A young black man talks about the most racist field trip ever... (funny and relevant)

 

I like this video for two reasons. The first reason is that it is hilarious This guy really knows how to tell a story. The second reason is that while being funny he also makes some great social commentary about whiteness and racialization in the U.S. I see two good points that can be made on those topics. First, the simple fact that the teacher thought it was a good idea to bring a class of black kids to a cotton filed for a filed trip speaks to the white idea that racism doesn't exist. Second, in this colourblindness the teacher forgets that there are places and actions that might seem benign can be offensive and have racializing effects on the children by having a cotton filed remind them about the racist history of the country they live in and that their history as black people is very different than those of white people.

Why did the teacher bring a whole class of black kids to a cotton field? Was it white ignorance, simply not understanding, from a position of racial privilege, that this might be insulting to any number of the children or their parents? Maybe it was part of the school curriculum this boys parents didn't know or did not like, which still doesn't make it right. I think that unless the explicit purpose of the field trip was to educate on colonialism, slavery and the origins of the U.S. cotton industry, then a class of black kids shouldn't have been brought there. The only reason the U.S. cotton industry ever had a chance is because the colonial powers had the enlightenment philosophy sufficiently sussed that they could justify slavery to stay competitive (Goldberg, 2001) 

It seems that the white privilege of the teacher or school, or whoever made the decision, forgot that blacks have historically been left out of the social contract, and still are in many ways - a point that Goldberg sets the stage for and Mill's "Racial Liberalism" (2003) and MacIntosh (1988) can settle, in that dominance on the part of whiteness was asserted on these black children through this field trip, and put into the children's heads without them really knowing what was going on, but their parents instantly took issue with the trip and complained to the teacher because as black adults they can identify this filed trip with the injustice they know they live as an intrinsic part of having black skin (Fanon, 1952).