I want to scream every time I hear math is "white." I did a few long-term substituting for a few years, and I can remember 6 students that were outstanding in math. Three were white (2 male/1 female) and 3 were black (2 male/1 female). I also remember the black students not being as confident as the white students and there's zero doubt in my mind it's due to the hogwash promoted. Both black females (7th grade and 10th) were the first to get a new concept, but both turned in mediocre work. I handed some tests back to both and told them I wouldn't accept it. They turned it back in with perfect scores, and continued to perform to their abilities while I had the class. Expectations matter. "I am not threatened or alienated. I am warmed and delighted...this is how we advance the family, and the race, if you care about such things. One generation at a time." I wish all families could see this. I want our children to be smarter and better than me or my husband, take the good side of us and make it better. BTW, a maternal great-grandfather was from Grand Cayman. Pasty white and tall Anglo/West African sailor who sailed up (on a boat he built) at the end of the 19th century, he eventually opened a sail loft in Mobile.
Thanks for this great comment! I almost feel like my Aunt Amy Wilson was blessed to not come of age in the Modern Era from the standpoint of psychology. Obviously, the 1950s in Virginia were an unjust time but, within her known world of family and friends and neighbors, her brilliance in math was appreciated, not celebrated (a cringe term if ever there was one) but duly noted and perceived as good for Amy and her family. There was no psychology of low expectations Amy had to surmount in her all-black, segregated schools.
As for your larger insight, how we see the world matters. Life is generational ascent. One doesn't flip a switch in 1964 and say, we're done. One doesn't break through to Harvard Law School over Dad's objection in 1983 and believe, mission accomplished. Each Son of every Dad must readjust the aim of the family. I often think of James Mitchell who set a generational aim for his black family in 1790 in Charleston, South Carolina. Each generation stepped higher and higher so that a 9x great grand daughter came into the world swaddled in the abundance of ancestors.
(We are not supposed to acknowledge black generational privilege in polite company/smile.)
Confidence in life flows from high expectations in this time and the foresighted aim of those who came before in their time. May my Son continue to best me and may my Son's children one day best their Dad. It is about the coming of a better time. I leave you with one of my favorite go to quotes for perceiving race and life:
"We''ll never see the day, Nancy -- never in the world -- never, never, never, child. We've got to drag along, drag along, and east crusts in toil and poverty, all hopeless and forlorn -- but they'll ride in coaches, Nancy! They'll live like the princes of the earth; they'll be courted and worshipped; their names will be known from ocean to ocean! Ah, well-a-day! Will they ever come back here...and say, "This one little spot shall not be touched--this hovel shall be sacred--for here our father and our mother suffered for us, thought for us, laid the foundations of our future solid as the hills!"
"You are a great, good noble soul, Si Hawkins, and I am an honored woman to be the wife of such a man" -- and the tears stood in her eyes when she said it." Mark Twain, The Gilded Age (as quoted in Old Money: The Mythology of America's Upper Class by Nelson W. Aldrich, Jr. (1988), page 3.)
Beautiful!! Love the Title and the many stories within.
Thanks!
I want to scream every time I hear math is "white." I did a few long-term substituting for a few years, and I can remember 6 students that were outstanding in math. Three were white (2 male/1 female) and 3 were black (2 male/1 female). I also remember the black students not being as confident as the white students and there's zero doubt in my mind it's due to the hogwash promoted. Both black females (7th grade and 10th) were the first to get a new concept, but both turned in mediocre work. I handed some tests back to both and told them I wouldn't accept it. They turned it back in with perfect scores, and continued to perform to their abilities while I had the class. Expectations matter. "I am not threatened or alienated. I am warmed and delighted...this is how we advance the family, and the race, if you care about such things. One generation at a time." I wish all families could see this. I want our children to be smarter and better than me or my husband, take the good side of us and make it better. BTW, a maternal great-grandfather was from Grand Cayman. Pasty white and tall Anglo/West African sailor who sailed up (on a boat he built) at the end of the 19th century, he eventually opened a sail loft in Mobile.
Thanks for this great comment! I almost feel like my Aunt Amy Wilson was blessed to not come of age in the Modern Era from the standpoint of psychology. Obviously, the 1950s in Virginia were an unjust time but, within her known world of family and friends and neighbors, her brilliance in math was appreciated, not celebrated (a cringe term if ever there was one) but duly noted and perceived as good for Amy and her family. There was no psychology of low expectations Amy had to surmount in her all-black, segregated schools.
As for your larger insight, how we see the world matters. Life is generational ascent. One doesn't flip a switch in 1964 and say, we're done. One doesn't break through to Harvard Law School over Dad's objection in 1983 and believe, mission accomplished. Each Son of every Dad must readjust the aim of the family. I often think of James Mitchell who set a generational aim for his black family in 1790 in Charleston, South Carolina. Each generation stepped higher and higher so that a 9x great grand daughter came into the world swaddled in the abundance of ancestors.
(We are not supposed to acknowledge black generational privilege in polite company/smile.)
Confidence in life flows from high expectations in this time and the foresighted aim of those who came before in their time. May my Son continue to best me and may my Son's children one day best their Dad. It is about the coming of a better time. I leave you with one of my favorite go to quotes for perceiving race and life:
"We''ll never see the day, Nancy -- never in the world -- never, never, never, child. We've got to drag along, drag along, and east crusts in toil and poverty, all hopeless and forlorn -- but they'll ride in coaches, Nancy! They'll live like the princes of the earth; they'll be courted and worshipped; their names will be known from ocean to ocean! Ah, well-a-day! Will they ever come back here...and say, "This one little spot shall not be touched--this hovel shall be sacred--for here our father and our mother suffered for us, thought for us, laid the foundations of our future solid as the hills!"
"You are a great, good noble soul, Si Hawkins, and I am an honored woman to be the wife of such a man" -- and the tears stood in her eyes when she said it." Mark Twain, The Gilded Age (as quoted in Old Money: The Mythology of America's Upper Class by Nelson W. Aldrich, Jr. (1988), page 3.)