Last night I received a text message. "
Diary of a
first year Teacher. Look it up".
I looked up the title and found a blog written by an anonymous 22 year
old white teacher in the Mississippi Delta.
In the blog she writes of an experience
teaching
about Dr. Martin Luther King at an all-black school in a part of the United
States that always has been and always will be segregated, my birthplace, the
Mississippi Delta. The top comment on
the bottom of the page was from a young man from Louisiana who
"attended" college.
the
elephant in the living room:
"When a
majority of parents refuse to require their kids to behave and do their work in
school, those students drag down the standards for the whole school. Disruptive
behavior dominates the classroom. It becomes harder and harder for the serious
students to actually learn anything, or get any work done. The parents of those
students are left with no choice but to remove their children from bad
schools."
This young man was the top commenter and legions of white
non-Deltans rallied to agree with him. The problem was that it was inaccurate
and inconsistent with history. I replied:
"I am from the Delta. I was born, raised, and educated there. The majority of my classmates graduated and
moved away. In fact 22,000 African Americans between the age of 18 and 35 left
over the 2000-2010 Census decade. When I
was growing up white students went to college to get better jobs. Black students went to college to leave. The exodus of over 20000 African Americans
along with the decline in manufacturing left the Mississippi Delta
impoverished. However, before the region
was in the shape it was in now, there were strong black families and good
public schools. The schools were black
because white people never have sent their children to the public schools
there. Even in districts where the
quality of public education exceeds that of private education, white
Mississippians elect to send their children to white flight academies. You can't remove students from schools they
never attended."
I allowed the comment to stay up for about an hour and then
I deleted it. I deleted it because it
had been made aware to me that people from work watch my Facebook page. Rather than being called into my boss's
office for posting racially charged material I deleted my very accurate post
and went to bed. This morning I walked
past the neighboring office complete with pictures of her heroes, Colin Powell,
Ronald Reagan, and Audrey Hepburn. I
wondered what the reaction would be if I were to put up pictures of Michelle
Obama, Nia Long, and Angela Davis. But
all I can do is wonder. African American
women experience a spiral of silence at work.
While white employees are allowed to vent about low job satisfaction and
celebrate their political affiliation African Americans typically hold all
complaints and political beliefs in until they are safely among other African
Americans or until they go home.
Racialized normative
workplace feeling rules must be obeyed.
There is an
interaction
order after all. The compound effect
of this has caused me (one of the few educated professionals from my class
remaining in the state) to seek employment and life away from Mississippi.
