Part 5/9:
Ying offers poignant anecdotes from her experiences as both a student and a teacher that underline the troubling dynamics she describes in her book. An example she shares involves an eighth-grade field trip to a prison, ostensibly intended as a deterrent against future criminality. Such experiences serve to reinforce the notion that Black and Native children are potential criminals, further entrenching their mistrust of educational systems.
Conversely, her own encounters as a fifth-grader underscore the subtle yet dangerous normalization of a colonial narrative in classroom settings—an experience that has lingering effects on how students internalize their identities and histories.