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Resources for Understanding Racism- Smithsonian Magazine

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Resources for Understanding Racism- Smithsonian Magazine

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158 Resources for Understanding Systemic Racism in America

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These articles, videos, podcasts and websites from the Smithsonian chronicle the history of anti-black violence and inequality in the United States

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What are some of the current, everyday situations or  practices that come up and/or exist at RMHS where staff is uncomfortable (everyone is entering this conversation at a different place.) Could there be a safe way for them to ask the hard questions and get some real, judgement free answers in an attempt to help move equity forward in our own building?

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What are some of the current, everyday situations or  practices that come up and/or exist at RMHS where staff is uncomfortable (everyone is entering this conversation at a different place.) Could there be a safe way for them to ask the hard questions and get some real, judgement free answers in an attempt to help move equity forward in our own building?

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There's a lot to wade through here, but I've found this to be a good resource.

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There's a lot to wade through here, but I've found this to be a good resource.

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Understanding how school discipline policies can contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline is essential for educators and families. Harsh punishments, automatic out-of-class time and police involvement for discipline can push young people out of classrooms and into the criminal legal system. But educators, parents and caregivers can help to change this harmful system by advocating for and implementing practices that prioritize mental health and well-being.

We offer this new resource page that highlights LFJ articles and content to open dialogue, shift practices and foster change to benefit all young people.

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Learning for Justice | Education Resources

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Learning for Justice provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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Research shows that many people feel they do not have the information needed to discuss race in a way that is candid, safe and respectful of other viewpoints and experiences.

"The portal offers a wealth of resources to inform and guide discussions-videos, role-playing exercises, targeted questions and more, said Crew." "We hope that people will use this site to become more comfortable about engaging in honest dialogue and self-reflection."

Talking About Race builds upon decades of work by the museum's educators. It is the result of extensive research, studies, consultations, and educational resources from these fields: history, education, psychology and human development. It includes published research from leading experts, activists, historians, and thought leaders on race, equity, and inclusion, including Brené Brown, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Robin DiAngelo, Julie Olsen Edwards, Jerry Kang, Ibram X Kendi, Enid Lee, Audre Lorde, Beverly Daniel Tatum, Bishop Desmond Tutu, and Tim Wise.

Phase one of the portal features eight foundational subjects including:

Being Anti-Racist: a conscious decision to make frequent, consistent, equitable choices daily.

Bias: the inclination or prejudice toward or against something or someone.

Community Building: connecting and engaging with others doing anti-racism work and exploring issues of race.

Historical Foundations of Race: how race, white privilege, and anti-blackness are woven into the very fabric of American society.

Race and Racial Identity: how societies use race to establish and justify systems of power, privilege, disenfranchisement, and oppression.

Self-Care: caring for one's mental, emotional, and physical health to sustain the work of dismantling racism.

Social Identities and Systems of Oppression: systems built around the ideology that some groups are superior to others.

Whiteness: an ideology that reinforces power at the expense of others.

Explore Talking About Race at nmaahc.si.edu/talkingaboutrace. The portal is free and does not require a registration or sign-up to use. Talking About Race is generously supported by The Atlantic Philanthropies.
Download Images for Media Use Social Media Toolkit
About the National Museum of African American History and Culture
Since opening September 24, 2016, the National Museum of African American History and Culture has welcomed more than 7 million visitors. Occupying a prominent location next to the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the nearly 400,000 square-foot museum is the nation's largest and most comprehensive cultural destination devoted exclusively to exploring, documenting and showcasing the African American story and its impact on American and world history. For more information about the museum, visit, follow @NMAAHC on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram or call Smithsonian information at (202) 633-1000.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture Releases "Talking About Race" Web Portal

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The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture today launched Talking About Race, a new online portal designed to help individuals, families, and communities talk about racism, racial identity and the way these forces shape every aspect of society, from the economy and politics to the broader American culture.

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Asking BIPOC students to articulate their people's take on racial issues

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When white teachers go to bat for black students who are put out of class or are failing. When teachers follow through with those students to let them know that they genuinely care. When teachers stand up against other teachers that have racially motivated comments about students and/or other staff members.

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When white teachers go to bat for black students who are put out of class or are failing. When teachers follow through with those students to let them know that they genuinely care. When teachers stand up against other teachers that have racially motivated comments about students and/or other staff members.

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This video pained me the most out of all of the videos I've been receiving....

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This video pained me the most out of all of the videos I've been receiving....

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I wanted to share this to show everyone how easy it is for a young black male to lose his life or be charged with felonies which impact his ability to work, own a home, etc. I was up in the middle of the night trying to get this out of my head, while crying.

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The Traumatic Impact of Racism & Discrimination on Young People & How to Talk About It

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The Traumatic Impact of Racism & Discrimination on Young People & How to Talk About It

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Say Their Names...A Toolkit to Help Productive Conversations

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Say Their Names...A Toolkit to Help Productive Conversations

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http://www.ascd.org/publications/newsletters/education-update/oct19/vol61/num10/How-to-Be-an-Antiracist-Educator.aspx?fbclid=IwAR2R01I_3ah2OQ9r0VyaQmN_Hb1BATVT0hQY7yzz-hvF2ojY22EvJT0pqKs#.XtDsFiJpUzU.twitter

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Racist and anti-semitic graffiti was posted at school. While it was acknowledged and condemned, we didn't really talk it through as a community.

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Of classes and academic programs that track closely with race.

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I'm not sure if this is an example of "Meritocracy Myth". I've heard students saying that "Everyone has equal opportunity because it's a law" and "America is a great country because if you work really hard, you can accomplish anything and make it to the top". This is a myth.  

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I'm not sure if this is an example of "Meritocracy Myth". I've heard students saying that "Everyone has equal opportunity because it's a law" and "America is a great country because if you work really hard, you can accomplish anything and make it to the top". This is a myth.  

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I saw two students wearing MAGA hats at school. I wanted to ask them, "So tell me, when was America great? And for which group of people was it so great for?...." But I was afraid of parents retaliating against me. 

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I saw two students wearing MAGA hats at school. I wanted to ask them, "So tell me, when was America great? And for which group of people was it so great for?...." But I was afraid of parents retaliating against me. 

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I like Lisa's idea above. Maybe an online space where we can add our questions and someone could provide answers; maybe in a running list of questions that remains open and we can read others' questions/answers and add our own as well, and refer back to the document when needed. 

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I like Lisa's idea above. Maybe an online space where we can add our questions and someone could provide answers; maybe in a running list of questions that remains open and we can read others' questions/answers and add our own as well, and refer back to the document when needed. 

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We don't do enough to actively disrupt the narrative within our community that Black and Latinx students accepted into the Magnet are only accepted "to increase the diversity" of the program.

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It's a slow process, but I have seen lots of teachers working to really diversify their offerings in terms of readings, examples, etc. We still have a long way to go, but there is movement on this front.

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Not believing BIPOCs experiences of racism

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Not believing BIPOCs experiences of racism

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In past discussions about these topics, I have heard teachers default to a position of defensiveness rather than sitting with students' accounts of what they are experiencing, even when they're uncomfortable. Minimizing these experiences and saying "that's just one student's view" is contributing to the problem.

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when a course offering is open to everyone and promoted/scheduled in a way that it is accessible to everyone

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What role will students play in our work? Is this an adult-exclusive space and if so, how will we make sure that diverse students voices are present in a space that is not representative of our student community?

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absolving oneself of possible racist fault by attributing racist views to only whites

thinking black individuals can’t be racist

tension and violence between Latino and black students exists at RMHS

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Are there any policies/practices at RM that should be revised?

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Are there any policies/practices at RM that should be revised?

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Perhaps we can form a group of staff, students, parents, etc to review current RM policies, procedures and practices to see what may be improved upon.

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Do we disrespect students by not holding them accountable for their behavior?

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Do we disrespect students by not holding them accountable for their behavior?

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Many teachers looks the other way when students use their phones in class, sleep in class, use profanity or racial slurs in the hallways, etc. We think that we are being tolerant, flexible, and understanding, but what message are we really sending? I am not saying that we should use traditional consequences such as detentions and referrals, but we need to figure out another way to send the message that these behaviors are unacceptable!!

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Understanding Racism and Inequality in America (WaPost)

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Understanding Racism and Inequality in America (WaPost)

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Teachers feeling comfortable ditching content for a bit to process these events with students and advocate for students to get involved in thinking with an antiracist mindset as well.  It's not enough to be "not racist" anymore.

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Teachers feeling comfortable ditching content for a bit to process these events with students and advocate for students to get involved in thinking with an antiracist mindset as well.  It's not enough to be "not racist" anymore.

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Included with resources from the MCCPTA page about Anti-racism. It talks about how systems change, and different roles people play in changing those systems. It felt like a good frame for what is happening in this moment.

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How I Became a Localist | Deborah Frieze | TEDxJamaicaPlain

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I would like to talk more about how teachers might be able to discuss this topic appropriately in classes where it may not fall in with daily lessons (ie. tech, math, some science, etc.)

