Maikutlo Aka - My Views
More Reflections on Race in Class
Posted Monday, July 16, 2007
Years of thinking about race in the African context has definitely colored my perspective on race relations here at home-home. If nothing else, I think it's made me hyper-sensitive to looking at a situation through racial lenses. That said, there's definitely something amiss in my class as I was writing about the other day. After two more weeks of thinking, I'm not going to take back any of what I said before, but simply build on it.
I started thinking about the kinds of influences and examples that these students have. I know I personally have -- through my own frustrations as well as the age and culture and intellectual gaps -- distanced myself from the younger students in my class. I'm the smart kid, but not in the same way I'm used to be -- no one has ever asked me for help with homework or to study outside of class. (I study with a (multiracial) group in the advanced class where I'm the one who's learning most.) I feel "untouchable" in a way I've never been with other students, from kindergarten to my masters programme in the Midwest or Africa.
I know it's partially me. I came in late, and am sure was -- am -- visibly irritated by their lateness, talking in class, and silence or wrong answers regularly. But I also wonder how that influences the way the other students see me and people like me. Liberal, intellectual, but not reachable.
Early in the class, one of the gals moved to sit next to me, we worked as partners for group work, she asked me a few questions about my time in South Africa and seemed motivated to be learning. For awhile I thought we might cross a divide. But after answering a couple difficult questions in class, the other students' "ooh, look who's been studying" put an end to all of that. Now she's back to her old seat, as well as sleeping and skipping assignments.
Who can she go to for help with Zulu homework? What are the social consequences of being the smart kid? When everyone else gets by with little effort, what motivation is there to achieve more than average? Every student asks these questions, but I don't think the answer was the same for me as it is for my classmates.
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