Reflections from a Six-and-a-Half Foot Tall White Male Teacher Working in a Predominantly Minority School

by Dave Gregory

An Implicit Racist Discovers Grey Hairs

Last week, I found my first grey hair. And then I think I found a couple more, but I can’t really be sure because the lighting in my bathroom might have deceived my eyes. Or perhaps, following the thought of Blaise Pascal, I consumed some rotting morsel or there’s a demon in my bathroom attempting to foment a greater awareness of my own mortality within me.

Either way, I know this much: my fourth year of teaching has proven somewhat rough. I’ve grown used to developing curricula from scratch over the course of a year. At this point, non-stop lesson planning is par for the course. I’ve taught freshpeople who entered high school a couple years behind reading and writing level. I know that the work of a teacher serving first-year high schoolers does not so much require high-powered content, but rather attention to acclimating students into a high school environment.

This past summer, I relocated to Portland, Oregon (the whitest large American city¹) to teach at a school belonging to the Cristo Rey Network, a nationwide network of Catholic high schools dedicated to serving students from socio-economic backgrounds who normally do not attend college. We are the single most diverse school in Portland, and according to Niche.com, the fourth most diverse private school in the country; unlike many predominantly minority schools, our black and Hispanic student populations are about equal. In my second interview, my principal asked me, “So Dave, what would you do if a student stands up in class and calls you a racist?” I discovered in September that he asked that question because it happens all the time here.

Throughout June and July, I found myself worrying that race would be a huge barrier, an obstacle that would impede relationships with my students. I took an implicit bias test on race from the Implicit Project based out of Harvard, which -- as I fearfully suspected -- did indeed reveal that I perceive individuals through a racially-biased lens. “Ugh,” I thought, “but I grew up in Queens, almost the only white dude on a block filled with houses belonging to a variety of races and ethnicities. A lot of my high school friends were Hispanic. Aren’t I better than this?”

Apparently not, Gregory. You’re still an implicit racist.

Teachers of color, and especially male teachers of color, are a rarity in the world of American education. I am not one of those rarities.

Some Anecdotes, in Reverse Chronological Order

This morning, as I was walking out of 7-Eleven with a coffee in hand, two of my students approached me, running. The African American kid pushed my shoulder, “Yo, Mr. Gregory, give us a dollar or we’re gonna jump you.” I laughed, “Sorry dudes, I don’t have any cash,” to which my Mexican student retorted, “Yeah, but you’ve got a credit card.” We chuckled, and continued on our paths.

Last week, one of my brightest and most motivated students asked me, “So, apart from your white male privilege, how did you get into Georgetown?” This kid and I have a pretty solid rapport, and I’m glad that he has the honesty and boldness to ask such a question, but there was no doubt an edge to his inquiry. He knew that I have inherited a real legacy with my white maleness, and he knew that this same legacy is stacked against him, even centuries after slavery had theoretically came to an end. Caught off guard, I didn’t know what else to say, save for, “Well, for one, I do not for one second deny my white privilege. Second, know that I worked my ass off every step of the way. Third, know that I will do everything in my power to help you get in as well.” Yeesh, I just wanted to hug him, but that would have been weird.

The same student told me a couple days before this exchange that I needed to leave this school -- not because he didn’t “like” me, but because he felt that he and his peers were undeserving (this sounds so silly to write, but it’s true) of my presence. Trust me, I don’t intend to lift myself up as a white savior, ² or as a super duper pedagogue. I am not here to save these kids. Jesus already has that offer on the table. Nonetheless, this question is asked on the regular, at least once every other week, even by upperclassmen I do not teach: “Why are you here?” These students of color perceive me as a white savior, and have been enculturated to believe that they are undeserving of teachers who actually give a shit about them. I don’t offer this to lift up my own ego.

Three weeks ago, during our Black Heritage Assembly, four students presented a spoken word poem. Along with the entire audience, I found myself riveted. One performer proclaimed, “I have been taught by the world to believe that my body is not enough [...] but the truth is, I am dripping with melanin and honey.” Tears came to my eyes. I approached one of these four during lunch, and asked where they got the piece from. “Oh, we wrote it,” came the response. My jaw dropped. Teenagers continue to astound me with a brilliance and insight I am simply incapable of.

I also get asked regularly, “Are you leaving us next year?” The same students who think I should go also don’t want me to leave. I’ve met any number of white students who come from broken homes, who have been abandoned by alcoholic parents, and/or who come from mediocre middle schools. Suffering is by no means constricted to people of given races or ethnicities or socio-economic backgrounds, and neither is stability. Students who have known abandonment, both those who are white and those who are of color, will ask such questions. A theology position opened up at another Portland Catholic school, one with way more folks who lack melanin as I do, and one with way more resources. I gave it a thought here and there, but I can’t leave this place because I need these particular students to hold a mirror up to me.

