Monthly Archives: April 2014

“People say I changed
And I tell them that I’m glad, cause I don’t wanna stay the same
Cause I used to be poor, I used to be unconfident
I used to hate these haters, now it’s just the opposite
Not only have I changed, I’m becoming something better
And revenge is for the weak, so I have settled my vendettas”

-Childish Gambino

I recently finished reading “A Hope in the Unseen,” by Ron Suskind and was left feeling quite a mix of thoughts and emotions. The book tells the story of an inner city Black youth, Cedric Jennings, who against all odds rises to attend an Ivy League university. The story of this young man’s success touched me on an intellectual and personal level. Looking back to the plethora of emotions that I felt while reading the book there were two main issues that were interwoven in this story and that constantly stood out to me. The first was what I like to call “ghetto voyeurism” and the second was the underlying theme of community that helped and followed Cedric on his path to success.

Most non-fiction pieces on the lives of inner city people of color tend to draw similar feelings from their readers. They evoke a sense of empathy and hope that pushes us to connect with the subject. “A Hope in the Unseen” follows this trend and gets the reader deeply invested in Cedric Jennings’s trials and tribulations. The absent, imprisoned father, the hard-working but financially unstable mother, the violence surrounding his neighborhood, and the lackluster high school that Cedric attends are all part of the stereotypical narrative attributed to urban life. The book in many ways feeds the reader’s imagination regarding these stereotypes and promotes notions aligned to the “culture of poverty” argument first articulated by the US government’s Moynihan Report.

While I wholeheartedly agree that this inspirational story is one worth bringing to light, I worry that if it is not framed properly then the reader might misinterpret parts of urban life. From reading the book it would seem that the only positive part of Cedric’s life outside of his and his mother’s work ethic is the church (albeit in a limited sense given the corruption the writer occasionally mentions like the preacher driving a Rolls Royce). Because of the perspectives evident in the book, I see its existence as both a gift and a curse. The narrative shows us what we already know about poor urban life but refuses to acknowledge it our day-to-day lives. It is much easier to ignore poverty as a problem when we don’t have to see or read about it. This book brings the cotidian life of inner-city poor people to light in ways that aim to inspire hope even in the darkest situations.

In the book’s Afterword and Author’s Note the writer attempts to describe his relationship with Cedric and their professional agreement leading to the publication of his story. He establishes his work ethic in journalistic integrity and objectivity. Suskind offers that he spent between 3-4 years following Cedric and writing his story. When I read this I was taken aback by the fact that this journalist had simply watched Cedric’s life develop as a bystander. It seems almost morally reprehensible that the writer, having just won a Pulitzer prize for his articles on Cedric, would stand by and simply watch as this young man and his mother were going through eviction proceedings. Maybe I have a poor understanding of objectivity in journalism but I personally would throw it out the window for my conscious’s sake. Following his declaration of journalistic professionalism the author then attempts to grapple with America’s elephant in the room: race. He tries to dismantle any challenges to his racial voyeurism by offering that after writing the newspaper articles and book he was contacted by various professionals and journalists who assumed he was Black or asked about his race because he had done such a good job “capturing the Black experience.” While I applaud this writer’s attempt at addressing the issue, his anecdotes are akin to those made by Whites who say “I can say the n-word because I have a ton of black friends” or “I can say the n-word because I grew up saying it and my friends don’t get offended.” Nice try Suskind…

An obvious but overlooked facet of Cedric’s success was the informal and formal community that contributed to his achievements. As a teacher I have consistently argued that the key to education lies in embracing its reform as a community and societal investment/effort. While Suskind does a phenomenal job at exposing the vast number of structural and social hurdles that Cedric faced, he frequently underplays the value of the community that nurtured him. Cedric himself appears to have portrayed much of his journey as an isolated David and Goliath story. Even in the end, most of his success is attributed to Cedric’s herculean effort and his mother’s tremendous sacrifice. While I don’t want to underplay the importance of these, I feel like the story was in some ways crafted to fit the Anglo/Protestant idea of grabbing one’s bootstraps and pulling oneself up. Portraying Cedric’s accomplishments as self-created makes for a more compelling story but obscures the community inherent in any individuals, especially those from the inner city’s, success.

