These three students, like the majority of my students during summer school, are black. Forty percent of Bronx students live below the poverty line. One in four black children in the country will watch a parent (most likely a father) go to prison at some point. A black male in his twenties and without a high school diploma is more likely to be behind bars than to have a job, according to this NY Times article.
These are trials that I couldn't have imagined facing as a young student, yet they were and continue to be harsh realities for many of the students in the Bronx and other impoverished areas–realities that collectively contribute to the gaping disparity in opportunities for black and Hispanic students compared with their white and Asian counterparts. This pervasive gap is too easily dismissed by many, whether through prejudice, complacency, or disregard.
Case in point: I recently helped a friend pick up some furniture from a family in New Canaan, one of the wealthiest towns in the nation. After loading the furniture, we were treated to lunch. We sat on the back patio overlooking a manicured lawn and marvelous (and probably underused) swimming pool. Our hosts were middle-aged empty-nesters. He was an attorney for "big oil," who still maintains that he spent his life fighting for an "energy-efficient America where the fighter planes could stay in the sky to keep you guys free."
At one point he asked if I knew much Spanish. I told him that I'd studied it in college but am not fluent. "Well, that's okay because the Spanish those kids in Hartford speak isn't what they teach in school anyway," he said with an airy, matter-of-fact tone. By saying it with such condescension, he revealed his elitist viewpoint toward a huge group of young people that he's probably never met and cannot possibly understand.
I think a step in the direction toward eliminating such biases is a basic awareness that they even exist. The guy who said those patronizing words didn't seem aware that he was implying that Hispanic youths in Hartford are unintelligent, even though he's probably never interacted with any of them.
Shamar isn't unintelligent. Neither is Isaiah or Shakira or any of the nineteen other students I had over the summer. Some struggled to read not because of a lack of innate ability but because of the world they were born into, a world that was very different than my own during childhood.
I should have said something to the guy from New Canaan when he belittled the Spanish spoken in Hartford. I was intimidated by his money, I'm ashamed to admit, but that shouldn't have deterred me from telling him about Shamar, who doesn't speak the dialect of English that I learned in faraway Oregon, but who has a quicker wit than most people I met in college.
Or Shakira, who shared with the class in the last week of summer school that one of her close family members had recently died. Despite that, she did manage to occasionally attend school, which must have required an unyielding will that I doubt many people could match. Or Isaiah, whose family had to move because their neighborhood had become too dangerous. He was well behind his peers in reading but would work feverishly on each assignment and rarely talk out of turn even when most students were. His resiliency is a product of the trials he's endured. The fact that I read better than him at his age does not make me smarter. Whereas I was given every resource to learn to read, Isaiah was given poverty and an unsafe neighborhood, and later, an hour commute just to get to school. His resiliency is a stronger asset than my ability to read.
The next time I hear something like this: The Spanish they speak isn't what they teach in schools, I will force myself to say something. It may lead to an uncomfortable conversation. But I'll think about how I'd feel if I were Shamar or Shakira or Isaiah, or any one of the Hartford students that I'll begin teaching in two weeks. That will be more than enough to challenge even the most oblivious prejudice or subtlest bias.