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MARTIN BUNZI: Dr. Sullivan, at a talk that you gave at the Minnesota Social Work Convention earlier this year, you said that for many Black kids going through the educational system involves questions of psychological and physical survival. And I wonder if you could elaborate on what you meant by that statement.

ALLEN SULLIVAN: Sure. I think there are two things that we have to look at. One, recent laws, such as the 1954 court case on the desegregation of schools, a whole lot of other laws that go back further than that, the Plessy v. Ferguson case, where educational rights were given to Blacks for the first time in American legal history.

But you have to look at the laws and you have to look at the attitudes that go along with the laws. A lot of people have talked about the laws change behavior, but they don't change attitudes.

And so I'm going to suggest to you that you can look at the history of slavery in the United States of America in relationships to Blacks and always find a systematic abuse that actually laws designated saying that you could not educate Black children and/or adults.

So I'm suggesting to you that the laws have changed in terms of allowing that to happen, but the attitudes still live on. So the laws change the physical nature of the relationship in schools, but they haven't changed the psychological nature of the relationship of schools. I'm suggesting that there's a residual effect of the attitudes that this society has had about Blacks existing today in the public schools.

If you look at reading achievement scores, and I don't care where you look throughout the country, you find a significant number of minority children, particularly Black, have not got those particular reading skills, the basic skills that people say are necessary to be a fully functioning member within our society. So that's what I mean.

MARTIN BUNZI: Why do you think they haven't achieved these skills?

ALLEN SULLIVAN: I think that there are a varied-- I can give you many responses. Some people blame it on inadequate home environment. I'm not one of those persons that accepts that.

Some people blame it on systematic bias within the educational establishments, such as the educational establishment that I represent. The University has inadequately prepared teachers to deal with the issues of multiculturalism within our society.

Some people say that it's an incipient racism and that racism exists. And that it's just actualized in this form where children are not given the tools to have access into our society.

MARTIN BUNZI: Well, which do you think it is?

ALLEN SULLIVAN: I think it's all three. As I look at my particular college and the particular university which I represent, I see very few minority people. I think that has an impact in terms of modeling behavior on many of the white students that I see at the University of Minnesota.

I think that minority persons very often give a counterbalancing point of view to the standard educational jargon that's given at universities. I think it's a valid input that students need to have to balance the biases that they come out of a university with. They can't help but be racist coming from the University of Minnesota. I think it's part of the social, cultural milieu.

I think that the university is attempting to address this particular issue by affirmative action programs and by recruiting significant numbers of graduate students, but I don't think they've really scratched the surface yet.

MARTIN BUNZI: Well, can you elaborate on the ways in which you think people exhibit their racism in the educational system?

ALLEN SULLIVAN: Yes, the standard argument that I've given, that I've been trained to give, I guess, is that there's bias built into assessment procedures. Assessment procedures, such as, for example, the college entrance examination.

Assessment procedures, such as the IQ tests that are given by state law at various stages throughout the developmental career of children. Assessment procedures, such as achievement tests that are given by schools to help place children in certain positions.

In the speech that you did hear, I began to read some of the questions that are given on the intelligence examinations and begin to ask whether there was systematic bias built into it.

And there was unanimity in terms of the audience saying that, yes, that those questions were biased. They could see how Black children could indeed answer the questions differentially and how there could be a differential score based upon the results of this particular examination that I did illustrate.

Some of the questions related to-- for example, they asked, what color your cheeks turned when you were embarrassed? And the correct answer was indeed red.

But for a significant number of Black children with a darker pigmentation of the skin, the answer was absolutely incorrect and really ridiculous even to ask because it just doesn't go that way.

They gave another example of, if you paired two birds together, one being black and one being white, what would happen? And they were suggesting that the birds would remain the same color, but their hearts would grow dark. And just a symbolic racism that was involved. And that particular question, just--

MARTIN BUNZI: Their hearts would grow dark?

ALLEN SULLIVAN: Their hearts would grow dark.

MARTIN BUNZI: I don't understand.

ALLEN SULLIVAN: A lot of the latent concern of many white parents when they talk about the desegregation of schools is that our children will come home talking like them, and them meaning Black students.

So that they're suggesting that the white students will remain the same, but their cultural style, their language style, their way of interacting with their environment will change in subtle ways that are threatening to me.

It was when a dove associates with crows. What happens? And suggesting that the feathers remain white for the dove, but its heart grows black. And I just think that that's just symbolic racism. There's no other way to explain it.

There was another question on the examination that asked children, if you bought a pencil for $0.10 and a pad of paper for $0.10, how much would you spend altogether? And they had $0.05, $0.10, $0.15, $0.20, or none of these.

Significant number of students that we worked with put none of these when the appropriate answer for three points on your IQ score was $0.20.

We debriefed after the situation and asked the children, why they answered the question in that particular way? They said because the way the man suggested it on that particular examination, you'd have to pay sales tax. And so it would be more than $0.20.

So the kids were using some very clear understandings, but were being mocked down in terms of actual IQ score. So those are some examples of how systematic bias gets in.

