Zero tolerance in schools = zero sense

Who am I to police my black students’ speech?

Marlon Anderson, an African American school security guard in Wisconsin who uttered the N-word in his own defense and got fired for it under the school’s zero-tolerance policy, was reinstated last week. The school board president asked district officials to rescind his termination after more than 1,000 students staged a walkout.

The reversal is good news for Anderson, as well as for rationality and reason. Hopefully, administrators actually listened to the students they are supposed to serve and realized that more students were hurt by the callous firing of a dedicated school employee than by hearing an adult tell an angry student to stop calling him the racial slur.

If we’re going to find ways to respond more reasonably to such matters — the subtleties of race, hateful words and hate speech — then we have to understand where we’ve gone wrong.

What should the principal who enforced the zero-tolerance policy have done? A more reasonable response might have been to let it go. After all, it’s hard to make a case that either the belligerent boy or Anderson committed a hate crime against the other. But high school administrators know the risks of making decisions based on logic rather than policy. They are under constant scrutiny, and everyone remembers every decision and measures its fairness against every other decision.

What happens if in the future, a white student or teacher at that school uses the N-word? Reasonable people would say such a case is different and context is everything, but zero-tolerance polices about language — as simplistic and tiresome as they are — exist as a shield to protect educators from accusations of bias and favoritism.

It has got to feel queasy to be a white educator passing judgment on African American students or staff about using the N-word. But, queasy or not, sometimes we find ourselves compelled to make such judgments.

White teacher’s experience

In 1992, during my first year as a teacher and basketball coach, a middle-age African American school bus driver threw my team and me off his bus and refused to drive us to our playoff game because some of the guys were casually using the N-word with each other. The driver seemed most contemptuous of me for letting them use it. I had allowed these African American teenagers that freedom because, as a white man, I did not believe myself in a position to regulate it. But as far as the driver was concerned, my silence had endorsed the offensive word.

I apologized to him and huddled outside with the team and found my own moral authority representing the driver. “You don’t know what he’s been through,” I told the guys. “He doesn’t want to hear that word and you ought to respect that. There are people who are hurt by that word.”

They apologized to the driver and sat in silence while we rode to the game.

Since then, I have tried to hold onto the moral authority I realized that day. I think about that driver and the respect he deserved. I imagine how he might feel and what he might say. I don’t think he would have wanted Marlon Anderson fired. I think he would have sympathized with Anderson and understood that outrage and urgency had forced that word out of his mouth.

I hope we can get beyond the fear and outrage of incidents like this one. I hope educators can find ways to turn discomfort into educational opportunities, without students having to walk out of class to prompt us.

Respect trumps race

Last year, a student at the school where I teach posted ugly racist messages, including the N-word, online. The student is a Chicana, and those messages sparked outrage. African American students felt attacked. Latino students felt judged for the actions of one. Our administrators, who are African American, did not want to expel the student. They thought the school had an obligation to try to enlighten her, and they saw an opportunity to teach all our students about hate speech, the perils of the internet and the power of humility and forgiveness.

I thought they were right, though I wondered whether I could respond that way if I were the principal. Perhaps the administrator’s race shouldn’t matter. I’m not sure what that bus driver would say about it. Many of our African American students complained to me and another white teacher about what they considered a weak response to the racist rant. We listened and encouraged them to express their outrage in constructive ways and promised to help them be heard.

Ironic? That African American students complained to white teachers about what they considered the racial insensitivity of African American administrators? Maybe not so ironic at all.

They knew us, trusted us and knew that we respected them as people, and maybe that matters more than anything. I think there are no perfect policies for addressing these questions, but if we are willing to know, respect and listen to each other, and have the courage to assert our decency, then we can somehow work things out.

Larry Strauss, a high school English teacher in South Los Angeles, is a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors and the author of “Students First and Other Lies” and, on audio, “Now’s the Time” (narrated by Kim Fields).