Disclaimer: I’m not the best teacher. I’ve seen people do work a lot better than me. I’m not the most effective, nor the most organized, nor the most cutting edge. I have so many flaws. But I am good at a few things. And one is detecting racism. And making sure that it’s called out when it happens.

That gets difficult when I become the target of racism. 

[Reader, I am going to walk you through this one, okay? Starting with the title, “Target on my Black,” which I think you’ll find is an astute metaphor for the fuckery that I experienced on this day.]

I heard from three former students, on separate occasions, about their excitement for the upcoming volleyball season and their anxiety around their very first home game of the year. They were now in high school and had made their junior team. I looked at my calendar and fortunately had some time on the day of their game. So I mentioned to each of them that I’d try to come support. Support, you know–the thing that propels youth and community forward? Yeah, that thing.

I arrived at the school maybe forty minutes after the school had let out for the day. Coincidentally running into these students in the hallway less than a minute after entering the building. We laughed at how nearly their entire team was comprised of students from our old school. 

I wished them good luck as they left to warm up.

Who knew I’d be the one needing it? 

Less than a minute later, I ran into some more former students. We talked, I asked them about their grades, they lied, I told them to make sure they were going to class. They nodded. We dapped. I left.

By the time I made it to the gym doors, two adults––a white lady and a south asian female––were peeking through the glass, trying to get in. “Y’all here to watch the game too?” I asked.

“Yup, the guy…he’s on the other side of the gym. He doesn’t see us.” The white lady responded. She was referring to a hall monitor inside. 

“Are you here for the Home team kids or the Away team?” I continued, confident enough that at some point all three of us adults standing here would eventually get into the gym.

“Away,” the white lady said. “My daughter is playing right now.”

“How about you?” I asked the other woman standing there, quietly watching.

“The Home team,” she said. “I’m here to watch my sister…I actually came to this school.” 

“Me too,” I said. “Yeah, I teach at the middle school down the road. A few of my former students are on this team.”

“Oh, wow, I went there too,” she said. She looked at me like she wanted to ask me more questions but before she could the gym door swung open.

“Mr. Morris! How you doing?” another former student said as she exited the gym. “Angel! What’s good? Where are you going? Aren’t you on the team?” I said. 

“Yeah, I am. But I have work. Gotta’ make that bread, juhknow?” 

I laughed as she skirted past all three of us and down the hall. The three of us walked in and went our separate ways, but not too far from each other. Maybe fifteen feet. That’s probably because the bleachers were yellow-taped off so there wasn’t anywhere to sit. There were less than a handful of adults in the gym who weren’t the teacher-coaches from the two schools. Me being one of them. 

The senior teams of the two schools were going into the third set. A few more students who I had taught turned around on their team bench to nod hello. 

[I know, I know. Trust me, I’m getting to the point. But a part of the point is the amount of students in this space whom I clearly had a relationship of familiarity with…]

While they were huddled up preparing for the tie-breaker I walked over to the junior team to chat. You know. That whole support thing. After two minutes or so, I was back holding the same spot where I had been standing for the previous fifteen minutes. Right beside the doors we came in, out of everyone’s way. 

[Right here is where the only objective defense that I will acknowledge. You could argue that by walking over I had made myself known. Hence why what was about to happen, happened. I would argue, doesn’t going over there and talking to the entire team indicate that clearly I had some form of relationship with them?] 

Ten minutes after that was when the bullshit started. A coach from the home school walked up to me. “Hi, ugh..” he stuttered, unsure of exactly what to ask me. “Ugh, who are you?” He finally spit out.

“Hi,” I said with a smile, “I’m Matthew Morris.” I mean, he asked me who I was. And even though I knew what he insinuated I still wanted to make him be as direct as possible with the racism he was about to project. 

“Uh, yeah. Um, but but how come, why are you here?” He asked, even more unsure of how to precisely frame my estrangement from every other person in that space. He didn’t know how exactly to tell me that I looked like someone who didn’t belong. How to tell me that I ought to prove myself. How to let me know that I needed to defend my presence in a high school gym at a high school game even after demonstrating a clear relationship with a bunch of high school students. 

“So, I taught at the school down the road and a few of my former students told me about their first game. They asked me to come. That’s why I’m here.” I said, flashing a brief smile again. Thinking that this would aid him in forming a rational, logical, contextual, and sound conclusion that answered any of his future questions. “Yeah, so we’re colleagues.” I said, just to add a little extra seasoning and reasoning.

