Causes…
I worked in law enforcement. I now teach school.
When I first started teaching, I taught in a all black school. There were two other white teachers and three white students grades four through eight. I teach ec.
So I pull my kids from the regular room for remediation. My eighth grade group was fifteen boys…no girls. They didn’t respect me…it took three to six weeks to get full cooperation. After the first week of them doing the opposite of what I told them to do. Ignoring and cursing and talking through instructional time…
I was at my wits end. I asked them what the problem was. They didn’t behave that way with their other teachers. Well…some of the time anyway. They told me outright.
White ppl are the devil. White ppl hate us.
I asked them if I personally had showed them anything but love and kindness. They all agreed I was nice and probably cared about them. But they said they had been taught not to trust me bc Im white. I told them we could work on trust and they agreed.
Then we talked about the differences between white people and black people and the things we have in common. I let them ask me questions about white ppl. By the end of the year a couple of them were saying I was their white auntie…lol
But they learned. A few of them jumped two grade levels in one year. They were all at least three grade levels behind. These kids are taught not to trust police. ..and definitely not to trust white people. It was the same in the neighborhoods I worked in as LEO.
I visited their churches. Ate at cookouts with them. I had to hang around their neighborhood before they would trust me. It got to where anytime a crime happened they called me on duty or off to tell me who did it.
I built a good rapport with the students I had. ..which helped them learn
Teachers can’t teach students who refuse to learn. Teachers facilitate learning…thats all. The students have to do the work. If they don’t trust you…they won’t do it. Everything they hear from the time they are born is don’t trust outsiders.
Don’t trust the police. Don’t trust white people. Its almost part of their identity. It takes ppl willing to go in and disprove those beliefs. And that only works for the individual doing it. The rest of the race is not to be trusted.
The change has to start with them. They must stop separting themselves. Their leaders have to get them to start teaching respect for the police in the homes…movies…advertising. ..and respect for other races. Instead of the victim mentality they teach now for the sake of money. It will take at least a generation for it to get better if they start tomorrow.
