Black children love their relationship to their teachers, and they can become catalysts for our education.   But I could feel her apathy and its vibrational energy emanating from her. In some cases, maybe the cultural deficit was too steep to overcome for most of my white teachers, or maybe they just didn’t care enough. Reasons aren’t excuses. Indifference is a spiritual disease of the heart. I later learned that the sensory apparatus of people exists on a contrast scale. Even though our Black teachers were few, we were able to compare the two and feel the shift of force. As a result of the white teacher’s apathy, I’ve witnessed a few of my peers develop what I now understand as disliking distortion, where we have a tendency not to learn appropriately from someone we dislike. The powerful psychological tendency has altered the trajectory of the lives of countless Black children. 

I distinctly remember the depressive movements elicited during insufferable history lessons as I was being indoctrinated with slavery as the nexus of my existence. There was nothing nostalgic in the curriculum for me. Illumined pictures of “Great White Men” lined the books, walls, and halls, along with their great accomplishments. Contrast these powerful images with those of the gloomy, worn, despondent features of Black leaders devoid of any happiness during their perpetual struggle against oppression till death. The intent was to create an impression. The impression that “whites” are the gods of the earth. They are the standard for which we should all strive. An educational paradigm that Hitler would’ve been proud of had he prevailed. I was given keys to doors that won’t open for me. Taught to believe that the world was benign, but in reality, my world is full of contradictions. Where is justice in that?