Unfortunately, you and I know that racism somehow always bends around reason. Slips through cognition. Get passed sound judgment. 

He walked back over to his team bench. To where his other coaches were sitting. To speak to his colleagues. He bent over to speak with a white guy sitting at the end. He walked back to me. Instead of just sitting his bitch-ass on the bench, he walked back over to me. I laughed to myself. Knowing that the bullshit clearly wasn’t over. 

“Yeah, so there are no spectators for this game.” He said, this time with an iota of added surety. “I can see that.” I said, now intent on making this guy stand in his not-so-subtle racism. 

[I hope that you can see how this interaction is completely racist without me having to explicitly explain why. But if not, this next part should make it clear as day.]

He stood there, too timid to actually make eye contact with the person he was telling to leave. Maybe, as public discourse would tell you, because I am Black I am threatening by default. I find it interesting how Black men can be simultaneously threatening yet feeble enough to be approached for no ostensible reason.

“But, I’m not really a spectator. Like I said, I’m a teacher. Who taught these students…literally your entire junior team. I’m just here to support them.” I said. “And…we’re colleagues.” I let my facial expression say, do you get it now?

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry,” he said. He was lying. We both knew he wasn’t sorry at all.

“So what about them?” I pointed to the two females I came in with. “Are you also going to ask them to leave?” I asked.

“No, parents can stay.” He said.

He told me this without having once spoken with either of these other adults. No clue who they were or where they came from. It was simply unspoken, I guess, that they were allowed and I was not. It was simply unspoken that the other adults, by disposition and appearance were validated while I was not. It was simply understood that these other visitors were verified in the space; they belonged and it somehow made sense for them to be in the gym. They naturally fit in. I was unnatural to the environment. 

Even after telling him that I was there to support former students. For students who asked me to be there. There because I am an employee of the Board that school belongs to. Belonging even more so because I was also once a high school student at that school.  

I didn’t even bother to mention that. That I could show them my photo on the wall made no difference. They already could not see the racist intent behind their actions from the very beginning of the encounter. Yet another example of having a target on my Black. 

[The worst part about anti-Black racist acts is that they are typically so overtly racist that it almost, counterintuitively, becomes easier to shrug them off by simply saying, “that wasn’t racist.” 

In education, racism is often couched in student safety, a position those non-Black folk would have undoubtedly stood on that day if I pointed out their racism.

What’s worse is that the man who came up to me doesn’t even realize the racism he was subjected to by being asked to validate my existence in that space. Him being a marginalized man; he didn’t even take in the subliminal racism he was subjected to by being told by a white man to go see why that Black man is here… Or maybe he did, which is just as disgusting.]

I should let you know…I did end up watching that game. And supporting my students.

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I do feel more comfortable describing my father as firstly an immigrant and then a Jamaican and then a Black and then a man. If I had a gun to my head and was asked to describe my father I would probably recount his eyes then his demeanour and then his skin tone. And then I would squeeze my eyes shut and hope that the questioner was satisfied. But in all other situations, I would start with the words immigrant and Jamaican and Black. In no particular order. Those words are not a foreign language to me.

With the gun raised, my own answer to the question about my mother would be shorter. I went to her parents––my grandparents’ home––and we ate big, soggy wheat-like balls and bigger crackers soaked inside a soup the same colour as the one my mother made with chicken noodles. Everything inside the bowl reminded me of the mini-wheats cereal I hated. I said that with my eyes every time I took a spoon to my mouth. Mom didn’t ever say, “this is your culture, eat up.” It was the same with my dad. He never forced down ackee and saltfish or oxtail and rice  with the gravy. But I always just asked for the latter more.

foreign language, it was never…

I grew up a Canadian. My mother never owned a drivers licence. My father picked her up from IGA and No Frills on days when it was time to restock our home. That trip was often with two young boys in the house. I loved Eggos and Frosted Flakes and bagels and cream cheese––the plain kinds because we never saw the ones with seeds or herbs––and Kraft Dinner and the brownwhite side of the neapolitan ice cream box. I was at home with those flavours because my mom had the keys to the shopping cart. And I never ever saw my dad eat any of that shit. It was a foreign language to him. 

A few years back I met a girl with a name and profile picture that I thought was a catfish who took me to Vaughan where we had brunch at a restaurant where everything on the menu seemed foreign to me. She spoke with an accent and told me to try the blinis. It tasted like a meagre form of pancakes and a slightly better form of Eggos. I was so accustomed to my upbringing, to me.

