TransRacial Study on Race and Religion

Free Assessment of Your Race and Religious Preferences

Project Implicit has created a series of assessments to evaluate whether or not one has a preference for one race, culture, skin-tone, or religion over another. It is really interesting in the way that you move the through the online assessment. You get your results immediately.

FROM THE SITE: Psychologists understand that people may not say what's on their minds either because they are unwilling or because they are unable to do so. The IAT measures implicit attitudes and beliefs that people are either unwilling or unable to report.

• Take the Assessment for Black/White Race Preference
• Take the Assessment for Skin Tone Preference
• Take the Assessment for Religious Identification
• Take the Assessment for Asian/White Race Preferences
  
• Take the Assessment for Arab/Muslim Preferences
• Take the Assessment for 2008 Presidential Candidates
  

RBCWW - Raising Black Childen While White

Mary Owlhaven writes an incredible blog on Ethiopian adoption and transracial adoption in general. She wrote a great post about raising her Ethiopian girls in a predominately white area. Below is an insightful response from a white woman living in a predominately black area..

And while it may be a touch awkward at first, one of the main things I have learned from living in such a diverse place is that conversations on race are necessary and often not as painful as we might expect. I think that sometimes when we don't know what to do or say about race, we try to ignore it. But you and every one around you can see with plain eyes that you are white parents raising black children and I think most people "get" that there are unique issues that might arise as a result. And I don't know how to say this without it possibly being misconstrued, so here goes: I think black folks probably "get" those issues even more because as white folks, we probably haven't thought about our race or racism nearly as much as black folks have, simply because we have always been the racial majority and have generally not been discriminated against based on race. I personally never thought about my "whiteness" until I lived in a place where I was the minority. Continue Reading

I echo what she says about black people "getting it". I think that in general we focus less on whiteness of the parent and more on the needs of the child. I can't speak for everyone but those who have had experiences like me and know some of the challenges that the child might face welcome the opportunity to talk openly about the issues and offer encouragement where we can.

Getting A Little Personal: Education Epilogue

The Prelude
Part 1: Early Education
Part 2: MisEducation
Part 3: Educating Them & Us
Part 4: Home Schooling
Part 5: Return to Education
Part 6: Education of a Mayor
The Epilogue

I was sure that I was finished with this series of articles but last night one of my childhood friends called me and I was telling her about the articles that I wrote. She was one of my neighborhood friends that had spent all of her time on the normal neighborhood track. Although she is about to begin a PhD program at Duke, she talked about how much she missed in those early school years and that today she is still playing catch up on so many fundamental things that were never taught to her.

I think I left off at the revelation that I had in high school about the advantages I had because of the unusual access that I'd been given to the white educational system. It's amazing what little things I'd learned sitting at the table of white families and interacting with the good doctors network. Be careful here, there may be a tendency to say, "well that was so great for you." I'd say it was fortunate for me and the reason why is that I was privy to private conversation. The only analogy that I can think of is a beauty pageant. Imagine that we are all competing in a beauty pageant but I've been hanging out with the children of the judges for years. Pageant talk is common at the dinner table and as a child I don't only get to go the pageants but I also get a backstage page to hang out with contestants. On a couple of occasions I even get to have my picture taken with the winners. Now, after 10-15 years of this you, the neighborhood kids, and I decide to compete in the same pageant with other young women. I have a little bit of advantage don't I? I know what the judges like, how the judges think, how other winners prepared, and have seen first hand what not to do. A couple of the pageant winner even volunteer to coach me for free because of our relationship. That was the benefit that was given to me. Good for me but how would you feel if I won! Fair and square right? After all, do you even have any idea of what I had been absorbing over the years?

With that in mind here is the quick rundown. The day that I showed up for high school advanced placement, I was given books like Homer's Odyssey that we had read in seventh grade. I'd already been through much of Shakespeare but I got to do it over again in high school. It was a cake walk. A new socialization program began. This is the first time that I noticed that even in a school that was mixed, but predominately white students didn't mix socially. What I mean is that we attended classes together but in the cafeteria there was a white side and a black side with an invisible line down the middle. We didn't hang out with the white kids after school unless we were on the same sports teams and even some of the sports were segregated.

The school was predominately white, but my class had more black students than the school had ever had. It was the first year that the entire student council was black. There was a little problem when the majority (first time ever) had a black prom committee There was some discussion about having separate proms or some foolishness because OTHERS didn't like some of the decisions that the (black) committee was making. Now for 30 years there had been all white student governments, all white prom committees but when we elected a black prom queen, it's the first time I heard they, "they voted for her because she was black" line of reasoning. There wasn't much mention of the fact that she was also smart, attractive, funny, and the first black valedictorian. For point of reference, this was the same year that Vanessa Williams became the first black Ms. America.

Back to education. I was accepted into Michigan State University in the second month of my senior year of high school. Even in college I found that I had been well prepared and exposed to much of what I was learning. It seemed that was not the case for many of the friends that I made that had come from Detroit Public Schools. For many of those students it was the first time that they had been in a school with so many white people. My roommate was from some small Michigan town, within five minutes of meeting me I wasn't even shocked by what she said. Here is the introduction:

Her: Hey I'm ... You're black. Cool.
Me: I'm Valarie.
Her: Well, my parents told me that it was okay if my roommate was black but if you start bringing black men around here I'm supposed to get the hell out.
Me: Glad to meet you.