If we, for example, accept the fact that there is a decrement of performance for minority students as a result of segregated educational experiences, which the Supreme Court in its 54 decision did indeed say, and that there are some results of that, what happens to these children when they're brought in or brought into the school system that has children who are non-segregated or non-minority? What happens in terms of the actual achievement scores?

I suggest to you that the non-minority students indeed have higher scores, and I suggest you that the grouping of students reflects the differences, the real differences of the kids when they come into the schools. And so the systematic bias still continues. All you have is segregation within a school.

I think there are some ways to get around that. I think there are some ways that we can begin to respond more appropriately and suggest that there is something that non-minority students get out of a desegregated school situation that's not talked about very much within our society.

MARTIN BUNZI: What are those ways?

ALLEN SULLIVAN: First, if you're talking about desegregating the school, it seems to me it would be interesting to have different classrooms where you have a predominantly white school and a predominantly Black school share letters with each other, just getting to know each other through written communication.

And since most schools indeed have pictures taken each year so that the student body can indeed buy them, it might be interesting to have these particular classrooms share pictures.

And then it might be interesting, again, at a third level to have these particular classrooms begin to visit each other or to exchange videotapes of what happens within the classroom. It seems to me that that's an enabling process.

It might be interesting to have each child take that picture and be asked to identify the kid who's his buddy now in that other school. I think there are some facilitating processes that we can engage in that get kids to get together.

For example, a lot of folks don't realize that when you have busing-- and that's the big no, no. And I call busing just transportation. But a lot of folks don't realize that Black students are picked up in their community and they're taken to the school, white students are picked up in their community and they're taken to their school and no time during that transportation process do they indeed intermingle.

If you're really talking about valuable time outside of the structured educational experiences, it seems to me that the bus routes should be different. That there should be an exclusion-- or excuse me, an inclusion of different communities traveling, different communities having different logistical lines other than just the immediacy of the situation.

I recognize that the gas shortage and all that do indeed influence the types of decisions related to transportation, but I'm suggesting that there are enabling processes where you can get children together in nonstructured situations.

I say when it's time to sit down and learn how to read or if sitting down is important, or a time to learn how to do mathematics or time for social studies and all that are really structured experiences.

I think there are some nonstructured time, such as gymnasium, such as cafeteria, such as recess, such as coming in, going from school when kids can indeed get along and have a chance to get along with each other. So I'm just talking about a different way to look at how we manage schools.

MARTIN BUNZI: Well, you've talked about the way in which you think the assessment process exhibits racism. In what ways do you think the day-to-day relationships between teachers and pupils in the school setting exhibits racism?

ALLEN SULLIVAN: Well, I think before I go on any further, I better define what racism is. I think it's very helpful to define it both from a dictionary definition and then from a behavioral definition.

First, racism is the subjugation of one race by another race with the assumptions of superiority built into it that are indeed historical in nature that cause one person to act towards another person in a way that's damaging to their self-concept and to their physical interest, with no consideration for the personalness of the person.

It's just a classification of a people by another people that's historical in nature. And I think that's very important to get at that it's historical in nature. We can look at the antecedents of that within the United States of America, and then in the European culture itself.

Now, when you look at how that manifests itself in our society and then in our schools, for example, I know it's kind of folly, but suppose you were going to pay me $200 for this particular presentation. Now, on the check, you would write the check out to Dr. Allen Sullivan.

And when I take it down to my bank, I'd have an extreme amount of difficulty in cashing that check that asked me for all kinds of identification, that asked me whether I had an account here. They'd call down to see how much money I had in my account.

There are all kinds of procedures that I'm suggesting to you that it would take me about 15 to 20 minutes in the drive-in window of a bank that's supposed to be expediency, the drive-in window to cash my particular check. And I think the reason for that is the built-in belief system that the bank teller manifest that indeed black folks cannot even have a doctorate.

I think this same particular process begins to happen to me as I visit many schools and people just can't believe that a Black could indeed have these types of skills and these types of knowledge to look at educational situations.

I think the same thing gets manifested within the public schools. If you try to figure out what white children learn from the segregation of schools, I think they get a false sense of security.

Now, I can give you examples of that. When I went to a predominantly white school, some 45,000 students, of which 10 were white-- I mean, excuse me, 10 were Black, and this was in Boston, Massachusetts, and every time that I got a B or an A on an examination, many of the students around who were white were very shocked that I got a higher grade than them.

Even some of the professors were shocked because my name being Sullivan, it kind of freaks people out every once in a while that indeed I'm Black, and they were shocked. And I'm suggesting to you that some real insidious ways of having me get a lower grade were introduced into my study. And so I've looked at that.

Some folks might say I'm very sensitive. And I guess I might be after being hit over the head so many times with this particular reality and this particular shock.

Another thing that's kind of interesting to me, I was a long distance runner. I ran 2 and 1/2 miles cross country and the 1 mile and the 1,000 yard. And traditionally, people think of Black folks as 50 yard dash runners or 100 yard or 220 or at the most 440.

And so every time I'd get on the starting line, the white entrance in this particular race would look at me and say that I was at the wrong place. Sometimes they say, no, no, no, you got dash starts over there or the 220 starts over there. And I kind of smiled because I knew what they were saying. They're not used to seeing Blacks in that particular position.

