I called one of two best friends in the whole world
on my way home from a late night grad class one wintry evening. The phone rang twice and picked up with talking on the other end… I
waited…and waited. She was talking to her son, my godson, about how he had had a bad day and he needed to spend some
time in his own room, and not in his mother’s. Finally she said, “Hey,” and I decided not to ask what was going on;
she and I had been playing phone tag for a while and I wanted to catch up on
my travel arrangements to see her and the rest of the gang in March. Her daughter called in just then and I hung
up- she said she’d call me back in a bit.
About 30 minutes later, she called back, saying, “So let me tell you what your godson did
today.” I said ok and waited for the
story of youth-life crisis that only a 7-year old can get into.
She said, “He took a magnet from the teacher’s
desk. When I asked him why, he said, ‘cuz I really, really wanted it.’”
I didn’t reply.
“That’s stealing,” she told me.
I waited for more to come, but that’s all she
said. I asked, “Is that all? Is that all he did?”
She said, “He did it the day before as
well.”
I sat there thinking. Ok. Yes, taking something that belongs to
someone else without asking them, with the intent of not returning it, IS
stealing.
She continued to tell me about how they were going to
approach the situation. The teacher called her on the 2nd day, very
upset. She wanted to teach him a lesson
“as a black boy.”
I had to ask: “Is his
teacher white?”
“No, she’s black.”
Huh. “Did she get the magnet
back?”
“Yes.”
My friend said that she didn’t believe in double punishing, so
she was curious to hear what the teacher had in mind for addressing the
situation. The teacher recommended that he,
for one week, have lunch in isolation and walk laps around the playground
during recess. My friend told the teacher
that she thought this punishment was a bit extreme for a first offense. She asked the teacher to think about whether
the punishment fit the crime. They would
speak again the next day.
Having just come out of my Stigma, Prejudice and
Discrimination class just minutes before this conversation, the notions of
institutionalized and internalized racism were clear as day. A 7-year old (who happens to be a boy, and Black, and living in the South),
takes a magnet.
In my view, this would be a perfect
opportunity to teach a lesson not only to him but to the others in the class
about appropriate (ethical/moral) behavior, and communicating about wants,
needs and conflict resolution. Perhaps
his lunch could be better spent in the library writing a little essay about why
stealing is wrong and an apology letter to the teacher. Perhaps this teaching moment could be broadened
to the greater classroom to include a role play about communicating your wants
and desires to those around you; creating boundaries that allow students to
talk about what is theirs; sharing, lending, and borrowing; and resolving
conflicts by practicing appropriate apology techniques for their age group.
No. As it stood,
his punishment could very well be likened to prison activities of solitary
confinement and prison yard exercise.
The irony was more than obvious:
That he is black, and his teacher is black; that his “sentence” is
extreme; that Black Americans are disproportionately represented in the United
States criminal justice system; that her reaction of offense (to a magnet, no
less) and desire to punish harshly is rooted in a culture steeped in
institutional racism; that she was expressing her internalization of that racism
through harsh punishment upon a 2nd grader.
How deeply, deeply affecting and pervasive is
minority stress, indeed!?
Was the teacher truly upset about the fact that a 7-year old
took one of her magnets (I mean, get real…it’s a magnet!)? Or was she upset
because the principle of stealing invokes feelings of mistrust, insecurity,
offense, and violation? Did she want to
teach my godson a lesson about stealing, as a young impressionable student, or did
she want to punish him for stealing
because he is a Black boy? In wanting to teach “them” a lesson, does she mean teaching the black boys in the class
a lesson- about crime and punishment, or teaching all the students about why
it’s not right to steal?
This teacher had internalized the racism she has faced as a Black woman in the
South, and was passing it down to her student.
I hoped she and my friend could work out an agreed upon punishment that suited the offense, but more than that, I hoped the teacher would see how her approach was perpetuating a cycle of institutional racism and encouraging an internalization
of that racism within herself, and in her young, innocent student.
This “punishment” instead of “treatment”
approach was likely subconscious but it was nonetheless driven by a country’s
history of socially constructed racial categories of oppression and her
lifetime of dealing with sigma, prejudice, and discrimination resulting from
racism.
Depending on how this situation was handled and resolved, my godson would be strengthened and empowered to be a good person or put down and demoralized, perhaps even stigmatized,
because he is Black. Granted, his parents could supplement these
lessons in the home, but the educational institution would either perpetuate
institutional racism, or begin its deconstruction. Regardless, he would learn from this
experience of isolation and lap-walking.
He just would not understand to what extent it might symbolize his walk in life.
