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When I visited my parents' house several years ago, I found a box filled with my old drawings from elementary school. I smiled at the cute images of myself in kindergarten, with my black hair and dark eyes.

But as I flipped through the pages, I noticed something was... off.

The drawings of me with black hair and dark eyes were soon replaced with blue eyes and blonde hair.

I was holding a tangible piece of evidence as to why representation matters not just in books, but in our schools. Looking back, I realized how little-if any-Asian American Pacific Islander literature and history had been taught in depth when I was growing up. I didn't know that 19th-century Chinese immigrant laborers helped construct the Continental Railroad. The illegal incarceration of the Japanese Americans during World War II was just a couple of pages, maybe even a side bar, in our US History textbooks. And as a Korean American, I learned more about the Korean War at the dinner table from my parents than I did in the classroom.

The irony? Many award-winning AAPI children's/YA fiction and nonfiction books were published back then. But during the 1970s and '80s, AAPI subjects were not considered "mainstream" enough to be taught in-depth in K-12 classes. As a result, there was not enough access for these books. For example, when I was in elementary school in 1975, Laurence Yep's Dragonwings won a Newbery Honor. But I never saw his books on our library shelves. I did not know about him, along with Yoshiko Uchida, Allen Say, Sook Nyul Choi, and others until I was an adult.

I felt cheated. I lost a valuable part of not just my childhood, but my identity.

And I had the drawings to prove it.

During college and beyond, I did my own homework on Asian America by devouring every single AAPI history book I could find. That inspired me to write AAPI nonfiction books for young readers. I did not want children growing up like me with this huge gap of in their education.

Because this gap can have devastating-and even fatal-results.

Soon after the 2021 COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act was passed, Illinois and New Jersey became the first two states to mandate Asian American Pacific Islander history in K-12 public schools. California recently passed a law requiring K-12 Ethnic Studies to be taught as well. New York and several other states are now working on similar legislation.

That statistic breaks my heart. Think about it. What if this whole time, AAPI history was already being taught in depth in all K-12 classrooms across the country? Instead of 1 out 4 AAPI children being bullied because of the pandemic, perhaps that number could have been... zero.

I hope my personal story inspires you to look into your own heritage as a source of inspiration for discovering nonfiction stories told from unique points of view. What are little-known historical events or figures from your heritage that you feel are not only universal but relevant to what's happening today? Because all of our voices are universal and empowering for those who have had to rise above the noise to be heard.

Paula Yoo is a TV/feature writer and producer, musician and author of over a dozen children's and young adult books. Her latest YA narrative nonfiction book, FROM A WHISPER TO A RALLYING CRY: THE KILLING OF VINCENT CHIN AND THE TRIAL THAT GALVANIZED THE ASIAN AMERICAN MOVEMENT (Norton Young Readers 2021), won the Boston Globe Horn Book Award, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction.

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Our Voices: Reading and Writing About Our Heritage

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When I visited my parents' house several years ago, I found a box filled with my old drawings from elementary school. I smiled at the cute images of myself in kindergarten, with my black hair and dark eyes. But as I flipped through the pages, I noticed something was... off.

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The most frequent question I am asked about Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre is, "Why did you tackle that topic for children?"

In response, I ask, "Did you learn about the massacre as a child?"

If not, don't blame your upbringing. Your parents and teachers probably weren't taught about the massacre either, because the scant Black history in curricula was-and still is-apt to be whitewashed.

Unspeakable commemorates what is believed to be the nation's worst incident of racial violence. From May 31 to June 1, 1921, a white mob waged a campaign of terror in the predominantly Black Greenwood community, leaving at least 300 dead and 8,000 homeless. Because Tulsa's white leaders declared it a "riot," Black residents could not file insurance claims to recoup losses, which totalled $200 million in today's dollars.

By 1921, Greenwood's Black Wall Street was the wealthiest African American district in the country. The one-mile stretch along Greenwood Avenue symbolized Black prosperity, fueling envy among white supremacists. The plot by white leaders and the police to destroy Greenwood erased Black Wall Street from the map and from memory. Seventy-five years later, an official investigation occurred. In 1996, the Tulsa Race Massacre Commission's report exposed the conspiracy. But the massacre was not taught in Oklahoma schools until the 21st century.

The oldest Tulsa Race Massacre survivor, 107-year-old Viola Fletcher (shown here at a Tulsa rally marking the centennial commemorations) testified before Congress.

Sue Ogrocki/Associated Press

This past May, 107-year-old Viola Fletcher, the oldest living Tulsa Race Massacre survivor, testified at a congressional hearing on reparations.

"I still see Black men being shot, Black bodies lying in the street. I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see Black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams," Fletcher bore witness. "I have lived through the massacre every day. Our country may forget this history, but I cannot."

Mother Fletcher's testimony begs the question: Why weren't we taught that history in school?

When bibliophile Arturo Schomburg (1874-1938) was a fifth grader in Puerto Rico, his teacher told him that African descendants had no history worth noting. Unconvinced, Schomburg embarked on a lifelong quest to prove that educator wrong.

After immigrating to the United States, he collected books, art, and artifacts about the African diaspora and became a leading light of the Harlem Renaissance. Donated to the New York Public Library in 1926, his collection formed the basis of the present-day Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The Harlem repository holds more than 11 million items, including author Langston Hughes's cremated remains, which lie beneath the lobby.

When I was growing up in the 1960s, few children's books centered Black histories. But teachers at my all-Black elementary school in Baltimore infused our lessons with Black pride. My fourth grade teacher made us memorize Hughes's poem, "I, Too," which filled me with a sense of liberation.

Decades later, at a literary event in the Harlem brownstone that Hughes once called home, I admired his typewriter on the mantle and wondered aloud: "Is this place haunted?" Within minutes, a full water bottle-undisturbed by any visible motion-toppled from the stool beside me, as if I had summoned his ghost.

Just as my preacher grandfather saw ghosts, I am haunted by the ancestors' untold stories of resistance, resilience, and remarkability. For me, Black history is a balm akin to church. I carry both sorrow and celebration to the altar of remembrance.

First and foremost, African American nonfiction is testament. By definition, Black testament encompasses tradition, tributes, trials/trauma, triumphs/transformation, and, to borrow from the biblical Proverbs, "training up a child."

[Read: More than 50 Works of Black Nonfiction]

Testaments to tradition focus on family, arts, culture, cuisine, and community. My book, The Roots of Rap: 16 Bars on the 4 Pillars of Hip-Hop, illustrated by Frank Morrison, fits in this category. So do Ashley Bryan's All Night, All Day: A Child's First Book of African American Spirituals, and Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions by Margaret Musgrove, for which illustrators Leo and Diane Dillon won the Caldecott Medal-a first for a Black artist.

Testaments in tribute include partial or full biographies, like my book R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, illustrated by Frank Morrison; Before She Was Harriet by Lesa Cline-Ransome, illustrated by James Ransome; Jump at the Sun: The True Life Tale of Unstoppable Storycatcher Zora Neale Hurston by Alicia D. Williams, illustrated by Jacqueline Alcántara; and Facing Frederick: The Life of Frederick Douglass, a Monumental American Man by Tonya Bolden. Another recent exemplar is The Oldest Student by Rita Lorraine Hubbard, illustrated by Oge Mora.

Of the categories that I have delineated, tributes predominate, perhaps because there are so many African American luminaries who were for too long overlooked, making for a wealth of biographical subjects.

Testaments of trials and trauma include histories of oppression as well as memoirs, like Ordinary Hazards by Nikki Grimes and Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson. Of course, Unspeakable belongs here. A Wreath for Emmett Till by Marilyn Nelson and The Middle Passage: White Ships/Black Cargo by Tom Feelings, which document other atrocities, go under this heading-along with adaptations of Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Sonja Cherry Paul.

Testaments of triumph and transformation commemorate historic events and collective action, as well as unsung heroes who overcame adversity and defied odds. I place my verse novel You Can Fly: The Tuskegee Airmen, illustrated by Jeffery Weatherford, in this category. Other examples are We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson and The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander, illustrated by Kadir Nelson.

Testaments to train up a child explore concepts, dispense wisdom, and sometimes take the form of odes, affirmations, and quotations. My most maternal and prayerful works, In Your Hands and Dreams for a Daughter-both illustrated by Brian Pinkney-fall in this category. Moja Means One: A Swahili Counting Book and Jambo Means Hello: A Swahili Alphabet Book, both by Muriel and Tom Feelings,are classic examples. More recent titles are This Book Is Anti-Racist by Tiffany Jewell, illustrated by Aurelia Durand, and We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices, an anthology edited by Cheryl and Wade Hudson.

Of course, some books overlap categories.

Children deserve and will demand the truth. Granted, teachers can't teach what they don't know. Often, Black nonfiction does double duty, simultaneously educating children and adults.

Black testament opens eyes, hearts, and dialogue. I write to fill in knowledge gaps, to honor the ancestors, to foster hope and healing among young readers, and to spark much-needed conversations among children and adults. Black nonfiction offers age-appropriate narratives to enlighten children early, before lies harden into denial and inherited prejudices into hatred. Truth is a prerequisite to recovery, reconciliation, and repair.

Langston Hughes's poem "I, Too" filled Weatherford with a "sense of liberation."

Fred Stein/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

Black testament is crucial given the vector of white supremacy throughout American history. The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, the 2015 Charleston church massacre, and the January 6 insurrection are all cut from the same white sheets. I wrote about the massacre for young readers because children-like the sisters depicted by the late Floyd Cooper on Unspeakable 's cover-witnessed, or perished in, the mob violence. I wrote about the massacre because Black youth are still victimized-by adultification, racial profiling, police brutality, and the school-to-prison pipeline. If Black children can bear the burden of systemic racism, then their peers can read about it.

As Fletcher attests, childhood trauma sears itself into the memory. Yet, even in Oklahoma, debates rage about teaching unbiased history in school. The reckoning after the police murder of George Floyd brought calls for authentic voices and antiracist pedagogy. White backlash has been swift and sweeping. In state after Republican-controlled state, legislatures have barred teaching about systemic racism on grounds that the truth might make some children uncomfortable. Where was this sensitivity when textbooks stereotyped Black, Indigenous, and people of color?

During the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes wrote, "An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose."

My subjects often choose me. Long before the terms "diverse books" or "antiracism" entered the lexicon, cultural curiosity compelled me to rescue obscure Black figures and events. I channel muted, marginalized, and once-muzzled ancestral voices to break the chains of ignorance that shackle us to America's original sin. Black testament has the power not only to set the record straight, but also to cultivate empathy, embolden young people to raise their voices against injustice, and make what the late civil rights leader John Lewis called "good trouble."

I never shy away from painful truths, because children merit a more complete history. And I trust when they hear it, they will ask the right questions. After reading my books about systemic racism, children respond as if I had scripted them. "Who made those stupid rules? Why were white people so unfair?"

Adults must not avoid the truth because they fear children's questions. Can I get a witness?

Carole Boston Weatherford's 60 books include a Newbery Honor, three Caldecott Honors, and 2021 release Unspeakable.

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roots of rap: 16 bars on the 4 pillars of hip-hop

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all day: a child’s first book of african american spirituals

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Black Nonfiction: Truth, Testament, and Good Trouble

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The most frequent question I am asked about Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre is, "Why did you tackle that topic for children?" In response, I ask, "Did you learn about the massacre as a child?" If not, don't blame your upbringing.

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America's Problem is That White People Want It to Be a Failed State

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America's Problem is That White People Want It to Be a Failed State

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Can America Solve the Problem of the White American Voter?

Is America really ready to reclaim democracy?

I'm going to share a fact with you - and you're not going to like it.

America's problems can be reduced to the following. White Americans want America to be a failed state - and that is its fundamental, deep, and long standing problem. That is how America ended up here - more than half a century of white hostility to any kind of social progress whatsoever - which resulted in social collapse, and culminated in Trumpism. White people made America a failed state.

But are white people ready to own this problem, of their own extremism? Is that long-term social position really about to change this election, finally, after more than half a century? Are white Americans ready to become a modern, functioning society? The answer, right about now, is a kind of hysterical "yes!" We all - all of us sane and thoughtful people anyways - want Biden to win, and put an end to the long nightmare of the Trump years. But - despite what the polls might say - how realistic is that?

"Kill Umair! Get him!!!" Maybe you're foaming at the mouth, ready to dispute my simple fact. So take a hard look at the chart above. What does it say?

I have some bad news, and then I have some worse news. Don't worry, you'll thank me later. The first piece of bad news is this. Here's a fact that most people underestimate. America is still about 80% white. 80%. Given the record-breaking turnout, this election is going to be more about America's white majority than about minorities, probably, at least if every group turns out in record numbers roughly equally. Minorities have much less power than many imagine, precisely because they are still seriously in the...minority. This election is about white America, and if it really wants to live in a democracy - or if it's happier living in a fascist society.

You might think that sounds over the top, so here's the worse news. The chart above says this. It says that white Americans, as a group, have never, as a group, voted for a Democratic President. Never in modern history. In fact, the chart above in fact understates the problem. This trend goes back to JFK and perhaps before. Are you beginning to see the problem here? Why I say "America's problem is that white people want it to be a failed state?"

Let me make it clearer. White Americans can be relied on, in the majority, as a group, to "vote Republican." I put it in quotes because it's worth examining what that anodyne statement really means. Liberal, sane, thoughtful White Americans often overestimate how many of them there are, how widespread their cause is. The result is that when I say " Americans are... " meaning of course the majority, which is still white, I get a wave of protest. Americans aren't dumb! Americans aren't dumb! They're not violent, stupid racists! They want to live in a modern society! Are they, do they - at least the white majority? Let's take a brief and hard look at reality.

Here are some things white Americans have been for, as a group, in their majority.Segregation. Endless war. Inequality. Billionaires. Capital. Guns and religion as primary social values. That is what the voting pattern above means. Conversely, here are some thing white Americans have been against, as a group, in their majority. Desegregation. Civil rights. Womens' rights. Their own healthcare, retirement, and childcare. Public goods of any kind whatsoever. That is what the "voting pattern" above means in the real world. Need I go on? America's problem is that white Americans as a social group, its majority social group, want America to be a failed state. They don't want to live in a modern, civilised democracy, and never have.

White America is America's problem. A big, white, ignorant problem. The problem of the white American voter - that white Americans don't want to admit - goes back more than half a century at this point. If the answer is "Make America Great Again!" then the question is: "well, who brought it this point of self-destruction?" and the answer is.... white Americans. They're the ones responsible for the self-destruction of the society they still rule as a massive majority. Nobody else is responsible for their poverty, despair, and humiliation but them. That is what the chart above makes crystal clear.

Who voted, over and over again, to have worse lives? No healthcare, retirement, affordable education, childcare - no public goods of any kind whatsoever? White Americans did. What the? The question baffles the world. Why would anyone choose a worse life? The answer is that white Americans would not accept a society of true equals. "I won't pay for those dirty, filthy peoples' educations, healthcare, retirements! Why, their grandparents were my grandpappy's slaves!" White Americans chose to retain power, supremacy, superiority, even in a failing society. They chose staying on top of decline and ruin, rather than prospering as equals.

Let me make that even clearer, by putting it in a global perspective. This is the part you're really not going to like.

White Americans are the rich world's most hostile, ignorant, violent, cruel, and selfish social group - by a very long way. "Voting conservative" after all doesn't mean nearly the same thing in Europe or Canada. There, even conservative parties agree on the basics - people should have healthcare, education, retirement, that the only point of the public purse isn't endless war and death machines. Conservatism in America is off the charts, and so "voting" that way carries a very different meaning. It means that White Americans are the rich world's most regressive, ignorant, and self-destructive political bloc - by such a long way that they might as well not be in the rich world at all.

I don't mean any of that as an insult, by the way. I mean it objectively, literally, factually. You'd think that by now White Americans would have figured out that voting against their own standards of living ever rising just because it meant black and brown people would have public goods too was...imbecilic. Especially watching Europe and Canada rise and prosper. They've had more than half a century to figure that out. But they still haven't. What else do you call the inability to learn from the world and history but...ignorance?

Do you know what the word imbecile means? Someone who can't look after themselves. But that's what has happened: white people are the ones who wrecked their very own lives, futures, and society - beginning the moment, decades back, that minorities finally gained a few rights, in a giant, stupid, endless, escalating temper tantrum, that culminated in Trumpism.

I know this sounds insulting. But to speak factually and empirically about levels of self-destruction this immense requires us to reach beyond the lines of everyday discourse. Let me try again, then.

White Americans really are different. From their peers - or at least the people they believe are their peers. But the truth that their political choices over decades reveals is this. White Americans have almost nothing in common with White Europeans or Canadians - who back the expansive social contracts of social democracies reliably. White Americans reliably reject such choices, which is how they made their society collapse. instead, they have more in common with the ethnic-religious-fundamentalist majorities of nations like Iran, or the authoritarian-nationalist majorities of nations like Russia. They are regressive, sectarian, fundamentalist, unable to change, trapped by their own ideologies.

That is how and why America collapsed. Black People didn't make it so. Brown People didn't. Native Americans didn't. America is still about 80% white, and white Americans make a certain choice reliably and consistently and predictably as a group - they vote "conservative," but conservative in America doesn't mean what it does in the rest of the rich world - it means something much more like Iran or Russia. Bang.

White Americans impoverished themselves, through decades of such folly. Voting against their very own basic public goods. Which meant they had to pay monopolists eye-watering prices for those very things which could and should have been socially provided - healthcare, higher education, retirement, and so on. Today, the average American dies in $62,000 of debt. Do you know what that predicted, a few years ago? A fascist implosion. When majorities grow impoverished, they turn even more regressive, violent, ignorant, and brutal. America's white majority was already all those things - and then they became even more so.

A demagogue came along, Trump, who blamed white America's problems on everyone but white Americans. Mexican babies. Black mothers. Latino immigrants. Syrian refugees. Gay minority couples. Everyone but white Americans was responsible for the plight of white Americans. But how could they be? America was and is still 80% white. Nobody was ever responsible for white America's stunning plunge into poverty, humiliation, and despair - but white America.

But nobody wants to blame themselves, do they? It's only human to project one's failings onto others. So white America took Trump's bait. And it was easier, too, to sell that line of nonsense, that racism, that prejudice, that bigotry, to a white majority that was already those things, and always had been. It was a self-reinforcing process, which was inevitable once America's white middle and working class began to implode. Fascism was coming to America.

Those of us who warned of it were called alarmists and hysterics and so on, when we warned of camps, genocide, bans, raids, purges. As all those things came to pass, and, sick to our stomachs, we survivors tried to warn all over again, we were mocked, shamed, and condemned. By white Americans. Even the good ones. We were told we were underestimating the power of white America to do the right thing.

But we understood something that white American never has about itself. White America has never done the right thing. Ever. At least not in modern history. White America, again, the chart shows us, has been for segregation and war and brutality - and against desegregation, women's rights, civil rights, and so on. White America, as a group, as a majority, has never, ever voted for anything even slightly towards greater equality, justice, freedom, for all. It has only ever voted to preserve, maintain, and expand its own power. Ever.

White Americans - the good and reasonable ones - overestimate their social group so badly that they probably imagine a majority of white people voted for Obama. Wrong. Even Obama couldn't win a majority of whites. The only candidate who came close was Bill Clinton - and even he failed. White Americans, again, never voted any way but fanatically "conservative", which, in global terms, means more like majorities in Iran or Russia than Canada or Europe - regressive, ignorant, brutal, hostile, selfish, and supremacist, not modern, gentle, fair, wise, sophisticated, thoughtful, peaceful, tolerant.

White America's escalating temper tantrum - its pattern of regressive voting - finally escalated in Trumpism. That is how all of America ended up here. Ruled by white America's fascists and fanatics, too. Which even the sane and thoughtful white Americans despair at. But will they finally understand themselves? Can they look in the mirror once and for all?

We survivors and scholars have seen all this before - the phenomenon of the deceptive majority. By "deceptive majority," I mean the idea that good and reasonable white Americans have about themselves. That as a majority, they are good and reasonable, and so goodness and sanity and reason will prevail in the end. They have not in America precisely because white Americans badly overestimate just how sane and reasonable their group in society is. How can they be, when they think guns matter more than healthcare and human rights?

I'm sorry if that sounds harsh. But again, I am only speaking to you factually, empirically, objectively. White Americans have voted over again and again for their guns and their Bibles - but they have never, ever voted as group to have healthcare or retirement for all or any single aspect of a functioning modern society whatsoever. Not to this day.

White America seemed to prefer supremacism and theocracy and authoritarian-fascism over modernity, as a social group. And that is how America ended up being a failed state. That, my friend, is the ugly and difficult fact.

That is the problem of the white American voter. And it spells real trouble.

Because when we say things like "Biden will win in a landslide!" what we are really saying is: white American as a group will, for the first time in modern history, not vote Republican. That they will, as a group, vote for something other than regressivism of the most extreme kind on offer. That the massive tide and force of history will suddenly turn on its head. That a decades long trend will simply reverse itself en masse, like never before.

We are asking for something greater than we may know - for history to deliver us a genuine transformation in long-standing political and social attitudes amongst a majority that has never, ever felt the way we wish them to. Who have never, ever been on the side of modernity or greater democracy or more civilization.

We are hoping for change of the deepest kind. Are we overconfident, then?

I'm not saying that a Biden landslide is impossible. But I am willing, at this stage, to call it unlikely. I don't think white America is suddenly going to reverse decades of history. I think history has a terrible momentum and inertia, which doesn't turn itself around so easily. I think social attitudes and political preferences don't simply magically upend themselves overnight. I don't think white America as a majority is going to back Biden. (If it does, it will be thanks to young people, though.)

Where does that leave us? Not in a very good place. The problem of the white American voter is very, very real. More real than white Americans know - which is precisely why their pundits and intellectuals never discuss it: they are giving their own social group's regressivism and imbecility a free pass. But it's the elephant in the room, just how different white Americans really are, as a group, in the majority, how regressive, cruel, hostile, ignorant, and backwards. That's not an opinion - it's a sad, terrible, frightening fact.

It's possible that minorities will deliver the election for Biden. That's if turnout for them is much, much higher than for whites. We don't know, really, if that's the case. I'd say while the chances are slim, they are very real.

More likely, though, is the following scenario. White America votes the way it always has as a group, as a majority - to screw everyone else over, as hard as possible, even if it itself pays a price. That will lead to three possible outcomes. One, an outright Trump victory. Two, a undecided election, which the Supreme Court will obviously hand to Trump. Or three, the most likely, in my estimation, months of chaos, as America tries to figure out what to do next, about the mess its in, and the GOP makes every grab for raw power.

And the protests of the good and thoughtful white Americans don't help: " not all of us!" Sure, Chet, not all of you. But enough of you have been like this for most of modern history. Embittered, hostile, cruel, backwards.

Is that about to change? I don't know, my friends. I doubt it, but I hope so. So why do I tell you this? Because we minorities are what we have always been: barely tolerated interlopers and hated intruders in the Promised Land. You, my white American friend, are the only one with the power to change any of it.

Umair
October 2020

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America's Problem is That White People Want It to Be a Failed State

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Is America really ready to reclaim democracy? I'm going to share a fact with you - and you're not going to like it. America's problems can be reduced to the following. White Americans want America to be a failed state - and that is its fundamental, deep, and long standing problem.

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The Reading List Behind "Nice White Parents" NY Times

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The Reading List Behind "Nice White Parents" NY Times

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Everyone wants what's best for their children's education. But who gets to decide what's best? The reporter behind our new podcast from Serial shares the books that helped her answer that question.

Credit... Joan Wong

"Nice White Parents" is a new podcast from Serial Productions, a New York Times Company, about the 60-year relationship between white parents and the public school down the block. Listen to the first two episodes now and keep an eye out for new episodes each Thursday, available here and on your mobile device: Via Apple Podcasts | Via Spotify | Via Google

Episode One: The Book of Statuses

A group of parents takes one big step together.

Back to Nice White Parents

transcript

Episode One: The Book of Statuses

Reported by Chana Joffe-Walt; produced by Julie Snyder; edited by Sarah Koenig, Neil Drumming and Ira Glass; editorial consulting by Eve L. Ewing and Rachel Lissy; and sound mix by Stowe Nelson

A group of parents takes one big step together.

"Nice White Parents" is brought to you by Serial Productions, a New York Times Company.

chana joffe-walt

I started reporting this story at the very same moment as I was trying to figure out my own relationship to the subject of this story, white parents in New York City public schools. I was about to be one of them. When my kid was old enough, I started learning about my options. I had many. There was our zoned public school in Brooklyn, or I could apply to a handful of specialty programs - a gifted program, or a magnet school, or a language program. So I started to look around. This was five years ago now, but I vividly remember these tours. I'd show up in the lobby of the school at the time listed on the website, look around, and notice that all or almost all of the other parents who'd shown up for the 11:00 AM, middle-of-the-workday, early-in-the-shopping-season school tour were other white parents. As a group, we'd walk the halls, following a school administrator - almost always a man or woman of color - through a school full of black and brown kids. We'd peer into classroom windows, watch the kids sit in a circle on the rug, ask questions about the lunch menu, homework policy, discipline. Some of us would take notes. And the administrators would sell. The whole thing was essentially a pitch. We offer STEM. We have a partnership with Lincoln Center. We have a dance studio. They were pleading with us to please take part in this public school. I don't think I've ever felt my own consumer power more viscerally than I did shopping for a public school as a white parent. We were entering schools that people like us had ignored for decades. They were not our places, but we were being invited to make them ours. The whole thing was made so much more awkward by the fact that nobody on those tours ever acknowledged the obvious racial difference, that roughly 100% of the parents in this group did not match, say, 90% of the kids in this building. I remember one time being guided into a classroom and being told that this was the class for gifted kids, and noticing, oh, here's where all the white kids are. Everyone on our tour saw this, all of us parents, but nobody said anything, including me. We walked out into the hallway. A mom raised her hand and said, I do have one question I've been meaning to ask. And the group got quiet. I was thinking, OK, here it comes. But then she said, do the kids here play outside every day?

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chana joffe-walt

I knew the schools were segregated. I shouldn't have been surprised. By the time I was touring schools as a parent, I had spent a fair amount of time in schools as a reporter. I'd done stories on the stark inequality in public education. And I'd looked at some of the many programs and reforms we've tried to fix our schools. So many ideas. We've tried standardized tests and charter schools. We've tried smaller classes, longer school days, stricter discipline, looser discipline, tracking, differentiation. We've decided the problem is teachers, the problem is parents. What is true about almost all of these reforms is that when we look for what's broken, for how our schools are failing, we focus on who they're failing - poor kids, black kids, and brown kids. We ask, why aren't they performing better? Why aren't they achieving more? Those are not the right questions. There is a powerful force that is shaping our public schools, arguably the most powerful force. It's there even when we pretend not to notice it, like on that school tour. If you want to understand why our schools aren't better, that's where you have to look. You have to look at white parents. From Serial Productions, I'm Channa Joffe-Walt. This is "Nice White Parents," a series about the 60-year relationship between white parents and the public school down the block.

