New Book Alert: Crossing the Hall: Exposing an American Divide by Lori Wojtowicz; Superb Book About Racism Asks Some Intentionally Uncomfortable Questions
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: Lori Wojtowicz's book Crossing the Hall: Exposing an American Divide is the kind of book designed to make the Reader uncomfortable. And I mean that in a good way.
Crossing the Hall explores racism particularly within our public schools and how it affects the future generations over the years. She asks some tough uncomfortable questions that ask the Reader to look at how they really feel about other races and how much interaction that they have had with different types of people. It is a book that challenges the Reader away from their safe assumptions much in the same way that Wojtawicz had to confront hers.
Wojtowicz uses her own experience with race to reveal how she had her own biases in which she had been previously unaware. The point of her own experience reveals that she admitted that she made mistakes and assumed the wrong things and that she worked to correct them. She realized that she was a work in progress and needed to change her behavior and thinking.
Probably like many white people author, Lori Wojtowicz never considered herself racist. Sure, she had a privileged background in what she derisively calls The Land of Only White but her parents were fairly liberal or so she believed. She was an educator at a school with a racially diverse student body. It must have been a coincidence that the students in the Honors English program in which she taught and had the most economic advantages were mostly white right?
She followed Martin Luther King Jr. and supported the ACLU. She grew up in a post-Civil Rights era, was raised to treat the races equally and claimed that she “didn't see color.”
Wojtowicz held onto those beliefs until she was assigned to teach African-American Literature to a classroom of mostly African-American students. She realized that even though the students in her current class and the Honors program may have gone to the same school, used the same lockers, ate in the same cafeterias, and walked through the same hallways, they couldn't have been further apart.
Wojtowicz compares her transition from the Land of Only White to connecting with African-American students to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. She originally thought that as a teacher, it was her job to bring students from the safe darkness of the cave into the uncertain knowledge of the light. She realized that she was in as much darkness as her students and that it was those same students who brought her from her safe assumptions and generalizations to confront her own biases and become a better teacher.
She also saw influence in the work of Malcolm X and how he wrote about systemic racism and how many institutions are stacked against people of color depriving them of opportunities that are given freely to white people. He saw this system as one of control and oppression and Wojtowicz understood her unintentional role in that system. This forced her to see that racism wasn't something that ended when segregation ended in the 1960’s and the people who practiced didn't always wear white sheets and hoods. Racism instead is still alive and thriving.
Most of Wojtowicz's book focuses on individual experiences with racism. It seeks to change the system, true but mostly it looks at how the individual can change their mind and in doing that, change the system. Particularly the main focus is on teachers and how they can recognize their own unintentional racism and they can get beyond those actions to become more inclusive towards students of color.
In her book, Wojtowicz identified five different forms of racism: overt racism, covert racism, institutional racism, internalized racism, and conferred dominance.
Overt racism is the most familiar form, the one that many insist they are not. Slavery and segregation were forms as well as the Ku Klux Klan and lynch mobs. They participated in violence against black people because of their skin color. Many people recognize this form of racism, but Wojtawicz points out that not everyone gets to this level. Many think that “As long as I am not going to Klan meetings or calling black people the 'n’- word then I cannot possibly be a racist.” Wojtawicz’s book proves that this is not always the case.
Covert racism is a form of racism that many white people fall into without being aware of it. Wojtowicz saw it herself when she was a girl and her parents were going out for the evening. They were stunned that their babysitter was African-American and made excuses to not go out rather than leave their child with a black woman.
Wojtowicz also saw it in her professional career with teachers who wondered out loud how they could teach “those students.” She also recognized it in students who said that teachers never called on them or expected too much from them, so they either withdrew from class, misbehaved, or asked to be transferred.
Covert racism is the type of racism where a white person's experience with black people is only limited to music videos, movies, and news reports that give him the stereotype that all black people are thugs and drug dealers, so can't manage a friendly “hey” to an African-American person that walks by.
This is the type of racism that inspires someone to tell racist jokes or make comments and when they are called out on it, the person insists “Well my black friends don't mind.” This is the type of racism that occurs when a white couple moves to a largely African-American neighborhood. They worry about crime when it didn't bother them before when they lived in a mostly white neighborhood. It occurs when a white woman walks down the street followed by a black man and she instantly clenches in fear and panic that he will rape or rob her. She would greet or even flirt with him if he were a white man.
This is the type of racism which throws out the words and phrases like “you people,” “some of my best friends are black,” and “I'm not a racist but…”
Institutional racism is the type of racism that Malcolm X spoke most freely about. This is the type that is sustained by laws, customs, and practices that produce inequalities.