We didn't make it till the end of the year. We ended up in student court months later after she called me the ultimate N and it got really ugly. This definitely wasn't the first time that I'd heard it but it was the most explosive because she said it out in an open hallway where other students black and white heard her and I watched some of the black students cry from being hurt so badly.

I'll skip over much of the rest of undergrad but I had a great time. I did well in my classes and had a great social life. I participated in a wide range of campus activities but I was also a member of the black caucus, a black sorority, and black student choir. Of course we always get the question why is there a black caucus, a black sorority, and a black student choir? My flippant answer is because every other caucus, sorority, and choir on campus is white. The real answer goes back to my point about my teenage revelation and the story of Mayor Young. In the black caucus I was able to bond with and help other students that were struggling with fitting in, feeling accepted, and wanting to give up. In my sorority we focused on and won awards for community service, developing reading programs, sponsoring food drives, any other programming that we thought would help our community and people at large. We as a black people come from a strong culture of giving back. These organizations allowed us to do that, to open doors for those behind and beside us. It was almost a requirement. These organizations gave us an opportunity to celebrate our successes with each other, to pool our resources and collectively work for causes that we believed in. The black choir gave me a chance to sing the songs that were true to our experience, that told our story of our hope and determination. Songs that we sung from the depth of our souls to anyone who would listen.

With that in mind, there was another important thing that happened in undergrad. I started receiving letters from one of the black professors on campus. He had singled out (here we go again) a group of black students that he wanted to work with individually. He believed that this group of students would go on to higher levels of education. He set up meetings for us with admissions counselors from other schools, he took us out on special field trips to learn about interviewing and how to network once we graduated. In a school with 50,000 students, he felt a responsibility to a few of the 5,000 black students to let us know that he believed in us. Dr. Redd was invaluable to me over my four years in college and I maintained a great relationship with him for about 15 years after graduating. He exposed me to an understanding of college that I would not otherwise have had. He was a place for me to go when it got tough. He knew exactly what to say to encourage me along the way.

I did go on to graduate school and I'll make this part short. Well, I'll try. I got into grad school with no problem. The same theme emerged. I was the ONLY one, the only black woman in my classes. That doesn't matter though does it? It was graduate school right? I'd worked my tail off since I was moved to the new school in kindergarten. Graduate school is where the path led me. I finished graduate school in two years while working a REAL full-time job. I drove 40 miles one way to school after working a 10 hour day at my job.

• One professor told me that my writing was not up to par. He asked me what special provisions had been made to get me into graduate school because it was obvious to him that I wasn't prepared to be there. It was my last year and I had a 3.9 GPA at the time and I'd been inducted into Who's Who of America's English students. I'd been published first at the age of 8 and had won ACT-SO for writing as a high school freshman and sophomore. But, of course he could be right.
  
• The same semester in a completely different class we were asked to prepare and present a report. Because I was a full-time working person in an office with many resources I was able to put together a great looking presentation. I was so proud of my color graphics that today no one would think anything of. On a break after my presentation the professor told me that he thought that I was "showing off". If you've read the whole series you know that this is a return to an old theme. He told me to stop trying to make the other students look bad and he took a half-point off of my grade as a warning to, "tone it down."

I know these things have to sound ridiculous to you. Some are trying to decide if they can trust my accounts. All I can do is assure you that everyone of these things happened. They happened in the EDUCATION system. Right next to me through everyone of them were white students being EDUCATED right along with me. What were they being taught? What were they learning? Where are they now? Who are they teaching? Who do these people now have the power to hire, fire, assess, and impact? Did some of these kids become social workers, guidance counselors, admissions counselors, or CEOs?

I haven't explored a lot of these issues in a very long time. What I'd like people to take away is that I am a pretty typical black woman in society. All of my black friends, men and women would tell you stories just like mine. When I meet people in the workplace there is an instant connection and a familiarity because I know some of the hurdles they had to go through to achieve what they have achieved.

Now, my friends who were educated and travailed the same crazy educational system that I did have children that are in school reliving some of the same experiences in 2008. The children in my church attend schools where they are the ONLY black child or one of few. They are telling us the exact same stories from our own childhoods. They are hearing the same types of comments from their classmates and from their teachers in 2008.

My story is not unique among my peers. It's the stories that we only tell to each other and from them the lessons that we teach to our children. What do the white families that were on the other side of these stories teach to their children?

FOOTNOTE: My graduate thesis was on a program that I developed called Project HOPE. The title, "The Development of Culturally Relevant, Community-Based Enrichment Programs for African-American Children."

What is the Color of my Culture?

The Color of My Culture
Valarie A. Washington
copyright(c)2008

My culture is colored by the family that raised me. It is the soulful blackness of the church that loved me and the colorful mix of the the foods and flavors that nourished me. My culture is the red-hot rhythmic dance of a people, the jazzy blues of music that beats in my heart, and the brown-eyed melodies of life that I learned how to sing.

The color of my culture is dark green and life affirming like collard greens on Thanksgiving. It's rich and strong in orange fibrous keratin like yams on Sunday afternoon. It is golden yellow like fresh cornbread crisp from that old cast iron skillet, and it is the conspicuous black spot staring back at me from black-eyed peas cooked on New Years day. My culture is as colorful as any soul food dinner served on mix-matched plates and as shiny as the Reynold's wrap we use to take our plates to go. It's sour green pickles, wine candy, red kool-aid, grape now-n-laters, red-hots, lemon heads, and bomb-pops.

