An excerpt from The Washington Post -
The invisible tax on black teachers
By John King May
John King is U.S. education secretary.
Research conducted recently by the American Federation of Teachers found that, while more teachers of color are being hired than in the past, they also are leaving the profession more quickly than white teachers.
Improved compensation and working conditions can help address this, of course. But one factor in teachers’ decisions to leave deserves special attention: the “invisible tax.”
According to some African American male teachers, the “invisible tax” is imposed on them when they are the only or one of only a few nonwhite male educators in the building. It is paid, for example, when these teachers, who make up only 2 percent of the teaching force nationally, are expected to serve as school disciplinarians based on an assumption that they will be better able to communicate with African American boys with behavior issues.
It is also paid when they have to be on high alert to prepare their students for racism outside of school. “Every time I take my students to an engineering competition, or to speak with industry partners, or to tour colleges, I have to have the code-switching talk,” explained Harry Preston, an African American physics teacher in Baltimore. “That is a mental tax I personally pay as an educator.”
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Sharif El-Mekki, principal of the Mastery Charter School’s Shoemaker campus in Philadelphia, has noted that the African American teachers he speaks with are of two minds about these extra duties. “They feel honored and appreciated that they are asked,” he said, “but when so many different people are asking them for help, it becomes a burden.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-invisible-tax-on-black-teachers/2016/05/15/6b7bea06-16f7-11e6-aa55-670cabef46e0_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
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