Crossing the Hall: What Malcolm Taught the White Lady

by Lori Wojtowicz

Having graduated from a small, private, and predominantly white college in 1977, I thought I was highly educated. After all, I had graduated magna cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa had taught me the secret handshake. I began teaching, confident in my knowledge. For the first few years of my thirty-five-year career, I taught higher level English courses composed mostly of white students. Even though there was a great diversity in my high school, I never questioned why there were so very few black students in my class. Where were they? Then my schedule changed, and I crossed the hall to teach African American Literature. My new students were all black. I am all white. My true education began with those steps across a hall.

194 pages, Paperback

Published June 29, 2018

About the author

Educator Finally Learns

My life has been lived in classrooms. A teacher for thirty-five years, I write not of what I taught, but of what I learned. The lessons were not easy. I learned racism is alive and well, not only in our school system and American society, but also within myself. Crossing The Hall: Exposing An American Divide, strips away the myths that keep white America blind to the truth. It poses the questions that white America will need to ask of themselves if we are ever to approach true equality. I wish I had asked the questions sooner. I now work for WestEd, a nonprofit, public research, and development agency in San Francisco as a national educational facilitator.

Reviews

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book last summer just after reading The Hate You Give, and have to say I'd recommend reading them in conjunction as they both leave you with a great deal to think about as a white woman trying to understand the depths of racism in our society, but also in ourselves. I've come away understanding that each of us has a great deal of work to do in this area and it will only come from open and frank conversations about our own experiences and impressions. No matter how far we've come, we still have so much work to do.

[Bethany M. Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Whiteness is so pervasive, it’s almost invisible. I was taught to remain blind.”

Our biases are deeply rooted in our culture. Recognizing them is the first step towards dismantling them.

Lori spent 35 years in the classroom dismantling her inherent bias and prejudice that she had learned in her white Christian culture. She has penned everything she has learned, and like any good educator, she says, “there is so much more for me to learn.” Her goal for this book is for teachers to think about the ghosts they carry with them.

Through her use of research, the teachings of Malcolm X and Plato, and thought provoking personal stories, Lori has masterfully reflected on the issues of racism, inequality, the achievement gap, and equity.

She uses powerful symbolism to describe living in the echo chamber being surrounded by people who look like you as “The Land of White People”.

When you live in a cave, seeing the sunlight hurts your eyes.

Most people are willing to talk about and examine oppression as long as you are talking bout it happening somewhere else. Another country.
In a book.
Another culture.

When white people are asked by BIPOC to examine their privilege, their bias, their complicity in white supremacy, it can result in guilt, feeling accused, and cause resentment in the person who dared to bring it up.

Furthermore, white, Christian culture teaches you that anger is impolite and improper (as opposed to righteous anger as strength in order to survive). If you as a white person get angry with fellow white people for continuing to put on blinders to injustice, you are evicted from the land of the white people.

The most impactful lessons she shares in this incredible book:
1. Examine your overt and covert racism
2. Examine institutionalized and internalized racism
3. Examine your conferred dominance.

Since the murder of #georgefloyd, I have seen many more teachers willing to start on step 1 and some get to Step 2, but Step 3 where you examine privileges you did not earn is where we are losing too many.

This book will teach the 82% of teachers in America who are white women how to empower students without denying them power within the classroom.

This book challenges the power structure and demand better of educators where we stop TEACHING racism through the education of exclusion.

Lori’s exercise from the book:
Use four words to describe yourself.
Mine were: Teacher, wife, mother, friend

If the first 4 words that came to mind don’t have anything to do with race, it is because race doesn’t define your lived experience. That is the divide with your students. Start there.

Disclaimer: I was given a copy of this book from the author. All opinions, as always, are my own.

[Julie Porter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lori Wojtowicz's book Crossing the Hall: Exposing an American Divide is the kind of book designed to make the Reader uncomfortable. And I mean that in a good way.



Crossing the Hall explores racism particularly within our public schools and how it affects the future generations over the years. She asks some tough uncomfortable questions that ask the Reader to look at how they really feel about other races and how much interaction that they have had with different types of people. It is a book that challenges the Reader away from their safe assumptions much in the same way that Wojtawicz had to confront hers.



Wojtowicz uses her own experience with race to reveal how she had her own biases in which she had been previously unaware. The point of her own experience reveals that she admitted that she made mistakes and assumed the wrong things and that she worked to correct them. She realized that she was a work in progress and needed to change her behavior and thinking.



Probably like many white people author, Lori Wojtowicz never considered herself racist. Sure, she had a privileged background in what she derisively calls The Land of Only White but her parents were fairly liberal or so she believed. She was an educator at a school with a racially diverse student body. It must have been a coincidence that the students in the Honors English program in which she taught and had the most economic advantages were mostly white right?



She followed Martin Luther King Jr. and supported the ACLU. She grew up in a post-Civil Rights era, was raised to treat the races equally and claimed that she “didn't see color.”