My culture is multi-colored like kente clothe weaved together in a really tight pattern. It is jewel-toned and ruby red like the church ladies hats. It's soft pink and lilac like little girl dresses on Easter morning. It is beautiful like the stained glassed church windows that we propped open on hot summer holy ghost days. It is as majestic and and rich as Mahalia's voice on Precious Lord and the regal way she stood in her choir robe on the back of those church fans we use to wave. My culture is far-reaching faith in a Thomas Dorsey classic like Peace in the Valley. My culture is as white and pure like the hearts of the stewardess' board and the church mothers sitting clustered on the front row. My culture is contrast of pure whites, whiter than snow that we sang about in familiar hymns cast against the blackest covered Bible that holds God's powerful word.

My culture is bright yellow like the smiles on our faces listening to the children's sunshine band sing songs from their tender hearts. It is as complex as the synchronized turns that the ushers and the urshers made walking up and down the aisles of the church. It is the melodic hues flowing from the voices of the young adult choir singing the chorus of "How I Got Over!" My culture is intensified by the click clack joy of tambourines and that shrill B flat that sister Mary always managed to squeeze out just a little off key. My culture is concrete gray and unshakable like the faith we were always taught to have. It is as thunderous and moving as the morning prayer that would raise you from your seat, wake the sleeping child, compel you to wave your hands, testify, and shout -- AMEN!


The color of my culture is cocoa-brown skin, light, bright, and almost white. It is colored like the ashy knees in summer, Vaseline, and blue hair grease or the kind that we scooped out of the red jar. My culture is colorful barrettes, beads and ribbons that little girls wear in their hair. My culture is colored by the rhythmic way we in which speak, the way we roll our Rrrra's, and the way that only my mother could turn a phrase. It is the worn-out beige handle of that old worn out pressing comb that was always sparking on the kitchen stove. It is lively and colorful like our conversations and slips of the tongue that only grand-momma or big momma can make.

My culture is the royal blue way they we love and revere our mothers. It's the gold-ribbon honor that The Spinners gave to "Sadie", and Boys II Men gave to "Mama". My culture is loud like my mother and her sisters when they hear their favorite song on the radio. It is as deep as the deepest note that Barry White ever sung and higher pitched than the notes Minnie Ripperton sang about, "Lovin' You" and every note she sang in between when she took us, "Back Down Memory Lane."

My culture is crimson stained from the blood shed by the Martin King's, Emmit Till's, James Chaney's, Malcolm's and nameless men that died to make us free. My culture is played out in the soundtrack of our lives sung by Marvin, Curtis, Otis, and James Brown who first told us to be black and proud before he sang anything about feeling good. My culture pours out red heart love and chocolate covered soul like Patti, Aretha, and Gladys. The color of my culture changes effortlessly like a chameleon. Because, when we had little to believe in, we sang, hummed and waited when Sam Cooke told us "A Change is Going to Come..." And even now when we feel like we want to give in, we can still hear Luther saying, "Never too much, Never too much..." My culture is familial and connected like, Marvin Gaye's, "Brother, Brother, Brother" and the true refrain he sings in, "Make You Wanna Holler." You know, "throw up both my hands."


The color of my culture is true blue American and the color of hope that Barak Obama had the audacity to write about. It is the silk ribbon in Stevie Wonder's sky. It is the crayon box of colors that drew out the richness of a people before MTV had a generation and Beyonce ever had a hit. The color of my culture holds the supremeness of the Supremes, the emotion of the Emotions, and the dreams of the original Dreamette's . My culture is found in the rainbow colored way in which we were loved, protected, and encouraged that allows us to love, honor, and share in return.

My culture is the red carpet red that led me to every good thing that has and will ever happen in my life. It is a shinning star that announced the birth of a King and the same bright light that will lead the way for every little black boy and girl for generations to come.

The color of my culture is a legacy that won't end with bars and tones at midnight and it is the hope of a people that will never ever fade.

Who Will I Be When I Grow Up

Today it is hard to believe that there was a time that there were very few images of black people in the media. Who did you most want to be like when you grew up? The cultural icons of the 60s, 70s and 80s were very different. If it weren't for Jet and Ebony magazine I would not have had a real image of what was possible for me and visions of who I needed to become. Cultural identity is reflected back in the positive images of self.

I always loved Gladys Knight. As a little girl with a lot of hair she was the only woman that I saw with long flowing hair. She was beautiful to me, she was talented, and classy.

My favorite author was Langston Hughes. I remember writing a report on him and my teacher had no idea who he was. He was one of the greatest writers of the Harlem Renaissance but he was omitted from any discussions of literature in my school. There was a poem that he wrote that summed up my experience.

I, Too, Sing America

I am the darker brother,
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes.
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed-
I, too, am American

At the same time that I was learning to recite Shakespeare's, "All the Worlds a Stage" it was Langston Hughes' poem "Mother to Son" that felt most real to me. But it is when you read his poem, Freedom's Plow that you understand how he rather than Shakespeare spoke to me and my experience. I wanted to look like Gladys but I wanted to be able to write and express myself like Langston.