I had a little funny incident. I ran my last road race in South Boston where they having all that difficulty related to desegregation of schools. And this particular community center has a road race each year on Patriots Day. And they had a police escort that goes around the streets and leads and clears the traffic and all that and leads.

At the particular time, I was winning the race and they had a PA system that was announcing the people in different positions. And as they went through the streets of South Boston, they were announcing that Sullivan was in the lead.

And all the men would come out the pubs and they were cheering. They'd look at this Black fella named Sullivan running down the street and say, wait a minute, wait, where's Sullivan? And so I think it was a very interesting experience for me in South Boston.

I like to say that I was having police protection at that time, but I'd have to be honest and say that indeed that was the function of the police to indeed clear the road for the road race itself. And coincidentally, I did win that road race and established a record that still exists in Boston right now, which I thought was kind of interesting.

But again, you're looking at the expectations of people and seeing Blacks and what they call traditional roles. How does that cascade into the schools, I think, is a very important question that we need to ask.

First, the whole element of touch. Do teachers touch kids? Now, yes, they pat kids on the shoulder. Some Black students have said to me, since we've been in this school, I want you to come and look at something. I want you to look at that woman that fixes the hot lunch. I want you to look at what she does when we give her money for our hot lunch.

And lo and behold, all the white children got the change in their hands. All the Black children had the change put on the counter and had to pick up the change. They said, she doesn't like us. How did they know? You tell me.

They looked at the secretaries and we looked at the secretaries when parents come to the school. There's an automatic assumption that the parents are coming to raise a whole lot of sand in the schools rather than facilitating. May I help you?

Yes, that teacher is there. There's an automatic built-in assumption better run and get the principal because there's a built-in assumption that there's something wrong. All kinds of incipient ways. I'm saying that there are not direct ways that children get the message that indeed they're being treated as different.

Two children are having difficulty in the halls. One is Black and one is white. The white child is reprimanded and the Black child isn't. An example of that is there were some children having some difficulty on the bus.

And there were Black children mostly, except for one white child. And every time the Black children had difficulty or some type of conflict, the bus would keep on going and the bus driver would get to school and report the children for being noisy.

One time the white child got up and he initiated some conflict and he stopped the bus and went back and grabbed the white child and said, now, look, you know better than this, meaning that the Black children did not know better. And so the kids came to school upset.

And so I'm saying that all kinds of ways that we send a subtle message across or maybe not so subtle message across that the kids pick up and they begin to react to. And once they begin to react, then they're pinpointed, again, as being troublemakers within the context of schools.

MARTIN BUNZI: Well, how do you think this affects them in the long-run?

ALLEN SULLIVAN: There's no question in my mind that the kids begin to act out, that they begin not to have too much faith and confidence in the people that are supposed to be helping them to learn how to be fully productive members within our society.

There's no question in my mind that they begin to get tuned off and turned out. There's no question in my mind that this goes beyond just minority children and goes into white children now.

We're beginning to see a significant amount of requests for alternative schooling, dropout prevention programs, street academies, schools without walls, all kinds of suggestions that the types of processes and procedures that people have established for working with kids are not being too productive right now.

So I think that's a mark that lives with people for the rest of their lives. For example, if you look at the Gallup poll on people's opinions about schools, the biggest issue of concern is indeed discipline.

Indeed, looking at verbal and physical aggression within schools and violence within schools are all issues that are a direct result of our inappropriateness in terms of responding to real, legitimate issues within the context of schools.

Just recently, U.S. News and World Report, April the 14th, talked about violence in the schools. And if you look at that particular article and you look at the pictures that represent this particular issue, you'll see that they're really talking about latent concerns about race within the schools.

And so I'm suggesting to you that we have to become more sensitive to different racial and cultural groups. Particularly in Minnesota, we were talking before the taping and you talked about the built-in bias that's in Minnesota that on radio still hear Swedish jokes that indeed parts of Minneapolis are frowned upon, for example, Northeast Minneapolis. And that's supposed to represent the Archie Bunker's.

I'm suggesting to you that there's built-in snobbery and built-in bias that not only affects minority youth, but affects all the people of the state of Minnesota.

And so we have to begin to look at that, we have to begin to eradicate it because I think those subtle little jokes, subtle that they're not do indeed influence people's perceptions of themselves and do indeed set up negative interactions within the context of our society. And we're really going to have to purge ourselves of that.

MARTIN BUNZI: How does the perception that kids are given of themselves in the school affect their physical survival?

ALLEN SULLIVAN: Push me a little further on that.

MARTIN BUNZI: Well, you've made this statement that the process affects the psychological and the physical survival of Black kids, the educational process. And I'm wondering what the physical side of it is. I understand the psychological survival side.

ALLEN SULLIVAN: Sure. Now, if you follow what I was saying in terms of students being turned off of school, students stating that a teacher is indeed racist and we're not going to go into a classroom because what she's doing is irrelevant.

Now, I suggest to you that some of those teachers that they're talking about are teaching mathematics or teaching physics or teaching foreign language or teaching English instruction. And so the skill that's being taught is a necessary skill.

