There are many memories that I have on the title of this blog but I would like to share one that I am sure will be a memory for my son. When he was a junior in high school he had a Caucasian French teacher in which he was not doing well in her class. During the parent-teacher conference she ask me was he "planning to dropout of school because she has had so many students when they get to his age (16), they usually do". I was shocked that she asked me that about my son and also shocked that she had made a bias statement about my son. She assumed that because he was not doing well in her class, a African American male, and from a single parent home that he would be a dropout. What she did not realize was that he was not failing in his other classes or having difficult in the other classes. After I composed myself to remain respectful, I replied, "that is not an option for him. He will graduate from high school even if he is 20 years old and he will go to college". I am sure that I could have said more to her to make her realize that she had made a bias judgement against my son but I felt that it was more mature of me to not get into an arguement with her but to answer her question directly.
Today my son did graduate on time and did attend college. I have often thought about that I should have confronted the teacher after he graduated to let her know but it was not about her, it was about my son. He did the opposite of what she expected and that is what is important. "It's not what people do to us but what we allow to be done to us" (author unknown). I refused to let the teachers bias-ism to take advantage of my son's future. Her overt and covert isms is her issue, not ours.
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