I Was Called a "White Savior." Here's My Response.
I’m going to state a very obvious fact.
I’m a white dude who works in a Black and Hispanic school.
I’m aware that it grants me a certain unearned status with liberal whites. They’ve never seen me teach, but they assume I’m a modern day Jesus.
“Oh, it’s so amazing what you do for those kids!”
It also gets me into queasy conversations with far right conservatives.
“Hey man, did any of those pieces of shit pull a gun on you today?”
When you’re a white guy working in a Title 1 school, people make assumptions about your motivations to work there.
It gets weird.
It’s fair to say that an interaction I had in the comments section under my article, “A Kid Said, "N*gga suck mah dick" to Me. Here's How I Responded” inspired this piece.
Here are those comments.
I read some Substack-advice column a while ago that suggested I respond to every single comment on every article I write. It’s probably poor advice when taken to an extreme, but I did it anyway.
In any case, when I run across a troll, my general strategy is to agree with them and move on. So if you’re wondering about the strange kindness of my first comment, that’s why.
His second comment was the one that got me. It was a mix of racist remarks, assumptions about my motivations, and defeatist sentiment about teaching tough kids from tough neighborhoods. For me, the worst part was recognizing that he genuinely meant what he said.
I took the opportunity to flex some of my teacher skills. I asked myself the question I ask myself all the time. How do I get someone who disagrees with me to see my point of view?
I wrote my response, and luckily the guy apologized.
But this comment section spat begs the question, how many of you consider me a white savior? After all, the two articles that have gone viral from this Substack are called, “A Student Called Me a “Dickrider.” Here’s How I Responded,” and, “A Kid Said, “N*gga Suck My Dick” to Me. Here’s How I Responded.” Both articles involve a student verbally abusing me and my class, and the restorative conversations that follow. If these are the only two articles you’ve read from this Substack, and you draw the conclusion that I must be some narcissistic white dude here to save all the beautiful colored children…you’re wrong, but I suppose I can forgive you.
White Savior Problems
There’s a million different ways to define this term, but when I hear “white savior,” here’s what I hear.
Someone who feels guilt because they were granted such lofty privilege as to be born white. Not only do they feel this guilt, they feel obligated to “selflessly” support minority communities. They often feel a sense of moral superiority for doing so.
Now again, if you’ve only read my two most viral articles, I could easily fit into this definition. But I’d encourage you to scratch the surface and go a bit deeper. I’ve argued for a long time that pitying someone based on the color of their skin is its own form of racism. I also don’t believe being born white is an unstoppable advantage that I must atone for. Yes, being white has its perks…but I’ve also seen minority students who couldn’t crack a 1000 on the SAT’s make it into elite east coast colleges. I’m not here to say all DEI policies should burn to the ground, I’m just saying seeing that happen feels…weird, and goes to show in today’s day and age there’s some perks to not being white. I think the amount of wealth you’re born into probably has more impact on the advantages you start with in life, but all of this is beyond the scope of this article.
Here’s my main problem with being called a “white savior.”
They don’t make it.
Seriously.
White saviors don’t survive the profession.
While working in a public high school in Harlem I’ve met my fair share of them. Six years ago a Harvard educated woman joined our school. All through 2016 through 2020 it seemed as though race was at the forefront of the media and our staff had frequent conversations about the subject during professional development. During one of these meetings the Harvard educated woman proclaimed that she “hated” the fact that she was white, and that she held enormous guilt for the color of her skin. Some of our fellow white staff nodded in agreement, but I was left scratching my head. Why would you hate something about yourself that you have no control over?
She lasted a year.
During the 2020 George Floyd riots our staff was working over zoom due to covid. At the height of the tragedy our administration decided we would have a discussion so we could air out feelings we had on the matter. However, when I joined one of the two breakout rooms I had been assigned to, I saw I was in a meeting with only white staff members of the school. What the fuck is going on here?
I asked the above question in a more diplomatic fashion, and one of the other white staff members explained to me that this was so the minority staff members could have protection from us. The administration wanted to create a space where people with melanin in their skin could talk without the oppressive presence of whites. She said it with an air of understanding and acceptance.
I kept my mouth shut, but I couldn’t help but feel rage. The administration is deciding that the color of my skin is too triggering for my fellow staff members? Apparently, character has no bearing on the situation. That thing we’re supposed to be fighting for - the future where we don’t give a shit about skin color because it has little meaning on who you are - that's out!?!
Outrage aside, the white staff member who supported the separate zoom rooms left the profession a year later.
Two years ago, an older white gentleman took the business teacher position at our school. He had run a small business for over 20 years and he had decided that students of color deserved to learn from his business expertise. He came in with an air of knowing arrogance. The poor guy didn’t realize just because he felt sorry for them didn’t mean he knew how to teach.
