What Do White Folk Fear? – radical eyes for equity

What Do White Folk Fear? – radical eyes for equity

What Do White Folk Fear?

Consider this description of public schools in the U.S.:

[P]ublic schools … [are] a “dragon … devouring the hope of the country as well as religion.” Secular public education … [is filled with] “Socialism, Red Republicanism, Universalism, Infidelity, Deism, Atheism, and Pantheism—anything, everything, except religion and patriotism.”

FREETHINKERS: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN SECULARISM, SUSAN JACOBY, (PP. 257-258)

Some of this language is archaic, but the attack on public schools here is little different than the current climate in the U.S. where Republicans in at least 15 states are taking aim at Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the 1619 Project, as Sarah Schwartz reports:

In total, lawmakers in at least 15 states have introduced bills that seek to restrict how teachers can discuss racism, sexism, and other social issues.

The legislation, all introduced by Republican lawmakers, uses similar language as an executive order former President Donald Trump put in place to ban diversity training for federal workers. The order has since CONTINUE READING: What Do White Folk Fear? – radical eyes for equity

CURMUDGUCATION: RI: Another Dumb Bill For Protecting White Folks

CURMUDGUCATION: RI: Another Dumb Bill For Protecting White Folks

RI: Another Dumb Bill For Protecting White Folks

Three Rhode Island representatives have proposed a bill to protect students in the state from what the legislators imagine, I suppose, what critical race theory or any of those other nasty anti-racist programs might be.

The three legislators are:

Rep. Patricia Morgan, who has also proposed that mail-in balloting be "tightened up," that the house condemn major tech companies "for their attack on the free speech rights of the American public," and that the house commemorate the life and career of Rush Limbaugh.

Rep. George Nardone, who has also proposed that charter schools be allowed to "engage in non-traditional approaches to learning," that ESAs be established in Rhode Island, and, well, he's on that Rush Limbaugh bus, too.

Rep. Sherry Roberts, who has also proposed the mail-in ballot thing, the Rush Limbaugh thing, and an act providing for the authorized taking of mushrooms from public lands.

Their bill is HB 6070, prohibiting the teaching of "divisive concepts." 

The divisive concepts in question do not, it turns out, include issues such as whether or not the earth is flat, whether Han shot first, or whether Mary Ann is hotter than Ginger. Instead, the legislators are concerned that some naughty teacher might choose to teach-- CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: RI: Another Dumb Bill For Protecting White Folks

Being White Is a Handout – radical eyes for equity

Being White Is a Handout – radical eyes for equity

Being White Is a Handout

My 4.5 year journey as an undergraduate and the first five years teaching high school English were spent mostly in the Reagan era.

While this was many decades before terminology such as “fake news” or “post-truth,” I literally lived during those years a painful and now embarrassing conversion from white denial and ignorance (believing in reverse discrimination, for example) to racial awareness and seeking a life dedicated to racial equity grounded in my own awareness of white privilege.

I had been raised in racism and white denial that pervaded my home and community so when I returned to my hometown high school to teach, I felt compelled to help my students make a similar conversion as mine but not have to endure the stress of experiencing that growth as late as I did.

Reagan in part depended on bogus American Myths (such as bootstrapping and a rising tide lifting all boats) and thinly veiled racist stereotypes, such as the infamous welfare queen myth evoked by Reagan and Republicans with great effect.

No one called this fake news then, but I invited my students to investigate and interrogate these overstated and unfounded claims as we examined race CONTINUE READING: Being White Is a Handout – radical eyes for equity

Anti-masking: The Subtext of White Privilege and Addictive Thinking – educationalchemy

Anti-masking: The Subtext of White Privilege and Addictive Thinking – educationalchemy

