A high school teacher in Chicago writes a guest post for EduShyster about a charming, charismatic student she calls Darrell.
Darrell was far behind in his school work. His attention was elsewhere. Darrell was murdered.
If Darrell had been born White and privileged, he would have been in the twelfth grade, ready to graduate from high school and move on to college. He would have been an entrepreneur, a politician. He was that charismatic, that magnetic. Peers gathered around him like steam over coffee. He had a sharp wit. He cracked up everyone he met, including his teachers. But because he was poor, lived in the hood, couldn’t read, and didn’t have the patience or inclination for formal education, Darrell used his talents in the ways that he could. Ways his teachers vainly protested, seeing the basic sweetness and goodness in this giant who seemed to us strangely vulnerable, despite his hulking frame and the $1000 in twenty dollar bills he regularly displayed, like a fan, when he couldn’t focus in class.
We, his teachers, knew how he got his money. We called his mother, expressing concern. But Darrell was caught up in something bigger than his block, more sinister than his gang and his guns and his drugs. He was stuck in the purgatory of hopeless, helpless poverty, whose victims know they’ll eventually end up in hell, but plan to enjoy the party while it lasts.
It’s a different thing, teaching the living dead. It’s a different thing to understand that you will likely outlive your students, praying that they’ll be jailed, just so they’ll still be drawing breath. It’s a different thing to see your students rocking guns and bags of drugs on their Facebook pages, the ones you stalk after they die. It’s a different thing to call and call and call and call a parent, and never get an answer, or to hear the parent kicking the crap out of the kid as you listen on the other end, or to hear the parent tell you, as a parent told me earlier this year, that she had no idea where her child even was—a young man in a similar situation to Darrell. Not for that moment or that hour, but for six months.
It’s a different thing when your own peers don’t get why you teach students like these, why you love their infectious enthusiasm, their humor, their undying spirits, the respect they show you when you treat them like human beings.
Do reformers understand hopelessness? They certainly don’t understand teachers like this one. They blame her for Darrell’s poverty and his academic failure. Why?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Reform” does nothing for students like Darrell. Ignoring the impact of poverty and all the associated dysfunction does not address the problems. Darrell would be one of the “leftovers” of “reform” sitting in a crumbling public school with fewer resources and larger class sizes as a result of charter proliferation. All the testing or merit pay in the world cannot save Darrell as his problems are cultural and social as well as academic. Maybe the question should be posed to Rahm Emanuel? What have he and the leaders of Chicago done to help Darrell or other students like him?
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We have built a LOT more jail cells. 😦
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How much is blamed on “white privilege” and instead is the massive income inequality and decaying middle class? In our Midwestern area, rural communities are in trouble. Good jobs have been lost to globalism and outsourcing. Heroin is a continuing problem. Families are eroding. I am still reeling from the mass killing of an entire family in Pike County which seems ignored by America. It is time Democrats work to unite and strengthen the middle class for all races. Or we will see Trump as president.
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I find the “white privilege” meme/construct to be quite a lot less than satisfactory. It serves to deflect and divide-deflect that it’s not just a white vs black issue but an issue of socio-economic class issue which serves to divide folks in the “old fashioned” way, race, instead of (deflect from) the main reason, that of the few having way more than anyone should ever need, want or have and the vast majority who have far less than their work and effort should allow them to have-food security, health care issues taken care of, clean air and water, etc. . . .
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Google’s “NGram Viewer,” which is a marvelous thing, suggests that the term “white privilege” comes from political discourse during the late 1950s and early 1960s about apartheid systems in South Africa and Rhodesia (perhaps others) — Jim Crow-style governments and societies in which there was quite literally a “white privilege.”
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Interesting! Thanks FLERP !
I find that it has the unspoken meanings/overtones similar to the phrases “welfare queens” “uppity” or “thug” that serve to obfuscate the speakers true meaning.
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Darrell could have been my student in my prek class. All the signs were there. Lacking resources and services he was left to rust grade after grade. It is difficult for many people to understand why you might want to teach Darrell. The problem is not Darrell or the teacher but the conditions that have created Darrell.
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Yet nobody ensured that Darrell didn’t become a statistic by doing what was needed to ensure he learned how to read and write and do math successfully like his more middle class and affluent peers.
Nobody contacted social service programs that might have helped him and his family to move to a better area of town.
Yet another kid was written off once again due to his demographics and the caste level he was born into….
When will all of the professional educators start to say enough is enough when it comes to the failure you seem to have in teaching literacy and math skills to those who come to you from broken homes or from homes where families have struggled generationally from poor educations and a lesser socio-economic status (as well as possibly struggle with physical or emotional health issues too…).
When will schools start to be accountable for not helping thes kids become literate and more engaged at school and help raise the academic bar while helping them to raise themselves up by their bootstrings – as the saying goes…. Rather than lamenting about his demise as an afterthought?
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