Black Teachers, White Parents

[Anonymous]

OP again. Just checked the thread again and see that a wider range of views have now been expressed.

Obviously the last thing we should do is make others so self-conscious about what they say that they don't give someone a heartfelt compliment for fear it will be misconstrued. For whatever reason, I keep replaying the scene in my head and wishing the other parent had said something like "thanks for putting so much work into the presentation" or "I really enjoyed it," instead of "very professional."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree with OP. It was patronizing. It was exactly like a "you're so articulate" compliment. Why wouldn't she be?!?! She's a professional. Why wouldn't it be a professional presentation? If she were white, I doubt it would've been the same compliment. It's hard to be a minority because there are countless little insensitivities like this happening all the time, and the moment someone calls it out, everyone is telling you not to start something and saying you're too sensitive.

Please do not pass your 'sensitivities" down to your children. Are you actually going to teach your children this... when white people say "X" it is wrong, what "those people" really mean is "Y".

I will not be teaching my children these things. They are in the past. YOU are creating the problem not fixing it. Work on fixing the problem. We wonder why there is still a race problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a white teacher. I'd be flattered if someone described my work as "professional". It's a compliment. Nothing more.

I have no clue why you think that is a race issue. I'm more worried about the fact that you were noting the color of everyone.

Part of it was the tone in which the comment was made, which I can't replicate here.

But the responses to date suggest it's over-analysis on my part. I'm happy to hear that. I want the teacher to feel welcome in the community.

Welcome in whose community exactly? The teacher is part of the school community already. As is your child. Do you worry about the white teachers the same way? You may be crossing over from being open to overly-sensitive and race-focused yourself. The teacher is a professional, someone complimented her on that, whatever the speaker's tone. What is notable is the classy manner in which the teacher handled it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a white teacher. I'd be flattered if someone described my work as "professional". It's a compliment. Nothing more.

I have no clue why you think that is a race issue. I'm more worried about the fact that you were noting the color of everyone.

Part of it was the tone in which the comment was made, which I can't replicate here.

But the responses to date suggest it's over-analysis on my part. I'm happy to hear that. I want the teacher to feel welcome in the community.

Welcome in whose community exactly? The teacher is part of the school community already. As is your child. Do you worry about the white teachers the same way? You may be crossing over from being open to overly-sensitive and race-focused yourself. The teacher is a professional, someone complimented her on that, whatever the speaker's tone. What is notable is the classy manner in which the teacher handled it.

Not PP but "school community" ... every school has one, and everybody needs to feel welcome. Put the microscope away you are going to hurt someone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with OP. It was patronizing. It was exactly like a "you're so articulate" compliment. Why wouldn't she be?!?! She's a professional. Why wouldn't it be a professional presentation? If she were white, I doubt it would've been the same compliment. It's hard to be a minority because there are countless little insensitivities like this happening all the time, and the moment someone calls it out, everyone is telling you not to start something and saying you're too sensitive.

Please do not pass your 'sensitivities" down to your children. Are you actually going to teach your children this... when white people say "X" it is wrong, what "those people" really mean is "Y".

I will not be teaching my children these things. They are in the past. YOU are creating the problem not fixing it. Work on fixing the problem. We wonder why there is still a race problem.

It is very difficult to "create" a race problem. It has existed for centuries. I interview people for a living. I couldn't count the number of times I have heard a competent seeming AA interviewee called "articulate." I have Never heard a white candidate described in this way. It is quite grating.it is like there is no way for the interviewers to get used to the idea that AA candidates are great or suck like anyone else. They are always surprised by competent sounding AAs, no matter how often we encounter them.

[Anonymous]

I'm white, and the white teacher my DD has was a hot mess. So to go to her other teacher, who happened to be Asian, and see her be professional in her presentation, was a welcome relief. The reality is, not all professionals ARE in fact professional. I did once tell a black coworker she was super articulate. Every sentence out of her mouth had an SAT word in it. Several times after I walked away I'd go look up a word she said. I was impressed. She didn't speak well for a black person, she spoke well for a human being.

[Anonymous]

I think a really good PP from a teacher is an impressive thing. I find it impressive in consulting. Humans often just aren't good at that sort of thing. So I don't think it was bad.

However I will say I have come into contact with a young white person at my 'professional' job that has a pretty loose grasp on the English language and it's hard, very hard for me to hear her speak. It makes me wonder if her lack of polish and not being as articulate will hurt her or not matter.

- A black person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a white teacher. I'd be flattered if someone described my work as "professional". It's a compliment. Nothing more.

I have no clue why you think that is a race issue. I'm more worried about the fact that you were noting the color of everyone.

Part of it was the tone in which the comment was made, which I can't replicate here.

But the responses to date suggest it's over-analysis on my part. I'm happy to hear that. I want the teacher to feel welcome in the community.

Welcome in whose community exactly? The teacher is part of the school community already. As is your child. Do you worry about the white teachers the same way? You may be crossing over from being open to overly-sensitive and race-focused yourself. The teacher is a professional, someone complimented her on that, whatever the speaker's tone. What is notable is the classy manner in which the teacher handled it.

