Inherent Discrimination

People are shaped by their environment and culture. Some who claim to be liberal and open about race issues are sometimes themselves the leading bigots in the room. They don't realize it but it is apparent to others.

The Reading Teacher at the William Lloyd Garrison School stopped Kozol from letting the students read Mary Jane, a 218 page novel about the only black girl in an all-white school. The students had read it voraciously. For many it was the first book they had ever really cared about. Kozol also gave them a children's biography of Martin Luther King Jr. Again many of the students fell in love with this book. The Reading Teacher stopped it on the grounds that "they were too difficult for most of the pupils (this was not the truth), and then, only latter, that they were about people who were Negro."

"I wouldn't mind using them, was the way she finally said it to me [Kozol], if these were all Negro children in your room. But it would not be fair to the white children in the class to force such books on them too. We do not have all Negroes. If we did, it would be different. I could see using them if this were a segregated school. But it isn't. We have white children. As matters stand it simply would not be right or fair." "Whether it was right or fair to the large majority of Negroes to use all white books for their regular work was a question which this other-wise observant teacher was not willing to ask. Only whether it would be fair to white children, for once in their lives, to encounter the reverse." (Death at an Early Age)