Here it is in Black and White

Yesterday I substitute taught for a 7th grade English class. It was gory. However, I learned a valuable lesson from these 13 year-olds.

Racism is alive and well.

For lack of a lesson plan another English teacher stepped in and wrote a thought provoking journaling prompt.

If you had the power to eliminate racism by making everyone the same race would you?

The first thing that struck me was that every student (regardless of their race) assumed the one race would be white. The majority of the papers I read (I did not read them all) suggested that we should not go to one race because "God made them that way" but could not give the reasons this was significant. Not one paper I read suggested that we already belonged to one race... the human race. Most of the papers had phrases written that were obviously direct quotes from adults "the problem is that you can't understand them." etc. There were some lovely things written about the world becoming a boring place if it was all one color (once again always white). One student assumed in his paper that if we all went to one race that meant that all black and Hispanic people would be dead (he consequently was Hispanic himself). One child made an uninformed stab about closing the boarders... but by far the most horrific thing I read was this: My parents are from ??????? So they are racist. Down there the black people shoot you, but here they are all nice.


At the end of the day I felt as though I had been shot. I thought we had come so far, but we still have so far to go.

I came home weary and disheartened, opened my e-mail and found an emotionally charged message that had been sent in mass to myself and others, regarding why Muslims could not be good Americans, sighting many of the teachings from the Koran. At the end it beseeched its readers to please send this message to everyone they knew.... because Barack Obama is going to be sworn in on a Koran and we can't have a Muslim running this country..... I wept.

I had no idea that misinformed was the new black. (Pardon the pun).