Subliminal Racism and Its Effect on Native Students

Racism in the Schoolyard

Although for the better part of my life I was unaware of it, I came into this world with many privileges. I have never had to deal with being turned down for housing because of assumptions about my behavior, or for a job because it was assumed I was not qualified solely because of my race or ethnicity. I can live where I want, anywhere in the country, and be surrounded by others that resemble me. Testing in schools reflects my culture and knowledge base so I am assured my children are being tested fairly. When I walk into a store, it is not automatically assumed I am going to steal. My morals and values are not judged by the color of my skin. And even with the best of intentions, even while feeling I am as unbiased as I could be, there are certain life experiences that passed me by that prohibited my understanding of what its like to be a person of color.

Until my path led me to do the work I do now, I never even considered I possessed any privileges. How could I? My own experiences led me to believe that life is the same for everyone. I had always assumed this was truly the "Land of the Free." My patriotism was unchallenged, my belief in what this country stands for was firm. In fact, I do still believe that everything this country is supposed to stand for is correct, but all too often now I see another side of life and I know that for many people "Justice For All" is an empty phrase.

I have always had a theory that life is like one of those electronic walkways in airports; we think we are walking, but an unseen path beneath our feet is taking us where we need to go. And my path has taken me deeper into Indian Country than I could ever have imagined. Through a series of events, I have come in contact with many people whose children are suffering extreme situations of racism in the schools on and off reservations, throughout the country.

Iris All Runner in Wolf Point, Montana was the first person to enter into my life at this particular fork in the road. Iris faced a racist school that had refused to budge in their tactics, some so archaic it is hard to imagine they had not been banished decades, even centuries ago. It was a school with an 80% Native student population and a completely white administration. The school board was white but for one Native man who had a very hard time making his voice heard. There was absolutely no cultural understanding between staff and students and the results were disastrous. Parents felt intimidated by the staff and teachers, there were no cultural references that indicated that this school was attended by Native students, no classes that reflected Native culture, no library books about Native people, history or culture, and none of the curriculum focused on the history of Native people yet began with the arrival of Columbus, who was lauded as a hero. With Columbus responsible for the death of millions of Native people, and his arrival heralding the demise of an entire civilization as it had been known up to that point, the majority of the students may have had a distinctly different perspective than was being taught.

Beyond that, discipline techniques that were being employed by the school were reminiscent of the old boarding schools where assimilation of Indian children was imposed by a heavy hand. The Wolf Point School warranted the national reputation of possibly being one of the most awful places to have sent one's children before Iris put out a call to bring it to a halt and change is still slow in coming. Is it possible to imagine that a 7 year old child was placed in a padded cell for letting her foot wander beyond the parameter of her desk? Can you even consider that a teacher molested young students, both male and female, and was supported by the school administration?

I would like to say that this is unusual but the many situations I have encountered and many people that I have met, show me that it is far more prevalent than one would imagine.

We hear about the Indian sports logo issue and so many people say, "But its an honor," or "Its only meant in fun." But when one looks at a lineup of all the emblems for sports teams, it is glaringly apparent that Native American Indians are the only humans represented as mascots, which are sort of like pets. Why is that? Well, it is partially from the belief that Native people have disappeared and they are seen as almost mythological rather than as People who continue to live among us today. But it is also a national, though subliminal, manifestation of the stereotypical ideas of Indian people. Many schools and teams have indeed changed their name in recognizing that having a team of people who are pretending to be another race is kind of like having a team called The African Americans or The Asians. It doesn't make any sense.

Many may think that the mascot is a small issue considering the other issues facing Native people, such as teen suicide, higher rates of alcoholism and drug abuse, diabetes and heart disease, government housing with black mold and often no heat and unclean water. Yes, these issues are extremely important but if the country barely recognizes that Native people are real and respectable by the continued use of sports names and mascots, how can they comprehend the greater issues that face reservation communities?

And where do these greater issues originate? Many people of privilege do believe that Justice For All actually means something, and it can be unfathomable as to why conditions exist on some of the reservations as they do. I have been asked more than once, "Why don't they get off the reservations and get a job like everyone else?" This certainly seems an easy enough question.

But it denies that Native culture is real and thriving, and for that to continue, many Native people choose to remain among their own people. Some do leave the reservations and still maintain their ties, yet others become part of that enormous melting pot that this country is famous for, where practicing their culture becomes a quiet affair, or where their children may become detached from their customs and culture, and begin to assimilate.