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Students of color are disproportionately placed in SPED and on 504 plans before they ever even come to RM.  We don't think about it, but we frequently treat these students differently in our academic and behavioral expectations of them; expectations that ask them to conform to our institutional norms formed over centuries.

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Students of color are disproportionately placed in SPED and on 504 plans before they ever even come to RM.  We don't think about it, but we frequently treat these students differently in our academic and behavioral expectations of them; expectations that ask them to conform to our institutional norms formed over centuries.

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Not calling parents who don't look like us -- maybe choosing to send email instead

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Not calling parents who don't look like us -- maybe choosing to send email instead

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Low expectations of our students of color

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Low expectations of our students of color

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Forcing kids to withdrawal (who are largely black and brown)

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Forcing kids to withdrawal (who are largely black and brown)

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inequity with student opportunities (i.e.field trips, awards ceremonies) 

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inequity with student opportunities (i.e.field trips, awards ceremonies) 

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Calling security or SRO immediately on kid who's not compliant

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Calling security or SRO immediately on kid who's not compliant

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Lack of conversations about hiring before interviews about what diversity (in many forms) a department may be lacking in and specific recruiting to find that kind of hire

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Lack of conversations about hiring before interviews about what diversity (in many forms) a department may be lacking in and specific recruiting to find that kind of hire

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Short, Coffee Break Length

The Disturbing History of the Suburbs, An Adam Ruins Everything episode that quickly and humorously educates how redlining came to be (6 minutes)

What Would You Do?: Bicycle Thief Episode ABC's popular show explores the impact of racial and gender bias and prejudice at a family friendly park. Before this video, would you have anticipated this differential treatment?

Medium, Lunch Break Length

Munroe Bergdorf on racism, trans activism and acceptance English activist and model Munroe Bergdorf, known for speaking her mind on trans issues, racism and misogyny, talks to Krishnan Guru-Murthy about her own transition, the controversy that led to her being dropped by L'Oreal and why tolerance is not enough (38 mins)

How to overcome our biases? Walk boldly toward them, TED Talk by Vernā Myers, encourages work vigorously to counter balance bias by connecting with and learning about and from the groups we fear (19 minutes)

Long, Sit On the Couch Length

Race In America: Fighting for Justice Bryan Stevenson interview with Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart delves into the state of US racism and racial justice as of October 2020 and explores the role of hope in staying the course (1 hour)

Slavery by Another Name, 90 minutes PBS documentary challenges the idea that slavery ended with the emancipation proclamation. (90 minutes)

Unnatural Causes, Seven part documentary by California Newsreel that explores the impact of racism on health and US healthcare. (4 hours total, episodes have variable lengths)

Once people start to learn about white privilege and America's systems of oppression through history, they often ask, "Why didn't I see this sooner?" It's easy to overlook what we're not looking for. Once you understand the phenomenon of selective noticing, take yourself on a noticing adventure.

1) Watch the Test Your Awareness: Do The Test

2) Go out in the world and change up what you notice. (Some of this will be influenced differently pre/during/post COVID. You may need to rely on memories until we are on the move again!) Here's some of what you might look for:

Who is and is not represented in ads?

Who are your ten closest friends? What is the racial mix in this group?

As you move through the day, what's the racial composition of the people around you? On your commute? At the coffee shop you go to? At the gym? At your workplace? At the show you go on the weekend?

What percentage of the day are you able to be with people of your own racial identity?

Notice how much of your day you are speaking about racism. Who are you engaging with on these issues? Who are you not? Why do you think this is?

What are the last five books you read? What is the racial mix of the authors?

What is the racial mix of the main characters in your favorite TV shows? Movies?

What is the racial mix of people pictured in the photos and artwork in your home? In your friend, family, and colleagues' homes?

Who is filling what kinds of jobs/social roles in your world? (e.g. Who's the store manager and who's stocking the shelves? Who's waiting on tables and who's busing the food?) Can you correlate any of this to racial identity?

Who do you notice on magazine covers? What roles are people of color filling in these images?

If you're traveling by car, train, or air, do you notice housing patterns? How is housing arranged? Who lives near the downtown commerce area and who does not? Who lives near the waterfront and who does not? Who lives in industrial areas and who does not? What is the density of a given neighborhood? Can you correlate any of this to racial identity?

3) Review the Continuum on Becoming an Anti-Racist, Multicultural Institution with a small group of people at your workplace, faith institution, club, or any organization you're a part of.

Where do you think the organization is right now? What's your evidence? Has the organization evolved in some ways? What caused/allowed for that? Has the organization articulated a desire to evolve towards being an anti-racist, multicultural organization? If not, do you have the power to influence that movement? Who are your in-organization and/or stakeholder allies? If yes, what steps is it taking? Could it be doing more? If so what? Who are your in-organization and/or stakeholder allies?

This can be the hardest part for people new to racial justice work. Engaging in racially mixed settings can trigger age-old power and privilege dynamics. The goal is to be a learner more than a knower, exactly the opposite of what dominant U.S. culture teaches us to be.

Here are some Engagement Tips to guide you:

Enter the process to learn and bridge knowledge gaps.

Enter the process to practice mindful social habits like the ones below.

Work to stay engaged even when your mind and body start sending you signals to shrink or walk away.

Ask clarifying questions.

Acknowledge what you don't know.

Validate others by listening closely and believing the truth and importance of what they are sharing.

Share airtime so that multiple perspectives are shared.

Step Up Step Back. If you are generally quiet, step up and practice speaking more. If you are generally a talker, practice stepping back and listening more.

Notice your biases and judgments as they arise. These are gold for you to excavate your subconscious!

Notice when you are uncomfortable. Reflect on why you're uncomfortable and think about what you can do to build more emotional stamina in this area.

Honor confidentiality. Though you can share what you are learning in general terms, do not repeat stories in a way that can be traced back to the person who shared it.

Find a mentor within your own racial group to support and guide your growth.

If you are white, join a Showing Up For Racial Justice (SURJ) chapter in your area.

Google who's who in your area by typing in 'Racial Justice" or "Anti-Racist/m" + name of city/town, organization, or sector. A few website visits, emails, and phone calls later, you'll likely have an idea of how to get on the mailing of one or more organizations in your area who are addressing issues of power and privilege. Once you connect to one, it's easy to connect to many!

Research racial justice speakers and see who might be coming to your local university, church, community center, or speaker series.

Take a course or workshop. Community Colleges and Adult Education Centers are a great place to find a course about social justice issues.

Though many people want to jump to action sooner instead of later, action without a vigorous self-education, self-reflection, and multiracial coalition can unexpectedly reproduce the very power and privilege dynamics we seek to interrupt. That said, sometimes acting immediately is called for. Welcome to the messy, imperfect world of challenging the status quo! Here are a few actions that you might consider:

Invite friend(s), family, and/or colleagues to do the 21-Day Challenge with you.

Prepare yourself to interrupt racial jokes. Click HERE for some advice about how.

Interrupt the pattern of white silence by speaking openly with family, friends, and colleagues about what you're doing and learning in the 21-Day Challenge.

Invite friend(s), family, and/or colleagues to join you for one or more of your daily "to-do's" for a low-threshold invitation into the work and introduction to the 21-Day Challenge.

Find out if your school, workplace, or faith group has an Equity Committee. What can you learn from them? Are they open to new members? Join if you can. Support in other ways if you can't.

Find organizations such as The Privilege Institute, your local YWCA, and other non-profits doing racial justice work and support them through donating your time, money, and other resources.

Find a 21-Day Challenge group in your region or sector and reach out to connect with, and perhaps co-create a region or sector specific 21-Day Challenge in the future. Google "21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge + your state, region, or sector"

When the status quo is blatantly racist, disrupt it. No matter how big or small put yourself out there to create change. No need to wait until you are comfortable disrupting; it may never get comfortable, though you will get better at managing discomfort. These actions are generally more successful when done in multiracial coalition. Examples from past participants include:

Demanding administration change the name of a dodgeball team from "The Cottonpickers"

Improving the representation of books in the library by raising funds and purchasing hundreds of new books

Conducting an equity audit within the organization

Creating learning communities to set goals, objectives, and action plans

Disrupting inappropriate language by offering alternative language you yourself are learning

Speaking, emailing, and posting about articles, blogs, movies, and this 21-Day Challenge that you find impactful.

Let people know you are not neutral!

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21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge©

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Short, Coffee Break Length The Disturbing History of the Suburbs , An Adam Ruins Everything episode that quickly and humorously educates how redlining came to be (6 minutes) What Would You Do?: Bicycle Thief Episode ABC's popular show explores the impact of racial and gender bias and prejudice at a family friendly park.

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Refusal to use language line or otherwise communicate with families in their home language

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Refusal to use language line or otherwise communicate with families in their home language

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"I can't help it that I'm white" as an excuse to not do the work required. 

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"I can't help it that I'm white" as an excuse to not do the work required. 

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"Meritocracy" and "model minority" myths are deeply invested in white supremacy. Author works to unpack this in MCPS context.

