Success may not be option for all teachers

On Wednesday, Sept. 24, a letter to the editor was published regarding the investigation of racial discrimination and imbalance within the Cedar Rapids Community School District. The opinion was wrought with personal experience(s), negative assumption and class-based biases.

On average, the black student population is suspended at a higher rate than others in the school district - 43.75 percent. This percentage is the result of combining the overall suspension rate of 46.6 percent and the high school rate of 41 percent.

The author of the letter shared how he had 'spent years as a teacher/coach and a volunteer instructor in middle and high school” and that he was surprised the suspension percentage 'is not higher for African American students because that's where the highest rate of unwarranted disruption, distraction, poor attention and confrontation to teaching originates.”

This was followed by a disparaging exception: 'the one, and only, exception to this classroom experience occurred when I taught classes to African American prisoners in penal institutions (jails).” If the 'surprise that the suspension rate [was] not higher for black students” wasn't overtly negative and peripherally challenged, the class-based claim the only positive exception exists in the penal system, is a textbook example.

Our nation once subscribed to a flawed approach to public education, where the only place a black American could succeed was in his/her own environment. The era was referred to as 'Jim Crow.”

Black Americans were not allowed to learn in the same classroom as whites, and this was solidified with the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court decision. Coupled with the enactment of 'Jim Crow Laws” and 'Black Codes,” black Americans could not partake in the society whites enjoyed, and there were separate facilities for the races from 1876 to 1965. Some would argue that the stench of 'Jim Crow” still exists today.

What the letter author fails to understand is that the words he chose, possibly meant with virtuous intent, remind us that academically systemic racial profiling combined with blatant racism are alive and well in public education.

The author failed to provide the reader with where he had supposedly taught, coached or volunteered, and makes an unequivocal assumption that for all of the years he taught, it was the black students who were always the instigators of unruliness and disrespect. The author shared personal experiences that were successful, but failed to provide factual evidence or support of what success meant. The author failed to provide the subjects being taught or where the courses were being held, when he was 'teaching classes to prisoners in the penal system.”

Based upon the author's closing paragraph, the reader is to assume that due to imprisonment, those black students with whom he worked became 'successful in numerous ways, and set forth questions related to their curiosity for learning so as to earn, and enjoy, a productive life.”

Are we to deduce black Americans can find academic success only while incarcerated?

The author feigned surprise that more black students were not suspended, and insinuated they were the root causes of classroom disruption. Are we to presume that (only) black students are the perpetrators of classroom conflict? Are we to surmise academic success for black students only comes from increasing their suspension rate? Are we to believe the only way to successfully reach a young black mind is through giving up on them? Are we to concede to the small-minded notion that 'that's just how they are”?

It is teachers like this who bruise American education. It is teachers like this who propagate the notion of the 'angry black man.” It is teachers like these who subscribe to a 'plantation mentality” whereby as long as we can keep them in check, everything will be fine.

Perhaps the letter author should look in the mirror and ask himself: 'Why was I not able to reach them?”

' Eric Thompson is a native of Cedar Rapids, local music educator and currently corps director and staff coordinator for Coastal Surge Drum & Bugle Corps, Myrtle Beach, S.C. Comments: etdrumpad@gmail.com.