” If the Black body is not fully, or really, Human, then it can be subjected to pain beyond that which is regarded as humanly possible (Hartman, 1997).Further, the Black may be seen as requiring heightened and sustained levels of pain in order to learn, as might a dog or a beast of burden.”

What struck me the most about the video of “The Assault on Shakara at Spring Valley High”, beyond the sheer violence of how the police officer removed the girl from her seat, was the fact that there was an adult black man, tucked shirt and pants, calmly ambling around the center of the room – the teacher, presumably… Though I don’t have definitive proof, let’s assume that the teacher, or at least one of the teachers, who called a police officer to remove the black girl from the room was also black. In this case, our assumption transforms the scene into one where black people use internalized subconscious racism as well as the tools of the oppressor (the police) to subjugate themselves. The idea that the black body should require “heightened and sustained levels of pain in order to learn” isn’t just something that non-black people believe, and it isn’t just a problem that non-black people perpetuate – it pervades our society. The text can tell you that black children are more likely to be handled physically in the classroom, but a quick google search can also tell that black children are far more likely to be beaten (spanked, whupped) at home than any other ethnic group. The idea that black people need experience more pain than others to behave in a way that is “right” is literally beat into black children, by their parents. As educators, we can’t do much to change how parents discipline their children, but we can ask ourselves, earnestly, in what ways we contribute to the cultural phenomenon of inflicting inordinate amounts of pain on to black bodies.

But it isn’t just physical pain that our culture believes that black children are more in need of. More often than not, math classrooms containing a majority of black students, are subject to the psychological torture of learning mathematics through rote memorization of tactics and algorithms. A deficit-based to approach to teaching contributes to the choice to teach students in this way, but do we also expect that  students of color (black) should tolerate this “education” because of subconscious racist bias? By contrast, more progressive, almost universally whiter, classrooms like to employ an inquiries based approach to teaching – the kind of approach that sincerely attempts to teach students that math can be enjoyed, instead of suffered through. Failing black classrooms suffer too much in the the math class, but, paradoxically and often enough to note, the opposite can happen.

On the other end of the extreme are classrooms with a majority of students of color where the students are held to much lower standards than they would if they were white or “model minority” students. In these cases, a deficit based approach and likely a well meaning attempt to help can factor into the decision to teach students in this way. Here, black students are seen as distinctly ill-equipped to handle the discomfort of learning at a higher level, a faster clip.  Teaching or expecting students to learn at a lower standard does obvious harm, but it happens anyway. I don’t have a clear solution to this issue of extremes, but I do have faith that there’s a middle ground somewhere. 

There could be a happy medium, where black students aren’t subjected to the physical and psychological pain, humiliation, but also treated like they are capable of performing at the same level as their peers. Reflecting on black suffering as described in the passage could help us, as educators, find that place.