Lack of Teacher Respectability in African American Communities

One of the successes of the Civil Rights Movement was its ability to convince the world that racism affected African Americans on even the most intimate levels. It gave the world a view into the real consequences of white supremacist patriarchal discourse on an entire people within a supposed free and democratic nation.

One of the failures of the Civil Rights Movement was that it was very outwardly-focused. During this time of seismic political and cultural change, African Americans should have looked within our culture and made a critical assessment of it. Some things should have been kept, while the things that impede our social, moral, cultural, and economic growth should have been discarded. This is why I love the book, So Long a Letter by Miriama Ba. This letter-form novel takes a view of Senegalese culture, and does that very hard assessment.

With that said, nothing displays this lack of critical self-assessment outside of the church like the current sorry state of education within African American communities. Teaching used to be one of the most respected professions an African American could aspire towards; it was one step below the calling to preach, and was almost seen as divinely inspired. Now, it is a joke. It's something you do if you want a guaranteed paycheck and a two-month vacation. Parents cuss teachers out, sometimes physically attack them, and all-around just don't give a damn about what's going on in the schools (Keep in mind I'm being very general here. I know that I sound like I'm stereotyping Black parents, but for explanation's sake, please hear me out).

And for once, I am not blaming Baby Boomers for this. Oh, no! That honor belongs to the generation before them. From California to Detroit to my hometown of Centreville, Mississippi to New Orleans, I have heard the horror stories. For instance, a Baby Boomer recently told me about a particular high school here in the Memphis area. If a young lady tried out for the dancing doll team, no matter how skilled or talented she may have been, if her skin color was too dark, then the coaches wouldn't pick her. Another Memphis alumnus told me of how the officials at her school mistreated a young lady who could sing. She could have been one of the most talented singers this country has ever seen; yet, she never led a song in her school choir because the teachers there and the choir director said she was too dark to represent the school.

Many people in our area heard of the terror unleashed on the county by one teacher, I'll call her Mrs. Pompous. When the Baby Boomers attended school, it was school policy that pregnant girls could not attend school (no such policy existed for the boys who got the girls pregnant. He could continue his education while the child's mother faced shame and expulsion). I was told that Mrs. Pompous reveled in putting pregnant girls out of school. Even if it were graduation day, and a girl were not showing, if Mrs. Pompous found out, she'd pull a girl out of the line, embarrassing the girl and her whole family in front of the entire community.

Mrs. Pompous's reign of terror didn't stop there. The Baby Boomer generation was one of the last generations to actually secure decent jobs with their high school diplomas. Many employers used the comments made by students' teachers to verify things such as good deportment. If Mrs. Pompous did not like a student or a student's parents, she'd simply write something unflattering on the student's record, ensuring that that student would never get a decent job in that area; thus, many Baby Boomers had to move away to bigger cities to secure employment.

 

Even though the Baby Boomers had many, many excellent teachers who were called into the profession and truly cared about their students, teachers like Mrs. Pompous simply seemed drunk on power. I asked one Alabama man, who is now deceased, why Black teachers had so much power and why they were allowed to truly terrorize the population in some communities. He sadly responded, "Most of our parents couldn't read and write, and almost all our school boards was white. So, what the teacher say went 'cause our parents just ain't want to argue with them, and what did the white folk at the school board care?" So, when the Baby Boomers began to have children, of course the memories of teachers like Mrs. Pompous lingered, and parents looked for any signs of abuse of their children. In fact, one woman from North Mississippi heatedly remarked to me, "If them teachers even thought about treating my children like we was treated, I'd be all over that ass like a hornet's nest. I'm glad they didn't touch my baby or talk down to them. I was always ready to whip some teacher ass!"

This woman's response is a classic and human example of what happens when rampant abuse, even within our own communities, goes unchecked. The failure of the Civil Rights Movement concerning education was that our parents and grandparents (and bless them for their efforts), pushed mightily for integration in education without moving toward improving education in our own communities. We didn't check that abuse or try to improve literacy in our own communities. And even after the enforcement of school desegregation, many Black school districts remained majority-Black school districts with the same teachers in place like Mrs. Pompous. Is it any wonder, then, that parents took matters in their own hands?