I apologize in advance because this is lengthy, but then again, aren’t most journeys?

I think my journey with understanding the implications of race began when I was in undergrad. I had around eleven majors in my five and half years at Clarion and finally settled on education as my final major because my previous major of anthropology and dream of being the next Indiana Jones seemed a bit silly as graduation and the real world drew nearer. My mum was a teacher in Dunbar, West Virginia and when home on breaks I would visit her kindergarten class and decided during those brief moments that there were worse things I could do for a living.

The school my mum taught at was poor and black. She was one of only three white employees in the building. My mum is what some would consider a “bleeding heart” liberal; she will tell you she is a card-carrying member of the ACLU, NAACP, and the Southern Christian Poverty Law Center (I have no idea if this is actually true). Her principal, who was black, used to tell me,”Leanne, your mum is my favorite white girl because she loooooovvvveessss black people…” Why is this important? Because at the young age of 21, my beliefs mirrored what I had learned at home. Therefore, I was a bleeding heart liberal who looooovvvveeedddd black people, which I thought at the time was the same as understanding them.

In the fall of 2000 I accepted a job at a southern high school and officially began my career as an educator. I instantly loved the profession. What other profession would afford me the opportunity to talk for 90 straight minutes? That fall I taught my first predominately minority class. It was an inclusion ELPS (economic, legal and political systems) course of 41 students. I had kids sitting on my bookshelves, my floor, my desk, until a relief teacher was hired in October and my class size dropped to a manageable 33. My class was about 75% African American and Hispanic, about 50% were EC and I’m guessing that over 50% were on free/reduced lunch plans. I realized pretty quickly that these kids were different from me, they were different from my honors (predominately white) kids, and they were even different from the inclusion white kids in their class. I didn’t know how to reach them, I didn’t know what to make of them, I didn’t know how to handle them, I didn’t know why they didn’t like me…I just knew I needed to do something, so I developed a “plan”, a “tactic” if you will, for dealing with “those” kids.

My grand plan for that class was: empathy. I told them that I too had grown up poor, wearing hand-me downs from the church and my neighbors, who were boys. That I understood the struggles they were facing because I had watched my mum cry while grocery shopping when the total was too high and she had to decide what staples we could go without for that week. (this is all true by the way) I told them all of this because I wanted them to know that I had survived my impoverished childhood and gone on to college and that they, just like me, could be successful if they JUST TRIED…if they JUST WANTED it badly enough. I did this for three years, and for three years I went home daily wondering why I wasn’t reaching my poor, minority students and why, despite my best efforts, they weren’t succeeding.

One day, a kid, I wrote about him in Grad school, called me out on my pitiful, “woe is me” childhood saga. With confidence and surety, I told him (in front of the class), “you too can be successful, if you would just TRY.” I’ll never forget this, he looked me square in the face and said something along these lines, “Where were you last weekend Ms. H? The beach? How about the weekend before? A Steelers game? Didn’t you go to Spain and France when you were in high school?” I was stunned to silence, standing there, mouth agape, nodding my head in affirmation to everything he was asking. Then he said, and this is a direct quote, “You don’t know shit about being me, so stop pretending like you do.” I was floored. I was hurt. I was embarrassed. I went home and cried. I felt like a failure. I felt like a poser. I felt empty and lost in my current profession. I called my mum and sobbed, I told her how unfair it was to me when I had grown up so poor and so…She cut me off and said two things that remain with me to this day, 1) My version of poor is not most people’s version of poor. As she likes to remind me, she grew up poorer than I did (daughter of German immigrants, blah blah blah) and these kids that I was teaching were sure as hell growing up poorer than I did. 2) Regardless of how poor I thought I was, I still grew up white, and that made a HUGE difference.

I remember feeling so ashamed, so…guilty for being white. I remember being angry at the unfairness of it; after all, it wasn’t like it was my fault I was white. I pointed this out to my mother and she just laughed at me and said, “You’re angry over the unfairness of being white? Imagine how everyone who isn’t white feels Leanne.” I remember finally realizing what the term “white privilege” meant. I remember being humbled by the realization that it actually existed and wasn’t just something that black people said when things weren’t going their way. I remember going back to class the next day with my head down and my tail tucked between my legs. I remember the fear and anxiety I felt about what I had to do. The uncertainty only a third year teacher who was about to admit to a class of 33 high school children that she was wrong could feel. I started class that day the only way I could think to start class that day, I apologized, not for being white, but for being naïve, not for having wealthy parents, but for pretending I knew anything at all about what is was like to grow up black in America. And from that day forth I didn’t try to empathize. I simply owned it; I told my kids up front that I didn’t know what it was like to be them. That I grew up (mostly) middle class and white and therefore couldn’t possibly understand the troubles they faced as a minority in a white dominated society. I promised them though, that if they wanted to share, if they would be willing to enlighten me, that I would listen, that I wouldn’t judge, that I would believe in them…that I would BELIEVE them.