Celebrating Juneteenth

This post also appears today on Multicultural Familia, an online magazine supporting modern families.

Today we celebrate Juneteenth. 

What is Juneteenth?  

It is the oldest African-American holiday, celebrating freedom and honoring the memory of former slaves. You might know that President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 and wonder–why do we celebrate on June 19th? The answer is that not all slaves knew they were free in 1863. Many white plantation owners wanted to keep their slaves working after the Emancipation; they wanted to continue making profits from free labor. As Union troops marched across the country, news of Emancipation spread; but it did not reach all slaves. The slaves in the state of Texas were not told about their freedom until Union troops marched to Galveston two and a half years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It took two and a half years for the United States to make sure that everyone knew: All slaves are free. That was June 19, 1865.

One year later on June 19, 1866, former slaves gathered to celebrate their freedom with music, worship, barbecue and the sharing of stories. The system of slavery and its aftermath did not permit African-Americans to attend school or learn to write, so the story of Emancipation was spread though oral tradition. Through their retelling, June Nineteenth became shortened to Juneteenth.

How Can I Celebrate Juneteenth?

Today, Juneteenth is a state holiday in Texas and in many other states. Families gather to celebrate their freedom by barbecuing, attending parades, sharing music and telling stories. Many drink red beverages or eat red velvet cake. Red symbolizes the blood shed by former slaves.

Looking for ways to teach your children about Junteenth? Many communities have Juneteenth celebrations with family friendly activities and barbecue. www.juneteenth.com has a place to search for and add Juneteenth celebrations occurring worldwide. My family will first remember history by reading some books we got from our local library and talking about them. Then we will celebrate freedom with barbecue, a baseball game and fun!

Children’s Books about Juneteenth

Juneteenth Jamboree by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Yvonne Buchanan. Published by Lee & Low Books.  Check out the Lee & Low site for a classroom guide filled with activities and discussion questions to help teach kids about Juneteenth here.

Juneteenth by Vaunda Michaux Nelson and Drew Nelson, illustrated by Mark Schroder. This book does a wonderful job of teaching the history of slavery with both sensitivity and honesty. The authors describe how slavery began by asking children to imagine themselves in the past, “Imagine that you are playing outside. Suddenly you are captured in a net like an animal. You are packed in the bottom of a ship with many other stolen people.” They go on to describe the basis for the Civil War and the continued struggle of black Americans for equality.

How does your family celebrate Juneteenth?

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Read more: What is Juneteenth & How Can I Celebrate at Home? http://www.multiculturalfamilia.com/2012/06/19/celebrating-juneteenth/#ixzz1yH3G595i

Special Education, Suspension, Criminalization of School, Dropout Rates, and Race

Image Credit/Flickr: soonerpa 

My brain has been abuzz with all kinds of things. Although I do not know the specific details of  my new job, I know a lot about the theoretical backing for programs like the one I'm going to work in. Here are the facts:

• African-American students nationwide are labeled as having emotional/behavior disorders and/or learning disabilities and placed in special education programs more often than white students--even though the schools doing that labeling have fewer black students than white students. This is called disproportionate minority representation in Special Education.  (See this book and this study for specifics, or just Google the phrase "disproportionate African Americans in special education" to get over a million results.)
• African-American students, specifically black males, are punished more often than white students--even in schools where there are fewer black students than white students.  This is called the disproportionate discipline of African-American students. The punishments often take the form of out-of-school suspensions or involve police. Out-of-school suspensions lead to students falling behind in schoolwork, increasing the achievement gap. Police involvement leads to the criminalization of school behavior, and more kids entering the juvenile justice system. (See this article with stats for the 20 biggest school districts in the nation, and this page with links to civil rights studies.)
• The system of zero-tolerance for behavioral issues that is in place in many schools often calls for police involvement in schools. This is the criminalization of school behavior. When we allow behavior in school to be criminalized, we send children into the juvenile justice system. Once a child is in the system, it is extremely difficult for them to get out. This is called the School-to-Prison Pipeline. Since disproportionate numbers of African-American students are facing disciplinary action in schools, it follows that disproportionate numbers of African-American students are entering this pipeline, moving directly from school to prison. (Read the ACLU's fact sheet here and find a book from the Civil Rights Project here.)
• High School Dropout Rates are terrible, especially among poor and minority students. Our nation's dropout rate in 2009 was 8.1%. The dropout rate for white students was 5.2%. For Black students it was 9.3% and for Hispanic students it was 17.6%--again, this is a disproportionate number of students of color. (See the National Center for Education Statistics fact sheet here.)

