning must seem to such a musica lly sophisticate d people.

Using Music in the Classroom

Though I have no training or talent in music, beca use of the powerful use of it in the Kj ng chapel and my success in using music in high school class­ rooms, I began to play taped musical selections in my college literature and composition classes when students were writing. For man y, their writing became more fluent while the music was playing. In litera ture classes, I brought songs whose lyrics and/or rhythms related to themes, metaphor s, or forms being studied in specific ge nres. I often asked st udents to bring to class their choices of music to relate to what we were studying. On tests, I found that the students could demonstrate more effectively their conceptual under­ stanrun g of those lessons that had been connected to their music. Ma ny ed u­ ca tional researchers have documented the use of music as a means of teaching a diverse range of skills from matl1cmatics to poetry (Moffett & Wagnc1 1983). The Algebra Project, initiate d by Rob ert Moses, a mathe­ matics educa tor a nd prominent Civil R ights Activist, sometimes uses Africa n drumming to Le a c h algebraic concepts. Howard Gardn er's resea rch (Gard­ ner, 2000) de fines music as one of the distinct Multiple Human Intelligences. To leave it outside the classroom door once students complete tl1e third or four th grade seems negligent on our part.

Nature Vs. Nurture

Hilliard (1999)has argued that in America, there is a continuing " nature vs. nurture" edu cational debate about African -American lear ners. l\!Iany Euro­ centric scholars, represented by the likes of Murra y an d Hernstein (1994)of the infam ous Bell Curve, purport that the nature of the student defines his potential to learn and achieve. Beca use of these and simila r edu cational the­ orists, the nature or capac ity of African-American learners to academically excel is more often than not questioned throughout our society, not just in our schools. Usi ng his own educa tional experiences and research as well as the work of Shinichi Suzuki, "a teacher of world-class musicia ns who asserted that talent was not inborn but must be trained," H illia rd (1988) affirms th at th e natu re of every human is to learn and that all stud ents op ti­ mally learn when they are nurtured. It's rather, Hilliard explains, the "nature of the nurt ure" that promotes academic achievement, not the nature of the student. Delpit (1997), too , suggests that when teachers create "a sense of family and caring," students of color are more apt to excel.

That kind of nurturi ng exists at many of the HB CU's where I have taught or visited. T he support system for excelle nce and the belief in the stud ents' capacity to excel is so strong throu ghout these colleges that most of their stu­ dents can stuv ive " bad" instructional practices found within a few class­ rooms. Traditi onally, the nurturin g of Africa n-American students, especially in the segregated "colored" schools in the south, began with academic excel­ lence as not just an expectation, but a demand by their teachers (Siddle­ Walke r, 1996).Without tha t expectation and without taking the responsibility to insure that stude nts lea rn , q uest ion s of pedagogy seem irrelevant. l r, we all know the research that suggests we get what we expect, regar dless of the methodology (Clark 1989;Good 1981 & 1982; Rosenthal &Jacobson, 1968; Venter, 2000). Delpit (1997), who received the MacArthur genius award, admo nished every teacher of Africa n-America n students, includin g elemen­ tary teachers, that "vVhatever methodology or instructional program is used, demand critical thinking." That demand, for Africa n-American educato rs, grows natura lly from a place of nurtur e. In too man y mainstream college classrooms and in some H BCU class roo ms, a nurturin g spirit is sorely miss­ ing. H illiard (2000) insists education in the United States is characterized by its " pathological preoccupation with ca pacity."

