No Dancing This Time: A Guide for White People Regarding “This Is America”
Too many of us ignore black pain while embracing black art
I’m finishing up my sixth year of teaching, and I know this may come as a shock to some, but… I’ve seen some racist things happen in the classroom *awkward white gasp*. There was the one time two of my students donned blackface during a video project on Of Mice and Men, or the time I caught wind of some white students using racial slurs on their Twitter accounts, and of course the time a group of five boys — four white boys and one boy of color — declared they were comfortable calling each other wiggas and n____ because the “tone they said it in wasn’t offensive.” If you need a non-teaching example, see any time white people sing-scream n____ at a hip-hop concert because we’re “post-racial” or something like that. You might be wondering if meaningful reflection and growth happened after these appalling events, and to find your answer I invite you to think about the following: How many white families do you know that are comfortable breaking down the overt and covert complexities of racism throughout the history of our nation? Now that you’ve located a single digit number (or zero), let’s move on.
When non-teacher friends hear these stories, their responses vary. Some melt into a puddle of profound…