[CHILDREN CHATTERING] I'm going to take you inside a public school building, an utterly ordinary, squat, three-story New York City public school building not far from where I live. This isn't one of the schools I've toured. And my own kids don't go here. They're too little. This is a middle and high school called the School for International Studies, SIS. The story I want to tell you spans decades in this one school building, but I'm going to begin when I first encountered SIS, in the spring of 2015, right before everything changed. In 2015, the students at SIS were black, Latino, and Middle Eastern kids, mostly from working class and poor families. That year, like the year before and the year before that, the school was shrinking. The principal, Jillian Juman, was worried.

chana joffe-walt

Ms. Juman started to reach out to families from the neighborhood, inviting them to please come take a look. Parents started showing up for tours of SIS, mostly groups of white parents. Ms. Juman was thrilled and relieved. She walked parents through the building, saying, stop me anytime if anyone has any questions. Really, anything; I want you to feel comfortable. And Ms. Juman says they did have questions, mostly about the poor test scores. That was fair. Ms. Juman expected those questions. She did not expect the other set of questions she got a lot from parents.

chana joffe-walt

Excellent principal answer. Principal Juman is black, by the way. She needed these parents. Schools get money per student. A shrinking school means a shrinking budget. Ms. Juman was worried if this continued, the middle school could be in danger of being shut down by the city. SIS is in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. Leafy streets, brownstones, it's a wealthy, white neighborhood that's gotten wealthier and whiter in the last decade. But white families were not sending their kids to SIS. Ms. Juman told these parents, choose SIS. We're turning things around. We're in the process of bringing in a new, prestigious International Baccalaureate curriculum, renovating the library. Here's the new, gorgeous yard. It's an excellent school. The parents seemed interested, but I believe that might have had just as much to do with what was happening outside of the school as what they were seeing inside the building.

chana joffe-walt

Rob lives nearby SAS, but he had never heard of the school.

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In his district, Rob could choose from 11 middle schools. The majority of white families sent their kids to the same three schools. Rob's white. Those were the schools he'd heard of, and those were the schools he toured.

chana joffe-walt

But they were packed. There were too many wealthy, white families in the district to continue cramming into just three schools.

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And they'd been running tours all day. Most cities have some amount of school choice like this, tours and options. New York City, though, is an amped-up version of what happens elsewhere. The level of competition, the level of wealth, the diversity of people sorting into different schools, everything is more intense. Rob found this process frustrating, although Rob is very even-tempered even when he's frustrated. He's Canadian. When he gets especially hot, he starts calling things "interesting." And this whole middle school thing was very interesting. He asked other parents on school tours, what are we going to do? Someone said, have you guys heard of SIS, that building down the block? Rob hadn't. The others hadn't. They decided to all go check it out together.

[music]

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As Rob toured SIS, he had an idea. That night, he emailed Principal Juman, and he asked, would she be open to starting a dual-language French program at SIS? They had one at the elementary school Rob's kids went to, and everyone loved it. Sure, Principal Juman was open. So Rob started spreading the word. SIS is starting a dual-language French program. We should all go. Rob says there was interest, but a lot of people he talked to had this question. Wait, are other people going?

chana joffe-walt

When it came time to choose middle schools, parents are supposed to rank their top choices. Right before they did, before everyone chose their schools, Rob sent a survey out to the families he'd been talking to try to ensure that a group of them would choose SIS together. It was a simple SurveyMonkey. If enough people said Yes, they'd rank SIS as one of their top picks, and they would be able to act as a collective. People said Yes. The numbers were stunning. In 2014, there had been 30 sixth graders at SIS. In 2015, there would be 103. That 200% increase was almost entirely white kids.

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Nobody I talked to from SIS characterized what was happening there as "integration." But here's why integration was on my mind. The New York City Department of Education was aware their schools were segregated. It was also aware that desegregation is the most effective way to close the gap in achievement between black and white students. But it did not want to mandate racial integration through zoning or school placements. The city was trying to make integration happen through choice, hoping to lure white families into segregated schools. The school tours I went on for my own kids, the sparkly programs and amenities, that was the new approach to integration. But can this work? For white parents to opt in to integration not because we have to, or because it's the right thing to do, but because it's a selling point? Because we get a dance studio, and STEM, and a school that was, hopefully, diverse? Integration, without talking about race. [CHILDREN CHATTERING] The kids at SIS, though, they did talk about race - immediately. Fall 2015, the first few weeks of school, a senior named Kristen leans over to her classmate, Chris, and mumbles, there are a lot of white kids in the school. And Chris says, oh, yeah, a teacher warned me about that over the summer.

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Kristen nods. Yeah, I guess we were prepared. And then she turns to me to say, I should have been ready for that. We saw the parents on the tours last year.

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"Diverse." This was a word I heard over and over in the first few weeks of school - "diversity."

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"Diversity" seemed to have two different definitions. White families would talk about all the diversity at SIS, and they were talking about Black and Hispanic kids. When kids of color noted the diversity, they were referring to the new white kids. For a lot of kids of color, this looked a lot like something they'd already seen happen in their neighborhoods - white families showing up in large numbers, taking over stores, familiar spots. There's a word for that. It's gentrification. But I noticed that no one was using that word about the school. What was happening here was "diversity." That's how the adults talked about it. Diversity is a good thing, something you're supposed to be OK with. For the most part, the kids were. It was different for the parents. Some of them saw specific advantages to the diversity, like Kenya Blount, the co-vice president of the PTA at SIS. He was excited.

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Rob Hansen, the dad who started the SurveyMonkey. Rob raises money for nonprofits and foundations for a living. Over the course of the year, I'll here Rob Hanson referred to as Todd Hanson, Ted Manson, Mr. Handsome. Kenya was the only one who went with "the gentlemen whose profession is fundraising." The most common was just "the guy who gets the money." Rob told the PTA he was eager to raise money for the school. To Kenya, this meant more resources at his own kids' school. His boys and all the kids could benefit.

chana joffe-walt

They were definitely not thinking that big. Because the PTA was run by Imee Hernandez and her co-president, Susan Moesker. Imee is not a gentleman who fundraises. She's a social worker. The first time I met Imee, she was wearing a T-shirt that said, "I'm not spoiled. My husband just loves me." She's Puerto Rican, grew up in Brooklyn. Her husband Maurice is Puerto Rican and Black and really does adore her. He grew up in Brooklyn, too. They have one daughter, one pit bull, one Persian cat, and one school.

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For Imee, the new diversity, it gave her pause.

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Imee was in her second year at the school. The year before, she put on community events, teacher appreciation, a spring carnival with face painting and hot dogs. They raised some money here and there, but Imee's vision for the PTA wasn't really about fundraising. The new parents, though, they wanted to be active in their new school, and they were accustomed to supporting their kids' schools by fundraising. The two approaches came face-to-face at a PTA meeting in October.

chana joffe-walt

There are about a dozen grownups, sitting on small plastic chairs around a classroom table, the PTA Executive Board. Principal Juman is here, too. Imee's leading, and the principal jumps in. She says she wants a minute to share how much the new fundraising committee had raised so far. Imee looks confused. Principal Juman goes on to say, the new fundraising committee has had a lot of success.

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People seem unclear what to do with their faces. This is good news, right? But also, wait, what's the Fundraising Committee? Imee turns to her husband, Maurice. A retired cop, Maurice is also the treasurer of the PTA, because when he retired, his wife told him he couldn't just sit around at home. Maurice shrugs at Imee, doesn't seem to know anything about this new money. Imee turns back to Principal Juman. So can we use that money?

chana joffe-walt

That's principal Juman.

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Maurice asks, how can that money be accessed for Mr. Negrone, who wants new gym uniforms, or Mr. Lowe, to get his microscopes? Imee nods

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Principal Juman nods, repeats that she wishes Rob had been able to make it. She was hoping everyone could be here and get on the same page about money. But Rob is chaperoning a sixth grade overnight trip. They're late getting back. One mom, a white woman, who came in with a new group of sixth graders, says, look, I know Rob. He means well.

chana joffe-walt

That's principal Juman. At this point, everyone seems to feel a little weird about how long they've spent talking about a fellow parent who is not present. And anyway, it's money for the school. We're all for that. We just need better communication. Imee she says, yeah, it's just usually, money raised by parents goes through the PTA, so we can all talk about where to spend it.

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Rob walks into the room. He just got back from the sixth grade trip. He sits down, and they all start to talk. We need to sort out some questions about money. Then, a mom from the fundraising committee says she's worried about me recording and asks me to stop. So I do.

chana joffe-walt

They let me stay, though, and take notes. Rob apologizes and then explains. A group of them have been meeting to raise money for the school. The new dual-language French program is expensive, and they promised the principal they'd help raise money to cover it. They were just eager to help, Rob says, so they formed a committee. He's really sorry. He should have communicated and coordinated better with the PTA. But good news is, it's going great. Someone has a contact with the French embassy, a guy at the Cultural Services Arm in New York, and he says he wants to help cover the costs of new French teachers and books. They've already kicked in around 10 grand. At this point in my notes, I wrote, "lots of looks, big money." Rob says, "The embassy suggested we do a fundraiser, an event. They can help." Here I wrote, "Looks - confused, mad? Nobody really talking." Imee says, "This fundraiser will be at the school though, right? And free, for everyone?" Rob says, "Yes." "Good, good." She asks one more time, "Free? I just want to make sure everyone can go." Lots of nods. Rob says, "Totally. This is a community event, for our community." After about 20 minutes, Imee says, we're out of time, guys. I can't tell if this is out of a professional commitment Imee has to stick to the schedule, or a personal commitment to getting out of that room.

[music]

chana joffe-walt

Before I came to SIS, I never thought much about the role of PTAs - ever. At SIS, early on, I have this feeling of, oh, a PTA is actually critical to the success of an integrated school. A PTA has a very simple democratic structure. Every parent has an equal vote. Smart - it's like a built-in system to equalize power, to help them make a budget together, make decisions, set priorities collectively - or not.

chana joffe-walt

It's another PTA meeting, and the whole collective thing is not really happening. It seems like the new parents are still raising money separate from the PTA, and the communication problems do not seem to be resolved. And some of the new parents have an idea. They propose a formal separation - the PTA and the people doing fundraising. Rob says this way, there'll be two organizations collecting money for SIS.

chana joffe-walt

That would be the PTA side, the community fund. Then there would be a separate organization that would go after grants and big donors. Up until this point, there seemed to be tension bubbling under the surface between the new parents and the old parents, but it wasn't really until this moment that the unsaid started to get said - mostly by Imee's husband, Maurice.

chana joffe-walt

That's Maureen, a white mom who's new. There are lots of nods.

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Maurice is asking, is this new money you're talking about, is it just for the new French dual-language program? Which is another way of asking, is this money just for your kids, or is it for everybody? Rob says emphatically, it's for everybody. Maurice says, really?

chana joffe-walt

Later, talking to Rob, I learned that the new separate fundraising arm he's talking about is actually a foundation. They want to create a school-based foundation at SIS. The plan is to call it the Brooklyn World Project. I asked Rob, why do you need another way to raise money?

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Rob says, because the PTA is a democracy, it makes things complicated. The very thing I saw as a strength of a PTA - one parent, one vote - to Rob, that's a problem for fundraising. Parents come and go and change their minds about what's important. A private donor wants stability, and Rob is trying to raise money for the kind of programming that was available at his son's wealthy elementary school. At that school, Rob was co-president of the PTA, and the previous year, his PTA pulled in close to $800,000. $800,000 - money that paid for after school programming, and ballroom dancing, chess, art, music, a garden. $800,000 for a school that is 75% white and serves a tiny fraction of the poor kids in the district. There aren't enough wealthy parents at SIS to raise that kind of money. That year, Rob helped raise $800,000, the SIS PTA raised $2,000. So Rob was trying to be creative. A foundation was a way for his new school to catch up. The school leadership, the principal, was behind the idea. . Ms. Juman told me she saw the foundation as a path to equity and access. More resources meant they'd be able to provide all kids with opportunities - like, say, a school trip to France. But the parent leadership, they found it annoying. Imee knew the new parents were trying to help the school. But she already liked the school. She felt like she was being saved against her will. Plus, they're new, she said. Shouldn't we be the ones helping them? She was fine with them bringing in ideas, but she didn't understand why they hadn't brought them to her first. They hadn't thought to consult her. She to me, multiple times, why are they coming up with all these private plans and meeting in secret committees?

chana joffe-walt

Rob and the new parents did tell the principal that they wanted to fundraise in a different way, but Imee felt like, what about the rest of us? She felt like the PTA was ignored. At that last meeting, Imee went quiet. She told me she just felt enraged, and then embarrassed for feeling so enraged.

chana joffe-walt

So it was tense, among the parents. But this is a school for children. Did it matter if the adults were not getting along, or who controlled which pot of money? Yes. Yes it did. That's coming up after the break. The school year went on. Rob's fundraising committee moved forward with the French Embassy to plan a fundraiser. It was now being called a "gala." The PTA moved forward with parent volunteers to plan a spring carnival. It was being called "the spring carnival." Quiet resentments locked in place. On the phone one night, Imee's co-president on the PTA, Susan Moesker, told me she worried the school was changing in ways that were damaging to the community. Susan is white herself, but she didn't come in with the new white parents. When she started, her son was one of the only white kids in the school. And now she felt like they were all being written into a narrative that wasn't true, that SIS was a bad school before, and now that the new white families had arrived, it was being turned around.

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This was a long conversation. The upshot? She's not happy with the way the new parents are behaving. It was true. A new narrative was taking hold at SIS. It's not like the kids were talking about it all the time, but it was in the air, and the kids were starting to pick up on who was valued and why. In the cafeteria, I'd hear middle schoolers saying, the French kids could kill someone, and they'd get away with it. Upstairs in the high school, I'd hear kids complain, all the attention has shifted to the new middle schoolers. We're being pushed aside. And down in the library, I met three sixth grade boys, white boys new to SIS. They're sweaty from playing soccer and looking very small against their huge backpacks. These boys, even at 11 years old, they've absorbed the same messages - that SIS wasn't so good before. It was a bad school.

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He and his friends, they've turned the school around. That's what he's learning.

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Nobody calls it "the book on statuses." They call it a directory of schools, with info like enrollment numbers for different schools, test scores, and special programs. But I love the calls it, "the book on statuses," because this is what happened at SIS. The school had a bad reputation among white families, and then, suddenly, it was in demand. Its status had changed because of the white kids. A powerful draw for white families into any school is other white families. Once you have a critical mass of white kids, you pass what one city calls "a bliss point." This is a real thing researchers study - how many white kids are needed at a school to make other white families feel comfortable choosing it. That number, the bliss point, is 26%. That fall, white families were crowding the school tours at SIS, not because the test scores had improved - the new scores hadn't even come out yet - but because the other white families made them feel blissfully comfortable.

[music]

chana joffe-walt

Of course, the thing that made the new white parents comfortable coming to SIS in the first place was the promise of a French program. They wanted French, and they got French. So now, all the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth graders are learning French. It wasn't a true dual-language program where kids learned in French for half the day or whatever. That first year, most of the French was happening in the after school program. You'd sign up for regular after school stuff like culinary, or soccer, or drama, and it would be conducted in French.

teacher

Hey, hey! [KIDS CHATTERING IN FRENCH]

Hey, everybody, you have to listen, OK?

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We're in the auditorium. And it's sweet. The kids are onstage rehearsing this play they wrote in French. And it's like they're having fun. But I couldn't help feeling like there's something off balance about this. Most of the kids doing this drama program seem to be native French speakers, but not all. A sixth grader named Maya is standing to the side of the stage, script in hand, waiting for her line.

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Still, she's excited. She's grinning, watching the other kids on stage. She's hanging out with her friend Constance. Maya gets up to deliver her lines.

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Constance, a native French speaker, tells Maya, you said the wrong thing. Constance correct her, pronounces it for her.

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Maya says, I can't, and her friend says, I'll do it for you.

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Learning another language is not new to Maya.

[music]

chana joffe-walt

When the new white parents asked for a dual-language French program at SIS, Principal Juman said yes. SIS was supposedly an international school, but she told me they didn't really have a lot of international programming, so it seemed like a good idea to her. But there was no school-wide debate about it, or consensus. The community didn't decide. What if they had? More than 1/3 of the families at sis are Hispanic. What if the dual-language program was Spanish, or Arabic? 10% of the students speak Arabic. If they had made a different choice, if SIS had a dual-language Arabic program, Maya would be teaching Constance how to read her lines. She'd be the one explaining the cultural references and teasing her friend about her terrible accent. She'd be the one translating the teacher's stage directions. There was money for a French program, which meant that at SIS, French had value. Arabic didn't. Spanish didn't. That's something Maya is learning at school, along with her French script.

From the very beginning, Imee and the others had insisted on three things from the new parents and the fundraising committee - that the gala fundraiser they were planning with the French Embassy, would, number one, be open to everyone, number two, take place at the school, and number three, be free. Then, four weeks before the gala, the PTA asked for an update, and a parent named Deb showed up - a mom to a new sixth grader, part of Rob's fundraising committee.

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Deb volunteered early on to help organize the party and she tells everyone, I met with our partner, Fabrice, at the French Embassy, and the event can't be at the school. The embassy won't be able to draw their supporters to Brooklyn. It'll be at the Cultural Services Building on the Upper East Side, Manhattan, 45 minutes away.

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That's Susan with the "Oh." Maurice leans forward, elbows on the table. Imee is not here. She knew the meeting would be almost entirely about fundraising, and she's sitting this one out. Maurice is now concentrating on Rob, who turns to Deb and says, "In what sense is that their event?" "They make the rules, she says."

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Security. It's a government building after all.

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That's Rob, asking to give a variant, which is, how about we have a separate invitation for our people that doesn't ask for any money? Rob seems to be picking up on the instant irritation in this room, and he's adding many variants to Deb's report.

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Deb hasn't been able to make previous PTA meetings. So all Deb knows is she got an email from the fundraising committee at her kid's new school, which she assumed was part of the PTA. She's volunteering her time, a ton of her time, to organize a huge event. She does not understand that the email list she's on is for a separate fundraising committee that just became even more unpopular with the official PTA leadership. I think I stopped moving watching Deb. It's so tense. She's like a porcupine who's just wandered into a balloon store.

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Deb says at her kid's elementary school, they got a lot more donated items from parents. She tells the room, you can ask at the restaurants you go to if they do gift certificates. The salon, your employers - you'd be surprised what people can offer. Just ask.

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I think about a PTA meeting a few months before where I watched Imee gently explain to one of the new parents why it might be hard for some families to throw in $5 for classroom supplies, that even being asked to donate can feel alienating. Some people in this room seem to be experiencing this whole thing as a routine update about public school volunteering. Others look like someone who's walked into the wrong room and is now looking around to the friends they came with for affirmation, we're in the wrong room, right? How do we get out?

[music]

chana joffe-walt

I spent a small chunk of that meeting occupied by an admittedly sentimental thought. Just looking around, the room was kind of incredible. People with homes in Sonoma and people who live in public housing, sitting together at a long wooden table in the library of a public school that they all share. That never happens. And I didn't want them to mess it up. But of course, they are. This is not something we have a lot of practice in. New York City has one of the most segregated school systems in the country. White parents here have very little practice sharing public schools. Maybe this is all to be expected. White parents will charge ahead, will sometimes be careless, secretive, or entitled. In response, parents of color will sometimes be cautious, or distrustful, defensive. These are well-established patterns, repeated over generations. It's easier for us to continue operating on separate tracks, because it's what we already know how to do.

The guy from the French embassy apparently has a mailing list of 22,000 people in the New York area. 300 people RSVPed to the gala for SIS. I couldn't believe it. And I couldn't believe that one of them was Imee.

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Imee, Maurice, and Susan carpooled together to the Upper East Side. It's winter. Central Park is across the street. It's cold. Imee told me she decided she needed to be a grown-up and come. They got stuck in traffic, so they're rushing up the sidewalk.

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The Cultural Services Building is ivy-covered with columns. The doors are wrought iron. The entryway is marble.

[music]

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A huge marble staircase winds up the side of the room. Later, I look up the architectural style - Italian renaissance, Palazzo style. It's a palace. There are people milling, sampling 17 different cheeses. I don't recognize anyone else from the school. Who are these people who have chosen to come out on a weekday evening for a fundraising event for a not-prominent or well-known-at-all public school in Brooklyn?

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I started asking people how they heard about the event.

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A lady named Barbara tells me she's never heard of SIS, like most people here, but she loves French, and she loves Paris, and it sounded like a fun night with other people who do too. She goes to France every year.

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I enjoy a person who likes to talk, where you can just get on the ride and sit back. Barbara is definitely that kind of person.

barbara

Oh my god, she hasn't been to Paris. Barbara's looking around for her French teacher to tell her the news. Barbara's teacher, it turns out, heard about this evening the same way most people here did. She was invited by this man, Fabrice.

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Fabrice Germain works for the Cultural Services arm of the French Embassy. He tells me he's fundraising for dual-language programs in public schools because his mission is to promote French language and culture. He called it "soft power," which I was kind of surprised he said out loud, since I associate that with something we do in developing countries, not something you're allowed to do in American public schools. After Fabrice and I talked, I walked into the main room and immediately saw Maurice. Maurice was so skeptical of this whole embassy thing, but there he is at a table, selling raffle tickets next to Imee, cheerfully raising money for a program neither of them ever wanted at their school.

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Maurice, amiable as ever, is trying - and mostly failing - to convert ticket sales into social connections. He asks everyone, so if you win, when are you thinking of going? Oh, you're going anyway? For Easter? Oh, nice.

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Barbara, from Gramercy Park, the woman who loves fall in Paris, wanders across the marble floor toward the raffle table, beside where Imee is sitting. And I thought, oh, no.

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Imee starts looking around. Maurice moves closer and leans in to hear why his wife is doing that nervous laugh, as Barbara explains Imee, a Puerto Rican woman, that being bilingual makes a person more sophisticated. Imee is exceedingly polite.

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That entire conversation, Imee never mentioned to Barbara that she does speak another language - Spanish. Later, I ask her why. She shrugs it off.

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Imee turns her back to her husband, facing me, and behind her, Maurice is looking right at me, nodding vigorously - yes.

So here we were in our fancy clothes on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, raising money for a French program at an utterly normal Brooklyn public school. That was already weird. But the toasts - the toasts were when the cognitive dissonance of the evening really kicked in for me. Fabrice steps up onto the marble staircase and clinks his glass, announces it's time to celebrate what we've created and raise some money.

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Fabrice hands the make to Principal Juman.

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One by one, people are talking about equality, and diversity, and community, and the meaning of public education. Here, at the Cultural Services Palatial Palace, full of white people.

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Rob gives a toast about that time he went on the overnight trip. It starts off OK, but then veers into strange and sort of cringe-y territory. He's on a ropes course, 40 feet up, looking down.

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I agree with Rob. It's great to give kids equal access to opportunity. But what they're being given access to are the opportunities that Rob and the other white parents care about.

Downstairs, I find Susan, Imee's PTA co-president, on a bench by herself. She's near the band, drinking wine, looking a little dumbstruck. I ask if she's OK. This is something else, she says. And then she adds, it's just hard to explain how this is a public school fundraiser.

When the founder of American public education, Horace Mann, laid out his vision for public schools back in the day, he rode his horse around Massachusetts, podium to podium. And his pitch was common schools would make democracy possible. They would bind us to one another, indoctrinate us, give us the skills and tools we need for democratic living. Public schools, he believed, would be the great equalizer. Rich and poor would come together and develop what he called "fellow-feeling," and, in doing so, quote, "obliterate factitious distinctions in society." For that to happen, you need everyone in the same school together. At SIS, they've gotten that far. Everyone was in the same school together. But there was no equalizing. We can be in the same school together and not be equal, just like we can be in the same country together. It's not enough. What do we do about that? After the gala, money poured into SIS, and more white families enrolled their kids at the school. But in the years after that, there was a backlash, and SIS changed in ways that made Rob question himself. He wondered if he'd made mistakes. He told me he thought they all wanted the same thing for the kids. He just didn't know. Not knowing? That happens a lot with white parents. I looked into the history of this school, and I learned that this wasn't the first time white parents showed up here. White parents have been involved all along, all the way back to the very beginning of this school half a century ago, doing the same kinds of things I'd just seen. It happens again and again, white parents wielding their power without even noticing, like a guy wandering through a crowded store with a huge backpack, knocking things over every time he turns.

Horace Mann believed public schools would make us equal, but it doesn't work. I'm not sure how to fix that, but I want to lay out the story, the whole story of this one American public school, because what I am sure of is that in order to address inequality in our public schools, we are going to need a shared sense of reality. At the very least, it's a place to start. That's next time on "Nice White Parents."

[music]

chana joffe-walt

"Nice White Parents" is produced by Julie Snyder and me, with editing on this episode from Sarah Koenig, Nancy Updike and Ira Glass. Neil Drumming is our Managing Editor. Eve Ewing and Rachel Lissy are our editorial consultants. Fact-checking and research by Ben Phelan, with additional research from Lilly Sullivan. Music supervision and mixing by Stowe Nelson. Our Director of Operations is Seth Lind. Julie Whitaker is our Digital Manager. Finance management by Cassie Howley, and Production management by Frances Swanson. Original music for Nice White Parents is by The Bad Plus, with additional music written and performed by Matt McGinley and Dan Reitz. Special thanks to Whitney Dangerfield, Rich Orris, Amy Pedulla, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Scott Sargrad, Jackie Carrier, Gene Demby, Charles Jones, Lenny Garcia, and Valero Doval. At The New York Times, thanks to Sam Dolnick, Stephanie Preiss, Nina Lassam and Julia Simon.

"Nice White Parents" is produced by Serial Productions, a New York Times Company.

Episode Two: 'I Still Believe in It'

White parents in the 1960s fought to be part of a new, racially integrated school in Brooklyn. So why did their children never attend?

Back to Nice White Parents

transcript

Episode Two: 'I Still Believe in It'

Reported by Chana Joffe-Walt; produced by Julie Snyder; edited by Sarah Koenig, Neil Drumming and Ira Glass; editorial consulting by Eve L. Ewing and Rachel Lissy; and sound mix by Stowe Nelson

White parents in the 1960s fought to be part of a new, racially integrated school in Brooklyn. So why did their children never attend?

"Nice White Parents" is brought to you by Serial Productions, a New York Times Company.

chana joffe-walt

The New York City Board of Education has an archive of all of its records. Everything that goes into making thousands of schools run for years and years is sitting in boxes in the municipal building. I love the B.O.E. archive.

chana joffe-walt

First of all, to look through it, you have to go to a century-old municipal building downtown. Arched doorways, lots of marble, an echo, vaulted ceilings really makes a person feel like she's up to something important. You sit at a table, and then a librarian rolls your boxes up to you on a cart. Inside the boxes are all the dramas of a school system. Big ones, tiny ones, bureaucratic, personal, it's all in there. There's a union contract and then a zoning plan and special reports on teacher credentialing, a weird personal note from a bureaucrat to his assistant, a three-page single-spaced plea from Cindy's grandmother, who would please like for her not to be held back in the second grade. An historian friend once pulled a folder out of the archive and a note fell out, something a teacher clearly made a kid write in the 1950s, that read, quote, "I am a lazy boy. Miss Fitzgerald says, when I go in the army, I will be expendable. Expendable means that the country doesn't care whether I get killed or not. I do not like to be expendable. I'm going to do my work and improve."

