What It’s Like to Teach Whites . . . and What It’s Like to Teach Blacks

This is part of our continuing series of accounts by readers of how they shed the illusions of liberalism and became race realists.

I grew up in a liberal, integrated neighborhood outside of Cleveland, Ohio. My family always valued education, and after graduate school, I started working as a special education teacher. Starting out in that career has sent me all over the country to teach in very different kinds of schools: urban, suburban, rural, etc. It was the contrasts I saw between these schools that made me into a race realist.

One of my favorite, and most rewarding experiences in my career was when I worked at a high school in Kentucky. Almost all of the students there were white and had grown up on farms. The culture was one of tradition and respect: the boys took pride in having jobs and owning cars, the girls were polite and active in their communities. My background was very different from theirs, but regardless the students were all friendly with me, and even came to feel like family. Unfortunately, a budget cut kept me from staying there — but to this day, many of the students stay in touch with me. I am quite honored.

Years later I found myself working at a “diverse” school in Maryland. The difference could not have been starker. Assigning homework was a waste of time. Many black students fantasize about having the sort of thuggish life glamorized in rap, and are completely uninterested in anything outside of it. Rap is all they listen to and all they talk about — and they think anybody uninterested in the genre is out of their mind. Student assaults on teachers were also common there. So common, in fact, that the administration seemed desensitized to it.

Although that school was especially bad, the black behavior I saw there was not exceptional. Last year, at a different school, a black student said, “Fuck you, nigger, white boy” the first time met. I brought this up to one of my supervisors, and to my shock, he told me to “pick my battles” and took no disciplinary action. I doubt I would have gotten the same response if I was black, and a white student had told me, “Fuck you, nigger, black boy.” In most schools, black students are regularly given a pass on destructive, disrespectful, and even criminal behavior. The administration’s highest goal often seems to be “looking the other way” when it comes to violence and theft — so long as the perpetrator is black. It doesn’t appear to occur to them that society needs protecting, and that to do that, brutish thugs need to face consequences for their actions.

It pains me to write this, but the truth is the truth. The undeniable patterns my teaching career has shown me can be summarized like this:

1. Black-majority schools are much more violent than black-minority schools. Blacks, far more than any other race, are the most likely to attack both one another and school employees.
2. Black students are the least academically motivated.
3. Teachers and administrators have to be very careful with what they say in front of black students. They can and will decry “racism” over most anything.

The first step in any attempt to improve black schools has to be an honest acknowledgement of these facts. The foremost problem isn’t even the low IQ blacks have relative to whites, the big issue is their violent habits, bolstered by broken homes, a lack of role models, and music that glorifies criminality and cruelty.

Right now, I am teaching at a racially mixed school and unhappy about it. I am hoping to find a school that is much more white.

If you have a story about how you became racially aware, we’d like to hear it. If it is well written and compelling, we will publish it. Use a pen name, stay under 1,200 words, and send it to us here.