Racism and Terrorism (ePub)

One of my most resonant encounters was with a professor who taught an English course. Having forgotten how many pages he expected for the first of two required papers, I went and asked him. He put a hand to my shoulder and said, "I asked for 18 pages, OK. But give me what you can, Emmanuel."

The exchange struck me deeply. The professor had done two things at once: he had told me what the high standard was for his class, but he also invited me to strive, if I wished, to meet a lower standard. The instruction was not lost on me. I had little doubt that, had I been a white student, my professor would have simply said, “Write 18 pages.” As simple as that, but being Black, I apparently presented a challenge for the man that his mind could not easily disentangle. The truth was that my skin color fed the perception that, perhaps, I was intellectually disabled; at any rate, that I was in all likelihood incapable of exerting the same mental rigor or rising to quite the same level of intellectual expectation as my white classmates.

That the professor in question was not someone against whom you could easily sustain a charge of racism made the experience, for me, all the more instructive. Most people who know him would, I suspect, describe him as nice, well meaning, and sweet. I would not be surprised if broadminded was thrown into the mix, as well. At any rate, it would occur to nobody to accuse the man of racism. Nor would such a charge be fair. He just does not strike you as that kind of person. So how was I to account for the fact that the professor felt that my mind was somehow deficient?