Taking it Personally: Racism in the Classroom from Kindergarten to College. . - Reviews - book review

Sekani Moyenda and Ann Berlak (Temple University Press, 2001)

The authors of Taking it Personally, Sekani Moyenda and Ann Berlak, take as a given that claims that we live in a color blind society, free of blatant manifestations of (legal and social) racial discrimination and struggle, are false. But their experiences indicate that these beliefs are held by primary and secondary educators and are manifested in graduate college education programs. In an attempt to counteract this color blind claim, Moyenda and Berlak have set out to demonstrate that the liberal multicultural language/ideology used in schools--an ideology in which historically marginalized groups and voices are heard but which never examines how and why they were marginalized to begin with--contributes to a vicious cycle. In this cycle, (white) teachers never get beyond a topical understanding of their students and thus continually negate and invalidate the unique cultural experiences and realities of many Black students. The lack of cultural awareness leads many teachers to operate out of and impose a str ikingly Eurocentric value system on Black students that tends to choke their educational advancement. Taking it Personally documents a process by which teachers, white ones especially, do or do not develop cultural lenses that will enable them to be successful teachers in culturally diverse classrooms.

The book is organized around a specific "Boot Camp Presentation" given to one of Berlak's college level classes. The class functions as the part of a graduate education program which seeks to make students more aware of and informed about the challenges they will face in a culturally diverse classroom. The presentation was developed by Moyenda, a Black elementary school teacher and former student of Berlak's, to help address what she sees as future urban educators' biggest fear: "managing classroom behavior in predominantly Black, and especially poor Black, classrooms." Frustrated by the fact that this issue was never addressed and that there was never any exploration of actual classroom experiences, Moyenda developed the presentation for graduate education programs. It is intended to mesh educational theory with real classroom experience.

The presentation includes a role playing exercise made up of a fictitious class of elementary school students who exhibit various degrees of academic achievement and behavioral "escalation levels." The teacher in the exercise is set up to fail. (One of the college students plays a teacher who just cannot seem to accomplish the plans for the day because of misbehavior.) Moyenda explains to the college students that if they plan to teach in an urban setting they will have comparable students. The mock class is culturally diverse too. This is relevant and appropriate, according to the authors, because it is directly related to the students' behavior and learning. The authors take the time to explain, convincingly, that a child's behavior in the classroom may be a product of her/his home experience. This is especially true for Black students whose home experience is, more often than not, influenced by larger social forces. For example, parents' unequal access to economic and political resources as a result of rac ism plays a direct role in how their child enters into and engages with her or his educational experience. (Both Moyenda and Berlak operate out of the assumption that institutional racism is present and consistent and continues to have a negative effect on African Americans.)

The Boot Camp Presentation is a way to help teachers realize that, contrary to color blind proclamations, race matters. Though the teacher in the presentation fails to manage the children's behavior, the presentation is actually a success because it starts a process in which future educators are forced to recognize that there will be situations beyond their control. These future educators would do well to realize that they are working against paradigms hundreds of years in the making, rather than getting frustrated and giving up or, worse yet, stubbornly insisting on "appropriate" (white) standards. The presentation is a way to create that awareness and is accomplished via its dialogue and processing components.

Moyenda's own experiences with racism seem to be the driving force behind the creation of the presentation. Both fed up and damaged by racism's effects on her, Moyenda, who describes herself as a militant, is a teacher who has made it "her agenda...to teach Black boys and girls to become militant." She encourages her students to label injustice when they see it and then work relentlessly towards alleviating that injustice. Moyenda also lets the college students know, in very candid language, that she is wary of white teachers coming into predominantly Black schools because she has seen the damage many of them have done, intentionally or not. The reader can almost see many of the students squirming in their seats as they try to make sense of what they see as her confrontational nature and provocative use of terms like "militant." Indeed, many of Moyenda's students felt that contentious concerns like militancy (and racism) had no place in a classroom setting.