And so that when children are turned off by the racial attitudes of the teacher, they're also turned off from the academic skills that they're supposed to be acquiring. Some kids get turned off so much that they drop out of school. They just don't want to go to school. School is not fun for them.

And if you look at some of the US census data on students or people that do not have indeed high school diplomas, then you see some real differences in terms of their actual income over their life span.

And so that would affect the ability to purchase things, their ability to purchase homes, their ability to do many things in our society to have that type of mobility. So I'm saying in a very real sense, it limits them in a physical way that's not very obvious when kids drop out from schools.

It influences our society in terms of loss of tax money, if you really want to look at enlightened self-interest. It influences our society in terms of the welfare and unemployment benefits and all those other things that have to be paid to people that can't find meaningful work for themselves. So I think it does influence us in a very physical way.

MARTIN BUNZI: I was educated in England. I was the only Jew in a boarding school and I remember the tremendous anxiety and fear that I felt in trying to deal with anti-Semitism in that school, because really, the whole burden of combating that anti-Semitism was placed on me an 11-year-old kid and the only Jew in the school.

And I'm wondering if it isn't an awful burden that we place on Black kids and minority kids in school and really expecting them to combat racism in schools that they feel from the teachers and other school personnel. So I'm wondering if you see that as a problem in facing the challenge of trying to combat racism in the schools.

ALLEN SULLIVAN: Well, I think there are two things. At first in the desegregation process, desegregation meant that Black students had their school closed and they went over to a white school, and then the burden was very clearly there.

More recent pushes for the cross line busing have indicated that the burden should be shared. And I think that that's where we're getting a significant amount of reaction from many communities is when that burden begins to be shared between folks.

Now, another process that people talk about for the desegregation of schools is what they call a critical mass. That students should not be isolated in a school, that there should be a critical mass of students involved in any one school.

That there should be at least 20% minority students in a school because it gives that identification group that some children have initially that they can indeed begin to work out of at one time. So the critical mass, I think, is very important when we're talking about the desegregation of schools or looking at the racism that's involved in schools.

MARTIN BUNZI: Well, isn't the requirement of a critical mass incompatible with some of the requirements for desegregation in areas where the percentage of minority kids in the community isn't all that high?

In Minnesota, for example, in Minneapolis, 7% of the population is Black. And if we integrated the white schools in the whole Twin Cities area, we wouldn't have that critical mass, surely.

ALLEN SULLIVAN: Well, you wouldn't integrate the schools in the whole Twin Cities area because they wouldn't let you do that. That's number one. Number two is that the city school systems, both Saint Paul and Minneapolis, are under mandate by state order not to have more than 40%. And that's with a special dispensation from the state, minority students in any one particular school.

MARTIN BUNZI: But is there a minimum percentage? Are they--

ALLEN SULLIVAN: No, there's not. No, there's not. And so that I think that you could begin to identify schools that would have the critical masses of students. There are ways to get that done so that the minority population doesn't get diluted to such an extent that a child feels a sense of alienation within the school itself. I think that can be managed.

But I think the other side is that there are some things that can be done with schools that have all white children so that they begin to have a feeling of what it is to be perceived as different, what it is that they need to do to help facilitate authentic interpersonal relationships within our society.

You can desegregate your curriculum, see, you can desegregate in terms of field trips and different processes that you establish that give white children a sense of the variability that's in the human species.

And within the United States of America, there are some things that must and should be done if we're really going to talk about getting healthy, wholesome attitudes towards racial differences within our society.

It was interesting. When I first moved to Minneapolis, I was told that this was Hubert Humphrey country and Senator Mondale country and the land of golden opportunity. And I swore that Nicollet Mall was paved with gold.

And so that when I went out to Southtown to do some shopping with my family, I would get the stares and the looks that told me that there's something about me that's different.

And then one particular time I went out and a little girl who happened to be white picked my hand and held my hand. And I thought that was very cute. And I said, what a very nice, pretty cute and courteous and kind, giving all kinds of positive attributes to the little girl.

And as I was doing that, she took my hand and she bit it. And she turned to her mother and said, Mommy, he's not chocolate, he's not chocolate. And it was just very fascinating to watch the mother turn-- I guess it's red when we talked about that IQ. And she said kept quiet and she hustled the little girl on out of the place.

And I began to say, well, whiz, what did that little girl learn? She learned that she could bite someone and not say she's sorry, she learned that flesh was the same the world over, and she learned that there was something about that man that her mommy didn't want to talk about.

And I guess I look at that same phenomena taking place in the schools. Everyone wants to shush and keep quiet about some very real differences and some very real similarities between people.

And I think that in a desegregated situation that kids begin to see the essential humanness of everybody, that they begin to see that everyone is trying to grow up and deal with issues that confront their existence and their survival, everyone wants the good life and a happy life. And that comes as quite a shock to many of the students.

And my particular work has been working with doctoral students at the University of Minnesota, and that has become a shock to them too. For example, I talk about the systematic bias built into purchasing a home and the impact that that might have on the educational process. And some students that came from upstate Minnesota or Northern Minnesota didn't believe that that existed.

