Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (Summer 2011)

I remember well when our public schools in North Carolina began the integrating process. I was approximately eleven years old and in the fifth grade. I was not stranger to blacks and lived close to many in the Piney Ridge area in Randolph County. To see them come into the school was not a shcok for me but I am sure it was for them. This was also the first year that girls could wear pants to school. I did not think of this at the time, but I wonder how long before we had a book adoption year that would also incorporate black history into social studies and reading. I do not remember one reading book that depicted black culture. All our readers were based on white middle class living, no divorced parents, no dysfunctional families, no same sex marriages, no disabled people and no blacks. The only book I can remember as multicultural was Little Black Sambo.
In all my years in school through highschool I only had one black teacher. Not only did the black student population suffer but also the disabled kids at this time. There were no special curriculum and no other classes. I also remember being embarrassed in the social studies lessons when we studied negative black history and the slave market. I would always peek a glance at my black peers and wonder if they were embarrassed or angry.
In a predominately white school with white teachers and administration, no efforts were made to include the black culture in discussions or topics of interest. My black peers never talked and habitually looked down or at the floor.
I really can not remember a push for multicultural literature in the classrooms until the 1990's. I had been out of the school system awhile and went back into the school system in 1994. I still observed predominately white teachers and white students. I can
understand in Henry's research her quest for answers from the perspective of Black African Carribean females. Not only are blacks oppressed through history but black women received a double dose of the oppression.
Our multicultural world and classrooms should reflect positive cultural values of all races through our textbooks and assignments and discussions.
I find it disconcerting that Henry feels she needs to refer to her studies and concerns as a "take back control" approach. I wish we could all plan a curriculum based on our student's needs without distinguishing one group or another but this has not happened in the past so the "take control" approach may be the only way to accomplish this.
Staples research in Hustle and Flow reiterate much of Henry's but in the life of black males. She says that black males are instantly stereotyped into categories of ignorance, criminality, gangs, murderers and thieves. We see this type of stereotyping attitude daily. If something criminal happens and the name or face of the perpertrator is not immediately available the comment is always, "must of been a black man". have we pushed them to this end?
I had the pleasure of having several black male students in one of my highschools classes recently. We used journaling as a means of mentoring. In their work it was amazing how many of them would write about the way people snubbed them and talked about them. In the perspective of white counterparts, these young black men were accussed of being drug dealers, girl friend beaters and gang members. Given them a voice or an opportunity to express them selves through their own cultural studies may instill pride and a reason to help change stereotypes and perceptions.
However, I feel it is our duty to instill pride in these girls and boys through our teaching and help them discover themselves and us.
I can't help but recall in the movie "The Breakfast Club' that the students were able to tell the teacher his perception of each of them even though unspoken.

"Dear Mr. Vernon, We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. What we did *was* wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. What do you care? You see us as you want to see us - in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. Correct? That's the way we saw each other at 7:00 this morning. We were brainwashed. "

Candy Kee