I’ve been working for a non-profit organization located in S.E. Washington, DC for three years. The organization is called Facilitating Leadership in Youth (FLY) and is a mentoring – tutoring program directed towards youth in the Barry Farms Public Housing Community in Anacostia. There are about 40 youths that attend this program, ranging in the ages of 7 to 17 years old. There are many different aspects to FLY, however the most dominant program is the one-on-one tutoring sessions. I happen to have the privilege of tutoring two young men, ages eight and twelve.
Hezekiah is eight years old and I tutor him every Tuesday afternoon. He lives with an older sister and both his parents. I just began tutoring him this semester. Devonte is twelve years old and I tutor him every Thursday afternoon. His parents are divorced and he has seven brothers and sisters, however he lives with his mother and a few sisters. He rarely gets the chance to see his father. Devonte and I have been working together for quite a while. I still remember the first time I met him.
That first tutoring session I decided to spend the time getting to know one another rather than doing work so that we could work on forming some sort of bond. I sat there asking him questions about his home life and school. He told me his favorite subject in school, the things he liked to do for fun, and all about his family. Throughout our talk, he had been drawing a picture the whole time. I asked him if I could see the picture when he was done. When he showed it to me I was astonished by what he had drawn, it was a diagram of mitosis, cell reproduction. How many kids do you know who draw a picture of mitosis for fun? I was surprised that he even knew what it was and understood it so well. Devonte has always been that type of kid. He got good grades in school. He never gave me any problems when it came to doing homework.
However, one day it all changed. He would come in with an attitude all the time. He was getting suspended from school. He would curse more and talk about sex all the time. He also started carrying a knife everywhere with him. It started getting harder and harder to tutor him, almost to the point where I dreaded coming to tutoring every week. It got to the point where I realized that I had to have a talk with Devonte if we were going to keep working with one another. However, he must have known that something was up because on that particular day he kept running away from me and ended up hiding in the bathroom for the rest of the day. Finally, one of the other guys went into the bathroom to get him out for me. It was then that I was informed of the actual problem that had Devonte acting so weird.
First of all, Devonte had just learned that he needed to where glasses which is why he never wanted to do homework anymore because he was afraid that the other kids were going to tease him, and Devonte being the type of kid he is that is a very big deal. However, there was a much larger problem at hand. Devonte told me that he had been acting up because all the other kids at his school have been telling him that he “acts white.” Devonte is a straight-A student, loves to skateboard and has always been a very polite kid especially to females because of the way he was raised. He figured that if he cursed more, did poorly in school, and acted up then the kids wouldn’t tease him anymore. But where did the idea of that being a black man come from?
Whether or not you agree with it, there are stereotypes identifying whether or not there is a specific way that people act depending on their race. Black people are associated with being arrogant, athletic, devious, dirty, dishonest, drug addicts, "having rhythm," incompetent, inferior, lazy, unintelligent, noisy, passive, poor, primitive, untrustworthy, and violent. White people are associated with being assertive, cold, dishonest, evil, greedy, lacking athleticism, lacking rhythm, lusting for power, racist, untrustworthy, smart, and unclean. However, not all white people act the same, just like not all black people act the same. The problem is then tackling those stereotypes.
What?
This blog is part of a larger project of our anthropology class. While others pay particular attention to public communication, sex and sexuality, and body language, our focus here is the performance of race. We look at the many ways in which people or things become of an ethnic background. This can include how a person references, whether through physical attributes, speech patterns, or surroundings, another ethnicity. It can include the ways in which a person makes their own ethnicity apparent (or render them invisible). Even within one ethnic diaspora, we meticulously capture the events in which they separate themselves through even narrower ethnic classifications. Every entry displays a reenactment of a racialized characteristic in the context of American life -- and a profound sense of the meaning of culture.
Why?
We participate in the mass observation movement because we believe that it has much to contribute to the field of anthropology. We capture the "thick description" described by Geertz without the consequences of our participation. In each moment, we are able to catch power structures, cultural flows, functions, structures, an individual's or community's relationship to its environment, human agency, symbols and symbolic meaning, the difference differences make, and/or how history is played out in one simple incident.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
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1 comment:
Man...black people are the worst when it comes to stereotyping our own race.
I hope Devonte realized that catering to those clowns would get him nowhere...I hope he had the confidence and drive to get back on track.
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