Cyde Weys Musings

I don’t much know how to overcome our society’s problems with unequal expectations. The United States has dealt with racism for centuries, and the effects of slavery still linger. Now, a new form of racism is ascendant: fear of the ‘incoming hordes of brown people’ (as popularized by several Republican candidates for president). Alas, sociology is not my field, and I don’t have any brilliant solutions in mind. All I can relate is this relevant anecdote from high school.

I went to Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. I was in the Math, Science, and Computer Science Magnet Program which, along with other magnet programs at the school, was situated at Blair to help balance out the majority minority (figure it out) student population. It worked. Smart students from all over the county (I came from over ten miles away) were bused in. We were immediately identifiable because we were mostly upper class white/Asian, whereas the rest of the school was mostly lower/middle class black/Latino.

Besides taking different classes, we were treated differently. The school was very strict. You had to wear a visible school ID card on a lanyard around your neck at all times. You couldn’t be in the hallways during classes unless you had a note signed by a teacher. If any friends were going to come home with you on a bus, you had to have notes signed by both students’ parents. Well, that was the theory anyway.

Let’s just say the rules had an unequal tendency to be enforced, judging primarily by what race you were (or at least how nerdy you looked). I was never stopped in the hallway, despite never bothering to get a note. I would usually leave lunch early and wander over to one of the Magnet computer labs to surf the web or work on class projects. I would frequently pass by security guards or teachers in the hallway, but by walking swiftly and purposefully, having my backpack with me, looking up and making eye contact, and being white, I would always get a free pass. Sometimes the same adult I just walked by would stop someone trying to make it through behind me.

Now I’m not going to try to claim that it was all race. For instance, when I would get out of class without a note to go to the water fountain or the bathroom, it’s because the teachers knew me and thus knew I wasn’t the type to go getting into trouble. It helped a lot being one of the more visible people in the class. But once I got out of class and ran into teachers in the hallway who I didn’t know that didn’t stop me, then yeah, I think that did have something to with profiling.

What’s the solution? I have no idea. It didn’t help that race served a somewhat accurate proxy at Blair between Magnet students, who were generally studious and unlikely to get into trouble, and the rest of the students, who weren’t so focused on academics and were more likely to get into trouble. But I suspect even if there were no Magnet programs at Blair, if everyone was equal in that regard, there would still have been preferential treatment of students by race. And that’s a terrible thing, because it breeds lowered expectations amongst those who are profiled. If everyone is treating you like you are more likely to be a troublesome kid, well then, won’t you be?

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 6th, 2008 at 00:16 and is filed under Personal, Politics. Keywords: Tags: high school, racism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.