That beginning part of The White Boy Shuffle really stuck out to me. The Santa Monica multicultural elementary school Gunnar went to was wack and I noticed really weird parallels to my own elementary school experience that I know were not 'ok.
From 3rd to 5th grade I went to Booker T. Washington Elementary School here in Campaign. It's in the middle of a lower-class, mostly African American neighborhood, so when a few years prior to my transferring, when they decided to totally renovate the school and add in a 'Gifted Program', it was a somewhat big deal. My grade and the grades above me each had only 2 classes (so we just had an extra classroom) for whatever reason, and all the grades below mine had 3 classes of students. My class had 15 students, which was relatively small.
My 'Gifted' class of 15 consisted of mostly Asian and white kids. I was the token latino, and there was one African American girl. The other class consisted of 23 African American kids and one white girl. Its suffice to say, we had problems.
There was a weird mix of "you shouldn't see color", "embrace all cultures", "the other class is weird", and "speak properly goddamn it" between us, and the mostly white teachers. In the book the teacher asks "what shouldn't we judge people by? what should we judge them by instead?" and blah blah. We had somewhat of the same thing, between each other we practiced this no-difference shit because in our eyes we were all 'gifted'- our supposed 'smartness' made us all great friends with each other. On multicultural night we would all dress in our 'traditional' garb and eat each other's specially cooked foods. Yeah, multiculturalism worked so well within my class. We shamed the other class for not being as 'smart' as us. We all had long commute times because most of us lived west of Prospect.
How did this make the 'normal' class feel? not good. It must've felt horrible watching a bunch of kids that aren't anywhere near the color of your skin calling themselves 'gifted' and 'smart', living in comparatively much more wealth. Something that kind of makes me uneasy was a saying among the teachers- "ain't ain't a world and you ain't gonna use it". They paid special attention to the students in these 'normal' classes to speak 'proper' English, almost as if they were destroying the black vernacular.
All of this gifted/normal multicultural stuff really screwed with both classes minds to the point where we actively hated each other in 5th grade. My class was bonded through its 'giftedness' and the other class bonded through the fact it was 'normal', it was almost like they were being forced to believe that they were never going to get as far as those kids in my class, because they weren't gifted.
We can definitely see this when Gunnar moves to the 'hood' and his new school. I saw the Shakespeare thing and I instantly knew- I would have been one of those kids in the Shakespearean Garb, pitying the others. Its not something I'm proud of- I and my dumbass friends said many things that may have really instilled a sense of inferiority into the other class.
Gifted is a strong word. I don't use it anymore. I don't claim to be 'gifted', and I hope others stop using it as well. All children have gifts- you just have to let them explore these gifts. Sorting them out into 2 different classrooms and telling one class that they're 'better' than the other solves nothing.
