#1 - White Man Dancing

Chapter 1 of Gary R. Howard's book We Can't Teach What We Don't Know: White Teachers in Multiracial Schools is entitled "White Man Dancing: A Story of Personal Transformation." In this chapter, Howard explains is own experiences with diversity. Howard did not have many experiences with diversity until high school, when his friend asked Howard to double date with him and his girlfriend. Both of the girls were African American. He then moves to Yale University where he began working with inner-city kids through the YMCA. It seems as though working with diverse inner-city kids was a great way to help out these children and for Howard to be immersed in diversity. This was not the real challenge, though. Through his time working and living at "The Hill" with these inner-city kids, Howard learned a lot about what it means to be a White person living in America. When Howard was living in "The Hill" he was amazed at how they people there welcomed him and treated him so well, "considering their painful history with most of the White world" (p. 14). These people did not let their history with White people affect their attitudes toward and relationships with Howard. The students that Howard worked with helped him to see White privilege. The students told him,

You may live in the Hill now, and hang out with the Black people, but you're at Yale and you can go back there whenever you want. We were born in the Hill and don't have any other place to go. It's not an option for us not to be Black, that's what we are 24 hours a day for our whole lives. If you wanted to, if things go too heavy for you here, or when you graduate, you can walk away from this thing and never look back. We can't do that (p. 15). 

White people were privileged. They were not forced to live in the ghettos. Howard was not forced to live there; he chose to live there. But he was able to leave whenever he wanted. Being White brings with it certain privileges because it is the dominant culture.

These experiences that Howard had led to a shift in consciousness. Howard said, "I came to see that my real work was not in the Hill neighborhood but back home with my own folks. The core of the problem was in White America, and if I wanted to help excise the cancer of racism, I had to go to the source of the tumor" (p. 16). Howard left "The Hill" in order to share his new findings with the White people in America. He was rejecting his own racial identity because he had learned what it meant to be White in America and he wanted nothing to do with it. He had been living a life of "cultural encapsulation," where all he knew was his own culture. But now, after these experiences at "The Hill," Howard was no longer encapsulated by his own culture. He understood what it meant to have White privilege and he wanted nothing to do with it.

So, Howard went to the White people to try to get them to see things his way. His method was to tell everything that they are racist. He learned, though, that this was not the way of going about it. In order to get people to understand, White America needed to be reeducated. The new method was to help White America "break out of the their own encapsulation" by having "direct action with others for positive change" (p. 19).

When I was in high school, I went on a mission trip to Tijuana, Mexico. Up until this point, I had not experienced many other cultures. I live in a small, Dutch town where I attended Dutch, Christian schools, and a Dutch Christian Reformed church. Sure, there were other cultures represented here, but I had not interacted with many of them. Going to Mexico was the first big experience where I was interacting with and being immersed in another culture. I did not know what to expect, and this experience really opened my eyes to the privileges we have here in White America. We visited a family in the area. Their house had a tin roof that leaked. They did not have cars. Their dad had to sell things on the street to earn money. Their shoes were sizes too small, and for fun they kicked around a deflated soccer ball. The entire family slept on two mattresses on the floor. Their whole house was at least 1/3 the size of my own home, but they had twice as many people living in theirs. We have flushing toilets, while all they had were pits.

I am privileged. My parents are able to work, and once I turned 16 I could work, too. We earn enough money to have ample food in our house, money enough for multiple cars, a trailer, a home. My parents were able to send me to Christian schools. Why? Because we are White people living in America and with that comes certain privileges. Before this trip I had been so encapsulated by my own culture, that I failed to see how privileged I was. I took for granted every day things that some people can only dream of having.