Urban Imagination Essay

Re-imagining The Urban: My Response as A First Year Teacher
I am black, I am a woman, growing up I was called “white girl.” As a black woman from sin city (Las Vegas, NV) the term urban did not describe my reality. Perception can be the only reality that you see in examining the lens of what is “urban”. What is urban? When the word urban comes to mind does it elicit emotions of privilege, pride or fear? Hunter; & Leonardo (2007) look at the term “urban” (particularly in the ghetto) they define it as both a “real” and “imaginary place” and divides the urban perspective into three distinctive categories of “space”: Urban is sophisticated, Urban is authentic, and Urban is a Jungle. Furthermore, from the text the author(s) argue, “daily constructions

In Imagining the Urban: Politics of Race, Class and Schooling the urban jungle is described as, “Black, Brown and Yellow bodies, which are poor and dirty, criminals and dangerous, violence and drugs tied with the images of majority of urban people.” Leonardo (2007) This perception of urban fails to look outside of one’s own stereotypes and attributes some character perceptions to describe a group as a whole. The media also plays a big role in our depiction of the urban, men and women who live in urban walls are seen as villains. An example of this is in the 2015 movie Fast and Furious described by IMDb as a “Crime film/Thriller.” Here we see an increasing majority of the character’s to be men of color and the themes of the movie were fast cars, vulgar language, violence and gang affiliations. The media constantly shows in the news that the response to manage the villain living in the urban is jail or death. The end result for most teachers who see urban in this way believe teaching students in these various demographics as a “waste and hopeless.” This perception held by policy makers and teachers has attributed to what Brenzel and Kantor (1945-1990) have described as a “crisis” that needs to be fixed, “urban schools receive insufficient funding, and have out dated facilities leaving them far below the achievement gap and increasing their dropout rates.” That was the case in the 90’s and is still the case today 25 years later. So in conclusion our perception as educators has a true impact on all students, the way we see them early on and relate to their urban can save them from prison and/ or death. It is challenging to be fully invested and truly help children if you do not trust them, as future and existing teachers we owe it to our students to think beyond the media, and our own