WHITE LADY!!!

This semester, I am assisting a professor with her class. My official title: TA (Teaching Assistant). It's a writing class. So, essentially we are teaching middle and high school (some elementary) teachers how to teach writing to their students. Last week, a woman who teaches in a predominantly black school (I believe it's 99% black) said that the majority of her students come from "broken homes" and as a result, these students lack character. It is her job to provide them with enough outlets and models for creativity and expression to counteract what they aren't getting at home.

Immediately, my hackles raised.

Her language is racially coded, for those who don't necessarily see anything with what this sophomore writing teacher said. But, what's more, her implication is that children from "broken homes" lack character. Who decided that she was the purveyor of characters in the Western world? Secondly, it is not her job to save the niggra children. By her statements, not only do the black children she teaches lack character but so do they families because they obviously don't have any upon entering her classroom. I find this terribly disparaging to the children that I taught and the children she teaches. But rather than addressing the comments made in class, the professor followed up with what appeared to be an automatic "Yeah, that's right and..."

That's right??!?!?!?!????!

I felt so entirely disregarded in that classroom. There is only one other black woman in the classroom and, as of last class, she has yet to say a word. Now, I am getting a grade for assisting this professor, but grade be damned, I have to speak up. When I brought it to her attention she said that it was a dilemma as to decide how to address those comments--either at the beginning of the class and risk losing the student or at the end when the class had built a community of learners. My first inclination is to address the comment right off the bat, from jump, as soon as the words are uttered. And, please believe, I do recognize that I can't fire on a student full-speed ahead. That would not have been my approach. I would have questioned her assumptions and asked her to clarify some of the things that she said and thought. But that didn't happen.

It goes against every fiber in my being and my ethical orientation not to speak up when someone disparages another group of people for whatever reason. This class is designed, mind you, to address the ways in which teachers view their students and to disrupt many of the deficit views teachers hold about certain students for whatever reason. I'm pissed; I'm hurt; I'm a lot of other things that I can't put my finger on right now.

I feel as though my presence in the course is window dressing when the goals of the course were overlooked in order to increase the comfort level of students in the class. What about my level of comfort? Why do I have to overlook who I am in order to make sure white folks find comfort? I've done that for the majority of my life. It reminds me of Jack Nicholson's monologue as Col. Nathan Jessep in "A Few Good Men." If you take out the references to the military and replace it with the fellings, thoughts, and sentiments of black folks, it's pretty powerful. This is what I want to say to her:

You can't handle the truth! Lady, we live in a world that has invisible racial walls. And those walls have to be guarded by whites unwilling to relinquish their power. Who's gonna break that wall of privilege? You? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for black people and you curse white privilege. White privilege affords you that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that black people's existence, while tragic, grants you privilege. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, reinforces your privilege and power...You don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me in this world. You need me in this world.

Black folks and true advocates use words like oppression, prejudice, racism...we use these words as the backbone to a life spent fighting for equality. You use them at privilege "conferences." I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a woman who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very privilege and power my existence provides, then questions the manner in which I experience it! I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you join the battle and sincerely reject your privilege. Either way, I no longer give a damn about preserving your entitlement!