Working with a group

We were working on an english project in the class, where the students would have to present on a book they have read as a class. The book the class had read was coincidentally, Getting Away With murder, by Chris Crowe. The group I was working with  had kids with a mix of backgrounds, some had hispanic background, others Asian. One of the students had african american heritage, but had been adopted at a young age. When one of the other students asked him to help create a timeline of events that took place in the book he was angry. It wasn't that he couldn't do it, or didn't know how, it was that he simply didn't want to. The rest of the group members continued to work on their parts of the project, such as writing a summary, giving historical context, and writing key points the book made, but the students who was asked to do the time line wasn't working. When the young Asian girl asked him if he wanted help he surprised me and her by saying, "It's because I'm black, isn't it?"

We both were shocked, and she didn't know how to respond other than stuttering out, "No". The girl had already worked on the summary and was just trying to help the group stay productive, but the boys comment shook her up a bit. I asked the boy later why he made that statement, to which he replied, "It was just a joke, and I didn't think she would actually care." It was surprising to hear his response  after he had played the race card as a joke on a fellow student. He didn't seem to respect his heritage, but merely use it as an excuse to get out of work, or as a joke. The rest of the students finished up the project while he sat back till the very end and then glued things on to the poster board. It is hard to form groups in a class room where the workload will be evenly divided by all the members. In each group it seemed like there was a leader, an organizer, the gatherer of information, the reporter, and a slacker. Hopefully the next group project will go better!