So we set up a little experiment where we were going to go buy a home on a street in Saint Paul. And we were going to send a white family in, two white students, male and female, from the class, and then we're going to send an interracial group, and then we're going to send a Black group, two couples.

So the first night-- and what we intended to do was to get the price of the home written down on a card, and then also try to capture the essence of the conversation that was taking place.

The first couple went, which was a white couple. They got a quote of $18,000 for the home. They were asked questions like, what religion are you? And then they would be told where the church was and where the school were and be orientated to the community itself.

When the interracial couple went, they got a quote of $20,000 the very next night, $20,000 for the home. And they were asked things like, where do you come from? What do your parents do? And they felt as they began to debrief the situation that the subtle implication was, how could your parents allow you even to get married? I don't understand that.

Then the next night the black couple went and the price of the home was $22,000. And they were asked questions like, what do you do for work? And the subtle implication again was, can you really afford this particular home?

I'm suggesting to you that if you look at the difference between the white and the Black of $4,000 and carry that out over the life of the mortgage, especially with these high interest rates that we have now, that something subtle begins to happen that's not so subtle is that Black couple begins to pay 18 to 20 or maybe $22,000 more for a home over the life of a mortgage than a white couple does. So I just asked the students, what do you call that? And of course, they had to call it racism.

Now, we did just the reverse just to show that indeed it wasn't the homeowner being anxious about the prospects of selling the home. We flipped it around, not the same home, but did the opposite and found the same type of gradation that the price of the home went down when the white couple was the last couple to interview for that particular home.

So there's a built-in bias that's there that nobody wants to talk about. And I can give you thousands of examples of the same process when I began looking for a home.

MARTIN BUNZI: I believe you've done other experiments sending kids into the school system. Can you describe some of those?

ALLEN SULLIVAN: Well, that's been related to the desegregation of schools when we have a significant number of whites and Blacks coming together for the first time. And I suggest to you that they use different language systems, not that different, but they use different words to describe concepts.

We've asked some white students to use the language that they think Black students will use and for Blacks to use the language that they think white students would use.

And then we had a little party or what the Black students would call a gig and would ask, for example, to get a drink of punch. The Black students at that particular time would say, well, give me a taste? And that meant, may I have a glass of punch?

The white students would come to the Blacks and say, may I have a glass of punch, or can I have a cup, or can I have a glass, or may I have a drink? And that was not the appropriate way within the Black experience to say that. So they were thirsty. They didn't get a drink. Whereas the Black children could turn around and say, May I have a glass of punch? and they got it.

When it came time to put on some record albums, for example, the white students had to ask for a particular artist, such as James Brown, or at that particular time, Otis Redding.

They had an inability in terms of identifying who the artists were that their classmates were appreciating who were Black. The Black students could turn around and ask for the Beatles or ask for different white groups. And so they had music.

And when it came time to dance, the Black students would automatically just go and hold the girls hand. They would never say, may I have this dance? They'd just hold her and help her out of her seat. Whereas the White students said, may I have this dance, please?

And so what we were showing that on a very surface level, there were differences in terms of the way that one orientates to their social environment. And so we're trying to get each group to be a little more familiar with each other.

I think it goes deeper than that. It's more basic than that. And it was pointed out by the Western Electric Company. In Philadelphia and Washington and the New York City a few years back, they began to get to a tilting point where over 50% of their telephone operators were Black. They began to get complaints about their telephone operators. People were calling in saying that we cannot understand your telephone operators.

They went back and they did an intelligibility study. They went and found that people were calling information operators who were Black and were indeed getting the information that they needed and indeed making the telephone calls, but they were still complaining that we cannot understand.

Now, what I'm suggesting to you is that they were picking up the subtle differences in terms of word usage and the subtle differences in terms of pronunciation of sounds that created a built-in bias that we have about language.

So the Western Electric Company has really gone pretty far in terms of trying to get an awareness of the differences in terms of language itself within the context of schools. I'm suggesting to you that these same people that have been calling into the telephone company complaining are the people that have children going to schools.

And so the same type of concern will take place within the context of the schools in terms of what language is being used, what's acceptable in terms of proper word form and verb form. And so that argument, this continues on within the context of the schools.

I suggest to you that when I was in Boston, Massachusetts, that we had teachers trying to teach the Black children their English as a second language when a significant number of the children in the particular school where I went to school, family came from the British West Indies, which at that particular time was a British protectorate. And so we felt we were more British and more English than the teachers that were trying to teach us.

And so that I find that my particular experience, I'm really tri-dialectal. I can speak the language of the university community because I've been through that whole particular process.

I can speak the language that some folks say of the streets, but I wouldn't say it's of the streets. I speak the language that a significant number of Blacks in urban settings speak.

And also I can put a little accent on my language, what are you talking about, man? I sound like I come from the West Indies, but I can change and I'm very conscious and aware of that at times and at other times I'm not.

I think that's a very interesting process to begin to talk about with some students in schools to recognize the different cultural variants that I have and the different culture that exists within schools that can be talked about.

For example, if you ask a significant number of kids, which I have done in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, any classroom, how many speak another language? At least four or five kids will raise their hand and give you a different reason for why they speak another language.

