Chapter 4
A LITTLE RELEVANCE CAN BE A DANGEROUS THING:
Channeling Anger
WHEN A CRISIS BREAKS OUT, THE instinctive response of those in charge is to attempt to normalize the situation by "cooling out" the people involved. No wonder! When people feel themselves wronged, their emotions heat up. Tremendous energy is created and there is increased potential for irrational acts. The safe thing to do is duck, wait for everybody to simmer down, and then try to review the underlying causes of the problem. But the trouble with this kind of Monday-morning quarterbacking is that the game may be over by then.
The peak of a crisis sometimes provides the best opportunity for beginning to set things right. For a brief instant, legitimate concerns may flash into the open. If one can perceive these issues, clarify them in the heat of battle, and harness the available energy, there is the chance for turning a destructive situation into a period of reform. It's not easy.
The School District of Philadelphia had established an Office of Community Affairs that specialized in utilizing the "emotions of the moment" in initiating positive action. The staff gave support and encouragement, as well as expertise in such strategies as "conflict utilization." Perhaps the key to the entire process was the effort to get people who were emotionally involved to be rationally involved. A good example of this kind of cognitive self-help was the case of "Little Brown Koko."
The Alpha Elementary School, located in a middle-class neighborhood, had a student body that was about 40 percent black. The parents of one little girl had called the principal to ask that their child be given additional reading material to help raise her reading level. The next day, their daughter, little Theresa Mason, came home with a book called Little Brown Koko. Written in the early 1940's, the book began:
Once there was a little brown boy named Little Brown Koko, who was the shortest, fattest, little Negro you could ever imagine. He had the blackest little wooly head and great big round eyes, and he had the prettiest brown color, just like a bar of chocolate candy. Little Koko's mammy thought him the most beautiful little boy in the whole wide world. Oh, he was a beautiful little brown boy all right, but he had one bad habit. He was greedy. Why, compared with Little Brown Koko, a pig should be called a well-mannered gentleman.
Theresa's parents were incensed. They called The Tribune, Philadelphia's black newspaper, which headlined the story: "Reading Book Given Negro Child Is Called 'Degrading." The parents cited such phrases as "good ole, fat, black mammy."
The principal of the school declared that "the book was not on the approved reading list. This was a book which was brought in with many others when the teacher instructed children to bring in books from home to add to the classroom bookshelf.
"The teacher feels the whole thing was carelessness on her part and we have alerted her and other
teachers to make sure that this never happens again. We know we did something wrong. We're
going to take every possible step to make certain this never happens again."
But such assurances didn't fully placate the Masons. "We want people to see what is possible, even today, through error or intent. We don't have any particular plan of action at this time, but we plan to see that the matter is dealt with."
This could have been another fruitless situation of parents trying to fire the teacher. Had they attempted it, one could safely predict that the teachers' union would come in to defend the teacher against community interference. The issue of unsatisfactory reading material would have been forgotten. Nothing would have been done toward achieving quality education. Even had the parents been able to force the teacher out, little would have been accomplished.
The society that created the kind of teacher who could make this sort of mistake didn't break the mold after she took her place in the classroom. What was really needed was the development of an ongoing process that could begin to counteract the cultural ignorance that caused the incident in the first place.
The initial problem was to get those involved to see the wider implications. The parents and community had to understand that this was not simply a personal attack on them.
The staff of the Community Affairs Office pointed out that the teacher's basic intent was to give the child a chance to see black heroes. That wasn't a bad idea. What was unfortunate was the choice she made to accomplish a legitimate end.
It was lucky that the teacher had recognized her mistake and had admitted it. We could say to the parents: "Look, even the teacher is asking for help. Are we going to give it to her?" The parents and community people agreed to give it a try. They asked, "How do we start?"
Our aim was to create a mechanism that could help teachers get the right books into the hands of the children.
But we were offering something more than simple assurances that the problem would be "dealt with." When people are hurt in a deep and personal way, they have a great need to be actively involved in setting things right. By ignoring this basic human need, well-meaning experts can increase, rather than reduce, irrational behavior of those they are trying to help. Our parents were pleased to have their energies channeled for some constructive purpose. They agreed to help create needed processes. Some committees were formed to examine and evaluate all the books in the school library. Board of Education specialists, trained in methods of evaluation, joined in. This was a bonus-the community was learning how to utilize Board resources they didn't even know existed before the crisis began.
Simultaneously, the school's administration learned how they could plug in their resources for the benefit of the community as well as the school staff. With the community now involved in a minor fix-up campaign, a different question arose: Was it possible to go farther, not just to examine materials and develop some items for enrichment? Was it possible for them to make important contributions to the overall school program? Specifically, could they help develop approaches that would diffuse the contributions and culture of black people throughout the entire curriculum?
The community now decided to deal with some rather intricate and very exciting issues. With guidance from professionals, they instituted a materialsresource committee and a curriculum development committee. What might have been a destructive situation was now shaping up into a series of processes for the pursuit of quality education. People were freed up to talk about the things that really bugged them. They began to discuss the question of the problem of a nearby junior high school, how white students were avoiding it, and how this avoidance was a source of unspoken rage among the black parents. For the first time, the discussion came around, past blaming the white parents, to the real issue: How can we make this school into the kind of place where all parents would want to send their children?
One interesting point is that sometime later, when I met with the father of the girl who had been given Little Brown Koko, he said, "You know, we are glad in a way that the whole thing happened."
He wouldn't have said that had all the tremendous crisis energy been focused on getting rid of the one teacher, even if that goal had been reached. What made him feel good was having used his energy in a purposeful, constructive way.
Twenty years ago it would have been a very different story. The school administration probably wouldn't have listened to the concerns of the parents. It would have seemed odd to the administrators to hear complaints about Little Brown Koko. Twenty years ago people were listening to Amos 'n' Andy. Black people tried to live with that stuff and not be destroyed. It took some doing..