Best Practices

evcrtheless, if we arc white professors teaching African -Ame ricans in a mainstream college where studen ts' lives on th e campus, outside the class­ room walls, do not have this kind of nurture or support, t11e n, I believe, we

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must dilige ntly engage in " best practices" in our classroom s. Along with the indigenous African vision of a teacher, the framework for a discussio n of best practices might include a defmition found in Vincent Harding's (1999 ), Hope and History. In that text, Ronald Massanari says, " Being a teacher refers less to one who gives answers and expects conformity . . . and more to one who is capable of provid ing contexts and stimuli so each learner can discover for him or herself Such teachers are skillful intermediar ies and guides in the sea rch for mea ning and selr-understa nding" (p. I) T hat kind of skillful tea ch­ ing within a cultural "c ont ext" is, in my experience, the basis for the aca­ demic success of many African-Am erican stude nts in any classroom. And, probably, it is, as Massana ri suggests, the basis for teaching students of any ethnicity.Many African-American students, as mentioned earlier, can achieve acade mic excellence in spite of the absence of such a framework for teach­ ing, even in majori ty white universities. H oweve1 those who fail to achieve at that le vel probab ly fail b eca use of tl1e oth er kind of teaching that caters to "giving information, answers, and demanding conformity," within a Euro­ American cultural context- a practice that Dr. Alonzo Crim (1999), the first Africa n-American superin tend ent of the Atlanta Public Schoo l System, called , the " Sa ge on Stage " mod el. To increase the rate of successfor a ll Afri­ ca n-American s in colleges, I believe, requires a shift away from that model. It requires an inter-active, participant -ce ntered approach to instructio n.

Education for Liberation

Within that shift from conform ity into a "search for meaning and self-under­ standing," I believe, is the demand for a pedagogy and a curriculum that is grounded in a ph iloso ph y of educa tio n for liberat io n. T he Morehouse cam­ pus abou nds in those conversatio ns- in history classes, in Africa n studies, in African-American literature classes, in meetings in chapels, in ca mpus-wide colloquium, etc. When taught outside a liberation context, knowledge learned in schools can become not only mea ningless to African-Americans and other students of color, bu t worse, a means to maintain an oppressive society. C ult ura lly responsive peda gogy "prepares students to effect change in society, not merely fit into it" (Ladson-Billings, 1992, p. 382).

In the Americas in the 20th cent ury, great teachers like Ella Baker, Septima Clark, Paulo Friere, Fannie Lou Hame1 Vincent Ha rding, Myles Horton, Benjamin E. l\liays, an d others led the way in teaching how to educa te to lib­ erate. Indebted to their courage and intellectua l int egrity, many educators have learned how, as H illiard (Tapp ing the Genius, 1997; St ructure, 1997 ) suggests, to invite students, faculties, and communit ies to engage in conver­ satio ns that ques tion mainstrea m socie ty's episte molog ies as weLI as its assump tions about education, power, and social justice. Without tho se

q uestio ns in mind, the disciplin es of physics, litera ture, scie nce, history, mathematics, etc. often become intellec tual scaffolds Lo s ustain hegemony. For African-Americans, living within a society that has for 400 year s dis­ torted past and present stories of history,economics, civiliza tions, and supe­ riority,such a dialogue is imperative, if these students are to assert themselves in a n acc urate historical context (Loewen, 1996). Moreover, if our society is to progress beyond mate rialism, militar ism, dominatio n, and greed, all stu­ dents, regardless of ethni city, need Lo ex pl o r e knowledge in the context of liberation. So as a classroom stra tegy,what does that loo k like?

First, in an y college classroom whether teaching business or humanities, a professor might begin each new semester with an exploratio n of the many facets of Educa tion for Liberation. T his can cause lively discussions of dis­ covery of self and of the dept h and breadth of human knowledge, as profes­ sors and stud ents try to examine just what libera tion means? Who arc we libe ra ting? Fro m what? And for what? What docs libera tio n loo k like? Feel like? Wha t does it have to do with studying physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering, liter a ture, history, a rt, etc? Freire (19 70) insists tha t there is "no such thing as a neutral ed uca tional process." It either sustains the status quo of the presently known, he suggests, or it uses what it knows to transform the world. If we choose tra nsform ation, then we must do as Hilliard (Str ucture, 199 7) suggests, " change our in tellec tu al structures, definitio ns and assump­ tio ns" that presume and foste r white privilege and super io ri ty. T his mea ns that in every discipline these conversations must be part of the strategy we use to engage our students in investigating the individual epistemologies of our particular content area. Can the laws of physics be see n only through a Euroce ntric cultural lens; or is it possible that other cultur es and oth er ancient traditions can offe r new perspectiveson those laws? In-service teach­ ers (Perry, 200 I) at Wheelock Co llege in Boston have discove red methods of scientific in quiry different from the traditio nal Weste rn model as they have immersed themselvesin the Haitian culture.

