In her book, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, Lisa Delpit presents a disturbing view of reality. She invites us to take a glimpse of a black special education teacher teaching in a black community, a black educator teaching a multicultural urban elementary, and a black principal in graduate school. Their commentary on communication with white people has a common thread. "They won't listen", "they listen, but they don't hear","They don't really hear me,.. What you have to say about your life, your children, doesn't mean anything." The silence that Delpit speaks of is an intentional decision of the non dominant educators to stop engaging the dominant culture educators because they disagree so fundamentally with how white people educate poor and black children. As there is no voice of those in the trenches actually teaching the poor and minorities, thus no dissension, white educators deduce that agreement in how to teach children of non dominant cultures has been reached. Recall the words of Johnson, "The trouble around the difference is really about privilege and power-the existence of privilege and the lopsided distribution of power that keeps it going". Silence is certainly lopsided....
Delpit asserts, "Children have the right to their own language, their own culture. We must fight cultural hegemony and fight the system by insisting that children be allowed to express themselves in their own language style. It is not they, the children, who must change, but the schools. To push children to do anything else is repressive and reactionary." Strong words... Delpit recognizes the necessity, like Johnson, to speak plainly about the power game that exists in U.S. education today. She states "I prefer to be honest with my students. I tell them that their language and cultural style is unique and wonderful but that there is a political power game that is also being played, and if they want to be in on that game there are certain games that they too must play." But she underscores her statement of reality with the understanding that playing the game doesn't mean agreeing with it. Delpit offers examples of teachers who use two forms of communication, the power code formal English and the informal, heritage English. Codes of power are important to understand for students. It is critical for instructors, the conduit of code, to understand how their communication is received both directly and indirectly. Delpit comments on a particular method of "de-emphasizing power", an indirect form of communication by white educators that is understood by white children of the dominant culture as a way to meet the student in a less threatening way, but by children in the non-dominant culture is understood as a request with alternative choices.
She writes of the culture of power and similar to Johnson's "luxury of obliviousness" states that "those with power are frequently least aware of-or least willing to acknowledge its existence". Like Johnson, she sees the solution to leveling the power playing field coming from those in the dominant position, "I am certain that if we are truly to effect societal change, we cannot do so from the bottom up, but we must push and agitate from the top down."
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