What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black (Part 1)

What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black

Margaret Burroughs

1^st Paragraph

 

What shall I tell my children who are black

Of what it means to be a captive in this dark skin?

What shall I tell my dear one, fruit of my womb,

of how beautiful they are when everywhere they turn

they are faced with abhorrence of everything that is black.

The night is black and so is the boogyman.

Villains are black with black hearts.

A black cow gives no milk. A black hen lays no eggs.

Storm clouds, black, black is evil

and evil is black and devil’s food is black…

 

                The deaths Michael Brown and Eric Garner made me think about this poem by Margaret Burroughs.  With the acquittal of the white officers by the Grand Jury, these words continue to remind us behind these deaths is the ignorance, fear and hate.  Burroughs shows us how this fear, ignorance and hate
“of everything that is black” is part of the routine of everyday life.  So I wondered can we as educators change this narrative by teaching children and young adults the importance of having a diverse and inclusive society?

 

                Education has always played a major role in the movement for social change.  In the era of Segregation, educators, parents and students called for the end of the negative connotations that define black.  More importantly, to counter the negative connotations, teachers directly taught black students about their heritage, demystified the negative connotations and instilled pride of being black.  In the post-Segregation era, the push for diversity and inclusion of black studies and the end of the negative connotations defined the word black.  The word black was reclaimed by the community to define beauty and strength.  This was evident in the era of movies where black men and women were portrayed strong, intelligent and unafraid to take on injustice in the community.  This era is commonly known as “blaxploitation.”

 

Unfortunately, education has lost its way.  Under the disguise of faux diversity and inclusion, the struggle to completely remove the fear, ignorance and hate of everything that is black has been has been replaced by the drive to acquire and consume.  Now that we can live in any community, work in corporate America and not directly called the “N-word” on a daily basis, our attention is on accumulation over substance.  We believe everything is “fine” and our black boys believe this until Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and the long list of young black boys whose lives ended prematurely. What do we do about it, march, get angry and then go home until the next tragedy is posted on the news about the premature death of a young black male by the hands of a white police officer.

 

To end the cycle, of ear, ignorance and hate of everything that is black, we need to work on the young people.   Young people of all races should be required to take a diversity and inclusion class in elementary, middle and high school.  Young people in suburban and urban school should be required to have a joint class in diversity and inclusion to learn from each other to see how they have more similarities than differences even though they come from different socio-economic backgrounds.  That is how you begin to end the cycle, of ear, ignorance and hate of everything that is black.

 

By getting young people together in a meaningful way, the young person who may eventually become the white officer in the life or death situation with a young black male, may not turn out to be another tragedy.