We never talked after that day. It wasn’t her, it was me. Everything was just too different. But if we had continued, it might have been the same thing my dad may have experienced. An understanding that everything, when you get here, is foreign. Even to the point where foreign people feel more comfortable here than you could ever be. A diluted game of roulette. Where you learn to play and stake your chips on the outcome that you best feel inside of yourself. Or better, Russian roulette. Knowing that you never ever are in control. You just hope that you answer for yourself as best you can. Hoping that things, out of your control, rotate in your favour. 

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I’ve asked myself this without letting the question resonate with me. My fears of using the word immigrant when describing my father felt fake. But it’s true by meaning. My dad came to Canada when he was sixteen or eighteen or twenty, somewhere around there, and I didn’t care to nail down specifics. He could have come at five, like some of my friends did, and I would have still considered him an immigrant. That’s what he was––not in a bad way––but in a real way. But I felt so foreign when writing that word to describe him. That’s why I don’t like to read back my words after I’m done writing them. I want them to exist. Like me. A Black man, with an immigrant father and a white mom. 

I never thought about how my so-called immigrant father was also Black. And by the time that I got around to describing him as an immigrant, he had been on Canadian soil longer than I had been alive. Compared to me, he was an immigrant. He told me that. I would wind the backseat window down in our whitegrey ‘92 Ford Tempo and throw my cheeseburger wrapper out the window while on the highway. “Ehyo, doneduhdat…Don’t be a nasty Canadian, Macchew,” he would say while glaring at me through his rearview. We were both Black and shared many other similarities. I thought they paid other Canadians to work on the highways to pick garbage up. When he came to Canada ten years before he birthed me he worked on an apple orchard in Kitchener.

I don’t think of my father as an immigrant unless I am asked to describe him. When I use the word immigrant I think it validates his testament––the struggle he endured in order to stay here, the fight he put up to proximate his worthiness, the fortitude and patience it took from him to become accepted. He hated fast food. And stir fry, hot dog (no plural) and Coca-Cola. He ate scalloped potatoes, shepards pie, and KFC fries. He loved watching hockey and could tell you so many things about the Boston Bruins. 

But I do not think of my father as an immigrant unless I am actually asked to see him. And when I do, I see a man who was asked, “where are you from?” just because he continued a conversation or said thank you or asked them a question. He often laughed and told them exactly where he was from: my grandmother’s name is Lucillle. They always laughed as they said, no but really, really…where are you from? Little immigrant words do frame us.

No one asked my mother that. I barely ever did. I barely questioned what it means to be a Black man with a white mother, leaving the immigrant part of it out. How does an immigrant and a white mother make a Black man? Somehow I have come to know myself as that. A Black man. Not a biracial man. Not a half Jamaican, half white man.  Not a half Black, half Jewish man. A Black man. Raised by an immigrant father and a white mother. These words leave ideology alone. The words I use to describe myself erase the meaning of meaning. These words truncate identity. The words we use continue the status quo. And we don’t even think about them when we say them or write them down. We just accept them without questioning things. Things like: How did I become a Black man with an immigrant father and a white mother. 

Raised on Indigenous land.

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That thought still runs through my brain on bored bored afternoons. Wondering if the time I set my alarm clock or the number of surgeries I’ve had on ligaments in my body or the amount I owe on my mortgage would all be different if I caught a few more inches during high school. Sometimes I wish I lived up to a stereotype.

Sometimes. 

Most times I’m grateful that I was decent enough at football to earn a college scholarship. And then lucid enough to come to an understanding that I wasn’t going to do shit with football after college. But I feel that way now. As a grown man, my expectations on life vary from the thoughts I had as a teen. Now I’m offended when people assume things about me based on my body. Then I revelled when people prophesied the pathways I could take based on their perceptions of me. 

Sometimes. 

Back then certain folks assumed I would live up to a stereotype. They nurtured that side of my being, neglecting all the other parts. But the stereotype I was manifesting in high school was that of the Black athlete. Damaging indeed but less disastrous. What about those kids who feel they are at risk of living up to more dangerous stereotypes? How do we as educators––and as a system––stave off these teenagers from consenting to the harmful forecasts? How do we help them see beyond living up to a stereotype?