[music]

I came to the Board of Ed archive after I attended the gala thrown by the French embassy, the fundraiser for SIS organized by the new upper-class white families coming into the school. I felt like I'd just watched an unveiling ceremony for a brand-new school, but I didn't really know what it was replacing. Everyone was talking as if this was the first time white parents were taking an interest in the School for International Studies. But at the archive, I found out it wasn't the first time. White parents had invested in the school before, way before, at the very beginning of the school. Before the beginning. I found a folder labeled I.S. 293, Intermediate School 293, the original name for SIS. And this folder was filled with personal letters to the president of the New York City Board of Education, a man named Max Rubin, pleading with him to please make I.S. 293 an integrated school. "Dear Mr. Rubin, my husband and I were educated in public schools, and we very much want for our children to have this experience. However, we also want them to attend a school which will give them a good education, and today, that is synonymous with an integrated school." "Dear Mr. Rubin, as a resident of Cobble Hill, a teacher and a parent, I want my child to attend schools which are desegregated. I do not want her to be in a situation in which she will be a member of a small, white, middle-income clique." These are letters from parents - largely white parents, as far as I could tell - written in 1963, just a few years before I.S. 293 was built. At issue was where the school was going to be built. The Board of Education was proposing to build the school right next to some housing projects. The school would be almost entirely Black and Puerto Rican. These parents, white parents, came in and said, no, no, no, don't build it there. Put it closer to the white neighborhood. That way, all our kids can go to school together. These parents wanted the school built in what was known as a fringe zone. This was a popular idea at the time, fringe schools to promote school integration. Comes up in the letters. "Dear Mr. Rubin, this neighborhood is changing with the influx of a middle-class group which is very interested in public education for their children." "Dear Mr. Rubin, if there is a possibility of achieving some degree of integration, it is more likely if the Board of Education's theory of fringe schools is applied." And from another letter, "it is apparent from the opinion of the neighborhood groups involved that the situation is not at all hopeless." This lobbying effort was so successful that the Board of Education did move the site of the school. This is why SIS is located where it is today, on the fringe, closer to the white side of town, so that it would be integrated.

I tried to imagine who these people were - young, idealistic white parents living in Brooklyn in the 1960s, feeling good about the future. They would have had their children around the time the Supreme Court ruled on Brown versus Board of Education. They probably followed the news of the Civil Rights Movement unfolding down South. Maybe they were supporters or active in the movement themselves. These were white parents saying, we understand we're at a turning point and we have a choice to make right now, and we choose integration. One of my favorite letters was from a couple who left the suburbs to come to New York City for integration, the opposite of white flight. "Dear Mr. Rubin, we have recently moved into the home we purchased at the above address in Cobble Hill. It was our hope in moving into the neighborhood that our children would enjoy the advantages of mixing freely with children of other classes and races, which we were not able to provide to them when we lived in a Westchester suburb."

chana joffe-walt

This is Carol Netzer. Most of the letter writers were not that hard to find.

chana joffe-walt

She didn't like the suburbs. So they moved to Brooklyn and wrote that letter, which I showed her, her 37-year-old self writing about her hopes for her young children, the choices she made back then.

[music]

chana joffe-walt

I went through this box of letters and called as many parents as I could. Most of them didn't remember writing these letters, which isn't surprising, more than 50 years ago and all. What I did find surprising is that, by the time 293 opened, five years later, none of them, not a one, actually sent their kids to I.S. 293.

[music]

From Serial Productions, I'm Chana Joffe-Walt. This is "Nice White Parents," a series about the 60-year relationship between white parents and the public school down the block, a relationship that began with a commitment to integration. In the 1960s, much like today, white people were surrounded by a movement for the civil rights of Black Americans. White people were forced to contend with systemic racism. And here was a group of white parents who supported the movement for school integration, threw their weight behind it. What happened in those five years between 1963, when these white parents planted an impassioned pro-integration flag on the school, and 1968, when it came time to enroll their children? Why didn't they show up?

These white parents who wanted an integrated I.S. 293, they didn't come to that idea on their own. They were part of a bigger story unfolding around them. I want to zoom out to that dramatic story because it takes us right up to the moment these parents wrote their letters, and then made the decision not to send their kids to the school. To begin, I'd like to introduce you to our main character in this historical, tale, the recipient of the parents' letters, the New York City Board of Education. Back in the 1950s, the New York City Board of Ed was not one of those boring bureaucracies that chugs along in the background, keeping its head down. It had personality. It invested in self-image. For instance, in 1954, when the Supreme Court found school segregation unconstitutional, New York City didn't just say we support that ruling, it celebrated the Brown v Board decision. And notably, it celebrated itself, calling Brown, quote, "a moral reaffirmation of our fundamental educational principles." That same year, 1954, the New York City Board of Ed made a film honoring multiculturalism in its schools. [CHILDREN SINGING] The film opens with a multiracial choir of schoolchildren singing "Let Us Break Bread Together." Like I said, the Board of Ed went the extra mile. The Schools Superintendent was a 66-year-old man named Dr. William Jansen, a man that newspapers described as slow and steady. And he definitely delivers on that promise here.

chana joffe-walt

A teacher addresses her classroom, filled with children of all races and ethnicities.

chana joffe-walt

The camera cuts to a white boy, maybe 9 or 10.

chana joffe-walt

Then a Black girl, around the same age.

chana joffe-walt

This keeps going, kid to kid.

chana joffe-walt

New York City was the biggest city in America, with the largest Black population in America, and it was saying in films, press releases, public speeches, Brown v Board, we agree. Separate but equal has no place in the field of public education. No problem here. It was also saying, you know who does have a problem? The South. New York City loved comparing itself to the backward South. There are plenty of examples of this in the Board archives, New Yorkers bragging about their superiority to places like Georgia or Virginia or Louisiana. This was the story the Board of Ed was telling. The South was ignorant and racist. New York City was enlightened and integrated. But here is what it was actually like to walk into a New York City school in a Black neighborhood at this time.

chana joffe-walt

This is an archival recording of a woman named Mae Mallory. In the 1950s, Mallory's two Black children were students in Harlem. And when Mallory walked into their school, she did not see children building brotherhood in interracial classrooms. She saw an all-Black and Puerto Rican school with terrible facilities, in disrepair.

chana joffe-walt

Mae Mallory says the school had two bathrooms for 1,600 children. Mallory's family fled racial violence in the South, like millions of other Black Americans, who headed to places like New York City, where everyone was supposed to be equal. Instead of welcoming these new students and spreading them out, creating interracial classrooms, the Board of Education kept Black and Puerto Rican students segregated in what were sometimes referred to as ghetto schools, schools that were often just blocks away from white schools. White schools in New York City had toilets that flushed. White children had classrooms with experienced teachers and principals, people who lived in their communities and looked like them. In Black and Puerto Rican schools, half the teachers were not certified to teach by the Board of Education. The buildings were in disrepair, and packed, sometimes more than 1,000 kids in a single hallway. The overcrowding got so bad the Board of Education decided to send kids to school in shifts. And mind you, this was not in the middle of a global pandemic. This was normal, non-crisis school for Black and Puerto Rican kids. One group of children would go to school in the morning until noon. The next group of kids would come in at noon, and stay until 3:00. The Board was literally giving Black kids half an education. In some schools in Harlem, they had triple shifts. This made it harder to learn elementary skills. Reading, for instance. Black parents complained that the schools were not teaching their kids basic literacy, that their white teachers didn't care, that the summer reading programs were only in white communities, that their children were two years behind white children in reading. This at exactly the same time the Board of Education was making a film promoting the virtues of integration. It was effectively running a dual, segregated and unequal school system.

[music]

For many Black families, the Board of Education was not to be trusted. It did not care for Black children, and it didn't respect the voices and concerns of Black parents. Mae Mallory says she visited her kids' school that day because they'd come home the day before and told her a child had died at school. He was playing in the street at recess. Mallory hardly believed it, but she says when she visited the school, she learned, yes, indeed, this child was playing the street because the schoolyard was closed. He was hit by a beer truck. And she learned the schoolyard was closed because pieces of steel from the side of the building had fallen into the yard.

chana joffe-walt

It was 1957, three years after the Supreme Court declared segregation by law unconstitutional. New York City didn't have Jim Crow laws on the books, but Mae Mallory would ask, the schools are segregated. What's the difference? She didn't care whether that segregation was codified by law or by convention. The harm was just as dire. And she wanted it addressed.

chana joffe-walt

Integration, Mae Mallory would say, was about, quote, demanding a fair share of the pie. She said, our children want to learn, and they certainly have the ability to learn. What they need is the opportunity. The Board of Education had defined integration as a multiracial choir. It was a virtue in and of itself. Mae Mallory saw integration as a remedy, a way to get the same stuff everyone else had - functioning toilets, books, certified teachers, a full school day. Integration was a means to an end.

[music]

Mae Mallory won her lawsuit. She and a few other parents were allowed to transfer their kids out of segregated schools. As for the segregation in the entire system, the judge in the lawsuit turned to the Board of Ed and said, this segregation, it's your responsibility. Fix it.

Now, on the question of responsibility, the Board of Education was cagey. And that caginess set the stage for the I.S. 293 parents when it came time to send their kids to the school. Here's what happened. The Schools Superintendent, William Jansen, decided school segregation was not his problem. In fact, he rejected the idea that New York City had segregated schools in the first place. After all, New York City was not barring Black children from entering white schools. This wasn't the South. Segregation, Jansen said, is such an unfortunate word. He preferred the phrase racial imbalance or racial separation. The way he saw it, racial imbalance in the schools was just a matter of housing. Neighborhoods were segregated. Again, unfortunate, but that had nothing to do with the schools. To make this argument, William Jansen had to ignore the many powerful tools available to the Board of Education. The Board of Education was responsible for where kids went to school. It decided where to build new schools. It drew zoning lines. It decided where experienced teachers teach. There were many ways the Board could have made schools less segregated. I know this because of the Board's own reports. Jansen did very little to break up school segregation, but man, did he study it. He organized commissions that led to reports that led to further study. You see a pattern emerge, starting in the late 1950s, that looks something like this. Black parents and civil rights groups would pressure the Board to act on segregation. The Board would invite its critics to join a commission to investigate the problem. The commission would study the schools, discover extreme segregation, lay out solutions. The Board of Ed would then take a tiny step toward implementing some of the recommendations until white parents started to complain about the changes, at which point the Board would back off and say it needed more evidence. Another commission, another report. For instance, there's the Report on the Committee on Integration, a Plan for Integration, the City's Children and the Challenge of Racial Discrimination, Redoubling Efforts on Integration, the Board Commission on Integration, the Status of the Public School Education of Negro and Puerto Rican Children in New York City, and, my favorite, a bound little red book from 1960 called Toward Greater Opportunity, which summarizes the previous investigations with this groundbreaking conclusion. Quote, "we must integrate as much and as quickly as we can." I want to pause for one second and step out of the past back into the world we all live in, just to point out that, over the last few years in New York City, we've been reliving this chapter of history. It's eerie. New York City schools are segregated. There's a growing movement to do something about that. And for the first five years of his administration, the city's mayor, Mayor Bill de Blasio, responded in the following way. He refused to say the word segregation, commissioned a number of reports on school diversity. He's pointed a finger at housing problems as a way to say this isn't our fault, and he's studying the problem deeply, which, again, is not segregation, no matter how many times reporters would ask the mayor at press conferences, why don't you use that word?

chana joffe-walt

I heard a live call-in show on WNYC, the public radio station. A young integration advocate, an 11th grader named Tiffani Torres, asked the mayor, how much longer until you do something?

chana joffe-walt

Mayor de Blasio likes to point out that this was a problem created by people long before him, which is exactly what people long before him said, too.

[music]

In the late 1950s, when Black parents and civil rights activists also asked the Board of Ed, why is it taking so long, board members complained about the, quote, extremists who wanted instant integration. Superintendent Jansen said, "some people want us to build Rome in one day." While the Board of Education was building Rome in 1956, '57, '59, and in 1960, 1962, '63, Black parents found each other on PTAs, in civil rights organizations, pro-integration groups. They formed new groups, organized sit-ins, boycotts, demanded the Board provide a timetable for citywide integration. They joined forces with Puerto Rican parents, and their numbers grew. These were volunteers, mothers mostly, who left their jobs at the end of a workday and headed directly to a meeting about how to get the Board to give their kids the education white children were already receiving. Finally, in 1964, 10 years after Brown versus Board, Black and Puerto Rican parents said, enough. They were sick of waiting, sick of lawsuits, sick of asking for a remedy, sick of being ignored. So they went big, spectacularly big. They shut down the schools. They organized a civil rights demonstration that was the largest in US history, larger than the March on Washington. It was called Freedom Day, a massive school boycott.

chana joffe-walt

On February 3rd, 1964, parents headed out to schools in the morning before sunrise to spread the word about the boycott. It was freezing cold that day. There's a brief TV news clip of a group of mothers picketing outside their kids' school at the start of the school day. They're holding up signs that say, "we demand a real integration timetable now," and "integration means better schools for all." They're handing out leaflets to other parents about Freedom Day, looking spirited and cold. A white NBC news reporter in a fedora walks up to one of the women.

chana joffe-walt

There were maps and charts and instructions with picket times and picket captains for hundreds of schools. There were volunteer shifts to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, to hand out thousands of leaflets and stencil posters. The boycott wasn't just effective - it was extraordinarily effective. Half a million kids stayed home from school that day. Half a million, close to half the school system. But the press barely covered it. After searching every major TV network, I found only one kid who was interviewed, a teenage boy, maybe around 16, on the street with some friends, protesting. A white ABC News reporter doesn't ask him why he's there. The only thing he asks him about is violence. The kid responds.

chana joffe-walt

He gestures to the police on horseback.

chana joffe-walt

That was it. Every once in a while, I'll hear a politician or friend or school administrator say, yeah, integration was a good idea, but there was no political will to make it happen. 460,000 kids, half the school system. The will was there. The majority wanted integration.

[music]

After Freedom Day, the Board of Education introduced some small-scale integration plans, and white parents protested. [CHILDREN SINGING] We love our children. Oh, yes, we do. We will not transfer -

chana joffe-walt

With their own marches, they put on their own school boycott. The flipside of freedom day, a white boycott. The white parents were far fewer in number. But as far as I can tell, they got a thousand times more press coverage.

chana joffe-walt

This protest worked. The Board of Ed backed off. And in the decades since, the Board of Education has never proposed a city-wide integration plan. The schools have never been integrated. I think the fact of white moms in Queens in the 1960s yelling about zoning changes and busing, it's not surprising they played a role in killing school integration efforts. But there was another group of white parents who played a quieter, but I'd argue more forceful, role in killing integration. The white parents who said they supported it, parents like the ones who wrote letters asking for an integrated I.S. 293. How did their vocal support for integration turn lethal? That's after the break. In the American South, schools were desegregated with court orders. Cities and counties mandated desegregation, and the schools desegregated. By the early 1970s, the South was the most integrated region in the country. But New York City did not want to do it that way. No mandates. The New York City Board of Education wanted to appeal to hearts and minds. They wanted to sell white people on the virtues of integration. Have it all happen, quote, "naturally." Some white people were sold. The white parents who wrote letters about I.S. 293. They believed in integration. So I made a lot of calls to ask, why'd you bail? They had a lot of different reasons. One couple got divorced, and moved. Another guy told me he had political ambitions that pulled him out of the city.

chana joffe-walt

So he sold the house and moved the family to the suburbs, where he thought he'd have a better chance running against Republicans. Many white people moved to the suburbs for jobs, for newly paved roads and subsidized mortgages, leaving Brooklyn behind. I understood what happened there. But some explanations made less sense. Like one guy I called, he did stay in Brooklyn. On the phone, he was telling me why he believed it was important that I.S. 293 be integrated. But then he said his own kids went to Brooklyn Friends, a Quaker private school. I said, oh, they didn't go to I.S. 293.

chana joffe-walt

But you were a Quaker when you wrote this letter, asking for an integrated 293.

chana joffe-walt

You weren't planning to send your kid there?

chana joffe-walt

What to make of that? When you get what you say you want and then, given the opportunity, don't take it. Maybe you never really wanted it in the first place. Then I spoke to Elaine Hencke. Of all the people I spoke with, everything about Elaine indicated someone who did believe in integration, someone who would send her kids to 293. And yet, she didn't. Elaine was a public school teacher. She taught in an integrated elementary school, until she had her own kids. She was looking forward to sending them to an integrated 293. When her daughter was old enough for junior high school, Elaine visited the school. She was the only letter writer I spoke with who actually went into the building. If this was going to work with anyone, it was going to be Elaine.

chana joffe-walt

Elaine and I talked for a long time I pushed her - not to make her feel bad, but to get to what felt like a more real answer. At the time that you are visiting, was it majority Black and Hispanic kids?

chana joffe-walt

And did that have anything to do with the way that you saw the classroom as disruptive and chaotic?

elaine hencke

I would hope not.

I'm not - I'm not sure how well educated they were, or - you know, I don't know. I don't know why I'm going into this.

chana joffe-walt

Well, did you have reason to think that they weren't well educated?

chana joffe-walt

I'm just - when you say chaos and disruptive, I'm trusting that what you saw was chaotic and disruptive. But I also know that those are words white people use - we use to express our racial fears, to express real racial fears. Do you think that's what was happening with you?

chana joffe-walt

Elaine told me when she wrote that letter to the Board of Education, she pictured her children becoming friends with Black kids, learning side-by-side, learning that all children are equal. That's what motivated her to write that letter. She wanted the picture of integration the Board of Ed was promoting - the picture of harmonious integration. But when she visited I.S. 293, that didn't seem possible. The reading levels were low. The kids were not entering the school on equal grounds. Her white children had received years of high quality teaching at well-resourced schools. The kids coming from segregated elementary schools had not had that experience.

chana joffe-walt

But part of the - part of the vocal complaints of black parents at this period of time was that their kids were not learning how to read because schools were segregated, and their kids were kept in schools that were inferior. And that was part of the argument for integration.

chana joffe-walt

That their kids were not going to get the resources, and quality teaching, and good facilities unless they were in the same buildings with kids like yours.

elaine hencke

Right.

I don't know what to say to that. I just - I guess I just began to feel that things were really difficult for these kids. Schools were not made for them. If the schools were made for them, with their background, what would they be like?

I think there was - and that's another whole thing. I don't know about it. I think there was sort of anger in the black community at the white community. A lot of the teachers were white. There were more white teachers, I suppose. People said that that was racism. And of course, it was racism. But maybe the kids were a little angry at the school. I wouldn't - I couldn't fault them for that. But on the other hand, then they don't get as much from the school. I don't know. I thought the problems were kind of enormous. And I guess I just, at one point, I just decided that my kids should go - went to Brooklyn Friends. And we could afford to pay for it. It wasn't easy, you know. It was - [LAUGHS] but -

chana joffe-walt

Did your feelings about integration change? Did you believe in it less?

elaine hencke

Maybe.

I think I would have said no, theoretically. But maybe they did. I guess I saw it as a more difficult project then. I sort of did back off from it. I just -

chana joffe-walt

Yeah. It felt when you guys wrote these letters like, this is - integration is this exciting ideal, and we can be part of it, and it's going to be a meaningful project that's also going to be kind of easy.

[music]

chana joffe-walt

I think what Elaine actually meant was not that she was innocent, but that she was naive. She was naive about the reality of segregation, the harm of it. And naive about what it would take to undo it. She did not know. And I think she didn't want to know. When Elaine said the word innocent, I felt a jolt of recognition. I felt like Elaine had walked me right up to the truth about her, and about me.

When my own kids were old enough, I sent them to our zoned public school. It was racially mixed and economically mixed. I was excited about that. And it was nice walking to school with neighbors, people I likely never would have gotten to know otherwise. My kid's first day of school was another boy's first week in the country. He'd just moved from China, and his mom asked the neighbor where the school was. When she said goodbye that first morning, I think he thought I was a teacher, and he crawled into my lap. We had no words in common, so I just held him while he screamed and cried. By the holiday show three months later, I watched that same boy belt out "This Pretty Planet" on a stage with his classmates. He was the star. He nailed the hand motions. Every other kid up on stage was just following his lead, just trying to keep up. It was such a sweet picture, all of them up there - Black kids, and Mexican kids, and Colombian, and Asian and white kids. And all of us adults supporting all of them. It's moving, to me, this picture of integration. It is also, I'm realizing right now, writing these words down, the very same picture the Board of Education put forth in 1954 - a multiracial choir singing together, building brotherhood. And it's dangerous, I think, this picture of integration. It seems perfectly designed to preserve my innocence, to make me comfortable, not to remedy inequality, but a way to bypass it entirely. I can sit in that assembly and feel good about the gauzy display of integration without ever being asked to think about the fact that much of the time, white kids in the school building are having a different educational experience than kids of color. A large share of the white students at the school are clustered in a gifted program. They have separate classrooms and separate teachers. We all blithely call these white children gifted and talented, G&T, starting at four years old. White children are performing better at the school than black children and Latino children. White families are the loudest and most powerful voices in the building. The advantages white kids had back in the 1950s, they're still in place. When Elaine said she was innocent, I thought about the things we say, nice, white parents, to each other about why we won't send our kids to segregated schools - because they're too strict, or too chaotic, or too disruptive. Because the test scores are bad, because we want more play. We want fewer worksheets. Because we don't want to ride a bus. We don't want uniforms. We don't want tests. We want innocence. We need it, to protect us from the reality that we are the ones creating the segregation, and we're not sure we're ready to give it up.

[music]

Elaine was not for segregation. But in the end, she wasn't really for integration, either. All of the choices she made, choices she had the luxury of making, were meant to advantage her own kids. And I understand that. That's what parents do.

chana joffe-walt

You regretted what?

chana joffe-walt

Elaine's friend Joan, another white mom who did send her kids to I.S. 293. Elaine still feels bad about her choice. But not everyone felt bad.

chana joffe-walt

Carol is the woman who wrote the letter about how she'd come to New York City from the suburbs for integration. I had a hard time reconciling her lack of piety with her letter, which I read back to her, about wanting her kids to mix freely with children of other classes and races. [READING] - which we were not able to provide for them when we lived in the Westchester suburb.

chana joffe-walt

You remember feeling that way?

chana joffe-walt

As a parent, did you - do you remember feeling like, I hope my kid has experiences outside of just people like them?

chana joffe-walt

I'm not going to tell you a lot about St. Anne's, except to say this - it's one of the most prominent private schools in Brooklyn. Upscale neighborhood, prime real estate, lots of heavy-hitters send their kids to St. Anne's. I had heard of it. What I didn't know is that St. Anne's opened at the very same time that Black parents were waging their strongest fight for integration in New York City, in 1965. Right when a lot of the letter writers would have been looking for schools. And it wasn't just St. Anne's. New progressive private schools were opening and expanding all over the city. Brooklyn Friends School expanded into a new building, and would double its enrollment. They were opening private schools in the South, too. But down there, it was all very explicit. They became known as quote, unquote, "segregation academies," schools for white people who were wholeheartedly committed to avoiding integration. In the North, private schools opened as if they were completely disconnected from everything else that was happening at that very moment. St. Anne's marketed itself as a pioneer, a community of like-minded, gifted kids, no grades. Lots of talk about progressive, child-centered education, the whole child. At one point in my conversation with Carol Netzer I was talking about how integration was happening around his time. And she surprised me by saying, no, not at that time.

chana joffe-walt

No, they were integrating the schools in the '60s, though.

chana joffe-walt

That's how easy it was to walk away from integration in New York City. You could do it without even knowing you'd thrown a bomb over your shoulder on the way out.

[music]

Here is what I think happened over those five years between the writing of the letters in 1963 and not sending their kids to the school in 1968. Those five years were a battle between the Board of Education's definition of integration and the actual integration that black parents wanted. For black parents, integration was about safe schools for their children, with qualified teachers and functioning toilets, a full day of school. For them, integration was a remedy for injustice. The Board of Ed, though, took that definition and retooled it. Integration wasn't a means to an end. It was about racial harmony and diversity. The Board spun integration into a virtue that white parents could feel good about. And their side triumphed. That's the definition of integration that stuck, that's still with us today. It's the version of integration that was being celebrated 50 years later, at the French Cultural Services Building at the Gala for SAS.

In some of my calls with the white letter writers, a few people mentioned that yes, they wanted integration. But also, they wanted the school closer to them. They weren't comfortable sending their kids over to the other side of the neighborhood. Which brings me to one final letter from the other side of the neighborhood. One I haven't told you about, from the I.S. 293 folder in the archives. It's one of the only letters, as far as I can tell, that is not from a white parent. It's from the Tenants Association for the Gowanus Houses, a housing project, home to mostly Black and Puerto Rican families. They also wanted a school closer to them. The letter from the Tenants Association is formal and straightforward. It says, please build the school on the original site you proposed, right next to the projects. That way, they explained, our kids won't have to cross many streets. We'll get recreational facilities, which we desperately need. And it'll be close to the people who will actually use it. The letter says they represent over 1,000 families. The white families, they numbered a couple dozen. Still, in the name of integration, the white letter writers got what they wanted - a new building close to where they lived, that they did not attend. Note the Black and Puerto Rican families we're not asking to share a school with white people. They were not seeking integration. That's not what their letter was about. They were asking for a school, period. The school they got was three blocks further than they wanted. And from the moment it opened, I.S. 293 was de facto segregated - an overwhelmingly Black and Puerto Rican school. What were those years like, once the white parents pushing their priorities went away? Once there were no more efforts at feel-good integration, and the community was finally left alone? Was that better? That's next time, on "Nice White Parents."

"Nice White Parents" is produced by Julie Snyder and me, with editing on this episode from Sarah Koenig, Nancy Updike and Ira Glass. Neil Drumming is our Managing Editor. Eve Ewing and Rachel Lissy are our editorial consultants. Fact-checking and research by Ben Phelan, with additional research from Lilly Sullivan. Archival research by Rebecca Kent. Music supervision and mixing by Stowe Nelson. Our Director of Operations is Seth Lind. Julie Whitaker is our Digital Manager. Finance management by Cassie Howley and production management by Frances Swanson. The original music for Nice White Parents is by The Bad Plus, with additional music written and performed by Matt McGinley. A thank you to all the people and organizations who helped provide archival sound for this episode, including the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Andy Lanset at WNYC, Ruta Abolins and the Walter J. Brown Media Archives at the University of Georgia and David Ment, Dwight Johnson and all the other people at the Board of Education archives. Special thanks to Francine Almash, Jeanne Theoharis, Matt Delmont, Paula Marie Seniors, Ashley Farmer, Sherrilyn Ifill, Monifa Edwards, Charles Isaacs, Noliwe Rooks, Jerald Podair and Judith Kafka.

"Nice White Parents" is produced by Serial Productions, a New York Times Company.

"I depended on several excellent archivists and historians to track the history of one school," said Chana Joffe-Walt of her five-year process reporting "Nice White Parents," which follows what happened when a group of white families arrived at a predominantly Black and Latino school in New York City.

"And there are a few specific books that ran on a loop in my head as I went," she said. "They were essential in helping me understand what I was seeing and learning."