The Common Good and Liberation:

Many Africa n-American scholars argue that rooted deep in the culture of people of African descent is a cur riculum , pedagogy,a nd practice that insist on the necessity to lea rn for the greater good of the community (Delpit 199 7; Hilliard , SBA, 199 7; Ladson-Billings 199 4; S idd le-Walker 1996; Wil­ son 1998) . When the purpose for lea rn ing any discipline is expli citly stated within a context larger than self-aggrandizement, these scholars indicate, the achievement level of Africa n-American students is favorably impacted. Benjamin E. Mays (1983), the President of Morehouse College for 27 years, who saw his life's purp ose as being "born to rebel," pro claimed that the

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p urpose of education was not only "to train the mind to think" but also " the heart to feel ... the injustices of mankind; and to strengthen the will to act in the interest of the common good" (p. 5). We know from such scholars' work that African-American students take their studies more seriously when they assume that the purpose of exploring a discipline is to mak e a more just and equita ble reality for the "whole" (H arding 1999; Hilliard SBA 199 7; Moses & Cobb 200 I ; Sidd le-Walker 1 996 ), J am es Banks (1 99 7) insists " When the school fails to recognize, va lidate , and testify lo the racism, pov­ erty, and inequality that student s experience in their daily lives, they are likely to view the school and the curriculum as contrived and sugar-coated constructs that are out of touch with the real world and the struggles of their daily lives" (p. 16). T he work of Herb Kohl (1994 ) ind ica tes that whe n our curriculum and our pedagogy omit these realities, many students of color choose to resist lea rning anything from us. At Morehou se, many stu­ dents come from economically privileged background s, yet there was a con­ certed effort at the college to remind those students that their economi c sta tus demanded that they use their intellectual talents to battle against the poverty of their people. They were encouraged to understand what form er SNCC member, Cha rles Cobb , once said of the students in Mississippi Free­ dom Schools, " \t\1hat they must sec is the link between a rotting shack and a rotting America" (Payne 199 7, p. 5).

Strategies for Liberation Education

Learning disciplinary content and exploring liberation are not mutu ally exclusive, as some professors might assume. Steeped in a tradition that honors a " pedagogy of the oppressed" (Freire 1998/ l 970 ), a science professor might, for exam ple, encourage students to examine scientific content, la ws, theories, etc. in a context of tl1wartin g the use of scie nce as a weapon against oppressed peoples. She might ask her students to ponder the probabiliti es that if they learned science weLI e nough they might, indeed, together with their newly formed scientific communi ty, be the instruments in discovering the encl to world hunge1; can cer, poLlution, high infant mortality rates, etc. Or the phys­ ics students might together discuss how to use the principles of physics, like those used to split the atom, to support life instead of death and destruction. For a peo ple whoseguidi ng principle of ed ucation al tTaclitio ns for over 5,000 years is spiritual transformation and libera tion, studying to get a job or to make excessive amo unts of money pales in the light of these grander pur­ poses. For oppressed people, ELia Baker insisted that radical educa tion "means facing a system that docs not lend itself to your needs and devising means by which you change that system" (Grant 1998). A ftrst step in changing that sys­ tem in education for African-America n students, could mean facilitating open

d ia logue in the class room investigating the assum ptions of oppressio n embed­ ded in every disciplin e stud ied. For many of us as professors, such disc ussio ns migh t unfold unconscious biases as well as wisdom.