I also wanted to take up parts of the stereotypes that were laid down on me. And I wonder if I owe a share of the responsibility because I lived up to certain projections. Or if the students that I teach realize that, sometimes, they seem to be living up to a stereotype. Because Black culture overlaps with tropes that are used to degrade and harm Black folks, I teeter on how I can use my position within education to shatter prevailing stereotypes while also giving the young Black students I teach the agency to mold and remold themselves. I survived the stereotypes that I projected and the ones that were projected onto me. And now I hope that the Black students I teach can live without necessarily having to live up to those same stereotypes. 

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Both The Lox and Dipset competitively jabbed at each other until Jadakiss, The Lox’s undisputed lead man, told his DJ to cut the first beat on and started rapping to one of their classic, grimy tracks, appropriately titled, “Fuck You.” I sat there hyped over the energy that Jadakiss brought to the stage at Madison Square Garden. As the rounds went on I felt a bit nostalgic listening to both groups play hit record after hit record but it was something about Jadakiss, his delivery, his energy, his lazer focus that made the songs he was rapping sound better now then when they first came out. Compared to Dipset, who basically played karaoke with their songs and, at times, could barely remember the words to even sing along, The Lox looked like a group that was in their prime. A trio of men that seemed to be in the middle of a 30 city tour run. But they weren’t. In truth, these were three men in their mid-forties.

I watched the three men that comprised The Lox work in unison for hours: sweating while remaining composed and present, controlling their breath in order to rap lyrics they had written fifteen, twenty years ago, intuitively knowing when a group member was running out of air and stepping up to rap a bar or provide an ad-lib. After a while I started to feel sorry for Dipset. I remembered back to my high school days, when they were an integral piece of curating hip-hop culture. When their aura, charisma, style and raps told you everything you needed to know about a place like Harlem, New York. I felt a bit sad as I watched these three men try to regain something that had left them over a decade ago. Juelz came on stage looking like he thought it was still 2001. Cam, unfortunately, didn’t. And at one point I saw Jim Jones fall. Like, fall right off the stage. It was getting ugly.

I watched the Verzuz to the very end not only because the music brought back a time that still sat indelibly in my mind but because of what these two iconic rap groups were projecting right there in front of my eyes. The contrasting visual that both groups reflected spoke to the importance of Black men to maintain healthy habits both mentally and physically. Without having any culturally significant tracks in years, The Lox showed me what longevity looked like. Dipset lip-singing over bangers proved that neglect and excess are a toxic mix better to be left alone. That we have to truly “live and maintain,” and not just speak those words. 

And at points while watching The Lox Dipset Verzuz I assumed that things would inevitably take a turn for the worse. But they never did. In fact, there was an almost unspeakable essence of Black brotherhood that existed on the stage even through the dichotomy that both groups represented. Despite all the jabs and disses and one-ups, there was a unity that prevailed. Black men who represented thuggish existences for decades hugged each other and commenced in celebration rather than competition. It was beautiful to see. It was the Verzuz we needed. You had to be there. Or at least, for me, had to see it.  

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For the black man, it has literally become a life-threatening decision every time he chooses to leave his home – especially in America. I can sympathize with my brothers state-side, being a black man living in a city with perpetual scores of both overt and subtle racism. But I also cannot easily empathize with them, because there is a small mental schism that occurs when I know that although what I am seeing on CNN and social media can happen to me, I do live in another country and it is not quite the same.* So when I speak with friends that live over there, I try my best to respond not with what I think they would want to hear but with true vulnerability. Because this isn’t a time for clichés and platitudes. This isn’t a time for aphorisms and old adages. It isn’t a time to send or receive meaningless communication. So yeah, don’t send me a message saying “just checking in to see how you’re really doing” if you’ve never checked in with me before all of this. Like there ever even was a before, for me.

This is a time for direction without directives. A time to stop pretending like we have the answers. We don’t. There is no right way to move forward, only the understanding that staying still is kin to complying with the status quo. That goes for all sectors of our society: business, government, sports, arts, media, culture, education. Especially education.

Teachers are not cops. The institution of learning and education is not the same as the institution of justice and law enforcement. But I’ll be damned if you try to tell me that there are not parallels and, at times, overlaps. Because society is inherently racist, school, like law enforcement, is as well. This is not up for debate. This is also not the easy, gentle “bad apples” conversation – we’re talking about the whole damn tree, down to the roots. When those bad apples are borne into classrooms, responsible for the learning of our future generations, they beget the reproduction of system injustice again and again. These teachers don’t literally kneel on the necks of children but some suffocate them of future opportunity by their mere position of privilege and power and pretentiousness. Schools are not physically harming children, but make no mistake, there is a bevy of psychological violence that is and has been enacted on certain bodies for decades. Maybe George Floyd, the fires, protests, social media blackouts and the zeitgeist of 2020 will spark public education to wake up and walk forward. 