In Peggy Macintoshes article entitled "The Invisible Knapsack", she states, "my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work which will allow "them" to be more like "us". It is important for nonnative people to recognize that Indians did not immigrate here, they liked it the way it was, with their own sophisticated societies that thrived before the arrival of the Europeans.

Native cultures do continue to exist, and the differences between them and the dominant culture are awesome. In fact, the value of accumulating a lot of "stuff" is not a value to be found in almost any Native culture. Some Native cultures communicate more in nonverbal than verbal ways and as Columbus found out, some tribes were more loving and giving in their approaches to others. This is still true with many traditional Native people, whose children do not react well to discipline. Native children in schools are sometimes treated harshly because they may respond differently to questions, may choose to keep their hair long for traditional reasons, and are frequently misunderstood because they may not be willing to share their culture with outsiders. In many tribes, children are taught to respond slowly and with great forethought to questions while the children of the dominant culture are often taught to learn by rote and to respond quickly.

The fact that Native cultures can be so different from the dominant culture is one of the greatest causes of all the problems that Native children face in school because teachers in the dominant culture do not recognize or understand behavior than is different from their own norm. I have heard from so many Native parents that their children, well behaved at home, have been accused of belligerence, ignoring the teacher, procrastinating, having learning disabilities or that their children, whom they know to be bright, should expect to fail.

When teachers of the dominant culture don't recognize that Native children are behaving normally according to their own culture, disaster occurs. The teachers may be perceived by the Native parents to be racist because the behavior a teacher may be complaining about seems normal to the parents. The white teacher doesn't have a clue that their attempts to "fix"the child may be seen by Native parents as trying to assimilate their children. When the teacher recommends behavior modification such as discipline or medication to make the children fit their own idea of the norm, which is to make Native children behave like white children, the parents may think their children are being treated unfairly because they don't see the same behavioral problems at home. If a teacher says, "He won't look at me when I am speaking to him," they may not know that eye contact in some cultures is a sign of disrespect.

Teachers who are unfamiliar with Native cultures can completely misinterpret the behavior of their students. This is a culture clash where people who are speaking the same language actually don't understand what the other is saying because of their own cultural references. When a child who responds in a culturally appropriate manner is under attack for misbehaving, it can cause confusion and resentment in the child. Feeling misunderstood and inherently unliked, he is likely to exhibit different behavior than his parents are used to seeing from him. In the end, the parents can't understand what the problem is and the teacher labels the child as a troublemaker.

Because the Civil Rights Movement did not change the perception of Native people and the stereotypes of times gone by, racism has been allowed to exist and this mistreatment is reflected in the way Indian students are targeted in schools.

Many stories of teachers berating Indian students, and turning a blind eye to white students who do the same as well as endless accounts of bullying have come across my desk with examples as bad as:

An 11 year Lakota old boy who was thrown in a trash bin by students who told him he couldn't come out until he stunk like an Indian.

The same boy who was jumped and painted brown by high school students as he walked home from school and was taunted as a "gay Indian."

A 14 year old Native girl who was raped by her white teacher and told she would die if she told. When she reported the incident, the school tried to protect the teacher. In another school, eighteen Native girls have given accounts to their hall monitor of sexual harassment by a white teacher who was suspended last year for the same. These new complaints are not being investigated by the school because the girls are afraid they will be targeted further and he is still teaching in the same school today.

A Dakota boy was knocked down and whipped on the playground by white classmates. He went to the nurse and was told to lie down for a while. The school never notified his mother, who only found out by seeing the deep welts on his back days later. The boys who whipped him were not reprimanded until the mother sued the school.

Young Native children in South Dakota are arrested at school and brought to Detention Homes or even prisons. Often, the school does not alert the parents, who only find out when the child does not return home on the school bus. The parents have to fight, sometimes for years, to get their children back and often, the treatment of the child in these detention homes or prisons is so severe they suffer irreparable emotional damage. The offenses are often unjustified or are minor offenses such as talking back to a teacher or pushing in the lunch line.

There are endless stories across the country of children being teased by being called the names of the school team or mascot, such as Redskin. Is such treatment even imaginable towards a child of any other race? Yet it is considered "all in fun."

A Pep Rally was held at a Minnesota school for an upcoming game with a team called the Indians. At the rally, teachers dressed up as cowboys and Indians. The "Cowboys" pulled out guns and aimed at the Indians and told them to go back to the reservation. After the Pep Rally, just outside the school building, Indian boys were assaulted by white students.

