Opinion
Teaching Profession Opinion

Dear White Teachers: You Can’t Love Your Black Students If You Don’t Know Them

Why loving “all” students isn’t good enough
By Bettina L. Love — March 18, 2019 4 min read
African American Girl holding book and reading in an elementary school lesson
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

For Black and Brown children in the United States, a major part of their schooling experience is associated with White female teachers who have no understanding of their culture. That was certainly my experience. My K-12 schooling was filled with White teachers who, at their core, were good people but unknowingly were murdering my spirit with their lack of knowledge, care, and love of my culture.

Fast forward 25 years. Now my job is teaching future educators about what it takes to teach beautiful Black children. No matter where I go, when I ask future teachers why they want to teach–especially White women, who make up the vast majority of all teachers—their first or second answer is always: “I love children,” followed by, without taking a breath, “I love all children.” The word “all” is meant to signal, “I am not racist; I am fit to be in the classroom with children of color.” The statement is used to show that White teachers can be kind to every Black and Brown child that walks through their classroom doors. But how can you love or care for someone you know so little about?

I do not think White teachers enter the profession wanting to harm children of color, but they will hurt a child whose culture is viewed as an afterthought.

A few years ago, a White student of mine wrote in a paper that traveling to South Africa for a missionary trip was the first time she had been around African-American students. I simply wrote on her paper, “See me after class.” I informed her that she had not been interacting with African-American people but with South Africans. I told her African-Americans are right here in Georgia. I am one of them. Her face turned red. She was embarrassed and assured me that she knew the difference.

After our brief chat, one thing was clear: Yes, she knew the difference, but her interactions with African-Americans were clearly limited, and so much about our very existence was unknown to her.

As an interesting exercise, I ask my students to guess the percentage of Black people in the U.S. population. I am always blown away that their estimations are so high: guesses range from 20 to 40 percent. In reality, Black folks make up just less than 14 percent of the U.S. population. So, if you have limited interactions with Black folks, how can you think there are so many of us?

Black folks are highly visible and invisible at the same time in America—just look at Sunday and Monday night football. Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem to bring attention to police brutality and the killings of Black and Brown people by law enforcement. Him taking a knee became highly visible; the Black deaths he took a knee to bring attention to were invisible in his fight to many White Americans. The sad truth is that White people can spend their entire lives dismissing dark people’s existence and still be successful in life. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for us.

Let me be clear: I do not think White teachers enter the profession wanting to harm children of color, but they will hurt a child whose culture is viewed as an afterthought.

Teachers who disregard the impact of racism on Black children’s schooling experiences, resources, communities, and parent interactions will do harm to children of color. This ignorance is not just a painful sign of a blatant lack of information—a function of racism is to erase the history and contributions of people of color—it is a dangerous situation as these teachers go on to take jobs in schools filled with Black and Brown children. This turns schools into places that mirror society instead of improving it. The hard truth is that racism functions as a “superpredator” of Black and Brown children within our schools.

There is no easy fix to this problem, but there are solutions. Future teachers should be required to take classes such as African studies, African-American studies, Latinx studies, Caribbean studies, Chicana/o studies, Asian and Southeast Asian studies, and Native American studies.

There also needs to be a push to recruit future teachers of color as early as high school, pay for their college education, and mentor them when they enter the classroom. Research consistently shows that teachers of color have higher expectations of students of color, which leads to more students of color referred to gifted programs. Moreover, having a teacher of color helps students confront issues of racism.

Before they ever step into a classroom, teachers need to work in urban school communities to understand the beauty and the difficulty of teaching in that environment and to examine how racism functions to allow schools to be underresourced and students labeled at-risk.

But, at the end of the day, White teachers need to want to address how they contribute to structural racism. They need to join the fight for education justice, racial justice, housing justice, immigration justice, food justice, queer and trans justice, labor justice, and, above all, the fight for humanity.

So, the question is not: Do you love all children? The question is: Will you fight for justice for Black and Brown children? And how will you fight? I argue that you must fight with the creativity, imagination, urgency, boldness, ingenuity, and rebellious spirit of abolitionists to advocate for an education system where all Black and Brown children are thriving. I call this abolitionist teaching. To love all children, we must struggle together to create the schools we are taught to believe are impossible: Schools built on justice, love, joy, and anti-racism.

See Also

Equity & Diversity Video Bettina Love: On Black Girls, Discipline, and Schools
In 2016, Bettina L. Love, the author of this essay, spoke to Education Week about African-American girls and discipline. Here’s what she had to say.
June 2, 2016
1:14

A version of this article appeared in the March 20, 2019 edition of Education Week as Dear White Teachers: You Don’t Love Black and Brown Children in Ways that Matter

Events

Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.
Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Teaching Profession The State of Teaching 'You Don't Know Teacher Tired': Educators Sound Off on Misconceptions
Hear what teachers featured in EdWeek's The State of Teaching Project say makes their jobs more difficult.
Frank Rivera teaches 7th grade ELA at Chaparral Star Academy in Austin, Texas, on Nov. 15, 2023.
Frank Rivera teaches 7th grade ELA at Chaparral Star Academy in Austin, Texas, on Nov. 15, 2023.
Montinique Monroe for Education Week
Teaching Profession Opinion Why I’m Happy Being ‘Just a Teacher’
Not every teacher is an aspiring administrator. That’s a good thing.
Amanda Myers
3 min read
Abstract vector illustration depicting the process of teaching and learning.
DigitalVision Vectors/Getty
Teaching Profession What the Research Says Do Teachers Really Earn More After Leaving the Classroom? Not Necessarily
Nearly a decade after leaving a big urban district, many teachers have yet to recoup income, a study finds.
4 min read
Illustration of woman and steps made of cash.
Getty
Teaching Profession The State of Teaching Here's What Keeps Teachers on the Job
Hear why these teachers stay in the job, despite its challenges and lower pay.
Fourth graders do a warm up dance at the beginning of Helen Chan's math class at South Loop Elementary School on November 15, 2023, in Chicago.
Fourth graders do a warm-up dance at the beginning of Helen Chan's math class at South Loop Elementary School on Nov. 15, 2023, in Chicago.
Jamie Kelter Davis for Education Week