Wojtowicz held onto those beliefs until she was assigned to teach African-American Literature to a classroom of mostly African-American students. She realized that even though the students in her current class and the Honors program may have gone to the same school, used the same lockers, ate in the same cafeterias, and walked through the same hallways, they couldn't have been further apart.



Wojtowicz compares her transition from the Land of Only White to connecting with African-American students to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. She originally thought that as a teacher, it was her job to bring students from the safe darkness of the cave into the uncertain knowledge of the light. She realized that she was in as much darkness as her students and that it was those same students who brought her from her safe assumptions and generalizations to confront her own biases and become a better teacher.



She also saw influence in the work of Malcolm X and how he wrote about systemic racism and how many institutions are stacked against people of color depriving them of opportunities that are given freely to white people. He saw this system as one of control and oppression and Wojtowicz understood her unintentional role in that system. This forced her to see that racism wasn't something that ended when segregation ended in the 1960’s and the people who practiced didn't always wear white sheets and hoods. Racism instead is still alive and thriving.



Most of Wojtowicz's book focuses on individual experiences with racism. It seeks to change the system, true but mostly it looks at how the individual can change their mind and in doing that, change the system. Particularly the main focus is on teachers and how they can recognize their own unintentional racism and they can get beyond those actions to become more inclusive towards students of color.



In her book, Wojtowicz identified five different forms of racism: overt racism, covert racism, institutional racism, internalized racism, and conferred dominance.



Overt racism is the most familiar form, the one that many insist they are not. Slavery and segregation were forms as well as the Ku Klux Klan and lynch mobs. They participated in violence against black people because of their skin color. Many people recognize this form of racism, but Wojtawicz points out that not everyone gets to this level. Many think that “As long as I am not going to Klan meetings or calling black people the 'n’- word then I cannot possibly be a racist.” Wojtawicz’s book proves that this is not always the case.



Covert racism is a form of racism that many white people fall into without being aware of it. Wojtowicz saw it herself when she was a girl and her parents were going out for the evening. They were stunned that their babysitter was African-American and made excuses to not go out rather than leave their child with a black woman.



Wojtowicz also saw it in her professional career with teachers who wondered out loud how they could teach “those students.” She also recognized it in students who said that teachers never called on them or expected too much from them, so they either withdrew from class, misbehaved, or asked to be transferred.

Covert racism is the type of racism where a white person's experience with black people is only limited to music videos, movies, and news reports that give him the stereotype that all black people are thugs and drug dealers, so can't manage a friendly “hey” to an African-American person that walks by.



This is the type of racism that inspires someone to tell racist jokes or make comments and when they are called out on it, the person insists “Well my black friends don't mind.” This is the type of racism that occurs when a white couple moves to a largely African-American neighborhood. They worry about crime when it didn't bother them before when they lived in a mostly white neighborhood. It occurs when a white woman walks down the street followed by a black man and she instantly clenches in fear and panic that he will rape or rob her. She would greet or even flirt with him if he were a white man.



This is the type of racism which throws out the words and phrases like “you people,” “some of my best friends are black,” and “I'm not a racist but…”



Institutional racism is the type of racism that Malcolm X spoke most freely about. This is the type that is sustained by laws, customs, and practices that produce inequalities.

This is the racism that never died. In fact, it is becoming more and more prevalent within the current Presidential Administration and states, many of which are lined up to implement similar policies.



This is seen when in an attempt to balance the budget, governments cut social programs that severely affect poor families, particularly ones in the inner cities and largely black neighborhoods. When Medicaid programs like better health care are cut, people can't always go to the doctor and are frequently absent from work or are too ill to take care of their family members. Economically disadvantaged schools often provide students and faculty with older books, dated technology and equipment, minimal extracurricular activities, and the faculty and staff have to make do with what they have. Housing in these neighborhoods are often a problem as many houses and apartments aren't well kept and often families are left homeless. When institutions don't provide the people with the proper care they need, that has a detriment on the individual and societal well being.



Internal racism often leads to self-hate. Wojtowicz saw many black students respond in this way. Some fully embraced the “thug” stereotype that white students and teachers already assumed about them. Girls with dark skin said that they would only marry boys with lighter skin or preferred straight hair to their own kinky and curly hair. She saw students who while bright were afraid to enroll in honors programs because they “were for whites only” or said that family members ridiculed them when they “talked white.”



Wojtowicz referred to the study in the 1940’s in which Dr. Kenneth Clark showed black and white dolls to a group of black children and asked which they would rather play with. The children selected the white dolls. This study was instrumental during the Brown Vs. Board of Education case that helped to end official segregation in public schools. However, in 2005 activist Kira Davis repeated the exact same study with African-American girls in Harlem and got the exact same results. In 2010, child psychologist Margaret Beale Spencer reflected on a study in which children compared pictures of skin tones and found that children are still taught to devalue dark colors and value lighter colors.



