Lost in translation

If the Seattle School District cannot find more articulate, less ham-fisted ways of talking about racial equity, I'll have to stop enjoying a cup of joe with the morning newspaper.

Imagine taking a swig of steaming brew before gazing back at a page and stumbling upon something like, say, an intelligent and normally reasonable school official calling summer break a byproduct of institutional racism.

The same administrator noted Jewish people have it easy because if they choose to, they can hide their ethnicity, while people of color cannot hide theirs.

Different day, another spit-take when I read about a well-respected black principal who informed a room full of white parents that they made her uncomfortable; indeed, parents like them were the reason she transferred to different schools.

We're not going to fire these folks — this is, after all, Seattle — but at least get them translators.

The city school system's laudable advocacy of racial and economic diversity suffers at the hands of people my grandmother would have written off as "educated fools." Steeped in the pedagogy of equity, race relations and cultural competencies, these folks open their mouths and the entire city cringes.

If the School District appears obsessed with race, it is rightly so. The irony of the federal No Child Left Behind law is its adamant emphasis on race. Leave no child behind, not the poor one in the corner or the Spanish-speaking one with his head on the desk. Move forward together or get dinged collectively.

The district's anemic budget takes an annual six-figure hit to support the Office of Equity and Race Relations, charged with rooting out cultural insensitivity in curriculum, instruction and textbooks.

With so many other pressing needs, this kind of fiscal investment is worth it only if we can get beyond inarticulate bromides about Jews and summer break.

The district's highly paid equity-office director meant lengthy school breaks deprive low-income and/or struggling students of much-needed class time and/or the chance for a decent meal. A disproportionate number of those who go intellectually and nutritionally hungry in the summer are children of color. Hence, the need for summer programs offering breakfast, lunch and classroom instruction.

Next up, the inescapability of race. There is a theory that people of color suffer a unique form of discrimination because skin color cannot be hidden or denied. This theory marginalizes the discriminatory experiences of whites, including Jews and gay people. Enough said.

It is easy to make district employees look like clowns. Indeed, they provide a wealth of material. But after we've all had a good chuckle at their expense, a look beneath the layers of poorly chosen words is in order. Either that or a translator.

The district isn't unique in this. Lots of things get lost in translation when people of different backgrounds and experiences are trying to talk to each other.

A colleague wonders if the district isn't aggravating racial tensions with its clumsy diversity dance. A better culprit of racial tensions is levitating housing prices.

If homogenous neighborhoods such as Queen Anne, Magnolia and points farther north weren't so expensive, people of different hues and backgrounds wouldn't be elbowing their way into the Central Area and South End.

Fine. People have gotten together for flimsier reasons. But we don't speak the same language and it shows. Take the saga of Madrona Elementary School. A group of families, mostly white but a few black ones, abandoned the school because they felt the principal paid more attention to struggling students at the expense of their kids. These families wanted to talk about music, gardening, exercise and other luxuries. They whipped out checkbooks, rolled up their sleeves and talked of improving the place. The translated version was something akin to missionaries offering religion and shoes to the natives.

I understand both sides. The correct response to someone's offer of help would have been "thanks, the more hands on deck the merrier." One group of Madrona parents felt insulted; another group felt rejected. Rather than a translator, the two groups opted for a divorce.

This is the kind of racial/cultural divide the next superintendent will walk into. At the risk of turning the district into a version of the United Nations, I'd recommend the schools chief bring his or her own translator.

Lynne K. Varner's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is lvarner@seattletimes.com