In the humanities, raising questions of liberation is often more common than in the sciences. An English professor might ask stud ents to connect the pur­ poses of effec tive writing with co untering the misconceptions in printed media a bo ut the disenfranchised. After ample student driven discussion of la rge r c o ntexts for learn ing to write than passing tests or better ways of com­ peting in t he job ma rke t, a professor mig ht o ffe r students opportuniti es to hone their skills by writing le tte rs to editors, members of Congress, mayors, etc., about issues of social concern in their immediate college or home com­ muni ties. T hey might also suggest ways to develop web sites or chat rooms for students to discuss issues of social justice. In addition, that same professor when teaching litera ture might ask student s to loo k a t the litera ry ca non not only for its aesthetic qua lities, but a lso in the light of the unexa mined racist, sexist, a nd other hegemonic notions that pervade Western literatur e as well as to question the choice of works admitt ed into that canon. In small groups, students might then debate the issues, thereby,strengthening their oratorical and dialogic skills, and , then, use what they a.re lea rn ing to educate stud ents in K-12 institutions. In their exploration of racism and oppression, they might read to youngster s in surroundin g schools of the stor y of an unschooled sharecropper nam ed Fann ie Lou Ha mer (H ard ing 1999; l\lioscs 200 I) who turned a national Democratic convention upside down by demanding to be seated. Som e English professors, a history professo1 and a few sociology and psychology professors at Morehouse used service-learning techniques like these to enhance their college students' acq uisitio n of and honing of skills in the individual cont ent area.

Empowering students to use their skills as they lea rn them in a productive way to better their commun iti e s is a libcra tory act. The "Service-learn ing" literature prolificall y chron icles the successes of such instruction in student acquisition of new skills as well as its positive imp act on the communiti es these students serve. One of the characters in Barry Lopez's (1990) fables says that, "Sometimes people need a story mo.re than food to stay alive" (p. 60) I believe that the stories of people of color, their histories, their cultural le g ac ies have been ignor ed or mutilated so often in the United States that their children need and deserve accura te cultural na rratives told in schools and universities to "stay intellec tually alive."

T hrough the Alge bra project, Bob Moses and his colleagues have taught comp lica ted conceptual material to unschooled adults, the children of those ad ults, and their teachers in poor, rural, and inner city communities. Along with their new mathematical expertise and higher order thinking skills, these par ents and students have becom e politically ac tive in challenging the

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inadequac ies of their schools, their teachers, and the systems that told them they cou ldn't learn algeb ra " beca use they are dysfunctiona l."

T he work of Moses, Delpit , Freire, Hilliard, etc. implies tha t rigorous intel­ lectual growth is a possibility for every college stud ent regardless of his or her SAT scores, prior knowledge of content, or skill base- if the belief system is there at the college that we leave no student behind. Braced by that belief and willing to discover and employ new methods of instruction, every profes­ sor can teac h any student. If we read Moses' successes with students, whom the la rger socie ty assumed could not and would not learn complica ted abstract thinking, those of us who teach African-American students in col­ leges, regardless of our e thnicity, should feel a new sense of hope for facilitat­ ing success for students who don't now excel in our discipli ne. It doesn't matter if their readi ng, writing, and mathematical skills arc inadequate when they come to us. Informed by Moses a nd othe rs' work, we can assum e that anyone can be brought from behind, perceiving a sense of purpose la rger

t han self, given the right instruction , and encoura ged to persist at the " hard work" of mastering a subject. As H illiard says, it is the quality of the instruc­ tion, not the quality of the student that creates acad emic excellence.