Here are a few of those books, and Chana's thoughts on each of them:

Margaret A. Hagerman

In episode one, a white boy, part of a large group of new white students, talks about how the school has improved "with us here" and is now ranked higher in the "book on statuses." He's communicating what he's learned about race at 10 years old, despite being in a school where the adults are saying "all children are equal." Margaret Hagerman'ssociological research reveals that white children learn about race as much from the choices they see their parents make as from what they hear their parents say.

Amanda E. Lewis and John B. Diamond

Integration is not just bodies in the building together - and this book takes us to one school where the halls are racially mixed but the classrooms are not. Lewis and Diamond explore why that is, including a very human and helpful look at white parents and the concept of "opportunity hoarding."

Clarence Taylor

This is the essential history of the movement for desegregation in New York City. It's a deeply researched book that describes the years of organizing that led up to Freedom Day in 1964, one of the largest civil rights demonstrations in American history. I owe so much of what I know about the names and details of New York's movement for integration to Clarence Taylor.

Vanessa Siddle Walker

When I first heard the archival tape of Mae Mallory, a civil rights activist, saying her lawsuit against the New York City Board of Education had "nothing to do with wanting to sit next to white kids," I thought of this book. It's a gripping narrative about the careful, savvy and often clandestine work of Black educators in Georgia to secure school buses, textbooks, playgrounds and school buildings for Black kids. These educators saw desegregation as a strategy, a means to achieve equality. Ms. Siddle Walker argues they got "second-class integration" that cost them their jobs and the very benefits they'd fought to protect instead.

Elizabeth Gillespie McRae

There's a phrase from Ms. Gillespie McRae's carefully researched book that has stayed with me: that white women have been "segregation's constant gardeners." She documents many decades of the quiet, everyday activism of "good" white mothers who helped maintain racial lines through their work on PTAs, and as social workers, teachers and midwives. This is a critical history that should be taught right alongside Brown v. Board of Education.

Matthew F. Delmont

Busing was the tool of choice for white people resisting desegregation in northern states. Mr. Delmont writes, "White mothers in New York were talking about busing before any school boards or courts anywhere in the country had ordered it." The idea of busing took hold in subsequent conversations about desegregation across the country. In the process, white mothers insisted busing wasn't about race or policy or justice. It was just about transportation.

Eve L. Ewing

While working on episode three, I put this book down and wrote "PURPOSEFUL FORGETTING" in red marker on a white board. Ms. Ewing helped me understand how school policy can pretend that history doesn't exist. It's an expertly told story about the closing of nearly 50 schools in Chicago in 2013. The Chicago schools superintendent said that these schools were selected for closure because they were underutilized and lacking resources. In response, Ms. Ewing asks, "How could the person charged with doling out resources condemn an institution for not having enough resources?" Then, with precision, she lays out exactly how they got that way.

Noliwe Rooks

Ms. Rooks began with curiosity about the rich college students she kept meeting who were interested in working in poor schools. What is it about the education of other people's children, she wondered, that is so consistently compelling to the wealthy? Ms. Rooks traces the dynamics of private money in public schools from Reconstruction to the present. She argues that programs like Teach for America and charter schools depend on racial and economic segregation, what she calls "segrenomics."

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The Reading List Behind 'Nice White Parents'

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Everyone wants what's best for their children's education. But who gets to decide what's best? The reporter behind our new podcast from Serial shares the books that helped her answer that question. "Nice White Parents" is a new podcast from Serial Productions, a New York Times Company, about the 60-year relationship between white parents and the public school down the block.

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Opinion

Three ways to center Black progress in the classroom

In January, on a cold, sunny Boston day, just two months before the COVID-19 global pandemic shut down schools across the nation, I visited a neighborhood school full of Black students. After observing a full day, a well-meaning white teacher-chair of Black Lives Matters week-stood in front of a group of faculty members with an abundance of anxious energy.

She told us that she was planning on inviting successful Black people to talk to the students. "They don't have to be President Obama or Beyoncé or anything, they can be anybody," she said. "We just want our students to see really good, really successful Black people."

All I could think to myself was here we go again-another well-meaning white teacher entranced by the romanticisms of talking about Black folks and our progress in America through an individual lens. Little did I know that only a few months later, a public reckoning on racism would erupt across the nation.

As schools fumble to talk about America's original sin-racism-well-meaning white teachers (and some Black folks) often assume that cultural relevance equals applauding individual progress.

As we now strategize our re-entries into school buildings after months of a global pandemic and ongoing demonstrations for racial justice, Black and brown families disproportionately carry the burden of food, housing, health, and income insecurities. Well-meaning white teachers have another chance to rethink classroom talks on race. As we continue to call the names of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Elijah McClain, Atatiana Jefferson, and Tamir Rice, well-meaning white teachers must question their pedagogical souls.

Against the backdrop of a dwindling moral fabric and farcical political leadership, all of us, but especially well-meaning white educators, have the burden of building a learning environment that centers the truths of Black progress in a nation plagued by "alternative facts."

The question, then, is how do well-meaning white teachers reimagine their classroom rhetoric? Here are three strategies that can reimagine the experience of our students.
1. Talk about systemic racism, not individual stories.
The system or the person-who's to blame? Every lesson is an opportunity to talk about the legacy of systemic racism, not solely the wonder of individual stories. And when we neglect to talk about how systemic racism is embedded within American structures-education, justice, employment, housing, and health care-we unintentionally teach students that "really good, really successful" Black folks are exempt from racist structures. We have a duty to resist this logic by acknowledging that those we acclaim-King, Morrison, Hughes, Angelou, Baldwin, Winfrey, Obama, and Knowles-Carter-existed and exist within a structure of systemic racism despite their individual feats.

Ask yourself, "What assumptions have I constructed about the Black experience, historical and current, that causes me to center individualism over the racism? Then, ask yourself, "Am I privileging individual stories over systemic racism to avoid having to wrestle with the risky and dangerous truths of how racism contributes to my attitudes and practices?"

As a Black educator with a modicum of American-defined success, I have seen white colleagues attempt to co-opt my own individual narrative without the context of systemic racism. When white educators see their Black colleagues as exceptions to the systemic racism of America, transformative dialogue can't happen. Our journeys to the job of educator were formed and informed by the different privileges we had or lacked. Ignoring the existence of a structure I exist within perpetuates the alternative fact of a personal American Dream while ignoring the oft-experienced Black communal reality of an American Nightmare.
2. Talk about history in today's context.
When we teach units that are grounded in American history-slavery, the Civil War, and Jim Crow-we often leave those units in history, without employing today's context. Most of our students need a clear reason why something is meaningful before it is learned and internalized. Our responsibility, then, is to provide that why for students-a why that is grounded in knowing that history is not only insight into what has been but also a catalyst for reimagining what can be.

What is it to esteem Frederick McKinley Jones' refrigerated-truck ingenuity without discussing Trump-era cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, effectively sustaining food deserts-areas without easy access to fresh food-in low-income urban and rural communities? What is it to know of the first successful pericardium surgery performed by Daniel Hale Williams without talk of persistent health-care disparities between races and the biases of medical practitioners who disregard the symptoms of Black women? What is it to be moved by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolent protests during the civil rights era of the 1960s without talk of the hyperviolent policing tactics and Draconian curfews against Black Lives Matter movements?
3. Talk about navigating and disrupting racism.
In 1993, Harvard professor Evelyn Higginbotham coined the phrase "respectability politics" to describe when racially marginalized groups attempt to distance themselves from stereotypical aspects of their communities to fit white-supremacist standards. The underlying assumption is that respectability will position Black folks to access white America's "inalienable rights." Students are told to "pull your pants up to look professional" or "stand straight, arms to the side, eyes in front of you, and lips sealed" as if treating children like prisoners will maximize their potential.

This philosophy expects students to navigate racism without any tools for disrupting the system. Instead, we should teach our students to disrupt language, writing norms, and even dress codes. For example, I've explained to my students that I spell my name "rob"-with a lowercase R-because, as an educator, I choose to reimagine the recommended relationship between capitalization and proper nouns because all constructed knowledge can be deconstructed.

The seemingly innocent rhetoric, academic tactics, and teaching frameworks of white well-meaning teachers need to bend toward justice. The democratic futures of our Black students, and the moral sustainability of our nation, depend on educators willing to disrupt their sensationalism of Black progress and rethink rhetoric, with love and justice, which centers the complex truths of Black folks in a white nation.

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An Open Letter to Well-Meaning White Teachers

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Opinion In January, on a cold, sunny Boston day, just two months before the COVID-19 global pandemic shut down schools across the nation, I visited a neighborhood school full of Black students. After observing a full day, a well-meaning white teacher-chair of Black Lives Matters week-stood in front of a group of faculty members with an abundance of anxious energy.

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How Schools are Spirit Murdering Black and Brown Students

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How Schools are Spirit Murdering Black and Brown Students

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Dr. Bettina Love

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How Schools Are 'Spirit Murdering' Black and Brown Students

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Opinion In February of 2019, a positive behavior support coach who was employed by the district in Madison, Wis., allegedly physically assaulted and ripped the hair out of the head of an 11-year-old Black girl. In the same school district, several teachers and substitutes have been fired or resigned earlier this academic year after reports they used racial slurs in the classroom.

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Why the Academic Achievement Gap is a Racist Idea

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Why the Academic Achievement Gap is a Racist Idea

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Kendi, 2016

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"Standardized tests have become the most effective racist weapon ever devised to objectively degrade Black minds and legally exclude their bodies"

This year marks the 100-year anniversary of the academic achievement gap-built and continuously renovated by the 100-year-old standardized testing movement. It is a centennial that hardly anyone knows about.

These days, many people are criticizing the testing movement. Colleges are slowly diminishing the importance of standardized testing in admissions decisions. We are seeing unprecedented numbers of wealthy white parents opting their school children out of these tests.

But few testing critics are bursting its biggest bubble: the existence of the achievement gap itself. To believe in the existence of any sort of racial hierarchy is actually to believe in a racist idea. The achievement gap between the races-with Whites and Asians at the top and Blacks and Latinos at the bottom-is a racial hierarchy. And this popular racial hierarchy has been constructed by our religious faith in standardized testing.

Americans have been led to believe that intelligence is like body weight, and the different intellectual levels of different people can be measured on a single, standardized weight scale. Our faith in standardized tests causes us to believe that the racial gap in test scores means something is wrong with the Black test takers-and not the tests. And the belief that "inferior" Black minds are capable of doing as well as the "superior" White minds does not take away from the racist belief in the existence of the racial hierarchy itself. Let me explain.

In 1869, Charles Darwin's cousin, English statistician Francis Galton, hypothesized in Hereditary Genius that "[t]he average intellectual standard of the negro race is some two grades below our own." Galton pioneered the western eugenics movement, but failed to develop a testing mechanism that verified his racist hypothesis. Where Galton failed, France's Alfred Binet and Thodore Simon thought they succeeded in 1905 when they developed an IQ test that Stanford University psychologist Lewis Terman revised for Americans in 1916.

An avowed eugenicist, Terman introduced and defended the viability of the nation's first popular standardized intelligence test in his 1916 book, The Measurement of Intelligence. These "experimental" tests will show "enormously significant racial differences in general intelligence, differences which cannot be wiped out by any scheme of mental culture," Terman maintained. He imagined a permanent academic achievement gap, a permanent racial hierarchy.

Terman's IQ test was first administered on a major scale to 1.7 million U.S. soldiers during World War I. Princeton University psychologist Carl C. Brigham presented the test results as evidence of genetic racial hierarchy in A Study of American Intelligence, published three years before he created the SAT test in 1926.

Famed physicist William Shockley and educational psychologist Arthur Jensen carried these eugenic ideas into the 1960s. But by then, these genetic explanations-not the tests and the achievement gap itself-had largely been discredited. In other words, the construction of a permanent racial hierarchy had been replaced by the construction of a temporary racial hierarchy.

Well-meaning environmentalists had shifted the discourse to disclosing and closing the "achievement gap," a shift that powered the testing movement through The Bell Curve controversy in 1994. "It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences" in test scores, wrote Harvard experimental psychologist Richard Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray.

The Bell Curve sparked such an intense academic war in 1995 that the American Psychological Association (APA) convened a Task Force on Intelligence. The APA report rejected all the existing explanations for "the differential between the mean intelligence test scores of Blacks and Whites," from "biases in test construction" to genes, class, and culture. "At this time, no one knows what is responsible for the differential," they concluded.

No one will ever know what doesn't exist. And yet, the racist idea of an "achievement gap" lived on into the new millennium. The testing movement rejoiced over the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act.

Progress has been slow in closing the statistical gap. In 1964, a Department of Education report found that the average Black 12 th grader scored in the 13 percentile, meaning 87 percent of White 12 th graders scored higher on their tests than the average Black 12 th grader. The Nation's Report Card fifty years later found that the average Black 12 th grader scored in the 19 th percentile. And in 2015, Blacks still had the lowest mean SAT scores of any racial group.

At 100-years-young this year, standardized tests have come to literally embody the American doors of opportunity, admitting and barring people from the highest ranked schools, colleges, graduate schools, professions, and jobs. Standardized tests have become the most effective racist weapon ever devised to objectively degrade Black minds and legally exclude their bodies. However, some of the greatest defenders of standardized testing are civil rights leaders, who rely on the testing data in their well-meaning lobbying efforts for greater accountability and resources.

But what if, all along, our well-meaning efforts at closing the achievement gap has been opening the door to racist ideas? What if different environments actually cause different kinds of achievement rather than different levels of achievement? What if the intellect of a poor, low testing Black child in a poor Black school is different-and not inferior -to the intellect of a rich, high-testing White child in a rich White school? What if the way we measure intelligence shows not only our racism but our elitism?

Gathering knowledge of abstract items, from words to equations, that have no relation to our everyday lives has long been the amusement of the leisured elite. Relegating the non-elite to the basement of intellect because they do not know as many abstractions has been the conceit of the elite.

What if we measured literacy by how knowledgeable individuals are about their own environment: how much individuals knew all those complex equations and verbal and nonverbal vocabularies of their everyday life?

What if we measured intellect by an individual's desire to know? What if we measured intellect by how open an individual's mind is to self-critique and new ideas?

What if our educational system focused on opening minds instead of filling minds and testing how full they are? What if we realized the best way to standardize a highly effective educational system is not by standardizing our tests but by standardizing our schools to encourage intellectual openness and difference?

But intellectual difference, and multiple literacies, languages, and vocabularies, are only valued in a multi-cultural society that truly values diversity and difference. The testing movement does not value multiculturalism. The testing movement does not value the antiracist equality of difference. The testing movement values the racist hierarchy of difference, and its bastard 100-year-old child: the academic achievement gap.

Ibram X. Kendi is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Florida. His second book, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Nation, 2016), was recently named a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction. Follow him on Twitter @DrIbram.

Copyright © AAIHS. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Why the Academic Achievement Gap is a Racist Idea

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"Standardized tests have become the most effective racist weapon ever devised to objectively degrade Black minds and legally exclude their bodies" This year marks the 100-year anniversary of the academic achievement gap--built and continuously renovated by the 100-year-old standardized test

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What Anti-racist Teachers Do Differently

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What Anti-racist Teachers Do Differently

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They view the success of black students as central to the success of their own teaching.

Editor's Note: In 1988, a teacher most commonly had 15 years of experience. In recent years, that number is closer to just three years leading a classroom. The "On Teaching" series focuses on the wisdom of veteran teachers.
Ask black students who their favorite teacher is, and they will joyfully tell you. Ask them what it is about their favorite teacher, and most will say some version of this: They know how to work with me. So much is in that statement. It means that these students want to work, that they see their teachers as partners in the learning process, and that they know the teacher-student relationship is one in which they both have power. In other words, black students know that they bring intellect to the classroom, and they know when they are seen-and not seen.

As the principal of San Francisco's Mission High School and an anti-racist educator for more than 30 years, I have witnessed countless black students thrive in classrooms where teachers see them accurately and show that they are happy to have them there. In these classes, students choose to sit in the front of the class, take careful notes, shoot their hands up in discussions, and ask unexpected questions that cause the teacher and other classmates to stop and think. Given the chance, they email, text, and call the teachers who believe in them. In short, these students are everything their families and community members have raised and supported them to be.

I have seen some of these very same students walk into another teacher's classroom, go to the last row of desks, and put their head down. I have seen them sit frozen in their seat, staring at an assignment-when earlier I had heard them make jokes, talk excitedly about the content of their history class, celebrate solving a vexing algebra equation, or shake a test tube with authority, waiting for a result. Their report cards often reveal this disparity in classroom experiences: A's and B's in classes where they feel valued and C's, D's, or even F's in classes where they don't.

When black students' academic strengths are overlooked, black students are marginalized. They are kept out of advanced courses, given bad grades, and sent to the dean's office. Over the years, the power that they initially bring to school is siphoned off by educators at every level of the educational system who do not respect, and in some cases do not wish to respect, the intellectual contributions of black students.

Anti-racist teachers take black students seriously. They create a curriculum with black students in mind, and they carefully read students' work to understand what they are expressing. This might sound fairly standard, but making black students feel valued goes beyond general "good teaching." It requires educators to view the success of black students as central to the success of their own teaching. This is a paradigm shift: Instead of only asking black students who are not doing well in class to start identifying with school, we also ask teachers whose black students are not doing well in their classes to start identifying with those students.

I spent the majority of my career in the classroom, and I loved it because-to do it well-it required that I call on all aspects of my humanity. Standing in front of my black students, I knew that it was my responsibility to invite them into the classroom and then to see, push, and protect them once they were there. Over the years, collaborating with other anti-racist educators, I co-developed an approach that was successful-and it showed in the students' attendance, grades, and quality of work.

We read articles and books, and we attend workshops centered around black pedagogy. That helps us examine cultural differences in discourse styles, so we can better understand black students' analytical approaches in essays. We learn how to integrate oral language into our curriculum, such as adding a debate unit or a poetry-recitation assignment, and to provide ample opportunities for students to work together. And we learn that nothing goes without saying and that praise and direction should be plentiful. In essence, we do what works for black students, which also works for all students.

Educators who are committed to black students use evidence in their own classrooms to find ways to improve. They analyze the assignments handed in, identifying ways in which their teaching reached-and didn't reach-all of their students. They recognize the brilliance of a black student's contribution to a class discussion and seize on it. They disaggregate data such as grades and attendance by ethnicity, look for patterns, and problematize their own practice-rather than assume that their students weren't motivated or sufficiently prepared to engage with challenging material. They ask themselves: Why did Taylor get a C on the final when he earned an A or a B on all of his other assignments, many of them equally demanding? Why is Vince silent in his group? What inspired Hile to write multiple drafts of her essay, each time asking for more detailed feedback? They seek support from colleagues who are effective teachers for all of their students, including black students, because they know that the changes they make to their teaching practice will have an impact on their students' achievement. All of this makes them better educators.

Teachers who do not value black students will shift the discussion away from their own practice when they see that black students are not succeeding in their classes. They will create bonds that eventually turn into factions with fellow educators who are also unwilling to change their approach.

To fight against systemic racism means to buck norms. Educators at every level must be willing to be uncomfortable in their struggle for black students, recognizing students' power and feeding it by honoring their many contributions to our schools. Teachers need to insist on using their own power to consistently reveal and examine their practice, and seek input from black stakeholders; they must invite black parents to the table, listen to their concerns and ideas, and act on them. Principals must clearly and consistently communicate the anti-racist vision for their school, create professional-development opportunities for staff, recognize teachers who successfully teach all of their students, and intervene when they see problems. District-level administrators must more firmly root their anti-racist messaging in black students' school experiences, making expectations for educators clear. And school-board members need to listen to educators who have shown efficacy in educating black students. They must enact policies that hold us all accountable to our black families. We must make demands of ourselves and work together in our communities.

The only measure of our anti-racist teaching will be the academic success of all of our students, including our black students.
This article is part of our project "On Teaching," which is supported by grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Panta Rhea Foundation.

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What Anti-racist Teachers Do Differently

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They view the success of black students as central to the success of their own teaching. Editor's Note: In 1988, a teacher most commonly had 15 years of experience. In recent years, that number is closer to just three years leading a classroom. The "On Teaching" series focuses on the wisdom of veteran teachers.

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Glorifying White Authors like DiAngelo Erases Decades of Black Writing on Whiteness

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Glorifying White Authors like DiAngelo Erases Decades of Black Writing on Whiteness

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Photo courtesy: W.E.B Du Bois Collection, Special Collections and University Archives, UMass Amherst Libraries

"I have spent most of my life ... watching white people and outwitting them so that I might survive." - James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name (1961)

Books on race and racism are dominating bestseller lists. Netflix has recently launched a new Black Lives Matter collection on its streaming platform, where films like Ava DuVernay's When They See Us and Spike Lee's Malcolm X have been trending for weeks. One of the most popular books right now is Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility, which, as of today,has been a New York Times paperback nonfiction bestseller for 93 weeks. While sales of books by black authors like Ibrahim X. Kendi, Ijeoma Oluo, and Carol Anderson have also soared (granted, only three to four weeks ago), DiAngelo's book seems to have left a particular mark on contemporary white American culture.

For weeks, white liberal Americans have been praising White Fragility, treating it as a must-read manual for white people, forming online discussion groups, and joining book clubs all across the country.

What is troubling about the current white liberal obsession with DiAngelo is how digital conversations that glorify her most recent work rarely consider writings on whiteness and white people by Black American authors, at least not with the same sense of urgency and importance.

DiAngelo is not the first scholar to become broadly popular among white liberal audiences. Before DiAngelo, there was the author of "White Like Me" Tim Wise (whose work I do not recommend for several reasons). Then, there was also Peggy McIntosh's 1989 essay, " White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," which was one of the first texts that a friend sent to me as I tried to understand race after first moving to the United States ten years ago.

If DiAngelo's readership is earnestly committed to decoding whiteness, we must ask a glaringly obvious question: why are white liberal Americans so quickly inclined to praise and venerate a white expert on race but generally don't extend the same attention to what Black writers, intellectuals, and political leaders have had to say about whiteness and white people for decades?

With this mind, in the introduction to Black On White: Black Writers On What It Means to Be White David Roediger makes a compelling observation that may give us ground for reflecting on how white Americans think about racial expertise:

"Few Americans have even considered the fact that black Americans are extremely knowledgeable about white people and whiteness."

Certainly, most white Americans haven't been seriously taught Black literature-let alone black political thought-in schools. To be generous, we may say that, considering calls for white people to educate themselves, many well-meaning whites may simply not know where else to start. But what Roediger ultimately implies is that, on the level of culture, white people don't fully realize that "being Black" is not a kind of fixed experience that automatically differentiates Black people's experiences based on skin tone. Rather, racial experiences arise out of having to deal with white people and, therefore, being forced to learn about them, watch them, and, above all, watch out for them.

In other words, racial experiences do not exist in some kind of vacuum that is the proverbial "black experience"; experiences of racism are born out of daily interactions with white people, with white institutions, and with white culture, which, as Roediger reiterates, has made Black Americans "the nation's keenest students of white consciousness and white behavior."

Nonetheless, as bell hooks writes in " Representations of Whiteness in Black Imagination," while white people routinely observe Black people with suspicion, they "find it easy to imagine that black people cannot see them" in the same way. In fact, white people, hooks argues, are deeply terrified of being seen by people of color and exposed in "the ways of white folks," as Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes put it. White people are afforded this psychological illusion of safety precisely because in a white-dominate society it is always already assumed that only white people have the power to scrutinize others, and not vice versa.

White fantasies are a form of American racial fiction that projects narratives of white innocence onto others, obscuring the actual realities of what it means to live with white people and be the object of white people's constant interrogation. Not only do Black Americans have had to intimately learn white culture and white consciousness in order to survive and navigate white people's everyday scrutiny, Black writers have been writing about white people and whiteness since at least since the nineteenth century.

From folktales to slave narratives, accounts of black life in bondage became increasingly prominent during the era of slavery as enslaved people had to learn white people's habits and ways of thinking to resist racial enslavement and find ways to persevere. Later, popular literary narratives about racial passing further showed how the practice of passing as white depended on black Americans' meticulous observation of whites and the ability to strategically move between and through white and black spaces.

In the early twentieth century, James Weldon Johnson wrote in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), a fictional account about a young biracial black man who could pass as white in the post-Reconstruction U.S. South:

"colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand themselves."

Yet, despite this rich archive of black-authored texts that do nothing less than theorize whiteness (not to even mention a wide range of black cultural theory produced in the late twentieth century), Black American writers have often been perceived as merely offering their white readers a new perspective on what it's like to be "a minority" or on, in Du Bois's words, " how does it feel to be a problem," and nothing more.

In comparison, "white writers," Roediger notes, "have long been positioned as the leading and most dispassionate investigators of the lives, values, and abilities of people of color." Writings on race and whiteness by white authors are much more rare to come by. These works provoke white people's curiosity and gather attention for being seemingly exceptional (they are not).

So, let's be clear here: the figure of the exceptional white race scholar is fetishized at the expense of black intellectual work on race and whiteness.

To this day, Black Studies scholarship is often dismissed by white Americans, many of whom don't seem to take black intellectual and political thought seriously. Think about how African-American Studies is often dismissed as an "easy major" rather than a rigorous academic discipline in its own right. Ironically, this piece itself falls into the trap of referencing the breadth of black intellectual thought on whiteness precisely in order to prove its intellectual rigor and cultural significance.

Ultimately, the problem here is not that people are eager to read Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility per sebut that way too many newcomers to the racial justice movement fail to take the rest of the black intellectual work as seriously. When white race scholars are revered and seen as exceptional, well-intentioned white Americans risk reading a trendy book by a white expert and not picking up a book by an established black author at all.

What does it say about white culture when masses of white Americans are ready to praise a white expert on race but make very little effort to read Black intellectuals who-make no mistake-have made their work possible?

Black intellectuals have been writing about whiteness for decades. Read them, too.

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Glorifying White Authors like DiAngelo Erases Decades of Black Writing on Whiteness

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"I have spent most of my life ... watching white people and outwitting them so that I might survive." - James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name (1961) Books on race and racism are dominating bestseller lists.

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Abolitionist Teaching and the Future of our Schools

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Abolitionist Teaching and the Future of our Schools

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Haymarket Books

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HaymarketBooks.org

Abolitionist Teaching and the Future of our Schools

The coronavirus pandemic has transformed the US education system overnight. The antiracist rebellion in the streets has shown a light on the deep racial inequality in America.

Educators and activists who have nurtured radical dreams for public schools now face an unprecedented moment of change, and the challenge of trying to teach and organize online in the midst of unfolding crises.

Scholar and author Bettina Love's concept of abolitionist teaching is about adopting the radical stance of the movement that ultimately overthrew slavery, but persisted and insisted on freedom long before that victory.
What would freedom look like in our schools? How can abolitionist educators make the most of this moment to fight for humane, liberatory, anti-racist schooling for black youth and for all youth?
Bettina L. Love is an award-winning author and the Athletic Association Endowed Professor at University of Georgia. She is the author of We Want To Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom and Hip Hop's Li'l Sistas Speak: Negotiating Hip Hop Identities and Politics in the New South.