It all seems so dismal. Unsurmountable obstacles to face, especially when most school teachers and administrators nation-wide are white (Find information about the U.S. Department of Education's plan to increase teacher diversity here.) Without the experience of knowing what it is like to be on the receiving end of racially-motivated stereotypes and prejudices or having your own child face such injustices, it is hard for many white people to understand the enormity of these problems. Schools try to alleviate the problems by offering diversity training for teachers (this is now a huge industry in education, with workshops available every year--particularly around Martin Luther King Day.) But is offering diversity workshops to white teachers enough? 


I don't think so.

For me, the thing that irritates me most about education reform is the trickle down theory: if we focus on the administrators and teachers, things will get better for kids. Reformers all seem to start at the top, and then hope that changes eventually make their way to the kids. That trickle-down approach means that things take years to improve for kids. Districts have to search for the proper teacher training materials, schedule the workshops at least a year in advance to get school board approval, and then they have to assume that all teachers will buy-in to the training. Once the in-service or training occurs, teachers have to find value in the material presented in order to start the process of change. And if they find value, then they have to take things one step further and actually apply their learning to their classrooms. If we're honest about things, that doesn't happen very often. Teachers are stuck in the day-to-day, one minute at a time, running of their classrooms. It takes a lot of determination to step back from the minutiae of day-to-day classroom operations so that we can alter the way we do things. One student's behavior, or a group of students' resistance to something new, and the lack of time to properly plan things, makes it difficult to change.

Instead of focusing on teacher diversity training, I think we should be focusing on changing things immediately and drastically for students. Develop plans for students first, and then make sure teachers adjust. Grassroots education change is what will make things better for kids the fastest.

How do we do that?

Start with the kid.  When a behavior occurs, do not call the police. Talk to the kid. When a problem arises, do not instantly suspend a child---talk to him. Teach him. If behavioral expectations aren't being met, consider the fact that perhaps no one has ever specifically taught the kid to meet those expectations. We need to explicitly and directly teach kids how to interact; we can't just assume that they know better. We can't keep punishing kids for doing things they don't necessarily know are wrong. We are educators. We need to teach kids, not kick them out. We need to give students the skills to succeed in school, on the job, and in life by teaching them. That is the only way to stop the school-to-prison pipeline, to end the disproportionate suspensions/labels/dropouts and get kids connected to mainstream society. Research shows that if we can get kids connected to someone/something positive by age 25, their chances of being successful in life improve astronomically. Instead of planning new in-services to teach multicultural communication skills, let's plan a program to directly connect kids to a teacher or community member who can explicitly teach skills that will help them be successful.

And so...that's what's been on my brain lately.  I am finishing out this year in my little alternative education classroom and doing the things we've always done to finish the year, but I am also receiving contact from people in the job I've accepted for next year. I am excited to learn more about what that job entails because it really does seem like a vortex of swirling "rightness" is around me--this job is right for me... I feel it. I don't know what the day-to-day nitty gritty of the new job will bring, and I can't really know until I get there. Obviously, there will be many day-to day changes, including these:

• 10 minute commute instead of 40+ minute commute
• 100 teachers in the building instead of just 1 (me)
• 1,400 students instead of 20-30

The level of student diversity will also be much different. The high school I am moving to is not as diverse as the elementary school my own children attend (that is 56% non-white), but at 30% non-white it is still more diverse than where I currently work--which is all white.

As I've said, I don't know the nitty-gritty daily-grind details of what my new job entails. But it is directly related to all of the above and involves intervening, problem-solving, and directly teaching kids. I am looking forward to being a part of a program that focuses on students, hoping that what they're taught raises them up without having to wait for change to trickle down.

Black is Beautiful: A Message to our Children Inspired by Trayvon

Image Credit: Flickr/werthmedia

Image Credit: Flickr/werthmedia

For a couple of weeks I've had to focus on things going on in my life, putting one foot in front of the other just to get through. As I spent time yesterday going through thousands of unread stories from fellow bloggers, trying to get caught up, I cried. Several times. 

Honeysmoke recommended this piece by Touré in Time that was the first to move me to tears. His piece is entitled, How to Talk to Young Black Boys About Trayvon Martin, and I don't know which saddened me more: the fact that such a conversation needs to take place between parent and child at all, or the fact that my husband and I have already had that conversation with our son--who is not yet 12. 

AP writer Jesse Washington has a son about the same age as mine. His piece, Trayvon Martin, My Son, and the Black Male Code also pulled at my heart strings. He's had that conversation with his child already, too. His conversation is tempered with personal memories of being an adult man, seen from a distance, and momentarily deemed suspicious by someone in his own family. 

We are a well-trained society when it comes to applying stereotypes.

