Dear future student,
I am terrified to write this letter to you. Partially because I fear I have nothing meaningful to say to you, and partially because I realize this cannot possibly be true, but that what I do have to express might be both alienating and abhorrent.
I am not intending to start this letter so dramatically, but after sitting in my own thoughts for days on end—realizing that eventually we will have to meet—I understand that my feelings towards you are by no means those of uncomplicated altruism. They are defined by my own history, and what I imagine to be yours. They are defined by our collective national history, world history and, larger than that, the power dynamics that have served to shape humans, all humans, over time.
Student, because of all of these things, I am afraid of you.
I have been hired to bring a “social justice” perspective to your ninth-grade language arts (new fangled code for “literature”) education. Before continuing with this explanation, let’s get a few truths out into the open. I am white, female, privileged, privately educated and in my twenties. You are black, urban, a teenager, either poverty-stricken or lower middle class and attending a public school in a school system that boasts 17 of the 100 worst public high schools in the nation, all of which are in underserved black communities.
And yet, somehow, I am the one hired to teach you social justice, to help you become an agent of your own free will, to empower you? Student, does this not seem rather absurd? How we came to this point, this juncture where my life and yours intersect, stems from the lives of your great-great grandparents, and mine, from the first attempts at subjugation of another being, and the first outcry in response.
I was born and raised in Virginia. I like to say Virginia, and not Washington DC, because here in Chicago, where you and I live, Virginia seems novel and unique. The truth is, I was raised in the crossroads between the confederate horse-country of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the buttoned up coiffed conservatism of politicians who swarm the beltway, and a strong Jewish knee-jerk liberalism motivated by the guilt of being a “have,” instead of a “have not.”
From kindergarten to sixth grade, I attended an elite private school where we wore blackwatch plaid. We were taught to sit well, listen attentively, and that our place in life represented the natural order of things. In my class of 70 sixth graders, there were exactly two black students (one who was the son of a famous Washington Redskins football player), two Indian students (the children of ambassadors), three Jewish students (myself included), and two Latina students (notably Cuban and Colombian).
Beyond our small and disparate “diversity” was a sea of white Protestant students from moneyed Republican families. In sixth grade I left this school for two reasons; I was made fun of for being Jewish (apparently, we killed Jesus Christ), and for being gay (I’m actually not, but that is inessential). From there, I made the trek across the river to Washington DC, and a 14-thousand-dollar per annum mecca of enlightened liberalism; still private, still predominately white. For six years I was told that I was special, important, unique, and brilliant. The funny thing, student, the funny thing, is that I had the luxury to believe all of this.
A friend of mine recently told me a story. He was walking down the street in an area of Chicago known as Hyde Park. In my opinion, this neighborhood is defined by great racial tension. It is home to the University of Chicago, but is surrounded on three sides by economically struggling black communities. It is one of the only truly integrated neighborhoods of Chicago due to the influx of white privileged students, a large number of interracial couples, and thriving south side culture that survives in spite of, or perhaps because of, the University’s influence.
To return to my friend’s story: He is a white male, in his mid-twenties, of average build… and also, a teacher. Walking down the street one evening, he noticed a small group of black children between 5 and 7 years old throwing tennis balls at a white university student who was walking in front of them. As my friend neared their group, he grappled internally with what to do. Should he confront the children? Ask them to stop? Try to talk to their parents? Do nothing?
He continued walking, and confessed to me later, while telling this story, that he simply hoped the youth would not see him. But they did. And, in accordance with their game, they began, as many children would, to follow him with tennis balls in tow. Just as he turned to request they not throw the balls at him, a tennis ball sailed through the air, smacking his cheek.
Did he confront these children? Teach them not to throw tennis balls at people’s faces? No. He turned, and walked on, speedily home. Why? Because he was afraid; afraid of elementary school students, and they were fully aware of it. What would it have done to me, how would it have changed me, if I knew I caused people to be afraid at 5, 6, 7 years old?
Tell me, student, has it done anything to you?
As you might have inferred by this point, student, your experiences and mine up until this point have been quite different. The first time I was really around black people in a purely physical sense was not even in the United States. At 16, I took a trip to Haiti. Up until that point, my encounters were limited to a specific exit on the highway through Anacostia which I knew to be the “ghetto,” and where my family would always lock the doors and speed up.
Indeed, their fear of this “bad neighborhood” was to the extreme that at one point, my mother was so focused on the black man on a bike in her rear view mirror that she slammed into the car in front of us, only to have that same man on the bike kindly retrieve the license plate the incident knocked off her car.
