ABSTRACT
Despite the cultural similarities between students and teachers, particularly for Black communities, relevant education within legalized segregation had a ceiling to contend with, such as Blacks' second-class status in the broader sphere of education and division of labor. In addition, cultural relevance should not compete with having up-to-date books and other basic educational materials, wholly lacking in Jim Crow schools. Language is intimate with racism. Most of the daily, hurtful forms of racism take place on the level of language through epithets, insults, and micro-aggressions, like subtle forms of paternalism. The pitfalls of depicting Euro-American culture as either universal and therefore race-neutral, or specific and consequently race-superior, lead to the same outcome of Whites' presumed racial superiority. A culturally non-relevant education produces several effects, and a lower achievement rate is only one, albeit the most obvious, of them. Culturally relevant or responsive education requires that educators care for their minority students.
