Is it racist to assume “ghetto” equals black any other minority?
I’m not naive to incredible amount of racism that still exists in society and clearly these awards are a very bad idea. But it’s not clear to me there was a racist intent here either.
When I was a kid many years ago, some teachers used mockery to force us to drop our bad grammatical habits (I’m thinking of the ‘huh’ award) and it worked for me at least. I was embarrassed out of my bad grammar. My uncle, an educator, did the same thing to me. I’d say some slang thing or another and he’s ask me how to spell what I just said. We had thicker skin then, and there certainly were no racial overtones to any of it.
I think sometimes the serious racism that remains in our society in which people are actually dying gets lost on stories like this that are more about poor judgment than real racist intent.
Knowing numerous teacher, some better than others, like you I think it’s possible the teachers might have been motivated by something other than racism, but the sheer thoughtlessness of the move calls into question their competence. It might be helpful to instead have the teachers transferred to a true ghetto school, where the kids are worried more about things like food, shelter, and personal safety than grammatical rules. I received the same treatement as you growning up and it did help, but that’s different from formal action in a school, which can easily typecast the kids… and since these are special ed kids, the whole embarassment factor is more cruelty than anything else.
Of course one of them is a pastor. No surrpise there. Religion in the South (& Texas) seems shot through with as much hypocrisy as the regional hospitality *(which is really a distancing/drawing out and not really). friendly).
Only one of them apologized and the other offered to resign rather than apologize. The guy who apologized was a Christian preacher who is very sorry he got caught.
That battle was lost a long time ago. It’s best to just accept that it has a colloquial meaning of “begs for the question to be asked” in addition to its more academic meaning of (surreptitiously) embedding the conclusion in the question/argument/premises - particularly since the academic meaning is itself based on mistranslated Latin, and is therefore just as much incorrect.
This is not so much a case of racist intent, but of exposing a racist mindset. It is the casual, automatic racism that makes it easier to believe that all those black males dying at the hands of the police have brought it on themselves. It is the kind of racism that makes it easy to vote for politicians that want to treat food stamp recipients like Sheriff Arpaio treats convicted criminals, with punitive rules like forbidding the use of food stamps to buy seasonings for food.
I find myself having to train my own 13-year old in coastal California, with biracial friends, to have more sensitivity about how his jokes and comments might be received, however benign the intent. It is important to bring racism to the consciousness of those who don’t experience racism themselves.
Have several friends who are teachers. Burnout is a real problem. Yes realizing the fact and getting the hell out is something that a lot of them have to face.
Yeah, I’m kinda with you on this.
Perhaps the “ghetto” had more to do with the no-frills, low cost unfancy way in which the awards were presented. Kinda like when you’re out of food and make a mayo sandwich. Or using dish detergent to to wash your clothes.
I want to give these teachers the benefit of the doubt here as nothing in the article indicates this was a racial issue.
But it was an incredibly DUMB move on the teachers’ part. Who would think this was OK? What parent would be okay with their child receiving a “huh?” award??? Whether it was called a “Low Class” or “Trailer Trash” Awards, it was just bad taste to even contemplate this, much less actually hand them out to students. This definitely calls into question the judgement of the teachers involved. As a parent, I’d have been pissed too.
I would never use the term but I have some younger friends and for them the connotation seems different from what it meant when I was growing up. They’ll say a food is so ghetto, or a club, etc. and not mean anything at all about race. It makes me cringe.
