Some of Us are Brave

I borrow the title of my post from what I hope is the well-known and widely-read anthology:

Hull, Gloria T., Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith (eds.). But
Some of Us are Brave: All the Women are White, All the Blacks are
Men. New York: Feminist Press, 1982.

Apparently, however, the lesson that there are women of color making significant contributions in our lives, and to the world, is still today often lost.

One of my Facebook friends posted a note recently highlighting the song, "A Dream" by Common & Will.i.am which is featured in the recently released film Freedom Writers starring Hilary Swank.

It's an interesting song that samples Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech "I Have a Dream," and based on the trailer that I saw, the film itself looks like a compelling one.

But, all the recent publicity around Freedom Writers got me to thinking about real-life stories of amazing teachers, and the representations of them.

Doing a keyword search for "teachers" in the International Movie Database (IMDb) yields a long list of results. I was particularly interested in "dedicated-teacher" and "teacher-hero" results because those seemed to encapsulate the kind of film Freedom Writers fell in line with. Sure enough, I found amongst those lists many (though not all) of the films I had been playing back in my mind:

Stand and Deliver
Akeelah and the Bee
The Ron Clark Story
Lean on Me
Dangerous Minds
Music of the Heart
Dead Poets Society
Good Will Hunting
Mona Lisa Smile
The Emperor’s Club

That's when it hit me WHO was being featured as the dedicated/hero teacher...

Hilary Swank – Freedom Writers
Edward J. Olmos – Stand and Deliver
Lawrence Fishburne - Akeelah and the Bee
Matthew Perry – The Ron Clark Story
Morgan Freeman – Lean on Me
Michelle Pfeiffer – Dangerous Minds
Meryl Streep - Music of the Heart
Robin Williams - Dead Poets Society
Robin Williams – Good Will Hunting
Julia Roberts – Mona Lisa Smile
Kevin Kline - The Emperor’s Club

Granted, a good number of these films are based on "true" stories, and the actors chosen for these roles in part reflects those "true" stories. But, it's also the case that not all true stories have the privilege of being told, and that there are many more stories out there.

Still, I found the pattern peculiar...

Do you see what's missing?

Yeah, that's right...not one woman of color teacher in the bunch!

Okay, I'll admit, I haven't done the research to give you figures of exactly how many K-12 teachers are women, and how many of those women are women of color, but I know that they exist--contrary to cinematic representations. (Again, I'll admit that I haven't seen every film that might fall in this genre, and I am probably overlooking some great teacher films that feature a woman of color protagonist. Please, if you know films like these, share the titles!)

Just goes to show the extent to which stories of teachers who are white women and men of color in classrooms dominated by students of color have been made to be "extraordinary" stories of dedication and heroism, while stories of teachers who are women of color amongst students of color are overlooked in their "ordinariness."

Perhaps a sign of lingering, racist, mammy paradigms? If not, then what?