<p>“Dunbar was filled with students who didn’t have that much money and who had a variety of other difficulties that in present days would be used as excuses to fail. Still, their teachers (who included people like the first black graduate from Smith) had high expectations that included the students’ learning formal grammar. Indeed, one of mom’s English teachers was infamous for flunking her entire class each year and making them all go to summer school. That teacher was Miss Cromwell, the first black Smith grad (whose nephew went to Harvard with me, and was the third generation in his family to go to Harvard).”</p>
<p>This quote hit home and reminded me of a study I once read in the journal “The Black Scholar” in, I believe, 1976. The investigators looked at the declining performance of African-American kids that attended integrated schools in, if I recall correctly, San Francisco. What they expected to find was what some have described in this thread, that teachers did not want these kids in their classes and worked to actively discourage them. They expected the kids to feel isolated and angry. In fact, they found quite the opposite. The African-American youngsters loved their predominately white teachers, much more so than did the whites, and further, the teachers went out of their way to be supportive and helpful, yet scores were declining. The clue came from the discrepancy found in the student survey concerning how the students felt about their teachers. The teachers were tougher on the white students. They demanded more and accepted few excuses. The teachers tended to give the black students more breaks and higher grades, and where more apt to be socially supportive and “understanding” of late work etc., which is why they were well liked. When asked about this, the teachers essentially admitted it, but said they felt they needed to be more supportive and give the kids a break because of their backgrounds, etc. Most talked about how much they cared about the kids and wanted them to succeed. Unfortunately, their concern led to the opposite result, which, in turn, occasioned the title of this study: “Racism Without Racists.” It has been my observation that this is still a critical problem in many communities (white and black) and lies at the heart of our educational dilemma.</p>