Educational Review Editors Discuss Special Issue on Race and Racism

Race, racism and their influence in American education were the topics of the day when authors and editors of a Harvard Educational Review special issue met yesterday.

The central issue is the problem that American minority scholars face--both students and teachers--as they struggle from a minority perspective within the "majority culture" of white middle-class America. Asian Americans, Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans all wrote for the journal.

The answer, "We don't have any more minority spots," prompted Maria de la Luz Reyes and John Halcon to examine discrimination against Chicanos in the form of tokenism, taboos against "brown on brown" research--"men and women of color" writing on race issues--and inadequate preparation of teachers to deal with Chicano students.

Student teachers are taught for a world of 30 years ago, said Reyes, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. No longer are the public school predominantly white--today, teachers should be prepared for classrooms of 75 percent Black or Hispanic. Reyes said that student teachers rarely have any experience with multi-cultural perspectives and have no practical experience with minorities in the classroom.

Ceasar L. McDowell, one of three special issue editors for the journal, said that "It's easy for Blacks to talk about racism and its effects by themselves, but this puts racism right in the hands of readers. It reaches a 'mainstream.'" McDowell is a 1988 graduate of the Graduate School of Education and a professor at Boston College.

Another issue editor, Emilie V. Siddle (GSE '88), told of the intense effect one article had on an English student of hers at the University of Pennsylvania. "I never thought about these issues before--they're new to me," the student said. "It's powerful."

Student Contributors

Several high school and college writers were included in the journal, including Christian Neira '91 and Concord high school student Imani Perry. Perry wrote an essay on the differences between private and public secondary school education, the former of which she sees as learning how to conceptualize, the latter a matter of "making things seem correct."

Perry once asked her freshman English teacher at a small private school, "Can we read something by a Black author?" The teacher responded, "The purpose of this course is to study our language and our culture." Perry soon left that private school.

Perry said that she was excited "not as much by my being published" as looking at her article and thinking, "I really like what I said and I'm glad it's there."