Response to Trainor

This was an interesting article. For me, being a black man, (I prefer this description) I try to see all sides. These “privileged” children are far removed the racial tensions of the 50’s and 60’s. So am I for that matter, but I can see why they would think of Angelou’s piece as being whiny. The author of this piece says she grew up in a mostly white, small Midwestern town. The students are unaware that Angelou grew up in a time where this country was divided by racial lines. These students come from two parent homes, neatly manicured lawns, and the only real thing that they have to worry about is missing soccer practice. I never knew there was such a thing as something called “whiteness studies”. That was an interesting phrase. In mostly all white schools, the faculty seems to tell their students to do all of the right things to succeed:

“For example, teachers, coaches, and administrators emphasized

to students the importance of a positive attitude in sports, social life,

and academic endeavors. Much of the infrastructure at Laurel Canyons supported,

and even necessitated, this emphasis, as I show below. As a result, students

often told each other to “look on the bright side” or “keep a good attitude,”

and they often interpreted literature so that it too taught the power of positive

thinking. When they read a text like Angelou’s, they praised Angelou for her

positive attitude and condemned those passages in the book where Angelou

critiques racism. In those passages, students felt Angelou was overly negative.”

In my school, no such advice was ever offered. I enjoyed reading how the students felt about blacks and their culture. Still, it was a little difficult to find exactly what Trainor was trying to accomplish with this article. Is she trying to establish that racism is taught in both school and home?