How many grandparents speak another language? And indeed, you see a lot of hands go up and you will see the beauty of Minnesota in terms of the cultural difference that indeed exists there. I don't think we begin to use that in a very meaningful way at all within the context of schools.

And I guess, I hope you hear what I'm saying. I'm saying that, yes, there has to be an inclusion of minority students. Yes, there are issues related to culture and there's a built-in bias related to culture. Yes, it is as strong or the strongest when we begin to talk about minority groups and particularly Blacks.

But that bias goes beyond the issue of race. It goes to culture, it goes to social class and economic standard. So that what I'm suggesting to you is that when we begin to address this particular issue in school, we address a lot of other concomitant issues that go along with it.

MARTIN BUNZI: For some time, there's been a raging debate in parts of the country over whether or not minority kids should be taught what's being called standard English.

The argument that's being made by some is that the only way that minority kids have a hope of, quote, "making it in American society" is if they learn to speak the standard English that white people speak. Let me first ask you if you accept the distinction that has been drawn between standard and non-standard English.

ALLEN SULLIVAN: No, I don't. First, what is standard English? And I've tried a little experiment with some of the teachers that I've worked with. I asked them to call the number 555-1212, and you can call any information operator throughout the country.

And so I suggest that they call San Antonio, Texas, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Boston, Massachusetts, Miami, Florida, New Jersey, and Brooklyn, New York and just talk with the operators and tell me what the operators sound like. Do they sound the same? And I suggest to you that they don't sound the same, that you begin to see the cultural confusion that exists.

You call up to Massachusetts, you hear John F. Kennedy, if you will, speaking. You call down to San Antonio, and you might hear the Spanish influence. You call down to Miami, Florida, and you might hear the Cuban influence that's been infused there.

You call to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, you might hear the German influence. If you call to Northeast Minneapolis, what might you hear? So I'm just suggesting to you that there's variability in terms of how the language is spoken and how the language sounds.

So that just that simple experiment indicates that we don't really know what we're talking about when we're talking about standard English because there's no standard that we really can apply that everyone speaks. There are regional differences and there are cultural differences that do indeed exist.

I suggest you that the Spanish language is influenced by Spain. I suggest you that the English language, as spoken in Boston, Massachusetts that spoken throughout the country, is influenced by a lot of the other Germanic language systems, such as French.

And so I'm suggesting that indeed the Black people's language is influenced by African because they're brought here from Africa. And there are certain things that exist within our language system that a lot of folks haven't recognized as African.

For example, the word "banjo," for example, the word "voodoo," for example, the word "guitar," for example, the word "chicken gumbo soup," for example, the word "he walks with a steady gait," for example, the word "banana," all these particular words are African in origin, but a lot of people don't know that because there's a systematic denial of that language infusion into the English or Anglo language system itself.

So I'm suggesting that a significant number of Black kids indeed right now have the vestiges of the African language system built into their language system because language-- and to get specifically to your point, to teach people to speak a language isn't done.

80 to 85% of language acquisition has taken place before school and only about 15% in terms of grammar and in terms of increasing the vocabulary or the lexicon is done within school itself. So no one took you and sat you down and said, look, I'm going to teach you how to speak today, did they? No. Of course, it's an experiential process.

And so to teach a person a different language and make the assumption that indeed the language is that different from the start I think is ridiculous. So that you really have to begin to talk about language experiences for people and to put them in experiences where they begin to test out different ways of interacting.

Let me give you an example of what we've done one time in Syracuse, New York. We took the children to the General Electric's factory and we said, look, we want you-- we gave them case of tape recorders.

We want you to interview the executives and we want you to pick an executive that's most like you. And these were mostly Black students, about 15% of them were white.

And so they went out and they picked somebody because they didn't see many Black executives. They picked someone that might have had a blue suit on or a blue shirt on or something like that. And the dialogue went something like this. We said also be like Walter Cronkite. And they watched Walter Cronkite for a week on TV, so they got interview style down.

And they said, hey, my man. How are you doing? This is your shin, man? What kind of gig you got? How much dust you make? When's the eagle fly? And all along in the back of the tape, as we transcribed them, you could hear the man saying, what? I beg your pardon. What are your children doing here? What do you want? What are you asking me?

And so we went on back and we took him to the classroom and we played the tapes and we transcribed them for reading materials and asked the kids, did the man understand what you were saying? And they said, well, no. We said, well, how come? He said, well, he doesn't speak English. I said, really?

Well, let's try something else. Let's go on out another day and interview the workers. And you could tell the workers because they're different from the executives because the executives had suit and ties and attache cases, getting the stereotypes out, OK? And the workers have the coveralls and the lunch pail. And so you can go interview them and try to interview a worker most like you.

So they went and they indeed did find some black workers and the dialogue went something like this. Hey, my man, how are you doing? Hey, little brother. How's everything? This your shin? Yeah, [INAUDIBLE]. Do you like it? Can I get a ride in it? Yeah, you can get a ride in it.

How much dust you make? Well, I don't really think that's any of your business. When's the eagle fly? Every other Thursday. What kind of gig you got? Well, I operate a lathe. And what does a lathe do?

