Insight

I've been reading "Black Boy" the past few weeks. I love it. I think of my students often as I turn the pages. What must it be like to know that people think you are inferior, just because of your skin color. Life was hard for Richard Wright early in the 20th century. I keep looking forward to his breakthrough as a great American novelist. I'm more than half way through and he has just begun reading the works of famous white authors. Here is what he has to say about this new knowledge reading has given him, "I could endure the hunger. I had learned to live with hate. But to feel that there were feelings denied me, that the very breath of life itself was beyond my reach, that more than anything else hurt, wounded me. I had a new hunger" (Wright, 250). Have I ever had to hunger so for something? Was there every anything, a power of sorts, that I desired but was denied. I can't imagine being shunned from the light of knowledge and intelligence. What must it be like to feel as though you were banned from using your brain to its fullest capacity. I am so grateful I have never had to live in such horrific circumstances. I admire Mr. Wright for searching after that knowledge he was so wrongfully denied.

Since I've been working in an inner city school I have contemplated similar thoughts. I feel like my students are not given the same opportunities for learning as white middle class students back west, or in the private schools of the East. I believe the American government is doing a huge disservice to my students. I don't know if its right to blame the government, should I blame all American people. But no matter whose fault it is I wish the denial of knowledge would stop. Why would we want such a large group of people to stay uneducated. Is it so they can feel the meaningless jobs our society demands? Is is so we can continue to blame social problems on a group of Urban people? How many of my students hunger for knowledge as Wright did? I think the answer is many. We are cheating them. We are leaving them in a shattered system that denies them basic American rights, just because of the color of their skin.