Students Called 'N-Word' Everyday by Some Teachers
June 23, 2008 | Los Angeles, California | Vetting explained
I substitute teach in three to four different classrooms, different grade levels, each week, but the scene is the pretty much the same in all of them, especially in the lower elementary grades: I actually get to see Bigger Thomas in real life. There is he is, physically sitting alone from the rest of the class, which is mostly Hispanic with a few whites and black girls thrown in. My man Bigger has a desk all to himself, usually in the back of the room, courtesy of a teacher who warns me in her lesson plan to watch out for Bigger; he is a problem. I usually ask Bigger himself why he has his own desk, away from the other desks. But before Bigger can answer, the whole class does for him: "He's bad, he doesn't listen, he's always in trouble..." Bigger will shout something back, but his heart is not really in it. He has resigned himself to being Bigger with an "N" substituted for the first letter. It's what the whole class, including his teacher, expect; so, for sure, he is going to give them Bigger with an "N". For the day or two that I am a substitute teacher in Bigger's class, I tell the other kids to be quiet and keep their opinions to themselves (they go off and do another assignment...in one class, their teacher had wanted me to play Disney videos the whole day), and I sit down with Bigger and we take up the entire board with a mock plan to invade some foreign country overseas with a budget of $20MM. Bigger respectfully, enthusiastically demonstrates math, analytics and strategy- Tags:
- reclaiming_the_dream,
- ireport_for_cnn,
- black_in_america,
- racism,
- politics,
- obama,
- n-word,
- education,
- race,
- black,
- african-american,
- hip-hop
- Posted in Assignment:
- Black in America
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