By: Nate Morris, senior editor In a packed auditorium at the Tulsa Community College Center for Creativity, students from seven schools presented their semester-long projects to change their school and the greater […]
By: Casey McLerran 7.31.2018 “It like a big explosion, like a bomb falling on him, and TJ scream and start to cry, he on his ass, on the sidewalk, crying. […]
I pray that my students will be so lucky enough to arrive in a classroom with a culturally competent teacher who looks like them and is passionately and unapologetically black. And should they not land in a class with a teacher who does not share the same racial ancestry, my next prayer is that they will encounter a benevolent teacher who will love and celebrate them as I have done. I pray they will gain a wonderful pedagogue or role model who will tell them that the sky is the limit for them and that they can be whatever their heart so desires.
I have so many hopes and dreams for you, that if I tried to say them all, they would run longer than the entire Harry Potter series!
People, who are usually white, often tell me that I am too obsessed with race. In fact, I have even been criticized and compared to a race fanatic. Notwithstanding those allegations, I will always believe that systemic racism is a facet for today’s illiteracy curse plaguing the multitude of Black children some one-hundred-fifty years after the Emancipation Proclamation — the epoch, in American history, that lead to the appearance of Black liberation. However, I, now, reckon the more significant problem stems from an aristocratic class of Americans, one-percenters — mostly white — who do not care about people of color nor poor White people. Therefore, it is incumbent upon all of us —Black, Brown, and White — to participate in that extension of democracy granted to the masses by the few decent, human beings among the upper classes.
I have a difficult time hearing that a local charter has a majority white teaching staff while serving a majority African-American student body. It reminds me of an excerpt from Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery.
“These gentlemen seemed to take it for granted that no coloured man suitable for the position could be secured, and they were expecting the General to recommend a white man for the place.” – Booker T. Washington
“One of the things we really strive to do is have instructors that look like our children. We feel that it is very important in building the bonding relationships that will last a life time. We have quite a few male teachers and a lot of them are ministers and they a huge impact on the young men as well as the young women.” – Ms. Cherly Henderson is a History Teacher at Langston Huges Academy.