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A protest for unequal education in New York City schools on October 7, 2015. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images

During my high school years, I was one of 400 students who had tested into the STEM Magnet program at Montgomery Blair High School. We had class offerings that looked like a college curriculum spread: Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Origins of Science, Sports Statistics, Astronomy, Genetics, Advanced Algorithms, and higher level math courses. We did elaborate experiments in chemistry and biology. We took an overnight trip to Wallops Island to learn more about ecological science. We built robots and trebuchets. We wrote research papers and won national STEM competitions. Our teachers were, for the most part, brilliant and excellent, expanding our minds to accept difficult, college-level concepts, and encouraging an innate curiosity and desire to probe for truth. We were built up to be exceptional.

We were also a school within a school - 400 students, primarily white and Asian, within a larger school population of roughly 3000 students. When I entered the program in 2009, the demographics of the student body made Blair qualify as a "high-minority" school - 29% Black, 27.6% Latinx, 25.6% white, 17.6% AAPI, and the remaining 0.2% Indigenous/Native. The makeup of the Magnet looked very different. Most of us within the program were white, Asian, and middle-to-upper class kids. Most of us noticed. But we accepted the narrative we'd lived our whole lives - that we'd all earned our spot in that program, through our hard work alone. The clean racial divide became an awkward but normalized reality.

Many of us had been in the Magnet and G&T system for years. G&T stands for "gifted and talented," a terminology now considered outdated, which refers to smaller programs within public schools for students who have shown their merit through an admissions test or application process. I entered the G&T program at Lucy V. Barnsley elementary school in the fourth grade, un-enrolling at Rock Creek Forest elementary, which was also a "high-minority" school in a largely Latinx neighborhood. For middle school, I attended the Humanities and Communication Magnet program at Eastern Middle School (also high-minority). Some friends and I tag-teamed through these schools-within-schools for years.

Some of us identified the pattern - that our magnet programs seemed intentionally planted in lower-funded public schools in Black and Brown neighborhoods; that there weren't Magnet programs in schools that drew from wealthier, whiter communities in the district. We'd learned about Brown v. Board of Education in our 6th grade history classes. We'd learned about segregation, and that it didn't exist anymore; perhaps some of us questioned why it seemed like our programs - and on a larger scale, district boundaries - were still cleanly split along racial and socioeconomic lines. But none of us knew the history of our Magnet programs, and how they were created, quite intentionally, to maintain a heavily biased distribution of resources and funding long after segregation was abolished in name.
Note: the information in the following section has been largely informed by the research of Eleanor Harris, who compiled the majority of the research and posted about it originally on her Instagram page.
School segregation on the basis of race was ruled unconstitutional in 1954. As was the case for several schools across the country that began to draw from Black and Brown neighborhoods, white parents whose students attended Blair were unwilling to send their children to a school that they saw as becoming "overcrowded" with non-white students, and threatened to evacuate the public school system altogether. School Boards pushed to create programs like Blair's Magnet to placate white parents, and, as an incentive, keep resources concentrated on pockets of white students within high-minority student bodies. As Eleanor Harris and Alice Park reported in a 2016 Silver Chips article, "A Polarizing Experience," Magnet programs were established in the 80's to funnel white, and then eventually Asian, upper-to-middle class students back into schools that were becoming predominantly Black and Latinx. The effects of this hoop-jumping are still seen today. In her famous 2016 piece for the NYTimes, "Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Racially Segregated City," Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote: "In a city where white children are only 15 percent of the more than one million public-school students, half of them are clustered in just 11 percent of the schools, which not coincidentally include many of the city's top performers. Part of what makes those schools desirable to white parents, aside from the academics, is that they have some students of color, but not too many." Magnet programs were crucial for this careful curation of school demographics, and crucial to keeping white parents happy.

Harris and Park report that in the years following the introduction of magnet programs, "local and national lawsuits changed the standards for using race in magnet admissions." President Reagan, who'd been elected in 1981, stated that "using race to integrate schools was just as bad as using race to segregate them" - effectively arguing that school districts shouldn't take active measures to create racial diversity in their demographics. The Supreme Court backed Reagan. Similar fights were taken to court on the local level. To this day, magnet admissions standards have remained "colorblind."

The fact that the Magnet sucked up the majority of resources (a significantly larger amount of funding, and a higher number of teachers-per-student) going into Blair was occasionally raised as a concern, but as the program became increasingly prestigious - as cohort after cohort graduated with impressive pedigrees and acceptances from elite colleges, and alumni went on to work high-status jobs or found notable companies - the original mission of the program was overshadowed by its new reputation, as a space for "accelerated" and "gifted" learners.

Throughout the 2000s, Black and Latinx parents regularly raised concerns about the low enrollment of their students, a conversation that continues, without resolution, today. Harris and Park reported that it was generally agreed among Magnet officials and administration that "few Black and Latinx students are well prepared enough to be accepted into the Magnet."

The fact that Asian students began to heavily populate the Magnet, when it was originally intended as an integration strategy to bring in more white students, is important. Asian Americans have historically been allowed to exist and succeed as "model minorities" within American society. The model minority myth promotes the idea that Asians (specifically East Asians or light-skinned Asians) are polite and law-abiding, achieving enormous success within the American framework despite our non-white identity. We're meant to serve as "proof" that non-white folks can make it in America through hard work and hard work alone, thus also "proving" that Black and Latinx folks are responsible for their own lack of social mobility, lower academic performance and rates of graduation, and increased rates of incarceration and poverty. This is quite intentional. Asian folks in the US are used as pawns to shift accountability off systems of white supremacy and onto the backs and "individual failings" of Black and Latinx people. We're duped into believing that we will be allowed all of the privileges of white supremacy, that we can be "honorary whites," as long as we uphold systems and institutions of whiteness. Southeast Asian communities face incredibly high rates of poverty, incarceration, and deportation. And even middle-to-upper class East and South Asians often face difficulty getting into positions of leadership at their companies or moving past lower-rung positions. The model minority myth is not just one of Asian success; but also one of Black and Brown failure. It's a myth that systematic racism isn't real.

The language shift in the Magnet's branding in the late 90's and early 2000s, from integration to acceleration and "giftedness," played directly into harmful minority myths. With the Magnet's racial history shrouded from view, what the public saw at face value was a program for "special kids" filled with Asian students who got in on the basis of their own merit, intelligence, and hard work. It also marketed itself to immigrant parents sold on the mythological American dream - that they were coming to America to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and give their children opportunities they never had, teaching them to "work the system" and get ahead in a society they understood to be harsh and unjust. I remember my ma regularly telling me that I just needed to "figure out the system and get on top of it," rather than question or challenge it. Parents who expected their children to excel academically, attend prestigious colleges, and get high-paying jobs, prepared for years to get their children into the Magnet. The fact that the Magnet quickly filled with Asian kids only further pushed the dangerous narrative that Asian Americans were simply "better minorities;" that Asian kids were gifted, accelerated learners and hard workers, and by contrast, Black and Brown students were failing themselves, whether by lack of hard work, or by some kind of inherent lack of ability. By rebranding the Magnet, not as a concession to white families unwilling to integrate, but as an elite and "colorblind" space for special students, the school board was able to hide its tracks, and hide the deep systematic inequalities that led to the demographics of its star program.

While I was at Blair, anti-Blackness and anti-Brownness oozed from the school at a deeply institutional level. The Magnet had multiple tech-packed laboratories, workshops, and computer labs to which we were granted exclusive access. Some classes within the program had less than ten students, while some non-Magnet classes had thirty. We received close mentorship, and there was an intensely familial feeling to the Magnet - we were all known by the teachers, and by one another. Black and Latinx students were often punished for things that Magnet students got away with - wearing hats, phone usage, walking in the halls during class time. I remember non-Magnet students also being regularly penalized if they appeared to be sporting gang colors or suspected of conducting "gang activity" on school grounds (which could involve a group of students standing and talking together). This project by ProPublica shows that at Blair, Black students are 8.9 times more likely to be suspended compared to white students, and that 100% of expelled students are Latinx. A few years before I enrolled, Blair required students to wear an ID tag, a measure that was considered necessary to prevent non-student gang members or "drug dealers" from entering campus undetected. The year before I started 9th grade, Blair got rid of the ID policy after students protested that it made them feel mistrusted, like criminals in a prison, rather than children going to school to learn. Our campus was also crawling with security officers. Data from the 2015-2016 federal Civil Rights Data collection showed that schools in predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods were found to be more likely to have school-based security staff than schools in white communities. It was also found that these schools had a greater security presence than staff available to address mental health needs. The statistics gathered by ProPublica lists that Blair has 10 security officers, a number that is in the highest 10% of the district. All I knew at the time was that we had several. They had police-like uniforms and intimidated us. They regularly intervened in student fights, particularly fights between Black or Latinx students, tackling students and forcefully separating them or pinning them down. In 2013, my senior year, a security officer used a taser to subdue a 16-year-old Black student. In news reports that came out afterwards, the student was said to have refused orders to go to class, and later punched the officer, which prompted the officer to use the taser. The officer was said to have "acted appropriately." The student was charged with disruption of school and second-degree assault. I remember that day. I don't remember if I was actually there, or if my memories emerged from second-hand accounts. The crowd that gathered around to watch, the violence of the taser; the shock and violation of watching the girl collapse, and doing nothing.

