Teaching While Black: A New Voice on Race and Education in New York City

Originally published in 2016, this memoir by Bronx-born writer, educator, and activist Pamela Lewis, FCRH ’03, has been getting renewed attention amid the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s a deeply personal account of her experiences teaching in one of the most racially and economically segregated school systems in the country. Lewis details her frustrations working within a system she feels does not value her own understanding, as a Black woman, of what children of color need to succeed. She writes about the effects of “double consciousness” on her and her students, using the term, coined by W.E.B. Du Bois, that refers to the challenge African Americans face when forced to view themselves through the eyes of those around them. Ultimately, Lewis challenges educators to acknowledge the role race plays in their classrooms and, above all, “to not be color blind.” —Nicole LaRosa

Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O’Connor

As a fiction writer whose Catholic faith was a driving force in her work, Flannery O’Connor created “powerful anti racist parables,” writes Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, Ph.D., associate director of Fordham’s Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. And yet, in her personal correspondence, she expressed “attitudes that are hard to describe as anything but patently racist.” In Radical Ambivalence, O’Donnell sets out to explore these contradictions “rather than try to deny, defend, or resolve” them. She helps readers see portrayals of race in O’Connor’s fiction from contemporary, historical, political, and theological perspectives. Although the opportunity for O’Connor’s thinking on race to evolve was cut short—she died from lupus at age 39, just one month after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—O’Donnell ultimately hopes to “focus attention where O’Connor clearly wanted it to be, as evidenced in many of her stories: on the ways in which racism and a racist caste system shape (and misshape) white people, its inventors and perpetrators.” —Ryan Stellabotte

Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side

Jim Mackin, FCLC ’76, is a retired financial executive turned New York City historian. As the founder of WeekdayWalks, he often guides people on strolls through offbeat areas of the city. In this richly detailed, photo-filled book, he focuses on his own neighborhood, writing about nearly 600 notable former residents of the Upper West Side. He highlights the famous (Humphrey Bogart, Barack Obama, and others), but he also celebrates the uncommon lives of scientists, explorers, journalists, and judges whose stories should be better known. He calls attention to women whose feats have been unsung, such as pilot Elinor Smith and nuclear physicist Harriet Brooks, and writes about the “Old Community,” a tight-knit African American enclave that counted Marcus Garvey and Billie Holiday among its residents. —Ryan Stellabotte

Public school teacher Aixa Rodriguez, FCRH ‘00, GSE ’05, attended a panel discussion devoted to the topic in Manhattan last fall and came away “incredibly frustrated” by the fact that the Bronx was absent from the discussion.

So Rodriguez, an ESL teacher at Fannie Lou Hamer High School in the Bronx, organized her own discussion, “Race and Public Education in NYC: A Town Hall.”

The event will take place Tuesday, Feb. 21 from 7 – 9 p.m. in the Flom Auditorium, William D. Walsh Family Library, on the Rose Hill campus. It will be moderated by Mark Naison, Ph.D., professor of history and African American studies. The panel will feature:

Fabienne Doucet, Ph.D., associate professor of early childhood education at New York University;

Pamela Lewis, FCRH ’03, author of Teaching While Black: A New Voice on Race and Education in New York City (Fordham University Press, 2016);

Luis E. Torres, principal of P.S. 55 in Claremont Village in the Bronx;

Sean Ahern, New York City public school teacher;

Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, Ph.D., assistant medical professor at the City University of New York, mother, and activist;

Arthur Goldstein, ESL teacher and United Federation of Teachers chapter leader at Francis Lewis High School in Queens;

Ruth Rodriguez, former teacher, mother, and administrator for United Opt Out National; and

Daniel Katz, teacher, member of Community Education Council 3’s zoning committee.

Rodriguez said a gathering of local stakeholders is especially important now because 32 of the of the 62 schools that the State of New York is considering closing are located in the Bronx. The panelists also have direct connections to schools (a “dog in the fight,” she said) either as administrators, parents, or teachers.

“None of us have really had a chance to explore this up until now, because a lot of these programs have put limits on time to speak, or there weren’t a wide variety of opinions, or the audience wasn’t involved,” she said.

One of her biggest critiques of the current conversations about school segregation is that it’s often a binary one, pitting the needs of black students against white students. Latino students are considered after the fact, and Asian students are left out of the picture altogether, she said. The face of bilingual education is going to have to change.

The biggest hurdle, however, is simply “getting people to accept that segregation is real,”and that it’s exacerbated by the fact that housing and schools are deeply intertwined. Because New Yorkers have to pay more to live in neighborhoods with good schools, they’re resistant to any changes that might alter the demographics of those schools.

“People want to feel good about themselves so they tell themselves a myth, and they don’t want to admit that they have preconceived notions. The legacy of redlining is one cause for segregation, but attaching the quality of a local school to the cost of local housing is another reason,” she said. “It just reinforces who wants to live where.”

For more information or to RSVP visit the event’s Facebook page.

Related Story: Bronx High School Students Join Fordham Class for a Day