Pieces written by parents of black/brown children flooded the blogosphere last week. Why? Parents of all children worry about their safety. The Trayvon Martin case has shown that many parents have additional worries. Those who have brown children worry that their safety will be threatened by the very same forces that are supposed to be serving and protecting them. It's not just that a crazy pedophile might snatch our child, it's that a neighborhood watch volunteer might kill him for no reason other than having brown skin in a society that sees all people with brown skin as threats. We inform our children from a young age (my daughters started getting tips at age 7) that they shouldn't bring big bags into any retail store because they may be suspected of shoplifting. We don't allow our son to go to the mall to hang out with friends at all (a cause for major eye-rolling on his part) because they will just be targets for trouble from mall security.  

So much of the time, we have to share messages with our children about how scary it is to be black... How difficult it is to walk around in brown skin...How worried we are for their safety...How much harder they have to try to proves themselves in EVERYTHING so that they can combat stereotypes. 

What we forget to do sometimes, is to remind them that they are beautiful. They are so beautiful! They should be so proud of their heritage and history! No matter what the struggle, no matter how society treats them, they are precious. 

To my children:

You are beautiful. I love you and believe in you, and I will always see you for who you are inside...not just for what is outside--your skin or your clothing.

To all of the black & brown children in the world:

You have a rich and storied history of which you should be proud. Do what you need to do to protect yourself, but never let it diminish your sense of self, your sense of heritage, your love for who you are.

This beautiful song sends such a positive message. Please watch, "You Are Black Gold" by Esperanza Spalding featuring Algebra Blessett.

Every time we need to remind our children about the possibility that what happened to Trayvon Martin could happen to them, let us also remind them that they are precious, like black gold.

Civil Rights in Education

The results of my Google search on the disproportionate number of black students suspended in U.S. Schools

On March 6, 2012 the U.S. Department of Education released some statistics from its Office for Civil Rights. The statistics show that not much has changed since their last round of stats in 2007. From the press release (which you can read here) :

• African-American students, particularly males, are far more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than their peers.  Black students make up 18% of the students in the CRDC sample, but 35% of the students suspended once, and 39% of the students expelled.
• Students learning English (ELL) were 6% of the CRDC high school enrollment, but made up 12% of students retained.
• Only 29% of high-minority high schools offered Calculus, compared to 55% of schools with the lowest black and Hispanic enrollment.
• Teachers in high-minority schools were paid $2,251 less per year than their colleagues in teaching in low-minority schools in the same district.

I ask again...what would the reaction be if we changed a few words around? What if the tables were turned? Imagine the outcry if this were the report's findings:

• White students, particularly males, are far more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than their peers.  White students make up 18% of the students in the CRDC sample, but 35% of the students suspended once, and 39% of the students expelled.
• Students who are proficient in English (ELP) were 6% of the CRDC high school enrollment, but made up 12% of students retained.
• Only 29% of majority white high schools offered Calculus, compared to 55% of schools with the lowest white enrollment.
• Teachers in majority white schools were paid $2,251 less per year than their colleagues in teaching in low-white enrollment schools in the same district.

Nothing will change until white parents and educators start to think about how it would feel if the tables were turned. We need to see all children as our children because in this global village we call home, there is no such thing as other people's children.
___

This is an excellent post challenging the media to focus on these issues  rather than on the usual negative stereotypical stories of crime and violence in urban schools (read problems in schools with high enrollments of people of color). Instead, let's focus on the real issues at hand: discipline, curricula, and teacher quality. It is an interesting argument that I hope you'll take the time to read.

Busy Life & Some Good Reads

On January 17, I started the last semester of my graduate program in Special Education. I am taking 6 semester hours--spending half-days in my own classroom, half-days in another teacher's classroom, then chauffeuring kids to dance/basketball/scouts, going to class, and keeping up (trying to) with my responsibilities for two volunteer board positions. I have been struggling to keep up with all my stuff, and even though I told myself that no matter what I would make sure to keep writing...I'm worried that this blog will fall by the wayside until May.

I hope that you all can stick with me for the next few months while I try on this whole micro-blogging thing that Multicultural Familia founder, Chantilly, recommended on her blog Bicultural Mom. Instead of me sorting out my thoughts in long-form, I'll be sharing little snippets of things I find interesting. I hope that you'll find them interesting, too.

I won this shirt on My American Meltingpot!

Here are a few posts that caught my attention this week:

My American Meltingpot takes on Black History Month
In honor of Black History Month, Lori is looking at white people who tell black folks' stories and profit from them. This fits right in with the series of done right here on empatheia regarding Inspiration vs. Appropriation. Lori's first post is about Kathryn Stockett and her best-selling book The Help. Check it out here.