The teacher is young, and new to our school; hence the reference to wanting her to feel welcome in a school community that consists of administrators, other teachers, students and parents with a common mission of supporting each other and our students. By definition, she's now part of that community, but there can be a difference between being part of a community and feeling welcome in it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Was at a back-to-school night recently. Two of DS's teachers are AA, the rest are white. One of his AA teachers made the greatest impression - she was full of enthusiasm, she'd prepared a slide deck with a lot of pop-ups that conveyed lots of information in the limited time allotted, and she had the parents laughing with her spot-on observations about teenagers.

On the way out, we stopped to briefly introduce ourselves and thank her for some after-school help she'd been providing DS. As we did so, we overheard another white parents telling the teacher that her presentation had been "very professional." I kind of froze in my tracks when I heard that. It sounded incredibly patronizing to me. I was just waiting for the teacher to respond with something like "well, yeah, I'm a professional, so that's what I do," but of course she just said thanks.

So my question to black teachers is do you still get this all the time from white parents, and does it bother you, or do you just move on and try not to think worse of the kids because some of their parents sound like characters out of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner"?

Wife is a teacher. Hear "horror stories" all the time from her about parents who are controlling and condescending and parents who are apathetic and indifferent and everything in between.
Based on her experiences I would say that believe it or not the slights and snubs and insolence and ignorance expands across all boundaries.
White parents do it as do black parents, Hispanic parents, African parents, Asian parents, Indian parents, white collar parents, blue collar parents, helicopter parents, half-assed parents, single parents, gay parents...the list goes on and on.
She's seen it all from parents of every race, religion, class, culture, and community and in my estimation it doesn't bother her when a parent of a particular ethnicity acts like an asshole - it bothers her when a parent acts like an asshole period.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with OP. It was patronizing. It was exactly like a "you're so articulate" compliment. Why wouldn't she be?!?! She's a professional. Why wouldn't it be a professional presentation? If she were white, I doubt it would've been the same compliment. It's hard to be a minority because there are countless little insensitivities like this happening all the time, and the moment someone calls it out, everyone is telling you not to start something and saying you're too sensitive.

Please do not pass your 'sensitivities" down to your children. Are you actually going to teach your children this... when white people say "X" it is wrong, what "those people" really mean is "Y".

I will not be teaching my children these things. They are in the past. YOU are creating the problem not fixing it. Work on fixing the problem. We wonder why there is still a race problem.

It is very difficult to "create" a race problem. It has existed for centuries. I interview people for a living. I couldn't count the number of times I have heard a competent seeming AA interviewee called "articulate." I have Never heard a white candidate described in this way. It is quite grating.it is like there is no way for the interviewers to get used to the idea that AA candidates are great or suck like anyone else. They are always surprised by competent sounding AAs, no matter how often we encounter them.

"They"... who are "they"... yes you are creating a divide.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think a really good PP from a teacher is an impressive thing. I find it impressive in consulting. Humans often just aren't good at that sort of thing. So I don't think it was bad.

However I will say I have come into contact with a young white person at my 'professional' job that has a pretty loose grasp on the English language and it's hard, very hard for me to hear her speak. It makes me wonder if her lack of polish and not being as articulate will hurt her or not matter.

- A black person.

I find this true with the Asian staff at my work. Lord forbid it's a conference call. Give me articulate and can design an IT application.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm white, and the white teacher my DD has was a hot mess. So to go to her other teacher, who happened to be Asian, and see her be professional in her presentation, was a welcome relief. The reality is, not all professionals ARE in fact professional. I did once tell a black coworker she was super articulate. Every sentence out of her mouth had an SAT word in it. Several times after I walked away I'd go look up a word she said. I was impressed. She didn't speak well for a black person, she spoke well for a human being.

PSA... the word "articulate" is ban from the white person vernacular.

[Anonymous]

While I understand that the inflection can make a compliment feel backhanded, as in "That was so professional." conveying praise for a job well done versus conveying surprise that it was so well done, but as the saying goes, sometimes a banana is just a banana.

I can tell you that I have worked for over 20 years in IT and have worked with a number of teachers, I can vouch for the fact that there are many, many people in IT and education who are not so professional and it has nothing to do with race. Technical skills and presentation/communication skills are very different skills and unfortunately not all teacher excel at both. I have seen more teachers of all races and ethnicities who excel at one or the other than I have seen who excel at both.

Unfortunately, with the poor pay scale of teaching, many of those who excel at both do not teach at public schools. We need to find a way to improve the pay scale of teachers so that we can improve the number of teachers who do excel in both and are very professional.

[Anonymous]

Well my kid has a very white teacher and she did a very nice powerpoint as well as a packet of info and I also had the same thought "wow, actually this is pretty professional"

[Anonymous]

OMG, you really can't say ANYTHING to ANYONE anymore, can you?

Having sat through back to school nights for twenty years now, I can say that some of the teachers are terrible public speakers and others are great. Telling someone their presentation was 'very professional' is a complement -- period.

What is with the need to turn everything into a racial issue? Sheesh.