ISGS 4311.501    Gender & Education

Black Ice Discussion Questions

(1)   Why does Cary decide she want to go to St. Paul’s school?  If there are several reasons, how are they related to each other?  How does Mike Russell figure in all of this?  Why does Cary decide to be a teacher? Why at St. Paul’s School?

(2)   Given the school ethnography we have read, how do you explain Cary’s behavior with regard to Ricky Lockhart?  Why she dates him in the first place?  How she treats him after the rape?  How/why she dumps him?  Does the education she gets about sex at home or on the job challenge or reaffirm what she gets at school? Is the relationship with Anthony Wade any different? 

(3)   Cary calls herself a “crossover artist” (233) in a conversation near the end.  What does she mean by this?  What’s the relationship of her black upbringing/education and the “white” education she got at St. Paul’s?  Does her sense of belonging or making connections between the two parts of her life change over the course of her education at St. Paul’s?

(4)  On Speaking up and “Selling Out”:  Why isn’t Mr. Price “one of us?”  In chapter 10, Cary decides she wants to take part, that she has something to give back to the school—what has changed?  Has she “joined the establishment?”  Is she “turning it out?”  What enables her to speak up about what she sees as racism at the school?  How is this related to the “real racism” she encounters at the diner?  Does what Vernon Jordan tells her shed any light on this?