Mixed Race Studies

Vulnerability as Empowerment in the Classroom

Education Week
2015-09-09

Christina Torres, Middle and high school English and Drama Teacher
University Laboratory School, Honolulu, Hawaii

It’s back-to-school time for many students and teachers this week. For many, it means that 20 to 120 new faces enter our classrooms and our lives.

Jessica, a fifth-grade teacher in Chicago, wrote this beautiful piece on the vulnerability of her new students after asking them to share how they saw themselves reflected in literary characters:

I was in awe of the bravery of these kids. To speak this freely in front of their classmates. To tell these things to me, their teacher, who they barely even know at this point. That is bravery.

What they showed me is their capability to make themselves vulnerable. To be willing to share the deepest parts of themselves. To leave behind the worry of how others would react and share these moments and glimpses into their lives with us all.

The piece hits on an aspect of education that is often forgotten: students not only look to us for content, they also can experience either empowerment or oppression based on the culture of our classrooms…

We have to face this with our students head on. We must not only acknowledge this truth with students but also attempt to build trust in a space that has failed to validate their identities.

Here’s the thing: we have all been biased, and we have been hurt by biases. As Jay Smooth discusses in his seminal talk, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Discussing Race,” “the race constructs that we live in in America were shaped … for centuries by a need to rationalize and justify indefensible acts.” Because of this, we “will never bat a thousand when it comes to dealing with race issues.” We’re going to mess up, which is difficult when the stakes feel so high…

Read the entire article here.

Louisiana Ordered to Provide Voucher Data to U.S.

Education Week
2014-4-09

Mark Walsh, Contributing Writer

A federal judge has ordered Louisiana to provide annual data to the federal government on the students participating in the state’s private school voucher program.

The April 7 order by U.S. District Judge Ivan R. Lemelle of New Orleans appears to bring to a conclusion months of skirmishing between the state and President Barack Obama’s administration over the voucher program and whether it will affect racial balance in the school districts still under court supervision for desegregation.

The judge largely sided with the U.S. Department of Justice, ordering the state to provide data about the racial background of students enrolling in the voucher program…

…The judge sided with the federal government in a skirmish over race classifications. The state had sought to exclude data on students who marked “black” as one of several race or ethnic categories they meet.

“The state is now suggesting, for reporting purposes, a ‘new definition of black'” that would fail to take account of mixed-race students, the Justice Department said in a March court filing.

“Adopting the state’s new proposed definition would thus undermine the United States’ ability to accurately and fully count students in public and private schools by race to evaluate … whether the voucher program has an impact on segregation in those schools,” the Justice Department said in the filing.

Lemelle’s order requires the state to include data for black students “defined as any student who indicated black either alone or as one of several race/ethnic categories.”…

Read the entire article here.

Marriages Across Racial, Ethnic Lines on the Rise, Study Says

Education Week
2012-02-16

Lesli A. Maxwell, Education Reporter

As the number of couples marrying across racial and ethnic lines continues to grow in the United States, public attitudes toward intermarriage are also becoming more accepting, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center.

Couples of differing races or ethnic backgrounds comprised 15.1 percent of all new marriages in 2010, while the share of all current marriages that are either interracial or interethnic reached an all-time high of 8.4 percent, Pew found. That’s a big jump from 1980 when just 3 percent of all marriages and less than 7 percent of all new marriages were across racial or ethnic lines.

Asians and Hispanics have the highest level of intermarriage rates in the U.S., and, in 2010, more than a quarter of newlyweds in each group married someone of a different race or ethnicity, according to Pew. And even though the intermarriage rate for whites is relatively low, marriages between whites and minority groups are by far the most common. In 2010, 70 percent of new intermarriages involved a white spouse, Pew’s report found…

…Of course, there are important issues for schools to consider because with more intermarried couples will come more students who are biracial or multiethnic. It could certainly present challenges on the data collection side of things for schools that must demonstrate that students of all races and ethnicities are reaching certain academic targets.

If a student has an Asian mother and a black father, do his scores get counted among those of Asian students or African-American students?

Read the entire article here.