"Racist, yeah?"

I've been working with some middle schoolers this spring - the residency is centered on the writings of Zora Neale Hurston and other writers from the Harlem Renaissance. The kids are writing "porch lies" or folktales in Zora's style and last week they had to come up with 'a big question' that their folktale would answer. "You know," I told them, "like 'why is the grass green?' or 'why does the sun rise in the morning?'"

Some of the kids come up with your standard nature-based questions, but some were a little more interesting. "Why are there immigrants?" "Why do people from different place not get along?" "Why were black people slaves?" The last question came up in the 7th grade class and the teacher pulls me aside and says, "They can't do that question. You'll get in trouble because it's racist." I told her that I didn't come up with the question and didn't have any intention of writing their assignment for them and I certainly didn't think it was racist anyway. In fact, I found it to be a very promising topic for the assignment. "Well," she tells me, "I'm telling you for your own good. There are a lot of politics around this place and you're going to get in trouble for being racist." I told her that, as their teacher, it was completely her call to tell the kids what they could write about, but I was fine with it.

Politics, indeed. I wonder why half of the groups came up with a question about race relations? Maybe because they're not aloud to talk about it? Perhaps this is how folktales are born...