We Magnet students weren't just passively complicit, either. There was active and subconscious anti-Blackness and anti-Brownness among our ranks. Magnet students regularly referred to Blair on the whole as a "ghetto" school full of gangs and drugs. Black and Latinx students were referred to, jokingly, as thugs or gangsters. We told our non-Blair friends shocking and sensationalized tales about the violence of Blair, with no awareness of the social context in which these situations occurred: the people we'd heard who'd gotten stabbed, the girls we'd heard who were pregnant, the people we'd heard were drug dealers. We were casually racist - making tired and stereotypical jokes about Black and Brown people, including our few Black and Brown classmates, and even about East Asians - speaking in exaggerated Chinese accents and broken English, mimicking our parents. And even if we weren't the ones saying it, we certainly weren't speaking up about why it was wrong.

The seemingly meritocratic nature of the Magnet also made it difficult for us to see the broader picture of systematic racism that infused our institutions, even long after we'd graduated. While I was in school, affirmative action was becoming a household subject, and the myth of meritocracy - a subtly racist idea that success and status should be earned through a completely colorblind process - was constantly being used to refute the principle of affirmative action and other diversity policies. Affirmative action, a set of policies intended to support disadvantaged groups, had been deemed constitutional by the Grutter v. Bollinger supreme court case in 2003. It made the rounds of family dinner talks during our middle school years, and had trickled into our adolescent conversations by the time we were starting to think about college. Meritocracy is an idea coined over 60 years ago by Michael Young, an English sociologist, which represents a world where power and privilege should be granted on the basis of individual merit, irrespective of one's social positioning. Though it was originally intended by Young to be a way to re-organize a classist, old-money society, it is used today, in America, to argue for a sort of color-and-class blindness that invalidates the systematic discrimination faced by Black and Brown communities. In his 2018 essay for the Guardian, Kwame Anthony Appiah noted that many working-and-middle class white Americans might perceive that "minorities" are now granted unfair advantages in the search for work, education, and government benefits, with the introduction of affirmative action and quota-like diversity policies. As he wrote, "They think minorities are getting "handouts" - and men may feel that women are getting unfair advantages, too - but they don't think the solution is to demand handouts for themselves. They are likely to regard the treatment of racial minorities as an exception to the right general rule: they think the US mostly is and certainly should be a society in which opportunities belong to those who have earned them."

By the time I was in school, the Magnet had branded itself as something that might exist within a meritocracy: a program for gifted and accelerated children with an admissions process that was race, class and gender blind. It was "fair," because the program wasn't gatekept by family finances or legacy, unlike a private school; at face value, it seemed that our brains and our talents alone were what deemed us worthy. We didn't stop to think about what had helped accelerate us: college-educated parents, paid tutoring, highly trained teachers, early access to high-quality resources. Skin color. Was I "gifted" because my ma had bought Singapore math books to supplement my classwork, because she regularly brought me to the library? Because she'd had the time and resources to research the magnet and G&T programs in our district while I was still learning to read? Because I had a steady slew of attentive and hand-picked teachers who genuinely cared about my learning? Because I had the face of someone who was allowed to succeed in America? Almost certainly, these factors mattered. None of us were aware enough, at the time, to recognize our role as props within a public school system that prioritized wealthier white and Asian communities and deemed Black and Brown students unworthy of resources and care - all on the basis of "merit."

By the time we were applying for colleges, we were desperate to maintain our prestige. There was pressure from all sides - from our parents, our teachers, our peers, ourselves - to gain admission into elite colleges, like the Ivy Leagues, or win merit-based scholarships. My peers even created a spreadsheet for us to track our college admissions and rejections. I participated, caught up in the competition, and the belief that my accomplishments determined my self-worth, that the only way I could get ahead, could matter, even, was to be wrung through these institutions, again and again. As my peers and I raked in prestigious acceptances and began to wear our brand new Ivy League hoodies around school, we weren't quite aware enough to consider the privileges that had led us to the fiercely guarded gates of these hallowed institutions.

Of course, we were rejected, too. Though by now, we felt entitled to success. We felt that we'd earned it through our intelligence, our effort. And so our rejections prompted ugly reactions. I remember a classmate of mine, fuming angry at their rejection from an elite school, complaining that it wasn't fair that Black students had "a leg up." I remember whispered discussions and raised eyebrows over the acceptances of our few Black classmates, speculation over whether "affirmative action had gotten them in." I remember my ma and I arguing over what race to list on my college applications - white, or Asian - because she was convinced that ticking off the "Asian" box might put me at a disadvantage. To this day, as I've thought deeply on my privilege as a half-white Asian American, that moment haunts me: the ease with which I could slip off my own identity to get ahead, and claim the privilege that white supremacy seemed to offer me.

The myth of meritocracy is dangerous because it sticks, and makes us unable or unwilling to challenge the institutions we've benefitted from and been a part of. And this extends beyond our Magnet years. Many of us who attended the Magnet went on to prestigious colleges, and then landed prestigious jobs, fellowships, and graduate school positions. Many of my classmates now work for top-tier tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. The narrative we'd lived by, and then continued to live by, was that if we worked hard, we'd earn prestige, money, success, everything that was supposed to matter in our capitalist society; everything we'd win if we stayed close to whiteness and privilege. We didn't see, unconsciously or by choice, the resources we were offered that were denied to others, the many factors outside of "hard work" that had elevated us to higher and higher planes of privilege. Recently, a good friend of mine wrote a strongly-worded Facebook status about Facebook's deeply unethical practices, imploring his friends and acquaintances to quit their jobs at the company. The post was written on the presumption that everyone already knew and agreed on the ethics of Facebook. It immediately drew reactions, a lot of it from our former high school peers, a number of them Asian American, many of whom now work in big tech. Some denied the company's misdeeds or expressed a lack of awareness that any harm had been done. Some expressed that it was privileged and judgemental of him to expect people to have the financial security to quit their jobs. And that's the thing: in the Magnet, not all of us came from wealth or financial stability. Some of us were the kids of immigrants, or even first-generation college students. Some of us had financial trauma. Some of us really, really hustled.

This is not a space to call judgement upon my peers for the choices they make, as we all try to survive in a capitalist system that disincentivizes us to make decisions based on our moral compasses. Sometimes we feel so grateful to have been "chosen," to have been called "special," that we can't see anything else. Sometimes our ego needs it. I've been there. There's a definite sense of entrapment - a feeling that these institutions are the only way to "make it," the only way to attain the things we've been told will make us happy, grant us independence, or make our loved ones proud. Some of us - myself included - have experienced trauma that convinces us that status and prestige and perfection are our only means of being worthy of love. Our decisions are so often necessarily based on survival and self-preservation. How can we live a comfortable life without endangering ourselves financially (finding deals on Amazon, which underpays and exploits its workers; buying fast fashion though we may know who makes it, how they're treated, how much they get paid)? And sometimes, the question is as simple and as urgent as how do we secure ourselves housing, food, medical care? How can we make ourselves feel happy, safe, loved? I wish that, in an ideal world, my loved ones and I could all stop participating in companies and institutions that cause harm. But I think it's fully intentional that many of my friends, particularly my Asian American friends, or my friends who didn't grow up with money, or who grew up with trauma - are not able to make that choice easily. I think it's intentional that making choices based on our moral principles is difficult and dependent on our capital and our social positioning. But there is an undeniable sense of entitlement woven through all of this, as well. Being told that you're "chosen," that you're "special," can do that to a person. It happened to me. Because many of us - myself included, once - seem to think that our "merit," hard work, and individual difficulties have absolved us from the larger, more uncomfortable ethics of our decisions. And this is a dangerous belief: that if we work hard enough, if we crawl our way inside the system, we will be safe from the harm these institutions can do. That we can afford to ignore that harm. So I think we have to let that go. I think we can forgive ourselves for whatever may have trapped us within these systems, while still holding ourselves accountable for our choices, our complicity, and what we choose to do next.

I've been complicit. I've grabbed onto the things that were offered to me. I've told myself I'd earned it all. I chose, for many years, not to turn and look at the larger costs of my earnings, not to investigate the bones and foundations of these institutions I clung to, to get ahead, and to feel worthy of love and my own self-respect. I've crawled inside these institutions and these institutions crawled inside me. I'm going to have to work to pick them out.
Fact-check edit June 11th, 2020: there were never metal detectors on Blair's campus, only an ID policy. *Note: I was massively aided in my research on the Magnet's history by resources compiled in a Action items and staying informed:

Sign the "Anti-Racism Education and Initiatives in Montgomery County Public Schools" petition organized by alumna Amie Idriss

Alumni can email Peter Ostrander, Magnet Program Coordinator, with questions about how the Magnet intends to make itself a more safe and inclusive environment. Alumna Nadia Alam has already taken the lead on this effort. Email: Peter_M_Ostrander@mcpsmd.org

Sign this petition by the Silver Spring Justice Coalition demanding police accountability in MoCo, follow them on Facebook for protest information and actions and follow them at @SilverCoalition on Twitter for MoCo-specific updates and more calls to action regarding police defunding

Montgomery County is discussing defunding the police. Contact info for council member Tom Hucker or other council members are at these links, though please note that they have already been flooded with hundreds of calls about defunding.

