“White Male With Privilege” Asks for Advice

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Clarissa

October 3, 2015

I’m a white guy teaching Kindergarten in a school that is 100% Black and 100% free-meals. I am one of three white persons on a staff of roughly 30 that, other than the three, is all Black and majority women. A colleague, who is a person of color, has recently shown such incredible disdain for their students that I was speechless, and that says a lot. This disdain and frustration has been revealed in person to students.

I have been told in recent years that, as a white male with privilege, I have very little say or place in the conversations about teachers or youth of color. I need to sit down, shut up, and listen. I ask my activist colleagues out there in the ether: what are the protocols in this instance? As a white male, can I challenge and reply with equal disdain with my perspective on this colleague’s treatment of their students? Do I sit down, shut up, and listen to this person call their students “bank robbers” or “murderers,” call them “evil” to their faces?

As an activist colleague, I have some advice. First of all, stop being such a victim because it’s obnoxious. If somebody really told you to “sit down, shut up, and listen,” start working on your presence because I have no idea how you can teach anybody if you can’t even get your friends to respect you and not take this tone with you. I cannot begin to imagine anybody taking this tone with me in any situation or even trying to refer to me as “white female with privilege.”

Aside from that, the aggrieved and victimized position of a “white male” who is terrorized into silence by evil black colleagues makes you sound like an asshole of enormous proportions. Quit feeling so massively sorry for yourself, stop policing what your colleagues do, and concentrate on maturing both professionally and personally because you can use a lot of work in that area.

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13 responses to ““White Male With Privilege” Asks for Advice”

Dreidel

October 3, 2015

Bravo, Clarissa! Your answer to this self-pitying idiot is the best response to such drivel that I’ve read in ages!

Unfortunately, he’ll never read or hear words like yours, because losers in his situation only turn to people who already despise them and are only too glad to tell them how inherently evil their “privilege” is — and that nothing can ever be done to make up for having it.

And if somehow he did hear your words, they would only feed into his vast need for narcissistic self-loathing. Disgusting!

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Shakti

October 3, 2015

C’mon … really? He needs permission to tell his colleague to stop derogating the people they serve in front of him?

I swear this dilemma is really “Give me permission not to say anything because I secretly believe what this person is saying even though I claim leftist politics” when he starts mentioning he’s white and male and his colleague isn’t. I managed this small thing in a job where I didn’t have these laundry list of privileges and I’d go home seething because I didn’t feel I could assert myself. This is incredible nonsense.

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David Gendron

October 3, 2015

A teacher should not try to police other teachers.

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1. valter07
  
  October 4, 2015
  
  Hmm… I am not sure whom you see as a policed here and whom as doing the policing… I see white male teacher being policed by the voiced in his head. Not that such voices are not present in real life, but to abdicate personal responsibility in order to not appear privileged is very unprofessional.
  Now, more generally – the primary allegiance of the teacher should be to the well-being of the students, not other teachers. What would you propose to do if the teacher sees other teacher behaving unprofessionally, or meanly or (not in this example, but sometimes this may happen too) sociopathically? I’d rather have teachers “police” each other in such cases than administrators or politicians or parents.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    October 4, 2015
    
    At issue here is a minor difference in teaching styles. He adopts the nurturing style, while she does the tough love thing. Both can work or fail to do so but both teachers need space to try their method out. This fellow should just trust that the colleague is not an evildoer and leave her be.
    
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    1. valter07
      
      October 4, 2015
      
      Where did you find evidence of “tough love” here? I am someone who is a bit on a tough love side of the continuum (IMHO), but it never occurred to me to call students “evil” or “murderers”… This looks like a manifestation of burnout in the best case. And teacher’s burnout should be imposed on students in such ways.
      
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      1. Clarissa
        
        October 4, 2015
        
        I’ve seen colleagues employ all kinds of methods with students that would have never worked for me and that looked extremely bizarre to me but that worked. Who knows what her relationship with the students is and if they actually like her more than this fellow.
        
        One of the only two teachers I remember fondly from the 3 schools I attended was this WWII veteran with a hugely explosive temper. He once actually grabbed two boys and physically threw them out of the classroom. And we all idolized him, the two boys included. We knew he adored us while the teacher who addressed us as “Vy” and never raised her voice was universally hated.
        
        These relationships are so much more complex than can be seen from the outside.
        
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cliff arroyo

October 5, 2015

Just to point out yet again what a useless, useless concept ‘privilege’ is. Like ‘intersectionality’ and ‘microagressions’ it seems more designed by enemies of creating a more functional society.

Intersectionality makes impossible to prioritize at the individual level in any useful way.

Privilege is almost always used to deflect criticism (whether or not it’s deserved).

Microagressions are all about nursing greivances rather than becoming stronger.

They all seem incredibly infantile.

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1. Clarissa
  
  October 5, 2015
  
  Whenever anybody uses any of these words in earnest, I know that I’m talking to a congenital idiot and remove myself from their company. No serious discussion can arise out of this terminology. It’s all about self-pity and self-congratulation.
  
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  1. xykademiqz
    
    October 5, 2015
    
    There are many online spaces where you can’t say anything lest being told you are too privileged or not intersectional enough or some such thing. You always have to address every possible aspect of every issue from every angle and from the standpoint of absolutely everyone, lest you miss anyone, because if you fail to be 100% inclusive of every person and every possible scenario, then you cannot possible have a point regardless of what you are saying.
    
    One recent issue is about access to abortion and how we are not supposed to say pregnant women but instead only pregnant people; sure, there are trans men who can get pregnant, but seriously? That’s when you get called privileged for being a cis woman over being a trans man and the whole discussion dissolves into idiocy. We can’t talk about abortion rights being eroded — which is a serious problem — because we spend all the time and energy trying to name properly the 100% of people who may ever need access to it? FFS.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      October 5, 2015
      
      I never have any patience for this kind of silliness. I believe it’s important to push back against it and stop any “pregnant people” or “people who get abortions” the second it begins.
      
      I’ll be damned if I start shying away from the word “woman.”
      
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      1. Dreidel
        
        October 5, 2015
        
        That’s because your cis privilege allows you to define “woman” so narrowly. 🙂 🙂
        
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        Clarissa
        
        October 5, 2015
        
        Yes, let me go check my privilege and improve my intersectionality. 🙂
        
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