White Bias and Your Black Child
There is an ongoing debate about the effectiveness of White teachers with Black children, particularly in urban schools. Many feel that White teachers are not effective educators for Black children. The arguments against their ability to teach Black children go something like this:
Many White teachers come to education with a set of prejudices, stereotypes and biases about Black people that are widely accepted and wholly unquestioned. These stereotypes -- often concerning the children’s ability to learn, their willingness to learn, and their propensity for violence--are so much in the fabric of the White belief system that White teachers often are not even consciously aware of their own biases. And often even when they are aware, they accept them as true. In either case, these biases and prejudices are almost always detrimental to the White teacher’s ability to help their Black students achieve.
In addition, most White teachers are not informed enough about the cultural chasm that lies between their Black students and themselves. There are many cultural differences in language use, non-verbal communication, family structure and socialization, to name just a few. These differences very often make communication and trust building complex and difficult. If a teacher is not understood by her students, or not understanding her students and at the same time, unaware that the misunderstanding stems from her own beliefs or cultural unawareness, she is likely to attribute this failure-to-connect to causes outside of herself, thereby failing to properly and adequately address the problem. Thus, often blame for the failure is placed on the children, instead of the teacher herself. Here, again, the children suffer
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