When Are We Going to Talk About Poverty?

I’m just going to say it, even though in our current educational climate it might at first seem to be unpopular — I just ask that you hear me out to the end:

I am getting tired of hearing about Race and Ethnicity in Education.

The reason for this could not be simpler: When we talk about the special needs of black and Latino students, the unsaid inference is that they are somehow deficient because they are black and Latino. I’m tired of talking about how different they are, and how we need to approach our minority students in a different way because of their culture, or the color of their skin. Believe it or not, there is something more important we should be talking about.

I want to address something that seems to loom over every staff meeting and workshop I’ve ever attended — it is an enormous shadow sitting in the corner of the room, and nobody seems to want to address it, even though they all know it’s there. It is the elephant in the classroom — poverty.

Our black and Latino students are unsuccessful not because of their ethnicity. And we can talk all day about White Privilege (and in many workshops that’s all we talk about). But the reason our minority students are less successful than our Asian and white students is a simple matter of economics.

Some of the worst students I’ve had have been white students. Some of the worst students I’ve had have been black students. I’ve also had some pretty bad Latinos. Asians haven’t been my best students either. But no matter their ethnicity, the most common trait I’ve seen among struggling learners is that they are poor.

If you have a black kid from a rich family in your class, and he is sitting next to a poor white kid whose parents are drug dealers, who is going to do better? The rich black kid. Despite how much we want to talk about the white kid being born with White Privilege, and the black kid being, well…black, and therefore deficient in some intangible way, none of it holds water when you recognize the power of poverty. I’ve never seen a first year teacher struggle to understand how to teach multi-cultural literature, but I have seen them break down, cry, and quit, trying to teach kids in poverty.

I have been bothered to no end over the last four years because of the fact that everything I read, and every training, workshop, and staff meeting I go to refuses to talk about poverty. All they want to talk about is race, and they ask questions like this: “What are you doing for your Latino students?”

Or: “What are you doing for your black students?”

We are given basic strategies to make sure we are letting black boys participate enough, or encouraging Latinas to become more independent by reading The House on Mango Street. This is good stuff, and should be included in our conversations, but our conversations should include other aspects of urban education as well. When we use a race-based approach in this way, especially in low-income areas where everyone is poor, we forget to ask another important question: “What are we doing for our white and Asian students?”

The answer to this question is: “Nothing.”

Now I’m not going to call this reverse racism. Racism implies prejudice, and I know that the main tenet of race-based education is that everyone is equal, and nobody should be discriminated against. Nobody is being racist, but this focus on dark-skinned students bothers me when I see the exact same problems in all my students who live below the poverty line (and at my school that’s over 50% of them), not just Latinos and blacks.

In low-income public schools, everyone is in the same boat. Let’s not forget Native Americans are worse off than blacks and Latinos. And I might even argue that in diverse inner-city schools, being white might even make life more difficult (and I might in a future post). At the school I teach at, white kids are a minority, so the really poor white kids are some of the worst kids in the school. Plenty of Asian kids are failing too. So why are we using all of our training hours thinking about the color of a kid’s skin instead of focusing on the bigger problem? Why don’t we ever ask this question: “What are we doing for our poor students?”

Just once I would love to go to a workshop that focuses on strategies for dealing with ghetto kids who live in poverty. How about we give practical strategies for things really going on in our class? Why don’t we ever learn how to teach ghetto students?

How’s this for some Real Advice in the Real World:

What do you do about that kid who never seems to have a backpack, pen, or paper?

You provide these for them in class, and don’t give them hell about not having them, because you don’t know the reason behind it. Maybe, like one of my students, they are homeless, and couldn’t get a backpack even if they sold them at Goodwill for a dollar. Even if you know a student is late because they were lounging around the corner with their friends being lazy, it doesn’t change anything. If they come in late, you thank them for making it to class, make sure they have the materials they need to learn, and catch them up on what they missed. I can’t imagine doing anything else (See my post — Killing Them With Kindness).

Or how about this gem: What do you do when a kid comes in your class smelling like weed and his eyes are red?

Well, first you have to recognize it’s even happening. I think some teachers go through an entire school year without looking for kids who are high. First, you need to be aware it’s going on — if you don’t, they’ll come in high every day because to them you are the oblivious teacher in 3rd period. Once you start looking, you need to figure out what to do. You can call security and send him out, but that might not be the best answer. Try talking to the kid and letting him or her know that you know they’re high, and you don’t want them coming to class high anymore. Here is some great practical advice you won’t hear anywhere else but in this blog: Nothing kills a high like someone knowing you’re stoned. Tell them at the beginning of class that you know, then go about making them self-conscious about it for the next hour. They’ll think twice about coming in high again, I can promise you that.

This is the kind of advice a first year teacher at my school could use tomorrow — not telling them that they need to focus more on the African-American boys in the class when it’s the poor white kid who is the drug dealer. Now I’m not going to provide all the answers here, you’re going to have to keep reading my blog. But rest assured it is dedicated to this kind of simple advice for teachers in the real world.

This is not to say I don’t believe we should teach teachers about our minority populations, and the different cultural aspects that affect how they learn. I think some of these discussions are very powerful. I’ve been in rooms where some white teachers didn’t realize the power White Privilege had in their lives, and were shocked by the stories of struggle they heard from Latino and black colleagues. These discussions were filled with tears, and many teachers leave them with a different perspective toward their students, and society in general. Don’t get me wrong. For teachers who did not grow up in a diverse area, or who have not studied race-based education, it is necessary to read and understand at a deep level. But that doesn’t mean every single workshop, seminar, and staff meeting needs to focus on it.

I believe one of the grossest ideological errors we have made in education is our misconception that ethnicity is the most important focus area for study and training.

It’s easy to see why we have made this error in judgment. As a society, we are so focused on skin color that we want to blame everything on it. I can see how race often appears to be the issue, but that is only because in American society (as in every society), our poorest citizens are always in the minority. We think it is a race thing because our working-poor have dark skin. But in Israel the labor force is Russian, or as we would call them — white people. The Russians in Israel are at the bottom of the socio-economic food chain because they are poor, immigrants, and in the minority — it isn’t because they are white. So don’t let discussions of race fool you, it is more about socioeconomics. Just remember this:

A black kid is not unsuccessful because he is black.

Puff Daddy’s son is black, and I guarantee you he’ll be more successful than all the white kids at my school put together. You tell me which is the bigger privilege, skin color or money?

Of course, race-based education and socioeconomics go hand in hand, and should be taught together. But one is more important than the other, and we have it backwards. We need to learn how to teach poor students to read and write before we get them to appreciate the nuances of multicultural literature.

The bigger issue is socioeconomics, and you will never be able to convince me otherwise. And let’s say you agree with me — then I bet you’ve been thinking the same thing I have. Our kids are poor and ghetto, no matter what their skin color. So how do we teach all of them?

The skin color of the elephant in the room is gray, and this one has an ankle bracelet and a knife, and his eyes are bloodshot.

Why don’t we ever talk about that?