Color Blind or Color Conscious?

School Administrator, May, 1999 by Beverly Daniel

Black girls, in white communities especially, may gradually become aware that something has changed. When their white friends start to date, they do not. The issues of emerging sexuality, and the societal messages about who is sexually desirable, leave young black women in a very devalued position.

One young woman from a Philadelphia suburb described herself as "pursuing white guys all throughout high school" to no avail. Since there were no black boys in her class, she had little choice. She would feel "really pissed off' when those same white boys would date her white friends. For her, "That prom thing was like out of the question."

Though black girls living in the context of a larger black community may have more social choices, they too have to contend with devaluing messages about who they are and who they will become, especially if they are poor or working class. As social scientists Bonnie Ross Leadbeater and Niobe Way point out in Urban Girls: Resisting Stereotypes, Creating Identities: "The school dropout, the teen-age welfare mother, the drug addict and the victim of domestic violence or of AIDS are among the most prevalent public images of poor and working-class urban adolescent girls ... Yet, despite the risks inherent in economic disadvantage, the majority of poor urban adolescent girls do not fit the stereotypes that are made about them."

Affirmation in Class

As these examples illustrate, during the high school years students of color are often experiencing a heightened awareness of the significance of race and racism and are trying to make sense of these experiences. This increased awareness may be accompanied by feelings of confusion or anger, alienation or sadness. Though they may not always seek out the help of teachers, educators who are color-conscious enough to notice their students are struggling with questions of identity can be helpful allies in the process.

Affirming identity in the classroom is a very useful place to start. All students should be able to see important parts of themselves reflected in positive ways in the school. Students want to find themselves reflected in the faces of other students and in the faculty. They want to see themselves reflected in the curriculum.

While middle-class white students can take such affirmation for granted, students of color often find that their experiences are peripheral to what happens in their classrooms. The colorblind teacher may not notice that some children are included and others are not. Conversely the color-conscious teacher will actively seek out materials (classroom posters, literature, music, relevant newspaper clippings, etc.) that reflect the identities of his or her students in a positive way.

In addition, the color-conscious teacher may acknowledge the social meaning of race by engaging students in discussions about race and racism. While such discussions may seem to belong only in social studies or literature classes, even math and science teachers can incorporate such discussions into their content. Affirming identity can be as subtle as ensuring that the word problems include names like Juan and Lakisha as well as Tom and Jane or as overt as asking students to collect and graph data about stereotypical images in the media and debunking myths about the "biology" of race.