Anti-masking: The Subtext of White Privilege and Addictive Thinking

Whiteness and Anti-masking

It’s not surprising that the population who refuse to accept the full scope of Covid19, the anti-masker group, intersect with the same population who own and deny their White Privilege. It’s not emanating from communities of color. It’s not emanating from non-Western countries. It’s as white [1] and “Ameruh-can” as Apple Pie. That is because to accept either, to concede the reality of this pandemic or one’s own privilege, is to then require that person to act, to require a change in their behavior, or to moderate their own “rights” (or freedoms) for increased responsibility for others. When we wear a mask, we are saying “I acknowledge the effects my body and behavior have on others, and I take responsibility for that effect. I am willing to change myself to help those around me.” Most of us do share community obligations everyday … but it’s by choice of group affiliations and institutional memberships. Yet, Covid19 has demanded we accept that fate in relationship to people with whom we might not have ever cared or considered before now. It forces us to widen the scope of who or what must matter to us. I concur with Indi Samarajiva who argued, “It’s largely white people that won’t wear masks, for reasons of whiteness. If that’s not you then congratulations, welcome to the human race. Be whatever equal identity you want, but white power is out.” The lottery (“will I or wont I get sick?”) of Covid19 that preys CONTINUE READING: Anti-masking: The Subtext of White Privilege and Addictive Thinking – educationalchemy

To All the White Allies Seeking to Become Co-Conspirators, Here Are Things to Think About - Philly's 7th Ward

To All the White Allies Seeking to Become Co-Conspirators, Here Are Things to Think About - Philly's 7th Ward

TO ALL THE WHITE ALLIES SEEKING TO BECOME CO-CONSPIRATORS, HERE ARE THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

George Floyd, gasping for air, uttered a desperate final plea that was heard around the world: “I can’t breathe.” The image of a black man dying under the knee of a white cop is horrific — and symbolic of the racism embedded in every institution in America. Pre-K-12 education is no exception. The white-dominant education system is suffocating black students.

No universal pre-K. Inequitable school funding. Dilapidated buildings. Police brutality in schools. Unqualified teachers. Crumbling textbooks. No heat or air-conditioning. No Advanced Placement or dual-enrollment courses. Academic tracking of students. White teacher bias. High rate of school suspensions. Lack of teachers of color. White family flight. Redlining resulting in a decreased tax base. Fear of black male students. Black children’s behaviors labeled as inappropriate. Restrictions on black hairstyles. Bias in selective-admission schools. Parent meetings held during the workday. Lack of special education supports. Low levels of rigor. Devalued cultural identity. Biased standardized tests. “No excuses” models.

The results of these inequities are consistently recited as facts: Black students lack proficiency in math and reading. Black students are not college-ready. Black students experience significant learning disabilities.

The real fact is that the education system is failing black students.

On May 31, after watching the news with tears running down my face, I CONTINUE READING: To All the White Allies Seeking to Become Co-Conspirators, Here Are Things to Think About - Philly's 7th Ward

What White Folk Want – radical eyes for equity

What White Folk Want – radical eyes for equity

What White Folk Want

KEEP AMERICA PURE WITH LIBERTY PAINTS.(Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, p. 196)

What do white folk want?

Rigid accountability for other people.

License for “me” (the white view of the world is rugged individualism masking white nationalism/supremacy).

And “whiteness” never to be named, never voiced—only allowed to be embedded as an understood in “human” (“There is only one race, the human race”) or “lives” (“All Lives Matter”).

This last point is vital for the first two, in fact, and appeared recently on a Twitter exchange:

Reich is recognized as a Democrat, a progressive or liberal associated with Bill Clinton.

Yet Reich offers what he intends as a racially woke Tweet, only to expose the power of whiteness not to be named. Reich, of course, means “Black people weren’t even considered people by white people on July 4, 1776,” but omits the white context because in the U.S. whiteness is a given.

Even or maybe especially to, as Martin Luther King Jr. described, the “white CONTINUE READING: What White Folk Want – radical eyes for equity

Implied (or not so implied) Bias, White Privilege and Racism: Are We Turning around 400 Years of Bigotry? | Ed In The Apple

Implied (or not so implied) Bias, White Privilege and Racism: Are We Turning around 400 Years of Bigotry? | Ed In The Apple

Implied (or not so implied) Bias, White Privilege and Racism: Are We Turning around 400 Years of Bigotry?

It was the last day of school; we raced home, picked up our bags and off to Kennedy for our overnight flight to Paris. Months earlier my wife was invited to an International Conference on Gifted Education in Hamburg; the planning expanded. We arranged to exchange our apartment with a French family for the month of July, a trip across Europe by train including the conference; from Paris to Brussels, to Amsterdam, the conference in Hamburg, to Berlin, behind the Iron Curtain to Prague, on to Vienna and Munich for the return flight.

