‘Courageous Conversations’

A Black educator tells how his school is dealing with unfair treatment of minority students.

By Jacob Ellis

A White teacher once said to me, “If a group of White students is smoking cigarettes along the schoolyard fence, that doesn’t feel like a crisis. But if a group of Black students is walking down the hall talking loud, that does feel like a crisis.” He was being very honest, and that’s important.

Another time, I heard a White teacher say to a Black student, “I have worked at a predominantly Black school and I’m not afraid of you.” You know that student is saying to himself, “Where did that come from?”

As educators of all children, we need to confront the fact that minority children are disciplined more harshly than White children.

Why does it happen? One reason is that Black students are louder than White students. I’m Black and I’m loud. I’m loud at home. I laugh out loud. If you’re not part of the Black culture, that loudness can be perceived as intrusive and disrespectful, while within the Black culture it may not be. So part of the problem is these cultural differences.

Another reason: Every time you turn on the TV, they’re talking about a Black person doing something bad. But when it’s a White person, they don’t mention the fact that the person is Caucasian, it’s “So-and-so did it.”

When people are bombarded with that, day after day, they form the mental image that Black people are to be feared.

So you have White teachers saying—and I appreciate their honesty—“I’m more comfortable dealing with White students.”

What can be done about this?

At Nathan Hale High School in Seattle (roughly 60 percent White, 20 percent Black, 20 percent Asian), we’ve organized what we call “courageous conversations.”

A group of 10 Black students talked to the staff about their everyday experiences. For example, you walk into a store and they’re following you. Live through enough of these incidents in your life and you really begin to understand you are different.

The staff didn’t ask questions, they just listened. It was very powerful.

In another “courageous conversation,” we invited minority parents to come in and talk about their experiences negotiating the public school system. One said, “I walk up to the office counter and wait for someone to respond to me and I’m ignored.”

Little things like that are important.

Or, “My student was failing, but it wasn’t until the end of the semester that anybody bothered to contact me.”

We had a third round of conversations in which minority teachers shared their experiences.

The White staff members were comfortable at these conversations because we were not playing the blame game.

If you’re White, you will never know what it is like to be a Black person, and I will never know what it is to be a White person. All we can do is listen to each other and believe each other when we talk about our experiences.

Since then, our staff has become much more aware of their behavior in responding to all kids.

As Activities Coordinator for our school, I try to involve minority students in leadership positions in clubs and other activities. When you put students in situations like that, they get to know each other and find out they have the same likes, fears, and concerns. We have a Diversity Club that started four years ago with 20 students. Now it has over 140 students—about half White and half minority—and 10 faculty advisors. One thing that happens in this club is that students talk about their cultures and their experiences.

I love our school. It’s the most cohesive school I’ve ever been in. We have a culture of respect for each other. Parents tell us they can feel it very quickly when they walk into our building.

So my message is this: We have a problem. It’s deep and it’s difficult. But we can do something about it.

Jacob Ellis, a former guidance counselor, is Dean of Students and Activities Coordinator at Nathan Hale High School in Seattle.

Photo by Steve Shelton