Student Anti-Racism, Part 1
In 2003, Dave Chappelle’s show had a skit about a man named Clayton Bigsby, a blind man who thinks he is white and becomes a champion of the white supremacy movement. The reason he thinks he is white? Because he was raised in a rural school for the blind and was the only black child, so the school thought it would be easier for him to think he was black.
Since then, responsive fans have delegated this as one of the best episodes of the show. There is even a thesis from Georgia State University that focuses on the dimensions of racial satire in the sketch (Zakos, 2009). On a surface search, most responses to the sketch focus on the racial aspect of the sketch, including a Vulture article on the origins and potential controversies of it when it was being written (Reilly, 2016). Not listed among those potentially problematic issues is the role of his blindness or the role of education regarding race and blindness.
The racism pandemic in the United States has been seething since before the country’s founding and has risen to a level of profound recognition in the summer of 2020. White people who have been blissfully or willfully unaware of the depth of these problems in the past have had their minds blown open. Others are using this as an excuse to raise their racial defensiveness, even taking to the streets with their own weapons to defend themselves against rumors of protest violence.
Guidance has been presented in articles and webinars about how to raise anti-racist children and how to support anti-racism as educators. Unfortunately, for some of us there is an added complexity to the instruction and it is one that must be addressed because it is not going to mystically vanish when the 2020-21 school year begins.
The problem we face is two-fold. First, there is no guarantee that your colleagues will take an anti-racist stance, taking seriously the established problem and vehement need for change. For those who see these elements as self-evident, there are others who refuse. The difference of view can cause rifts within the school space, sending mixed messages to students and damaging the social-emotional health of a space.
The second problem is the most pressing: parents. I have worked hard in my career to keep my political beliefs quiet among students because I want them to make their own choices instead of building their ideas on what a person in authority thinks. The person or persons of authority I cannot block them from is the adults in their home. Visually impairments are not restricted to one race or one group of people who participate in the pandemic in a singular way. We can’t treat our students as Clayton Bigsby because aside from how extremely unethical that move would be it is also impossible in reality. Race, conflict, and injustice must be addressed in the classroom space. Students will have questions, they will need guidance, and they will inevitably bring things to the table that are incorrect and harmful. BUT - what is the message at home? Should we compromise our own ideas and keep quiet about things our students do in relation to race? Should we contradict what is being said at home? What are the risks to both ourselves and our students if we do contradict what is said at home?