Racism

In light of Brody's post about racism I thought I would share this little story.

I was just starting my 5th period class when the teacher came in and announced that some of the students would be leaving to attend an assembly. He named off the students and they quickly raced out of the room. After the students left, the others where feeling left out, and were wondering why they didn't get to go. So it was explained that they were attending an assembly to discuss their standardized tests. After about thirty seconds the students realized (as did I) that the only people who were called out where the African American students. One students asked after this realization, "Hey! Are they being racist?"

As it turned out teachers are trying to solve the problem that certain groups (races) perform lower than other groups (races). In an attempt to solve this, teachers gave sort of race specific assemblies to talk about the tests and to urge them to do their best and to talk about their importance. This may not really be a racist thing to do, since they are trying to help all students do better, but it does send the message to the students that different races are different.

I'm not sure if there is a better way to solve this problem...