Comments to An African Student

I was teaching math in the last period of the day in late October. This was the last class of the last day I was teaching before I departed for three weeks in Cote d'Ivoire, West Africa. Most of the students had finished their classwork and were wasting time and fooling around. The talk among them turned to girl friends and boy friends. The class was divided between a large contingent of Chinese students, about half a dozen Hispanic girls, and several other foreign students, including one from Mali, West Africa.

The students were joking around about who would be whose boy friend and girl friend when one of the Spanish students commented that she could not possibly ever be the girl friend of the student from Mali.

Just as the bell ending the class rang, the young man from Mali said to me, "They make fun of me because I am so dark."

I must tell you that a few weeks before I had had this same students in one of the ESL classes I occasionally teach. All the students there were given a picture of a room in a house and had to explain in English what they saw in the picture. The general comments went something like, "I see a window. I see a door. I see a sink. I see a chair."

The student from Mali started out describing things by commenting that he saw "a chair in the Style of Louis Quatorze." He went on in his broken English describing things in a much more sophisticated way than the other students. His English wasn't any better, but his perceptions were miles ahead of theirs.

On that final day as the students were rushing out to go home, I called this young man over and started giving him a pep talk. Luckily I speak French. In our conversation, which was in French, I learned that he had attended school in France before coming to the United States. I explained a number of things.

First, I told him that he was intellectually way beyond the other students in the class. I reminded him of his description of the Louis Quarorze chair, and he was surprised that I remembered.

I reminded him, too, that he was here with his family from Mali, and that they had a culture. "Keep true to your culture," I told him. "You are something that many of the African-American students here would really want to be -- a true African." I told him that if he doubted me, he could go to one of the local flea markets, where he would find a number of African-Americans drumming together, pretending (and wishing) they were African.

He had, I mentioned, values and a culture, things many of the other students in the school don't have. He must stay true to who he is. He must not be infected by the cheap culture of many of the kids who have no role models to imitate, and who take their cues for living primarily from their peers.

And as for the very dark color of his skin, I reminded him that "La beaute se trouve dans les yeux de celui qui regard." "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." If anything, he should know who and what he is, and feel very proud of his African identity, which is precious.

I am not one for subtlety or political correctness, as you can tell from my talk with him. And I haste people looking down on other people because of skin color.

I've been called down by readers of this blog before, and I am sure I'll be called down many times again, especially for what I have said about what I have come to regard as the dismal culture of many of my African-American students. For all of them, thought, what I want is simply something better.

And don't we have a President now who demonstrates that they can have this if they so choose ?