Jesse Washington examines the phrase "African-American"
My husband has always referred to himself as Black. He dislikes being called African-American because he is not from Africa--he is American. My mom tells me stories of her time as an elementary school secretary when Nigerian-born or Senegalese-American families came in to fill out registration paperwork for school and checked the "African-American" box- because it truly explained their heritage and current citizenship. These issues and more are tackled in Jessie Washington's piece for the Associated Press which you can read here.

My daughter's hair story featured on Multicultural Familia
As a white person, I had no idea about Black people's hair... until my daughter was about 2 years old. It has been quite a journey for us. Read about it here. If you're as clueless as I was before my daughter was born, Chris Rock did an excellent documentary about the whole Black hair industry and the struggle that Black women face every day with their hair. I highly recommend that you watch Good Hair. And I sincerely thank all who have commented on Multicultural Familia, Facebook and Twitter! You have made my daughter feel even more positive about her decision to go natural in 2012!


What have you read lately that made you think? I'm short on time these days and would love for you all to point me towards the pieces that are worthwhile to read. Please share!

Teaching Slavery in Schools through Empathy Writing: Insensitive or Powerful?

I remember it pretty clearly--as clearly as someone can remember something that happened 30 years ago. The fact that I remember it at all really means something, because most of what happened 30 years ago is pretty hazy.  I was in junior high school. 7th grade. He was my history teacher. A big, burly, flannel-shirt wearing bearded man that reminded me a lot of Grizzly Adams. He was definitely a gentle bear who you wouldn't want to mess with. He made history come alive for me.

The 7th grade curriculum at my junior high covered what is, in my mind, one of the darkest periods of American History--the Civil War era. Mr. S taught us that the origins of the conflict really came much earlier, with the beginnings of slavery. He taught us about the slave trade in a brutally honest way, asking us to put ourselves in the place of an African, stolen from her family, shackled and stacked against strangers on a ship bound for the U.S., land of "opportunity." His lectures were graphic and disturbing. He wanted us to learn the truth: that human beings are capable of doing terrible things to each other. He wanted us to learn about slavery so that if we ever witnessed someone attempting to steal a human being away from their home and family, we would not stand aside and allow it to happen. He wanted us to understand our present world in the context of what occurred in the past. He believed that by learning history we could prevent humanity from making the same mistakes twice.

Image Credit: Flickr/Olivia Hotshot 

We read slave narratives and looked at primary source documents that left no doubt about man's ability to be inhuman. I will never forget the final assignment for our unit on slavery: a writing project that asked us to  synthesize all we'd learned. "Put yourself in the place of an African who has been stolen from her family, and write a series of journal entries from her perspective." That assignment led to my first experience with the power of empathy.  I put myself in the place of an enslaved African and wrote a heart-wrenching series of journal entries that changed the way I looked at people. In fact, I would argue that it changed me forever.

Flash forward 30 years. I've spent some hours here on this blog thinking about and discussing the issue of cultural appropriation, and how it compares to the inspiration many artists/writers/musicians say they get from learning about another culture. My 7th grade teacher asked me to put myself into the experience of someone else and write about it. That writing was powerful. I learned from the act of writing (but I didn't publish my work, claim to be any kind of expert, or profit from what I wrote. That writing was only for myself and my teacher.)

This week a middle school teacher has come under fire for making a similar assignment. "Pretend you are a slave in the southern United States. Write a journal/diary memoir about your life."  A student felt uncomfortable with this assignment and told his mother, who is biracial, that he didn't want to do it. She says, "For him to pretend to be something he's never been or never will be, that's going too far." She requested action from school administrators and says she has not yet received a satisfactory response.

I am puzzling this out, just like the inspiration vs. appropriation pieces, because I can see both sides of the issue. On the one hand, I know first hand how powerful such an assignment can be if given in the appropriate context. I know, both as a teacher and as a learner, that some of the most powerful learning comes from those moments where we are uncomfortable. Pushing ourselves to stretch our imagination, our math ability, or our understanding of foreign ideas---that is how we learn, and it is not always comfortable or neat. Learning is messy; it stirs things up. But I say all of that as a white woman, whose ancestors weren't slaves. Maybe an assignment asking me to pretend I am someone from my own family, who suffered such inhumanity, would be more than just uncomfortable. It might even be painful.

There were definitely black kids in my junior high school history class. I don't remember talking about anything as serious as our history assignments back then, so I don't know how it felt for my friend Traci to write about her ancestors' suffering. But this news story has given me pause. As my son picks his classes for junior high next year I wonder if he will learn about slavery, if his teacher will ask him to write from the point of view of a slave, and how we will respond to that. 


