For the Love of Black People
Bell hooks, my students & my lily-white ass.
In this post: I want to talk about how much I love Black cultures and bell hooks’ writing on teaching, love, and life.
Last week: Where my frustration with the education started, the importance of listening to BIPOC students, and the concequences of minors targeted by micro and macroagressions from the adults around them.
Next week: Photos of Protests in Riga, Latvia in front of the Russian Embassy, updates on Russian adcance, and what I'm re-reading.
The most life-changing text I have read to date has been bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. It was my first engagement with Black feminism, and it remains one of the most sought-after books on my shelf (I keep it right by my desk, just in case). This quote stands as a reminder of how much we all have to gain by embracing Black futures, love, and imagination, as hooks herself stated:
“Urging all of us to open our minds and hearts so that we can know beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable, so that we can think and rethink, so that we can create new visions, I celebrate teaching that enables transgressions-- a movement against and beyond boundaries. It is a movement which makes education the practice of freedom” -bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress
Love, Teaching, and My Lilly White Ass Go to (teach at an) Urban High School:
When I told people I was teaching a college course in a high school classroom in Harlem, the near-universal reply was::scrunched face:: “woof! Are the kids so bad?” No one said anything about love, liberation, and empowerment, even though that’s what I was in it for. I had a hard time countering these responses with anything other than "I love it, teenagers are hilarious."
These comments weren't always explicitly racist, that knee-jerk reaction to the mere idea of teaching teenagers-- who tend to inspire adult revulsion/fear-of-being-made-fun-of writ large. I had taught high school before and found teenagers to be exhilarating to teach. They were more inquisitive, engaged, and hilarious than my mute and somewhat forlorn/hung-over-looking college students. And their brains… cognitively speaking their little hormone-flooded minds did loops around the progress I saw my college students make in the course of a semester. Teens learn so damn quickly, teaching them is like selling water in a desert of boredom and angst. And when you find yourself teaching a sea of Black and Brown faces about the art history of their ancestors, watching the students come alive with passion and show a dedication to grammar? Teacher's best day ever. I wanted more.
I was hooked and cleared my path to pivot and pursue a secondary education teaching license. I felt I had found a viable career path using my weirdo-skill set and knowledge. I was determined to worm my way into one of the largest public school systems in the country (the naivete of white saviors, ammi right?)
White Savior of the Week: me!
I’m not saying every white teacher who enters urban education has a white savior mentality, but I am saying that this false deficit-based narrative of white teachers has nonetheless inspired an entire generation, of which I am a part. Please see: "The Teach for America Scam" by Aarushi Nohria, Oct 5, 2020, which lists the serious problems of TFA as A White Savior Complex, prioritizing image over impact, teacher turnover.... [and] making broad generalizations and misleading claims doesn’t help anyone.
Stay tuned...
What I’m reading:
Mikki Kendall on the legacy of bell hooks, in this WaPo op-ed.
Hood Feminism: Notes from the women a movement forgot (2020, Viking Press) by Mikki Kendall (full pdf available here)
All About Love bell hooks (2000, Harper Perennial)(full pdf click here)
Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994, Routledge) (full pdf click here)
This medium article, "While We're Talking About Structures of Oppression, We Ought to Talk About Teach for America" by Miles Devon Skeens about the Propublica report in 2019 about the cozy relationship with Teach for America and Corporate Charter Schools.
ProPublica report: How to Teach for America Evolved Into An Arm of the Charter School Movement, by Annie Waldman
NSFS: Not Safe for School, your snark-filled antidote to racism and corruption in education. Follow @postphdtheblog on Twitter and @allisonharbin_postphd on Instagram