This is the racism that never died. In fact, it is becoming more and more prevalent within the current Presidential Administration and states, many of which are lined up to implement similar policies.
This is seen when in an attempt to balance the budget, governments cut social programs that severely affect poor families, particularly ones in the inner cities and largely black neighborhoods. When Medicaid programs like better health care are cut, people can't always go to the doctor and are frequently absent from work or are too ill to take care of their family members. Economically disadvantaged schools often provide students and faculty with older books, dated technology and equipment, minimal extracurricular activities, and the faculty and staff have to make do with what they have. Housing in these neighborhoods are often a problem as many houses and apartments aren't well kept and often families are left homeless. When institutions don't provide the people with the proper care they need, that has a detriment on the individual and societal well being.
Internal racism often leads to self-hate. Wojtowicz saw many black students respond in this way. Some fully embraced the “thug” stereotype that white students and teachers already assumed about them. Girls with dark skin said that they would only marry boys with lighter skin or preferred straight hair to their own kinky and curly hair. She saw students who while bright were afraid to enroll in honors programs because they “were for whites only” or said that family members ridiculed them when they “talked white.”
Wojtowicz referred to the study in the 1940’s in which Dr. Kenneth Clark showed black and white dolls to a group of black children and asked which they would rather play with. The children selected the white dolls. This study was instrumental during the Brown Vs. Board of Education case that helped to end official segregation in public schools. However, in 2005 activist Kira Davis repeated the exact same study with African-American girls in Harlem and got the exact same results. In 2010, child psychologist Margaret Beale Spencer reflected on a study in which children compared pictures of skin tones and found that children are still taught to devalue dark colors and value lighter colors.
The way Wojtowicz describes internal racism is similar to an abused child with their parents. The parent constantly yells at, hits, and criticizes the child and the child feels that their parent is right. They doubt themselves even if others tell them otherwise. They have a negative self-image because their parents made them believe it. The child grows and even as an adult, they still hear their parent’s voice in their head. That negative self-image remains and affects how they behave at work, with friends, or with their spouse and children.
Now imagine those abusive parents being several parents. Imagine them being teachers, principals, police officers, in short every authority figure that child personally encounters. Imagine them being political leaders who hold other people in more worth than that child. How likely do you think that child will challenge that abuse and instead withdraw and accept their impoverished life or become the criminal they expect them to become?
Conferred dominance is also known as white privilege. This is the result of all of the previous forms of racism: acquiring privilege that was not earned by merit. It was earned by the simple virtue of being the majority, being born white. Wojtowicz writes that it's when people don't think about being white. She said that she doesn't either. “As a member of a racial majority in America, we can choose to think about race or we can choose to ignore it...Race does not affect our lives on a daily basis. When it comes to race, we can choose ignorance.”
Wojtowicz writes that white people don't even realize their dominance. Even in little things such as default settings on games which start off with a white person until the player changes their character or that crayons describe peach as “flesh” colored assuming that every child who picks up that crayon has the same color of flesh. These are things which some might perceive as trivial but show how homogeneous the white perspective is that it is omnipresent without a thought.
Conferred dominance is also in larger more important issues such as when many white people protested against Affirmative Action programs in colleges providing acceptance for people of color. They failed to acknowledge that these same schools often had legacy admissions which guaranteed acceptance to white children of alumni.
It is also shown when predominantly white schools have clubs, activities, student government, and have students who volunteer, take SAT courses, drive and receive cars, and go on vacations. The students may be stressed because of the active student life and often seek therapy.
Students in predominantly black schools ride buses or with friends and family, work in jobs to support their families, care for younger siblings, and don't have time to participate in activities. Stress often comes in the forms of homelessness or unemployment.
When college applications are filled, the administrators often inquire how involved the student was in school with activities and volunteer work and such. Of course they will look at the white student that was able to do those activities and ignore the black student that was not even though they both worked hard to earn the same grades.
Of course, the same white privilege opportunities carry over into employment. While officially there are anti-discriminatory laws that insist that employers cannot discriminate based on color, Wojtowicz reveals that isn't always the case.
A 2008 Princeton University study showed that black applicants are less likely to be called back for job interviews than white applicants. That even applies to white applicants who checked the box for felony convictions vs. black applicants with clean records.
Wojtowicz saw the disparity with her own students. In her Honors English course, she assigned her students to write an essay about where they felt the most at home. One student couldn't decide between their family's beach house in Australia or their condo in the mountains. Others talked about streets in France or their trip to the Galapagos Islands.
Later in her African-American Literature class, a student asked if he could leave a suit in her classroom for prom. He then gave the suit to another student and explained that since his friend couldn't afford a tux for prom, the student allowed him to borrow his good suit. Wojtowicz said, “I was left to contemplate the difference between one family that could afford to vacation to the Galapagos Islands and another that could not travel to the mall to buy a jacket and a new pair of pants for a school dance.”
