The Time I Got Called Racist for Teaching Middle Schoolers About Prison
Only by bringing such patterns into the light of day can you begin to undo the harm they have caused
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One morning, the principal of my school called me into her office. “Mr. Wright, I got a call from one of the parents,” she said. “She complained that you were promoting racism.”
As a Black man, it’s not exactly a usual occurrence to be accused of being racist — let alone as a teacher. The parent in question had a child in one of my most challenging periods that year, a group of eighth graders. The majority of the students were male and Black; the student who complained wasn’t.
In my eight years as an educator, I’ve been no stranger to challenging environments. I’ve worked in schools where 100% of students came from free- and reduced-lunch backgrounds, where students didn’t have running water, where gang life was embedded in the social environment of the city. None of it made a difference to my teaching; I believe that all students can learn and deserve a fair and even approach. I knew that not all the students I taught would be Black, and so I have always fought to maintain a reasonable balance between teaching what was most needed while avoiding bias in my teaching. I haven’t always succeeded — but up until that moment, I had never heard any complaints about my content.
My principal knew that I taught eighth-grade history, which in Georgia basically amounts to Georgia studies. I covered events like the Trail of Tears, the Civil War, and the civil rights movement in detail; I never got calls when I covered these topics. I showed a documentary about Kalief Browder, who died in Riker’s Island three years after being imprisoned without trial, as well as Ava DuVernay’s 13th; it wouldn’t have surprised me if I’d gotten calls about those, but I never did. It wasn’t until I told my class about the school-to-prison pipeline that I got my warning.
At one point, my counselor told me to avoid being too radical, to not put so much emphasis on the role race has played in America. I agreed with him, but I also believe in telling the truth…