Follow Principal Renay Johnson on Twitter here for Blair-specific updates, or contact her at Renay_C_Johnson@mcpsmd.org

Follow @dcteensaction on Instagram for actions happening right now in the area

List of Black-Owned businesses in MoCo

Donate to save this Black-owned ice cream shop, Tropical Ice Cream

Donate to BLM DC's East of the River Mutual Aid Fund

Prince George's County schools are also discussing pulling cops out of schools - twitter thread here with updates and petitions

written by Eleanor Harris, as well as in a story highlight on her Instagram page. Please check out the doc for instructions on how to do research on your own school and school district, as well as a comprehensive list of resources for learning about racial inequity in schools. Thank you, Eleanor.
I don't know if "accelerated learning" inherently has to be an idea that upholds a racist and segregationist system. I've worked in a school with a project-based learning educational model that pushes for differentiation and separates students by learning pace and educational experience, rather than by age. I don't always sit well with the word "gifted," perhaps because the framework by which it is defined often fails to take external factors such as race and class into account. As a result, it's been indirectly used to perpetuate the narrative that Black and Brown kids aren't as "gifted" as their white and Asian peers. Research has shown that magnet and gifted programs regularly fail to consider race and class in their educational methodology, and also fail on recruiting and retaining lower-income Black and Brown students, and creating safe spaces for those who do enroll. But I don't know if spaces that resemble the Magnet program necessarily have to stop existing. The Magnet is precious to many who attended. The very fact that I benefited so enormously, in a material and educational sense, from the Magnet, is perhaps evidence enough that all students would benefit from the kind of care, resources, and educational privilege we were provided. What clearly needs to change is the use of Magnet and G&T programs to disguise an insidiously racist and segregated educational system; to stop using such programs, and the colorblind standards of "merit" and "giftedness," to justify withholding the same level of care and resources to Black and Brown students and communities.

I'm no expert on educational inequity, nor educational sociology. I don't know all the answers - how schools can better assess the educational needs of all students, through a lens of race and class; how resources can best be allocated to address deep-rooted societal issues like poverty and systematic racism; how Magnet programs can fit into a totally re-hauled educational system that is committed to caring for Black and Brown people, or if they can. But there is undoubtedly a rotten core to our nation's education system, and many of us have been used to uphold it. All across the country, resources are funneled exclusively to pockets of affluent white and Asian students within the public school system, while schools in Black and Brown communities are de-funded or completely shut down. All across the country, police officers flood schools in Black and Brown neighborhoods, sniffing out opportunities to criminalize students and feed them into the prison pipeline.This institutional racism has seeped into all of us. None of us are fully innocent. And it's okay to sit with that. There is a blatant disregard for Black and Brown students in this country. I don't have the power, as an individual, to right all of the system's wrongs; nor do I want to take up space seeking "forgiveness" or absolution for being complicit. I'm not asking anyone to be guilty for their privilege, race, or social positioning. I'm not here to take away your accomplishments, or your hard work. But I can ask for my white and Asian classmates, my peers, to reflect deeply not only on our privilege, but also the sources of it; to reflect on how privilege gets into us, how it compounds upon itself, how it elevates itself, how it incentivizes us to be apathetic and self-interested. I can ask that we never again believe the lie that we are where we are only because we worked for it, and that others aren't because they didn't. That we can look around at where we are, and see what it cost for us to be here. And then, after we've done some of that reckoning, we can use the privilege we've been given and the resources we've accrued to challenge the systems we've helped uphold, and invest our time, money, and effort into making our communities safe and caring spaces for Black and Brown people. But we will be doing this reckoning all our lives. As long as these systems are operating, as long as we are still inside these systems and these systems are still inside us, we should be working.

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Magnet Programs, Segregation, and the Anti-Blackness of the Asian Model Minority Myth

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During my high school years, I was one of 400 students who had tested into the STEM Magnet program at Montgomery Blair High School. We had class offerings that looked like a college curriculum spread: Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Origins of Science, Sports Statistics, Astronomy, Genetics, Advanced Algorithms, and higher level math courses.

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An educators guide to this moment (MCPS resource for educators, parents, students)

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An educators guide to this moment (MCPS resource for educators, parents, students)

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ADDRESSING RACE AND TRAUMA IN THE CLASSROOM: A RESOURCE FOR EDUCATORS

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ADDRESSING RACE AND TRAUMA IN THE CLASSROOM: A RESOURCE FOR EDUCATORS

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The National Child Traumatic Stress Network

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Helps educators understand how they might address the interplay of race and trauma and its effects on students in the classroom. The guide outlines recommendations for educators and offers a list of supplemental resources. It should be implemented in accordance with individual school policies and procedures.

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Addressing Race and Trauma in the Classroom: A Resource for Educators

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Helps educators understand how they might address the interplay of race and trauma and its effects on students in the classroom. The guide outlines recommendations for educators and offers a list of supplemental resources. It should be implemented in accordance with individual school policies and procedures.

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Talking About Race and Privilege Lesson Plan for Middle and High School Students

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Talking About Race and Privilege Lesson Plan for Middle and High School Students

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Talking to Children About Violence:Tips for Parents and Educators

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Talking to Children About Violence:Tips for Parents and Educators

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Do we have a space to brainstorm ideas?
1. Be willing to have conversations about these topics (with adults and students) in common spaces. Other people nearby can hear and learn, even if they aren't ready to be active participants in a conversation (yet).
2. Create small groups (10 ish) to have conversations. Groups last for a set amount of time (a month?) but then switch up groups so we hear new voices.
Other ideas?

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"Isn't that one of your kids?

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These conversations can be intertwined, even though they can also stand alone.

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Dr. Sheldon Eakins, free resource. Begins with ideas on how to set up an online classroom but the subsequent podcasts by various writers and teachers is interesting.

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Supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their school.

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Do we do enough to recognize the hard work of supporting staff including security, building services and the cafeteria?

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Internal practices that placate parents and hurt students

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Internal practices that placate parents and hurt students

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A protest for unequal education in New York City schools on October 7, 2015. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images

During my high school years, I was one of 400 students who had tested into the STEM Magnet program at Montgomery Blair High School. We had class offerings that looked like a college curriculum spread: Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Origins of Science, Sports Statistics, Astronomy, Genetics, Advanced Algorithms, and higher level math courses. We did elaborate experiments in chemistry and biology. We took an overnight trip to Wallops Island to learn more about ecological science. We built robots and trebuchets. We wrote research papers and won national STEM competitions. Our teachers were, for the most part, brilliant and excellent, expanding our minds to accept difficult, college-level concepts, and encouraging an innate curiosity and desire to probe for truth. We were built up to be exceptional.

We were also a school within a school - 400 students, primarily white and Asian, within a larger school population of roughly 3000 students. When I entered the program in 2009, the demographics of the student body made Blair qualify as a "high-minority" school - 29% Black, 27.6% Latinx, 25.6% white, 17.6% AAPI, and the remaining 0.2% Indigenous/Native. The makeup of the Magnet looked very different. Most of us within the program were white, Asian, and middle-to-upper class kids. Most of us noticed. But we accepted the narrative we'd lived our whole lives - that we'd all earned our spot in that program, through our hard work alone. The clean racial divide became an awkward but normalized reality.

Many of us had been in the Magnet and G&T system for years. G&T stands for "gifted and talented," a terminology now considered outdated, which refers to smaller programs within public schools for students who have shown their merit through an admissions test or application process. I entered the G&T program at Lucy V. Barnsley elementary school in the fourth grade, un-enrolling at Rock Creek Forest elementary, which was also a "high-minority" school in a largely Latinx neighborhood. For middle school, I attended the Humanities and Communication Magnet program at Eastern Middle School (also high-minority). Some friends and I tag-teamed through these schools-within-schools for years.