While there are wealthy black people and poor and homeless white people, the economic divide between the races has never been higher. In fact the highest that it has been in over 25 years. Because of the privileges that white people are provided, many believe that they are somehow superior and that the way of life that fits them should fit everybody. Someone with white privilege goes to a good school, gets good grades, has some kind of further education like college, university, or trade school, gets a good dream job, gets married and has children whom they can pass that privilege onto.
Conferred dominance occurs when white people believe that if someone doesn't follow that same trajectory then there must be something wrong with them, not the system. Those with conferred dominance believe that “those people” must be lazy or drug addicts if they can't receive those advantages.
Conferred dominance occurs when a white person challenges any gains that black people get without realizing the struggles that were inherent to get those advantages. This usually appears as “Whataboutisms.”
When a white person asks “Why isn't there a White History Month?,” they refuse to acknowledge that educational and historical curriculum for a long time favored studying only white men.
When someone mentions causes like Black Lives Matter, the response “All Lives Matter,” is a deflection that refuses to accept that police brutality and racial profiling are real concerns. Someone with conferred dominance refuses to admit that a person can be shot by a white police officer that feared the worst just because of the color of the other person's skin.
Crime is also a frequent issue when it comes to conferred dominance. Wojtowicz recalled the many students who lost friends, relatives, and others due to violence. In the Land of Only White, Wojtowicz says people talk about “black on black crime” but never “white on white crime” even though statistically it is more likely.
“The color of your skin does not make you commit crimes but unemployment, poverty, and poor education do,” Wojtowicz writes. “Add in a societal message that you are less and ask yourself what you might do to survive? How frustrated and angry might you become?”
For example, many white people hold the stereotype that many black people are drug dealers or users. However, the statistics show that white people have higher substance abuse rates than minorities. However, black people in the drug trade are thirteen times more likely to be arrested than white people in the same trade. Because of the reported arrests, many white people emerge with the false narrative and belief that black people are criminals.
The levels of racism lead to equivocations or the use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or avoid committing oneself. The equivocation of integration- that schools are integrated and people don't need to learn about other cultures, the equivocation of meritocracy-that everyone can be successful if they work hard and play by the rules without realizing that sometimes the rules don’t lead to success for everyone, and the equivocation of power-that if certain people succeed, others have to fail.
Wojtowicz offers various solutions to the problem of racism in the classroom. Since the problem itself involves perceptions, the solutions involve stronger reflection. They are less about changing the system but changing our role and behavior within the system.
Wojtowicz begins by asking her white Readers to revise and rethink. She asks them to think about where these biases and assumptions come from such as their background or the media. Once they think about that, then they can change their thought process.
Besides analyzing their thought process, Wojtowicz peers into people who believe racism is wrong but don't speak out against it. Are they afraid or intimidated to speak out? Were they raised in an environment where they were told that it was impolite to get angry as Wojtowicz admits that she was? Were they presented with specific societal roles and made to believe “that's the way it is?” She advises the readers to understand why African-American people speak out on these injustices, sometimes acting on that anger.
In a touching chapter, Wojtowicz described an assignment in which she told her students to bring three physical objects as personal symbols. Jay, a student who had anger management issues, brought a balloon. It represented his childhood. As he blew into the balloon, he explained that it represented the anger that he felt inside growing bigger. Jay deflated the balloon as a symbol of his future in which he hoped to learn to let go of his anger. Unfortunately, Jay's cousin died and shortly afterwards, he left school unable to express any emotion including his anger.
By contrast another student, Aisha did not respond with anger. She acted with cold icy silence when her parents got divorced. She withdrew even further after her mother's boyfriend was killed. By the time, she attended Wojtowicz's African-American Literature class, she was completely detached and nothing Wojtowicz did could break her from that detachment. Even on her graduation day, Aisha only expressed icy indifference at the violent future that she believed lay ahead for her. Wojtowicz called Aisha the most frightening student that she ever had.
Another way that we can combat these racist beliefs is to be more inclusive in our language, Wojtowicz writes. Think about who we consider “the other.” When Thomas Jefferson wrote “all men are created equal” he only meant white men, Wojtowicz says. It took subsequent generations to widen that scope to include black men, women, Native Americans and others.
Malcolm X had to deal with that exclusion as well. For a long time as a member of the Nation of Islam, he thought of white people as “the white devils.” He later felt like a mouthpiece for the organization expressing ideals of Elijah Muhammad, that Malcolm X no longer believed. When he visited Mecca, he saw people of all colors living and worshipping as one. Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam and changed his approach to challenging systemic racism rather than the individual racists. He recognized the humanity within white people as well as black.
