Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/moving-in/5025966/
During the mid-1970s, at the young age of four, I began my early schooling years by helping to racially integrate public schools in Milwaukee. As an adult, I can still recall rising early each morning, walking to the corner of my city-dwelling home, boarding the yellow bus and arriving at my predominantly white school in the suburbs. I can also recall how attending predominantly white schools caused me a great deal of anxiety. I was the only Black child in my class—none of my classroom peers or school staff looked or talked like me. And my white classmates seldom included me in their daily play groups. I felt like I had been transported to a foreign land. While in this distant land, I was expected to acclimate to the school’s mainstream culture and excel socially and academically. Yet, this rarely happened for me.
In this foreign land, I felt different and I struggled to operate within this system of difference. For example, I found it difficult to abandon my Ebonics language (i.e., “Black” English,) and was often reprimanded by my teacher for using words that were not found in Webster’s Dictionary. To encourage my use of standard English, my teacher informed the ...