“I tell my own son, ‘them things are for bed or inside the home,’” he said. “‘I don’t want to see you with that on your head outside in public.’” He spoke about preparing Black students for their future and holding them accountable for how they dressed. 

“I hear you,” I said. I did hear him. Here we were. Two Black men talking about ways to help Black boys become Black kings. “But I see it differently,” I continued. 

The truth is: Not only do I disagree; but I see it as a form of anti-Black racism and the opposite of culturally responsive pedagogy. Instances like this, however casual, are forms of culturally not-so responsive pedagogy. I have a problem with any infringement on Black students representing Black culture inside of their schools. Especially when it comes from Black teachers.

Black folks shutting down aesthetic demarcations of Black culture inside schools is the stuff that is supposed to be picked up by––to use Kiese’s terms––the worst of white folk. I personally don’t care how a Black teacher chooses to raise their own children. I don’t care which suburb they choose to buy their home in. Or what they decide to put in it. Or what they tell their children to take off or put on once they step out of it. But I do care about how Black folk take up forms of Blackness in our schools. I do care about Black folks who teach towards anything less than validating or examining all parts of Black culture and then turn around and preach culturally responsive pedagogy. 

What they’re doing is actually Culturally Not-So Responsive Pedagogy. And the truth is: doing that may be more harmful than simply ignoring Black culture. Especially when it comes from Black teachers.

I don’t need a cultural competency chart to know where I stand. Reading an article will never erase then override my lived experience. We don’t get to––to use Kiese’s terms––that Black abundance by tucking in and taking off parts of our Black selves. Black excellence and acceptance is not tethered to assimilation. Black excellence and acceptance is not tethered to assimilation. Black excellence and acceptance is not tethered to assimilation. Never that. 

I wear my durag while I’m teaching all the time. For a variety of reasons. Sometimes I need a line up. Sometimes it goes with the fit. Sometimes my braids look dusty. Sometimes it just is what it is. Nothing more, nothing less. Both inside and outside of culturally responsive pedagogy. Never Culturally Not-So Responsive Pedagogy. And because of that, I can’t tell you everything that culturally responsive pedagogy is. But I sure can tell you what it’s not.

Culturally responsive pedagogy is not teaching about Black history and then delegitimizing Black futures. Culturally responsive pedagogy is not centering Black stories and then validating only a single version of our Black story. Culturally responsive pedagogy is not bringing hip-hop lyrics into the classroom and then limiting other forms of hip-hop culture and knowledge production in between those class walls. Culturally responsive pedagogy is not leading Black affinity spaces and then in those affinity spaces insidiously promoting assimilation tactics. Culturally responsive pedagogy is not befriending Black students and then chastising Black forms of belonging. Culturally responsive pedagogy is not liking and sharing all that pro-Black talk on your social media when you get home and then targeting all the Black kids every second of every day when you get to school. That is not culturally responsive pedagogy. That is Culturally Not-So Responsive Pedagogy.

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The hallways on the main floor of my high school resembled the outline of a square with adjacent hallways sprouting off of each corner of that central square. One day, right after the lunch bell rang, I was casually strolling this thoroughfare – you know, buying time before I actually had to be in class, hoping to run into a friend, a female, or a fight. Anything to keep me distracted from the slightly conscious reality of feeling like I somehow didn’t belong in this space; at least not in the way I wanted to be included. I happened to cross paths with a teacher during my deliberate wander. Someone I didn’t really know – he had never taught me before but I had seen him around. When we, unfortunately, made eye contact he told me to take my hat off. I did, without saying anything. The situation was one of those moments in passing that didn’t require any more attention that it got.

But, karma, combined with the white gaze, has a funny way of working on young Black boys trapped inside of public schools. I made my way to my locker, grabbed my binders, put my hat back on and finally began the walk to my first afternoon class. I’m assuming that the teacher I previously encountered must have went to the main office to grab his afternoon attendance before heading back to his class because (if he was just aimlessly wandering, like me, that would raise heady implications) as I made my second 90 degree turn I ran into him again. This time, in the opposite hallway of our square framed main floor. The eye contact this time wasn’t as mutual as it had been five minutes ago. This round, I gave him a brief glance. Enough for him to notice that I did notice him. As I unknowingly attempted to proceed past him, I honestly wasn’t even thinking about the hat I was again wearing. The same hat that he had casually told me to take off. I guess all this internally fused within his psychosocial reality which, by extension, lit a fuse within him.

