“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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In teacher’s college, I was one of four Black student-teachers in a cohort of sixty. When tasked with reflecting on various points of our school experiences, I observed that I had little in common with almost all the other folks who also wanted to become educators. And if I––a grown man who graduated from similar institutions and pursued parallel career paths––had little in common with these fellow teachers, how did most of the students who grew up in lower socio-economic environments feel? 

Most of my friends hated most parts of school. My little brother was kicked out of high school in the tenth grade. My dad never showed up to one parent-teacher meeting. School seemed to be a thing that was imposed on Black boys like me. Something we were compelled to participate in. Something we had to comply with. The deeper I reflected, the closer I felt like I was getting to some of the core reasons why school felt so distant for students like I once was.

When I was a student, it always felt like teachers didn’t really invest themselves in who I was beyond what I could produce on tests and assignments. I was there, in their classrooms, and was treated as if my life in that specific moment represented the complete capsule of my hopes and potential. Nothing beyond the information as it pertained to the curriculum was poured into me. Nothing aside from the black and white academics of that day was inquired about me. I sat at the back of the classroom and merely existed. Only to be monitored if I stepped outside the lines of acceptability––of their acceptability. And when I occasionally did, I was chastised. That was the only time I was implored to “do better”.

Despite what I looked like on the outside, to the outside world, I knew that if I didn’t help challenge and shatter stereotypes, Black boys that looked like the younger versions of myself would look at school the same way my friends and my brother did––the cycle would continue. They had to see men like me exist in roles that extended beyond basketball courts and rap videos. I had to meet them where they were at while fostering opportunities for them to think about who, exactly, they were. I knew that would be key to keeping students who looked like me engaged in the school buildings that never made any attempts to represent their wholeness. 

I learned three keys along the way. First was the reality that if we want students who ostensibly don’t align with the “universal student” then the onus is not on them, but on us, as teachers, to provide a learning environment where they feel welcomed, validated, and brilliant. Second was the reality that cultivating an equity-centered environment starts way before and many times in between any curriculum delivery. Third was that in order to create such an environment teachers would need to be themselves. 

I’ll admit, the aphorism, “be yourself,” is an overused and vague platitude. It is actually dangerous if merely taken at face value. It has the potential to inspire adults to think that their views and opinions are infallible. The saying subtly encourages teachers to teach from a “holier-than-thou” pedestal. But, by “being yourself”, I mean enter your teaching space as close to the most unbridled version of yourself in order to open up the floodgates for your students to enter as their most unbridled self. That’s where reflection ultimately occurs. I mean being authentic in your relationships with the children you are charged with teaching but I also mean rigorously reflecting on your shortcomings or blindspots as a person, and by extension, an educator.

Reflection, through the lens of continuous learning, protected my students from me. It curates a space where students feel safe in being themselves; willing to talk about their likes and dislikes with the content, the way it’s been taught to them, and their overall observations about schooling. It allowed both them and myself to grow. And to commit to continuous growth. By virtue of continuous reflection. 

Growth through the process of reflection is what we need to emphasize in our education circles. That there can’t be taught through a textbook, it can’t be photocopied onto a worksheet, it can’t be read in a teaching guide. It is only begot through the essence of learning itself––moving forward and occasionally taking pauses to look in the mirror. And it is the key to equity driven pedagogy, anti-racist teaching, and abolishing the opportunity gaps we still face today. We just need to look in the mirror every now and then.       

[A longer version of this blog was previously published at The Digital Pedagogy Lab]

The post The Mirror’s Reflection appeared first on Matthew R. Morris.

There has been no rapper who has taken it upon themselves to narrate their version of the #BlackLivesMatter movement with such sonic substance and clarity than Kendrick Lamar. The dichotomous relationship between blacks and whites in America seems to gain more saliency every time we turn on CNN. And the relationship between blacks and whites has never been rhymed with more elegance than on a “sleeper track” from Kendrick’s latest critically subversive and politically acclaimed album, To Pimp a Butterfly. Appropriately titled, “Complexion”, K dot rhymes through insurgent tones pertaining to a multitude of experiences brought on by skin color. He speaks on the seemingly innate yet trivial complexities of black self-hate that is created by simple differences in melatonin levels. The hook clearly proclaims the message of the track: Complexion means nothing. Unfortunately Kendrick is grappling with the utopian ideal of living in a post-racial society while still living in one that is institutionally segregated along racial lines. Kendrick is right – completion doesn’t mean a thing. But unfortunately his hook would be more accurate if it said, complexion shouldn’t mean a thing.

Listen closely to the first 16 bars of the track as Kendrick puts himself in the historic shoes of a slave who is lusting after a lighter-skinned “house servant”. The line, “Sneakin’ through the back window, I’m a good field nigga. I made a flower for you outta cotton just to chill wit ya,” is so metaphorically potent that upon each listen you can feel another layer of its meaning. On the surface it describes the obstacles that impede society’s unity and the division that is founded on race. On a deeper level, those very lines can be used to sum up the entire TPAB album. The butterflies in this case are rappers, or on a grander level, the exploitation of black culture and the symbolism can be meant to represent the route that black culture had, and has, to take just to get “a seat at the table” – through the back window. The flower out of cotton made just to chill is the packaging of our culture’s hard work and determinism. Yes. Shit gets deep.

“Brown skinned but your blue eyes tell me your mama can’t run” is another example of the historical markings that slavery has left on our society. The controversial nature of skin color is fervently challenged in this telling track off of TPAB. There are rappers who make catchy songs that sonically sound great but have little social relevance and there are rappers who purposely and unknowingly are pressed into appropriating our culture, and then there are rappers who maintain a vision of the roots of hip hop and use their words to tell a story. A story about what growing up black feels like. The realest rappers are not the ones who claim to slang the most dope, drop the most bodies or bag the most shorties; the realest rappers are those who still feel that this tool of music can be used as a weapon for both economic stability and social change. A song like “Complexion” reveals why Kendrick is one of the realest rappers out.

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