Mother to Son

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

Colorstruck

Whenever I introduce any words and phrases, I will always try to give some historical context and resources.

COLORSTRUCK: In one of the articles I mentioned that my grandmother was colorstruck, and she was. She really did not like people with dark skin and she hated kinky hair.

• The White Doll Experiment
• ColorStruck the Play
• Implications Today
  

Conspicuous Kid

Guess which one is me.

I was the conspicuous kid that stood out like a sore thumb. If you don't really know who you are it can crush you. If you are secure in your identify it only adds to the depth of who you become.

Here's one for you. We were always told to wear flesh colored hose. Check out my legs.

Getting A Little Personal: Part 6 Education of a Mayor

The Prelude
Part 1: Early Education
Part 2: MisEducation
Part 3: Educating Them & Us
Part 4: Home Schooling
Part 5: Return to Education
Part 6: Education of a Mayor
The Epilogue

This is the final part of this series. Being black in America is more than skin color. It is a history and a cultural identity that people share that goes back generations. This little post speaks to just how true that is.

A few years ago I spoke at a conference where the keynote speaker was Andrew Young, the former Mayor of Atlanta. Anyone familiar with Andy Young knows that he has a long history of civil rights. He was US Congressman and the first African American Ambassador to the United Nations.

[Me with Mayor Andrew Young in Long Beach,CA]

As Young began his speech he told a story from his childhood that is very much like what I've tried to discuss in this series of post. He told a story about being in elementary school. I believe he was in fifth or sixth grade. He and another student were play fighting and the teacher sent them home. The teacher told them not to return until they came back with their parents. He told of how his mother was so disappointed but she took him to school and he never thought much else about the incident.

Years later when he was a college student, he worked his first or second summer as a lifeguard. One day he had to pull a man from the water and give the man mouth to mouth resuscitation. He said when the man came to and realized what was happening he told Andy Young, "I know you." At first he did not know the man but as the man began to talk he realized it was the other little boy that had been sent home with him years ago. The man told Andrew Young that he had had a very difficult life and that it all started on that day at the school. He said that his mother was never able to take off from her job and he never returned to school after that day.

As Mayor Young told the story, he said that the man explained that he had kept up with how he was doing. The man knew that he was in college and that he was doing well. He told the later-to-be-named Mayor that he could never quit, that he had to excel for all the little boys like him that would never get the chance.

Mayor Young, said the experience changed his life and he decided that he would strive for excellence and be a defender of those who could not fend for themselves. It's these stories from our history that connect us.

Getting A Little Personal: Part 5 Return to Education

The Prelude
Part 1: Early Education
Part 2: MisEducation
Part 3: Educating Them & Us
Part 4: Home Schooling
Part 5: Return to Education
Part 6: Education of a Mayor
The Epilogue

There are two stories I would like to share to end this series of post. So far I've talked about my early education and the crazy teacher I had in junior high. Well, there was another teacher that I had in junior high. She was the French teacher and her name was Mrs. Rich.

I returned to my junior high school about 15 years after I graduated. The first teacher that I ran into happened to be a black teacher and she actually recognized me. She asked me if I was one of the gifted kids and I answered that I was. She is the one that told me about Mr. Williams conviction and then she told me to make sure that I saw Mrs. Rich before I left. I have to tell you, this was one of the strangest experiences ever.

I went to the teachers lounge where there were about 10 teachers sitting around talking to each other. I saw my old Aviation club teacher and before I could say anything, Mrs. Rich yelled out, "I know you! I know exactly who you are. Please come and sit with me, I want to talk with you." It was like she had been waiting for me for the last 15 years. That would have been one thing if we had had a good relationship but that was not the case. What happened next knocked me off my feet.

She said, "Please tell me that you are okay. Are you okay?" Before I could answer, she grabbed me by the hands and said, "I need to know that you are okay. I have thought about you many times over the years and hoped that your life turned out well." Weird right? That's what I thought. She continued, "I know that we had some really rocky times back then but I always believed that there was a 50% chance that you would be a star and a 50% chance that you wouldn't make it." I told her I was a star. I mean, what could I say? She was grabbing my hands tighter and looking in my eyes. She then told me that she was sorry for how she had treated me as a child. She told me that she had grown a lot and realized that because of her views and her actions that she may have caused me irreparable harm. She told me again that she was sorry and hoped that I could forgive her. She assured me that today she treats ALL of her students with great dignity and respect. If you haven't figured it out, she had none of that for me in the 70's. She was horrible to me. It was a special kind of horrible that she reserved for the few black children the she encountered. She did everything that she could to remove me from her advanced French class and continually gave me low grades that I didn't deserve.

Here was this lady, that I hadn't given much thought telling me that she had always thought about me. She had a tear in her eye when she said to me, "I'm better now and I really am sorry." We both knew what she had done. I told her about all the things that I had done in my life and the places that I had been. She lit up and started to smile. I told her that she would have destroyed my self-concept had it not have been for the continual lessons that I had learned from my mother, "get your lesson!"

About a week later I received a post card in the mail from her. She apologized again and told me that me stopping by had, "given her a chance to heal where I was concerned."

I still have that post card!