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1. Understand that their life experience will never ever be the same as yours

This can be said for all of the students you teach. Age, culture, and gender are all impossible intersections for teachers to traverse simultaneously. But for black boys, this understanding becomes explicitly pronounced. Our black boys look markedly different from society’s predescribed male. The stories they have already heard about themselves capture obscure destinies such as the athlete, the entertainer, and the criminal. And oh yeah, that one-off president that, for youth born after around 2005, is now an afterthought. Don’t pretend to be able to put your feet in the shoes of a teenager growing up in 2019 who has had to watch Trayvon, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Eric Garner…on and on, all get shot and killed by police, and then have to wake up and go to school the next day. Internalization of what the world means to them is a real thing that happens. And for black boys, they may not know how to precisely articulate the subtle notion that their lives seem to be worthless, but they damn sure see and feel it. So err on the side of understanding, at the least, of that.

  2. Accept their cultural nuances

When you ask De’Marious a question and he responds by saying, what? or huh? don’t get upset and harshly correct him. He “ain’t” responding to you that way to signal a sign of disrespect (unless he is – and in that case he’s super intelligent and you need to foster that). He’s asking you “what?” because that is how he talks, because that is perhaps how he has learned to communicate. Pump your brakes Mr. ExuseMeHowDareYouDoYouNotHaveAnyManners? Maybe “Pardon me?” simply isn’t part of his lexicon. And really, who cares? You are there to teach math and things like that. He’ll learn socially acceptable conventions and how to use a knife and fork properly outside of school, hopefully. Customs and social mores are not things for you to assess and chastise. I learned that I should put my knife and fork together to signal to a waiter that I’m finished my plate at like 25 years old. Some of y’all reading this just learned that right now. So chill on the expressive scolding of particular behaviors that may differentiate from yours. 

3. Validate the importance of Hip-Hop

You do realize that black males created hip-hop, right? And whether or not you like it – your kids do. Hip-hop may be the most tangible act of self-determination in our “post modern” era. And black boys created that shit. They did it all after school, and maybe sometimes during school but nevertheless, the act of creating a universal artistic artery within our modern culture deserves some kudos. So put some respeck on that name. Validate that fact in your classroom. Instead of analyzing two novels in the year; analyze one and then pick an album (actually, let your kids pick), and run the same learning back with that as your “text”. Don’t worry about the extra work and new photocopies, you can ask the same questions and expect the same analyzation of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly as you can from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. 

Teaching black boys is real simple, people. I wrote 3 things that you can do but I could have written ten. Regardless of the amount, all would have inevitably come back to one main theme. And that is the realization that while you are teaching, there is a black male child sitting in your classroom, trying to listen to your lesson but also being subconsciously compounded by the fact that we all don’t value him as an intelligent, capable and unique individual. So start with that. If you are able to do so, you may not even need to read this list. 

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Black masculinity is a fickle thing. I’ve had the opportunity to speak with close people who are doing lots of time and from what I can surmise, almost every pen timer can explain the phenomenon of searching for identity while still being compelled to a prescribed being – the way they articulate their identity, psychology, and existence, is remarkable. Sitting on the phone with men who are doing, or have done, decades, provides me with an incredible insight on how, despite of immaturity, we were merely on the path to figuring out what “becoming” means. And I cherish the opportunities I get to talk to them. Because those are my typa niggas.

What becomes ironic is our overwhelming understanding that, as humans, we all do learn. Learning, when sutured within the constructs of liberal, western thinking, education, is indeed confined. That is why theories, books, and simple talks about the “school to prison pipeline” make complete sense, however saturated in academic jargon or sautéed out to basic simplicities. 

I idolized the same people you did.  Not the exact same people. But the same people. Do you follow me?

I followed them. So did you. And they were the same yet different. 