Building a Community of Learners

To be able to explo re the questions of justice and equi ty within a classroom, and for students to feel safe enough to risk expos ing what they don't know in a specific discipline, a teacher must first build a Co mmunit y of learners. Most indigenous cultures are rooted in a strong sense of communal values. With the primary focus on individual rights in our U.S. culture, our sense of commu­ nity is too often neglected. In many college classrooms, comp etition is the guidi ng principle, a principle that is outside the African worldview (Diop 1989 ), a view described by Chibuczc Udca ni (1989 ) as " the consciousness of a lively unit y with commun ity ... where cooperation, collec tive responsibility, and in terdependence are the key values" (p. I). In co ntrast to that, the pre­ dominant Euro-centric worldview is one that relies on competition, indepen­ dence, separateness,and individu al rights (Car ruthers 1999 ). Stark differences exist between the two within the context of seeking knowledge. As educators, how do we create a sense of balance among both, where the individual and the community are equally valued? How do we da nce with the creative ten­ sions of the dualities? Can we, as educator s in college classrooms, co ntinue to separate our work from the community's work? These questions might make worthy discussion with our students within classrooms as community is sought.

Especially,for African-American students, taking the time to build a commu­ nity within the classroom makes the most sense. Furth er more, if we have the integrity to honor the ancient traditions of the culture of the students we arc

teac hing, then we must pay a ttention to the social nature of the African edu­ cational experience. Often on the Morehouse ca mpus, I saw the reflection of Hilliard 's resea rch (SBA 1997) which found that "Education, to our [African] ancestors was regarded as a social, rather than an individual process. Serious effor ts were taken to establish the social bonds necessary to create a cohort of learners who not only were students, but who would be lifelong brother s and siste rs in the most profound sense of those words" (p. 9 ). Instinctively, Mor ehouse ca pitulated to that ancestra l wisdom and those ancie nt practices. T hough deliberate a ttempts to esta blish social bonds might not be practiced in every classroom, the emphasis of brotherhood outside the classroom walls sustained campus life and academic achievement.

Moreover, numbers of scholars suggest that there is scientific data from ancient Egypt to modern physics, which indicates the interdependence of all humanity,all spec ies, a nd all components of the universe from the subatomi c lev el to the formation of the galaxies (Berry 1990; Eisler 1987; T homas 19 74; Swimm e 1992 ). Given those assump tions, why would we model in our classrooms a format of isolated thought and competition, a format incongru­ ent with what we accept as true in cosmic terms? Building a community of students in the classroom seems, then, not just ed ucationally sound, but also well-ground ed in ancient and modern scientific theories.

For those of us who teach where the camp us life doe s not offer that sense of communi ty for African-America n studen ts, or for those of us, who have con­ sis tent problems with stude nt failure, I suggest we, especia lly, give classroom time to build a community of lea rn er s. M y students during course evalua­ tions have repeatedly asserted that their being part of such an experience assisted their performan ce in the classroom. Because I am convinced of the efficacy of this bonding, I use at least 30 minute s of the first class period of all my courses to begin establishing those bonds. T hereafte r, I establish small co llaborati ve groups who will beco me peer editing teams, literat ure discus­ sion circles, speec h critiq ue gro ups, or textual analysis response group s in any discipline. Imp ortant to the construction of these groups is at least one ses­ sion dedicated to the simulation of just what makes good teams. Because the mainstream culture of the United States primarily promotes competition, too few of us come to college with an adequate background in just what it mea ns to be an effective tea m player and little exp erien ce in group roles that lea d to individ ual and g roup success. Neve rtheless, we ca n fin d guides to facilita te such a process. Research literature and popular bookstores are replete with examples describing specific activities that create social bonding, team process, and group success (Cam pbell & Smith 1997; Felde r & Brent 1994; Felder & Brent 2001; H aller et al 2000; John son & J ohn son 1989 & 1995; Maton & H ra bowski 1999; Starfield & Bleloch et al. 1994). Such suc­ cess with group process in college classrooms was recently valida ted by a

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g roup of African-Am erica n grad uate students. T hese teac hers comprised tJ1ree different, grad uating cohort s of an urb an teacher leadership master's degree program. As a deliberately formed cohor t, these students attended together every course in their five-semester program. When asked during exit interviews to evaluate the program , all graduat es remarked that the bonding of the co hort in Oucnccd their success more than any other compo­ nent in the program. T his type of peer support system is enormou sly impor­ tant if we want to foster the intellect ual growth of Africa n-America n students in a mainsu·eam college.