Getting A Little Personal: Part 4 Home Schooling

The Prelude
Part 1: Early Education
Part 2: MisEducation
Part 3: Educating Them & Us
Part 4: Home Schooling
Part 5: Return to Education
Part 6: Education of a Mayor
The Epilogue

Thank goodness school is not the only place that we get our education. I lived in a home with a very strong black mother. I purposefully identify her as a black mother because that has real meaning to me.

My Mother was Black
My mother was a black woman who in 1952 was given a scholarship to historic Spelman College in Atlanta. That was completely unheard of in her little small town of Indiana Rock , Virginia. She went there for two years before moving to the big city of New York. I asked my mother once how she went from her little town to New York and her answer shocked me. She told me that at that time families from New York advertised in small town newspapers for domestic help. Domestic help? Like a maid? I was shocked. My mother worked as someone's maid. That is the contradiction of black life. A black woman who graduates second in her class, goes away to college can still wind up working as a maid. I had always heard my mother talking about working for the Lotker's, but I never knew that is what working meant.

At the same time that I learned about my mother it is the first time that I was also learning that that is what my Aunt Vicky was also doing in New York. The Aunt Vicky that I knew had a master's degree and worked as a counselor. She traveled the country and was one of the smartest women that I ever knew. Another layer of the contradiction. My mother said that they had the time of their lives. While my mother worked as a domestic that is where she met my Aunt Vicky and Aunt Martha. That is where she hung out at the Apollo Theater on her day off and where she met my father. Later when she married my father she was not really accepted by my grandmother who did not like people with dark skin.

Let's Go to a Party
Now, let's go back to the fact that this is the same mother that petitioned the school board to have me moved. Getting the picture? I was quite a bit older when I realized the sacrifices that my mother had made for my brothers and I. Maybe I was about 16 and my mother told me that she was going to Dr. Stadler's for a party. At least that's what I thought she said. The Stadler's were old family friends, the Dr. had been my pediatrician from birth. I knew that my mother had worked for them years ago but still had not tied that whole working thing together. My mother told me to wear something nice and she put on a pretty black dress. We got to their house like I had done many times before, we said hello, and then Mrs. Stadler said everything is in the kitchen. I followed my mother thinking I was going to get something to eat and found out that I was there to help her work a party.

My mother put on an apron like I'd seen in movies. She handed me a tray and told me to carry it in to the guest that where in the dining room. Something dawned on me. In all the years I'd been in their home, I'd never seen the dining room. We had always come in through the back door and only sat in the family room. I was completely out done. My mother wanted me to serve WHITE people that I had always believed were our personal family friends? Are you kidding me? I was a brat and I refused. I sat on a little stool in the kitchen and my heart broke every time I watched my mother go through the door to do something I thought was so demeaning.

I shed tears when I finally realized what my mother had done. A few weeks after this everything in th world made sense to me. I finally knew who I was and how I had come to be me. These people were friends of my mother's and they loved her like family. Because my mother was not too proud to work for them on occasion they gave her unprecedented access to a world that many of my neighborhood friends never knew.

The Good Doctor
My mother's first job in Indianapolis was as their domestic, she cared for their children and their relatives children. One who grew up to be the mayor of Indianapolis. The doctor was very connected in the city. His friend was the school board superintendent that had me tested and moved. It was his friend that wrote a letter for me every year. Whenever my mother ran into an brick wall, he was able to use his influence to help her move it.

The good doctor had been a supporter of our family for years. Now I knew why we always had the best medical care and how we got a personal referral to a high-priced orthodontist who took great interest in me. For the first time I learned how I was transferred to a much better school and how my brother got into a prestigious art school. That's why when I went to college he wrote my letter of recommendation and when I went to graduate school he insisted on completing all of the medical records himself. When I graduated , they sent me a diamond bracelet direct from the jewelry store.

What She Did For Us
She did that for us. She swallowed her pride, she sucked it up, so that we could have incredible advantages. I cried then like I am crying right now. True, I was intelligent. True, I was a hard worker and a good student. But, it was also true that there was an invisible hand moving obstacles out of the way for me and my family. I realized after this experience that the only thing that set me apart from my neighborhood peers was that I was given ACCESS to people, places, and opportunities that I would not otherwise have had. He didn't do the work for us. He simply provided the opportunity. That is what was not happening for the masses of children that looked like me. I understood why my mother never allowed us to complain about how we were being treated by our teachers. She would simply say, "Get your lesson. They have degrees, make sure you get yours. If anyone mistreats you, I'll take care of it." She always did.

What I Must Do
My life changed the day that I realized what had been done for me. My life changed when I understood the scripture that says, "to whom much is given, much is required." That was the day that I decided that I would spend my life making sure that every child that looked like me, and felt like me, would get a chance. I've worked tirelessly from that day to provide access and opportunity for black children. I will do it until I take my last breath.

Getting A Little Personal: Part 3 Educating Us & Them

The Prelude
Part 1: Early Education
Part 2: MisEducation
Part 3: Educating Them & Us
Part 4: Home Schooling
Part 5: Return to Education
Part 6: Education of a Mayor
The Epilogue

Somehow I made it to the end of that fifth grade year and I asked my mother to stay for sixth grade. The work was really easy, but more than that I definitely felt more comfortable going to school with kids from my neighborhood. For the first time I got to walk to school. Talk about an education, I learned a new lesson everyday as we passed the penny candy store, the churches, the pool hall, the abandoned building, and 500 Liquor store that was open early in the morning. I remember this being the best time for me. As we walked through the neighborhood, we picked up more kids along the way. These were becoming my friends and I definitely felt more comfortable with them. I could just be myself.

