From Not a Racist to Antiracist: Part 2

My Journey: The Later Years

Please read my Blog Part 1 for June 2020 before reading this piece.

            During the years that followed graduate school I had the opportunity for varied employment: a science and language arts teacher, various part-time writing posts, a full time position with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and for more than 30 years, coauthor of a biology book for a major publisher. Racial disparity and injustice for minorities and women still existed in the occupations mentioned above.

            These are my stories. In the late 70’s I worked as assistant manager for the US Fish and Wildlife Service at a refuge in western Pennsylvania. I was the first woman hired in a professional position in the agency. Until laws changed in the early 70’s women could be turned down when they applied for jobs simply because they were women. Part of the job of assistant manager was to do biological research on the refuge.

It became clear after several of my proposals were turned down that no one wanted a woman to do research. “You won’t be strong enough to do that.” “You might fall out of the tree.” “You won’t want to get your fingernails dirty doing that.” “A woman wouldn’t have the stamina to do that.” And more. I filed a discrimination complaint and won back pay and reinstatement after not working there for 3 years while the complaint moved through “the system.” After being reinstated and submitting another proposal for doing research, my proposal was denied. When I called the administrator of the eastern region of the US to ask why the proposal was denied and to ask what research they would like to see, he said, “The law may say we have to hire women, but it doesn’t say we have to keep them.” I was assigned work that was mostly in the office and not allowed to participate in important meetings or do much of anything important.

 After fighting this battle for more than three years, I could not go on any longer. Totally worn down, I quit. Feeling guilty about not carrying the banner for women in the Fish and Wildlife Service any longer, I told my story to as many people as I could. I was invited to speak about my experience in several local groups promoting diversity and justice for all people. Women’s consciousness raising was important at that time, and I spoke at several of those meetings as well as to a group at the library and the local college.  

A few years later, I discovered that the manager of the refuge was a woman. I was delighted! I met with her and she said I had “paved the way” for other women to have professional careers in that agency. She told me of several others in positions women held in leadership and research all over the country. Music to my ears!   

            As a teacher, one experience stands out in my mind as an example of my involvement in antiracism. In 1983 I was teaching language arts to middle school children in Colorado. I often arranged lessons in which students worked in groups. I assigned the groups so that best friends were not together. This prevented much extraneous conversation and more attention to the work assigned. Black students were assigned to several different groups. When students complained that they wanted to be with their friends and couldn’t be friends with the people in their group, I said they were not expected to be friends, just to develop a working relationship and appreciation of the people in their group. I explained that in life and on the job, they might have to develop a working relationship with people who were not going to be their friends. This arrangement was practice for that time.

            The morning after I assigned the groups, a father stormed into my classroom before classes began. He shouted that he would not allow his daughter to be in a group with a n_____.

            “You will put her in another group today, or I will have you fired!” he roared.

            “Please sit down, Mr. Jones,” I encouraged as I pulled a chair next to my desk.

            “I will not have my daughter sitting next to a n______,” he barked as he sat down. “Are you going to change her seat or not?”

            “Mr. Jones, thank you for expressing your views so clearly, but I must insist that you stop using words that demean my black students. I do not allow racially inappropriate words to be spoken by you or anyone in my classroom or in my presence. I cannot listen to your complaint unless you calm down and speak to me politely.”

            He took a deep breath and went on. “I teach my daughters that black men are dangerous. They are rapists and murderers. They should always stay away from them, and then you put her right beside that boy.”

            “Owen is a fine young man, an A student, an athlete, and a good friend to many in the class. You do not need to fear for your daughter’s safety in her assigned group.”

            “Sounds like you’re not going to move her into another group. Right?”

            “Yes, that’s right.”

            He jumped up shaking his fist. “I’ll make you pay for this! You are the worst excuse for a teacher, you n_______ lover!”

            His daughter did not come back to my class. Her dad went to the principal, and the principal moved her into another teacher’s classroom. When I confronted the principal, he said, “It’s easier this way. We don’t want him going to the superintendent and the press.”

            “Why not,” I asked.

            “I’m not a racist,” he claimed, “but I don’t have time to deal with things like this.” The only thing left for me to do was to tell other teachers what happened and create a discussion in my classroom regarding the girl’s departure and how important it is to speak up when discrimination occurs.

 I asked my students to write about times I their lives when they experienced or witnessed racial conflict or discrimination and to explain whether they thought there was an escape from this type of thinking. Class discussion followed with why they thought things would change or not. Many students thought racial conflict would continue because they said, “Kids learn from their parents what to think.” One brighter thought came when one student piped up, “When I grow up, I will not be teaching my kids the same things my parents are teaching me.”