\Vith the pressure on professors to cover material, to raise standa rds, to pro­ duce ad equa tely prepared graduates read y either for a competitive market or for gradua te school, many believe that bonding is a " nice idea," but too much Duff and too little substance. However, after many trials and errors of others and mine, I have come to agree with Pa rke r Palm er (1 993 ), who says tl1at, "In the absence of the communa l v irt ues, intellec tual rigor too easily turn s into int ellec tual rigor mor tis" (p. xvii).

The Developing of Personal Relationships with Faculty

Professors at Morehouse spent many hours developing mentor relationships with their stude nts. Professors felt an obligation lo know their students beyond the classroom. Many a professor met students d uring late eve nings to tutor or counsel them. O ne of the professors there, a deparm1ental chairper­ son, not only used his night hours to tutor college students, but also tutored high school stud en ts who showed promise in science, but did not have ade­ quate instruction in the high school. He performed these uncompensated tasks in the midst of writing texts, grant s, resea rch, and teaching a full load. I used to tease him that he " needed to get a life." H is pra c tices, however, reminded me of the African vision of the teacher as "selfless." In the ind ige­ nous African context of education, serious learn ing happens when teachers have established a personal bond with tl1eir stud ents. In the Swahili tradi­ tion, tl1is rela tionship of passing on knowledge through direct contact with people who arc skille d c ra ftsmen and instructors is referr ed to as fund i (Moses & Cobb 2001; Grant 1998 ). Unlike many white universities whose major focus is chasing research dolla rs, at l\ilo rehouse teac hin g is considered a serious and meaningful responsibility, the act of a fundi.

At tl1e college, it was not an uncommon practice for professors to invite tl1eir students in small groups to their homes. Long before the adm inistration offi­ cially initiated advisory groups for all freshmen, many professors chose to occasionally meet students at their homes. In my classroom, at the end of

eac h semester, nea rly 1 00 % of the students, on eva luat ion cards I iss ued, co mmented on the benefit for them of the meetings at my home in creating a har mony for struggling with difficult qu estions and concepts. In my experi­ ence with African-American students in high school, college, and gradua te school, this practice seemed to cement relationships that made room for a " mutual criticism of thought" (Palm er, p. 74). Man y African-Ameri can schola r s insist that relationship building is a key value in th e Africa n cultur e, and, thus, Africa n-American studen ts perform best for those teachers, what­ ever their ethnicity, who have auth entically bonded with their stude nts.

Other Issues of Culture

In tertwined within discussions of relationship building and othe r eleme nts of African-America n culture lay qu estions about culLure in general. How do we respect each other's cultures; lea rn from all the variations; recognize the " hidden dimensions of unconscious cultur e" (Hall 1989 ); and move as Edward T. Hall suggests " Beyond Culture"? How do we grapple with the thoughts, feel ings, communica tions and behaviors that arc molded by our sepa rate cultur es? How do we reckon with the good and bad in every cul­ t ure? And, perhaps, most importantl y, th rough the investigat io n of culture, can we begin Lo br ea k the chains of a hegemonic society where all citizens are held captive, not only the disenfranchised?

For most professors in the U. S., issues of culture are dee ply embedde d in how we teach. Beca use most of us were schooled in a Euro-centric (or a Brit­ ish) model of education, including those who have come to the university from previously colo nized countri es (Carruth ers & H arr is 1997 ), we seem obliged to conside r the limit s of teaching within that one cultur al frame. Connecting our classroom instruction Lo t he culture of our students Lo help unfold their brillia nce has been validated by a host of educa tional research­ ers (Delpit 1995, 1997; Hilliard SBA 1997; Ir vine 2000; Ladson-Billings 1993; Wilson 1999). Yet, in my nume rous years of sitting in meetings with white university professors, I have been perplexed by our attempts to loo k outside the context of the African-Am erica n culture, in fact, to lo o k among ourselves, for answers to pedagogical p roble m s in Leac hing stude nts from another's culture- a practice that seems nol only arrogant, bul also stupid. We seem to assume that our wisdom, emanating from our one cultural per­ spective, is somehow universal- that our truths are not grounded in our par­ ticular cultural belief system, rather somehow gleaned from a cosmic logic. Dclpit's research (1995) indicat es that many mainstream teachers' confusion of cultura lly relevant instruction is common no matter where we teach- in Africa n-American communities, in indigeno us co mmunities in Alaska, Pa pu a New Guinea, in elementary through college classrooms. Along with

