Prejudice Reduction

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is my favorite book to teach. It’s the reason I became a high school English teacher. Years ago  when my teacher handed me that book, I was both engrossed and frightened to learn of a dystopian world in which books were not only illegal, they were burned. 

Whether it’s the bully or the blonde, the nerd or the jock, most of us are familiar with a wide range of stereotypes. We’ve also been affected by them. But there are plenty of unexpected stereotypes that need to be acknowledged as well.

I’m probably a bit more familiar with children’s books than the average college student. Having a preschool teacher for a mother will do that to you. So it’s never a surprise when she sends me email about new books. This week, the email linked to a story announcing that The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats—a book I loved as a child—is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

“I hate Jews.”

That was the sentence, uttered coldly and dripping with vile undertones, from the mouth of a sixth-grader that nearly caused me to let a very powerful teachable moment slip through my fingers.

Almost.

Every now and again, a student will say something that leaves me speechless and desperate for the correct response. I can feel in my bones that the moment is about to become pivotal. One of these moments came while we were reading Katherine Paterson’s novel The Great Gilly Hopkins, in which the main character deals with her racism. We were in the process of analyzing her character, her motivations and her racist attitudes, and I could tell that my sixth-graders didn’t really understand the theme of racism, so I needed to step away from the novel for a moment and put the history in context for them.

One-third of my daughter's kindergarten class is bilingual, speaking both Spanish and English, and 10 percent speak only English. Where do we live?

Texas? Florida?

No, Forsyth County, Ga., where, a little over 20 years ago, Oprah Winfrey did a special on white supremacy.