We registered our son in a city-run sports program (isn’t Socialism wonderful) and we wandered the City of Lights. Up early, our son picks up a demi-baguette or croissants at the local patisserie, shop in the bouchere, by the second day we were regulars, Madame, monsieur, asseyez –vous, si’l vous plait, recommendations from the butcher along with recipes, ever try lapin (taste’s like chicken). Do you have a cremerie in your neighborhood?  A different cheese every day …. and the French love huitres. Our son was selected to play on the rec center team in the city-wide soccer tournament, (l’American, his nickname, probably helped USA – French relations more than the Embassy).

Eating mussels in the Grand Place  in Brussels, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the conference in Hamburg and on to Berlin, crossing over into East Berlin (searched by very serious Vopos, East German border guards) to Rosa Luxemburg Station and off to Prague, the glorious Wenceslas Square, the only CONTINUE READING: Implied (or not so implied) Bias, White Privilege and Racism: Are We Turning around 400 Years of Bigotry? | Ed In The Apple

White Hero Teacher and White Paternalism (#3) | Educate All Students, Support Public Education

White Hero Teacher and White Paternalism (#3) | Educate All Students, Support Public Education

White Hero Teacher and White Paternalism (#3)

What ‘white folks who teach in the hood’ get wrong about education

Christopher Emdin teaches at Columbia University Teacher College and is Associate Director of the Institute for Urban and Minority Education at Columbia. He identifies a pervasive narrative in urban education: a savior complex that gives mostly white teachers in minority and urban communities a false sense of saving kids.

“The narrative exotic-izes youth and positions them as automatically broken,” he says. “It falsely positions the teacher, oftentimes a white teacher, as hero.”

He criticizes the “white hero teacher” concept as an archaic approach that sets up teachers to fail and further marginalizes poor and minority children in urban centers. In his book, “For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood … and the Rest of Y’all Too,” Emdin draws parallels between current urban educational models and Native American schools of the past that measured success by how well students adapted to forced assimilation. Instead, he calls for a new approach to urban education that trains teachers to value the unique realities of minority children, incorporating their culture into classroom instruction.

I think framing this hero teacher narrative, particularly for folks who are not from these communities, is important. The model of a hero going to save this savage other is a piece of a narrative that we can trace back to colonialism; it isn’t just relegated to teaching and learning. It’s a historical narrative and that’s why it still exists because, in many ways, it is part of the bones of America. It is part of the structure of this country. And unless we come to grips with the fact that even in our collective American history that’s problematic, we’re going to keep reinforcing it. Not only are we setting the kids up to fail and the educators up to fail, but most importantly, we are creating a societal model that positions young people as unable to be saved.

I always ask my teachers why do they want to teach and I can tell by their responses how closely the white savior narrative is imbued in who they are or who they want to be. I always say, if you’re coming into a place to save somebody then you’ve already lost because young people don’t need saving. They have brilliance, it’s just on their own terms. Once we get the narrative shifted then every teacher can be effective, including white folks who teach in the hood.

I know that folks hear the title of my book “For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood … and the Rest of Y’all Too,” and get upset. I’ve got folks who say to me “that’s inherently racist.” But no, because it’s a reality. The overwhelming CONTINUE READING: White Hero Teacher and White Paternalism (#3) | Educate All Students, Support Public Education

Confronting DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” in the Time of #BlackLivesMatter – radical eyes for equity

Confronting DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” in the Time of #BlackLivesMatter – radical eyes for equity

Confronting DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” in the Time of #BlackLivesMatter

For a book on racism written by an academic, Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility has experienced a level of popularity over the last two years that is interesting, if not surprising.

With the #BlackLivesMatter movement re-ignited after the killing of George Floyd by a police officer, DiAngelo’s book has also experienced another significant boost in readership, primarily by white Americans seemingly having a long-overdue come-to-Jesus moment with their whiteness and complicity in systemic racism.

On social media, however, blog posts and Twitter threads have warned “don’t read White Fragility” and “don’t worship DiAngelo.” These warnings come from Black scholars and advocates for anti-racism activism, creating a powerful and important tension in that fight to eradicate white privilege and racism in the U.S.

There is also an insidious challenge to DiAngelo and White Fragility that comes from and speaks to white denial and white nationalism; this denial is grounded in a dishonest use of “science” calling into question DiAngelo’s statistics, methods, and scholarship.

This rebuttal is ironic proof of the existence and resilience of white denial and CONTINUE READING: Confronting DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” in the Time of #BlackLivesMatter – radical eyes for equity