Program
Impact
Diversity At School Undone By Segregation
At Home
By Desiree Cooper,* Metro Times,
February 2-8, 1994, This Side of 30, p.16.
*Founding Director of MELD, formerly known as Community Education Leadership
Program (CELP)
Not to beat a dead horse, but I want to take
one last swipe at the Cranbrook snowball fight fiasco. The tragic
picture of a mob of white students a throwing racial slurs while cruelly
pelting two innocent African-American girls was appalling. People heard
the story in disbelief. The scene was straight out of a civil rights
nightmare, calling up images of pre-1960s America, when these things
happened in public daily. School officials took swift control, trying to
right an irreparable wrong, embarrassed that their pleasant and
open-minded island of learning had been swamped by the tidal wave of
racism. Underlying the entire discussion was the incredulous comment.
How could this happen at Cranbrook, a place that celebrates diversity, a
place that stretches more than many private schools of its ilk to
attract and retain students who represent all walks of life? The answer
has nothing to do with Cranbrook. It has nothing to do with how nice the
administrators are, or how forward thinking the staff is. It has to do
with how children learn and what we are unwittingly teaching them. When
I'm not writing, I coordinate the Community Education Leadership Program
at Wayne State University. The program is designed to teach community
leaders to work across cultures to effect change. Each year a dozen
people representing diverse backgrounds and cultures assemble one day a
month to explore different lifestyles, values and ways of doing things.
They learn how language is used to sustain power for some and to oppress
others. They learn how history is inextricably tied to the present, how
people are who their ancestors were, how past experience colors future
behavior. They learn how values drive decisions, and how culture
under-grids value systems. They learn that there are many different
roads that can be taken to arrive at a desired point, and if they are
able to work across cultures, they must be willing to take wonderful
unexpected journeys. But mostly they come to understand that the only
way to learn acceptance is to put themselves in a position to interact
with people who are different. You can't get over the fear of flying by
sitting in your living room. You can't get over your discomfort with
diverse people unless you spend time with people who are not like you.
The leadership program provides that opportunity. It is amazing how,
after a year of sharing personal visions with Latinos, Chaldeans, Arabs,
Europeans and African sharing mutual concerns for Detroit's future with
gays and straights, the participants discover that their differences are
exciting. When people live in segregation communities, this interaction
cannot occur unless individuals make heroic efforts to travel unbeaten
paths. What happens is that the warriors for equal rights grow up, have
families, and for various reasons end up another piece in the segregated
jigsaw puzzle that characterizes America's urban centers. They take
their children to worship in homogeneous congregations, and feel good
that they are teaching their offspring to "love one another."
But their children are hearing another message: "Love those who are
like us." People send their children to community schools which
reflect the poverty of diversity in their neighborhoods, to learn about
other nations and cultures. What the children hear is: "take care
of your own communities, don't let outsiders in." Adults socialize
with coworkers and neighbors, most of whom eat the same food they do,
celebrate the same holidays, practice the same religion. And their
children learn: "our way is the best way to do things."
Suddenly, these adults must come face to face with a group of children
who have demonstrated the lessons they have been taught: It is OK to
hurl snowballs at two girls who invades the community we have been
raised to love and protect. Where is the surprise? Why the amazement? In
the 1960s, Jane Elliot, a teacher in Iowa, conducted a controversial
experiment to teach her all white class the horrors of racism. She
divided them into Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes - treating first one group,
then the other different because of their eye color. The documentary of
her lesson, "A Class Divided," is still painful to watch. How
easily the dominant group learned to hate those who didn't share their
eye color, and to participate in the privilege of power. How completely
the oppressed group learned subservience, to perform poorly under the
yoke of low expectations. Jane Elliot gave us a great gift. She showed
us exactly how hatred is taught. Twenty years later, a snowball fight at
Cranbrook takes us back to her Iowa classroom. We need to remember that
incredible responsibility that we all shoulder when it comes to teaching
children about race and culture. Children learn quickly and they learn
well. And they learn just as much from what we do as from what we don't.