He lasted two months.
Big Picture White Savior
But let’s expand beyond my school. Let's take a look at the halls of teacher celebrity. Here is perhaps the greatest example of a white savior. None other than Erin Gruwell, superstar teacher of the Freedom Writers.
Now, I’ll be the first to acknowledge that the work that Erin Gruwell did at Woodrow Wilson High School in California is some of the most incredible work a teacher has ever done with a group of high school kids. Working a second job so she could buy books for her students, getting kids to read and write when they either couldn’t or refused, buying sparkling cider so her students could make a toast to creating a better life - this is wild above and beyond the call of duty teacher shit.
It was also white savior work.
How do I know it was white savior work? I saw her speak in person while I was at the University of Delaware completing my bachelors in English Education. Her speech was littered with lines like, “and these kids had no families to rely on, and no resources to access. They needed someone who truly cared about them…one of my kids was convinced she was going to get pregnant and die until I talked her out of it…” Even as a 20 year old I remember the speech rubbing me the wrong way. There was just too much pity.
And god bless, I can respect the hustle when I see it. The woman was selling her book to support her foundation. She played the world's tiniest violin like a maestro. Even I couldn’t help but admire the shining white goodness this woman represented. But do you know why she could go on a tour to promote her book in the middle of the school year?
It’s because she doesn’t teach high school anymore.
She taught high school for a totality of four years.
She worked with one class of students from freshman to senior year.
She “saved” her 150 students and moved on to greener pastures.
I’m not in the business of diminishing what she did for those kids. It was amazing. They’ll never forget her. But making her a shining example of an incredible teacher career? That’s a sham. I’ve been teaching for eight years, and the difference in my ability to teach from year-four to year-eight is staggering.
How good would Erin Gruwell be at teaching if she had continued at Wilson High School? What if she had some career longevity in mind? What if she had taken a bit more time for herself? What if she hadn’t let her teaching job ruin her marriage? What if she took a breath every now and again and allowed herself to say, “let me chill the fuck out.” What if she had gone a little less hard in the paint, and stayed in the game?
Had she done that, I’d probably be looking at the Lebron James of teaching. 1000’s of kids would have experienced her classroom, not just 150. Maybe I’m wrong, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she took a hard look at her life after her seniors graduated and said, “Damn. I could use some work life balance here. This is exhausting.”
It’s almost as if “save the children,” is a shitty reason to teach.
But You Still Haven’t Explained Why You’re Not a White Savior
I know. I’m getting there.
Hopefully I’ve convinced you I have a healthy disgust for the term…but let’s dig into some stories from my first year of teaching.
When I first got to Harlem, I wanted to get out. Desperately.
I had just graduated from a student teaching experience in Scarsdale, NY. Highest paid teacher district in the entire United States, land of sunshine, peaches, and rainbows. Now I was in a windowless concrete block where gangs roved the hallways and kicked down locked closet doors so they could play basketball in the middle of my class.
One particularly vindictive asshole liked to head-hunt me. Halfway through his P.E. class when I had given up any semblance of trying to maintain order and the kids had yet again broken into the equipment closet, he would hide a dodgeball in his backpack and wait until I wasn’t looking. When he was sure he had an angle where I couldn’t see him, he would throw the dodgeball at me as hard as he could.
One time he connected.
It smashed into the side of my head with a loud smack and left my ear ringing. I lost my shit and started screaming at the kids, “WHO DID THAT!?! WHO DID THAT!?!” They just laughed.
Save the children? Man, fuck those kids.
Halfway through the year I called my cooperating teacher in Scarsdale and explained to her how bad things were. I wanted out. She found a part time job for me in a school 10 minutes from her district. I was about to take it. Then, right before I did, a veteran teacher in the school quit, and I saw how the news devastated the staff.
Everyone would have to cover that class for the rest of the year. Long term subs generally don’t take positions at schools like ours. Everyone would have to pick up the slack. At the bar that Friday, one of the teachers sipped his whiskey and said, “Maaaan, I understand why he did it, but I don’t fuck wit it.”
I couldn’t quit. These people were the only reason I was surviving in the first place. I couldn’t give them another class to cover. I vowed to survive the year and find another job once it ended. I made it. Barely. Then I applied to every suburban district that had an opening. I wrote cover letters and tried to hand in my applications in person. I wanted nothing to do with inner city teaching.
But it didn’t work.
