Abstract:

In the United States, it is no secret that inner city students receive an inadequate education in comparison to their counterparts in suburban neighborhoods. In the dynamic of "salt suburbs, pepper cities", students of color, specifically black students, receive the shorter end of the stick in terms of educational resources and investments. As a result, there is increased risk for black students to perform poorly on standardized exams, drop out of high school, and turn towards behaviors of juvenile delinquency. This 'achievement gap' thus perpetuates a cycle of low enrollment rates of black students in college or in other competitive fields. The common response is to go headstrong and strengthen the urban school systems, starting with increasing the number of teachers within the school to provide more intimate learning environments. However, many of the teachers that are introduced into these schools are young white recent graduates, who have limited knowledge and empathetic understanding of the more complex racial and financial disadvantages their students deal with.They enter the schools with the notion that will be helping and uplifting struggling students, when actually they are strengthening the paternalistic view of blacks depending on whites to succeed. Their position of power and their symbolic presence as a source of knowledge in an inner city school becomes the window and foundation of how young black minds view white people, and white leaders. It is this interaction that becomes the buttress for black students understanding roles of race relations intersected with ideas of subordination and empowerment. In this paper, I will seek to identify the image of the white teacher in the mind of the black student of the inner city, through my own personal account, direct interview quotes from white teachers, as well including the representation of white teacher-black student relationships as portrayed on mainstream media and popular movies.

Keywords:

Education, Black Students, White Teachers, Teach For America, Inner City, Suburban, Decentralization, Help.