Although not verbatim, “are you deaf or stupid?” was along the lines of the question this teacher asked me. I don’t think I need to give you an extensive history of how masculinity, Blackness, hip-hop culture, community, and identity intersect in my life to let you know that those are fighting words. But naturally, I wasn’t the latter of his question so I wasn’t literally going to fight a grown man and actual teacher in the middle of a high school hallway just because I was insulted. I took the path of least resistance; I stared at him, smirked, and kept walking – hat on. Unfortunately, I was in a position that is perpetually difficult for people like me to prevail. This teacher anted up, raising his voice to call me out in the packed hallway. He was simply being a teacher, who in light of his blatant disrespect, felt disrespected. But in raising his voice to command that I go to the office for whatever infraction I had not only committed but now aggravated due to his interaction with me, he called into reality exactly how privilege and power operate in classrooms, hallways, schools. Not hidden, not invisible, not elusive. Right in the open, compelling all observers and actors to participate.

I went to the office with him. He told the secretary what happened and then left to “teach”. I sat there until a vice-principal called me into his office. I explained what happened, there wasn’t much to explain, I mean… “the situation was one of those moments in passing that didn’t require any more attention that it got”. He listened as I spoke and then told me that I was acting in “opposition to authority” which required a two-day suspension. I was heading home instead of going to my afternoon classes.

I don’t remember everything from my high school days. But I’ll never forget that moment. At the time, it was frustrating and funny to me. “A two-day suspension for wearing a damn hat, can you believe that?” is what I told my boys and my family. To me now, it’s no longer merely frustrating or funny – it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous to know how the gaze of others, the performative nature of my Blackness, the direct interactions with peers and people in positions of power, the surveillance within the white space of the school are all so erroneously and easily manipulated in order to serve the white world.

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After watching the video, I tweeted that we have officially crossed over from “protect and serve” to “comply or die” and I was not surprised at the amount of activity such an accusation would stir up. That is because all people seem to be invested in the current state of affairs that America finds itself in. I recently told a friend that 15 years ago, if we had the technology we now have, we would already have had “this conversation” and one would hope to think that we would have “progressed” as a society. (I use the word progressed with quotations because I am fully aware of the potential of supremacies’ insidious tendencies to cloak and move on.) But the technological revolution is happening now – and we are visually exposed to black life on a scale that we only could share stories about before. The tangible effects of such atrocities leave education in somewhat of a quandary, with people taking up sides. Some feel that students are “too impressionable” to be exposed to the realities of the world while others hold the notion that we need to be critical and reflexive in our practice if we do truly want to uphold the ideal that education is a powerful weapon.

Instead of taking up arms (which is seemingly more of a possibility with every additional instance), we need to strategically use the weapon of education to arm our future so instances like Sandra Bland cease to occur. There is only one way to do this. We must have candid conversations within the confines of educational spaces so that we can hear from minds that are not so institutionalized to the point where they argue that Sandra Bland was at fault for her demise.

Along some Cornel Westish train of logic, many are pointing the finger by saying blacks are to blame for their predicament, I grow more tired each day battling people with these mentalities. What makes it worse is that many of these people are black people who think other black people are being too sensitive by painting every last instance that happens to blacks with a racist brush. My only question is: Are we to blame Sandra Bland for her death? The divide and conquer logic I have heard regarding this instance securely affirms the apolitical, status quo mentality that gets society nowhere. We must not forget that being apolitical in itself is a political stance.

By ignoring these issues in our classrooms, we are prescribing to a status quo logic that dates back decades. A mantra that upholds the ideal of, “let us educate them, but let us not educate them too much”. Citing Audre Lorde, “we can never dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools”, but education and teaching that is grounded in exposing the flaws of society breeds a tool that the master never created. We need to step outside our politically correct and rigid ideologies of what education is intended for and start taking agency by providing youth with tools they need to dismantle a system largely based on injustices. And we need to start this early in schooling. University is too late. Education is meant to create critical individuals. Right now, it seems like education is simply creating lambs for the lions.

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