In reality, Cedric’s achievements were very much tied to the larger formal and informal community he was part of. The church that he and his mother attended was a place where many of his  efforts and triumphs were nurtured and celebrated. At school, Cedric had two teachers who stood by him for years and constantly pushed him academically, spiritually, and socially. There was the technology teacher who allowed Cedric extra time on the computer to work ahead and the science teacher who would quote scripture and try to constantly motivate him. Even in the school where he was treated as an outsider, Cedric had a handful of friends who supported his success and even checked him when he tried being a “bad boy.” Outside of D.C., Cedric benefited from his wealthy, Massachusetts benefactor throughout his time in college. At Brown, Cedric struggled greatly his first year but found professors and writing advisers who tried to support him.

I point all these things out because the book motivated me to think back on my own academic journey and consider how I’ve gotten to where I am. The day I graduated from Brown my mom boldly stood up at the dinner table and exclaimed that she and I made it alone. While I don’t think that she meant her comment in an arrogant way, her excitement clearly had gotten the best of her. My success would have been impossible without Mrs. Earle risking her job to sneak me in her class. When we couldn’t afford after-school care, our family friend Cristy always took care of me and fed me without ever charging us. I would have known little about survival and manhood without the crazy hard-ass Scoutmaster who treated me like his surrogate son. I would have never won a cross country or track race without the coach who would drive me home when I didn’t have a ride and offered to buy me running shoes when my mom couldn’t afford a pair. At Brown, I was pushed by many of my professors, in particular my professors of color, to be the best student I could be and to be a symbol for what students of color were capable of doing. My success is entirely due to the community that helped nurture and inspire me. It is for this reason that I am so deeply invested in education and social revolution. Once we realize that we owe it to ourselves to view education as a community endeavor, then we can truly have an impact on the world.

All in all I want to say that I truly enjoyed reading “A Hope in the Unseen.” I shed tears at various parts of the story and have even convinced my mom to give it a read. I appreciate Mr. Suskind’s work and hope for the day that there are many more Cedrics and Jonathons in the world. Until then we must wait for the “community” to wake up from its idle state…

It’s the mystery of Inequity…
Said it’s the misery of Inequity…
Said it’s the history of Inequity…
When it all…
All falls down…
Telling you all…
It all falls down

– Mystery of Inequity, Lauryn Hill

“Mr! It’s not my fault that kid’s parents can’t afford to buy him nice clothes and sneakers.”

This quote is taken from a student of mine who felt threatened by my questions on materialism. It struck me as odd because I grew up on the other side of this coin and this was the first time I saw how offended a person, even a child, could be when questioned about their privilege. The school I teach at now is similar to the ones I attended growing up in that we have a diverse population both in terms of class and race. I recently asked an education scholar about how we could promote diversity in public schools and he summed up his answer in three words: high performing schools. One fear tied to this that goes widely ignored is how this “diversity” can lead to schools that no longer serve the populations they were created to serve. This has happened at my high school Alma Matter, Coral Reef Senior High, where the student population has shifted so that the number of Black students is disproportionately low considering that the school is located in a historically Black working class neighborhood. While academic development and performance is paramount, it seems that as educators and policy makers we often seem to ignore social development. As both a student and a teacher in diverse schools I find that we were and continue to be ill prepared to discuss these issues among ourselves or with our students.