When Trump was elected, our principal called a spontaneous faculty meeting before school began; several (white) faculty members quite literally wept out of shock, having gone to bed before results were called. The atmosphere surrounding our students, however, did not consist of shock. A cloud of grim resignation hung over their heads; they’re used to this sort of thing. Racism, no longer implicit, would now become institutionalized within governmental rhetoric to an even greater degree. Ever since the inauguration, students have increasingly reported slurs being launched their way, virulently rocketed at them from passing cars, lobbed at them from passers-by on the streets.

In my first month, I grappled with the single most difficult student I’ve ever had. He disrupted class, yelling across the room, rarely turned in work, and when he did, threw a fit that I took off points for lateness. I brought him outside to speak with him, and he refused to make eye contact, or even respond, hunched over on the bench; other teachers had similar conversations. Something, however, as the months wore on, clicked, he realized that his performance in school is entirely a matter of his own freedom. He’s now an A student, turns in everything on time, helps others when working in class, and contributes meaningfully to class discussions.

My second week here, when my students groaned at the announcement of a quiz, I jokingly shouted (I’m kind of loud and obnoxious in the classroom, but this is how I engage and hold the attention of teenagers), “You like that, teenagers?!” A kid immediately yelled back, in mock horror, “You just call us the n-word?” We burst into hysterics. My fears surrounding racial barriers dissipated. We were joking about our race in the second week of school. A couple days later, the same African American student came up to me after class, pointing his finger at another black classmate, “Mr. Gregory, Jon³ just called me the ‘n-word.’ The one with the hard ‘r,’ not even the soft one.” He was testing me, and all I could do was laugh. I didn’t know -- and still don’t -- to what degree I can tell kids to not use that word. It’s an ugly word in my mind, but I cannot really erase their culture, because to do so might very well be another instantiation of whiteness overpowering blackness.

The Reality of the Situation

I am an embodied (and very furry, almost comically so) symbol of white male patriarchy, in the midst of brown and black bodies. This much, I cannot deny. I wish it wasn’t the case. But it is the unavoidable reality. I’ve learned that my students are not so much “underserved” as they are actively oppressed and marginalized by the “filthy, rotten system.” I’m grateful that we dive into the Hebrew Bible together, a text that grew out of an oppressed and marginalized people. Next month I’m going to try to teach the prophetic literature through the lens of early hip hop, so wish me luck.

I go home on many days, exhausted and dying for a nap. I rinse my face, sigh, and look into the bathroom mirror, noticing the bags under my eyes. Some days I feel hopeless, thoughts running through my mind: “This kid absolutely refuses to stop talking, even after I call his name three times, and that kid still doesn’t know how to format a paper or write a complete sentence. Are these students dooming themselves to a future without opportunity?” Then again, I am the son of two white lawyers, one a professor and the other a former prosecutor. I have done very little, in reality, to deserve all the opportunity that has been gifted to me. I entered high school already disciplined, already knowing how to write a complete sentence. Should I stop mourning this? Am I able to? Is “mourning” even the right response, or is it yet another symptom of my inheritance? Is this mourning pure narcissism, preventing me from undertaking transformative work? I honestly have no idea, but I suspect dwelling on it would be a luxury of my own racial privilege.

On the upside of things, several dozen students filter through my classroom during most lunches, Snapchatting and real chatting happily away. Some days, a couple of kids⁴ used to follow me⁵ as I locked my classroom an hour after the final bell rung, and escorted me to my car (my own little bodyguards), only to have a few more minutes of conversation before they trotted along to the bus stop. These are the seeds of solidarity in its most basic form, that of elemental human interaction.

Bonds of trust and friendship deepen and grow more palpable as the months pass. A greater percentage of my kids turn in their homework, of higher quality than it once was. In the muck and mire of the quotidian, all this remains largely invisible. Nonetheless, I have to stake my life on it.

---

1 For an absolutely fascinating history of Oregon’s and Portland’s racist history and present that might make you flip your lid, read this Atlantic piece.^↩

---

2 Anyone who has been to the developing world, or worked with oppressed communities, has probably known this sort of complex; I, as a white person, believe I am helping a certain person or group by offering my charity. This perpetuates a dangerous narrative by refusing to acknowledge that true justice comes through empowerment. The white savior complex can manifest in some pretty brutal and insensitive ways, and even subtle ones, as evidenced by my first draft of this piece.^↩

---

3 Name changed for confidentiality’s sake.^↩

---

4 No joke, one of their names literally translates to “way of God”.^↩

---

5 Last month, I moved to an apartment within walking distance of school, and this once regular interaction no longer occurs.^↩