The racism I was raised with was of this implicit nature. I knew the “n-word” was bad, I knew we were supposed to accept everybody, but in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the people in my life modeled an entirely different agenda. Are you already aware of this, student? Do you know that people fear you, a 14-year-old child, because of the neighborhood you are from and the color of your skin? I know that when I was 14, and a young white female, I did not think anyone was afraid of me. Now, I struggle to understand which is worse: Your already knowing, and internalizing, the fear your countenance provokes; or what is perhaps the blessing of your being temporarily ignorant of this dynamic.
In Haiti, for the first time, I encountered undeniable abject poverty. For the first time ever, I was aware of not being in my own community of practice. It was my face that stood out, and a number of assumptions were made about who I was, based on the color of my skin.
In Haiti, I saw my first dead body lying in the street. I was introduced to the abuses of government, and the psychological impact of living daily in violence. I am aware, student, that at 14, you have probably lived through all of these already. I know that this year, as of the end of May, 32 Chicago Public School students have been killed—the youngest being 10 years old, killed in a drive by shooting. I also know that one of your peers made national news after being beaten to death with a railroad tie by other children; the video footage caught on cell phones, and then disseminated online. You see, student, I did not have to live with these realities until much later. I was developmentally behind you.
I did not know I would be a teacher. There are some who, as long as they could remember, wanted to be teachers. I am not one of those people.
How did I begin teaching? Simple. At 22 and about to graduate college, I was lost and desperately needed a next step. As an anthropology student, I found people and systems to be fascinating, and what better system in which to be a “barefoot anthropologist” than education? I saw a sign on campus advertising a new masters program in Urban Education. Impulsively, I applied, was accepted. Without once considering the ramifications, I made a decision that fundamentally changed my life.
This is how you and I cross paths; stuck in an un-air-conditioned, lead paint and asbestos-filled building, struggling to understand each other and navigate an impossibly humiliating system.
Future student, before I go on, let me state, unequivocally, that I love you. We have not met, but I know that I will, because that is how I am. I will love you for all of your needs and your independence, for your obnoxiousness, silliness, and simultaneously over-inflated and woefully inadequate self-confidence. Above all else, this is why I continue teaching, and why, this year, despite my own limitations and misgivings, I will teach you, too.
Remember how I told you that my job was to bring a “social justice” perspective to your learning? I will try my very best to do this. Yes, we will talk about the issues. We will discuss race, my own, yours, and others as well. We will unpack culture, assumptions, normativity and prejudice. I will try to engender a level of informed but functional anger, rooted in the realities of inequity that everybody will attempt to ignore—and they will ask you to be complicit in this ignorance.
For instance, you will be always asked to do more with less; less money, less technology, less support, less understanding, less trust. I’m sorry, but it is true. You will also be subjected to humiliation that only the poor urban student of color has to suffer. Humiliation in the form of endless standardized testing that insults your intelligence, trying to measure a modicum of improvement in the most basic of skills. Humiliation in the form of chanting meaningless affirmations about how you will SUCCEED and are RISING TO THE TOP, of clapping to the beat of call-and-response intended to make up for years of low expectations.
You will bear the indignity of hearing your parents, caregivers and peers insulted and disregarded by the teachers, administration, government and media, because everyone else knows best. Furthermore, you will have to bear the dwindling of your ranks as your peers fall by the wayside, lured by jobs, responsibilities outside of school; as they are killed, imprisoned, or become just too frustrated to stay in the system. By your senior year, only 39 percent of your peers will be left standing with you.
With all of these factors in mind, student, the real social justice piece I will bring is that I will, to the very best of my capacity, teach you. I will really and truly teach you to succeed in a world bigger than the one you are currently exposed to. I will teach you to read, to write, to question, and to code-switch fluidly between whatever communities you wish to be part of.
As Lisa Delpit explains in her work Other People’s Children, too often are black children exposed to the soft racism of low expectations. Student, for whatever deeply internalized racism I have, and I do indeed have it, I will not subject you to low expectations, ever. We are about to start a year together, and yes, as I stated above, I am afraid of you.
Afraid of your blackness, and my whiteness, afraid of your brilliance, and my ineptitude, afraid that in the end it will not be enough, I will not have the necessary tools as an educator, as a human being, to live up to the expectations that you aught to have of me. Student, I am terrified, but I am also unbelievably excited. Thank you. Thank you for being young, and open and, most of all, forgiving. I know I will need it.
