Who Cares What Race Student Role Model Is?

* I have just read the article concerning protests at CSUN by Black Student Union members concerning the hiring of a white teacher to teach remedial reading and writing skills in the Pan-African studies department.

Leslie Small believes that a white woman, Katherine Komis, should not be teaching reading and writing to black students--only a black instructor should be doing so. Small feels these students need a “role model” while developing college reading and writing skills. (Why? Are they all growing up to be reading and writing instructors?)

I used to teach such classes in CSUN’s English department (or perhaps we should call it the Euro-American studies department). Since in the name of empowerment blacks and Chicanos have been largely segregated at CSUN into Pan-African studies and Chicano studies writing programs that duplicate the English department’s writing program, I had almost no students of color.

I now teach at Antelope Valley Community College, where all writing classes are the responsibility of the language arts department. My classes are now filled with a racial and cultural mix. This is how I thought our society was supposed to be. Silly me. I now realize I am probably damaging my black and Hispanic students because, as a white woman, I don’t provide a role model for them. I mean they will probably be permanently damaged from having to learn about organization, detail and grammar from me, since I am not of their culture. In fact, who knows what psychic wounds I’m inflicting on my male students, regardless of color? The black male student who asked me to write a letter of recommendation for him clearly needs his consciousness raised. Wait, it’s worse than I’m letting on: We have a Women in Literature class that is often taught by a white male colleague. Someone had better get outside his classroom with a bullhorn: He’s a miserable role model for young women. How can they ever succeed if they learn about women’s writing from a man?

Somebody should tell Mr. Small to put his bullhorn away (it sure sounds like a male intimidating a female to me) and turn his attention to solving some of our society’s real problems--like the increasing racial and ethnic segregation that attitudes such as his are feeding, and the consequent hostility and misunderstanding it is creating among all races.

LYNN M. McDONIE

Saugus