Dr. Gholnecsar (Gholdy) Muhammad is an Associate Professor of Language and Literacy at Georgia State University. She also serves as the director of the GSU Urban Literacy Clinic. Dr. Muhammad's scholarship has appeared in leading educational journals and books. Some of her recognitions include the 2014 recipient of the National Council of Teachers of English, Promising New Researcher Award, the 2016 NCTE Janet Emig Award, the 2017 GSU Urban Education Research Award and the 2018 UIC College of Education Researcher of the Year. She is the author of Cultivating Genius: An Equity Model for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy.

Dena Simmons, Ed.D., is an activist, educator, and student of life from the Bronx, New York. She is the Assistant Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and an Associate Research Scientist at the Yale Child Study Center. She writes and speaks nationally about social justice and culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy as well as creating emotionally intelligent and safe classrooms within the context of equity and liberation. She is the author of the forthcoming book, White Rules for Black People (St. Martin's Press, 2021).

Brian Jones is the Associate Director of Education at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He writes about black education history and politics.

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem is one of the world's leading cultural institutions devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.

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Abolitionist Teaching and the Future of our Schools

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The coronavirus pandemic has transformed the US education system overnight. The antiracist rebellion in the streets has shown a light on the deep racial inequality in America. Educators and activists who have nurtured radical dreams for public schools now face an unprecedented moment of change, and the challenge of trying to teach and organize online in the midst of unfolding crises.

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Jon Stewart on How Paying Interns Made "The Daily Show" Better

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Jon Stewart on How Paying Interns Made "The Daily Show" Better

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Jon Stewart on How Paying Interns Made “The Daily Show” Better

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Why I Stopped Talking About Racial Reconciliation and Started Talking about White Supremacy

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Why I Stopped Talking About Racial Reconciliation and Started Talking about White Supremacy

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Recently, people have asked me, "Why isn't talking about white privilege enough, why white supremacy?" There is an obvious discomfort with the term by white people. The one exception to that is when things like Charlottesville happen. When people march around with Nazi flags, most folks I know feel comfortable saying, "I'm not down with that." Which is a pretty low bar, but OK. However, when the term white supremacy is used for anything less obvious than tiki torch-wielding, Nazi flag-waving people, lots of folks get uncomfortable. Most of my crowd was taught to use the terms "white privilege" and "racial reconciliation". Here is why I no longer focus on them and instead teach on white supremacy.

When I first learned the term racial reconciliation in the early '90s, I found it very helpful and exciting. I was passionate about issues of race and justice, but I had never heard those things discussed in Christian circles. Suddenly, there was a biblical basis and communal energy toward this value. When I came on staff with a Christian campus ministry, I was taught that racial reconciliation consisted of a three-strand rope - ethnic identity, interpersonal relationships, and systemic injustice. Though the focus was almost always on the first two.

Beginning with the not guilty verdict of George Zimmerman and gaining momentum with the murder of Michael Brown Jr. in the fall of 2014, Black Lives Matter revealed the limits of the racial reconciliation model espoused by many evangelical organizations in the '90s. I watched as white Christians, and people of color (POC)( 1) submitted to whiteness, responded again and again with:

denial of systemic injustice

disregard for the lived experience of Black people

silence in the pulpit

deeply ingrained superiority regarding issues of race

fixation on intentions over outcomes

I had to ask why those discipled by the racial reconciliation framework were so ill-equipped to engage, learn from, and respond to a movement focused on systemic and institutionalized racial injustice. I'll discuss three reasons that I've observed: individualistic theology, a sanitized version of history, and good old white centering.

Bad Theology

The term racial reconciliation serves the dominant culture; it serves white people and those who align with whiteness. The term reconciliation is relational in nature. And though relationships are important, the focus on relationships is anchored in white theology's pathological individualism.

Jesus died for my sins.

Jesus went to the cross for me.

I know the plans He has for me.

Though there is a place for the individual in theology, white theology, in profound syncretism with American culture, has distorted the Bible to be solely about individual redemption. So it is blind to the reality that when Scripture says, "I know the plans I have for you", the "you" is plural and addressed to an entire community of people that has been displaced and are in exile. All Scripture has been reduced to individual interactions between God and a person, even when they are actually between God and a community, or Jesus and a group of people. As a result, white theology defines racism as hateful thoughts and deeds by an individual, but cannot comprehend communal, systemic, or institutionalized sin, because it has erased all examples of that framework from Scripture.

Secondly, white Christianity suffers from a bad case of Disney Princess theology. As each individual reads Scripture, they see themselves as the princess in every story. They are Esther, never Xerxes or Haman. They are Peter, but never Judas. They are the woman anointing Jesus, never the Pharisees. They are the Jews escaping slavery, never Egypt. For citizens of the most powerful country in the world, who enslaved both Native and Black people, to see itself as Israel and not Egypt when studying Scripture is a perfect example of Disney princess theology. And it means that as people in power, they have no lens for locating themselves rightly in Scripture or society - and it has made them blind and utterly ill-equipped to engage issues of power and injustice. It is some very weak Bible work.

Together, these create a profoundly broken theological framework. It explains why people love a photo of a cop hugging a Black person, but dismiss claims of systemic racism in policing. It pretends that injustice is resolved when individuals hug. This was actually something that people were encouraged to do at Promise Keeper events in the '90s: go find a Black person and hug them. It confuses white emotional catharsis with racial justice. The two are far from each other. The movement for Black Lives Matter and other marginalized communities insist on addressing systemic issues, and white Christianity is pathologically individualistic. Learning must come from POC, who would clearly be the experts on issues of racism in the church.

Bad History

Racial reconciliation assumes an innocent reading of history. This is a term I learned from theologian Justo Gonzalez. An innocent telling of history is foundational to maintaining unjust and racist systems. When have white people ever been in just relationship with Black people? During slavery? During Jim Crow? During the War on Drugs? What are we RE-conciling? It pretends that there was a time when everything was fine, we just need to get back there. However, that idyllic time has never existed.

Even when the Civil Rights Movement is taught, it is framed as a discussion of the courage of Black people. Which is true, their courage was amazing. But why did they have to be so courageous? What were they facing? The rage, racism, and violence of white people. Rarely is the profound hatred and resistance of white people taught. The evil of white people is downplayed, or minimized, to a few racist exceptions in the South. But white people, all across the United States, resisted any move toward racial justice with fury, rage, and violence. Our history never tells the true story of whiteness.

In her brilliant book on the Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson describes a riot that broke out in Chicago, in 1951, when a Black family attempted to move into a white apartment building. After being driven from the apartment, white people destroyed everything the family owned, and over the course of the next day, the crowd grew to over 4,000, eventually burning down the entire building. White people would rather burn a building than see Black people live there. Or looking to the West Coast, "When Oregon was granted statehood in 1859, it was the only state in the Union admitted with a constitution that forbade Black people from living, working, or owning property there. It was illegal for Black people even to move to the state until 1926 ... Waddles Coffee Shop in Portland, Oregon was a popular restaurant in the 1950s for both locals and travelers alike. The drive-in catered to America's postwar obsession with car culture, allowing people to get coffee and a slice of pie without even leaving their vehicle. But if you happened to be Black, the owners of Waddles implored you to keep on driving. The restaurant had a sign outside with a very clear message: "White Trade Only - Please".( 2)

And hence, white people don't believe it when white racism is pointed out in the present. They've been told a fairy tale about themselves. Even when the history of POC is told, white violence is erased, and the consequences of historical injustices are minimized. White people do not connect themselves to history, once again because of pathological individualism. They simply want a friend in the present, with no acknowledgement of the past or present injustice.

White Comfort

Racial reconciliation centers language with which white people and their allies are comfortable. Racial reconciliation moves at the pace that whiteness dictates. It focuses on making sure white people don't feel guilty, but not on the systemic disenfranchisement of POC. It will talk about redeemed white identity without teaching about white supremacy. It will lament but not repent with action. It is comfortable with POC being displaced and paying significant mental and emotional tolls for the work, but asks little to nothing of its white people. It is profoundly anxious about white discomfort and is always trying to control the narrative.

In the racial reconciliation model, POC are commodities. POC exist to teach and educate whiteness. When white people are ready to learn, POC must share their story, and our pain is for consumption. Whiteness listens, feels superior to other white people who aren't as "woke", but does not change. Recently, I talked with a 24-year-old African American woman who works for a Christian ministry. As she described her current job, it became clear that she was expected to do her job, educate her peers, educate her supervisors, and educate up the line to leadership with 20 years more experience than her. While those leaders congratulate themselves for listening to a Black woman, they never wonder why there are no people at their own level of management with whom they can engage. And the 24-year-old white guy, her peer, is left to simply learn his job, carries none of the responsibility of educating up, and exerts none of that emotional labor. This is the racial reconciliation model: massive labor by people of color, but no accountability for systems and institutions that exploit this labor. If POC become angry, frustrated, and tired of this dynamic, they are labeled as uncommitted to the cause, immature, or not a right fit.

The racial reconciliation model perpetuates white privilege because the pacing is centered on the dominant culture, the language is white-centered, and the implicit audience of teachings and content is always the dominant culture. In the racial reconciliation model, POC are expected to show up whenever the topic of race is addressed, even though the implicit audience is always white people. The time is not really for people of color, but they must be there to validate that "real" work is happening. Again, POC are a commodity.

The role of POC in racial reconciliation is to feel grateful, be loyal, educate (but nicely, and without anger) and conform to white culture. POC are to bring just a sprinkle of color - without ever pressing for deeper cultural, organizational, or systemic change. POC must always "trust their leaders" and be satisfied with intentions over outcomes. Whiteness controls the narrative at all times. And let me state for the record, one does not need to be white to be working for whiteness. As someone who grew up in the Korean immigrant church and has been a part of the Korean American Christian community for much of my life, I am troubled to see how often there is alignment with white theology and white tellings of history. Communities of color must rigorously disentangle ourselves from white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and settler colonialism.

White Privilege

The term white privilege can be helpful, but it is still located in pathological individualism. It assumes that issues are resolved by how an individual white person handles their privilege. Hence, it cannot be considered a term that is sufficient to address or resolve organizational or systemic white supremacy. It cannot dismantle white supremacy culture in a denomination, organization, or church. It is useful, and it is real. It is often a first step for people of privilege. It is important that they realize they participate in unequal systems, even unintentionally. However, it is not enough for anyone in a position of leadership or influence.

Shifting to the term white supremacy and understanding that it means more that flag-waving Nazis is a move away from pathological individualism. It puts responsibility on white people to stop supporting white supremacy versus putting the responsibility on POC to educate and provide diversity. Racial reconciliation often views POC as the problem that needs to be solved. White supremacy locates the problem in the right place.

Let me close by referencing the imagery of the canary in the mine. In the olden days, miners would take a canary into coal mines because their delicate lungs would more readily be impacted by deadly gases and alert the miners that they should leave before they died of poisonous gases.

In the racial reconciliation model, the death (or departure) of POC is sad and sort of confusing, but is seen as an indicator that the bird was just not a good fit for the mine. They bring down another canary, try to put a tiny mask on it, and get confused when it dies as well. At no point is there a discussion that the mine is toxic.

The white supremacy framework says, HEY! That bird died because your well-intentioned mine is toxic. It is on you, it is on the mine, to stop being toxic. It is not on the canary to become immune to deadly fumes.

The term white supremacy labels the problem more accurately. It locates the problem on whiteness and its systems. It focuses on outcomes, not intentions. It is collective, not individual. It makes whiteness uncomfortable and responsible. And that is important.

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Why I Stopped Talking About Racial Reconciliation and Started Talking About White Supremacy | Inheritance

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Recently, people have asked me, "Why isn't talking about white privilege enough, why white supremacy?" There is an obvious discomfort with the term by white people. The one exception to that is when things like Charlottesville happen. When people march around with Nazi flags, most folks I know feel comfortable saying, "I'm not down with that."

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Bettina Love vividly explains the difference between allies and co-conspirators in the fight for justice.

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A Project by the Augusta Baker Chair

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Washington Post

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Protesters march in New York. (Ragan Clark/AP)

A new Washington Post-Schar School poll reports that a big majority of Americans support the protests that have been held across the country since the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody - and they say that police forces need to do more to treat blacks equally with whites.

Eight-one percent said police need to reform to ensure equal treatment for whites and blacks, the poll said. Other findings include: 87 percent of Democrats said they support the protests, as do 76 percent of independents and 53 percent of Republicans.

Big majorities support protests over Floyd killing and say police need to change, poll finds

One of the calls made by protesters is for reform in police departments, including calls to defund them, meaning to divert money from their budgets to social, health and educational programs. And some are calling for the dismantlement of departments, including in Minneapolis, where nine of the 13 city council members have called for finding other ways to keep residents safe.

With police reform front and center in the national debate, it's a good time to learn about the history of policing in the United States. Here are resources on the subject from the nonprofit Zinn Education Project, which offers free downloadable lessons and articles on history organized by theme, time period and grade level. The lessons are based on the approach to history highlighted in Howard Zinn's best-selling book, " A People's History of the United States," emphasizing the role of working people, women, people of color and organized social movements in shaping history.

You can check back here on the project's websites for additions that will be made to the list below.

As part of our People's Historians Online series, we hosted a special session with Keisha N. Blain on the "Roots of the 2020 Rebellion," focused on the history of policing. Many teacher participants reflected that what they learned about the origins and practices of policing is vital to make sense of current events, but is not in their U.S. history textbooks.

Therefore, we offer resources below to teach outside the textbook in middle and high school classrooms about police throughout U.S. history. There are many more books, articles and films on the topic - these are just a few student-friendly suggestions.

To get started, we recommend the " Throughline podcast on the history of policing in the United States " with Harvard professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad.

Throughline: American Police: The origins of policing in the United States, starting with slave patrols. Features Khalil Gibran Muhammad, author of " The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America."

Democracy Now: Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing Interview with Stuart Schrader, author of a book by the same name.

Lessons and textbook critiques

A 7-year-old student's telling answers on a worksheet titled 'Police Protect Us' by Valerie Strauss ( The Washington Post, June 2, 2020)

Happening Yesterday, Happened Tomorrow: Teaching the ongoing murders of black men by Renée Watson (Rethinking Schools)

How Chicago's Public Schools Are Teaching the History of Police Torture by Thai Jones. An article about Chicago's citywide curriculum that requires the history of police torture be taught in all eighth- and 10th-grade public school social studies classes.

The Murder of Sean Bell: From Pain to Poetry by Renée Watson (Rethinking Schools)

Remembering Red Summer - Which Textbooks Seem Eager to Forget by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca (Zinn Education Project)

'What We Want, What We Believe': Teaching with the Black Panthers' Ten Point Program by Wayne Au (Rethinking Schools)

Books for high school students and adults

" Chokehold: Policing Black Men " by Paul Butler

"Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color" by Andrea J. Ritchie

"The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" by Michelle Alexander

"Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas" by Sally E. Hadden

"Teaching for Black Lives" edited by Dyan Watson, Jesse Hagopian, Wayne Au

Young adult novels and graphic novels

" All American Boys " by Jason Reynolds

" I Am Alfonso Jones " by Tony Medina

" The Hate You Give " by Angie Thomas

" Say Her Name " by Zetta Elliott

Also see books for children and young adults on the Social Justice Books Incarceration list, including a young readers' edition of " Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson.

Student Athletes Kneel to Level the Playing Field by Jesse Hagopian (Rethinking Schools, 2017)

Violence in Minneapolis is rooted in the history of racist policing in America: Police violence against African Americans has persisted for centuries by Keisha N. Blain ( The Washington Post, May 30)

'We will overcome whatever [it] is the system has become today': Black Women's Organizing Against Police Violence in New York City in the 1980s by Keisha N. Blain, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 20, Issue 1 (Fall 2018): 110-121.

Primary Documents

"#7. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of Black people, other people of color, and all oppressed people inside the United States." - from the Black Panther Party 1966 10-point platform.

Gordon Parks's 1960s Protest Photos Reflect the Long History of Police Brutality in the United States by Daria Harper in Artsy.

The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States by Ida B. Wells-Barnett 1895. (To compare to the current annual list of murders - or lynchings - by police.)

SNCC Digital Gateway Often missing from lessons on the civil rights movement are the demands to end police brutality and violence by other white supremacists. Many stories at the website of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) highlight the role of the police and organizing to defend communities.

This Day in History Series

Selected stories of police brutality and protests of the police, including a 1941 protest of police brutality in Washington, D.C. See This Day in History stories about the police.

Art: Mural of Oscar Grant. By Robert Trujillo, Trust Your Struggle Collective.

Campaign Materials

We Came to Learn: A Call to Action for Police-Free Schools A report from the Advancement Project offers the history of how school police became institutionalized in the public education system in the United States, documents the negative impact on students of color, and offers a guide for how to take action. Learn more and download.

Documenting National Organizing toward #POLICEFREESCHOOLS by Christopher Rogers. A growing list of campaigns and resources to inform ongoing organizing in schools in defense of black lives.

" Fruitvale Station " by Ryan Coogler about the murder of Oscar Grant.

" Say Her Name: The Life and Death of Sandra Bland " by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner on HBO.

" Slavery by Another Name " by Sam Pollard, Catherine Allan, Douglas Blackmon, and Sheila Curran Bernard about false arrests of African Americans to feed the convict leasing system.

" When They See Us" by Ava DuVernay about the false arrest and imprisonment of five teenagers known as the Central Park Five. (Also see 13th.)

Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee veteran, lawyer, and Teaching for Change board member Tim Jenkins gives a 90-second history lesson about who the police "protect and serve."

A lesson on voting rights and suppression that students won't learn in textbooks

'Teaching for Black Lives' - a handbook to fight America's ferocious racism in (virtual or face-to-face) classrooms

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Analysis | Resources to teach the history of policing in America that you won't find in textbooks

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A new Washington Post-Schar School poll reports that a big majority of Americans support the protests that have been held across the country since the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody - and they say that police forces need to do more to treat blacks equally with whites.

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An Open Letter Regarding the CNN Sesame Street Town Hall

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An Open Letter Regarding the CNN Sesame Street Town Hall

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June 7, 2020

By Marcella Runell Hall & Rani Varghese

An Open Letter regarding the CNN Sesame Street Town Hall on Racism.

As parents of young children of color, we applaud the effort to give voice to so many brilliant, thoughtful, nuanced questions and pair them with content experts. We have so much love and respect for the many ways Sesame Street has led in areas of diversity and inclusion, and we appreciate that CNN is using its platform to educate children and parents across this country about these complex issues. Which is why in the spirit of love and dialogue, we are writing this open letter. We hope if you do a follow up Town Hall on this very important topic, you might take this feedback into consideration.

Racism has never been just about individual acts of kindness or being fair. Racism is systemic, cultural as well as individual. If we don't start with an acknowledgement that there is a bigger picture, we will continue to confuse our kids. We believe that children have the capacity to understand who creates the rules and enforces them. Individual bias is one part of a much bigger and more complex set of historical laws, policies, practices, and norms in society. This provides a context for why people are protesting and why people are angry, sad, and frustrated. What is important in these conversations is that we make space for our children's intense feelings and uncomfortable questions as we would in discussing other complex topics such as death, child abuse or pandemics like COVID-19.

People can be kind, and still do, say and believe racist things. Racism is conscious and unconscious, because it is rooted in bias and unearned, unchecked group privilege. If we only talk about racism in terms of fairness and kindness to our "Black friends" we are not teaching kids to be aware of subtle, passive, internalized ways that racism plays out. We also continue to perpetuate this idea that if white kids are kind to Black kids and other kids of color, racism will go away. Kids are smarter than that.

Grown ups can't talk to kids in thoughtful and authentic ways if we aren't comfortable ourselves with issues of race and racism. Parents, particularly white parents, need to prioritize reflection and self education to make sure there is an understanding that there is a 400 year history of racism in the United States, and complicit, passive racism has always been permissible and socially acceptable. This isn't just an uncomfortable set of conversations, it's a life-long commitment to unlearn and relearn, and this is where being able to commit to actions steps can help to recenter the conversation and role model this commitment to our kids. This means being focused on "antiracism as opposed to non racist" drawing on Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's work.

White children and families need to be central in the conversation about eradicating racism. People of color, particularly BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) are not the only ones with a racial identity and thus solely responsible for addressing racism. It is important to name that white people have a racial identity too! Parents should talk with their children about "being white", what it means to "be white", and their role as white people in combating racism. This is particularly critical for white parents of children of color. We want to underscore Dr. Beverly Tatum's point about the value of using literature as a tool to educate. Check out EmbraceRace below as a resource that can help parents begin that conversation.

BIPOC children and families should be able to grieve, be angry, sad, have complicated feelings and ask for help and support at any point in bearing the burden of these levels and types of racism-that is a matter of self preservation and fairness. Any conversation about racism should create adequate acknowledgement and space for that conversation too.

As social justice educators, we have learned that it is important to center the voices of those who are many times voiceless. And while we deeply appreciated the "grown up" content experts, we believe it is equally important to have children of all ages directly address the questions raised. In our children's schools and in the collegiate classrooms where we teach and/or work, our children and students sit up, listen, and cheer the loudest when they get to hear the voices of their friends and peers.

One of our teachers and womentors, Dr. Barbara Love, introduced us to the idea of liberation and liberatory consciousness. It is about "creating the world you want to live in while being attune to the dynamics of oppression" and so we also think it is important to be proactive with our children, think about what we are working towards not only working against. Ask yourself and your children to imagine the world they want to live, work and play in and who they want to be in that world. Then create a plan for how you will work toward that and support each other in that potential vision as a family.

Below we have listed some resources that we think will help families talk about racism and other forms of oppression. And we look forward to more conversations and more Town Halls!

In love, solidarity & liberation,

Marcella Runell Hall, BSW, Ed.D. (she/her/hers)
Vice President for Student Life/Dean of Students, Mount Holyoke College
Mother-Scholar, Social Justice Educator
Proud Parent of Aaliyah, age 10 & Ava, age 6

Rani Varghese, MSW, Ed.D (she/her/hers)
Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, Adelphi University
Mother-Scholar, Social Justice Educator, Clinical Social Worker
Proud Parent of Ronin, age 6
Resources:
Website: EMBRACERACE https://www.embracerace.org/

Co-founded by Andrew Grant-Thomas & Melissa Giraud, EmbraceRace is multiracial community of parents, teachers, experts, and other caring adults who support each other to meet the challenges that race poses to our children, families, and communities. There are a lot of great and free resources, particularly webinars on talking to kids about race and racism, action guides and recommendations for children's books.

Website: KIDLIT RALLY 4 BLACK LIVES https://thebrownbookshelf.com/.../kidlit-rally-4-black-lives.../

Thoughtful and dynamic Anti-Racist perspectives from popular children's literature authors of YA fiction, picture books and other kidlit content creators.
Virtual Storytime: DREAMLAND WITH AALIYAH https://www.facebook.com/aaliyahsdream/
Aaliyah (age 10), with support from her sister Ava (age 6), reads a book every night for children about a range of social justice topics.

Coach, Author and Educator: DR. BARBARA LOVE https://www.barbarajlove.com/

Dr. Barbara Love offers a framework, liberatory consciousness "to maintain an awareness of the dynamics of oppression characterizing society without giving in to despair and hopelessness about that condition and enabling us to practice intentionality about changing systems of oppression".

Psychologist and Educator: DR. KIRA BANKS http://kirabanks.com/
CNN Sesame Street Town Hall on Racism https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/06/app-news-section/cnn-sesame-street-race-town-hall-app-june-6-2020-app/index.html
Dr. Banks has created a series called Raising Equity, which explores what it means to intentionally raise children with "an equity mindset", knowledge and an understanding of systemic inequalities.

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An Open Letter regarding the CNN Sesame Street Town Hall on Racism

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June 7, 2020 By Marcella Runell Hall & Rani Varghese An Open Letter regarding the CNN Sesame Street Town Hall on Racism. As parents of young children of color, we applaud the effort to give voice to so many brilliant, thoughtful, nuanced questions and pair them with content experts.

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Clint Smith: How to raise a black son in America

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As kids, we all get advice from parents and teachers that seems strange, even confusing. This was crystallized one night for a young Clint Smith, who was playing with water guns in a dark parking lot with his white friends. In a heartfelt piece, the poet paints the scene of his father's furious and fearful response.

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A Letter to Friends Who Really Want to End Racism

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A Letter to Friends Who Really Want to End Racism

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by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)
Yesterday I posted a letter to friends on my personal Facebook page to help process my thoughts and feelings on what happened in Central Park with birder Christian Cooper and Amy Cooper and what happened to George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, as well as other recent events. Some have encouraged me to make the letter public, as it might help others. Since that is the primary mission of Good Black News, here it is:

Dear Friends,

First off, this is going to be a long one, so if you are inclined to read my more serious posts, circle back when you have a good 5-to-7 minutes. Secondly, thank you to everyone who took a moment to read, respond and/or comment on my post yesterday about the woman in Central Park who called the police to falsely report that an African American man was threatening her life. I appreciate the solidarity, the rage, the links, the legal statutes, the sharing of up-to-date information on the incident - all of it!

But I did not have it in me to reply or respond yesterday because following that post, I saw the Minnesota footage. I saw what could have happened to Christian Cooper actually happen to George Floyd. That took me places. If Central Park woman was my trigger, George Floyd was the bullet. I literally had to lie down.

Many of you know I have a site called Good Black News where for the last 10 years, I have been posting positive stories about Black people or about those who are doing positive things for Black people. If you don't already know the reasons why I do it, I believe you can infer.

Part of my process in finding those positive stories is reading through A LOT of stories that are not. I usually bear this well for a few reasons: 1)I believe witnessing injustices, other human beings' pain, struggles and conflicts and reading different perspectives on them is a helpful step to healing for everyone even when you don't know yet what the step after that is 2)I've observed over time that within a few days or weeks, stories can swing from negative to positive, giving real-time affirmation to MLK's "the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice" quote 3) it's worth the psychic toll it can take because knowledge is power and finding the good stuff is worth it.

But then there are days like yesterday, like after Ferguson, Trayvon Martin, the Charleston church massacre, Charlottesville ... where I have to lie down. I no longer have it in me to find the way forward, to come up with suggestions, to look for the light.

I tried - I pulled out a pen and paper and tried to find clearer words to express what I was trying to say with the Central Park post re: advocating for policy/law change to help defang one specific part of systemic racism - the ability to lie to the police, attempt to use them as personal assassins and get away with it - but what I ended up writing down instead was a list of stories I've read recently that had been getting to me but I had not consciously acknowledged their deleterious affect:

Ahmaud Abrery

Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend

NFL listing Colin Kaepernick as "retired"

Disproportionate numbers of Black and Brown people dying from COVID-19

Armed White protestors intimidating lawmakers with NO police response

Swarms of park and beach parties - participants overwhelmingly White

Joe Biden's "you ain't Black" comment

The GOP and PROGRESSIVE's weaponization of Joe Biden's "you ain't Black" comment

Children being deported from the border back to countries of origin WITH NO parent/guardian notified and no provisions put in place for their safety

A doctor friend's post with the long list of names of doctors and healthcare providers who had lost their lives while combatting the COVID-19 crisis

The morning's post on GBN about three Black men in Cleveland wrongly imprisoned for decades finally receiving $18 million from the city

After all that came out of me, I gave up trying to write out what I still couldn't find words for. So I got up, focused on the home evening routine, and thought maybe after a good night's sleep I might feel recharged or at least a little bit clearer and able to process it all.