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D clpit 's, my experie nce, loo, suggests that many or us in ma instream con­ texts seem confused as well ab out the significan ce or culture in the personal and the political lives of all people.

Because of institutional and societal failures to recogniz e diverse cultural reali ties and wisdom, can we who teach African-American student s in col­ lege a ssume that our content knowledge is enough to optimally support the intellectual growth of our stud ents? T hough expertise in a discipline is cru­ cial, a cultu rally responsive context for teaching that discipline seems equa lly significan t lo the academic achie vement of Africa n-America n stude nts, as it is for all students. Too few students achieve at their highest potential when the instructional climate is alien to their cultural experience. \l\7hi te students arc always taught in the United States within their cultural context. But, for African-Am erica n students, and most students of color, whose cultur e and histor y have been denied or disto rt ed in our schools, teaching within a cul­ tural context becomes a mandat e of intellec tual integrity.

Sometimes when confronting the racist epistemolo g y that dictates polic ies and pra c ti ces o f most of our institutions, especially education, I sink into dis­ illusio nment and hopelessness. In those moments I remind myself, however, that part of my hopelessness is driven by my own racism. Being white and a product of mainstream schooling, I have unconsciously absorbed many notions of supremacy. O ne of those is the assumption that if white people don' t find a solution to the proble ms we have created in schools that suppos­ ed ly serve Africa n-America n youth, then those youth arc all do omed. I now understand more clea rly,however, that what we really need to do is get out of the way of those African-American teachers, scholars, and researchers who already know the "way out of no way" (Young 1994). For, the reality is that, with or without us- their teachers, as Richard Wright (194 1) proclaimed in 12 J\1i.llion Black Ttoi ces, "Hundr eds of thousand s [of African-Americans] arc moving into the sphere of conscious histor y" (p. 147 ) a histo ry that includes H illia rd 's assumpti on of intellec tual a nd spiritua l tra n sform ation.

Summary

Two of the philosop hical and instructional constructs for the classroom , dis­ cussed in this chapter are not only valuabl e but also imp erative for delivering consistently positive academic results and for grounding all of our classroom work in intellectual integrity.

T he first is discussed in the chapter under the category of Nature Vs. Nurture. T he nature of the learn er, in colleges and universities, is too often questioned. Without a record of past high performa nce or high test scores accompa nying ad mittance, a student's ab ility to withstand the rigor of the college classroom

is st rongly doubted,. iVhat th is chapter suggests is that, as instructors, when

we do not believe in tJ1e c apacit y of all students to achieve at high levels, reg ardl ess of SAT scores, previous skill-based comp e tence in a discipline, or ethnic or socio-economic history, we stunt the intellectual growth of those who arc in our classroom, and we weaken the nation's capacity to profit from its human inte llectual capita l. Too much research and too many life storie s emphatically demonstrate that those who wor k hard to pursue excelle nce, regardless of previous manifesta tions of talent, can and do achieve at high levels when they know that their teachers expect from them and demand excellence. Within such a climate of respect and nurt ure, the students per­ form well, rega rdless of the methodology that those professors use (H illiard, Delpit , Stee le). Septima Clark and others in the Southern Freedom Move­ ment proved this over and over again, while teaching illiterat e ad ults in the rural south. Bob Moses continues that tradition in the Algebra Project. Asa