Well, a lathe is a machine that drills holes. Why didn't you say that? Oh, where's your pad, my man? Well, I live next to your aunt Alice. Don't I recognize you? Aren't you Alice's nephew?

And so the communication was taking place. And we went back and asked the kids, well, how come communication is taking place there? Well, they can speak English. And so we said, well, really, is that what's really going on, or do they speak different words at different times?

And lo and behold, we went back and we said, now, look, if you really want to know what that man's gig is, then it's called occupation. Can you dig it? Occupation. If you really want to know how much dust he makes, which is the same as salary, or some folks call it renumeration. So you call it remuneration.

If you really want to know when the eagle flies, the eagle fly is indeed payday. And the kid said, well, no, no, no, we'll tell you. Renumeration day. Yeah, renumeration day. Well, then you say these particular words. And so you have a choice that you have to make depending on the type of communication that you want to have to take place.

And so, indeed, the kids understood that and indeed, the kids operationalize it by going out and actually interviewing the executives with very little instruction, if you will, in terms of English as a standard language.

The kids were put into experiences where they had real options and real choices that they could begin to utilize in some meaningful fashion for them in their own lives. And I think that's what we need to talk about because I suggest you that a significant number of white teachers cannot do that.

They cannot teach English as a second language because they don't know the primary language themselves, for example, the lexicon, the types of word differences that some Black children present, the types of grammatical differences that are systematic in nature that some Black children represent and present in the schools. They have no idea of it.

As a matter of fact, once they do get an idea, it changes. Once the teacher begins to appreciate what the children are saying, sometimes it does indeed change. So you really can't get at that.

And I'd addressed that to the same phenomenon. For example, I would suggest that a significant number of parents that have teenage children, the teenagers are talking almost like a different language sometimes, using different words, using them in different ways and it's perplexing sometimes for the adult.

And so the adult gets tuned in and listens and learns what those words are. And by the time they get tuned in and listen and learn, the words have changed. And so that's the nature of the communication process.

But you must appreciate the fact that, indeed, communication is taking place within that particular group. At many times, it's shared and sometimes it's not shared. And so I suggest to you that that's just a reality in terms of just language when we begin to look at groupings of people.

There is part of a language that remains intact and that's an in-group communication that will always remain that way. I think that's the nature of groups. There's a lot to be shared, though.

MARTIN BUNZI: I take it you would take issue with the contention that the way Black folks speak English is a degenerative form of the language.

ALLEN SULLIVAN: No, that's just not so. The research is very clear on that. For example, if you listen to Appalachian whites, you find out that the talk that Appalachian whites are speaking and that a lot of folks think is a degenerative form of the English language, indeed, is 17th and 18th century English.

If you look at the protection or the insulation of that particular cultural group by the Appalachian Mountains, indeed the language gets shared and generated and with very little infusion because of the insular nature of that particular population. So the language remains intact over time.

If you look at the nature of slavery within the United States of America, you saw enclaves of Blacks kept together. So, indeed, the African language system, parts of the African language system remained intact.

And so that in certain parts of this nation, for example, off the coast of South Carolina, you have the Geechee Islands and you have a form of African spoken called Gullah, G-U-L-L-A-H, that's spoken right here today in the United States of America because of the insular nature of that particular population within America.

So I'm suggesting to you, because of the whole insidious process of slavery and the confinement of populations of Blacks, that you have a vestige of African language system that's a little older than what we might recognize right here in the United States of America that indeed influences what has taken place.

MARTIN BUNZI: And influences the standard English itself.

ALLEN SULLIVAN: Oh, definitely. In other words, we talk about rap right now. You talk about your uptight right now. And all these words we begin to appreciate and accept within our language system without really giving true credit to where they have come from.

MARTIN BUNZI: Some people seem to have viewed the process of desegregation of the Minneapolis schools as a model of sorts for the rest of the country. I know that last fall, a delegation of the Boston school board came to Minneapolis to study the system. You've been studying it, you've been working with it for quite some time now. What do you think of it? How satisfactory has the process been, in your view?

ALLEN SULLIVAN: Well, let's back up a little bit. I think that hurt and perceptions of hurt or perceptions of bias are just as strong in Minneapolis as they would be in Boston, Massachusetts. Let me be more specific about that.

A group of parents, if they perceive that their child is, in fact, not getting an adequate education, they wouldn't feel any less strongly about it living in Minneapolis as they would in Boston, Massachusetts.

A group of parents that have offered resistance to the whole movement for desegregation, because we did have some controversy when the desegregation integration plans were first introduced and still do have controversy related to them in Minneapolis, don't feel any less strong or more strong in Boston or in Minneapolis.

I'm saying the same types of basic feelings are here. I don't think there's really much difference between Boston and between Minneapolis in terms of feelings about it.

Now, in terms of overt behavior, there might be some real differences. In terms of critical masses of people moving from one portion to another, there might be some very real differences.

I think the numbers in Boston are much larger in terms of the number of students that are being desegregated or being moved, if you will, physically moved in Boston than there is in Minneapolis.

And the nature of that number is the thing that causes the difference in terms of overt responses to it, but I suggest to you that the impact is just as strong in both situations itself.