In 1988 I was recruited to be one of a team of three coauthors of a biology textbook.  We wrote features in our book titled “Multicultural Education.” We did research to find scientists of color who had made significant contributions to the field of biology so their work could be featured in chapters rather than just the same white scientists given page space in other biology books.  

I spent over 13 years traveling around the country for my publisher. I visited teachers, heads of science departments, superintendents of schools, and others to explain the new benefits and features of our book.

I remember with sadness one of several trips to Alabama. First, I visited a high school in Birmingham. I was awestruck with the science rooms: expensive electron microscopes at every lab station—had never seen these anywhere in any school in the country, cupboards stuffed with reagents, glassware, and lab supplies, bookshelves brimming with science reference books, laptop computers at every lab station. This school was a biology teacher’s dream! Teachers with whom I spoke ordered a new book for every student and told me they order new books each year—unheard of! They ordered CD’s and other supplementary technology pieces. I was stunned.

My next stop, with the textbook sales representative, was a school about 40 miles from Birmingham. The school looked like an unpainted cement block bomb shelter. The windows, I assumed all broken, were covered with cardboard—must be chilly in those rooms on this November day I figured. When we walked in, I noticed everyone was wearing coats and the students were all black kids. I remembered that in Birmingham I had not seen one black student or teacher. We arrived at Miss Curtis’ room, and after introductions I said.

“Furnace must be out since everyone’s wearing coats today.”

“No, she said, we have no furnace in the building, so it’s cold all winter. We wear coats all winter.”

The room was bare except for about 30 chair/desks and the teacher’s desk and chair. I noticed a class set of textbooks in an otherwise bare bookcase. Most books were missing covers and in a terrible state of disrepair with pages wrinkled and torn.

“What kinds of things can we show you today? Books? CD’s? Transparencies? We have it all,” declared the sales rep.

“The school has no money to buy anything right now. I’m sorry,” she said.

“How about we show you our transparencies. They will make your teaching so much easier,” claimed the sales rep as he pulled out a giant three-ring binder of colorful transparencies.

“I’d love those, but I don’t even have an overhead projector to show them.”

“I’ll just set up my computer and projector and you can pull down your screen and we’ll show you what you can do with our CD’s.”

“But I don’t have a screen.”

“Well, how old are your books over there?”

“About 15 years old.”

“Linda can show you all the benefits and features of our new book.”

“No, we have no money for books.”

Much to the chagrin of the sales rep, I finally couldn’t stand his pushing this teacher to look at things she could not buy. I said, “Looks like Miss Curtis is not in a position to buy anything right now.” I turned to Miss Curtis and said, “We can come back another time when your school district has funds. We’ll call you and leave our business cards so you can call us. And by the way, I notice that a student has been sweeping and dusting your room. Is that a punishment for some infraction?”

“No, all the students take turns cleaning because we don’t have enough money for a custodian.”

As soon as we were in the car, I asked the sales rep if he could send sample products

such as books, cd’s, and other materials from our publisher to that school and to that teacher specifically. His answer: “We are in this business to make money. If we gave away materials, they would never buy anything, just wait for handouts.”

            “Then when they have money, they would remember your good will and buy from you,” I retorted.

            “The company does not allow us to give anything away. We’re required to destroy our older materials rather than giving it away. We can lose our jobs for giving away anything the company makes. Nothing we can do about how each county here in Alabama distributes tax money for education.”

            I was angry at the disparity between the two schools, the haves, white students, and the have nots, the black students. When I arrived home, I boxed and sent all my samples of books, CD’s, transparencies, and other materials to Miss Curtis and told her not to tell anyone I sent it to her. Apparently, I could have lost my job for providing educational materials to a school that could not afford to buy it.

            In addition to teaching others about the implicit racism permeating our culture, it was important for my husband and I to raise our own children to become antiracist. We made certain to support their friendships with black children even when a few in our circle of family, friends, and colleagues did not. We made sure they had opportunity to interact with a diversity of people in a variety of settings. We were committed to encourage their friendships with kids of other races, cultures, and religions. We provided opportunities to read books by black authors. We saw that sports, music, and education could expand their horizons to become antiracist, respectful of lifestyles different from their own, and willing to fight for a kinder and just world. We are happy to see that they passed on these ideas to their own children who take action and speak out against the implicit racism of our culture. In spite of how proud  I am of my children and grandchildren, I am haunted by what I know black parents have to teach their children: the world is not always safe for them simply because of the color of their skin.