Maikutlo Aka - My Views
Only White in the Classroom
Posted Tuesday, July 3, 2007
For the first time ever in my life, as of yesterday, I'm the only white person in my classroom. I only realised this today. My first day in the new Zulu class, there were three white students, but both of the other two have now moved to the higher level class... for reasons which I won't speculate on!
This is incredibly difficult to write without sounding very, very bad. And I recognise that. Nonetheless, I'm going to make a few observations here. There isn't a specific message I'm trying to get across, but mostly a sense of something that's really concerning me right now.
For starters, most mornings I'm the first student there. Itself not a problem, except that some mornings, when class starts, there's only two or three of the seven or eight students in the classroom. (Considering that learning a language is something really hard to do alone, I think this is different than skipping a lecture where you can get the same information from a book.)
Most of the time, most of the rest of the class shows up at some point. Sometimes quietly, but not uncommonly being disruptive enough that our teacher has to stop class. Often in the middle of class she calls students by name and asks them to wake up. Yesterday, only two of us turned in our weekend homework assignment.
I can't put my finger on exactly what bothers me most about this situation. Partly it's disrupting my own learning experience, because lessons are interrupted, students often ask our teacher to repeat information which they missed, and we go a lot slower with the content of class than I think is normal.
It also bothers me because the other students are blatantly disrespectful to our teacher, who I really like. A part of me wonders if she's too nice... a part of me wonders whether or not, consciously or not, the fact that she is African (from South Africa) influences anything.
It bothers me that many students seem to take the privilege of being at the university for granted -- whatever their backgrounds are.
But mostly, I think it bothers me to sit in class and contemplate the stereotypes of disinterested/non-academically-oriented/rowdy African Americans. I've used the word contemplate purposefully for it's vagueness -- not to assess the situation, make a judgment, or apply a label. But just to think about what I see, and now to write a little bit about what's been on my mind.
I know there are all sorts of socio-cultural-economic ranges of theoretical reasons.
I know that my teacher could and probably should do some things differently.
I know there are bits of detail left out of this story, which give it more depth and meaning, but that's the problem with story-telling of any type.
I also know there's something deeper going on here. I'm not frustrated by the colour of anyone's skin. But I'm very frustrated with my class.
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