Friday, December 26, 2014

Equity Access and Cultural Responsiveness

I became an educator given from my experiences as a brown youth growing up in the Detroit area and because of my strong passion to give honor to our black and brown ancestors --- the beautiful struggle for liberation and equality which has been consistently denied for over 400 years in America. I had a passion, as the award winning journalist and freedom fighter Mumia Abu Jamal has been called to be "a voice for the voiceless," to tell the untold stories, to provide a more balanced version of American history than previously told. I wanted to expose the "truth" of Columbus' so-called discovery of America as nothing more than a genocide of Awarak peoples of the West Indies and reveal the nations capitalist system as the richest on earth as one in which profited solely on the blood stained backs of enslaved black labor. So when the conversation begins around equity, I look to my passion and my past. In my youth, a deep and sincere thirst for racial identity, carefully shaped my worldview. In my humble opinion all schools should empower students to answer two key questions: Who Am I? Where do I come from? With the lack of stories and images of brown and black youth and particularly in my case as a bi-racial child growing up in the countries most segregated city, I certainly did not have access to even seeing myself portrayed in books particularly those written about the so called "development" of the Western World or for that matter taught by brown or black teacher --- as less than 2 percent of the teaching force is African American. You see black and brown people, especially women, even in this day of a black man in the "White House"are ignored from our nations storied past. Instead, we are taught to revere the same old tired stories of George Washington crossing the Delaware or the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Who is telling these stories of early America? Would the stories and experiences be told differently if we shared words espoused by free or enslaved blacks during this same time period? Why do our history books continue to be euro-and elite-centric? When will the day arise when we can embrace the voice of Native Americans and women abolitionists right next to those ideas of James Madison and Ben Franklin. Seems to me that we can learn just as much from the all voices of Americas past than continue to sterilize our youth and society with a one-size fits all notion of America history. How's that for creating more equity in our classrooms and schoolhouses?