Your teacher,
Ms. Nichols
I am terrified to write this letter to you. Partially because I fear I have nothing meaningful to say to you, and partially because I realize this cannot possibly be true, but that what I do have to express might be both alienating and abhorrent.
I am not intending to start this letter so dramatically, but after sitting in my own thoughts for days on end—realizing that eventually we will have to meet—I understand that my feelings towards you are by no means those of uncomplicated altruism. They are defined by my own history, and what I imagine to be yours. They are defined by our collective national history, world history and, larger than that, the power dynamics that have served to shape humans, all humans, over time.
Student, because of all of these things, I am afraid of you.
I have been hired to bring a “social justice” perspective to your ninth-grade language arts (new fangled code for “literature”) education. Before continuing with this explanation, let’s get a few truths out into the open. I am white, female, privileged, privately educated and in my twenties. You are black, urban, a teenager, either poverty-stricken or lower middle class and attending a public school in a school system that boasts 17 of the 100 worst public high schools in the nation, all of which are in underserved black communities.
And yet, somehow, I am the one hired to teach you social justice, to help you become an agent of your own free will, to empower you? Student, does this not seem rather absurd? How we came to this point, this juncture where my life and yours intersect, stems from the lives of your great-great grandparents, and mine, from the first attempts at subjugation of another being, and the first outcry in response.
I was born and raised in Virginia. I like to say Virginia, and not Washington DC, because here in Chicago, where you and I live, Virginia seems novel and unique. The truth is, I was raised in the crossroads between the confederate horse-country of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the buttoned up coiffed conservatism of politicians who swarm the beltway, and a strong Jewish knee-jerk liberalism motivated by the guilt of being a “have,” instead of a “have not.”
From kindergarten to sixth grade, I attended an elite private school where we wore blackwatch plaid. We were taught to sit well, listen attentively, and that our place in life represented the natural order of things. In my class of 70 sixth graders, there were exactly two black students (one who was the son of a famous Washington Redskins football player), two Indian students (the children of ambassadors), three Jewish students (myself included), and two Latina students (notably Cuban and Colombian).
Beyond our small and disparate “diversity” was a sea of white Protestant students from moneyed Republican families. In sixth grade I left this school for two reasons; I was made fun of for being Jewish (apparently, we killed Jesus Christ), and for being gay (I’m actually not, but that is inessential). From there, I made the trek across the river to Washington DC, and a 14-thousand-dollar per annum mecca of enlightened liberalism; still private, still predominately white. For six years I was told that I was special, important, unique, and brilliant. The funny thing, student, the funny thing, is that I had the luxury to believe all of this.
II
A friend of mine recently told me a story. He was walking down the street in an area of Chicago known as Hyde Park. In my opinion, this neighborhood is defined by great racial tension. It is home to the University of Chicago, but is surrounded on three sides by economically struggling black communities. It is one of the only truly integrated neighborhoods of Chicago due to the influx of white privileged students, a large number of interracial couples, and thriving south side culture that survives in spite of, or perhaps because of, the University’s influence.
To return to my friend’s story: He is a white male, in his mid-twenties, of average build… and also, a teacher. Walking down the street one evening, he noticed a small group of black children between 5 and 7 years old throwing tennis balls at a white university student who was walking in front of them. As my friend neared their group, he grappled internally with what to do. Should he confront the children? Ask them to stop? Try to talk to their parents? Do nothing?
He continued walking, and confessed to me later, while telling this story, that he simply hoped the youth would not see him. But they did. And, in accordance with their game, they began, as many children would, to follow him with tennis balls in tow. Just as he turned to request they not throw the balls at him, a tennis ball sailed through the air, smacking his cheek.
Did he confront these children? Teach them not to throw tennis balls at people’s faces? No. He turned, and walked on, speedily home. Why? Because he was afraid; afraid of elementary school students, and they were fully aware of it. What would it have done to me, how would it have changed me, if I knew I caused people to be afraid at 5, 6, 7 years old?
Tell me, student, has it done anything to you?
III
As you might have inferred by this point, student, your experiences and mine up until this point have been quite different. The first time I was really around black people in a purely physical sense was not even in the United States. At 16, I took a trip to Haiti. Up until that point, my encounters were limited to a specific exit on the highway through Anacostia which I knew to be the “ghetto,” and where my family would always lock the doors and speed up.
Indeed, their fear of this “bad neighborhood” was to the extreme that at one point, my mother was so focused on the black man on a bike in her rear view mirror that she slammed into the car in front of us, only to have that same man on the bike kindly retrieve the license plate the incident knocked off her car.