There were very few openings. People in my profession had long figured out that if you held a P.E. position in a nice white district, you held on to that job for life. I would have had to knife an old man just for the chance to hand in my resume. Even worse, the very few positions that did open up in enviable districts required three years of experience and a health education degree. I didn’t have the experience, I didn’t have the degree, and I was drowning in college debt. Signing up for my second year was one of the hardest decisions I ever made in my life.
When I approached the school on the first day I saw a crowd of students waiting outside the entrance. I felt a cold pit in my stomach. One of the kids approached me. Then he said, “Yo Schuerch! You came back!”
“Yeah…ugh…I did.”
“Good to see you! I’m glad you came back.”
“Oh…ugh…thanks!”
“See you in there.”
“Yeah. I guess you will.”
And the first day of my second year started.
I’m not saying it was all sunshine and rainbows. My second year was still an utter shit show, and so was the third. But they were better shit shows. I was slowly accumulating small wins. Here and there kids would actually listen to what I had to say.
My weightlifting program was starting to gain steam.
I was learning how to manage a gradebook and accurately apply consequences.
I started figuring out how to change the culture of my classroom.
I started hosting school-wide tournaments based on the P.E. curriculum.
I was becoming a better version of myself. Shitty classes became thinly veiled mechanisms for self improvement. My first year, a kid would smash another kid’s skull in, and all I could think about was how do I get out of this madhouse school? In my 8th year, a kid rips another kid's hair out of her head and I think hmmm, how I wonder if I can fix this relationship? Is there an intelligent way to have a conversation with the class about what just happened? How can I prevent this in the future? Time to get to work.
The place almost killed my soul.
Instead, it made me fall in love with my craft.
This idea that I can walk into a classroom of chaos, exert control, and create a safe environment where kids want to be - it’s an intoxicating idea to me. I like knowing I’m working toward that skill set. I like practicing the ability to pass on knowledge to young men and women no matter the environment. Master teacher - it’s an ideal version of myself I strive for.
Save the children? Nah. Learn how to teach in one of the toughest school districts in the country? Sign me up.
Where You Can Point the Finger
So, white savior? Perhaps not. But let me properly educate you on my true faults. I’m undoubtably an attention-whore.
I hope it doesn’t surprise you when I say I know I’m writing a click bait title when I post, “A Kid said, “N*gga Suck My Dick,” to Me. Here’s How I Responded.” I know that title is going to draw clicks. In an attention based economy I’m actively trying to steal some of yours. I’ve long been frustrated with the fact that teachers don’t make much money, and I’ve always felt like that stems from poor marketing. So, if you think I’m leveraging my white-guy-teaches-in-poor-inner-city-school-status to attract attention, trust your gut.
While I’m burning down your happy assumptions about me, I suppose I’ll try to pitch you on a rather benign reason for attracting attention to my stories - perhaps to salve the sting a bit. I believe the average person has no idea about the amazing things teachers do on a daily basis. They have no idea how stressful the daily grind of running an inner city classroom can be. My stories are a way people can take a peek at what it’s like surviving and thriving in that environment. If that sounds self-aggrandizing to you, you are of course correct. We shall add narcissist to the list of my faults.
But let's take all the altruism out of this equation. Yeah, I care about teachers, and I’m in love with the profession, but you’ve probably figured out a small Substack talking about the trials and tribulations of teaching isn’t going to make much of a difference. It’s never going to convince the public to pay teachers like they’re doctors. But maybe this small Substack can convince you to pay me like I’m a doctor.
I read Kevin Kelly’s article, 1000 True Fans, over 4 years ago and its message has been stuck in my head ever since. Create a following of people who become fans of what you do. Become so damn good at what you do that people want to give you money so you continue doing it.
Here’s what I do. I teach, and I write stories about it.
So I guess we can add money-grubbing-asshole to my list of fabulous traits.
I have more unfortunate characteristics of course, but we’ll save those for another time. The white savior thing though…that one gives me a laugh. I’m far too self interested to base my life’s work on an emotion like guilt, and I respect my kids too much to feel sorry they were born with more melanin in their skin than me.
So if you still think after damn near 3,000 words that pity is the main reason I teach,
kindly…
Fuck off.
My wife taught Special Ed for decades. The nicest thing a student said about her was that "she really sees you" My wife saw a child who required structured assistance, limitless patience and no pity. I think you see your students as people who need structured assistance and safe places. White saviours see guilt, pity and bottomless self centeredness. They never see other people.
I’m also a white male teacher in a Title 1 school but have never had this thrown at me. If anything, my minority parents were among my most supportive, perhaps because so few men teach early childhood special education. Most moms, dads, and kids were pleasantly surprised to see a “boy teacher”. I also made a point of relating to my young men students on a “man-to-man” basis, often using that very phrase in fact. By emphasizing something we had in common, I was better able to connect and engage.