Nope.

I woke up in the dark with Amy Cooper on my mind. There was something about that particular incident that contained some crucial connective tissue to all of the above that I still couldn't find the words to express. Overtly, I knew it was about entitlement and feeling no compunction about weaponizing racist infrastructures, but there was something unnamed going on I needed to pinpoint, which was about more than one individual acting badly and, in my opinion, violently.

I couldn't go back to sleep so I got out of bed before 5am to take the dog for an early walk. Maybe that would clear my head. I put on my headphones so I could listen to the "Hit Parade" episode on Lady Gaga as a welcome distraction (random pop culture aside: the "Hit Parade" podcast which my pal Teddy hipped me to is SO GOOD! Check it out if you love pop music history).

Twenty minutes later, my little Maltese Daisy had me all the way up the hill that ends at the beginning of the Mulholland trail. I am sweating and singularly transfixed by host Chris Molanphy's analysis of all four "A Star Is Born" movies and what distinguishes Gaga's turn at bat from Barbra's, Judy's and Janet's.

Daisy and I normally don't go on the trail because there are too many people up there with no masks in too narrow a space. But it was so early and there were no cars (indicating people already on the trail) and Daisy was curious, so we went up a small ways into it.

After a minute or two I decided to turn us around because the trail was getting narrow and some bikers or hikers could be coming down at any moment and I didn't want to deal. As we were making our way out, I chose the fork to the right because it's a little smoother grade and gives a better view of oncoming traffic.

But just as we head that way, a man with no mask and his unleashed 65-lb. dog come up towards us on that same fork. I react by immediately pulling Daisy towards the left and walking down the other way. This man's unleashed dog keeps coming towards us. The man DOES NOTHING.

Daisy starts to get agitated and turns because the dog is coming at us. Daisy is 7 lbs. wet and leashed so I can control her, but her resistance and the rocks and the slope of the path make it more difficult to hustle away quickly and safely. The dog keeps coming, the man still does NOTHING, so I myself say "No!" to the dog. His dog ignores me, keeps coming.

Finally, the man calls the dog's name. The dog turns its head for a moment but then still proceeds to come our way! I hustle as fast as I can down the other side of the fork and the dog finally trots back towards its master. The man says nothing and proceeds with his back turned from me as if this is all okay. I yell after him from a safe distance, "Your dog should be on a leash!" Because leash laws, which apply to this trail and all the streets surrounding it. He does not turn around. He ignores me and heads up the trail.

Well, that was it for Lady Gaga. I couldn't concentrate on the podcast anymore so I turned it off and walked back down the hill with Daisy in silence. So much for forgetting about Amy Cooper. And that's when it crystallized for me what the problem with that guy was and what the problem with Amy was.

They cared only about their freedom, their dog's freedom and nothing about mine or Christian Cooper's. And not (at first) in an aggressive or even a conscious way. It's just something that neither this man nor Amy chose to factor into how they go into a public space.

They know the laws but want to ignore them when they think no one is around. And if someone else does show up - they are the ones who are annoyed! They don't seem to have a conversation with themselves ahead of time or even in the moment that might go "Okay, I know I'm not following the rules/law, but if I do come across someone who is bothered or in any way put out by that, I'll yield."

And that was it. That is the most insidious, underlying aspect of entitlement - of supremacy - be it based on gender, creed, sexual preference, class or race - even when I'm wrong, even when I'm in a shared public space with rules and laws governing it for everyone's protection, I DO NOT HAVE TO YIELD. Other people need to get out of my way. Cater to my choices. Even when I'm wrong, because the rules don't apply to me. Or my dog. Only to others.

I was simultaneously angry and grateful in this moment. Angry because I had to yield and change my path to stay safe even though this guy was completely in the wrong. And I bet he's not given one more thought to this morning's moment, because unlike me, HE DOESN'T HAVE TO.

And yes, he was a White guy. (BTW, for what it's worth, I do not think this was a racial incident in any conscious way because this guy did not know I would be there. But it IS racial because of his subconscious sense of entitlement that laws don't apply to him when he doesn't want them to, and there will be little to no consequence for him.) Grateful, because I think I finally found the words that are a good place to start for people who want to do the work to bring about equity, justice and safety for all:

Observe who you won't yield to, then think about why. Observe others who won't yield to others, then think about why.

Thank you for reading. I feel clearer now. Stronger. And ready to look for the light again.

Love,

Lori

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EDITORIAL: A Letter to Friends Who Really Want to End Racism

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by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson) Yesterday I posted a letter to friends on my personal Facebook page to help process my thoughts and feelings on what happened in Central Park with birder Christian Cooper and Amy Cooper and what happened to George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, as well as other recent events.

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White Women Aren't Afraid of Black People. They Want Power

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White Women Aren't Afraid of Black People. They Want Power

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There's a scene in the film The Color Purple -based on Alice Walker's 1982 Pulitzer-winning novel set in 1930s-era rural Georgia-that has been coming to mind far too often lately with all the BBQ Beckys and Permit Pattys having their moment. In it, the town mayor's wife Miss Millie, a white woman, walks up to Sofia, a Black woman who is out enjoying life with her children while her husband is pumping gas. Miss Millie, in a moment of peak caucasity, walks up to these Black children, squeezes their faces and kisses them, and compliments Sofia on how clean they are. Then she asks if Sofia would like to become her maid.

Sofia, a free, feisty robust Black woman known for not taking any mess from anyone, responds with her signature, " Hell nawwwww. "

The mayor comes over and slaps the shit out of Sofia, who defends herself, nearly knocking him into the afterlife. But the sheriff cracks her in the head with the butt of his pistol and she falls to the ground unconscious. She is imprisoned, then released to work as Miss Millie's maid.

I think of Miss Millie every time I hear another story about one of these white women who has been accosting or calling cops on Black people for simply living and breathing, whether it's mowing lawns, or selling candy, or families having barbecues, or an Ivy League student napping in the library. These Permit Pattys are living archetypes of white females lording their privilege over Black people.

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I'm talking about the white woman who called the police on a Black Oregon state representative while she was out campaigning. And, in Memphis, the white woman who called the police on a Black man wearing socks at a pool (she was recently fired). In another pool incident, a White man called the cops on a Black woman just because she had the nerve to be there. Side note: What IS it with white folks and swimming pools anyway?

A white woman in Maple Heights, Ohio, called police on a 12-year-old Black boy who was mowing the lawn, and in another part of Ohio, a white woman called the police on a 12-year-old Black boy for looking "suspicious" while doing his paper route. #PermitBetty lost her job after calling the cops on Mexican street vendors in San Francisco. A white female barista in Philadelphia called the cops on a Black male Realtor who was waiting for clients in a Starbucks. Another white woman called the police on a Yale student taking a nap in the lobby of her dorm.

How about the white woman who called police on a Black man for listening to a yoga CD in his car? Or ol' #NewportNancy, who called in the law to report a Black woman who was smoking a cigarette in a parking lot? Or the CVS employee who called the cops on a Black woman over a fraudulent coupon?

That's an overwhelming list, right? And these are just the ones we know about.

Yes, there are white men who've earned their viral hashtags through racist police calls, but know that the majority is coming from white women. Public acts of white-on-Black racism appear bolder and more numerous in the Trump era, but it's important to remember that they're not new. And to fully understand them, we must examine the historical dynamics that have always been at play.

Which brings us back to Miss Millie-a literary symbol reminding us that this historical manifestation of the Jim Crow era is alive, well, and ever-powerful today. From the white mayor's wife touching children who aren't hers to keeping Sofia, a Black woman who hates her, as her servant after instigating her being beaten half-blind; "allowing" Sofia to go home for just a few precious hours to see her children for Christmas, then sabotaging her visit by crying and having a classic Becky meltdown because there are Black men nearby, forcing Sofia to cut her family visit short-we can see these patterns in recent incidents.

These hashtagged Beckys are contemporary versions of the plantation mistress and Miss Millie from the Jim Crow era. The growing list of white women calling the police today reminds us that they feel entitled to have a say in and control over Black people's lives, reinforcing their entitlement by calling in the law when they feel offended. While a few police officers are exhibiting a rare common sense by not attacking or arresting the Black victims, they remain the exception to the rule. The risk of danger is ever-present when a white woman takes out her entitled fingers to dial 911.

If white women decide that they feel uncomfortable, upset, or threatened-again, without any cause or provocation-they know they can always call in the white patriarchal soldiers to back up their racist suspicions. They make those calls with the expectation that they will be believed and the Black person will be "put back in his or her place."

We've seen a lot of think pieces about the "angry white man" in the era of Trump. But what do these stories tells us about white women's state of mind?

As African-American author Morgan Jerkins writes in his Rolling Stone essay, " Why White Women Keep Calling the Cops on Black People": "If we are ever going to meaningfully address racial injustice in this country, we must unpack the power of this fear and understand how it is inextricably linked to discrimination, police brutality and other forms of racial terrorism."

Not only do we need to unpack and understand white women's historical "fear," we must examine the under-recognized, feminized work that white women do as mothers, teachers, property owners, and gentrifiers to shape and support racial order in public spaces and how they continue the ongoing work of perpetuating segregation and white supremacy.

A lot of folks keep arguing that fear and suspicion is behind these women's need to call the cops on Black folks. And yes, they are feeling increased white extinction anxiety. In ethno-nationalist societies, white women's ability to gauge threats is heightened. Increased racism heightens the power of white women through sexism.

As Tommy J. Curry, author of The Man-Not explains: "Historically, white women have acted as the triggers of white male patriarchal violence. They establish the racial proxemics within societies. For centuries, the alleged hyper-vulnerability white women have had to racialized men and their discomfort around raced bodies has served as the justification for segregation and apartheid in colonized spaces the world over."

Curry also asserts that the discrimination white women face limits their individual aspirations and controls their bodies in exchange for the safety from and superiority to racialized groups. This gives white women an extraordinary managerial power over Black lives.

But because white women today are also in this place where they don't feel privileged because of a combination of sexism and general economic crap affecting all but the one percent, they flex what power they do have in weird ways, so they're less inclined to imagine themselves as oppressors. Their sense of trumped-up fear and vulnerability against people of color, especially Black people, has been historically validated-rarely if ever challenged or questioned-and so if and when they call the police or the mobs to exact violence, they know they will rush to their defense.

In times of national distress, white women need Black people, especially Black women. They are longing for someone to take care of them and they resent that they can't command that any more. These police calls are tied up with them missing their sense of power. They want us to clean for them. To be their magical Negroes sacrificing ourselves on their behalf. They are insulted by our sense of joy, our freedom of movement, and ownership over our own bodies, our lives and our children. I think it's a "why am I not in/controlling/allowed/considered in this equation" when they see Black joy and freedom. This is about repression, projection, the sublime pleasure of anti-Black racism, and a return to the Jim Crow era.

There are also other factors at play.

Across the country, white women are dying at higher rates from excessive drinking, drug overdoses, and suicide. Add to that the fact that white women are having fewer babies and they are on course to be surpassed by people of color. The assault on abortion rights has become more aggressive than ever-we're looking at the "when" not "if" Roe v. Wade getting overturned-because white men are anxious about their biological representation in a majority-minority future.

But white women, who are being fucked over by white men's misogyny legislatively and otherwise, are most comfortable displacing their rage and disappointment onto Black people. They are anxious and don't feel confident handling everyday encounters with people of color, and because they misinterpret situations due to internalized racism. Most white women don't have non-white friends. Even if they teach Black children, or adopt Black children, they rarely face challenges to their sense of entitlement, of privilege, of superiority, and of vulnerability in the face of non-white people. That creates all kinds of issues in terms of internalized racism because there are no checks on the white-supremacist socialization that grooms them to behave in these ways.

"History, as well as the voting patterns of white women, show that white women will endure the antipathy of misogyny for the benevolence of patriarchy," Curry argues. "Their position as white women, vulnerable, fragile, and in need of protection places them above and distanced from the violence and death that defines the conditions of Blacks, Muslims, and immigrants in this country. It's an easy choice white women have made over and over again."

Those who feel pressure or oppression deflect their rage onto those over whom they feel superior. White women have actively participated in the subjugation and segregation of Black people in the United States for over a century. In the 19th century, white suffragettes sought to disenfranchise Black men and exclude Black women from the ballot, in the early 20th century white women started KKK organizations, in the mid-20th century white women created national organizations around the preservation of segregation contrary to the federal mandate in Brown v. Board of Education, and in the 21st century a majority of white women chose the racist ethno-nationalism of Trump over democracy.

Consider the segregation even today, in 2018, of U.S. public schools in cities across this country. White women also practice voluntary segregation, moving to homogeneous neighborhoods because of better schools, and fail to make efforts to integrate their children with friends of different races. White women, the most influential force in parenting, are resisting measures to integrate them, especially in New York City where wealthy whites have been resisting plans to diversify neighborhood schools.

There is a long history of this. It is through white patriarchy, the one power white women could exercise freely was by having control over the spaces where Black bodies existed. They had "pretty" power-which was lethal. White women weaponized their tears and femininity to assert their power over Black lives. From Emmett Till to the Scottsboro boys, white women would cry for attention and make false rape claims and white supremacist men were eager to believe it and exact violent retribution for crimes not committed. Today, they continue testing their power over black bodies and manipulating white male hatred and state authority to see if they'll "defend" them.

White women, while in large part historically politically powerless during slavery (unable to vote and the literal property of their husbands) were nevertheless culturally powerful. White women were tasked and with schooling and Christianizing Black folks, all done from a sense of superiority and know what's best for Black folks than they could possibly know for themselves. White women, due to white patriarchy, had more daily proximity to Black bodies on the plantation, and after slavery as Black women worked as domestics in their homes.

During slavery, white women set out to "civilize" enslaved Black women whom they forced to nurse their children, cook the family's food, and act as handmaids for the white children who sometimes technically owned them. White women beat and tortured enslaved Black women and children in an effort to silence discontent and quell resistance. Meanwhile, these enslaved women's proximity to slave masters made them even more susceptible to rape and other physical abuse. And white women remained silent, normalizing slavery, the breakup of families, brutality and rape in service to white supremacy.

They were also committed segregationists and have kept their allegiance to the racist, misogynistic power structure and have no interest in dismantling the racist structure. During Jim Crow and the civil-rights movement, white women acted as the " constant gardeners " of segregation.

Policing Black bodies in everyday activities was core to their sense of identity as "good" white woman and mothers. Within those roles, white women felt an obligation to oversee and police the color lines where public and private life intersected. For instance, midwives determined the race of the babies whose births they had assisted. White schoolteachers removed students who they thought might be mixed-race from their classrooms.

As the movement against racial segregation grew, white women worked around their lack of political muscle by resisting through verbal attacks on Black people, calling to harass employers who were pro-integration, teaching their children to bully Black people, and even lying about being threatened or attacked, as Carolyn Bryant Donham admitted in the iconic murder of Emmett Till.

The white women's cries of "rape" that often ended in a lynching was one way to leverage the attention from and power of white men. White women enjoyed and benefited from the "intimacy" of slavery, and Jim Crow interactions with Black people. This gave them power. They no longer have access to that kind of unfettered power.

These hashtagged racists are suffering from a profound neurosis. Their irrational thoughts result in irrational action. But we can't just write this off as fear. These white women are not only completely aware of the heritage they are upholding-they remain as committed as ever to wielding any power at their disposal to maintaining a white-supremacist status quo.

Miss Millie is alive and well and oh so very real in 2018 America! And she is a continuing threat to every Black person in her environment. Her dwindling sense of power is sending her into overdrive, trying desperately to regain her sense of power and superiority by flexing her ability to summon the authorities on a whim. Each of these women is making these calls not because they feel legitimately threatened, but because they need to bolster their deflating identities as "mistresses of the universe," fully aware of the very real dangers to the Black people involved at the hand of the police.
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White Women Aren't Afraid of Black People. They Want Power. | Dame Magazine

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There's a scene in the film The Color Purple -based on Alice Walker's 1982 Pulitzer-winning novel set in 1930s-era rural Georgia-that has been coming to mind far too often lately with all the BBQ Beckys and Permit Pattys having their moment.

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It looks like Amy Cooper, the white woman in the viral Central Park video, is a liberal. That's important

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It looks like Amy Cooper, the white woman in the viral Central Park video, is a liberal. That's important

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On Monday around 8am, a white woman named Amy Cooper was walking her dog unleashed in a protected area of New York City's Central Park, a wooded space called The Ramble.

Christian Cooper (no relation), a Black man and a bird-watcher, asked Amy to leash her dog. Dogs must be leashed in Central Park from 9am to 9pm, but in the Ramble they must be leashed at all times. Christian later said that he had been worried about the delicate ecosystem of The Ramble and the way in which the dog might affect the birds.

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Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

Amy, clearly offended, responded by saying that she was going to call the police on him. The video Christian took ended up online, and almost instantly went viral.

In response to the video, many on social media began to speculate and insist that Amy Cooper was a Trump supporter and a member of the "MAGA" movement.

However, campaign contribution information - with donations to Democrats such as Barack Obama, Pete Buttigieg, and John Kerry -leaked online earlier today appeared to suggest that Amy actually identifies as a liberal. If true, this matters, because in this political era, during this most critical US presidential election, it is necessary that we understand and recognize that white violence transcends party lines and political ideology.

In the video that Christian recorded, Amy can be heard saying, "I'm taking a picture and calling the cops," as she appears to strangle or roughly handle her dog with the pet's collar. "I'm going to tell them there's an African American man threatening my life."

Amy repeatedly and insistently stresses the term "African American," giving viewers the impression that his race is significant here, perhaps in terms of how he can expect to be treated by the police. Incidents of police brutality against Black people are not rare, as Amy Cooper must surely be aware of. In fact, just today, news broke that another unidentified Black man has died in Minneapolis , seemingly gasping, "I can't breathe" as a police officer keeps his knee on the man's neck.

White violence is not the sole domain of Trump supporters, or open white supremacists. White violence is pervasive, spreading everywhere and tainting everything. And when we overlook liberal white racism, we put ourselves in grave danger, because liberal white people often live closer in proximity to Black folks than their conservative peers. There's a chance the Amy Cooper we see in that viral video may not be the same Amy Cooper whose details were leaked onto social media - but as a New York City resident, she's still statistically much likely to be a Democrat than a Republican, and the conversation about white liberal racism is long overdue.

Many believe that if we just get Donald Trump out of office and replace him with a white liberal or a white moderate, racialized violence will abate in this country. But that's not necessarily the case. "Moderate" and "liberal" politicians have all aided in such violence becoming the norm as well. Martin Luther King Jr. himself warned of the particular danger of this type of racism. "Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection," he wrote in his famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail."

And that lukewarm acceptance can quickly turn into threats or actual violence, when white people that their supremacy and their spaces are being threatened. Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg may well be a Democrat and a self-identified liberal, for instance, but his handling of the killing of Eric Logan by police traumatized the Black community.

Assuming that Amy Cooper is a white conservative Trump supporter desensitizes us to the ways in which even "progressive" white people protect their spaces from Black people. We cannot assume that a liberal or even a progressive political future will save Black people from white fragility and white supremacy and white violence. A long legacy of considering themselves superior doesn't go away just because someone has a "D" for Democrat behind their name, or on their voter registration.

In a city and a state that skews heavily liberal, there's a good chance Amy Cooper is the ideal liberal on paper. She also threatened to call the police and falsely report "an African American man" was "threatening her life" in a country well-known for allowing fatal police brutality against unarmed, innocent Black people.

But Amy Cooper is not an anomaly. She is, unfortunately, the norm.

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Opinion: It looks like Amy Cooper is a liberal. That's important

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On Monday around 8am, a white woman named Amy Cooper was walking her dog unleashed in a protected area of New York City's Central Park, a wooded space called The Ramble. Christian Cooper (no relation), a Black man and a bird-watcher, asked Amy to leash her dog.

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Gholdy Muhammad at NCTE Member Gathering

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Gholdy Muhammad at NCTE Member Gathering

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NCTE Member Gathering with Gholdy Muhammad

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Ibram X. Kendi

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Americans don't see me, or Ahmaud Arbery, running down the road-they see their fear.

Oakmont beckoned outdoor runners-even novices like me.

We were the second family to move into Oakmont, a new housing development seven miles west of the University of Florida, when I joined the faculty in 2015. My partner and I loved how our living space wrapped around a green-dotted, open-air indoor courtyard like homes we'd seen in West Africa and Latin America. Nothing compared to being outside inside our courtyard home.

Well, maybe being outside in Oakmont-running down its newly paved roads, gazing up at stately oak trees with moss draping down, staring down into the ponds, racing all the galloping or flying animals, all to the sweet melody of quietness. Few houses. No people. Just paved roads. Just nature's sight lines.

At first, I hardly worried about cars while exercising. But the vehicles started coming. Trees were cleared. Foundations laid. New houses framed-a fascinating new picture screening every day for my curiosity.

As I ran on by, I imagined how the framed-out houses were going to look completed. Or I imagined living in the jumbo dwellings. Or as I ran on by, I stared at the construction workers as they stared back at me.

But not on one particular day. That day, no construction workers were around this half-built wonder. No vehicles were in sight. There was just my curiosity on overdrive-pushing me into the house to feed my imagination. I did not need long. I never needed long.

Minutes later, my feet were pounding the pavement under the moss. I am Ahmaud Arbery.

Running from yesterday's acquittal, 2019. Acrylic on cotton canvas. 24" x 24" (Image courtesy of Chase Hall Studio)

On Sunday, February 23, around 1 p.m., Arbery had just peered into a half-built home, as I did so many times in Oakmont. He ran away under the falling moss near the coastal Georgia town of Brunswick. Up the block lived Gregory McMichael, a former police officer and investigator for the local district attorney, and his son, Travis. McMichael did not see a former high-school football standout who normally jogs around the neighborhood, as Arbery's family describes him. McMichael saw a black male "hauling ass" from the scene of a crime, as he told investigators.
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Arbery could have been any "black male running down the street," as a 911 caller described him. He could have been anyone's brother, father, son, cousin, boyfriend, husband, co-worker, friend. He could have been me running down the street. As a black male-not to the people who know me or who know Arbery, but to the Americans who don't know me and think they do-I am Ahmaud Arbery. Those Americans think they know me when my curiosity gets the best of me. They think they know me when something has gone missing. They think they know me when they see me running down the road.

They don't see me wearing the same white T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers that they wore the other day. They don't see themselves in me. They certainly don't see their own innocence in me. They see only their own guilt in me-their villainous fear marking me as the villain.

They don't need to figure out who I am. All they see is what I am. A black male. And what I am pronounces who I am. A criminal. The embodiment of danger. The producer of fear.

Black males have been made into the fathers of fear. But the fears of black men are bastards. Broods we never wanted, but can't escape. All these bastards are coming after us, suspecting us continuously, terrorizing us constantly, and we can't escape. The black man can't escape the fear of the black man.

Gregory McMichael "stated he was in his front yard and saw the suspect from the break-ins 'hauling ass'" down the road, according to the police report. McMichael "stated there have been several Break-ins in the neighborhood and further the suspect was caught on surveillance video," the report said. But where is the surveillance video linking Arbery to a recent burglary? And McMichael's neighborhood had gone seven weeks without a reported burglary, a local police lieutenant recently told CNN. The last reported burglary was on January 1, when a 9-mm pistol was stolen from an unlocked truck outside the McMichaels' home.
Ibram X. Kendi: We're still living and dying in the slaveholders' republic
According to McMichael, he ran in his house and grabbed his son, Travis, and both grabbed their weapons. McMichael told police they armed themselves because they "didn't know if the male was armed or not." McMichael also told police he saw Arbery "the other night" stick his hand down his pants, which led him to believe he was armed. Arbery was not armed.

No one living knows what Arbery felt in his final moments. No one living knows what Arbery felt as he approached the white pickup truck parked on the two-lane road, blocking his way. No one living knows what he felt as he saw Gregory McMichael standing in the truck's bed and saw Travis McMichael standing outside the passenger door wielding a shotgun.

All I know is what I would have felt. If I were running under the falling moss, if two armed white men were coming after me in their pickup truck-and a third not far behind-then I would have felt the wrath of terror: racist terror.

And I know the feeling of racist terror. I know what it feels like when a white man- in my case a police officer -suspects me as an armed criminal and pursues me and clutches his gun when I'm just out running (errands). I was three years older than Arbery, who would have turned 26 on Friday. I lived, and Arbery died. Arbery could have lived, and I could have died.

And I could have been placed in a morgue near all those black bodies falling from COVID-19, at rates higher than any other racial group, in states from Georgia to Maine, from Michigan to South Carolina, from Ohio to South Dakota, according to the COVID Racial Data Tracker. We can't see the coronavirus like we can't see the fears that terrorize us, but we keep feeling their lethal effects.

I just don't think Americans fully realize how terrorizing it is to black males when we are falsely suspected as violent criminals. All Americans seem to be thinking about is their fear of us-not our fear of their fear. Black males fear racist fear because we know from experience what happens when the police are called, when the Klan is called, when faces are reddened, when purses or ropes or guns are clutched, when they cross the street away from us, or cross the street toward us clutching their police badges, or their badges of white masculinity.

It is terrifying to produce so much unwanted and unwarranted fear. And then we are harmed. And then we are killed. And then our killers claim self-defense. And then our killers cast us-the unarmed ones, the dead ones-as the aggressors, as Gregory McMichael cast Arbery in the police report, justifying his son pulling the trigger; as George Zimmerman's lawyers cast Trayvon Martin in a strikingly similar case.

If I was chased by armed white men on an afternoon jog, then I would have thought they were trying to lynch me. I might not have run past their pickup truck, especially if they had been pursuing me for some time, especially if one of them was standing outside the car holding a gun. I would have thought he had gotten out of the car to shoot me. I would have feared that if I ran past the car, he'd shoot me in the back. I would have felt the need to disarm him to save my life.

But then again, armed white men have fashioned a racist existence wherein I'm unable to stand my ground against their violence. When white men murder men like me, they call it self-defense. And they are believed. When men like me defend ourselves against violent white men, they call us the aggressors. And they are believed.

Self-defense, like the Second Amendment, like stand-your-ground laws, has been colonized by white men. These rights are not for black women such as Marissa Alexander or Catina Curley, nor for white women such as Francine Hughes or Jennifer Schlecht, who defend themselves against domestic abusers. They are not for Latinos fleeing state-sponsored xenophobia, Native warriors fighting off white invaders, or Asians warding off coronavirus hate. They are not for Muslims or Jews defending themselves against crusading neo-Nazis. The human instinct to defend one's right to life is considered divinely human in white men, and bestial in the rest of us. When I defend myself as a human, I am not seen as human. I am seen as a beast.

Arbery did not just die. His version of the events died with him. His ability to defend his right to live died with him.

But there are black men who have survived the terror of being wrongly suspected. There are black men who know what it feels like to be avoided like we are beasts, or to be "literally hunted" like we are beasts, to use the words of LeBron James. There are black men who know what it feels like to fear the fear.