A young Tulelip girl worked to have the "tomahawk chop" removed from her high school football teams "pep" activities. The team uses an Indian name. When she was successful, she was told by white students that she would be raped and killed, her cousin was beat up, they taunted her with "Hiya ya ya" whenever she passed by, and ultimately she had to leave the school. She states that she could never go to another game or she would be in "big trouble." All in fun?

A father complains that his son is so harassed by white kids, that he is turning away from his culture and "becoming white before my very eyes." His son is so embarrassed at being Indian, his father must drop him off a block from school in the mornings. How does this help this boy embrace his culture, his family, his very sense of self?

Multitudes of children are placed on Ritalin or other similar drugs to cure them of the learning disabilities that most often do not exist but are only misunderstood cultural responses.

There are so many stories of mothers afraid to complain about their schools for fear of having their children removed by Social Services. Native parents live in constant fear that if they step out of line, their children will be taken from them. In Montana, the Native population is about 6%. The amount of adopted children there who are Native is 33%. In Denver, a Native infant was taken from the birth mother without consulting the mother before giving the child away for adoption. And in Iowa an investigation is underway as to the reasons so many Native children are adopted out to white families, which is against the Indian Child Welfare Act, that states Indian children should be placed within the tribe.

Their removal is no different than when children were forced to attend the Indian Boarding Schools. There they were often abused as a way of making the children abandon their culture. Language was forbidden, traditional clothing replaced, hair cut, until the child was stripped of his identity, which in turn was responsible for the demoralization of the tribes, whose communities were left devastated by the absence of their children's laughter. The removal of children by Social Services for bogus reasons is no different today. No other group of people must fear the removal of their children, who carry the torch of their culture into the future. When the children are removed and raised in white families, they can lose their sense of self and may struggle to find themselves in destructive ways. A piece of the culture is lost with every child who is removed from their home or tribe.

In schools, Native children are often told by teachers that they will fail anyway, so they might as well quit school. Statistics in many schools show a high Native population, anywhere from 30-80% in elementary schools but less than 6% in high school. These children are routinely forced out of schools. They are forced out and leave their self-esteem behind. They have been called Redskin, they have been humiliated for their learning styles, their culture has been mocked, they have been treated unjustly in so many cases, and it all goes unheard. The papers won't print it, the news programs won't cover it. The excuses run from, "The Native population is too small so there aren't any ratings in it," to the real truth, "No one cares."

Is this a hopeless situation? To many Native parents, the answer sure feels like Yes. But it isn't.

When calls come in about discriminatory situations, there is usually one strong person who isn't afraid to make a lot of noise and demands that their voices be heard. In Wolf Point, that voice came from Iris All Runner, and in other Native communities where change has come there has always been one person who took the lead. Certain government agencies, such as the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights and the Department of Justice have been called in to help clean up the situations. But there are endless stories like these and government agencies can and will only do so much.

Change needs to begin with each person. We all need to understand that until we walk a mile in another person's moccasins we cannot begin to understand their life's experiences. We need to realize that school pow wows put on by white teachers embarrass Native children because of their inaccuracies. Team names and mascots mock the heritage of Native people. Native students need to see their history and heroes reflected in the curriculum. Pride and interest will be instilled in them when they see themselves reflected in their studies.

Teachers who try to use methods that are resonant with the heavy-handed discipline techniques of the past find they will not be effective with Native children, or even many sensitive children of the dominant society. A gentle and loving approach, a respectful approach, an approach that serves to encourage Native children rather than mistreat them is going to be effective in lowering drop out rates.

In education, each child's cultural differences and learning styles must be recognized and respected, regardless of whether we understand it or approve of it. Multicultural education must begin to include Native Cultural Awareness and teachers must be required to attend courses to help them understand the children they are teaching. This must be mandated in areas with large Native populations and yet is equally important in places where the Native population is less visible. We need to teach all children to respect each other's cultural differences and understand that what is right for one is not necessarily right for all. We must see that expressions such as Land of the Free and Justice for All does not reflect truth for all people in this country and we must be sensitive to what we don't understand. And for those of us who were born with white privilege, we must recognize that privilege comes with a responsibility to see that all people are treated equally or we are not doing our part to further the American Dream.

Copyright 2004
Christine Rose
Students and Teachers Against Racism