Your Pity is Racist

Crack a joke or two, it's just melanin.

*For the past week I’ve been enjoying February break in Mexico City visiting family, seeing pyramids, and taking severe advantage of the dollar peso exchange rate. Needless to say, very little productive writing happened — mezcal late at night makes the brain fuzzy in the morning. So, this is a repost. I wrote this article back in 2024 when I had around 200 subscribers. At the time I thought it was one of my best pieces. When I read it today, I’m pleasantly surprised to say I still enjoy reading it, and I still think it has relevance. So, without further ado — ENJOY!

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Racist Teacher

“We have a no-whites tolerance policy here!”

I turn around and see one of my favorite students, Jelly, smiling at me. If you haven’t guessed, she’s black.

Game on. Time to talk some smack.

“That so? Who’s going to teach you then? Doesn’t seem like any black people want to do it.” It’s a half truth, about fifty percent of the teaching staff is white.

My student starts cracking up.

“Oh woooooow, mista. You know what? For that, I hope the next plane trip you take gets canceled and you have to book another ticket.”

“You know why I’m okay with that Jelly?” I let the silence stretch… “Because I can afford it.”

As I walk down the stairwell to get to my class I can still hear Jelly’s laughter.

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Take a Deep Breath

Now, if you’re white, and every instinct inside of you is screaming, “RACIST TEACHER!!!” I need you to take a deep breath with me and ask yourself a couple of simple questions.

Would a racist white guy choose to work in a public school in Harlem for seven years? Would he elect to work in a building that has seen exactly one white pupil during that time? Would he accept and even enjoy working for a black principal? Would he decide to return for an eighth year?

If, after asking yourself those questions, your cognitive dissonance feels like nails running down a chalkboard, and you’re still ready to report me to my superiors for joking about race… you may need to take a step back and reflect, because you might be part of the problem.

It’s a conversation I’ve had with my principal before. Racism takes a lot of interesting and subtle forms, and one of those forms is pity. Here’s an exchange I experience weekly… if not daily.

I have a conversation with random person. The random person learns I’m a teacher in Harlem.

Random Person: “Oh woooow. What you’re doing for those kids is just incredible! Those kids really need a guy like you. I’m sure your after-school program keeps them out of trouble.”

Me: “Uhhh thanks. The kids I work with are generally pretty great.”

I appreciate their compliment, but it also makes me wince a bit. Think about what those lines communicate: “those kids really need a guy like you,” and “your after-school program keeps them out of trouble.” It’s as if rich white kids don’t need caring teachers and poor black kids only play with heroin needles after school. It’s nonsense. There’s a subtext there that states, “our situation is way better than your situation,” and therefore, “those kids and you deserve our pity.”

And trust me, whenever I hear that line, “what you’re doing is so special,” I don’t believe the people who say it are truly racist. I think they’re just ignorant of the subtext. I know this, because when I first started teaching in Harlem I was incredibly careful with my own words - too much so. The exchange I had with Jelly would have never come out of my mouth. I had been drilled at the University of Delaware to understand that I came from a place of privilege.

Unfortunately for first year me, the kids knew I had that mindset. I was called racist when I called out a kid for having their cell phone out. If I informed a student that they were losing points because they weren’t participating, they would immediately say, “What? Because I’m black?” I had no idea how to respond to these accusations. My university had trained me to believe I was in a place of privilege and could therefore never truly understand the black experience. Due to biases I was unaware of, every action I took could have been racist without my knowledge.

The thing is, I was being racist. When you assume this idea, the idea that you come from a place of privilege, and all your students don’t, then you’re already operating under the assumption that you are not equal. When you display pity by not holding students accountable and you get nervous from accusations of racism when they’re clearly ludicrous, you actually communicate that you and your students don’t operate under the same rules.

Here’s a law of humanity. Assholes deserve to be treated like assholes — when you ignore that law you ignore someone’s humanity. That first year the students could have stolen my lunch money and I would’ve let it happen because in some weird way, I felt they needed it more than I did. This thought process disrespected the very kids I was trying to teach.

Compare that thought process with the exchange I had with Jelly. When she says we have a “no whites policy,” instead of diving into some weird frame of mind where a white person has no footing to talk about race, I recognize the comment exactly for what it is - a teasing jab that needs a jab right back. When I respond, “doesn’t seem like any black teachers want to teach you,” Jelly laughs because a) it’s funny, and b) jabbing back puts us on equal footing. The subtext behind my response is important. I recognize Jelly as a teasing asshole who deserves to be teased. She is decidedly not a poor black girl so beaten down by the system that she needs my gentle coddling. By joking back I actually strengthen my relationship with her and let her know that I don’t think race is a big deal at all.

This is the power of some light joking about race. It robs race of power. How many blondes got into Harvard last year? We don’t know because nobody cares. Blond hair is a completely trivial physical trait that no one gives a shit about, and it’s the exact same way I hope we view the color of each other’s skin in the future. The moment I begin treating skin tone as this exalted trait exempt from humor is the exact moment I lose the power to connect with my students.

Racist Cookies

I’ll end this with a story from last year.

I bake a bitchin’ batch of chocolate chip cookies. I’m also the only teacher in the school that teaches every single kid all four years in a row. When graduation rolls around it’s always a bittersweet moment. I raised these kids, and as much as I want to kick them out of the nest, I also know I’m going to desperately miss (most) of them. Like a mother about to lose her kid to college, I set off in the kitchen making dozens of chocolate chip cookies.

On the last day of school, I bring them to my seniors. Each kid gets one cookie and I film them taking the first bite and then rating the cookie on a scale of 1-10. It’s a fun day where I basically ignore my job, and run around the school hunting down seniors and giving them cookies.

One of the seniors is Nyliyah, and when I find her she’s hanging out in the computer lab with the principal. When she sees me, she immediately smiles and holds out her hand for a cookie. I give her one of my masterpieces and take out my phone to record her rating. She takes a bite.

I can almost see the dopamine response in her pupils as the perfect combination of sugar, fat, cacao, toasted butter, and salt nails her taste buds. She says a soft “woah” under her breath. I lean the camera forward in anticipation of an incoming ten out of ten, but instead of giving it a rating, she grins at me mischievously and says,

“Nahhhhhh, a black man made these cookies!”

Nyliyah, the principal, and I all fall apart in laughter.

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*4 years ago, I read Kevin Kelly’s article, “1000 True Fans.” The gist of it goes like this. Create a following of people who become fans of what you do. Be 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.

If you’re in the position where you don’t mind becoming a paid subscriber, I hope you consider it… though if your initial reaction to that is, “fuck off, I’m just here to read,” then rock on.

Fit To Teach is free to all.

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