But there are also black men who know what it feels like to have courage: to acknowledge our fears-and all the fears about us-and still muster the strength to do what's right in the face of this pandemic of fear. We can build a different existence for black men-for all feared peoples-as we all run under the moss draping down for Ahmaud Arbery.

We can build an existence wherein when people don't know us, they recognize that they don't know us. An existence wherein people see our tattoos, hair, flash, lyrics as our art. An existence wherein people see us as unarmed when we are unarmed. An existence wherein people see us as armed for self-defense. An existence wherein when people see us speeding recklessly down the road like Sean Reed, they see us in a mental-health crisis. An existence wherein when people see us wearing masks, they see us protecting ourselves and them from infection. An existence wherein when we are not wearing masks, people give us masks to wear out of care.

What I am-a black male-should not matter. Who I am should matter.

We can build an existence wherein the fearful stop fearing me, and terrorizing me with their fear. Wherein they strive to get to know who I am, to get to know Ahmaud Arbery.

Or they don't. They just wave. They just let him run on by.

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Americans don't see me, or Ahmaud Arbery, running down the road-they see their fear.

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How Moderate Teachers Perpetuate Educational Oppression

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How Moderate Teachers Perpetuate Educational Oppression

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In his famous " Letter from Birmingham Jail," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about his disappointment in white moderates. "I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is ...the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice." Dr. King realized that injustice and oppression are systems that are maintained daily by a majority group that is afraid to act in a way that could cause themselves to lose power and privilege.

In her book, "We Want to do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom," Dr. Bettina L. Love writes about the educational survival complex, through which US schooling perpetuates the oppression and suffering of black and brown people. She explains it by writing, "The educational survival complex, in which students are left learning to merely survive, learning how schools mimic the world they live in, thus making schools a training site for a life of exhaustion." Dr. Love realizes that US schooling reproduces whiteness or the status quo of this settler colonialist nation, and the necessary solution is abolition of the system for the freedom of dark children.

@bbyanarchists on Twitter. Reform is a distraction from abolition.

To put these ideas together, I posit that the greatest stumbling block black and brown students and educators have to abolition of the racist, sexist, heteronormative, xenophobic and generally oppressive educational system is the white moderate teacher. The white moderate teacher isn't always white - it's a moderate teacher more devoted to maintaining the educational negative peace of the status quo order of standardized testing and policing of black and brown bodies rather than the tension of fighting for abolition of the schooling system. The moderate teacher has been thoroughly socialized through the US schooling system - a university degree is literally required to hold the position. It is not surprising that this schooling has taught moderate teachers to reproduce the system and indoctrinate students into whiteness. The moderate teacher has been so thoroughly institutionalized by schooling that they perpetuate the institution on to their students. The moderate teacher can often speak the lingo of radical ideology and theory, but weaponizes it against students, to continue to make them comply and produce and become citizens of a standardized capitalist society.

I was on a panel for a podcast by the abolitionist educational organization Free Minds, Free People when a comrade named Awo Okaikor Aryee-Price opened with, "We love children because they are closest to their humanity." My comrade said this casually, as though it weren't an earth shattering statement, and it blew my mind. It led me to ask the question - why are adults further from our humanity?

And my answer to this question is schooling. US schooling is a process of dehumanization, and I as a teacher am, complicit in that dehumanization. That's why many people, especially people of color, talk about the unlearning they have to do as adults in order to learn about themselves, their culture and feel closer to their own humanity.

The truth that children are closest to their humanity forces me to interrogate my own moderateness, which I learned through my childhood schooling, was reinforced in my teacher credential program and solidified in my master's in education program. It forces me to ask myself, where in my practice am I leading students away from their own humanity? The answer to that question is where I can identify the aspects of a moderate teacher, in myself and in others.

Sonya Renee Taylor, author of "The Body is Not An Apology" via @traumaandco on Instagram. Moderate teacher maintain the oppressive educational system.

A moderate teacher places value on production above all else. To a moderate teacher, the most important things about students can be graded, measured by tests created by for-profit private companies, and compared against other students. A student is only valuable if they are completing classwork, homework and performing well on state tests.

A moderate teacher, thus, worries about children "falling behind," without realizing that children can only fall behind when measured against arbitrary standards on an artificial linear trajectory and when children are made to compete against each other. (A child can never fall behind if the goal is to express their humanity.)

A moderate teacher builds relationship with kids and families because theory says it is important to do so, and because those relationships can be wielded as manipulation to force students to produce. A moderate teacher is often completely bogged down by the educational survival complex and is thus unable and/or unwilling to build relationships solely for the purpose of seeing each child's humanity, community and which often requires the educator to vulnerably reveal their own humanity, as well.

A moderate teacher often uses the rhetoric of maintaining high standards without interrogating themselves -holding students to high standards of what? As my comrade G.T. Reyes wrote, "Educators ...if you're still asking about how to "hold students accountable," I would suggest you first ask yourself - accountable to what? This might sound crazy to some of you, but maybe you are wanting students to be accountable to learn their place within white supremacist, capitalist schooling." Many credentialing programs teach that it is racist to expect that black and brown children are less capable than white children, which is absolutely true. However, this doesn't mean that the solution is to expect any student to reproduce capitalism or whiteness.

An example of moderate teaching couched in social justice terms is school uniforms. Often, schools that require uniforms are entrusted with the care of the bodies and spirits of poor black and brown students. Educators at these schools claim that uniforms "equalize" school because students cannot stunt on each other, and they claim that the uniforms "protect" students from gang violence because students are no longer wearing the 'wrong' color. In my experience, like every other punitive, carceral policy, uniform policies are enforced unequally, meaning that black and brown boys end up being sent to the office and thus excluded from learning most often for being out of uniform, and I have yet to see any evidence from anywhere that gang violence is lessened because of students' self-expressions and bodies being policed. Instead, I see students' spirits being crushed as they are scrutinized and made to conform by teachers and administrators throughout the school day. Moderate teachers and educators, in this instance, are claiming to perpetuate social justice but are really enforcing capitalist, carceral status quo. Uniform policy is only one example of moderate teaching, and there so many more.

Moderate teachers would often call themselves liberal, perhaps even radical. And, most radical teachers probably have to enact moderate actions in order to navigate the educational survival complex. In order to move beyond moderate teaching, one has to be critically reflective in all moments, and in all actions, as much as possible.

One of the interesting things about this pandemic is that I, personally, have been privileged enough to step a small bit away from the educational survival complex long enough to study more radical theory and ideas, and to do what Dr. Love calls, "freedom dreaming," and have the mindspace to critically analyze my own practice. I acknowledge my privilege in this - I am lucky enough to not be economically struggling, to not currently be sick and to be able to think and intellectually explore alongside my daily job of REECHing my students. Below I offer my beginning thinkings on how to move beyond being moderate, and moving closer to being abolitionist teacher.

I've seen some radical therapists online say that the least important thing therapists bring to their work of trying to connect people to their humanity is their degrees, because degrees are earned in a racist institution. So I've been thinking, does this apply to teachers? How can teachers approach teaching knowing that our degrees are the least important things we bring to our work? If schooling is a process of dehumanization, those of us who go through school uncritically are furthest from our humanity...does this qualify us to then teach?

What would it look like to dismantle the racist, sexist, heteronormative, ableist, capitalist schooling that forces people away from their humanity? What would education that isn't based on capitalist ideals of work production look like?

The first answer that comes to my mind would be - schooling that is centered on relationships. Not relationships that are about getting kids to like you enough to want to produce for you. But relationships built on understanding the unique humanity and the community that each child brings to education.

From there, abolitionist teaching to me would require that teachers get to know students' abilities, hopes, dreams and desires, and try to help students achieve what they and their families want for them. This would require an individual plan for every single student so that students could measure their progress against themselves, instead of against each other. (To be fair to educators, this is hardly possible in overcrowded public schools - which is how the system is designed to reproduce itself).

To return to Dr. Love, she writes that "those who cling to their Whiteness cannot participate in abolitionist teaching because they are a distraction, are unproductive and will undermine freedom at every step, sometimes in the name of social justice. Being an abolitionist means you are ready to lose something, you are ready to let go of your privilege." As a mixed race and light skinned, able bodied, cisgendered and thin person, I have many privileges that I need to constantly interrogate, ensure are not taking up space unchecked and use to advocate for and with dark, oppressed people. It takes courage to admit when I am moderate, to gauge when the benefits of disrupting the status quo and moving the dial closer to abolition out-risks the dangers, and to always do so in order to support the development of the humanity, spirits and bodies of the black and brown children in my care.

I vow to remain inspired by activist Angela Davis, and to continue everyday acting as though it is radically possible to abolish US schooling.

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How Moderate Teachers Perpetuate Educational Oppression

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In his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about his disappointment in white moderates. "I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great...

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Shea Martin

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This week, another heartbreaking news story* regarding the traumatization of black children in our schools filled our timelines. This time, she is a beautiful brown-skinned six-year old arrested at her school by the Orlando Police for seemingly having a six-year-old tendencies - throwing a temper-tantrum in a state of unrest, frustration, and/or sadness.

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Some things are glaringly racist - being called racial slurs, being attacked for looking or sounding different, being mistreated because of skin colour. Most of us can probably agree these things are racist.

These fit into the established understanding of racism - 'the belief that one's own racial or ethnic group is superior' - as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary.

But these basic definitions can miss crucial aspects of the true meaning of racism - power dynamics, prejudice, and structural racism.

Professor Peter Wade, a sociologist from the University of Manchester, tells us how racism more complex and insidious than the traditional definition, explaining that it is a system of oppression that has historically existed and continues to do so against minorities and debilitating their lives in covert and overt ways.

Peter tells Metro.co.uk: 'Racism is an ideology and a practice that produces a society in which some people systematically have less access to resources, power, security, and well-being than others.

'These systemic inequalities reflect hierarchical differences between people originally created by colonialism, which produced patterns of historical inequality that make it difficult for certain people to access opportunities and resources.'

If our understanding of racism is that it's only when people knowingly believe they are superior, then we are actively ignoring the true insidious ways it operates.

It's important to understand that racism is much more than outright thinking one race is better than the other. Most of us probably don't go around thinking our skin is better than the colour of other people's skin.

Changing the definition of racism could bridge the current disconnect between those oppressed and those doing the oppressing.

So what definition of racism do you hold and is it time to change it?

Things that don't fit into the traditional definition of racism but may still contribute to it:

How has the meaning of racism changed?

The definition of racism we hold today is still pretty much the same one that was established in its earliest use of the word.

The earliest is dated all the way back in 1880, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, when racism was referred to as when 'we all incline to consider the caucasian superior to the other races of the genus homo'.

By the end of World War II racism had acquired the same supremacist connotations formerly associated with it but with an added element of racial discrimination, racial supremacism and a harmful intent.

As a result of that enduring definition, racism is often thought of as something that happened in the past or is something that is only committed by evil people who think they are superior.

This is why so many people's experiences of racism are dismissed as not actually racist - because this past definition doesn't encapsulate racism today.

In her groundbreaking work White Fragility, Robin Diangelo refers to this as the good/bad binary. If we define racism as something that only bad people commit then, of course, most of us are not racist.

Robin explains: 'The most effective adaptation of racism over time is the idea that racism is conscious bias held by mean people. If we are not aware of having negative thoughts about people of color, don't tell racist jokes, are nice people, and even have friends of color, then we cannot be racist.

'Thus, a person is either racist or not racist; if a person is racist, that person is bad; if a person is not racist, that person is good. Although racism does, of course, occur in individual acts, these acts are part of a larger system that we all participate in.'

Our current understanding of the concept needs to evolve to show that good, honest people can do racism too and that they can uphold the structures that prop up racism.

Because, at the end of the day, 'race is a social construction', says Dr. Zuleyka Zevallos, Adjunct Research Fellow at Swinburne University.

'Race is a system of classification and stratification, based on perceived biological differences.

'Race is stratification because these categories rank some groups as superior to others. It's not based on some innate and immutable scientific fact.'

How do we take on this meaning of racism?

If we understand that racism isn't just about intention and is rather upheld by systems and individual acts (no matter how well-meaning the individual), we can begin the work to be anti-racist.

Being anti-racist means actively doing the work to challenge racism, not acting defensively when confronted with it, and passing on the message.

Rima Sani, a lecturer in sociology at Middlesex University, tells us that it is a conscious effort.

She says: 'To become anti-racist is to realise the subtle, less subtle and institutional prejudices which you contribute to, either knowingly or unknowingly and being committed to change.

'It's not enough to claim to not be a racist because whether over the dinner table or on a drunken night out [or generally in day-to-day life], your deep-seated prejudices will be exposed.'

Those biases may even be exposed without you realising - those affected by your words or actions may not call you out on it.

It's vital to remember the challenges to approaching the topic of racism. Those who dare to bring it up risk making others feel uncomfortable, losing their personal and professional standing, or experiencing further criticism in response.

And for those who don't understand racism, it can be difficult to ask about it for fear of looking uncultured or insensitive in an era where cancel culture prevails.

The answer is to do the work - read things such as Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People about Race, Brit(ish), Natives, It's Not About the Burqa and much much more. Listen to those around you, observe things, and call out problematic behaviours.

But, remember that you will never arrive at true racial awareness, it's an ever-evolving process. You just have to be open, listen, and take appropriate action.

It begins, first, with changing your definition of racism.

The State of Racism

We need to be able to talk about racism.

Do you have a story to share? Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@Metro.co.uk. Share your views in the comments below.
MORE: The damaging psychological impact of constantly having to explain racism

MORE: The State of Racism: Why our new series will explore racism in the UK

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Don't think you're racist? New definitions will open your eyes

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Some things are glaringly racist - being called racial slurs, being attacked for looking or sounding different, being mistreated because of skin colour. Most of us can probably agree these things are racist. These fit into the established understanding of racism - 'the belief that one's own racial or ethnic group is superior' - as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary.

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Stella. Villalba

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Listening and Learning: A Teaching & Coaching Life

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2020 is here. I join the excitement along with so many of you who have hopes and a refreshed outlook for what the new year can bring but also to what the new decade might mean in our important work in education.

I moved to the USA in 2001. This year, I'll be celebrating 19 years of living in the USA. As an immigrant, I have many stories to tell but today I want to share with you a couple of insights from the last decade that has become the solid ground onto which I'm walking into this new decade.

As I write this, I just came back from Paraguay (where my parents are from) and from spending the holiday season in the heart of South America. While I'm home, there are some of the things I'm reminded that I can do with ease:
saying my last name aloud without spelling it out (like I do when I'm in the USA) everyone can pronounce my last name I don't really stand out because I'm amidst Latinos (although I don't really sound like Paraguayans, my accent is different). Even though I'm still very careful about being pickpocketed in public transportation, I don't fear about my race or ethnicity. I can speak in Spanish freely without worrying if this would be problematic. I can drink "mate" (a tea that is traditional in Paraguay and Argentina) without getting noticed.
When I travel to South America, I'm reminded of my roots, my traditions, my beginnings. I know that as an immigrant, I'm very blessed to be able to do this trip as not everyone is privilege as I am.

When I'm in the USA, I recognize that I'm privilege in many ways. I can speak, read, listen and write English fluently. I have access to a lot of opportunities because I was a legal resident and now I'm a USA citizen. I can move freely. I drive and I have a driver's license. I'm a world traveler and every traveling experience gives me knowledge and culture. I have a strong educational background with two college degrees. I have experience working in four different public school districts. I lead a lot of work for the growth of the Latino community in the city I live. However, I still look Latina, sound Latina and my accent will give me away letting people know that : "I'm not from here". It doesn't matter how many books I read, how much knowledge and understanding I might have about certain topics, I'm still fighting for a seat at the table. I'm still bringing a folding chair because my opinion might only count in certain opportunities but not for others. After working in the same workplace for years, people still can't or won't even try to say my last name correctly.

Why am I sharing this with you? Here's my point. If I am still fighting to be "seen", to be acknowledged and I carry these many privileges with me, can you imagine what are some of our English learners are going through that may not have access YET to the full command of the English language? How many of our students' names are still being mispronounced? How many of our students are struggling to be noticed by their teachers? To be seen as resourceful human beings? How many of them want you to look at them and say, "kid, I see you and I can't wait to get to know you better." How many of them are not even in the peripheral vision of the work and decisions we make in schools?

When I go to different classrooms because I'm invited to speak, most of the time teachers introduce me as their "teacher friend" but they don't say my last name aloud. When I'm invited to speak at a community meeting and I'm being introduced, my "job title", what I do daily in schools still gets confused. When I use my voice to explain things aloud, to bring another perspective, to explain how a particular situation is not equitable work, I get either justification, or simply uninvited to the next conversation.

All of these are my personal experiences but I'm not writing these down so that people feel sorry for me. That is not the feeling I am hoping to elicit from you. What I hope this blog post does is to start the long journey of self-reflection when it comes to the work we ALL need to do for ALL OF OUR students in the new decade. America has a long history of racism, discrimination, sexism, ableism, classism, and many other systems of oppressions that occur in our schools. We are ALL responsible for this work.

My wish, as we start in a new decade, is that every person who has a role in the educational system in the USA becomes knowledgeable, invested and committed to start writing a different reality for our children. As educators, we must understand why we are here, what got us here, and what is the work that we need to do if we are to truly create equitable classrooms where ALL of our students succeed. There are NO experts in this topic. We are ALL learners. But to do this work of understanding and embracing ALL that our students ARE and BRING to school, we need to start with ourselves. No more blaming the children. The work begins with us. I started this work in the last decade and I'll continue this work on the new decade.

I'm making it my responsibility to SEEK resources, conversations, opportunities, classes, discussions that involve race, equity, inclusion, culturally sustaining pedagogy, multilingual education, and social justice work in education. I'm making it my responsibility to talk to administrators and educational leaders about where we are in this work, and we might need to do to start this work. I commit to continue to show up even when it gets uncomfortable (this work is not easy), or when I get pushed to the side (oh it will happen. over and over), or when it gets frustrating ( there will be tears. guaranteed).

My 2020 vision: the children. Why else would anybody do this work for? They deserve our self reflection, our learning, our efforts, our trial and errors, our consistency and determination to create spaces where ALL of our children are loved by who they are and appreciated for their past experiences. They deserve teachers that say, "We'll take it from here kid. We got you."

Here's to a new decade in education. I believe.

In the next post, I'll share a couple of books I read in the last decade and the ones that I'm planning to read in 2020. Here's to learning and growing alongside our children and youth!

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Looking Back to Move Forward: Education in the New Decade - Listening and Learning: A Teaching & Coaching Life

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2020 is here. I join the excitement along with so many of you who have hopes and a refreshed outlook for what the new year can bring but also to what the new decade might mean in our important work in education. I moved to the USA in 2001.

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A Note From Your Colleagues With Hearing Loss: Just Use a Microphone Already

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A Note From Your Colleagues With Hearing Loss: Just Use a Microphone Already

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ChronicleVitae for higher ed jobs, career tools and advice

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Image: Getty Images By Jessie B. Ramey
Dear colleague: Today at the faculty meeting, I really wanted to tell you something: "It's not about you." When you were offered the microphone to make your comments, you said, "No thanks, I'm good." But it's not about how you feel using a microphone. It's about how others can best hear.

Refusing to use a microphone is like scheduling a meeting in a room accessible only by stairs. And then when your colleague in a wheelchair shows up and asks for a ramp so she can attend, you stand at the top of the steps and say, "No thanks, I'm good."

If our colleagues and students can't hear in meetings or in classrooms, they can't participate. Those of us with low hearing, a hearing impairment, or a hearing-assistive device need you to speak into the microphone so we can fully understand your words. In a crowded or large space, amplification makes it possible for everyone to engage and learn.

Simply talking loudly isn't enough. It's not about the fact that you took a high-school theater class and learned to project from the stage. Or that you can use your "teacher voice" to be heard in the back of the room. It's not about your belief that you are a good speaker.

The quality of sound coming from a microphone is different: It's more distinct and easier to hear.

When you said, "No thanks, I'm good," I wanted to yell, "But I'm not!" When you say you don't need a microphone, what you're really saying is that you don't care that I need you to use one. You are making the assumption that everyone is like you and can hear just fine. And that those with hearing loss will speak up for themselves - whether it's comfortable to do so or not, and no matter how many times we have already had to do that in these same meetings.

This is what ableism looks like - the assumption, both explicit and implicit, that able bodies are the desired norm. When you refuse to use a microphone, you are saying that people like me are worth less and don't need to be accommodated. It's an act of exclusion. When you groan and ask, "Oh no, do we really need to use the mike?" you are saying that your discomfort with hearing your own amplified voice outweighs someone else's right to be included in the meeting.

When you ignore the microphone and ask, "Can everyone hear me in the back?," you are saying I don't exist. I know you don't mean this. But you are using the culturally accepted default belief that no one in the room needs amplified sound - because if they do, they would tell you, right? And then (and only then) you will use the microphone.

What if we flip the script, and start with the assumption that people like me do exist and are in the room? Then there is no need to ask if everyone can hear, and force people to continually out themselves.

For people with disabilities, constantly being excluded, made to feel invisible, and having to self-advocate for even basic accommodations is a daily frustration. Dealing with hearing loss is also exhausting. When there is no microphone, we are spending a huge cognitive load concentrating on hearing your words. With amplification, I can turn my attention to thinking about what you are saying and being present in the meeting or the classroom. It literally frees up brain cycles to attend to the reason we are gathered together.

Because hearing loss is an invisible disability, perhaps you are unaware of how many of your colleagues and students struggle with this issue every day. About 15 percent of American adults over the age of 18 have some hearing loss. That means there are probably several students in your classroom trying to hear you clearly. Because hearing loss is extremely common as we age, about a quarter of people between 55 and 64 are not hearing well, and fully half of those over 65 are hard of hearing.

So what can academics do? Here are some best practices we should all use in our meetings, at our conferences, and in our classrooms to fully include those with hearing loss:

If a microphone is available, use it. Make it a personal habit, and make sure your guest speakers are using it, too. Bonus points: As an ally to those with disabilities, you can model inclusion by explaining to your audiences and to students why you are using the microphone, and why they should, too.

If you are running an event or organizing a conference, be sure there is amplification in the space you are using, or arrange to have it brought in. Build this technology into your budget.

If you have a Q&A with an audience, pass a microphone around for listeners to ask questions. In a large room, passing around a mike might require a lot of patience. You can let people know why this is so important. If there is no way to amplify audience questions, make sure the moderator with a mike repeats the question clearly. If you are moderating a panel, be sure all the panelists are speaking into their mikes.

Learn to use a microphone correctly. For most mikes, you must hold them very near your mouth. If it's on a stand, make sure you keep your mouth very close (usually one to two inches away) and don't wander away or turn your head from side to side. With hand-held microphones, be aware that it's easy to forget and let your arm drop; remember, your belly button is not doing the talking. With clip-on lapel mikes, make sure they are secured high enough on your clothing, away from clacking jewelry, and facing your mouth.

When you show a film, be sure to turn on the subtitles if they are available. Make this standard practice, not just when you know a person with hearing loss is in the room.

Remember, dear colleague, it's not about you. It's about how you can help establish new norms for academic spaces so that they are fully inclusive, and everyone can participate and learn.
Jessie B. Ramey is director of the Women's Institute at Chatham University and an associate professor of women's and gender studies. She is also chair of the Gender Equity Commission for the City of Pittsburgh

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A Note From Your Colleagues With Hearing Loss: Just Use a Microphone Already

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Image: Getty Images By Jessie B. Ramey Dear colleague: Today at the faculty meeting, I really wanted to tell you something: "It's not about you." When you were offered the microphone to make your comments, you said, "No thanks, I'm good." But it's not about how you feel using a microphone.

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Want to Keep Teachers of Color at Your School? Recognize Their Work

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Want to Keep Teachers of Color at Your School? Recognize Their Work

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Keisha Rembert is an assistant professor of teacher preparation at National Louis University. She is a Teach Plus Illinois Policy Fellowship alumna, 2019 Illinois History Teacher of the Year and NCTE's 2019 Outstanding Middle-Level Educator in the English Language Arts award recipient. Full profile →

I reread it slower this time, an email sent to 40+ staff members with the subject line, "Congrats and Great Work," from my principal. The email was a glowing account of one of my colleagues' recent accomplishments: wrote a grant ... new outdoor classroom ... dedication ... significant contributions to our school community. While I realized all those statements were true and my colleague deserved this recognition, as a teacher of color, I was also hurt and perplexed. Why do such mass acknowledgments and effusive praise only accompany the victories of my White colleagues?

I left that job this year. Was it because my work was constantly being rendered invisible? Yes, that was part of the reason.

Within the same timeframe, I had also achieved a myriad of successes: presenting at a national conference, organizing and leading an off-campus leadership experience for students, co-creating and implementing a schoolwide literacy approach, publishing an interdisciplinary literacy newsletter, leading a parent/staff diversity book club, being nominated for History Teacher of the Year. Yet, I'd never had so much as a personal email or note in my mailbox or even a 'great job' in passing in the hallway.

Although I wish my experience were unique, it isn't. Like many teachers of color, my labor was expected, not celebrated. The just-released EdTrust and Teach Plus report " If You Listen, We Will Stay," identifies major reasons why teachers of color are leaving the profession. It also articulates why my staying at that school was nearly impossible.

I Got Tired Of Working in a Space Where I Didn't Belong

It is exhausting being the person who always asks others to consider the needs of students of color. You get labeled. Your convictions are turned into contempt. As the report states, I had to "deal with these experiences every day and ... operate in a space where you don't belong."

When I asked directly why my labor went unnoticed, the principal told me she didn't really know what was going on in my classroom (during my post-observation meeting, mind you), and that she'd liked and shared one of my tweets. I interpreted that comment to mean, "Wasn't that good enough for you?" I knew then the invisible tax had become too much to bear.

Yet, the problems aren't insurmountable. Teachers of color want to stay in the profession. A simple "I see and appreciate the work you do for all of your students and what you bring to our school community" could have gone a long way.

When Schools Devalue Their Teachers of Color, Students Lose

When teachers of color are left to feel like adversaries, they look for comrades elsewhere. That was my approach. I sought other opportunities to grow and learn and share my talents and passions. To create a safe space for myself, I went to Twitter to find like-minded educators and joined more professional organizations to empower myself, instead of relying on my school's validation or a shift in its culture.

I wish those things had been available and attainable in my own building. I wish there were more opportunities to lead, more principals of color in my district, more candidates of color being considered for open positions and more opportunities to have dialogue centering race and its impact on our educational system beyond the underachieving subgroup discussion.

Here's how school and system leaders can change cultures to keep teachers of color in their classrooms: value them, support them, affirm them and create a safe space for them. These actions are foundational to education and what we focus on for our students. Teachers of color offer so much to school communities, and their departure harms students and school cultures.

My former school now has no teachers of color. I think of what that means for students of color and what that means for the overall school community. It's a dual loss.

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Want to Keep Teachers of Color at Your School? Recognize Their Work.

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Keisha Rembert is an assistant professor of teacher preparation at National Louis University. She is a Teach Plus Illinois Policy Fellowship alumna, 2019 Illinois History Teacher of the Year and NCTE's 2019 Outstanding Middle-Level Educator in the English Language Arts award recipient.

