Why Talk about Race

When I engage educators in trainings about educational equity and how we need to consciously deploy different strategies and incorporate various resources to reach all students - specifically African-American students and Latino and Hispanic-American students, but also White students, and Asian-American students - I always face the challenge of how to address race.

The background here is that I believe that we, as educators, deliver instruction based on our strengths and preferences.

• A human being cannot separate culture from lived experience - we can reflect on it, analyze it, and even adapt our cultural understanding and practices - but we never experience life "outside" of culture. The analogy: Culture is to humans as water is to fish!

• The students in front of us enter school already immersed in their own culture, including cultural strengths and preferences.

• Many, many times the students in front of us do not share our strengths and preferences - even when our students are from the same racial and cultural background.
  

• Yet, to reiterate: we approach instruction from our cultural experience, our cultural lens, our strengths and preferences.

How to Talk about Race

In opening a training which requires addressing questions of race, I often begin by saying, "Hello, I'm white."

Why tell people I'm white?

• This sets the example that we will be not be making assumptions about race and racial identity, and we will be engaging race explicitly, directly, and personally.
  
• This gives people permission to speak about race. However unfair this might be, if a representative of the dominant culture (in this case, the facilitator at a teacher inservice) can engage topics of race this legitimizes the discussion.
  
• It takes a personal risk and invites others to do the same.
  

I'm white...it's alright, I've always been right..

A white guy blogging on race and culture?

Why?

I'm in an interracial marriage, I'm a stepfather to mixed children, I've been a high school teacher in a primarily Hispanic and African-American public school district, and I am currently an educational consultant to assist schools and districts in eliminating the achievement gap.