The racism I was raised with was of this implicit nature. I knew the “n-word” was bad, I knew we were supposed to accept everybody, but in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the people in my life modeled an entirely different agenda. Are you already aware of this, student? Do you know that people fear you, a 14-year-old child, because of the neighborhood you are from and the color of your skin? I know that when I was 14, and a young white female, I did not think anyone was afraid of me. Now, I struggle to understand which is worse: Your already knowing, and internalizing, the fear your countenance provokes; or what is perhaps the blessing of your being temporarily ignorant of this dynamic.
In Haiti, for the first time, I encountered undeniable abject poverty. For the first time ever, I was aware of not being in my own community of practice. It was my face that stood out, and a number of assumptions were made about who I was, based on the color of my skin.
In Haiti, I saw my first dead body lying in the street. I was introduced to the abuses of government, and the psychological impact of living daily in violence. I am aware, student, that at 14, you have probably lived through all of these already. I know that this year, as of the end of May, 32 Chicago Public School students have been killed—the youngest being 10 years old, killed in a drive by shooting. I also know that one of your peers made national news after being beaten to death with a railroad tie by other children; the video footage caught on cell phones, and then disseminated online. You see, student, I did not have to live with these realities until much later. I was developmentally behind you.
IV
I did not know I would be a teacher. There are some who, as long as they could remember, wanted to be teachers. I am not one of those people.
How did I begin teaching? Simple. At 22 and about to graduate college, I was lost and desperately needed a next step. As an anthropology student, I found people and systems to be fascinating, and what better system in which to be a “barefoot anthropologist” than education? I saw a sign on campus advertising a new masters program in Urban Education. Impulsively, I applied, was accepted. Without once considering the ramifications, I made a decision that fundamentally changed my life.
This is how you and I cross paths; stuck in an un-air-conditioned, lead paint and asbestos-filled building, struggling to understand each other and navigate an impossibly humiliating system.
Future student, before I go on, let me state, unequivocally, that I love you. We have not met, but I know that I will, because that is how I am. I will love you for all of your needs and your independence, for your obnoxiousness, silliness, and simultaneously over-inflated and woefully inadequate self-confidence. Above all else, this is why I continue teaching, and why, this year, despite my own limitations and misgivings, I will teach you, too.
Remember how I told you that my job was to bring a “social justice” perspective to your learning? I will try my very best to do this. Yes, we will talk about the issues. We will discuss race, my own, yours, and others as well. We will unpack culture, assumptions, normativity and prejudice. I will try to engender a level of informed but functional anger, rooted in the realities of inequity that everybody will attempt to ignore—and they will ask you to be complicit in this ignorance.
For instance, you will be always asked to do more with less; less money, less technology, less support, less understanding, less trust. I’m sorry, but it is true. You will also be subjected to humiliation that only the poor urban student of color has to suffer. Humiliation in the form of endless standardized testing that insults your intelligence, trying to measure a modicum of improvement in the most basic of skills. Humiliation in the form of chanting meaningless affirmations about how you will SUCCEED and are RISING TO THE TOP, of clapping to the beat of call-and-response intended to make up for years of low expectations.
You will bear the indignity of hearing your parents, caregivers and peers insulted and disregarded by the teachers, administration, government and media, because everyone else knows best. Furthermore, you will have to bear the dwindling of your ranks as your peers fall by the wayside, lured by jobs, responsibilities outside of school; as they are killed, imprisoned, or become just too frustrated to stay in the system. By your senior year, only 39 percent of your peers will be left standing with you.
With all of these factors in mind, student, the real social justice piece I will bring is that I will, to the very best of my capacity, teach you. I will really and truly teach you to succeed in a world bigger than the one you are currently exposed to. I will teach you to read, to write, to question, and to code-switch fluidly between whatever communities you wish to be part of.
As Lisa Delpit explains in her work Other People’s Children, too often are black children exposed to the soft racism of low expectations. Student, for whatever deeply internalized racism I have, and I do indeed have it, I will not subject you to low expectations, ever. We are about to start a year together, and yes, as I stated above, I am afraid of you.
Afraid of your blackness, and my whiteness, afraid of your brilliance, and my ineptitude, afraid that in the end it will not be enough, I will not have the necessary tools as an educator, as a human being, to live up to the expectations that you aught to have of me. Student, I am terrified, but I am also unbelievably excited. Thank you. Thank you for being young, and open and, most of all, forgiving. I know I will need it.
Your teacher,
Ms. Nichols