Goal: Ending the Race Wars

This piece is by guest contributor Curtis Taylor, who is a teacher at Dr. Freddie Thomas High School in Rochester, New York. The Gandhi Institute has been partnering with Mr. Taylor and other teachers at Freddie Thomas to provide nonviolence education sessions four times each week. More info on Mr. Taylor’s background and experience is below.

Goal: Ending the Race Wars

The tragic August 5 shootings at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin brought to my mind, once again, a hard question I continually ask myself as a teacher: how can we as educators help to prevent young people from growing up hateful?

We are not, after all, their parents or guardians. We cannot control what they go through at home, or in their neighborhoods, or in their daily lives out in the world.

And yet, as I have learned and continue to learn, we can do something. I think back to 2007, when I substitute-taught a group of seventh- and eighth-graders at a city public school in Rochester, New York.

There was, in an adolescent way, a race war going on in this group of young people. On one side were American-born English-speaking students, mostly African-American. On the other side were English Language Learner students, primarily from African nations and from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran. From what I could tell, the combat started with the American-born students making fun of the ELL students for their ways of speaking and their cultures. This escalated to ridiculing and demeaning female Muslim students for their traditional garb, and making inflammatory claims that the religion of Islam was responsible for the awful events of September 11^th.  Then came the counter-attacks: the English Language Learners, not to be outdone, vehemently mocked the American-born black students as uneducated, lazy, violent and stupid. Things went into free-fall.

I fought it. First I tried the tough approach: I told every student that under no circumstances would I allow xenophobic, racist or intolerant behaviors in my classrooms. Then I tried the empathic approach: I told the black American-born students that showing mutual respect was a way for them to counter negative perceptions of America and media-produced stereotypes of black Americans.  Next I tried the unifying approach: I told all of the students that regardless of ethnic or religious differences, they all shared a heritage of having been colonized by European powers.

All of this failed. The abuse and counter-abuse kept going full-steam.

So I tried soccer.

But here’s the twist: I didn’t want students to play the game. I wanted them to see certain things about the game.

Right off, soccer appealed to more of the ELL students, who were often from nations where soccer is huge, than the African-American students, who tended to see soccer as a privileged “white” game.  So I showed videos of the world’s top soccer players, many of whom are of African descent. I also showed news footage of black players being bombarded with racial abuse by thousands of racist fans during matches in European countries: fans throwing bananas, screaming epithets, making monkey chants. At the same time, I showed video footage of Muslim and African immigrants in Europe being discriminated against, attacked and even killed by wildly bigoted mobs.

This started to hit home. In answer to questions I devised, and during speak-outs I orchestrated, students began to open up. American-born black students expressed shock at how much they had in common with the foreign-born students of color. Foreign-born students heard harrowing stories from black American students that were not terribly unlike their own experiences. In these conversations, and in the ensuing days, the mood shifted subtly from civil to cordial to downright collegial among some students who just days ago had been at each other’s throats. Frankly, it amazed me.

I provided as much guidance as I thought I should: I asked students to describe out loud instances when they had been discriminated against and occasions when they had stood idly by while members of “their” group discriminated against others. I asked them how they could use what they had now seen and heard to look out for one another and to help students in general in the school to better get along. I suggested to them that bigoted actions, if not caught early and opposed, can spread like cancer until something tragic happens. I assigned seating so that every American-born student was seated next to a foreign-born student, and I held students to this arrangement.

By the end of my two weeks as a substitute, the racial taunting had ceased.  I don’t delude myself into thinking that the prejudices carried by these young people – which took a lifetime to take hold – suddenly disappeared. But I did see first-hand how bringing students face-to-face with one another’s ordeals and truths can be a big step toward a shared sense of fairness and justice.

 

About the author:

Curtis Taylor is a native of Rochester, NY and a graduate of the Rochester City School District. After being labeled emotionally disturbed as well as an at-risk-youth during the 4^th grade, he would spend grades 4-8^th in a special education academic setting. After graduating from high school and enrolling at a local community college he decided to give back to minority youth by working as a teacher’s aide and a summer recreation counselor for several years.  Upon earning his Bachelor’s degree from S.U.N.Y. College from Old Westbury with a degree in Media and Communications /American history he decided to dedicate his life to assisting impressionable inner-city youth by deciding to work as a substitute teacher in the Rochester City School District. Witnessing the firsthand accounts of the disturbing educational experiences that inner children and teaching staff experience on a daily basis compelled him to pen his EPIC first novel- A Teacher’s Diary: A True Life Novel.

Curtis is currently enrolled in a graduate school TESOL(Teaching English as a Second Language) program at Nazareth College. For the spring semester of 2013, Curtis has decided to spend a semester abroad in North Africa (Tunisia) learning Arabic and French. In addition, he has earned a Tier I certification from Football4Peace international, a British Council Sponsored program during a weeklong conference in England.  The Football4Peace organization uses soccer to promote mutual respect and cooperation between Arab and Israeli children in the Middle East. He is scheduled to graduate from Nazareth College with his master’s Degree during the spring semester of 2014.