The way Wojtowicz describes internal racism is similar to an abused child with their parents. The parent constantly yells at, hits, and criticizes the child and the child feels that their parent is right. They doubt themselves even if others tell them otherwise. They have a negative self-image because their parents made them believe it. The child grows and even as an adult, they still hear their parent’s voice in their head. That negative self-image remains and affects how they behave at work, with friends, or with their spouse and children.



Now imagine those abusive parents being several parents. Imagine them being teachers, principals, police officers, in short every authority figure that child personally encounters. Imagine them being political leaders who hold other people in more worth than that child. How likely do you think that child will challenge that abuse and instead withdraw and accept their impoverished life or become the criminal they expect them to become?



Conferred dominance is also known as white privilege. This is the result of all of the previous forms of racism: acquiring privilege that was not earned by merit. It was earned by the simple virtue of being the majority, being born white. Wojtowicz writes that it's when people don't think about being white. She said that she doesn't either. “As a member of a racial majority in America, we can choose to think about race or we can choose to ignore it...Race does not affect our lives on a daily basis. When it comes to race, we can choose ignorance.”



Wojtowicz writes that white people don't even realize their dominance. Even in little things such as default settings on games which start off with a white person until the player changes their character or that crayons describe peach as “flesh” colored assuming that every child who picks up that crayon has the same color of flesh. These are things which some might perceive as trivial but show how homogeneous the white perspective is that it is omnipresent without a thought.



Conferred dominance is also in larger more important issues such as when many white people protested against Affirmative Action programs in colleges providing acceptance for people of color. They failed to acknowledge that these same schools often had legacy admissions which guaranteed acceptance to white children of alumni.



It is also shown when predominantly white schools have clubs, activities, student government, and have students who volunteer, take SAT courses, drive and receive cars, and go on vacations. The students may be stressed because of the active student life and often seek therapy.



Students in predominantly black schools ride buses or with friends and family, work in jobs to support their families, care for younger siblings, and don't have time to participate in activities. Stress often comes in the forms of homelessness or unemployment.

When college applications are filled, the administrators often inquire how involved the student was in school with activities and volunteer work and such. Of course they will look at the white student that was able to do those activities and ignore the black student that was not even though they both worked hard to earn the same grades.



Of course, the same white privilege opportunities carry over into employment. While officially there are anti-discriminatory laws that insist that employers cannot discriminate based on color, Wojtowicz reveals that isn't always the case.



A 2008 Princeton University study showed that black applicants are less likely to be called back for job interviews than white applicants. That even applies to white applicants who checked the box for felony convictions vs. black applicants with clean records.

Wojtawicz makes several suggestions that teachers can implement to change their own way of thinking. One of them is to take part in active listening as her school did when they held a think tank with students to discuss problems with racism.

Wojtawicz also discusses the six levels of pedagogy. The highest level is that of the Coach. The Coach encourages and guides but it's the student that acts and does the work.

One of the most important things that a teacher can do is participate In shared power. Shared power in curiosity, emotions, dignity, and finding a purpose.

[Lois Strachan · Rating 5 out of 5]

While the educational system forms the setting for this exploration of questions of race, inclusion and exclusion, it is equally a thought-provoking statement about society as a whole. The questions and reflections it stimulated for me, and the conversations it generated amongst my family and friends were highly impactful.
A text I may well read again.

[Karma · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent and important read, especially for teachers.

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book for all educators

If you want to learn to be a good educator, I suggest this book. It speaks about the “Land of the White” and how we refuse to allow any one to have the same privileges.

[Flemingj · Rating 5 out of 5]

So glad I finshed this the night before the first day back to school. Really reminded me to focus on my students.

[Nancy Millar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful book of hope

This book woke memories of being a white kid going to an inner city Detroit school in the 60’s. It reminded me that for all intents and purposes I’m back in The Land of Only White and will have to work hard for the rest of my life to eliminate the inherent racism that comes with that. Thank you Lori for sharing this story of courage and awakening. We all have a
Lot of waking up to do. This book helps to understand that. JBBM

[Sean Kottke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essentially a memoir of an English teacher getting woke, this book does a good job of operationalizing core ideas in anti-racist thinking within the context of the literature classroom. The author avoids what might otherwise come off as a self-congratulatory journey by candidly owning her own positionality as a citizen of "the Land of Only White" and problematizing the white savior myth in popular narratives of teaching. She owns her white fragility and does not indulge in white ladies' tears. For long-time grapplers with white supremacy and anti-racist ideology, there's nothing new here that hasn't been explored elsewhere - in fact, within some of the texts cited here - and the challenge of my daily work is crafting policy that ensures new educators approach their work with an anti-racist equity lens from day one, not after a career of trial and error. The book could definitely use more careful proofreading (I can be an unforgiving reader of books written by English teachers). Led/lead, aide/aid, it's/its, reverie/revere, and "distain" instead of "disdain" are just a few of the more obvious errata.