Tayari's Blog: Joe Miller's Wake-Up Call

Posted by TayariJones on November 1, 2006 10:54 AM
Filed under Bookshelf

Joe Miller, a (white) journalist in Kansas City, got more than he bargained for when he went to Central High School where most of the kids and black and poor. Central High is also home to the one of the nation's most successful debate teams. It is the subject of the book, Cross-X: A Turbulent and Triumphant Season With An Inner-City Debate Club.

Fear not, this is no "Dangerous Minds." The kids at Central were already winning debates before Joe Miller ever laid eyes on them. Miller is here as reporter, as the assistant coach to the debate team, but not as savior.

Here is an excerpt from a Denver Post article about Miller and Cross X:

One sleepless night in a Red Roof Inn in Kentucky, after a heated battle with a debate judge he considered racist, a switch in his brain flipped.

"I'd seen the world from both sides, as a white who, like the judge, knows few blacks, and then as one who has lived and traveled with African-Americans and now sees the shadows of racism at every turn," he writes.

"It hadn't fully dawned on me yet as I was lying there, stewing in resentment, but I had changed immensely over the weekend. My consciousness had shifted. For the first time in my life I was aware of my race with the same intensity that many black people are."

Stay tuned. Joe Miller is going to write us a guest-post one day soon!

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