You look specifically in Minneapolis, some minority students and parents are very concerned about that critical mass that I talked about, being put into a school where they don't feel that they're accepted, being put in situations that they have to begin to speak up and act out to let people know that they're hurting in a particular situation.

I think the minority community has spoken very effectively about this particular issue of a critical mass. Don't dilute the number of students going to all kinds of schools so that you don't really get a critical mass of kids.

Again, the whole issue of critical mass in relationship to Judge Lawson's order relating to educational personnel, his ruling does say that there has to be at least one Black teacher in every school throughout the city of Minneapolis.

I suggest you that the same feelings of alienation, the same feelings that the children have at the children's level passed on at the adult level. The same issue of not being included within the decision making process, but not being informed about the social network within the school has the same feeling of alienation within the Black educational personnel itself.

So I suggest to you that, yes, that Minneapolis has taken a pretty big step towards desegregation of schools. Now, the next step is the integration.

When asked to meaningful acceptance of the real differences in people and the inclusion of people within the educational process itself, the involvement of people at all levels of the decision-making process itself. And until that happens, we just real talking about integration. We haven't had that happen yet. And so there's a lot of work to be done.

MARTIN BUNZI: Let me throw out an argument, get your reaction, an argument against desegregation, an argument against integration.

You made the statement earlier that the educational process, the problems of the educational process essentially reflect the problems of the economic status of people in the society as a whole. They reflect the general problems of society as a whole.

And I think it's certainly uncontroversial to say that at least up until now, we've generally seen the systematic denial of particularly minority cultures in the educational system.

Can one make the argument that the issue is not one of desegregation and integration, but the argument is really whether or not minority groups are going to be able to control the curriculum, the financing, the hiring, and the policies of the educational systems that their children are included in, and that that applies as much to people of Irish descent in South Boston, as much as it applies to Black minorities and Indian minorities?

And that the only way that Blacks and Indians and other minorities are really going to be able to avoid the systematic denial of the culture is by controlling their own educational system, and that the only way they're going to be able to do that is to have Black kids concentrated way beyond the critical mass that you talk about. And that if we desegregate the schools, we're never going to approach that kind of critical mass that's required for that.

How would you react to that kind of argument? It's an argument that I think was performed by Black communities in Detroit many years ago when the desegregation orders came down in Detroit.

ALLEN SULLIVAN: Yeah, that is, I think, a legitimate concern. That's when despair has set in, when nothing else has worked. I think the resegregation has been suggested.

But I think that you have to be mindful of one thing is that when we're talking about the education of children, especially young children right now, we're really talking about training them for living in the 21st century. And so we have to begin to ask some questions about what the 21st century is going to look like.

And already we've seen this whole issue of shortage of fuels, of fuel oil beginning to raise some questions about cultural variability. For example, who has the oil, those oil resources right now? I suggest you that there are people of color throughout the world.

And you begin to see things like overtures towards South America by Dr. Kissinger. You begin to see a whole lot of interdependence, if you will. You see, for example, refugees from Vietnam coming to the United States of America, infusion, a strong infusion of a cultural group.

So my question is, what are children to be learning? And I think one thing that they should be learning is how to get along with each other. I suggest you that you can't do that if you don't have the experiences in the contact to get that done.

And so I'm suggesting to you for almost self-interest of what this world is going to look like in the 21st century. We begin to look at Red China, we begin to look at Russia and cultural and racial differences that are looming up. The world is going to be very much different.

It's very interesting in preschool class that I attended of about some 22 children, eight of which have been out of this country to other parts of the world and could begin to talk about it. I'm talking about preschool children now, OK? So that right now their world is very much different from what you might think it is.

I was walking down the streets in London, England and bumped into people I know. I was walking in the bush in Western Africa and bumped into about five or six people that I knew that I didn't know were going to be there.

And so I'm really suggesting that this world as we know it is going to be much larger in terms of the social, cultural context than we might be able to visualize right now.

And so that we're really educating children because we as adults right now have had a very difficult time in seeing the worldly picture or the picture of cultural interdependence, if you will, so that you always have to be mindful of that.

MARTIN BUNZI: Well, I take it, then, you don't feel we have reached that point of despair, where we have to give up and resegregate?

ALLEN SULLIVAN: I think in some parts of this country, it is at that point.

MARTIN BUNZI: Where?

ALLEN SULLIVAN: I would suggest to you that Detroit is. I would suggest to you that Pontiac are. I would suggest that the feelings of powerlessness are so strong that something has to be done as a measure to show folks that they can, indeed, have a meaningful input.

But I suggest to you, again, what I call the sinking ship philosophy. When the ship is really going to sink, then you give it to the minorities. Then you say, well, look what you've done. You haven't pulled it up.

You can look at a Black mayor in Detroit, you can look at Newark, New Jersey, you can look at Gary, Indiana, and you have to raise some very clear questions about the sinking ships.

And so that don't give me anything unless you're going to put an adequate amount of resources in there. Don't give me anything unless you're going to give me a fair chance to make that whole process work and really meaningful decision-making processes. And then I'm sure it can be turned around.