Our school only went to the sixth grade. For seventh and eighth grade we all went to a feeder school with five or six other elementary schools. Guess what happened before we got there? We were tested again! This time everyone got tested, but this is after six years of sub-standard education for them and 1.5 for me. What do you think that result of that was? Me and the neighborhood kids did all go to the same school, but I was instantly separated from them once we got inside. I went to the gifted program tucked away on the other side of the building. My new gifted class had about 20 white students and four black students. There was Dana, Kathyna, Monica, and me. This school was perhaps 50% black and 50% white. The funny thing is that the new middle school was only about 4 or 5 blocks from my neighborhood school.

Separate and Unequal
I now boarded a school bus everyday with my neighborhood friends and after we hit the school doors, we went to homeroom and then I was completely separated from THEM until the end of the school day. My little gifted group had a different curriculum, different books, different schedule and completely different expectations. I remember that we had fewer classes and each class latest 2 to 3 times as long as the other students. It took time to study the subjects in depth. To help you understand the significance of the difference. We studied LITERATURE but WE chose the books that we would read. WE developed the study questions and WE gave out the grades to each other. We were being taught how to develop arguments, negotiate within the group, and problem solve at a college level. We did not use the standard textbooks, were required to type all of our work, and were graded on a curve. We did not participate in things with the other students like field trips or pizza parties. We were separate, and often told that the other children were spending their time on silly things that we earn them nothing. There was a big focus on being intellectually superior. Our teacher let us know that it was his job to safeguard that for us and that is why we did not mix much with the other kids.

Intelligent Blacks
Here is the best thing or the strangest. Our teacher created his own English book because he thought we needed to be challenged. It was called, "Slot Machine English" and we did all of this overcomplicated diagramming of sentences. But, there was a chapter in the book that he called, "Black English." We sat in a class and actually had to study the inferior manner in which black people spoke English. When me and the other girls (I know that that is grammatically incorrect by the way) challenged him, Mr. Williams actually said to us, "Of course this was not written about any of you. You are good blacks, you are intelligent. You have been socialized and you know better." This was actually told not only to seventh grade black children but was also said in front of impressionable white children that may not have had is ability to make the subtle distinction.

He called me, "good". He said that I was, "intelligent." I should feel pretty good about that right? But tell me how do you feel good about the fact that you are better than or more intelligent than the people that you hang out with everyday after school? I remember this being the first time that I was ever really offended. It didn't feel good at all to hear this. I wasn't sure why but it felt like someone had poked a dagger into my heart. It didn't make me feel superior to my neighborhood friends. My mother was from the country and demonstrated many of the patterns he wrote about in his book. But I knew my mother was intelligent enough to get me into this program. I knew that they did not talk this way, at least not all of the time. But, I also understood that I did talk that way but only in certain settings. For the first time I got it! If he would say this, he was talking about me too. I was one of THEM no matter how he tried to clean it up. He wasn't only talking about my schoolmates he was talking about my mother, my aunts, my cousins and my friends. He was talking about me too.

I was intelligent, I was well-spoken, I was a good student, and I was BLACK too. These things were not contradictions. I can still see the smug look on his face when he said, "There are always exceptions to the rule. You four are the exceptions." I was not an exception and I was not exceptional, but I was angry at the insinuation.

The questions:

• How does someone develop the nerve to make such incredulous statements to anyone let alone children? Well, the answer is because they believe it. So, a better question is how do you develop this theory as a belief and get away with never being challenged on it? How do you look at your only four black students and instead of using them as your model of who black people are and how they speak, you instead develop caricatures of a race of people that you probably never even encounter?
  
• Is this where white children learn superiority, entitlement and arrogance? Could this also explain what leads to strong bounds of black solidarity?
• If this is what an educated person who teaches children truly believes and espouses to other children, doesn't he espouse these beliefs in his social groups? Does anyone challenge him or do they silently agree?
  
• How many children did he teach this garbage to over the years and what did they go on to believe and teach as a result?
  
• If you create the box, the terms, and the labels does that give you the power to define, defame, and destroy the self-esteem and self-worth of others? Even if it is not your intent aren't you accountable for the damage? How do you fix it? Do you care if it gets fixed? Do you think that anything has even been broken?
  
• Why was is it that when we were taught about Black English it was associated with lack of intelligence by an entire race of people; however, when we were taught about the use of tautologies (my sister, she), the improper use of words like irregardless, or the incorrect usage of I and me those things were not characterized as white failures?
• What is the pressure on a black child that is the only one or one of few that is constantly seen as representative for their entire race?
  

For me the issue has nothing to do with whether or not Mr. Williams was racist. I think that they're are far worse things than a racist. The power he yielded was not racism but that he was an educator. I understood somehow at that young age, that his intent (unfortunately) was not to demean or castigate all black people as ignorant, that was only the outcome. I say unfortunately because his intent was only to TEACH what was acceptable. In so doing he used the worst speech patterns of a small segment of black people to compare against the best speech and equated that with BEING white. He deemed the rest of us exceptional or exceptions to the RULE. We were all "better than" as long as we did not demonstrate qualities like those who were "less than." For the first time I had to choose which one of them I was to be. Was I a them or an us? Well, he had just told me that I was neither.