How would you respond?

Being African-American in Iowa: Politics

Iowa Pubic Radio (IPR) correspondent Rob Dillard (@IPRDillard) has been working on a year-long assignment on diversity. In March-April 2011, IPR ran series of stories on Being Latino in Iowa that highlighted the Latino experience in my home state. Dillard covered stories on the effect of Latino populations on small towns and the importance of Latino food and culture. The series returned to focus on a different population in our state--African-Americans.  According to IPR, U.S. Census data show there are now 90,000 African-American adults living in Iowa. According to state department of education enrollment figures, there are almost as many African-American children enrolled in our public schools. My husband and his family have lived in the state since the 1960's and I found it interesting to hear what Rob Dillard learned about Being African-American in Iowa in 2011. His series was divided into five parts: education, economy, politics, health, and spirituality. I have written about my family's experiences with education and economy.

Last night I was watching the Republicans verbally duke it out at the Iowa Debate (thanks Ezzy, for reminding me to watch) and decided to watch the Twitter response. Besides all of the commentary about what $10,000 can buy and Newt's statement that Palestine is "an invented state", several tweeps noted that the audience was overwhelmingly white. They questioned why this debate was held in Iowa, a state that is 95% white and mostly rural.

The reason the debate is held in Iowa is simple: we are the first in the nation to caucus (i.e. elect) a candidate in any political party. According to the Iowa Caucus Project, a move by our state legislature in the 1970s to improve the delegation process led us to be first in the nation. Our government wanted more people to be able to take part in the political process, so they pushed for election reform and required a minimum of 30 business days between precinct caucuses and the county, district and state conventions.  During those 30 days, the caucuses are advertised so that more people know about them and can participate. In 1972 the State Convention was slated for May 20. Allowing for 60 business days to occur before the State Convention made the Iowa Caucus date January 24--first in the nation. It has been that way since 1972. (See Slate magazine's great article about the Caucus here.)

What tweeps watching the Iowa Debate may not know is that we do have some diversity in Iowa: I am sitting in a house where I am the only white person, and my children attend a school that is over half non-white. There are pockets of extreme diversity in our state. Those pockets of diversity have greatly influenced our politics, and as I've written in the past, Iowa has a history of doing what is right instead of what is popular when it comes to some political issues--especially Civil Rights.

The Iowa Public Radio podcast, Being African-American in Iowa: Politics, was aired in July of 2011. It taught me a lot of about the history of African-American involvement in Iowa politics at the state-level. It is an impressive history to me because for African-Americans to be elected, they need to cross the so-called "color line" and gain the votes of whites in their districts. The African-Americans interviewed in the IPR podcast did that--they went door to door, they hosted events, they communicated their concerns and interests. A repeated theme in those interviews is this: "We need to focus on what we have in common vs. what we don't have in common." Those who were elected got there by focusing on the issues, but not necessarily by talking about race. The podcast talks about Helen Miller, an African-American woman who currently serves in the Iowa House. Miller is the ranking member on the House Agriculture Committee, which is not a committee dealing with a traditionally African-American issue. She states that she got there by really communicating and focusing on the issues. There seems to be a significant amount of "colorblindness" in campaigning that leads to African-American success in politics.

In my mind, the notion of focusing on the issues to get elected is one that is very idealistic. It can happen in a state like Iowa because there isn't much diversity in the state as a whole. But there are definitely issues that need to be addressed without a "colorblind" lens. These issues are human rights issues, and it is my hope that eventually a candidate--of any color--will begin to discuss them.

These statistics are from the Iowa Commission on the Status of African-Americans:

• The poverty rate in 2008 for African Americans was 35.6%. The corresponding rate for Iowa is 11.5%
• 70.9% of African-Americans rent, as opposed to owning, their own home. The corresponding rate for the state as a whole is 27.1 %.
• The unemployment rate for African-Americans in 2008 was 8.9%. For Iowa as a whole, it was 3.9%
• Median earnings for African-Americans was $19,174. For Iowa, it was $26,959. 

Then there is also a considerable achievement gap for all people of color in Iowa. According to the Iowa Department of Education's "Gap Paper,"

Gaps exist in the achievement of Iowa students. In 2010, the percent of all students in grade four enrolled for full academic year (FAY) scoring proficient, as measured by the Iowa Tests, was 78.5 percent. The percent of Black (54.5 percent), Hispanic (61.2 percent), free or reduced lunch eligible (66.6 percent), or English Language Learner (ELL) (51.3 percent) students was considerably less.