Some of us identified the pattern - that our magnet programs seemed intentionally planted in lower-funded public schools in Black and Brown neighborhoods; that there weren't Magnet programs in schools that drew from wealthier, whiter communities in the district. We'd learned about Brown v. Board of Education in our 6th grade history classes. We'd learned about segregation, and that it didn't exist anymore; perhaps some of us questioned why it seemed like our programs - and on a larger scale, district boundaries - were still cleanly split along racial and socioeconomic lines. But none of us knew the history of our Magnet programs, and how they were created, quite intentionally, to maintain a heavily biased distribution of resources and funding long after segregation was abolished in name.
Note: the information in the following section has been largely informed by the research of Eleanor Harris, who compiled the majority of the research and posted about it originally on her Instagram page.
School segregation on the basis of race was ruled unconstitutional in 1954. As was the case for several schools across the country that began to draw from Black and Brown neighborhoods, white parents whose students attended Blair were unwilling to send their children to a school that they saw as becoming "overcrowded" with non-white students, and threatened to evacuate the public school system altogether. School Boards pushed to create programs like Blair's Magnet to placate white parents, and, as an incentive, keep resources concentrated on pockets of white students within high-minority student bodies. As Eleanor Harris and Alice Park reported in a 2016 Silver Chips article, "A Polarizing Experience," Magnet programs were established in the 80's to funnel white, and then eventually Asian, upper-to-middle class students back into schools that were becoming predominantly Black and Latinx. The effects of this hoop-jumping are still seen today. In her famous 2016 piece for the NYTimes, "Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Racially Segregated City," Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote: "In a city where white children are only 15 percent of the more than one million public-school students, half of them are clustered in just 11 percent of the schools, which not coincidentally include many of the city's top performers. Part of what makes those schools desirable to white parents, aside from the academics, is that they have some students of color, but not too many." Magnet programs were crucial for this careful curation of school demographics, and crucial to keeping white parents happy.

Harris and Park report that in the years following the introduction of magnet programs, "local and national lawsuits changed the standards for using race in magnet admissions." President Reagan, who'd been elected in 1981, stated that "using race to integrate schools was just as bad as using race to segregate them" - effectively arguing that school districts shouldn't take active measures to create racial diversity in their demographics. The Supreme Court backed Reagan. Similar fights were taken to court on the local level. To this day, magnet admissions standards have remained "colorblind."

The fact that the Magnet sucked up the majority of resources (a significantly larger amount of funding, and a higher number of teachers-per-student) going into Blair was occasionally raised as a concern, but as the program became increasingly prestigious - as cohort after cohort graduated with impressive pedigrees and acceptances from elite colleges, and alumni went on to work high-status jobs or found notable companies - the original mission of the program was overshadowed by its new reputation, as a space for "accelerated" and "gifted" learners.

Throughout the 2000s, Black and Latinx parents regularly raised concerns about the low enrollment of their students, a conversation that continues, without resolution, today. Harris and Park reported that it was generally agreed among Magnet officials and administration that "few Black and Latinx students are well prepared enough to be accepted into the Magnet."

The fact that Asian students began to heavily populate the Magnet, when it was originally intended as an integration strategy to bring in more white students, is important. Asian Americans have historically been allowed to exist and succeed as "model minorities" within American society. The model minority myth promotes the idea that Asians (specifically East Asians or light-skinned Asians) are polite and law-abiding, achieving enormous success within the American framework despite our non-white identity. We're meant to serve as "proof" that non-white folks can make it in America through hard work and hard work alone, thus also "proving" that Black and Latinx folks are responsible for their own lack of social mobility, lower academic performance and rates of graduation, and increased rates of incarceration and poverty. This is quite intentional. Asian folks in the US are used as pawns to shift accountability off systems of white supremacy and onto the backs and "individual failings" of Black and Latinx people. We're duped into believing that we will be allowed all of the privileges of white supremacy, that we can be "honorary whites," as long as we uphold systems and institutions of whiteness. Southeast Asian communities face incredibly high rates of poverty, incarceration, and deportation. And even middle-to-upper class East and South Asians often face difficulty getting into positions of leadership at their companies or moving past lower-rung positions. The model minority myth is not just one of Asian success; but also one of Black and Brown failure. It's a myth that systematic racism isn't real.

The language shift in the Magnet's branding in the late 90's and early 2000s, from integration to acceleration and "giftedness," played directly into harmful minority myths. With the Magnet's racial history shrouded from view, what the public saw at face value was a program for "special kids" filled with Asian students who got in on the basis of their own merit, intelligence, and hard work. It also marketed itself to immigrant parents sold on the mythological American dream - that they were coming to America to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and give their children opportunities they never had, teaching them to "work the system" and get ahead in a society they understood to be harsh and unjust. I remember my ma regularly telling me that I just needed to "figure out the system and get on top of it," rather than question or challenge it. Parents who expected their children to excel academically, attend prestigious colleges, and get high-paying jobs, prepared for years to get their children into the Magnet. The fact that the Magnet quickly filled with Asian kids only further pushed the dangerous narrative that Asian Americans were simply "better minorities;" that Asian kids were gifted, accelerated learners and hard workers, and by contrast, Black and Brown students were failing themselves, whether by lack of hard work, or by some kind of inherent lack of ability. By rebranding the Magnet, not as a concession to white families unwilling to integrate, but as an elite and "colorblind" space for special students, the school board was able to hide its tracks, and hide the deep systematic inequalities that led to the demographics of its star program.

While I was at Blair, anti-Blackness and anti-Brownness oozed from the school at a deeply institutional level. The Magnet had multiple tech-packed laboratories, workshops, and computer labs to which we were granted exclusive access. Some classes within the program had less than ten students, while some non-Magnet classes had thirty. We received close mentorship, and there was an intensely familial feeling to the Magnet - we were all known by the teachers, and by one another. Black and Latinx students were often punished for things that Magnet students got away with - wearing hats, phone usage, walking in the halls during class time. I remember non-Magnet students also being regularly penalized if they appeared to be sporting gang colors or suspected of conducting "gang activity" on school grounds (which could involve a group of students standing and talking together). This project by ProPublica shows that at Blair, Black students are 8.9 times more likely to be suspended compared to white students, and that 100% of expelled students are Latinx. A few years before I enrolled, Blair required students to wear an ID tag, a measure that was considered necessary to prevent non-student gang members or "drug dealers" from entering campus undetected. The year before I started 9th grade, Blair got rid of the ID policy after students protested that it made them feel mistrusted, like criminals in a prison, rather than children going to school to learn. Our campus was also crawling with security officers. Data from the 2015-2016 federal Civil Rights Data collection showed that schools in predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods were found to be more likely to have school-based security staff than schools in white communities. It was also found that these schools had a greater security presence than staff available to address mental health needs. The statistics gathered by ProPublica lists that Blair has 10 security officers, a number that is in the highest 10% of the district. All I knew at the time was that we had several. They had police-like uniforms and intimidated us. They regularly intervened in student fights, particularly fights between Black or Latinx students, tackling students and forcefully separating them or pinning them down. In 2013, my senior year, a security officer used a taser to subdue a 16-year-old Black student. In news reports that came out afterwards, the student was said to have refused orders to go to class, and later punched the officer, which prompted the officer to use the taser. The officer was said to have "acted appropriately." The student was charged with disruption of school and second-degree assault. I remember that day. I don't remember if I was actually there, or if my memories emerged from second-hand accounts. The crowd that gathered around to watch, the violence of the taser; the shock and violation of watching the girl collapse, and doing nothing.

We Magnet students weren't just passively complicit, either. There was active and subconscious anti-Blackness and anti-Brownness among our ranks. Magnet students regularly referred to Blair on the whole as a "ghetto" school full of gangs and drugs. Black and Latinx students were referred to, jokingly, as thugs or gangsters. We told our non-Blair friends shocking and sensationalized tales about the violence of Blair, with no awareness of the social context in which these situations occurred: the people we'd heard who'd gotten stabbed, the girls we'd heard who were pregnant, the people we'd heard were drug dealers. We were casually racist - making tired and stereotypical jokes about Black and Brown people, including our few Black and Brown classmates, and even about East Asians - speaking in exaggerated Chinese accents and broken English, mimicking our parents. And even if we weren't the ones saying it, we certainly weren't speaking up about why it was wrong.

The seemingly meritocratic nature of the Magnet also made it difficult for us to see the broader picture of systematic racism that infused our institutions, even long after we'd graduated. While I was in school, affirmative action was becoming a household subject, and the myth of meritocracy - a subtly racist idea that success and status should be earned through a completely colorblind process - was constantly being used to refute the principle of affirmative action and other diversity policies. Affirmative action, a set of policies intended to support disadvantaged groups, had been deemed constitutional by the Grutter v. Bollinger supreme court case in 2003. It made the rounds of family dinner talks during our middle school years, and had trickled into our adolescent conversations by the time we were starting to think about college. Meritocracy is an idea coined over 60 years ago by Michael Young, an English sociologist, which represents a world where power and privilege should be granted on the basis of individual merit, irrespective of one's social positioning. Though it was originally intended by Young to be a way to re-organize a classist, old-money society, it is used today, in America, to argue for a sort of color-and-class blindness that invalidates the systematic discrimination faced by Black and Brown communities. In his 2018 essay for the Guardian, Kwame Anthony Appiah noted that many working-and-middle class white Americans might perceive that "minorities" are now granted unfair advantages in the search for work, education, and government benefits, with the introduction of affirmative action and quota-like diversity policies. As he wrote, "They think minorities are getting "handouts" - and men may feel that women are getting unfair advantages, too - but they don't think the solution is to demand handouts for themselves. They are likely to regard the treatment of racial minorities as an exception to the right general rule: they think the US mostly is and certainly should be a society in which opportunities belong to those who have earned them."