FOOTNOTE: For what it's worth, I wrote a final paper in his class on Transexuality in Children. Why? He always told us that subjects like Tornadoes where boring. Remember the theme was to challenge, to reach, to learn, to impress with knowledge. He said surprise him with something new. I picked what I thought was most shocking. I only mention this because years later when I returned to the school I was told that Mr. Williams had been convicted for molesting young boys.

Getting A Little Personal: Part 2 MisEducation

The Prelude
Part 1: Early Education
Part 2: MisEducation
Part 3: Educating Them & Us
Part 4: Home Schooling
Part 5: Return to Education
Part 6: Education of a Mayor
The Epilogue

I had gone to school for five years in a completely foreign environment where there was not one day that I didn't feel like a foreigner. I was picking up mannerisms of swinging my hair from side to side and speaking in a very altered way. No matter what things I imitated I was always reminded that I didn't really fit in. It was further compounded because I had picked up just enough of this new school routine to the point that I didn't really fit in the neighborhood either.

I was conspicuous in both environments and suspect on the block.

Brown Brownies
My brownie troupe had the whole regalia, the shoes, the sashes, the badges, and the beanie. The brownie troupe at my neighborhood school had white shirts with red trim and those press on letters that said "Brownies". When I would come home to the neighborhood, I'd have to RUN into the house and change my clothes quickly before being made fun of and hearing the overheard term "better than us."

Some may find this hard to believe but in an educational setting, by educated educators I was being held out as the possibility of what black people could be if they just worked hard. Each day I went into this school I was being given this message and guess what happens when you hear the same record over and over? You start to sing the same tune.

Back to Fifth Grade
So, I go back to the neighborhood school in fifth grade. I stand up in class that first day in the first hour and do some new tricky math. I told you earlier that Mr. Dillanger responded very negatively. He made a big deal out of what I knew and what he's students had not learned. Guess how the other students reacted? It turned into, "yea who does she think she is to come in here and act likes she is better than we are." At this point I knew I was better -- right? That's what I had been fed for years at the other school. As far as I knew these kids just needed to work harder.

After my little mathematical showing in Mr. Dillanger's class it started a new ball rolling. Mr. Dillanger sent me to the principle's office. YES! I was sent to the principle's office for doing NEW math. He showed up later and talked with the principal. The next day I went to school, I was ushered down to the BOILER ROOM with the teacher's aid. What...!?! It wasn't punishment that is where her office was located. Why was I there? They wanted to test me to find out what else I knew. She pulled out a couple of grade level reading books and I told her that I had completed those in the third grade. I was more than two complete grade levels ahead. She pulled out a few activity sheets and I finished them without breaking a sweat. It was decided that I should not return to Mr. Dillanger's class, instead I was sent to the elementary school side to work as a teacher's aid and tutor to second, third, and fourth graders.

Tell a twelve year-old that she doesn't have to do work, just roam the halls going from class to class helping whatever teacher needed help. It never occurred to me that there was anything wrong with this arrangement. I read stories to little kids, graded papers, socialized with the teachers and ran errands all day. What was the big deal? We all found out when my mother found out that this was happening. She hit the roof. I can't remember how long I trolled the halls as some junior educator but it ended immediately when my mother found out. I wonder what the young kids mother's would have thought if they knew their children were being educated by me. I was Miss Education and we we were all being miseducated.

I'll pose a few more questions for thoughts:

• How does a student get almost three grades ahead by only grade 5?
  
• So was there a test score disparity between the two schools? Absolutely! What did the test scores really mean? What is the message given to the different groups of children?
  
• What happens when black children are defined and labeled by the education system? How early does it begin? What damage does it cause? What doors does it have the power to open or close?
• If I was being told that I was special and better than the others what where they being told about who they were? If I believed it and operated on what I was told weren't the other students simply singing the song that had been written about them too?

"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his "proper place" and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary."

-- Dr. Carter G. Woodson, "The Miseducation of the Negro" 1933

Getting A Little Personal: Part 1 Early Education

The Prelude
Part 1: Early Education
Part 2: MisEducation
Part 3: Educating Them & Us
Part 4: Home Schooling
Part 5: Return to Education
Part 6: Education of a Mayor
The Epilogue

I grew up as a little girl in a predominately black neighborhood in Indianapolis. I lived in the same house from the time I was born in 1966 until I left for college in 1984. We didn't live in that area because we tried to segregate ourselves, we lived there because that is the area of the city carved out for people with dark skin like me. There was a little neighborhood school about a mile and a half away. All the kids from neighborhood went to school #73. I was there for the first part of kindergarten, the last half of fifth grade, and all of sixth grade. What I learned in those years and through those school moves had a great impact and taught me a lot about the city and country that I was growing up in.

Imagine this. I was five years old at my neighborhood school and some how it was determined that I knew everything they were teaching the kids. I knew how to read at the age of 3.5, I knew my colors, numbers, and whatever else I was supposed to know. I clearly remember that a woman would come and take me out of my classroom and take me to a separate room where I was asked a lot of questions and asked to write stories, and do drills with flip cards. What I didn't know was that I was being assessed by the school board. The school board determined that I was exceptionally gifted and that my neighborhood school would not provide the intellectual challenge that I needed. A decision was made to remove me from my neighborhood school and transfer me to a school that seemed so far away. It was like a different world to me. The houses and trees were huge and all the kids at the school were white. There were a couple of other brown faces like Aaron and Vivica Foxx who is now a big time actress.