Interestingly enough, these Iowa issues are also issues we face as a nation. Yet none of them were mentioned in last night's Republican debate. In my mind, these are human rights and social justice issues that concern us all. Politicians, no matter what their color, can no longer afford to be colorblind.

I am interested to see when, if ever, the 2012 candidates will really and truly discuss issues of poverty, unemployment and achievement.

What issues do you think politicians should be discussing? What was your reaction to the Iowa Debate?

Being African-American in Iowa: Economy

Iowa Pubic Radio (IPR) correspondent Rob Dillard (@IPRDillard) has been working on a year-long assignment on diversity. In March-April 2011, IPR ran series of stories on Being Latino in Iowa that highlighted the Latino experience in my home state. Dillard covered stories on the effect of Latino populations on small towns and the importance of Latino food and culture. The series returned in September 2011 to focus on a different population in our state--African-Americans.  According to IPR, U.S. Census data show there are now 90,000 African-American adults living in Iowa. According to state department of education enrollment figures, there are almost as many African-American children enrolled in our public schools. My husband and his family have lived in the state since the 1960's and I found it interesting to hear what Rob Dillard learned about Being African-American in Iowa in 2011. His series was divided into five parts: education, economy, politics, health, and spirituality.  I plan to blog about my thoughts on each of these issues and how they relate to my family's experiences in Iowa.

Image via Davenport NAACP

According to the Iowa Public Radio podcast Being African-American in Iowa: Economy, 2,200 African-Americans in Iowa own their own businesses. Most African Americans in Iowa do not own their own businesses, though; instead they try to work for other people. Overall unemployment rate in Iowa is 6%. However, the unemployment rate for blacks in our state is more than twice that, at 13%.

The average income for a white family in Iowa is $61,000. The average income for a black family in Iowa is $27,000 (source: Status of African Americans in Iowa report). The poverty rate in 2008 for the African American population was 35.6%. The corresponding rate for Iowa as a whole is 11.5%.  These numbers echo a national trend. Using the demographics tool at the National Center for Children in Poverty's website you can select from a list of factors and compare poverty rates among the 50 states. In EVERY state, half or more of the African-American population lives in poverty.  Considerably less than half of white people in every state live in poverty.

Many families are trying to make ends meet, trying to go to college and live the American Dream...but they are finding it hard to make that dream become a reality. A mother on the podcast tells the story of her lost faith in the American Dream, and her story echoes the story of many people--especially young mothers--in my own neighborhood.  Many of the parents in my neighborhood came to Iowa from Chicago trying to make a better life for their children. Neighborhoods here are safer, housing is more affordable, and (for a while) decent jobs were available. Our community is home to an excellent community college and a state university, so there are opportunities for residents who aspire to better themselves through higher education.  A lot of young mothers who move to Iowa from Chicago enroll in school, work part-time jobs, and strive to achieve the American Dream. And like the mother interviewed for the podcast, they struggle.  Fast food restaurants and motels seem to be the top employers for those new to our community, and the average pay at such places is not enough to support a family.

Why are the numbers representing economic status of African-Americans so disproportionate when compared to the numbers representing the economic status of European-Americans? How do we improve the quality of life for African American families, both in Iowa and in the nation? How can we revive the American Dream? Like the founders of our nation, most people today are trying to make a better life for their families. Why is it so much harder to achieve that dream for African American families than others? The Iowa Commission on the Status of African Americans is trying to answer those questions, and to provide resources for African Americans in Iowa, such as listings of grant opportunities and employment opportunities.

What can others do to help? First and foremost, consider your own perceptions of African Americans in your community. Do you make assumptions about the abilities of African Americans? about their education? about their interests? Do you look black people in the eye when you walk by? Do you speak to them with the same respect you speak to other people? In every day situations, do you approach African Americans without fear?

Consider your perceptions, and if you see a difference in the way you treat African Americans from the way you treat the people from other cultures, please investigate why that is. True change begins within. Offer yourself the opportunity to experience a shift in perception. I believe that seeing all people as worthy human beings is the starting point for helping all people to achieve economic equality.

If you see people as equal to yourself,  you will begin to treat people as equal to yourself. 

Imagine: White Students Suspended Disproportionately More than Blacks

Imagine this headline in your local paper:

Report: White Students Suspended 59% More than Blacks

Imagine the response of a typical American  community to this article:

White students in the City School District tend to get suspended at a higher rate than students from other ethnic groups, according a recent report from district officials.  

According to the report, white students accounted for about 59 percent of the 929 suspensions school administrators handed down during the 2010-11 school year, even though they make up only 16 percent of the district's 12,000 students. 

District administrators denied it is a case of racially profiling white students even though the district's teaching staff is overwhelmingly black, with only 13 whites among the district's 918 teachers, said the district human resources director.  

