Lisa Delpit's "Other People's Children"

 The author argues that... culture power is enacted in the classroom in an inequitable way wherein white teachers disseminate their cultural norms and expectations onto black students that conflict with their culture resulting in lowered expectations on black performance.  She states that in order to shed this dominant cultural power found in classroom, educators should embrace all of their students' cultures and identities while being honest about the political power game that is played. 

Three talking points:

Beginning: Within the first few pages of the text, Delpit powerfully describes the experiences black educators have had with encountering white educators viewpoints on education and specifically their views on educating black children. It seemed to be a theme from the black educators to have to smile and nod at the opinions of white educators or hold their tongue. I found it striking that "[white educators] only want to go on research they've read that other white people have written." This doesn't surprise me based on systems of racial inequality that are seeped into the structure of society in this country but it is quite baffling that there has been a pattern of white educators only listening to their racial counterparts on cultural matters they oftentimes do not attempt to learn about. 

Middle: One of the quotes I found most worthy of mentioning was, "What the school personnel fail to understand is that if the parents were members of the culture of power and lived by its rules and codes, then they would transmit those codes to their children. In fact, they transmit those another culture that children must learn at home in order to survive in their communities." This section was super powerful because I feel like this is something that educators fail to recognize--that some of their students really have to learn how to live a double life because their existences at school and home are vastly different. It also recognizes that parents cannot be at fault for the way they raise their children based on their culture and should not be expected to raise their children in line with the cultural expectations of educators who have cultural power. 

End: I love how towards the end of this reading, there was almost a call-to-action section where "black parents, teachers of color, and members of poor communities must be allowed to participate fully in the discussion of what kind of instruction is in their children's best interest." While some white liberal instructors attempt to have good intentions with the ways in which they teach nonwhite students, many times they are actually teaching them in a way that is not pushing them to succeed because their expectations are lowered for them. If a white educator is to work with a nonwhite population, they should really consult ways to instruct their youth in a way that takes account their personal experiences but does not restrict their ability to be challenged. 

Reflection/Connection:

This reading was a great continuation of learning about social issues in education. I feel like it really expanded upon the discussion that Johnson had in "Privilege, Power, and Difference" that we read at the beginning of this course, specifically because of the connection between dominant power ideologies being present in our society. This reading more specifically references the power dynamics present in classrooms, which is very relevant to us obviously as educators, and the Johnson almost previewed the topics covered in this reading to make it an easier read.

I have always believed it to be extremely important that all cultural identities are embraced and fostered in the classroom. Especially as a white educator who works with a majority population of nonwhite students, it is soooooo important to do lots of internalization in order to not continue the cycle of committing cultural power imbalance to the next generation. I found this podcast pretty relatable and for those who want to listen, its advice from a teacher on five actionable ways that white educators can embrace their black students' cultured in the classroom. I think that one thing that I do is to embrace translanguaging in my classroom because I think it is pretty beautiful for students with different language backgrounds at home to be able to use that in the classroom, and I don't think those need to be always separated. 

Finally, I wanted to include this graph because many statistics always show that white teachers in the US are a significant majority of all teachers by race, yet all other races/ethnicities have more percentages of students than teachers, meaning this could have the potential for nonwhite students to not feel represented by their teacher in the schools.