By the time I was in school, the Magnet had branded itself as something that might exist within a meritocracy: a program for gifted and accelerated children with an admissions process that was race, class and gender blind. It was "fair," because the program wasn't gatekept by family finances or legacy, unlike a private school; at face value, it seemed that our brains and our talents alone were what deemed us worthy. We didn't stop to think about what had helped accelerate us: college-educated parents, paid tutoring, highly trained teachers, early access to high-quality resources. Skin color. Was I "gifted" because my ma had bought Singapore math books to supplement my classwork, because she regularly brought me to the library? Because she'd had the time and resources to research the magnet and G&T programs in our district while I was still learning to read? Because I had a steady slew of attentive and hand-picked teachers who genuinely cared about my learning? Because I had the face of someone who was allowed to succeed in America? Almost certainly, these factors mattered. None of us were aware enough, at the time, to recognize our role as props within a public school system that prioritized wealthier white and Asian communities and deemed Black and Brown students unworthy of resources and care - all on the basis of "merit."

By the time we were applying for colleges, we were desperate to maintain our prestige. There was pressure from all sides - from our parents, our teachers, our peers, ourselves - to gain admission into elite colleges, like the Ivy Leagues, or win merit-based scholarships. My peers even created a spreadsheet for us to track our college admissions and rejections. I participated, caught up in the competition, and the belief that my accomplishments determined my self-worth, that the only way I could get ahead, could matter, even, was to be wrung through these institutions, again and again. As my peers and I raked in prestigious acceptances and began to wear our brand new Ivy League hoodies around school, we weren't quite aware enough to consider the privileges that had led us to the fiercely guarded gates of these hallowed institutions.

Of course, we were rejected, too. Though by now, we felt entitled to success. We felt that we'd earned it through our intelligence, our effort. And so our rejections prompted ugly reactions. I remember a classmate of mine, fuming angry at their rejection from an elite school, complaining that it wasn't fair that Black students had "a leg up." I remember whispered discussions and raised eyebrows over the acceptances of our few Black classmates, speculation over whether "affirmative action had gotten them in." I remember my ma and I arguing over what race to list on my college applications - white, or Asian - because she was convinced that ticking off the "Asian" box might put me at a disadvantage. To this day, as I've thought deeply on my privilege as a half-white Asian American, that moment haunts me: the ease with which I could slip off my own identity to get ahead, and claim the privilege that white supremacy seemed to offer me.

The myth of meritocracy is dangerous because it sticks, and makes us unable or unwilling to challenge the institutions we've benefitted from and been a part of. And this extends beyond our Magnet years. Many of us who attended the Magnet went on to prestigious colleges, and then landed prestigious jobs, fellowships, and graduate school positions. Many of my classmates now work for top-tier tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. The narrative we'd lived by, and then continued to live by, was that if we worked hard, we'd earn prestige, money, success, everything that was supposed to matter in our capitalist society; everything we'd win if we stayed close to whiteness and privilege. We didn't see, unconsciously or by choice, the resources we were offered that were denied to others, the many factors outside of "hard work" that had elevated us to higher and higher planes of privilege. Recently, a good friend of mine wrote a strongly-worded Facebook status about Facebook's deeply unethical practices, imploring his friends and acquaintances to quit their jobs at the company. The post was written on the presumption that everyone already knew and agreed on the ethics of Facebook. It immediately drew reactions, a lot of it from our former high school peers, a number of them Asian American, many of whom now work in big tech. Some denied the company's misdeeds or expressed a lack of awareness that any harm had been done. Some expressed that it was privileged and judgemental of him to expect people to have the financial security to quit their jobs. And that's the thing: in the Magnet, not all of us came from wealth or financial stability. Some of us were the kids of immigrants, or even first-generation college students. Some of us had financial trauma. Some of us really, really hustled.

This is not a space to call judgement upon my peers for the choices they make, as we all try to survive in a capitalist system that disincentivizes us to make decisions based on our moral compasses. Sometimes we feel so grateful to have been "chosen," to have been called "special," that we can't see anything else. Sometimes our ego needs it. I've been there. There's a definite sense of entrapment - a feeling that these institutions are the only way to "make it," the only way to attain the things we've been told will make us happy, grant us independence, or make our loved ones proud. Some of us - myself included - have experienced trauma that convinces us that status and prestige and perfection are our only means of being worthy of love. Our decisions are so often necessarily based on survival and self-preservation. How can we live a comfortable life without endangering ourselves financially (finding deals on Amazon, which underpays and exploits its workers; buying fast fashion though we may know who makes it, how they're treated, how much they get paid)? And sometimes, the question is as simple and as urgent as how do we secure ourselves housing, food, medical care? How can we make ourselves feel happy, safe, loved? I wish that, in an ideal world, my loved ones and I could all stop participating in companies and institutions that cause harm. But I think it's fully intentional that many of my friends, particularly my Asian American friends, or my friends who didn't grow up with money, or who grew up with trauma - are not able to make that choice easily. I think it's intentional that making choices based on our moral principles is difficult and dependent on our capital and our social positioning. But there is an undeniable sense of entitlement woven through all of this, as well. Being told that you're "chosen," that you're "special," can do that to a person. It happened to me. Because many of us - myself included, once - seem to think that our "merit," hard work, and individual difficulties have absolved us from the larger, more uncomfortable ethics of our decisions. And this is a dangerous belief: that if we work hard enough, if we crawl our way inside the system, we will be safe from the harm these institutions can do. That we can afford to ignore that harm. So I think we have to let that go. I think we can forgive ourselves for whatever may have trapped us within these systems, while still holding ourselves accountable for our choices, our complicity, and what we choose to do next.

I've been complicit. I've grabbed onto the things that were offered to me. I've told myself I'd earned it all. I chose, for many years, not to turn and look at the larger costs of my earnings, not to investigate the bones and foundations of these institutions I clung to, to get ahead, and to feel worthy of love and my own self-respect. I've crawled inside these institutions and these institutions crawled inside me. I'm going to have to work to pick them out.
Fact-check edit June 11th, 2020: there were never metal detectors on Blair's campus, only an ID policy. *Note: I was massively aided in my research on the Magnet's history by resources compiled in a Action items and staying informed:

Sign the "Anti-Racism Education and Initiatives in Montgomery County Public Schools" petition organized by alumna Amie Idriss

Alumni can email Peter Ostrander, Magnet Program Coordinator, with questions about how the Magnet intends to make itself a more safe and inclusive environment. Alumna Nadia Alam has already taken the lead on this effort. Email: Peter_M_Ostrander@mcpsmd.org

Sign this petition by the Silver Spring Justice Coalition demanding police accountability in MoCo, follow them on Facebook for protest information and actions and follow them at @SilverCoalition on Twitter for MoCo-specific updates and more calls to action regarding police defunding

Montgomery County is discussing defunding the police. Contact info for council member Tom Hucker or other council members are at these links, though please note that they have already been flooded with hundreds of calls about defunding.

Follow Principal Renay Johnson on Twitter here for Blair-specific updates, or contact her at Renay_C_Johnson@mcpsmd.org

Follow @dcteensaction on Instagram for actions happening right now in the area

List of Black-Owned businesses in MoCo

Donate to save this Black-owned ice cream shop, Tropical Ice Cream

Donate to BLM DC's East of the River Mutual Aid Fund

Prince George's County schools are also discussing pulling cops out of schools - twitter thread here with updates and petitions

written by Eleanor Harris, as well as in a story highlight on her Instagram page. Please check out the doc for instructions on how to do research on your own school and school district, as well as a comprehensive list of resources for learning about racial inequity in schools. Thank you, Eleanor.
I don't know if "accelerated learning" inherently has to be an idea that upholds a racist and segregationist system. I've worked in a school with a project-based learning educational model that pushes for differentiation and separates students by learning pace and educational experience, rather than by age. I don't always sit well with the word "gifted," perhaps because the framework by which it is defined often fails to take external factors such as race and class into account. As a result, it's been indirectly used to perpetuate the narrative that Black and Brown kids aren't as "gifted" as their white and Asian peers. Research has shown that magnet and gifted programs regularly fail to consider race and class in their educational methodology, and also fail on recruiting and retaining lower-income Black and Brown students, and creating safe spaces for those who do enroll. But I don't know if spaces that resemble the Magnet program necessarily have to stop existing. The Magnet is precious to many who attended. The very fact that I benefited so enormously, in a material and educational sense, from the Magnet, is perhaps evidence enough that all students would benefit from the kind of care, resources, and educational privilege we were provided. What clearly needs to change is the use of Magnet and G&T programs to disguise an insidiously racist and segregated educational system; to stop using such programs, and the colorblind standards of "merit" and "giftedness," to justify withholding the same level of care and resources to Black and Brown students and communities.