G. Hilliard , III c rea tes that for graduat e students. As professors, we need to school ourselves in those lesso ns.

T he second imperative is discussed under the category Education.for Liberation. Denying our students the opportunity to examine the faulty notions of a his­ tory and epistemology rooted in oppression, which taints ail of our individual disciplines, is a negligence that hinders honest intellectual discourse. Within a discourse of liberati on, African-Americans like Vincent Harding seem to be asking educator s the right questions. Harding (1999 ) wrote tJ1a t, "Langston H ughes, our po et /t eache1 said , 'V\le, the people, must redeem our land ... And make America again.' What does it mean to redeem a land, to remake a nation? Who are 'the people' who must do it? And who are the teachers, and what is the curriculum that will prepar e us for such a task?" Theresa Perry, Charles Payne (Perry et al. 2003; Payne 1995, 1997 ) and hundreds of other Africa n American scholars suggest that a curriculum grounded in the old A frica n-American traditions of liberato ry education is a first step in transforming our students, our schools and colleges, ourselves, and our nation.

T herefore, if we really want to call forth in the classroom tJ1e in tellec tual dimension of African-American students, we need to honor their histories which demon strate that struggles for liberation have been an on-going move­ ment in America since the clays of slavery, that their ancestors for centuries have been pushing America to reach its dream . T hese stories are powerfully instructive. T hey privilege a na rrative that counters society's climinishment of tJ1e ir cultural vigor and in tellec tual traditions (Perry et al. 2003). When stu­ dents investigate science, mathematics, philosophy, and the humanities within a context that acknowledges the ancient Black civilizations that existed while Europe was still in the dark ages, possibilities emerge for new ways of think­ ing about each discipline, about knowledge, and about the making of knowl­ edge. If we ignore the significan ce of examining cultural tru ths, then no

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matter how crea tive or "c utting edge" our stra tegies are, they become mean­ ingless a nd lead nowhere except to further buoy a spiritually and intellec tually cor rupt "military industrial complex." If students are reading and writing his­ torical and cultu ral distortions , and ignorin g the impact of those distortions on sustaining a hegemonic worldview, who cares what strategy we're using, or how well the stud ents read and write. In such classrooms, I think about the words of l\liao ri writer, Patricia Grace who said th at, " Books a rc Dan gerous" because most books lie about indige nous people's values, ac tio ns, custo ms, cultu re, identity, and, ultima tely, their existence (Smith, 1999, p. 35 ). When we do not confront the erroneous constructions of knowledge embedded in all of our disciplines, are not our classrooms dangerous as well?

Marti n Lu ther King, J r. said that, "The American Negro may be the van­ guard of a prolonged struggle that may change the shape of the world, as billio ns of deprived shake and transform the earth in the q uest for life, free­ dom and justice" (H a rding, 1998, p. I 08 ) F rom reading the stories of the long history of African peo ple's resista nce to oppression , I believe th a t th e ':i\merica n egro" has been in the vanguard for over 400 years, stru ggling, chan ging, challenging the society to tran sform itself, and if we as teachers cannot usher those ancestors' children to the top of their game, then we need to step aside and allow those who do know how to do it.

References

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Berry, T. (1990). The dream ef the earth. U nivcrsity of California Press.

Ca mpbell, W. & Smith, K. (199 7). New Paradigms for Coll.ege Teaching.

M innea polis: Burgess Publishin g Co.

Carruthers,]. H. (1999 ). Intellectuawl a,fare. Chicago: Third World Press. p. xv. Ca rruthers,]. H. & H ar ris L. C. (Eds). (1 99 7). Africanworld hist01y project: T he

/mliminaiy challeng.eLo s Angeles, CA: Association for the Study of Classica l African Civiliza tions.

Clark, D. (1989). High expectation s. Effectiveschools: Critical issues in the education

ef black children. D etro it: National Alliance of black School Edu cators. p. 33.

Crim , A. A. (1999). Psychological aspects of leadership. A course taught at Georgia State University, Atlan ta, GA.

Delpit, L. (1995 ). Other people's children. cw York: T he New Press.