Is it okay for teachers to ask about students ethnicity?

Parent Cafe
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<p>Look, I also think people are often too easily offended, and I don’t think it is a general rule of thumb that you should never ask someone about origin. I just think context matters. I don’t have a set of rules for when certain types of questions would be OK and when they wouldn’t be, but in the context the OP described, it rubbed me the wrong way. </p>

<p>There seems to me something different about asking an individual in conversation about where they/their name comes from and doing it as a routine part of a roll call, asking ONLY students who appear to be of non-European descent and have unusual names in the context of a situation, reading down a class list, that doesn’t normally invite such questions. Even at the risk of “singling out,” I wouldn’t mind if there had been a few students with such names and the sub had commented to ONE “that’s a lovely name - what’s its origin?” because that would be a question that arose organically out of a particular encounter with an individual, whereas the situation as described is one in which the sub seems to have a blanket notion (or at least unintentionally created the impression) foreign name + non-European appearance = interesting/exotic/other. As I’ve said before, I don’t assume there was any ill-will or malice, but I could see not liking it, as a student. </p>

<p>It is possible that the sub would also have asked a student with European features and an unusual name where he or she was from, but that doesn’t seem to have happened and, given notions of race and identity in this country (which is NOT the same as racism), I suspect it is less likely such a student would have been asked the same question in precisely the same circumstances.</p>

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Actually, there is a considerable faction who wouldn’t be insulting the generation that immigrated. There was a percentage of the “first” American who dropped their past in their old countries and welcomed North America as their “real” home. </p>

<p>So when I hear people say, “My family is American through and through.” I assume they had family who immigrated here in the early beginning and have loved here ever since.</p>

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<p>Real American, to me, is a matter of values and engagements, some perspectives, etc. And some personality attributes- like boiling an issue to death, imparting all sorts of significance (that may not be there, at all,) butting into each other to state and restate our opinions, with so much certainty we are right. Laugh with me, we all seem to share that, on this thread.</p>

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<p>Yes, we bring different perspectives to the discussion. My perspective is that some minority groups, previously silenced in various ways by the majority, feel empowered to speak up and ask questions they might not have asked until fairly recently. When sweetcupcake asks “Is it okay for teachers to ask about student’s ethnicity?” it sort of illustrates for me what is happening in society as a whole. Some find it undeniably inappropriate, because it spotlights a few. Some seem on the fence. Some say “we” have always asked this question and so it’s appropriate. Some try to silence sweetcupcake and don’t want the question asked at all.</p>

<p>Since my children and future grandchildren belong to groups silenced in the past, I am extremely interested in these questions being asked and the responses. I like the questions.</p>

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<p>So are you saying that the remedy to past silencing of some groups is to silence everyone else?</p>

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<p>Really interesting question zoosermom. My immediate response is to reframe it as: is the majority somehow silenced and disadvantaged when minority groups gain a voice? If so, is that a real problem? I would really like to discuss this with you but was just popping in to read the new posts on my way out of town. (really!) If the thread is still active Monday, maybe I can post again then.</p>

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<p>Lookingforward- I liked your term, “boiling an issue to death”. I think that is what we have done here. :)</p>

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<p>Context matters. The way the substitute was asking in class as described by the OP is likely more bothersome to more people than the subject coming up in casual one-on-one conversation.</p>

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<p>Some will hate this comment, but hypersensitivity to others’ potential to be offended can be just as identity focused, just as delineating and single them out. Can throw up the same walls you think you are immune to.</p>

<p>I’m a little baffled at how easily we treat (in this case) OP and her classmates as if they can be stereotyped as fragile and as if we need to tread oh-so-lightly. Does anyone see how, in this effort to be sensitive, we are, in ways, profiling?</p>

<p>If you hate that, my apologies. But I think the issue of identity in the US is fraught with potholes. We all trip into them, even with good intentions.</p>

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<p>The statement above would be considered by those who studied power disparities between majority and minority groups in history, politics, and other social science fields as making false equivalencies between the two groups. It effectively denies the existence and well-documented effects of such disparities in play throughout history and in various societies…including our own. </p>

<p>Those whose groups are in greater positions of power due to being in the majority or dominating most/all social and political institutions of a given society by that very nature, aren’t likely to suffer much silencing, on average, in relation to those who have less relative power in that given society. Even if the ones with less relative power are speaking up more. </p>

<p>Moreover, someone else voicing strong disapproval of what you(general you) may have said and others opting to initiate negative consequences regarding whether social or even professional aren’t necessarily silencing or denying your First Amendment right to speak. </p>

<p>For instance, public boycotts against creative artists, businesses, and their owners for their speech/actions isn’t “silencing” or a “violation of their First Amendment rights” as some ignoramuses who keep saying “But that’s my/their opinion” like to assert. Those performing the boycott are also exercising their First Amendment rights by publicly boycotting and if we want to extend a recent Supreme Court ruling…that includes their right to take their purchasing/funding dollars elsewhere. </p>

<p>Some of those whose politics tend to lean one way also forgot they also employed the same “violation of First Amendment rights” tactics when they boycotted creative artists and businesses they didn’t approve of…such as the Dixie Chicks or in more isolated cases… Ben & Jerry’s.</p>