A successful white student athlete in the district says that most white kids he knows don’t feel singled out for being white. Kids who behave poorly receive their due consequences. “White kids just need to realize that they can still be white! They just have to act more professional and try to fit in."

Imagine if you looked at the comments online for this article and saw many comments like this:

If you were a white parent who had white children in this school district, would you be concerned? Would you worry about how your children are being treated? Would you want the school to invest in programming and training to help teachers become more culturally aware of white behaviors?

Would you fear for your children because of the comments? Would you wonder if those who comment using the anonymous login or a pseudonym would ever take the next step and do something in the real world that targets your children--just because they are white?

The headline above did appear in an Iowa newspaper this week. The article above is a paraphrase with only racial categories changed from the original. The comments are real. 

To white people in Iowa and in many other parts of the country where you are still the majority race, I ask you to think about these questions:

• How would you respond if you read that your kids are being disciplined more than any other group in school?
• How would you feel, knowing that you are powerless to do anything about that disproportionate punishment of white students because the same statistics about whites that occur in schools, also are the norm in our judicial system? 
• What lessons would you teach your children about how to survive in a world where brown people are the majority? 
• How would you feel about having to teach your white children survival skills so that they can exist in a brown world?
• What would be important to you? If your children were surrounded by brown people all day, every day, and rarely saw other white people, what would you want them to learn about white culture?

The questions I ask above are the questions that parents of brown children have to ask every day. Stop and think for just a moment. Read any story in your local paper that deals with race. Substitute "white" for "black" or "hispanic" while you're reading, and imagine how you'd feel.

Think about it.

Being African-American in Iowa: Education

Iowa Pubic Radio (IPR) correspondent Rob Dillard (@IPRDillard) has been working on a year-long assignment on diversity. In March-April 2011, IPR ran series of stories on Being Latino in Iowa that highlighted the Latino experience in my home state. Dillard covered stories on the effect of Latino populations on small towns and the importance of Latino food and culture. This week the series returned to focus on a different population in our state--African-Americans.  According to IPR, U.S. Census data show there are now 90,000 African-American adults living in Iowa. According to state department of education enrollment figures, there are almost as many African-American children enrolled in our public schools. My husband and his family have lived in the state since the 1960's and I found it interesting to hear what Rob Dillard learned about Being African-American in Iowa in 2011. His series was divided into five parts: education, economy, politics, health, and spirituality.  I plan to blog about my thoughts on each of these issues and how they relate to my family's experiences in Iowa.

Both as a teacher and a parent of school-aged mixed race children, I found it very interesting to listen to Rob Dillard's piece on education (You can listen to it here:  Being African-American in Iowa: Education.) The piece centers on the Waterloo School District and spends time in a pre-k through 5th grade elementary school called the Dr. Walter Cunningham School for Excellence.  Named after Iowa's first black principal, Walter Cunningham is a public school where 92% of 400 students are black. School officials in the state department of education and the Waterloo School District say that No Child Left Behind data point to a huge gap in achievement between black students and white students.  For every 10 white students in the district, 8 are proficient in reading and math. For every 10 black students, 5 are proficient. District officials, like many other educators in the country are focused on the question,  "How do we close the achievement gap?"

A PBIS assembly at my children's school. Image credit: Bobby Duncan

In the school district where I live, we are seeing a similar gap in achievement that correlates closely with race/ethnicity. Like many other schools both in Iowa and across the country, educators in my home district are talking about how to close the gap. Some things they are trying at the Walter Cunningham School for Excellence and at other schools include: an extended school year (to prevent the loss of proficiency that occurs in all children over the summer),  Positive Behavior Interventions & Supports (a program of setting clear behavioral expectations and rewarding students for meeting them), and an instructional strategy called Differentiated Instruction (individualizing instruction to meet the abilities and needs of each student.)

There are several things that the Iowa Public Radio piece did not discuss. First and foremost is the fact that in Iowa (as well as throughout the rest of the nation) our schools are largely segregated. In the IPR-featured Waterloo school district, Walter Cunningham School is 92% minority. Across town in the same district is Poyner Elementary, which is only 12% minority. In the district my children attend, one school has 13% minority enrollment while another has 70% minority enrollment. It is important to note that in my children's school district (and across the country) poverty and ethnicity correlate: schools with high minority enrollment also have high levels of poverty. Like other school districts in the country, poverty and ethnicity also correlate with lower achievement.  Schools want to close that achievement gap, but are meeting a lot of resistance from parents --largely from white, European-American, educated and middle class parents.

