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Wounds that can never heal

The power racism holds over children



 

 

There used to be a grade school just west of K-Mart in Rapid City, E.B. Bergquist elementary. Before it was torn down it was over 51 percent Lakota although in my day Lakota students comprised only a fraction of that total.

There was a Fifth Grade teacher, Mrs. Mullin, and in a better world this column would be about what a wonderful, caring mentor she was had there not also been a Sixth Grade teacher named Mrs. Hilmer.

Funny thing was Mrs. Hilmer liked me, she’d call me “my Jimothy.” I liked her back, had no idea she was a bad teacher. Most adults have a poor reading of their reality let alone 11-year-old boys, so I never realized I was devolving into a bad student. I had been an excellent student for Mrs. Mullin the year before. I would stay after school to keep her company while she caught up on her paper work. She’d let me cover her black board with drawings in colored chalk, and she’d tell me I was going to be a famous artist someday.

I expected the same relationship with Mrs. Hilmer, but after only a few weeks in Sixth Grade she moved my desk right up beside her own. At the time I didn’t realize my behavior was disruptive, that she was struggling to keep me in check. Children act out their stress, and she finally pulled me into the hallway, slapped my glasses off my face, shook me by the arm and said, “Finally, one of you comes along with some brains and this is how you act!”

It all probably had something to do with a reading program called SRA. Each level was colorcoded and you tried to reach the highest level, and I reached that highest level first but was surprised when she gave the honor to a Wasicu classmate. Can’t recall what I figured, maybe I figured he really did beat me even though I knew I was ahead by a color level at the end. I figured maybe I was mistaken.

I know how I felt. Unless you have experienced discrimination, racism, you think you might know how it feels. You don’t. It not only wounds, those wounds often refuse to heal, even after long decades, regardless of how successful you become. Maybe it is because a child’s brain is still forming, and so deep hurts register indelibly, hurts that your adult psyche would successfully process. Eventually I didn’t even want to come to school. I would set out in the morning, take a detour down to the grassy creek bank and sit with my back against a tree trunk. I had a stack of books I would read to pass the time, had some crackers in my pocket for lunch. I wasn’t happy being there, it was cold, but it must have been preferable to walking the last two blocks to school.

There was a major event that precipitated that reaction. My friend Bryan Janis and I had been playing on the playground when Mrs. Mullin came up to me. She demanded to know what we were doing, why weren’t we in the art class. We both had no idea about any art class. That set Mrs. Mullin’s teeth on edge, and she ordered us to come along to the principal’s office.

What happened next would change the course of my life. I didn’t realize it at the time. I just assumed Bryan and I were guilty of something. Janis is the most common Lakota surname, so common that when all things Lakota have passed from this world, the last remaining Lakota will probably be a Janis. Another thing common to Lakota is artistic ability. Bryan was an exceptional artist, and that was why we were friends, we’d spend hours at his kitchen table drawing comic books and battle scenes.

Mrs. Mullin had us wait outside the principal’s office and Mrs. Hilmer arrived looking gruff and irritated. They closed the office door behind them and Mrs. Mullin got very animated at Mrs. Hilmer, although we couldn’t make out what was being said, until Mrs. Hilmer’s voice suddenly boomed over everything— “I wanted the opportunity to go to children I knew would take advantage of it!”

That came as a shock to Mrs. Mullin. For her I had been an A and B student. She knew full well Bryan and I were the two most gifted artists in the school. That we would be denied participation in a special art class by a racist teacher incensed her.

Nothing was ever done about it. Whatever disciplinary actions were taken against Mrs. Hilmer, I never knew about them. I went on to North Junior High and after a few weeks I was removed from most of my classes. Mrs. Hilmer’s parting gift to me had been to place me in all the remedial level classes, and the junior high teachers flat out told me I didn’t belong there.

The innocent, trusting nature of children astonishes me. Only days before Mrs. Mullin approached us on the playground, one of the Wasicu boys who Mrs. Hilmer had sent to art class in our stead approached me and Bryan. He couldn’t draw a waterfall and we asked him why he even needed to draw a waterfall. He said it was for the art class, and we had no idea what he meant, so we drew the waterfall for him, and he thanked us. And then we went back to our regular routine, under a racist teacher, in a racist school, where even Mrs. Mullin could not protect us. God bless her wherever she is at. I realize now the incident must have been as painful for her as it was for us.

(James Giago Davies can be
reached at skindiesel@msn.com)


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