Cultural Miscommunication In School

Racism often comes to the fore not as explicit slurs, but as structural forces which disadvantage minorities in ways white Americans do not experience. Schools are not exempt from structural racism, and the actions of teachers and administrators can reinforce and perpetuate these disadvantages. Many of these actions can stem from cultural miscommunication. Cultural miscommunication is when the cultural practices of a person are incorrectly interpreted. In schools, this often has a negative impact on minority children, when their largely white administrators and teachers misinterpret their actions as subversive or disobedience. This essay will discuss the origins of cultural miscommunication in schools, provide examples of cultural miscommunication

An instance of this can be found in Zaretta Hammond’s Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain, in an exchange between an black student and a white teacher. The black student is sharpening his pencil and the white teacher asks him to sit down, which the black student declined. The teacher became angry and punished the student because she interpreted the declination as disobedience, however, the student was confused because he merely thought she was posing an inquiry. This exemplifies cultural miscommunication because “indirect directives are a feature of white middle class cultural communication style,” but the black student was not aware of this because in his culture, directives are only direct (Hammond 2015, pg. 58). The tension between the teacher and student that likely arose from this miscommunication now is present in the learning environment, ultimately putting the student at a disadvantage. It is also important to note that this is a disadvantage rarely, if ever, felt by white students, further marginalizing minority students. Another example of this miscommunication can be found in the first chapter of Stupidity and Tears by Herbert Kohl. The author tells a story about two Latino boys in his class, Luis and Antonio, and how they displayed “stupid” behavior in school, but not at home. When Kohl visits the boy’s home and speaks to Luis’s sister, Maria, he discovers the reason Luis and Antonio have been acting up in class is because teacher’s have made him feel stupid, so he started to act that way (Kohl 2004). As we discussed in class, white teachers who misinterpret foreign behaviors as defiance or a lack of intelligence create a divide between students of color and their white peers when they act on these biased assumptions. These fifth grade boys from Stupidity and Tears have already internalized the label of inferiority they received from their white