Other People's Children by Lisa Delpit

Ok, this article was a little more difficult for me to swallow.  I actually read it two days ago and am just now bringing myself to be able to write about it.  I can honestly say I do not like Lisa Delpit's style of writing at all.  I understand and even somewhat support her argument that in the field of education dialogue around race has become silenced.  According to the previous articles we have read, dialogue around race is silenced or difficult in an adult setting, so of course its going to be going on in the schools as well.  Up until this point I have agreed with and judged myself on the need to end racism and to stop people from pitting one race or gender against the other.  But then I read this.  I felt attacked.  I felt like she was actually contributing to pitting one race against another by some of the comments in the article, such as:
     pg 21 " White folks are going to do what they want to do anyway.  It's really hard.   They just don't ;listen well.  No they listen, but they don't hear..."


     pg22 " they wear blinders and earplugs"


     pg29 "some had added that the liberal educators believe themselves to be operating with good intentions, but that these intentions are only conscious delusions about their unconscious true motives"
She goes on about how white parents ask their children to do things while black parents have to give more instruction and then once they are in school and the teachers are asking them to do things instead of giving instruction, black students are struggling.  The only time I ask my son to do something is if its to help me with something, otherwise I am constantly giving detailed instructions on what he needs to do.  He is a child, albeit a white middle class male, that still requires INSTRUCTION!!!  To say that race determines how a child reacts, responds or learns to me is just too general. 


I will say that there were a few things that I agreed with.  Those were:
     pg37 " Children have the right to their own language, their own culture.  We must fight cultural begemony and fight the system by insisting that children be allowed to express themselves in their own language style.  It is not they, the children who must change, but the schools.  To push children to do anything else is repressive and reactionary"
      pg46  " To put our beliefs on hold it to cease to exist as ourselves for a moment and that is not east"  This is my absolute favorite line from the article.  It touches on what Johnson was saying.  We need to put aside our discomfort and our prejudices and come together as one.