Fluttering Around the Racial Tension of Trust: Proximal Approaches to Suspended Black Student–Teacher Relationships
Fluttering Around the Racial Tension of Trust: Proximal Approaches to Suspended Black Student–Teacher Relationships
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围绕信任的种族紧张局势摇摆不定：暂停黑人师生关系的近端方法
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发表时间：
2008
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
H. Stevenson
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作者：
H. Stevenson
我很荣幸受邀为 Gregory 和 Ripski (2008) 撰写的这篇关于青少年对教师信任的精彩文章做出回应。作者详尽地解释了师生关系信任的背景文献，阐述了这种关系如何导致停课率，并讨论了教师信任对学生福祉以及教育、就业和司法系统中未来生活挑战的影响。他们还正确地认识到，学校停课的脆弱性不成比例地落在黑人学生身上，并将学生与教师的关系动态视为这种不公正的令人不安的根源。我想补充一点，其他地方已经提出了这种情况，即黑人青年的停学和开除率不成比例与黑人青年与其他青年相比更普遍的不当行为无关（Advancement Project，2005）。 Gregory 和 Ripski（2008）的文章提供了对该问题的非常有用的分析，尽管有些遥远。他们的研究强调需要对师生关系中的种族动态进行更深入的分析，这可能会导致对黑人青年，特别是黑人男性的误解、不尊重和敌意（Stevenson，2003a）。我最感兴趣的是种族紧张关系如何影响师生关系、警察学生关系以及同伴关系和家长学生关系，在这些关系中，黑人青年成为不公平和危及生命的互动的接受者（Stevenson，2003b）。这种种族紧张关系可以被定义为教师和学生对不良关系可能导致公开羞辱、种族主义指控、无能名声或刻板印象确认的焦虑和压力。然而，这种种族紧张局势的显着因素是它的隐形性，这是由于国民不愿正面面对种族冲突的棘手问题而加剧的，并反映在回避种族讨论、解释和对社会现象的分析上。鉴于美国糟糕的种族关系历史，对有色人种、妇女和儿童的统治和征服受到旨在促进富裕个人和企业的权力和影响力的法律和法规的支持，因此害怕在家庭、社会和同事关系中讨论种族问题是可以理解的。这段历史对家庭的形成、社会流动性以及那些在几乎没有社会资本的情况下开始代际故事的人的教育提升的好处产生了长期的不良影响。然而，在学校系统中，我们一直期望有一个美国梦，即尽管历史上存在基于种族或性别的顽固的社会压迫，但每个孩子都能够通过教育克服这种压迫。学校过去和现在仍然被视为平等的地方，在这里我们学习如何在公民稳定的更大市场中竞争，同时也像其他人一样学习生活和玩耍的游戏规则。不幸的是，学校和教育系统同样无法免受种族和性别陈规定型观念的霸权和等级神话的影响。这些神话基于这样的假设：我们社会中的某些群体没有天赋或动机来获得成功驾驭这种竞争性平等主义的技能，或者不值得获得“平等主义游戏”的秘密代码或作弊手段。因此，我立即对格雷戈里和里普斯基的开场前提感兴趣，即师生关系对于黑人学生停学来说尤其具有挑战性。当他们指出，“鉴于这些趋势，了解教师如何在课堂上成功地行使权威并引起合作对于缩小种族纪律差距至关重要”（第337页）时，我发现自己希望更多地讨论教师权威和缺乏成功的问题，而不是相反。 ……
I was honored to be invited to write a response to this wonderful article by Gregory and Ripski (2008) on adolescent trust in teachers. The authors have done a thorough job of explaining the background literature on teacher-student relationship trust, laying out how this relationship might lead to suspension rates and discussing the consequences of teacher trust for student well-being and future life challenges within the educational, employment, and justice systems. They also rightly identify that the vulnerability of school suspensions disproportionately falls on Black students and target student--teacher relational dynamics as the troubling source of this injustice. The case has been made elsewhere, I might add, that this disproportionality of suspension and expulsion rates for Black youth is not associated with a greater preponderance of misbehavior on the part of Black youth compared to other youth (Advancement Project, 2005). Gregory and Ripski's (2008) article provides a highly useful, albeit somewhat distal, analysis of the problem. Their research highlights the need for a more proximal analysis of the racial dynamics within the student-teacher relationship that might contribute to misinterpretation, disrespect, and hostility towards Black youth in general, and Black males specifically (Stevenson, 2003a). I have been most interested in how racial tension influences teacher-student, police-student, and peer-and parent--student relationships in which Black youth become the recipients of unfair and life-threatening interactions (Stevenson, 2003b). This racial tension can be defined as the ways in which teachers and students are anxious and stressed about how a poor relationship might lead to public humiliation, accusations of being racist, a reputation of incompetence, or confirmation of stereotypes. The salient element of this racial tension, however, is its invisibility, which is fueled by a national reluctance to face head-on the thorny issues of racial conflicts and which is reflected in the dodging of racial discussions, interpretations, and analyses of social phenomena. The fear of discussing racial matters in familial, societal, and collegial relationships is understandable given Americans' abysmal race relations history whereby dominance and subjugation of people of color, women, and children was supported by laws and regulations designed to promote the power and influence of wealthy individuals and businesses. This history has had long-term ill effects on the formation of family, on social mobility, and on the benefit of educational uplift for those who start their intergenerational story with little to no social capital. Yet, in school systems, we have always expected there to be an American dream that each child would be able, despite historically intransigent societal oppression based on race or gender, to overcome this oppression through education. The school was and is still seen as the place of equality where we learn how to compete in the larger marketplace of civic stability, but also to learn the rules of the game of life and play as well as anyone else. Unfortunately, schools and educational systems are no less immune to the hegemonic and hierarchical myths of racial and gender stereotypes. These myths are based upon the assumption that some groups in our society have no talent or motivation for procuring the skills to successfully navigate this competitive egalitarianism or do not deserve access to the secret codes or cheats to the "egalitarian game." So, I was immediately intrigued by Gregory and Ripski's opening premise with regard to how student--teacher relationships are particularly challenging for Black student suspensions. When they state, "Given these trends, understanding how teachers successfully exercise their authority and elicit cooperation in their classrooms becomes paramount reduce the racial discipline gap" (p. 337), I found myself wanting more of a discussion about the problem of teacher authority and lack of success rather than the opposite. …