A good colleague, Vasti Torres, wrote a piece years ago entitled “Mi Casa Is Not Always Like Your House.” In this piece she encouraged folks to use a culturally sensitive lens in the context of higher education. Most importantly, she talked about Latino students from a Latina perspective.
I was reminded of her piece when a new faculty member asked me about housing, schooling and just living in this part of the country, and how I navigated finding a place as an African-American female.
I began with a response similar to that of Torres. “What I consider to be a great neighborhood and great schooling is certainly different from what many folks consider to be great neighborhood and schooling,” I said.
When I decided to move to Indianapolis, I asked folks from here about where I should live. Most folks offered similar advice: there were a handful of neighborhoods that were not only great, but they had great schools — and just plain old great neighborhoods.
I knew what this “coded” and sometimes non-critical message meant. Most of the time, great neighborhoods and great schools meant something very different than what I was looking for.
The coded langue of greatness had some commonalities. It tended to mean homogeneous and White — both schools and neighborhoods and most of the participants including teachers. It meant high test scores, and really well-manicured school yards with really nice buildings. Oh yeah, it meant high tax dollars to fund education, and of course “high-quality teachers.” (I assume this means that all teachers are culturally competent because that would mean that their multiracial classroom students perform well.)
I took to the Internet to look at school data. A quick perusal of who tended to be in the socially constructed gifted and talented and who was suspended and expelled also told an interesting story about who were considered to be “great students.”