I'm no expert on educational inequity, nor educational sociology. I don't know all the answers - how schools can better assess the educational needs of all students, through a lens of race and class; how resources can best be allocated to address deep-rooted societal issues like poverty and systematic racism; how Magnet programs can fit into a totally re-hauled educational system that is committed to caring for Black and Brown people, or if they can. But there is undoubtedly a rotten core to our nation's education system, and many of us have been used to uphold it. All across the country, resources are funneled exclusively to pockets of affluent white and Asian students within the public school system, while schools in Black and Brown communities are de-funded or completely shut down. All across the country, police officers flood schools in Black and Brown neighborhoods, sniffing out opportunities to criminalize students and feed them into the prison pipeline.This institutional racism has seeped into all of us. None of us are fully innocent. And it's okay to sit with that. There is a blatant disregard for Black and Brown students in this country. I don't have the power, as an individual, to right all of the system's wrongs; nor do I want to take up space seeking "forgiveness" or absolution for being complicit. I'm not asking anyone to be guilty for their privilege, race, or social positioning. I'm not here to take away your accomplishments, or your hard work. But I can ask for my white and Asian classmates, my peers, to reflect deeply not only on our privilege, but also the sources of it; to reflect on how privilege gets into us, how it compounds upon itself, how it elevates itself, how it incentivizes us to be apathetic and self-interested. I can ask that we never again believe the lie that we are where we are only because we worked for it, and that others aren't because they didn't. That we can look around at where we are, and see what it cost for us to be here. And then, after we've done some of that reckoning, we can use the privilege we've been given and the resources we've accrued to challenge the systems we've helped uphold, and invest our time, money, and effort into making our communities safe and caring spaces for Black and Brown people. But we will be doing this reckoning all our lives. As long as these systems are operating, as long as we are still inside these systems and these systems are still inside us, we should be working.

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Magnet Programs, Segregation, and the Anti-Blackness of the Asian Model Minority Myth

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During my high school years, I was one of 400 students who had tested into the STEM Magnet program at Montgomery Blair High School. We had class offerings that looked like a college curriculum spread: Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Origins of Science, Sports Statistics, Astronomy, Genetics, Advanced Algorithms, and higher level math courses.

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"But I pulled myself up by the bootstraps and made it."

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"But I pulled myself up by the bootstraps and made it."

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Consider leaving Black Lives Matter (BLM) out of this GREAT WORK. BLM is linked to some pretty heavy racial ideology and propaganda yet when criticized, can be used as rhetorical blackmail. Either get on board or you’re a racist is the logic but is driven by fear. There’s an immediate and powerful social block on even questioning this movement. It does not belong in our school building or in these conversations. We can do this work without it.

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White Guilt How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era

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Radiolab | Radiolab Presents: G | WNYC Studios

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When President Donald Trump, frustrated during a bipartisan immigration meeting in the White House, reportedly asked last month why the U.S. was protecting immigrants from "shithole countries," he appeared to be privileging the immigration status, if not the biology, of some people from certain lands. It harkens back to an era when race mattered a great deal in terms of one's status, rights and opportunities - all to our nation's social detriment.

Between the late 1890s and the late 1930s, "White Anglo-Saxon Protestants" on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean were obsessed with the future of their country's gene pool and how different immigrants might taint it.

Supporting these fears was a theoretical framework called eugenics, first proposed in 1883 by Sir Frances Galton, the British polymath and naturalist, and a pioneer in many other fields such as meteorology, psychology and anthropometrics.

Galton, the younger, first cousin of Charles Darwin (who played an outsized role in influencing Sir Francis's education and intellectual life), was born on this day in 1822. We come today not to praise Francis Galton but to bury him along with his faulty and dangerous pseudoscience of eugenics.

Sir Francis's social theories on who was eugenically worthy spread like wildfire among white intellectuals in almost every developed Western nation.

The word eugenics is taken from the Greek root, "eugenes," namely good in stock or hereditarily endowed with noble qualities. Galton coined the term in his 1883 book, "Inquiries into the Human Faculty and its Development." The idea was to propose a way to 'give to the more suitable races ... a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable." In a 1904 issue of the American Journal of Sociology, Galton defined eugenics more succinctly as "the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage." Galton also coined the phrase "nature versus nurture."

Sir Francis's social theories on who was eugenically worthy spread like wildfire among white intellectuals in almost every developed Western nation. For example, in July of 1912, one year after Galton's death, the threat of inferior races polluting the Western body politic was discussed at the first International Congress of Eugenics in London. Sitting in the audience were Britain's Prime Minister Lord Balfour, Winston Churchill and Charles Darwin's son Leonard, along with the ambassadors of Greece, France and (wait for it) Norway.

During the Progressive era (1900-1920), a generation of American reformers sought to fix several social problems of the day, which included urban poverty, assimilating the huge number of immigrants coming to American shores, and public health crises such as epidemics, high infant mortality rates and explosive population growth. Many of these reformers used inappropriate eugenic explanations for their management of those deemed to be socially undesirable: so-called "mental defectives" (which included those labeled with newly-created clinical terms like "imbeciles," "idiots," and "morons"); the blind, deaf, mentally ill and "crippled"; orphans, unwed mothers, epileptics, Native Americans, African Americans, foreigners, poor residents from the mountains and hollows of Appalachia and many other "outsider" groups.

"Inferior races," eugenic theorists concluded, were a drain on the economic, political and moral health of American life. Some African American intellectuals, too, supported the theory, arguing we should focus on the "talented tenth" of every race.

Eugenics offered Americans in positions of power an authoritative scientific language to substantiate their biases against those they feared as dangerous.

One of the dirtiest realities of the American eugenics movement is that, with relatively few prominent exceptions, it is difficult to find a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant man (or woman) of means who did not endorse such theories. As the "social Darwinist" Herbert Spencer famously opined, it was a matter of the "survival of the fittest." "Race suicide," a term introduced in 1901 by the University of Wisconsin sociologist and best-selling author Edward A. Ross, was a concern that captured the American conversation all the way up to the White House. Behind his "bully pulpit," President Theodore Roosevelt repeatedly wrung his hands over the issue.

Other influential eugenicists who fretted over the American protoplasm included grant makers from both the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations, U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, David Starr Jordan, the president of Stanford University, psychologist Henry H. Goddard, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, R-Mass., auto magnate Henry Ford, inventor of the telephone Alexander Graham Bell, botanist Luther Burbank, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Robert A. Millikan, a Nobel laureate in physics, novelists Upton Sinclair and Sinclair Lewis, economist William Z. Ripley, birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, advocate for the blind Helen Keller, African-American scholar W.E.B. Dubois, and the creator of the wellness movement, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.

The solution of the day was to quarantine, cordon off and prevent these "undesirables" from contaminating the "superior" mostly white, native-born citizens. Moreover, racial groups deemed "eugenically superior," specifically White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, were encouraged to reproduce at greater rates, a concept often referred to as "positive eugenics."

This bit of history reminds us to constantly evaluate and test our theories for evidence of racism and prejudice before implementing them and harming the innocent.

Those adjudged to have "inferior genes" were discouraged from reproducing through the establishment of "negative eugenics" programs, such as state-mandated sterilization laws for "mental defectives," restrictions against who could marry whom, birth control policies, harsh adoption laws and loud nativist calls for laws restricting the entry of "swarthy," "unkempt" and "unassimilable" immigrants. In essence, eugenics offered Americans in positions of power an authoritative scientific language to substantiate their biases against those they feared as dangerous. Indeed, few of the "social eugenics policies" had a greater impact than the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, which blocked the entry of the millions of Eastern and Southern European and Asian immigrants seeking refuge on our shores for the following 40 years. How many millions of them died or lived tortured lives in their native lands because of this stringent and prejudiced policy is difficult to enumerate.

One of the biggest fans of the American eugenics movement was Adolf Hitler, the chancellor of Nazi Germany. When the world discovered the role eugenics played in Hitler's campaign to cleanse the Third Reich of its "unfit," it drummed a final nail into the eugenics movement coffin.

Once the theory of an armchair population biologist, eugenics too quickly transmogrified into a racist and harmful evidence base for ridding nations of those the dominant society did not like or feared. The problem, of course, was that the evidence base was false and poorly constructed.

If Francis Galton is remembered at all, it should be poorly, despite his many other intellectual contributions. Some consider eugenics to be merely the weird, step-uncle of modern, scientifically-grounded genetics. Yet this bit of history reminds us to constantly evaluate and test our theories for evidence of racism and prejudice before implementing them and harming the innocent.

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Column: The false, racist theory of eugenics once ruled science. Let's never let that happen again

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When President Donald Trump, frustrated during a bipartisan immigration meeting in the White House, reportedly asked last month why the U.S. was protecting immigrants from "shithole countries," he appeared to be privileging the immigration status, if not the biology, of some people from certain lands.

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Ignoring the opinions of others who do not fit your narrative

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Ignoring the opinions of others who do not fit your narrative

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Racism exists at RM in so many forms! We have "advocates" who  alienate  anyone who does not agree with them.  Our own principal does this regularly.