Is it risk or just uneasiness?

Novice teachers often tell me they've been cautioned, in the same way I was, to be wary of the neighborhoods in which they teach. Physical dangers are evoked most often, but I suspect the physical risks of visiting our students' homes or walking in the streets in which they play are less significant than something more akin to an emotional uneasiness about the act of crossing lines between two worlds of race and social standing. I also think that crossing lines like these as often and as comfortably as we can will teach us more than any of those classes offered frequently to education students about 'multicultural relationships,' as useful as some of those classes are.

Jonathon Kozol, Letters to a Young Teacher (2007)