Demonization of Black Boys With Developmental Issues (1st & 2nd Hand Experience).

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

I don’t talk much about my time as an educator. It has been some of the most fulilling yet mentally taxing work I’ve ever done. It’s a thankless job with little to know care for the very people who are responsible for making the ship sale.

I want to talk about some of my last experience as an educator and how black youth, particularly males with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are treated and viewed by the education system compared to others. This may not be news to you, especially those who have experienced the harsh hand of the American school system. Dr. TJ Curry, one of my favorite scholars on this subject has loads of analysis similar to this topic from published books, lectures, presentations and essays. ND expert, Calvin Zimmerman published in the Journal Sociology of Education, found that elementary school teachers not only anticipate trouble from black students more than they did white students, they were scrutinized more and dished out heavier punishments https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00380407241228581 Needless to say, the detailed experience that I will go in depth here isn’t just an isolated incident. This seems to be a problem in public schools throughout the country, from North Dakota, Massachusetts to Georgia.

My Experience.

One of the last schools I worked for was a center for students grades 6–12 with ASD and other developmental issues. I didn’t last long there compared to other schools/programs I worked for due to reasons I sort of mentioned before. Bad pay, safety, both physically and mentally of the educators was an after thought most people there didn’t want to think about. The travel distance to and from there was the worse distance I’ve ever had to travel for work and yeah, racism.

When I first started at this school we went through the “normal” start of the school year, prep the week before Labor Day. All of the teachers met with aids over how we wanted the year to be, classroom setup and establish a game plan for how to deal with certain students. One student who was brought up a lot by the lead teacher and other aid I worked with was a black kid I’ll refer to as “C.” The other student is a white girl I’ll call “A.” This was a week before I met “A” and “C” and yet I’ve already heard so much about them from just about every staff member. Here’s a a summed up break down of what I was told from staff about “A” and “C”

A’s Pros

• Is really smart.
• Is really funny.

A’s Cons

• Self Injurious
• “Flirtatious” with males her age and older.

C’s Pros

• He’s trying…

C’s Cons

• A trouble maker.
• All talk, no bite.
• A creep.
• A future pedophile.
• A Manipulator.
• A Narcissist.
• A Devient.

My Experience With A and C.

I’ll start with “A” because A was a student of mine and I had my interactions with her first. The first time she yelled at me (yes there’s multiple times she verbally got aggressive with me) was when I picked up a pencil and placed it on her desk. I, like all teachers like to keep a clean and safe room. I already had to “soft lecture” the class on cleanliness and how since they are in the 6th grade they should be able to clean up after themselves. After all, all but one student in the class didn’t want to be treated “like a kid” so my way of treating them “older” was reminding them that “mature” people clean up after themselves. So again, “A” drops her pencil and I wait at least three minutes for her to pick it up. She didn’t, I picked it up and she yelled “I got it.” I calmly explained to her why she should’ve picked it up the moment she noticed it fell on the ground. I pretty much said it was a safety hazard. Someone walking could trip on it and fall. She wasn’t trying to hear me out at all because in the middle of me getting my Mr. Mackey on she started screaming some other stuff I honestly tuned out because I wasn’t going to argue with a 12 year old brat. Teachers do not get paid enough to sit and take shit from disrespectful kids who get pampered at home or are unfortunately raised by an adult(s) who are just as childish as they are. I walked away and gave my attention to another student. That was the end of verbal beating number 1.

The second unpleasant situation with “A” was coming back from recess. The other two teachers were elsewhere and I had a line of students walking back to class. She didn’t like that. Nothing happened at recess, everything was fine. She played well with others and enjoyed herself like the other kids. She just didn’t like that I was the one taking them back to class. She walked with the class, but as soon as we got around the corridor she up’d her pace and tried to slam the door in my face. Her classmates told her how rude it was, but that only made her more red. I assured them that I was okay and not to worry about it. She’s in the room pacing back and forth from one corner to the other. I’m standing by the door in my safety stance. She calms down once the other two teachers arrive and I stop holding my breath.

The third instance where she yelled at me was later on that week on a Thursday, so you know I was really anticipating that Friday. There’s a storage closet in the room where all the board games are in. There’s a big red sign on that closet that reminds students if they want a game from the closet they have to ask a teacher who’ll then get the game for them. She asked the other aide to get a game for her, the aide told her to ask me to get it. The aid wasn’t busy by the way just lazy. Another reason why I stopped teaching because once other teachers notice how good you are at what you do, they start telling students to go to you for everything while they sit back on a computer/laptop pretending to be busy when they’re really window shopping on Amazon. So she tells “A” to ask me, “A” ignores her instructions and takes it upon herself to go through the closet. I remind her that the rule is only teachers are allowed to go in the board game closet. She starts yelling again, I persist this time and remind her that she has to follow the rules just like her classmates. She reacts the same way she reacted the first time, she interrupts me by getting louder, yelling some bullshit. I look over at the aide and she looks back at me with a half smirk on her face as if she finds it cute and funny “A” is “sassy” or she thinks I’m in on the “joke.” It didn’t take long after and before that moment I realized these mostly white teachers and administrators were part of the problem when it came to “A’s” behavior. They were enabling it by ignoring it. “C” didn’t not get that same treatment when he broke a rule.

