“How do you like this place?” he asked.
I told him we’d been sending our children there for seven years and that our oldest had entered kindergarten well-prepared. I told him I am impressed with the education level and, especially, the open, airy and clean look, feel and smell.
Then he dropped the ultimate issue for many colored folk: “I didn’t see many black teachers.”
I chuckled and said he would find that in every step of his daughter’s academic experience.
He continued, “I just don’t want her to get their values and not ours.”
I was a little speechless after that one, but I understood where he was coming from. Cultural differences include varying attitudes about morality and values. So, what do we as black people value that white folks don’t? And how does that play itself out in school?
There are some obvious answers, including our value of equality while some whites still embrace a racist point of view. And prejudice in the classroom and at work is more subtle. And, yet, the light-skin, dark-skin, good-hair, bad-hair issues still haunt us. Don’t we as an ethnic group have differing values within our culture?
Surely, there are central issues that we all wrestle with: family stability, health, safety and financial security. I’ve addressed single sistah’s raising children alone in this column before. These issues impact the black community much more than the white community. How does the lack of good solid marriages affect the black community and our children? And is it, as some whites say, a lack of values on our part that has led to this difficult situation?
The rate of HIV infection is highest among black women. There are a few explanations, including promiscuity, the down-low brother and, to a lesser extent, the HIV that is acquired in prison then spread in the community.
Crime and punishment is another issue that impacts us to a greater extent. And the obesity epidemic hits black women above all others.
But to really answer the brother’s question, I would tell him that, wherever he sends his daughter, he needs to get ready for the battle for her soul against educators, whatever their hue, who might have different values or no values.
I would also give him this to consider. Would it matter that the greatest teachers I had in high school happen to be white? Would it matter that I didn’t really grow in college until I went to a historically black school? (Lincoln University, Jefferson City n class of 85!)
We have more similarities than differences. But the bottom line is this: raise your children with such a firm foundation that, even when someone else’s lack of values are presented to them, they won’t be shaken and they’ll know what to do.