Map via http://www.remappingdebate.org/map-data-tool/new-maps-show-segregation-alive-and-well

Many white, European-American parents are worried that their children are being exposed to a dumbed down curriculum, are being treated like lab rats in a behavioral scientist's research study, and are not receiving the kind of instruction that will permit them to be competitive in the global marketplace.  There is no evidence that the use of research-based practices to close the achievement gap will harm middle class European-American white kids. In fact, the opposite is true--for example, PBIS and Differentiated Instruction research data show that those programs and teaching methods help ALL children--regardless of ability, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. So why are European-American white parents so resistant to changes that will close the achievement gap?

Here is what I know about my own children's education:
They attend a school that has more than 50% minority enrollment, and more than 50% of the students enrolled live in poverty. Their school is in its fifth year of using PBIS and the staff believes the program is making significant positive changes for both them and for students. They are working really hard to close the achievement gap by using PBIS to teach behavioral expectations to all students, and Differentiated Instruction to meet the academic needs of all students. Every student in the school shows tremendous growth each year. Those that start out below proficiency show significant improvement in math and reading by the end of the school year. My own children are usually already at or above-proficiency level when they start the school year, but that doesn't mean that their teachers stop teaching them--they are still learning and growing. There is no shortage of opportunities for them to be creative, to learn, or to move forward to more challenging material. There is no doubt in my mind that my children will go on to be extremely successful at whatever they decide to do with their lives because they are receiving a quality education. The methods used by my neighborhood school not only help to close the achievement gap, but they also work to help students like my kids--those who are already proficient in their grade-level materials.

When there is that kind of research and that kind of testament to the success of programs that help close the achievement gap, and white parents don't want their children exposed to them, I am left wondering...Why?  Why are you so against schools using research-based practices that will improve the future for children of color (who will represent a majority of adults by the year 2042)? How can you be so against it when those same practices will also help your white, European-American children? At the very least, those parents exhibit a selfish interest in "my kid" rather than showing a vested an interest in "our nation's kids."  At the very worst, their resistance may be an attempt to protect their white privilege and/or further our nation's history of institutionalized racism.

We all care deeply about our children. But we need to think about their lives in the future. The U.S. Census predicts that by 2042 our current minorities will be the majority. Kindergarteners today will be adult leaders in 2042--old enough to run for the office of President of the U.S.A. Do you want the majority of our country's adults in 2042 to be the product of schools that settled for less? Should we just leave those kids behind and allow the achievement gap to continue? Shall we just cast aside what research says will close the achievement gap so that the white folks can remain on top and in power? It is time to worry about more than just your own kid. We need to worry about all of Iowa's kids, about all of our nation's kids. Let's close the gap.

Flickr image credit: zimpenfish 

Change IS Gonna Come (get ready Iowa)

Last Wednesday in Iowa City,  a short documentary film premiered entitled "Black American Gothic: Planting Urban Roots in Iowa."  An opinion article appeared in the Iowa City Press-Citizen prior to the film's release stating, "New documentary will spark some needed discussion"


The opinion piece briefly describes problems with racism that exist in Iowa City, but the evidence of those problems appear in the comments section. 


For example, the opinion piece states that black folks move to Iowa City from Chicago because they want better lives for their families. The commenters discuss their belief that black folks come to Iowa City for shorter welfare lines. 


The filmmaker is quoted as saying, "Soon Iowa City and much of Iowa will be truly multiracial like most of the nation, and now we must all reconsider what that means." The commenters do not understand this statement. One of them asks, "Does that mean we have reached some magical number on the desired mixture of races?" 


I read this article and feel a knot in the pit of my stomach. I remember the looks on my all-white students' faces when in Government class we discussed the 2010 U.S. Census prediction: by 2023 more than half of the children in our country will be nonwhite; by 2042 more than half of the adults will be nonwhite. Iowa will not be immune to this change. My family is evidence of the shift to a more multiracial community, as are the many other multiracial families in my neighborhood. Change is here and more is coming. One can only hope that when those white folks who make such closed-minded comments become the minority, the multiracial majority will treat them better than they have been treated. We need to learn to respect each other, not beat each other down.

Poverty is colorblind, right? Or is it...

Using the demographics tool at the National Center for Children in Poverty's website you can select from a list of factors and compare poverty rates among the 50 states.

In EVERY state, half or more of the African-American population lives in poverty. In all but 2 states, half or more of the Hispanic population lives in poverty. Considerably less than half of white people in every state live in poverty. Poverty is not colorblind---maybe it's time that we stop kidding ourselves. Though we celebrate MLK Day each year and have a president of color, we still have a long way to go before Dr. King's Dream becomes a reality.

From United for a Fair Economy website (UFE)