The criminalization of “C.”

The principal held an hour and 15 minute long mandatory staff meeting about “C.” A meeting I was 40 minutes late to, but felt how uneasy the room was just talking about him. It’s as if this kid was the boogyman, whether physically present in a space or not, he was feared and detested. This meeting was held before the school year started, so a week before I met “C” or “A.” I knew I was going to have “A” as a student, because she was in 6th grade, which is what I taught. “C” was entering the 8th grade, so I was never going to see “C” in a classroom setting or much throughout the day. Prior to this meeting, the aide I worked with and other teachers talked about how much of a “trouble maker” and “sexual deviant” he was. The one who had the worst things to say about him was the other aide that I worked with. She’s the one who made him sound like a “brown” Quagmire. She said he had this “creepy” smile with straight white teeth, “brown” skin and was my height. The straight white teeth and bright smiles were the only physical features “C” and I shared. He was actually dark skinned and taller than me. To her credit, she did apologize when I corrected her on her thinking. Don’t know if it amounted to her changing how she viewed and interacted with “C” or black males in general, but once I spoke up she seemed to understand how her stance and description of “C” was problematic.

For those who don’t/can’t see the problem, don’t worry, I’ll tell you. Class is in session. First off, I thought it was really weird of her to add “C” having white teeth as a flaw. Are all black males supposed to have gold teeth? And if one did, would that make him a bad person? We get called angry when we’re not smiling and creepy/devious when we are. Where’s the “fair treatment” in that? Second, as beautiful as all shades of black is, “C” and I are two totally different shades. Saying we look almost identical when “C” has waves and I have locs just screams “all black people look the same.”

Continuing the story, she called “C” a creep because he was caught sexting a girl who was two years younger than him. He was in the 8th grade, the girl was in the 6th. Yes, it is weird for someone who was going into high school the following school year to be sexually or romantically involved with someone who is still in middle school, but you know what’s more alarming in my code of conduct rule book? A 12 year old asking a man in his 40s about his erections and wanting to see it. That is something “A” did before I started working at that school. The school’s handyman told me and was avoiding her ever since. I asked the aide who seemed to love gossip about students and she confirmed “A” was the aggressor in that situation and has asked other male faculty about their erections and how it felt inside of a vagina. The lead teacher confirmed this, too. This girl is 12. No mandatory meetings held about her, just a few mentions about the one self-harm incident she had. Serious shit, I know, but is the safety of male staff not just as important? I apparently got the good end of the deal because she only talked to and flirted with men she liked. She hated me so I never had to endure her sexual advances.

This far into the piece, I hope you see where the problem is. Despite the treatment I got from “A” not being right, the bigger issue here is how these two middle school students are viewed and handled by faculty. One students behavior is often shrugged off as a pre-teen curiosity and mood swings while the teenage black boy who is “sexually active” with girls in and around his age range is already being viewed as a criminal/sexual devient. By the way, all of my meetings with “C” were nice.

When I first met him he dapped me up introducing himself and his best friend. They were helpful teens. Always offering to hold open doors for me and my students whenever they saw me walking with them. I didn’t see this deviant boy much of the staff felt the need to warn me about. As mentioned before, I didn’t have much interactions with him “C” because he was in the 8th grade and had classes on the other side of the school, but that didn’t stop him and his best friend from going over to where I worked “to head to the cafeteria.” They didn’t really want to go to the cafe, they just wanted to say hi to me without looking “gay,” because as men we are taught that it is “gay” (wrong) to genuinely be happy to see another man, whether that be a friend or someone you look up to. I can’t verify or deny if “C” was “too sexually active” because when we did chat he always wanted to know something about me, my music taste, basketball takes. I’ve had male students in the past ask me about my sex life, “C” wasn’t one of them. Till this day, I still hate how unfair “C” was treated and viewed at that school. It’s WWIII when a black teen sexts two teenage girls, but a pre-teen who has sexually harassed multiple male staff members is giving a pass due to her mental and physical health.

The solution to this problem is not hiring more black teachers. What’s the point in that if they are just going to stay silent or continue on pushing the double-standard? I wasn’t the only black faculty at that school, just the most “outspoken” as it always seems to be when I work anywhere. Sure, we need more “Leroy’s” in these spaces, but as a “Leroy” I can tell you if these schools/youth programs don’t see an error in their behavior, they’ll just fire the Leroy or make it harder for them to force them to leave. There has to be a veritable desire from these institutions to want to do better when it comes to how they view/treat black youth. “Troubled” or not.