For as long as I can remember, the mantra has been "We need more educators of color". This directive is usually aimed at white teachers and professors, many of whom come from middle class backgrounds. What gets lost in the debate is that if you are a person of color, an immigrant or from a working-class background, being an educator is an economic luxury you cannot afford.
The comments that teachers don't teach for the income downplays the economic challenges that educators from disadvantaged backgrounds face. If you do not have other sources of income or a spouse with a high paying job, what a typical K-20 educator earns is not enough to build equity. If you are the first in your family to attend college, you cannot choose a profession that pays less than if you went into computer science, engineering or a skilled trade, because it is up to you to shore up the financial cushion on which the rest of your family and future generations depend. Your toehold in the middle-class is too tenuous to risk on the ideal of giving back to the community, especially when your earnings match or are below the working classes you came from.
So, if you want educators of color from diverse economic backgrounds, you are going to have to raise salaries substantially, from preschool to the university level. Denying that basic fact is just another symptom of systematic racism and class prejudice.
I’m Frances Jaeger, and that is my Perspective.
