For the last week, M has been muttering fragments from the “I have a dream” speech, which just warms the cockles of a liberal mother’s heart. And she can’t stop talking about the play. The play is called Sitting Down and it’s about the Greensboro Woolworth’s sit-ins. M’s class rehearsed it all last week, and this week they’ll perform it for the other third grade classes, two of the second grade classes, and their first grade reading buddies (but, alas, not their parents).
M is Protester #4. Her lines are:
“Why is that, ma’am? Why can’t people like us sit down at your lunch counter?”
“So you want some strawberry shortcake, do you? Well, so do we.”
"Listen, mister, I don’t want any trouble here.”
There are two casts but Protesters 1, 2, 3, and 4 get to be in both casts, which is why it’s good to be a Protester. Also, Protester #3 gets a bowl of sugar dumped on his head and Protester #4 (that would be M) gets pulled off his seat . (E really wishes she could see that.)
If just about now you’re feeling a little uneasy about 21st-century white kids in the heartland playing 1960s southern Black civil rights protesters, well, so am I. But they’re definitely learning about the sit-ins and the civil rights movement, and they’re totally into it. And that’s great.
What’s not so great is that they seem to be learning that racism, like Christopher Columbus and Ben Franklin, is a thing of the past: history for them to study in school and perform in plays. When I asked M if there is still racism, she said she’s not sure, and she comes from one of the more politically aware, liberal (even radical) families in town. I’m sure most of the other kids in her nearly all-white school have no doubt that racism is over, and we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday because he won. How I wish they were right.
[Check out Jackie for a quote that would make M’s teacher seriously reconsider her curriculum.]
1 comment:
FWIW, on the "white kids playing black civil rights protesters" thing--I think it's *excellent.* I went to a school named after MLK, one that was very focused on civil rights curriculum and deliberately and consciously integrated, and we were taught that the history of the civil rights movement was *everyone's* history. Teaching white kids to identify with the struggle for Black civil rights is important: one of the huge problems liberal whites have is with "white guilt," which tends to make them focus on wanting absolution rather than on whatever the issue at hand is. For me, identifying with the civil rights movement and learning about it young has helped short-circuit a lot of that guilt that comes from applying a simple victims/perpetrators model.
Sounds to me like, on this at least, your kid's teacher is doing a pretty decent job.
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