So besides the fact that I learned more from TLC’s Waterfalls or Snoop’s first album, Doggystyle, while you were watching familiar faces of safety and authority on TV screens and in movies, I learned my context, identity and performance. I also learned that from the shows you watched and the actors and entertainers and politicians you craved over. I learned this, unfortunately, in a perverse way. Because I learned from you without being a part of it all. Needless to say, I didn’t have the same connection. While you could learn from everything, I had to learn from from the scant bank or identity production and reproduction we were afforded. The athletes. The entertainers. The criminals. I took what I saw from people who were introduced to me via the media and configured my identity. Lucky for you, you had a variety of options. For me, well… I quit working on my jump shot after 9th grade and soon after realized that, despite a self-acclaimed proliferation for gab, a proliferation for wordplay and wandering into  both through a rhythmic sequence, still seemed like a last ditch resort for my plight to becoming successful. But that was no cross to die on. That realization was okay because although I did idolize “my typa niggas”, I also idolized other ones. Like my dad, a truck driver who paid for and took my to baseball practice as a kid. And other black men in my community who, despite their inability to inspire through economic upheaval, did so in other ways. 

As a child, I deep down had an appreciate for a lot of niggas. The ones who had flashy cars and expensive jewellery and could do what they wanted despite what they had been dealt with. And I also aspired for those men behind the veil of a “boot strap” ethos that did the same while driving used beater cars and struggled to make ends meat. Looking for a role model between Jay-Z and my uncle Dale was a perilous road solely built on optimism. I have a many family and friends who tried to navigate it but “failed. Now that I am older, I realize it is more accurately a navigation built on an understanding of complexity. But to be a black male and understand what “success” may look like inevitably lies on that pathway right now. Even in 2019. The question becomes, how do we show our young black male youth “what typa nigga” they ought to strive for?

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I recently watched Kevin Hart’s Guide to Black History on Netflix (and if you haven’t yet seen it, I highly recommend it). This documentary slash special is the type of learning that I was never exposed to. It is also not the type of information that I never dug deep enough to research as an adult, a black man, and an educator. Perhaps I am baring my faults too openly, but my purpose for sharing these thoughts is to have a vulnerable and candid conversation. I don’t have a PhD in African American History nor do I claim to be an expert in anything of the sort, but I pride myself on an ability to articulate anti-black pedagogy to my students on a daily basis. So pardon my arrogance on this matter – but if I didn’t really know about these essential people, I’m guessing a whole bunch of black people didn’t or don’t know about them either. And if a bunch of adults don’t know them, you can bet our kids don’t know them either. 

Black History Month still holds meaning but the way we organize it within schools is getting stale. That is why I am not even upset about the fact that we have not established a grounded Black History Month program within the school I currently work in and haven’t done so for the last three years that I’ve been there. Our students know about Martin and Rosa and Muhammad and Slaves. They grew up with Michael and Barack and Oprah. But the in-between figures, the people who were exceptional without being exceptional and the stories that are a few degrees moved from the explicit torture and status of an entire identity are, I think, things we need to move towards if we do want black history month to still hold meeting in 2019 and beyond. Providing our students with the opportunity to see and experience a range of identities that have existed as far back as 100 years ago and as recent as yesterday, is perhaps the key to making meaning out of an otherwise flailing “celebration”. 

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The school system maintains a storage shed of words and phrases ready to deploy at any time for describing black male students. Our black boys are our most vulnerable, or our “at-risk” ones, or the underachievers, the disadvantaged, or underserved, or our minority students. The list of descriptors goes on and on. When speaking on their plight, we offer our pre-stamped condolences through nouns and verbs like concern, or challenge. It is no wonder we seem lost in white man’s land – spinning our wheels in the vehicle of progress only to end up in the same position over and over again.

Crafting an email to staff in regards to starting a club for black boys, I am stuck at the first sentence. It reads, “The academic and social underachievement of many minority males in our school (system) continues to be a challenge.” And in writing that, I can’t help but think of the different readings a simple sentence like that will arouse. I anticipate some colleagues reading that and thinking to themselves, “You damn right, what’s wrong with them?” I foresee others interpreting the collection of words through a more sympathetic tone, reading the word challenge as a thing to be guided and nurtured. While others may read that same word, challenge, thinking that I am on their side, which I am not, assuming that I am speaking as a war commander and not as a teacher, and offering a pep talk towards engaging in a battle against our black boys that is to be either won or lost. Yet, because of the politically correct nature of my profession, some will probably stick on my use of the word minority students. And that is no fault of theirs; they think I am talking about all minority students when truly I am too much of a coward to use the word “black boys” in an email.

So I’m stuck writing an email proposing to run a group for my most vulnerable, needy, strong-headed, confident, brave, broken, suffering, “at-risk”… black students. Because I can’t write a word past the first sentence. It is hard for me to finish the email and push send – I don’t want the words that I am using to speak on and about our black students to be read the wrong way. And I think that is where, in one way or another, we all are. At a loss for words.

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