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NASHVILLE, Tenn.- This week, Debbie Thomas said something that ought to scare every black parent in America.

Thomas, who is the director of teacher education at Fisk University, talked about a time seven years ago when she was teaching a cultural competency class at Indiana University – basically a class to help teachers navigate racial barriers to reach students. One white guy, she said, was especially miffed at having to take the class.

And he told Thomas so.

“He stood up and said he felt the class would be a waste of his time,  and that he didn’t understand why he needed it because he was going to teach history at the secondary level,” said Thomas, who talked to the William Monroe Trotter Group, the nation’s top organization of black columnists, at its annual meeting at Vanderbilt University. “And he had the audacity to say it with some kind of authority.”

But Thomas didn’t lose her temper -- even when he peppered his vitriolic rant with condescending remarks about how he paid her salary and such-and-such.  Instead, she let loose with a history lesson -- for him.

“I said, ‘Oh, by the way, you did say that you paid my salary,” Thomas recalled. “I have to address that because in fact there was a time period in this country where people whose hue was much like mine were primarily in positions of servitude to people whose hue was much like your own. That time has now past.”

Thomas also told him that the university paid her salary, not him, that she earned it because of training and expertise, and that the quality of the course was going to be just as good as if it were taught by someone of a different hue.

That shut him up. But it made Thomas go to the bathroom afterward and scream.

I wonder how many black children do the same thing after they encounter white teachers like Thomas’ former student. Because even though he didn’t wind up teaching in a school in which scores of black children attend, many others do.

And that’s what’s scary.

According to the National Teacher Recruitment Clearinghouse, nearly 70 percent of all students in urban districts are minorities, yet minorities make up about 36 percent of the teachers. That means that more and more black children are being taught solely by white teachers. And as seasoned black teachers retire and fewer blacks pursue teaching as a career, that cultural gap is poised to widen.

Now, I don’t believe that black children will suffer because all white teachers are racists who are salivating to be in a school full of black students to act out their hate. What I do believe, though, is that if there are too many teachers who believe they don’t have to be sensitive to the culture and the individuality of black children, those children will suffer because their teachers will try too hard to see them as being the same as everyone else.

Or they’ll try hard not to see them at all.

As I listened to Thomas and her colleague Rich Milner, who is an assistant professor of education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, talk about the challenges that they face in teaching educators how to reach black children, I was reminded of a time in the 1980s when a black school psychologist told me about a black boy whose teachers believed needed some evaluation for his emotional health. Apparently they had gotten hold of a note he’d written in class in which he proclaimed that he needed love.

The psychologist looked at the note -- and started rapping it. As it turned out, the kid had written down the lyrics of the LL Cool J song, “I Need Love.”

Now I don’t doubt that the educators who overreacted to the black boy’s note would have been concerned if a white boy had written it. But if the black psychologist hadn’t seen the note, the black boy could have been labeled for the rest of his school career merely for writing down some words to a rap song that the teachers were too culturally blind to recognize.

Of course, that was a long time ago. But I doubt if things have changed that much.

“When it comes to educating African-American children, teachers often place themselves in denial about the challenge that has yet to be met,” Thomas said. “So they say things like, ‘I educate all children the same,’ but that’s not something to be proud of. My parents had seven children, and we all had seven different personalities and needs, and so if all children in a classroom are being educated and treated the same, then someone’s needs are not being met.”

That’s why I hope that black parents will look at teachers who proclaim they teach all children the same with more dubiousness than admiration. Because chances are, the white teachers who are saying that are the ones who believe they can teach black children without seeing the big picture of their lives.

And it would be too bad if their cultural blindness is allowed to cause too many black children to stumble in the dark.