Rachael Oelkers

EDU 504

Reflection #2

Revealing the Invisible

Many children in today’s America will go to school bi-culturally, a concept very different from past generations. While children go to school to work hard at obtaining a good quality education they will also have to work hard at overcoming the obstacles of diversity. Young children are taught to go beyond differences by learning to understand such misconceptions that can divide a classroom. However, while students work together to reach understanding and equality amongst one another, many are still being subjected to the harsh reality of diversity by the teacher.

“Passive racism is the most common form of racism in the United States today” (Marx, 11). Widely accepted and unchallenged, passive racism can greatly influence educators and greatly hinder the students. The book “Revealing the Invisible” follows a group of white teacher education students and examines passive and often unconscious racism of a white teacher. The study allows each education student to confront their own passive and unconscious racism, and learn to recognize their own positions of privilege and work hard to create an anti-racist learning environment.

Sherry Marx, the author of “Revealing the Invisible” starts off her book by including her own personal account of passive racism during her experience of student teaching. While unfortunately passive racism does exist within the educational system, the real unsettling factor is Marx’s first description of her supervising teacher. Marx begins by describing Mrs. D as having a highly respected and praised reputation for success within her classroom (Marx, 1). Considered a veteran of teaching, Mrs. D had many personal successes such as a leader in the local writing project, publisher of an article in a highly esteemed professional journal, and she was also finishing up her masters degree in education (Marx, 1). However, Mrs. D’s success was targeted only at a portion of her class. Mrs. D had no time to help students she felt had “no work ethic” or were not “advancement material”. One student Raquel who was a straight A student, was often singled out by Mrs. D and stuck in a section of the classroom of struggling students. At a parent teacher conference, Mrs. D described to a very concerned parent, Raquel’s progress and stated she was “exactly where she needs to be” (Marx, 2). The parent left very satisfied and confident in Mrs. D’s assessment of her daughter. Unfortunately Mrs. D saw Raquel as being right where she needed to be because she had already reached her maximum level of achievement. All the students doing poorly in Mrs. D’s class room including Raquel where African American. Mrs. D’s strive for student success within her classroom was limited to her white students.

Whether or not it was passive racism or an unconscious act, Mrs. D was basing her student’s success rate on their racial status. Even for students such as Raquel, Mrs. D did not see any further advancement in her educational career and fed the parent what she wanted to hear and then gave up on the student. At that point in Raquel’s life someone other than herself had already determined the amount of success she was worth. This unfortunately is not uncommon within schools. Working as a preschool teacher and subbing in a second grade classroom I have noticed countless acts of passive and unconscious racism towards the students and their level of potential. It is hard enough for children of different racial statuses, cultures, economic statuses, and many other differences to come together and create a positive community. But to have teachers whose job it is to build a positive environment for all students and show acceptance in all differences single out students is degrading. Not only do parents rely on such teachers as Mrs. D. to provide a positive learning environment, but the students as well.

Rachel from the vary beginning identified herself as having “a strong dual identity, a cultural Jewish identity, and an ethnic White identity” (Marx, 39). Rachel described herself as “not always feeling safe publicizing her Jewish Identity” (Marx, 39). Rachel in a sense used her White identity as a safety net to almost blend in with the majority. Growing up Rachel spent her early part of childhood in a predominately White area. Over the years she described her neighborhood as becoming very “run down” and so her parents transferred Rachel to a wealthy White public school. However Rachel found she couldn’t “compete” with the students at her new school and transferred back to her old one (Marx, 39). However when Rachel returned to her old school, she found it was very different and that she had now become the minority.

Throughout Rachel’s experience as a student teacher she described herself as a person “into helping”. Although she was much more comfortable at her original school and the diversity that she now found, she felt that the education was deficient (Marx, 39). When taking about the future, Rachel’s initial plan was” to teach at a private school where she felt the parents would care and the children would be well behaved and have similar values to her own” (Marx, 40). Rachel defended this statement by also saying that “I would have more to offer a school like that” (Marx, 40). Rachel also shared her beliefs in sending her children to a private school verse public in that “the atmosphere would be safe and calm” (Marx, 40).

Starting off Rachel had already development many ideas and beliefs throughout her own experience that could potentially promote passive or unconscious racism. An example during her student teaching experience that demonstrated this was during her work tutoring a little girl. When describing the tutoring experience she felt the lesson had been completely unsuccessful because she could not get the child to read anything in English (Marx, 61). Rachel went on to say that the child would repeatedly say that if the material was in Spanish she would read it. This seemed to only frustrate Rachel and she began to judge the level of intelligence based upon the little girl’s English skills rather than her intellectual ability (Marx, 61).

Ashley reminded me a lot of Rachel in the fact that both of them had something that separated them from the majority. Ashley was German however she grew up in a small town on the Texas-Mexico border. Right from the start her language alone, a mix of English and Spanish, separated her from the majority of the English speaking population. Also Ashley grew up in a town where her family was one of just a few White families. Ashley’s experience growing up can be described as something of a minority. This was until she left for college and found herself lost and uncertain in her new environment where she was now the majority. As her experience in the White majority increased Ashley began to assimilate into her new found identity, and started to lose her past connections. During her student teaching experience she was asked to depict neighborhoods of color and described neighborhoods of color particularly African American with fear, and felt she or Whites “weren’t welcome there” (Marx, 64). Ashley was also very fearful of Latinos, as she associated them with aggressive and uncivilized behaviors (Marx, 65). How had Ashley suddenly come to fear such cultures different than her own after living as a minority in a Spanish community?

Rachael and Ashley’s passive racism left me sad and amazed. Two individuals coming from such unique environments and diversities had taken their own personal knowledge of difference and were unable to connect it within the outside world. Instead of using their differences to help overcome differences within the classroom, their experiences had left them with misconceptions and fear of the unknown. However it is my hope that they both take from this study the importance of understanding diversity and using their own stories to help promote equality in the classroom.