Teaching Race Explicitly in the Classroom Essay -- Education

Teaching Race Explicitly in the Classroom Many literacy experts point out the fact that at the college level, black students who attend all-black schools tend to be more successful than those attending predominantly white schools. Even though these schools often lack resources and financial stability, they nonetheless produce more high achieving black students than predominantly white schools. For instance, according to Fleming, black students attending Historically Black Universities and Colleges (HBUC) have higher graduation rates than those attending predominately white institutions. Also, students who graduate from a HBUC and go on to attend predominantly white graduate schools do just as well as students who have graduated from predominantly white colleges (Fleming 1). What is it that black schools and black teachers have that produces academically successful black students? What approaches to learning can white teachers adopt from black teachers in order to maximize the learning of these students? Bell Hooks, author of Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, grew up in the South. As a young child, she attended a segregated school, but then made the transition into a desegregated school later in her youth. Hooks believes that the education she received at the all-black school was far better than the education at the desegregated school. Hooks explains: Almost all of our teachers at Booker T. Washington were black women. They were committed to nurturing our intellect so that we could become scholars, thinkers, and cultural workers—black folks who used our "minds"†¦Within these segregated schools, black children who were deemed exceptional, gifted were given special care†¦When we entered rac... ..., Jacqueline Jordan and James W. Fraser. "Warm Demanders." Education Week 17 (1998): n. pag. Online. Internet. 21 May 1998. Available FTP: http//:www.edweek.org/ew/vol-17/35irvine.h17 Jones, LeAlan and Newman, Lloyd. Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago. New York: Washington Square Press Publication, 1997. Ladson-Billings, Gloria. The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1994. Smitherman, Geneva. "The Blacker the Berry, The Sweeter the Juice." 1994. Tatum, Beverly. Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? New York: Basic Books, 1997. Villegas, A. "School Failure and Cultural Mismatch: Another View." The Urban Review, 20.4 (1988): 253-265. Wellman, David. Portraits of White Racism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.