As a student, I struggled for years to confront and diffuse the resentment I held against myself, my family, my peers, and society. I spent years walking around with a large chip on my shoulder (really it was more like the Tostitos Party Pack), because of what I perceived as a bad hand of cards. It is difficult for a child to understand why kids have things that you don’t. Why they live in houses with their own room while you sleep on the floor in the same room as your mom. Why they go shopping every month while you wait for your parents income tax check like it’s a ghetto Christmas.Why they had, what I conceived at the time to be, a better life even though I felt that I was a better person. Although these things are all superficial and materialistic, these are real thoughts that real kids in diverse populations are bound to have everyday. When kids are surrounded by sameness they do not conceptualize differences in the same way that kids in diverse environments do. They do not develop inferiority complexes as they are forced to see the spectrum of what exists and what they don’t have. I’ve been to and taught at schools that have a homogenous environment and what I found was that these kids were sheltered from many notions of “difference.” In these places, most kids dressed the same, lived in similar situations, and therefore perceived their reality as “normal.” The issues in these environments are even more problematic as these children develop one dimensional perceptions of a world that is much greater and more complex than they are led to believe. When placed in an environment that has a diverse population, we have the opportunity to either address these issues properly (which rarely happens) or create a situation where resentment, like mine, is both fermented and typically dismissed.

As a teenager I came to the realization that many of my feelings were unfounded and immature. In an attempt to begin to address them I reached out to school counselors and to my own family. Overwhelmingly we face questions about privilege and lack thereof in the same ways; we tell kids who’ve got it that they deserve it because their parents worked hard for them to enjoy it and we tell kids who lack it that if they work hard enough they may one day experience it. The problem with these responses is what they imply. The first suggests that kids won some kind of privilege/parent lottery and that those children who don’t enjoy it have “bad” parents. It also fails to help kids develop any sense of empathy for those less fortunate. The response to low income kids is even more problematic in that it makes them seem like victims of their parents preconceived mistakes and only gives them a chance at success rather than a promise of it. This line of thinking obscures the complexities that low income parents and families must face in their day to day lives and equates being low income with not having worked hard enough. The general response to the aforementioned frustrations are that getting an education will eventually serve as the ultimate equalizer for kids like my students and I. This is easy to say but much more difficult to live. Too often we tell the poor to be hopeful and the rich to be grateful. My frustrations with these is that they are band aids against critically engaging these issues in any meaningful way and trying to discern how we systemically contribute to and inherit both privilege and oppression.

With the above being the typical institutional/societal responses to differences in class, the typical family response is equally troubling. Overwhelmingly, engaging these topics with my family was both daunting and frustrating. From my parents’ perspective I was very much a “desagradecido” (ungrateful) in that my situation could be classified as consisting mostly of relative disadvantage while their upbringing entailed facets of true third world abject poverty. Instead of tackling my frustrations head on, my mother tried to use religion, tough talk, and hope as distractors for my real issues. Frankly, I don’t blame my parents or family for their inability to discuss these things meaningfully as it is difficult enough to live a situation, much more so to try to rationalize it to a kid stuck between worlds.

Conservatives frequently argue that one of the shortcomings of putting high performing minority students in affluent primary schools and colleges is that the culture shock is too great for  them to handle. In many ways I agree; but I don’t think that the shock can’t and shouldn’t be overcome. Instead of looking to avoid these troubles like critics of affirmative action do, we should be looking for ways to develop and nourish discussions on these issues so that we can work through them as a society.  In fact, I believe that it was my maturity and growth in these settings over time that allowed me to come to terms with who I was and where I started. While it was not easy, the gamut of my experiences and exposures contributed greatly towards my development as both a person and a teacher. Eventually, after much reflection and dialogue, I came to view my hardships as badges of honor and symbols of character rather than impediments to my success.

As my students get older I hope that they are able to go through a similar growth process as my own. I am frustrated by the fact that I must say “hope” rather than “know.” Barring a few people who pushed my thinking and challenged my notions of equality and resentment in critical ways, most people I encountered shy’d from having discussions about inequity. After all, since school is supposed to be “the ultimate equalizer,” why do we need to talk about class and poverty? Until we can engage kids on these issues at the emotional and psychological level as parents, teachers, administrators, and friends we will continue to promote a system that intrinsically perpetuates deep feelings of inferiority in its poor kids and notions of superiority in its affluent ones.