Taking It Personally: Racism In Classroom From Kindergarten To College

When Sekani Moyenda, an African American elementary school teacher, accepted an invitation to speak at a graduate education class, neither the students nor Ann Berlak, their professor, could guess that her presentation would spark an outpouring of emotion and a reexamination of race from everyone involved. The encounter - as it was called - was an expression of Moyenda's anger at the institutionalized racism of our educational system, a system whose foundations are reinforced and whose assumptions about race are reproduced in the graduate school classroom. Forcing everyone involved to rethink their own race consciousness. Taking it Personally is a chronicle of two teachers and their own educational progress. In processing their own responses to the encounter, along with their students', Berlak and Moyenda meditate not only on their own ideas on teaching and learning, but also redefine the obligation a teacher has to his or her students. Personal in its approach, yet grounded in significant currents of educational thought, Taking it Personally will be a must-read for any educator or educator-to-be who is committed to teaching in our diverse classrooms.

Many readers will have difficulty appreciating a book that comes to the conclusion that "all white people are infected with racism." Relying heavily on opinion and often falling into overgeneralization, the authors (a university professor and an elementary school teacher) present a cautionary tale for teacher educators hoping to introduce their students to the tenets of "critical multiculturalism," i.e., an approach that "is structured to convey that the entire social order is shaped by institutions that tend to preserve and reproduce prevailing racial, gender, and class inequities." Hoping to find a place in the curriculum alongside the works of Jonathan Kozol (e.g., Savage Inequalities, LJ 9/15/91) and Lisa Delpit (Other People's Children, New Pr., 1995), the authors demonstrate that children of color are the victims of an institutionalized racism that affects the teaching they receive at every academic level. Unfortunately, this important message is obscured by the angry, self-righteous, and occasionally self-indulgent tone of this work. Recommended only for the most comprehensive academic collections related to multicultural education or teacher education. [With this title Temple University inaugurates their "Teaching and Learning Social Justice" series, which highlights educational practices that promote equality in multicultural societies. Ed.] Scott Walter, Washington State Univ., Pullman Fisher, Anne.
- Scott Walter, Washington State Univ., Pullman Fisher, Anne.
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