School curricula can be more inclusive, Wojtawicz suggested. She cited the feelings that an African-American student may have walking through a school hallway when the walls only promote books by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Mark Twain, or feature pictures of Albert Einstein. The school may only promote people of color during specific months but don't cite them the rest of the year. What this teaches, Wojtowicz says is “Education belongs to white people.”
Education is meant to make everyone inclusive to help people learn to challenge and change their circumstances. Wojtowicz realized this when one of her students who was homeless said that whenever her family left, her mother first ordered the family to “get the books.” Wojtowicz's previous stereotypes of the girl's homeless life disappeared when she realized how much her family valued their education and reading. “Reading served as an escape, a kind of tunnel into the fresh air of momentary freedom. But books can do more than transport us temporarily. They have the potential to transform us permanently,” Wojtowicz wrote.
Part of that transformation includes using books to look into the mind of “the other”, to see what life is like in the mind of someone who is a different gender, nationality, or race.
Reading allows students to challenge what they are reading, including questioning the roles that oppress the races.
To combat racial equivocations like the ones discussed earlier, Wojtowicz wrote about the concept of shared power. She referred to Jawanza Junjufu’s six levels of teaching. The highest level is that of the coach “that merges pedagogy and learning styles and cultivates a bond with their students with love, respect, and understanding.” The coach is there to guide, but it's the students that contribute the actions. They learn to implement their own styles, creativity, and opinions to the classroom and the lessons that the coach/teacher guides them towards.
One way is to explain to students why they must learn something and allow them to give their own opinions on what they are working. Don't just ask simple questions about the books they are reading, Wojtowicz suggests. Ask students how they feel about the book or which characters the student relates to.
Teachers also must act wisely and admit that they make mistakes. Wojtowicz told her classmates two incidents where students talked back to her and she ordered them to leave her classroom. Wojtowicz was able to show her students that she was just as mistake prone as they were. They saw her as an individual and work in progress and felt freer to discuss and even disagree with her.
There are several tenets of shared power. The first is listening, allowing people to speak about their concerns and problems to understand each other.
A group of black and white students at Wojtowicz's school had a discussion on racial tension. During the first session, the teachers spoke and at the end, students erupted in anger. During the next session, they formed groups with student leaders. The students led the discussion and they argued, talked, and had ice breaker activities. Most importantly, the students talked about their concerns and experience with race. While racism still continued, the students and teachers came to a real understanding by listening to one another about their experiences.
Another incident involved the son of a colleague of Wojtowicz's. He was pulled over and when he reached for his wallet, the officer believed that he had a gun and slammed the young man into a police car after he cuffed him. The mother managed to get her son out of jail. Wojtowicz listened to this account and understood the young man's experience of DWB: Driving While Black.
Another tenet of shared power is curiosity, asking questions and learning the answers as well as sharing laughter and sorrow. The tenets of shared curiosity, laughter, and sorrow help increase student and teacher's mental and emotional connections.
A troubled student disrupted Wojtowicz's class. She asked him to act out defiance by acting the way he normally did and then storm out so the kids would learn what the word meant. After he returned to the class, the entire class erupted into laughter and Wojtowicz never had trouble with that student again.
The final tenets of shared power are dignity and finding a purpose. Dignity is maintaining respect for one another and helping to preserve respect and their strength. Together teachers and students can preserve that dignity by finding a purpose in learning. Frederick, a student of Wojtowicz's did not get involved in her classroom. When she discussed Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem,“We Wear the Mask” she glanced at Frederick's notes and saw his drawings of broken masks and families looking hurt and lost. Wojtowicz used Frederick's drawings for the lecture the next day, acknowledging his talent for drawing and he found his educational purpose in art.
Wojtowicz's book calls for Readers to look at their own biases and change them to get along with others. It demands that white America recognize if our behaviors are intentionally or unintentionally uplifting others or holding them back.
We can't necessarily change the entire world, but we can change ourselves. That's what Wojtowicz's book shows us.
In his hit song, “Man in the Mirror,” Michael Jackson sang “I'm starting with the man in the mirror/I'm asking him to change his ways/And no message could have been any clearer/If you want to make the world a better place/Take a look at yourself and make a change.”* Lori Wojtawicz's book Crossing the Hall: Exposing an American Divide presents us with a good start.
*Lyrics to “Man in the Mirror” by Gary Ballard and Siedah Garrett @Warner Chappell Music Inc., Universal Music Publishing Group, BMG Rights Management, Song trust Ave. All Rights Reserved.