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<p>I’m in a mood to say: I do wish you would use “that’s my opinion,” rather than telling me how it is.</p>

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<p>Cobrat, why don’t you start your very own thread where you can pontificate on anything you want, rather than continuing to make this one all about you?</p>

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<p>I find it odd that you find my disagreement your prior post #425 is “making it all about me”. </p>

<p>Could it be that you don’t like the fact I am pointing out some serious issues with that post of yours?</p>

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The majority is somehow silenced when a voice is given to the minority. However, the majority is not fully silenced. They are “hushed”. They are quieted down in order to hear the voices of the minority. Both sides, ideally, would be listened to. The majority would not have as much as a voice as they did before. Is this a problem? No.</p>

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<p>So, I take it the suggestion that we don’t need to be lectured…was taken as offensive. So, who’s holding the conch? It’s very hard to have a “both sides listened to,” when one, uh, thinks the other needs to be taught.</p>

<p>Ironic, on this thread.
Sometimes, presuming to speak with authority is a stab at that very power imbalance. That’s why, for a respectful match, it helps to ensure we periodically claim our opinions as our own. Not as absolutes.</p>

<p>IMO, that is.</p>

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In the context of this thread, someone is being asked not to ask about others. That is the embodiment of being silenced. The people being asked about themselves are being asked to speak about themselves, not to be silent.</p>

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<p>You know, it is quite possible that the majority of Californians were concerned about the <em>economics</em> of illegal immigration, but I realize that stories about economics don’t sell many papers. </p>

<p>Prop 187 was 20 years ago. Look at today. Undocumented immigrants in CA are protected by the Trust Act, can obtain driver licenses, practice law, attend and receive FA for public colleges and universities, and recent polls show that 90% of Californians are in favor of a pathway to citizenship.</p>

<p>While I don’t doubt that racist incidence continue to occur, one would be hard-pressed to claim that CA is hostile to Mexican and Latino immigrants, at least as compared to most or all other states.</p>

<p>Generalizing about anything on CC is impossible. If I say dogs are man’s best friend, 15 people will jump in with stories about a dog attacking its owner or killing a child.</p>

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<p>Yup…And be very careful not to blame the child for grabbing a steak out of the dog’s mouth. Yikes!</p>

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<p>And in the process, you’re ignoring the following situational context:</p>

<p>Setting: What was supposed to be an AP Government class for which the absent regular teacher had left a readied lesson plan on the lesson of the day…The Constitution.</p>

<p>Situation & context: </p>

<p>Substitute teacher assigned to be the teacher in charge of the class that day and the students…including the OP.</p>

<p>From OP post#1:</p>

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<p>He then proceeds according to the same post to put OP on the spot by asking what could be a politically loaded question about “political tension and terrorism in Nigeria” and later on…adds insult to injury by insulting her for not fully knowing about idioms…a subject which had absolutely nothing to do with the class or the lesson plan and which he ended up wasting around a half hour on. </p>

<p>Taking the totality of the sub’s conduct, the fact he’s the teacher in charge of the class that day, his legal in loco parentis responsibilities for the class, and the fact he’s older and has more education means the onus of responsibility falls overwhelmingly on his shoulders. It also means he should have known better than to act in the ways he did in OP’s class. Especially considering he’s a retired teacher. </p>

<p>Keep in mind this wasn’t a casual social gathering among equals. It was a classroom where the teacher had the potential power to punish in class, write up, and even send students down to the dean’s/principal’s office…regardless of whether he actually used it or not. In some cases, subs could also have the power to grade as several of the ones I had in HS did when they subbed the classes I was in. </p>

<p>It’s much more analogous to HR staff/hiring manager asking such questions at an interview, one’s supervisor asking such questions while supervising the completion of work when it had nothing to do with the job at hand or worse, at a performance evaluation for an employee under his/her direct supervision. </p>

<p>Reasons why my labor lawyer friends are paid, in part, to remind, HR, hiring managers, and supervisors on a regular basis through in-house professional seminars and through workplace policies to never ask such questions or otherwise initiate conversations on such topics with one’s employees unless it has direct bearing on the job they were doing.</p>

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<p>I am sorry, but we have been there and back and back again. OP also said it (ethnicity) took about 5 minutes.</p>

<p>We agree OP said he did not follow the class plan. After that, we disagree. And, I feel you are talking freaking down to us. You are setting up some - ok, the IMO reminder- ideal as the one and only standard, the only way he is allowed to operate. Etc, etc. And stating it as FACT, when it is your opinion. Or your experience. Or that of friends and family. Or something or other happened at Oberlin. Or with artists and free speech defenses. Or Heaven knows what. And, we got that.</p>

<p>What punishment? What intimidation? A sub didn’t stick to the lesson plan. What grades, HR staff, hiring manager, federal laws, labor laws, friends, family members, seminars, ad infinitum?</p>

<p>All this is about a gentle and bright seeming student who took offense. Not a federal case. Not definitive, life changing, heinous. Just offensive. And yes, she had a right to feel that way (whether or not we agree with her or think it is misplaced, she had a right.) </p>

<p>The central core here, to me, is can we ask about ethnicity (here, in the class context?) I have yet to find any guidelines. There is no “World According to-” </p>

<p>We get it.</p>