Race

Chimaobi’s post has generated a lot of good discussion (comments from Aaron, Austin, and others here; Rob here; Abe here; Molly here; Jeremy here [apologies if I have missed someone]).  I’ve been thinking about the issues that Chimaobi and others have raised for awhile now.  Here are my thoughts, specifically on Chimaobi’s idea of a mostly African-American Mississippi Teacher Corps (MTC); Aaron’s suggestion that MTC should focus more on recruiting Mississippians; Chimaobi and Rob’s idea that African-American teachers can better motivate African-American students; and Chimaobi’s assertion that African-Americans in the Mississippi Delta need to solve their own problems.  I apologize in advance if, in this long blog post, I misrepresent anyone’s stance.  Please correct me if I do.  Also, some of what I’m about to write is only tangentially related to the original post.  Here we go…

Facts

Let’s start with the facts.  I have never seen any research that demonstrates that African-American teachers are more effective at teaching African-American students (or that white teachers are more effective at teaching white students).  Furthermore, the idea that an African-American, or a Mississippian (or an African-American from Mississippi), is more likely to stay teaching in Mississippi after two years in MTC than a non-African-American or a non-Mississippian is false.  Germain’s dissertation covered this ground thoroughly.  The long-term attrition rates, the number of teachers who stay and leave (whether broken down by race or by region of the country), are identical.  For every Torsheta Bowens, an African-American female from Mississippi, there is a Joe Sweeney, a white male from northern Michigan.

Race

The idea is simple: The students who we teach in MTC, the vast majority of whom are African-American, do not see enough African-American role-models (especially men) in their day-to-day life.  Having a successful, educated, African-American (especially a male) in the classroom everyday, as both a teacher and a role-model, is of immeasurable benefit.

Let me preface this, as I do with any discussion of race, by saying that I am a white guy from Vermont, so what do I know...  That being said, I’ve gone back and forth on this idea for years.  I’ve had many long discussions with Torsheta, Molina, Chimaobi, and Amani (to name just a few) about this topic.  When I started as Program Manager of MTC, in the summer of 2003, I felt it was important to put African-American teachers/role-models in front of the students of Mississippi.  Over the years, I’ve slowly changed my opinion.  It’s not that I devalue this idea.  It is simply that I’ve come to believe (and I may yet again change my opinion) that race plays no factor in being a successful teacher, and that recruiting successful teachers should be our only criteria.  Going now by anecdote, I have seen excellent teachers of all races come through MTC.  I have also seen poor performing teachers of all races come through MTC.  In no case do I think race played a factor in a teacher’s success or failure.  Rob would contend that he can interact with African-American kids differently than a white teacher.  Okay.  But I don’t think this means Rob can be a better teacher (and I think Rob agrees).  I don’t even think it gives Rob an advantage.  Germain has said that his being black helped him on the first day of school, but after that he had to prove himself as a teacher.  I don’t even think it helped him on the first day.  Teachers have to prove themselves to students, no matter the race of the teacher or the student, from the start.  Successful teaching (organization, classroom management, content knowledge) has nothing to do with a person’s race.  In fact, for the past few years, I’ve argued that we should remove racial identification (which we ask as an optional question) from our application.

Put another way, and again because the sample size of MTC is so small I am reduced to using anecdote, the top 10% of teachers to come through MTC in the past four years have come from all different backgrounds, ethnicities, and parts of the country.  So have the bottom 10%.

I don’t think Chimaobi is arguing that we need more African-American teachers in the schools of the Mississippi Delta.  The vast majority of teachers in the Delta and in Jackson are African-American.  As Crystal, who grew up attending public school in the Delta, once said to me, “All my good teachers were white (and the best was an MTCer).”  I believe that what Chimaobi is saying (and certainly what Torsheta has said to me over the years) is that we need more good teachers who are African-American, who can serve as role-models to young black men and women.  I think we just need more good teachers, and I could care less about their ethnicity.  Teachers should not be viewed through the prism of “role-model” because that is a malleable, and ultimately useless, definition.

Role-Model

In my Educational Leadership Ph.D classes at the University of Mississippi I am always irked when one of my classmates says that teachers and principals need to be role-models.  What my classmates (almost all white and native Mississippians) usually mean with this statement is that teachers and principals need to conform to the community norms.  I disagree.  A teacher’s job is to teach.  A principal’s job is to run an organized school.  Nothing else matters.  Get drunk on the weekends? Sleep around? Gay? Atheist?  Communist?  I could care less.  However, most Mississippi communities frown on these things and would not consider you a role-model if you engaged in these activities.

Obviously, this is not what Chimaobi is saying.  Chimaobi’s definition of a role-model is, I believe, someone who is professional, educated, and dedicated to the task of teaching young people in Mississippi.  This is not a role-model, this is simply someone who is a good teacher.

Why doesn’t MTC recruit more Mississippians and/or African-Americans?

As a percentage of applications, we got more Mississippi applicants (defined as having lived or gone to college in Mississippi) than any other state.  20% to 25% of a given class is from Mississippi.  I do not know what percentage of applicants are African-American (it is an optional questions on the application).  Over the past few years, any given MTC class has been between 12% and 25% African-American.

That being said, as I stated earlier, I think that an applicant’s race, and/or home-state, should play no part in whether he or she is accepted into MTC.

Race and MTC

I do think that there are unaddressed issues of race within MTC (and thanks to several people who have both helped me see this and come up with a way to, hopefully, address it).  What you have in MTC each year is a group of mostly white and mostly middle-class/wealthy recent college graduates teaching almost exclusively poor, African-American kids.  I think that sometimes the ways in which white MTCers discuss their students can be (unintentionally) demeaning.  This is one of the reasons we’ve instituted the story circles led by the Winter Institute.

Divisions

People outside of the south say (with their nose held high), people in the south need to help themselves.  People in the south say (with their nose held high), people in Mississippi need to help themselves (summed up perfectly by Sir Charles Barkley who, when asked if he was serious about running for governor of Alabama, said [I’m paraphrasing here], “I can’t screw things up any worse.  Alabama is 48^th in everything and Arkansas and Mississippi aren’t going anywhere.”).  Some of my classmates at the University of Mississippi’s Educational Leadership program (virtually all of whom are white and not from the Delta) say (with vaguely racist undertones) the people in the Delta need to help themselves.  Some white people in the Delta say (with clearly racist undertones) black people in the Delta need to help themselves.  My response is always the same.  We are all Americans (and, in a greater sense, we are all humans); we are all in this together and we all need to help each other.  To divide ourselves by region, or race, or class, is wasteful, harmful, and, ultimately, destructive.  To say that only African-Americans in the Delta can help themselves is a limiting definition, a limiting division.  And it precisely those definitions, those divisions, that have kept the status quo.