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171 They were mostly black, I was white. They lived in the inner-city, I grew up in the suburbs. They knew bus systems and row homes and the subtleties of local drug-pyramids. I knew minivans and spacious isolated backyards and after-school specials starring skinny white kids whose characters popped stimulants so they could pull all-nighters. I grew up middle class, and they, my students, hovered around or below the poverty line. And yet, the differences between my students and me were not usually the subjects of our conversations. Perhaps because I was too busy teaching. Perhaps because the differences were so obvious, we didn’t need to say them aloud. Still, we occasionally stumbled upon the symptoms like little walls between us, such as the day I told a class that I’d never been in a fight before, and the kids couldn’t believe me. It was beyond their comprehension that I, a grown person, didn’t at some point in my twenty-some years need to raise my fists and sock it to somebody. But I insisted. Unless you counted the times I pulled my sister’s hair or bit her arm, I’d never fought anyone. Some kids took my reference to amateur fighting tactics as evidence that maybe I was telling the truth. Maybe Ms. Kirn really had never rumbled. But a few kids still shook their heads in disbelief. No way. No how. Everybody fights somebody, eventually. And sometimes the subject of race came up during the sporadic but oddly recurrent discussions about how we cared for our hair, which went hand-in-hand with how much lotion we put on our skin, which led to some kids’ shock: how could I never wear lotion? How did my skin not become ashy? And why did I wash my hair almost every day? Didn’t I know it could fall out? I must have been lying, Davon Green said, especially since my hair looked the same every day. I must have had it styled once a week. “It’s the truth,” I said. I resisted turning to the one or two white kids in any given class who represented the nine percent white population at Southwestern, a sizeable percentage for a Baltimore school. Who wants to Chapter 12 Reading Powhitetrash 172 Teaching in the Terrordome be called out for skin color? So, in the middle of a lesson, while my kids’ textbooks were splayed open on their desks, I added, “I think white skin produces more oil than black skin.” Aside from making myself feel like a walking oil slick, my comment also made me realize something: I rarely announced my whiteness in class. I felt strangely self-conscious. I felt bare, and ready to cover up my hands with gloves. “You ever notice that?” Davon continued. “Ms. Kirn hair look the same every day.” Davon was stalling. I tried to steer my kids back to our lesson plan. But he persisted with his characteristic musings. “Ms. Kirn, how come when white people get wet in the rain, they smell like dog? You ever notice that?” He looked up plainly. Before moving to Baltimore, I would have chalked this comment up to some wise-ass affront. But Davon was sincere. He wanted my explanation . Because the question felt like a further digressive tug from my lesson , I think I just shrugged and moved on. But had I let myself engage in Davon’s distractions, my real answer would have been, No, Davon, not until coming to Southwestern and not until immersing myself in a mostly black culture, which produces completely different smells than my own, had I noticed that, yes, white people, when wet from rain, smell vaguely like my childhood pet, Benji. Noelani raised the topic some time later. “Do your kids tell you that white people smell like dog when it rains?” “Yes!” “Did you ever notice that it’s true?” she asked. I nodded. “Weird,” she said. “I need to start carrying an umbrella,” I said. These moments were unusual, though. Race was more like an undercurrent than a topic of conversation. My kids had made note of my black Mary Jane shoes—Look at Ms. Karen cute shoes!—or my folded-over, ribbed, yellow socks. (Three girls had pointed and laughed at those a full minute, unable to calm themselves down enough to explain what was so funny.) But my whiteness was a subject rarely mentioned. When it...

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