Real talk, everything that happens in that Jane Elliot video falls into the range of acceptable shit for most POC. Definitely for POC raised in the inner city & going to public schools. Hell, some of it was kinder than what can happen in a Chicago Public School if you’re black, poor, & have any kind of special needs. You best believe there is yelling, profanity, insults (and none of that subtle sideways shit either), physical violence, and all of it is sanctioned and supported by the administration and society. When people talk to poor black & brown kids that way, folks call it tough love & claim it’s to help us make it as adults. I have been called everything but a child of God in a classroom at various points in my life.
My husband had a teacher who refused to believe he could have a learning disability and be good at math. She was such a waste of skin she tried to falsify the grades on his report card to make him think he’d failed. Mind you, he was in 5th grade. And no, she didn’t lose her job despite my MIL reporting it & providing proof to the administration. That’s just school shit though, that’s before you get into dealing with police, store clerks, random white folks who think your 3.5 GPA is a gift, or who act like black people can’t read, write, or do anything that doesn’t involve a ball or a microphone.
Fuck around & tell the wrong teacher or guidance counselor that you want to be a doctor, a ballerina, an architect, and watch them do everything they can to kill that dream. And they will get pats on the back for telling black & brown kids to be “realistic” even though their GPA’s are high & with the right prep classes they can do anything.
My white aunt pats herself on the back for marrying a black man and is quick to hold him & her kids up as proof she’s not racist. Meanwhile she’s a gym teacher at a majority Latin@ school, and she encourages the kids to join the military or go to trade school if they happen to mention college. She’s proud of that shit, even as she sits down every day with her two black kids and gives them a whole lot of mixed, fucked up messages right down to telling her daughter (now too dark to be mistaken for anything but black) not to go to the magnet college prep, but instead to go the school down the street with a shitty record & no AP classes. That’s racism folks, & it plays out every day in every way in the lives of POC. Especially in good old America.