This was the first time that I was asked to navigate issues that in 2008 we are still dealing with as a country. At five years old in 1971 I went to a school that allowed children to progress at their own rate. Great right? Here is the real deal. This school was only about 5 miles from my house. It was a public school just like school #73 in the exact same school system. Still, things were very different. Why or how is it that a this school only a few miles away offered such incredible opportunities to students that the kids in my neighborhood would ever know about? Something else that I never knew was that my parents (my mother) had GONE to the school board and complained about the substandard conditions and the low expectations at my neighborhood school. That's why I was tested and moved. That's the ONLY reason why I was tested and moved. I also learned that every year that I was at that school, out learning my neighborhood friends my mother had to trek down to the school board and get a special dispensation to keep me there.

If you don't see the trouble with any of this let me point it out:

1. I was moved because I was too intelligent for the school, but no one else at my neighborhood school was tested. Was I really so smart or was the school poor? If the school was providing a sub-standard education, should anyone have been left at that school?
   
2. In the same school system should one school get the hand me downs from the one school or should they all get the same resources? (More on this in a bit)
3. What was really different between the kids in my neighborhood and the kids at the new school? Did the white kids get tested to before they were allowed to attend this school? That's rhetorical but the answer is NO. They did not have to be tested. Smart or dumb the white children only had to live in the vicinity. They were given access simply because of where they lived, I had to prove that I was smart enough.
   
4. What is it like to be the only brown brownie in your brownie troop? How does it feel to a nine year old to have great friends at school who you can visit but they are not allowed (by their families) to visit you because you live in a black neighborhood? What do both sets of children learn from the experience?
   
5. What is it like to go to school with people from a VERY different cultural experience and then have to live in the neighborhood with people that share your culture?
   

It is difficult for a small child to absorb all of that and why they are really not accepted in the neighborhood or the school.

Back to number 2. Because of some really outrageous things that happened to me at this school, my mother had to remove me in the 5th grade. I will never forget that day walking into Mr. Dillanger's class as the new kid, living in, but somewhat disconnected from the neighborhood perspective of my friends. I was about to learn how the difference in the way that we were being educated impacted our future.

Mr. Dillanger's Long Divison
Here's what happens very early. Mr. Dillanger's class was learning division, something we had mastered in 3rd grade at the other school. I was asked to go to the board and a said the problem wrong. I said something like, "divide 5 by twenty" instead of the other way around. He told me that I was wrong and said that it couldn't be done. He said, "then show me." I realized my mistake but it was no big deal because I had long ago learned how to do division using decimals. I made the problem 5.0/20. My ability to do that was immediately scolded. I was told that I was showing off and that his students were not at that point and I would confuse them.

Ah - ha the difference! At #106, my white school we were taught to challenge the limits, to question, to reach, to explore, to LEARN. Here at my neighborhood school that had hand-me-down books, the black students were already being taught not to "show off" by being too intelligent. It was being taught by the teachers. They were being taught to color only within the lines and never reach beyond what they were given. That is where a serious divide begins.

This is not some sad tale of my childhood. It is only a small glimpse into what made me so resilient and why I believe that I can help my new children figure out how to make their way it what will seem like a very new world.

This relates to Ethiopia adoption or transracial adoption in general because I was the conspicuous child. The difference was that after my daily school experiences, I went into a home with a strong mother, I played for hours with black children in my neighborhood, I participated in little league clubs that were predominately black, and I attended a black church. There was a balance to the messages that I was receiving about who I was and who I should be.

Thank God!

Getting A Little Personal: The Prelude

The Prelude
Part 1: Early Education
Part 2: MisEducation
Part 3: Educating Them & Us
Part 4: Home Schooling
Part 5: Return to Education
Part 6: Education of a Mayor

This is just a quick note to the few who do read my blog. These post have a little different tone than the typical post that I do about adoption. I just wanted to interject how they relate. The stories that I will tell in this series of post point to why I developed a heart that beat loud and strong for young black children. It explains why I became so heavily involved in working with children by the time that I was 16 and why I was so committed to the idea of adoption at an early age.

I also think that I have a unique perspective on race, how it affects the self-identify of children, and what some of the long and short-term consequences are.

• I lived in an all black working-class neighborhood and went to an all white school in an upper middle-class neighborhood.
• My father married a white woman with three children in 1970's Indianapolis, so I was part of two transracial families from age 10 into adulthood. Whew...we survived it!
• My father's mother was mixed (Cherokee, Scottish, Black) and the politics of that were very present in almost all of my interactions with my grandmother. For black readers, my grandmother was COLOR STRUCK and not ashamed to let you know it.
  
• Both of my parents interacted socially with friends of different races but RARELY was race ever discussed in our home while I was growing up. Except for the white friends that were no longer allowed to visit my stepmother after she married a black man.
  
• I attended a black church where I was told that, "I could do all things through Christ..." That I was created in God's image and to never hide my light under a bushel.
  

Through this series of posts I hope to give at least a glimpse into the complexities and hurdles. Hopefully you will read along with me. Your comments all help me a lot too it would be great to start a real dialog. I'll try not to take too long to sum it all up.