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What's My Complicity? Talking White Fragility with Robin DiAngelo

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What's My Complicity? Talking White Fragility with Robin DiAngelo

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What's My Complicity? Talking White Fragility With Robin DiAngelo

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Teaching Tolerance 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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What it Takes to Be Racially Literacy -Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi

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What it Takes to Be Racially Literacy -Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi

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Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo: What it takes to be racially literate

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Over the last year, Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo traveled to all 50 US states, collecting personal stories about race and intersectionality. Now they're on a mission to equip every American with the tools to understand, navigate and improve a world structured by racial division.

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Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi on Lessons of Cultural Intimacy

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Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi on Lessons of Cultural Intimacy

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Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo: Lessons of cultural intimacy

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After visiting all 50 US states to talk to people about racial literacy, Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi expected to hear personal stories of race, culture and intersectionality; what they weren't expecting was how their unique upbringing influenced the experience. Guo and Vulchi outline the very personal challenges they faced and how they overcame them.

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Within the past 24 hours, I have had several exchanges that brought me back down to Earth and reminded me that for many self-professed white allies, their knowledge of racism is still rather rudimentary. It's more of a head exercise that hasn't quite gravitated downward to the heart and shaken them to their core.

As I have written many times before in this space, for many white Americans, Trump's win was a wake-up call of sorts. Kind of like the first alarm before you hit the snooze button. For the liberal, white progressive or the white moderates as Martin Luther King Jr. referred to them in his " Letter from a Birmingham Jail," the goal has almost never been about achieving the type of racial equity that acknowledges that America's prosperity was bought and paid for with the land, blood, bodies and souls of Black and Indigenous people of color (BIPOC) and that continued oppression and marginalization of both groups has been a mainstay of maintaining the America status quo. Nor has the goal or effort been to really sit with that reality and look at what is truly necessary to right 400-plus years of such immense wrong. (Hint: It's more than a free college education and some feel-good moments with diverse faces at the table.)

A deep dive is what is needed, yet for many white people they simply want to bob and float and splash at the surface or in the shallow end. They want to focus on surface-level, feel-good moments around race-videos of the occasional police officer showing random kindness to a Black person or a Black person doing a heroic act or a white ally standing up for a person of color being harassed in a store or whatever. Or to focus on the accomplishment of getting our first Black president-of course, both the fact we got a Black president (freaking out much of white America) and the fact that so many white liberals and moderates thought that was a moment that made us "post-racial" is also what gave us the current awful occupant of the White House.

Too many white people, while horrified by the extrajudicial killings of Black bodies and the blatant racism coming out of the Trump administration, refuse to understand that their very whiteness has allowed them to be co-conspirators in the system of white supremacy-that to be born white is to inherit the blood of white supremacy. Personal kindness toward Black people and other non-white people doesn't erase that. To be born and raised as a white person is to be racist. Full stop.

That's a hard one to swallow but the type of transformation that we need is a critical mass of white people who understand this. We need a majority of white people to understand that their good feelings and good deeds towards BIPOC-without frequent reflections on lingering racism in themselves and without a commitment to systemic, societal change-only helps to keep the system of white supremacy alive. As my colleague and collaborator, author Debby Irving, says: She spent 20 years on diversity committees in educational and community spaces with no real analysis around race. With no understanding that her good fortunes in life were built on the backs of others. The same system that allowed her relatives access to Harvard and upward mobility (and to pass that on to other family members), also worked systematically to prevent others who were not white from having those opportunities.

Even in anti-racism work, there is a tendency with white organizers to see themselves differently; to see themselves as better and more enlightened than the "other white people." Not wanting to deal with the Trump supporters and others of that ilk-but, are they not white people like you? If you don't work with your more actively racist people and, yes, other such white people are your people (your neighbors, mentors, peers, colleagues, family and more), who exactly is ever going to work with them? Do you feel this is the work of Black and other non-white people? No, it's not. Your very whiteness allows you a certain level of access that I or other non-white people will never see nor should we. The emotional labor required on that task shouldn't be our job when we are drowning in racist systems and behaviors on the daily already.

Which is why loving, good feelings toward other people regardless of race don't change the impact or the system. As we often say in movement spaces, it's intent versus impact. Your intentions may be all good and well, but the impact can still be harmful.

It's the same type of harmful impact that has many in this current dialogue on reparations suggesting that tax credits or free college education could be the answer in dealing with racial inequity.

The data are clear that often Black people with college degrees fare worse than white people with only a high school diploma. Black women with advanced degrees have higher mortality rates than white women without a high school diploma. High-earning Black people are still targeted for discrimination when it comes to home ownership. We have access to enough data to know that overall, being a college-educated Black person does not afford you the same access or protection that it gives to white counterparts of a similar demographics. We also know that more and more Black Americans, particularly Black women, are already well educated-so how is paying for our continued educations going to change anything when the ones we paid for ourselves still don't allow us to catch a break?

Erasing the student debt or paying for the education of Black people is but a drop in the bucket when the real problem is the current infrastructure and system that favors white people. When white people refuse to see that and understand how their seeming benevolence fuels this system, nothing changes.

Look, being told that being white means you harbor racism (in certain thoughts, in certain actions, in certain benefits you reap without hesitation, in certain preconceptions, etc.) is not a slur or necessarily even a judgment against you. Telling you that being white is to be racist on some level is a statement of fact. White people have blind spots when it comes to racism; even white people in loving and intimate relationships with people of color can fall prey to the seductive allure of whiteness and wanting to uphold a system of standards that decided hundreds of years ago what is right and who is wrong and made white people the center and the standard by which to judge that.

If you are going to become offended when you are confronted with this knowledge and told that you can't claim you "don't have a racist bone in your body" or that you harbor racism (whether you want to or not) simply from being white in a white supremacist society, you are part of the problem. If your first response is to get defensive and rattle off your racial justice bonafides, that should be a red flag that you need to sit with it and ask why are you pushing back so hard.

Look, we have a lot of work ahead of us and if you are truly down for change, we are playing the long game. The goal isn't to assimilate enough Black folks and other POC into this unjust system. It should be to eventually dismantle the entire system and build something better.

If this piece or this blog resonates with you, please consider a one-time " tip" or become a monthly " patron"...this space runs on love and reader support. Want more BGIM? Consider booking me to speak with your group or organization.

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Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

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Understanding that you, too, are racist (even if you're one of the "good ones")

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Within the past 24 hours, I have had several exchanges that brought me back down to Earth and reminded me that for many self-professed white allies, their knowledge of racism is still rather rudimentary.

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Trauma as Peril and Potential in Schools Elizabeth Duty

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Trauma as Peril and Potential in Schools Elizabeth Duty

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Trauma as Peril and Potential in Schools — Elizabeth Dutro

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Teachers Push for Books With More Diversity (EdWeek)

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Teachers Push for Books With More Diversity (EdWeek)

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Most texts feature white characters

For decades, children's books in school libraries and classrooms have overwhelmingly featured white faces. And as the U.S. school-age population grows more diverse, students of color are less likely than white students to see books with characters that look like them or share their cultural background.

Some educators and children's book authors are trying to change that.

Nonprofits like We Need Diverse Books advocate for children's literature that better reflects the experiences of all young readers. In online communities, such as those formed around Twitter hashtags #DisruptTexts and #DiversityJedi, teachers, authors, and critics discuss which books are given to students in classrooms and what messages they convey. Even DonorsChoose.org, the school crowdfunding platform, recently pledged to match donations to teacher requests for diverse learning materials.

The ripples of this ongoing conversation have reached a lot of classrooms, said Jess Lifshitz, a 5th grade teacher at Meadowbrook Elementary School in Northbrook, Ill.

"More teachers now know it's the right thing to have books that represent a wide variety of people," said Lifshitz. But, she added, "I think people do that, and they kind of want to check it off the checklist."

Important Messages

Supporters of diverse books say that it's important for children of color to see their own identities and experiences reflected in literature. And studies have shown that black children who receive messages emphasizing cultural pride-though not necessarily through books-have higher self-esteem, better social-emotional functioning, and increased classroom engagement.

But developing a truly inclusive classroom library goes beyond bringing in diverse books. "Just having them on the shelf does not ... do that teaching or unlearning of the stereotypes that we are barragged with all the time," said Laura Jiménez, a lecturer in Boston University's education school.

Following the civil rights and women's rights movements, a call for multicultural education in the 1970s and '80s drove schools to incorporate texts that would challenge stereotypes about people of color and shed light on the historical injustices perpetrated against those groups, said Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, an associate professor in the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.

Those texts were meant to repair distorted narratives, said Thomas, but they can be painful for children of color to read because they often deal with traumatic events. Thomas has seen these patterns persist in the literature that students have access to today-many of the books about black people cover slavery or the civil rights movement.

"The white child gets all kinds of mirrors of the self in literature," said Thomas. "Endless, countless adventures. The full range of history-the good, bad, and the ugly. Whereas other children only get a very narrow slice of that history."

Now, some educators are examining the composition of their classroom libraries as a whole and the stories that these books tell. And they're asking their students to examine the stereotypes that they hold as readers.

Auditing the Classroom

The Cooperative Children's Book Center, a library at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education, has tracked diversity in children's books since the 1980s. Last year, 11 percent of children's books published in the United States featured main characters who were African or African-American, about 9 percent were about Asian-Americans or Pacific Islanders, about 7 percent featured Latino main characters, and only 1 percent were about native peoples. That's in contrast to the demographics of public schools today, where there are now more students of color than white students.

Even when teachers bring diverse books into their lessons, the broader context of a classroom or school library might still disproportionately favor white characters.

Noelle Mapes, a 2nd grade teacher at PS 142 in New York City, has found that to be true in her own classroom.

Three years ago, when she was teaching 3rd grade at a different school, she started conducting an annual diversity audit of her classroom library with her students. First, they looked at national trends in the racial diversity of children's books, using the cooperative center's data. Then, the elementary schoolers did their own tally in the classroom, recording the race of the protagonist of each book.

Mapes now does this activity every April, after introducing her students to the idea that books can be both "windows," exposing readers to new worlds and perspectives, and "mirrors," reflecting readers' own experiences-a framework developed by author and education researcher Rudine Sims Bishop, a professor emerita of education at Ohio State University.

Every year, the highest percentage of books feature white protagonists. And every year, students are surprised-and disappointed.

In Mapes' classroom, the overrepresentation of white characters isn't for lack of trying to improve. The first year Mapes did the audit in her old school, students started bringing in books with protagonists of color to donate. As a result of her project, the PTA allocated funds for teachers to buy more titles. She also uses school-provided funds for her classroom to buy diverse books every year.

Over time, the percentage of diverse books in her old classroom increased, Mapes said. But when she left the school, books with white main characters still outnumbered books featuring characters of color in her classroom library. "Each year, as that initiative grows, as awareness grows around what kinds of books we want to buy and have donated, the margins should decrease," she said.

Perpetuating Stereotypes?

In examining her classroom library, Mapes said, she's also noticed some of the narratives that her collection shapes. In years when she has had the time, she's gone through some of the categories of books with her students after the audit. When they looked at the books about Native Americans one year, she noticed a theme: All were set in the past.

That trend holds true across children's books about native people, conveying the myth that they don't exist anymore, said Debbie Reese, the founder of the American Indians in Children's Literature blog.

"The idea that we can have present-day culture, modern-day society as part of our lives and still have our traditional religion and culture intact-it's a no-brainer to me as a native person, but society has a hard time understanding that," said Reese, who is tribally enrolled at Nambé Pueblo. Characters also often aren't named by their tribal affiliation, Reese said, which obscures the fact that there are more than 500 different federally recognized native nations, all with unique languages and cultures.

Some educators are asking students to interrogate these "single story" narratives that they may carry.

Every spring, Lifshitz, the Illinois teacher, does an activity around bias in books. She covers the titles on a handful of picture books in her classroom and poses some statements describing what the books are about-sentences like: "This is a book dealing with sadness and struggle and loss," or "This is a book about the love and joy that exists between family members."

Lifhsitz's students, who are majority white, are asked to match up each book with each statement, relying on cover art alone. Usually, the children guess that the covers featuring black families are about struggle, pain, or trauma-even when they aren't.

Once the titles and summaries of the books are revealed, the students can usually explain what has happened in the exercise. "They're willing to say, 'Oh you know what, I was totally using skin color to make an assumption, and that's what led me to the wrong answer,'" she said.

Teaching students to think critically about the kinds of stories books are telling is just as important as having a diverse array of literature in the classroom, said Lifshitz.

No matter how much she works to confront stereotypes in her classroom, students are still going to confront them out in the world, she said. "If I don't give them tools to recognize that, having the books in my classroom isn't really doing much to change how they're reading outside of the classroom."

Published in Print: June 12, 2019, as Teachers Push for More Diverse Books, Fewer Stereotypes

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Teachers Push for Books With More Diversity, Fewer Stereotypes

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For decades, children's books in school libraries and classrooms have overwhelmingly featured white faces. And as the U.S. school-age population grows more diverse, students of color are less likely than white students to see books with characters that look like them or share their cultural background.

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supporting LGBTQ Students in Elementary School

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supporting LGBTQ Students in Elementary School

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Three strategies elementary school teachers can use to foster a sense of inclusion for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer students.

Jing Jing Tsong / theiSpot

"Paul, do you have a girlfriend?" Parker asked me.

"I don't," I replied succinctly, hoping to avoid the topic altogether.

"Why?" she queried.

"Because I don't want one," I said.

"Why?" she asked again, smiling up at me.

It was clear I wasn't getting out of this one. This first grader had questions-and would demand answers.

"Because I have a boyfriend," I finally exhaled.

"Oh, that's weird," she said.

"I understand. Sometimes when things are different, they seem a little weird," I replied. "Why do you think it's weird?"

"Well, I just don't like when people make fun of you. I feel bad for you."

In these few minutes, it seemed as though my heart was broken and put back together all at once.

We adults often think of sexuality and gender as things that are out of reach for students-especially our youngest ones. We project our discomfort on them, assuming that discussing sexuality, biological sex, or gender is inappropriate for young students. But it's clear from conversations like the one I had with Parker that children come into our classrooms with a wealth of knowledge.

One of our jobs as educators is to welcome students' perspectives into the classroom. But we can also dismantle ways of thinking that reinforce the gender dichotomy and heteronormativity, and we must create safe spaces for children to explore their identities and empathize with those who are different from them.

In 2017, the CDC estimated that 8 percent of high school students identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ). Kevin Jennings, founder of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, estimates that one in 10 educators in the United States identifies as LGBTQ. These data provide the moral imperative for showing pride in the classroom-for finding ways to include the LGBTQ community in our curriculum. The problem is that most teachers don't know where to start, even in spaces where the LGBTQ community is already welcomed and visible.

3 Ways to Create an LGBTQ-Inclusive Classroom

1. Include LGBTQ children's literature in your class library: As educators, we should provide both windows and mirrors in our curriculum, ensuring that our book selection represents a diverse array of people and identities. This includes the LGBTQ community. While you may not know it yet-especially if you teach young children-there are students who will identify as LGBTQ at some point in their lives. Our job is to provide a safe space and role models for them as they age.

This also means that we must represent the intersectionality that exists in the LGBTQ community, sharing stories of different genders, ethnicities, races, religions, and classes.

Here are a few of my book recommendations, which are mostly for grades K to 5:

All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold and Suzanne Kaufman

Julián Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love

Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag by Rob Sanders

Queer Heroes: Meet 52 LGBTQ Heroes From the Past and Present by Arabelle Sicardi

Pink Is for Boys by Robb Pearlman

A Family Is a Family Is a Family by Sara O'Leary

George by Alex Gino

The Boy and the Bindi by Vivek Shraya

2. Rethink practices that reinforce the gender dichotomy: Gender is constructed through intergenerational experiences and social norms. Once we're aware of this, we can deconstruct the gender dichotomy and rebuild it as a fluid spectrum.

There are some simple ways to do this. Start saying, "Good morning, everyone!" instead of, "Good morning, boys and girls!" Have critical conversations with your kids about the many assumptions we make based on gender, providing counterexamples, like boys who like to sing or girls who play sports.

I've even written gender out of the stories I write with my class. In one instance, I was writing a fairy tale adaptation of Cinderella, modeling for my class.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" one student queried.

"Maybe we don't need to assign our character a gender," I replied, using the pronoun their deliberately throughout.

3. Capitalize on teachable moments: My experience with Parker didn't happen because I planned it. It happened because Parker wanted to know me better-she wanted to find out about a part of my personal life. Over the course of her rather short life, Parker had learned that lots of adults have special people in their lives, and when those people aren't husbands or wives, they are often boyfriends or girlfriends. To her, it seemed only natural to ask.

I could have shied away from the conversation, as I intended to do at the outset. In hindsight, I'm glad I took the teachable moment by the horns.

If you're an LGBTQ educator like me, embracing these moments allows us to share a piece of ourselves that can provide either a window or a mirror into a whole set of stories to which most of our children have not been exposed. If you're not, such moments provide you an opportunity to demonstrate how to be an ally for the LGBTQ community.

It's scary, I know. For so many of us, this is uncharted territory. But to ignore these moments would be to operate in opposition to justice. To quiet students' voices would mean crushing autonomy, courage, and vulnerability. And as educators, we cannot and must not do that.

We have a responsibility, you see. And as we enter into Pride Month, I hope it's one that you don't take lightly.

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Supporting LGBTQ Students in Elementary School

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Three strategies elementary school teachers can use to foster a sense of inclusion for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer students. Jing Jing Tsong / theiSpot "Paul, do you have a girlfriend?" Parker asked me. "I don't," I replied succinctly, hoping to avoid the topic altogether. "Why?" she queried.

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5 Steps for Liberating Public Education From Its Deep Racial Bias

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5 Steps for Liberating Public Education From Its Deep Racial Bias

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Commentary

Social-emotional learning can build a more-inclusive school community-but only if done well

In order for social-emotional learning to advance educational equity, we must be prepared to talk about race.

Recent incidents of racially motivated violence and discrimination have prompted widespread media attention. Last year's attacks by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., the ongoing detainment and separation of children and families immigrating from Mexico and Central America, police shootings of unarmed African-American people, and the recent examples of white people calling the police on African-Americans for unfounded suspicions all serve as a backdrop for the racial inequities students experience and observe in their schools every day. If we don't acknowledge this context, students are left to assume that we think these conditions are acceptable, that we are unaware of the impact of these harmful policies and practices on students and their families, or, worse, that we don't care. To support our students' social and emotional well-being authentically, we must acknowledge and confront the legacy of racism and exclusion in our schools and communities-and its continued impact on all our students.

Research confirms that the context of learning and how students feel about that context matter. In the United States, that context has always been racialized. Although race is a socially constructed category, our race affects our access to opportunities, how we experience the world, and whether our identity is accepted or derided. From the beginning, schools in the United States were designed to benefit and affirm the values and culture of the white people in power. Over time, this white dominant culture shaped the educational structures and policies that articulate how children are expected to behave, communicate, and interact.

Today, how learning is organized and evaluated is still rooted in an acceptance of whiteness as "natural" and "normal." The presumption that students from a culture outside this "norm" come to school with deficits-in their intelligence, families, culture, or communities-is built into the DNA of public education.

Most educators value fairness and equality and want the best for all their students. However, we cannot underestimate the power of the unconscious to lead us to take actions, both at the individual and institutional levels, that undermine students' sense of belonging and unintentionally contribute to educational inequities. Research has shown that belonging in schools has a direct impact on academic performance; belonging defines who benefits from caring relationships and who has access to rigorous content and engaging instruction.

Students of color often must attempt to learn in an atmosphere that feels unwelcoming and sometimes hostile to them and their families. This experience of hostility undermines their sense of belonging and can interfere with their cognitive performance. As educators committed to equity, we must be aware of the impact of social threats on our students of color and other stigmatized groups, and actively work to mitigate the effects of institutionalized bias in our schools.

We also need to avoid framing social-emotional learning either tacitly or explicitly as an intervention to address the perceived deficits of students of color or students living in poverty. Doing so can reinforce harmful stereotypes and lead to an overemphasis on developing individual self-management and self-regulation skills while ignoring the impact of inequities in our systems. Instead, we can use social-emotional practices to build on students' strengths and develop student agency to lead positive change in their own communities.

Through the National Equity Project's more than 20 years of work partnering with schools and districts, we've seen how educators committed to equity have used social-emotional learning to help students and adults heal from the effects of systemic oppression, build empathy, strengthen cross-race relationships, and create inclusive learning environments. Our recommendations for educators seeking to advance educational equity include:

* Invest time in professional learning. Educators need regular opportunities to increase their self-awareness about how their various social identities, including their race, have shaped their own education experiences and inform their interpretations of student behavior.

* Identify and eliminate biases in student placement and discipline. School leaders and teachers should re-examine the policies and practices that determine who gets access to honors and Advanced Placement classes, as well as student-leadership roles and extracurricular activities. They also need to take a hard look at who gets disciplined and how.

* Elevate narratives that promote the intellectual achievements of students of color. Research has shown that teachers can mitigate the effects of "stereotype threat" by implementing well-timed reflection activities in which students write about values that are important to them and their families. This practice counters the effects of pervasive racial stereotypes and reduces stress in students of color. The reflections reassure students about who they are and protect their sense of academic belonging, which ultimately leads to greater engagement and higher grades.

* Develop a repertoire of approaches for building trust, especially across race, class, and culture. Trusting relationships between students and teachers prepare the brain for learning by reducing stress and releasing oxytocin, a hormone that promotes social interaction. Educators should work to learn about the passions and interests of individual students of color and apply what they learn to inform instructional strategies.

* Utilize social-emotional-learning practices to engage in productive dialogue about race. Building "racial literacy" is a critical dimension of both self- and social-awareness for all students. Teachers should engage all students in deep listening and reflection on complex issues and current events surrounding race, racism, and exclusion. This provides students the opportunity to develop SEL competencies, including communication and relationship skills, self-management, and responsible decisionmaking.

* Access the Aspen Institute's recent Call to Action. These examples of evidence-based practices and policies will help educators learn how to apply a racial equity lens to ensure that equity and SEL are mutually reinforcing.

Ultimately, all learning is social and emotional. Learning is mediated by relationships that sit in a sociopolitical, racialized context-for all children, not just those who are black, brown, or poor. We must be willing to locate the problem we are trying to solve not in our students, but also in our collective response to the current context and conditions of their learning. Together, we can create learning environments in our schools that are rigorous, liberating, and joyful for all our students.

Published in Print: August 22, 2018, as How to Liberate the Schoolhouse From Racial Bias

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5 Steps for Liberating Public Education From Its Deep Racial Bias

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Commentary In order for social-emotional learning to advance educational equity, we must be prepared to talk about race. Recent incidents of racially motivated violence and discrimination have prompted widespread media attention.

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Recently, over on Twitter, I asked a question about the new vocabulary people are learning in order to see what parts of my own lexicon has changed. While I limited it to new words in the last 5 and 10 years I hadn't expected the responses. My assumption, and I did make one, was that these words would come solely from educators, my biggest community over there.

Surprisingly, lots of other people joined in and it turned into a learning environment where people asked for clarification, ideologies were explained, folks dropped links to definitions and stories where their word was used, and all kinds of personal growth that comes from the fluidity of language coupled with dominant socialized identities. I offered up "settler colonialism" as an example of something I hadn't been taught explicitly in school nor did it come from anything I'd learned as a classroom teacher. It simply became a word I'd begun to see once I expanded who I was following on Twitter:
Native Americans and Indigenous peoples.
Sometime in 2017 I began to wonder what it was that I had to learn and unlearn and my feed has been more rich and affirming because of that small change. Once I followed people like Dr. Debbie Reese, Dr. Adrienne Keene, Kaitlin Curtice and a man who goes by Big Indian Gyasi (aka Breakdances with Wolves, a fabulous name), the recommended 'people to follow' began to change.

One of my other learnings in the last 5 years has been around the phrase "macro affirmations". It's hard to find much about it online and it's the kind of granular terminology that makes its way into the anti-racism work I do currently. But there's not a lot written on it. If I'm wrong and academics use it, then that's another story and probably a condemnation of the Academy as gatekeepers.

In September of 2016 the Yale Child Study Center came out with a report on the emphasis of bias in pre-school teachers who are looking actively for disruptive behavior in Black children (mostly boys). The study, and visibility of the lead researcher Dr. Walter Gilliam, made its way into the mainstream in a way that studies like this rarely do. The implications confirmed that Black children are hardly seen as innocent or developmentally appropriate. As a former teacher and middle and high school administrator, nothing about this study seemed new. We have a plethora of studies on bias and exclusion that pull the thread from pre-K through higher education. It's common to hear about the over 80% of teachers who are white within the system of education.

Yet, it was what the study didn't show that piqued my interest. The question that haunted me was what this study show?

The conclusion I came to was that it didn't show macro affirmations.

Following a natural conclusion of the results that pre-school teachers tended to more closely observe (and thus, "catch") the behavior of Black children which points to the rest of the K12 systems doing the same, I wondered about what that does to the white children in schools. Black students, as well as other students of color, have reported incredible amounts of micro aggressions within school and other parts of society. So, I wondered, what is on the other end of that spectrum?

Macro affirmations.

How do white children, starting from pre-school, get an uneven amount of affirmations in the school setting? They're told they belong, that every story centers them from the preschool bookshelf to the posters displayed on the walls to the songs they sing to learn. White children see themselves in history books as the victors. They never wonder the race of characters in stories since curriculum choices favor them and relegate the stories of the "other" in small units or months of celebration. Presence, as they understand it, is theirs. Constant affirming of their belonging and being and ways of living are simply... normal. The norms of what they see and how they experience educational settings give them a barrage of messages:
you are welcome here everything about you is normal this is all for you you can see yourself everywhere
When educators talk about bias we mostly come at it from the perspective of a bias . Often, we fail to discuss that we have a bias a group. Even as a biracial Black woman, I have recognized that my socialization has been to have a bias white people as those messages have also affected me. [Thanks, Project Implicit!] It's not only jarring to see my own results, it's devastating to consider how much this informs my own biases.

The macro affirmations that white children get throughout their educational careers is astounding. I want the study that tells me what that does to them.

Or is that 'study' already living out before our eyes?

Do I really need a study to tell me that white children are hurting from these macro affirmations when they find themselves in a world that doesn't center them? Is it possible that a formal study would tell us that the macro affirmations for white children are leading them to high rates of suicide and violence? Would a study explain why the domestic terrorists we see in the news, a news that centers them, refuses to even name them as such?

Some would say this is debatable (as "whiteness" is fluid thus the data set keeps changing) yet the over 70% of gun violence exacted by white boys and men in schools, churches, concerts, mosques, temples, movie theaters seems to point back to that pre-school study of who we're not watching in the classroom.

If teachers overwhelmingly indict Black children's developmentally appropriate behavior starting in preschool, what's happening to the white children who rarely, if ever, get reprimanded for the same thing? I wonder how that socializes them to see some children get in trouble for things they're doing. I am curious about how the macro affirming messages get deep into their bones and guide their interactions with people who don't look like them and what it is they make of those subtle stereotypes that turn into ingrained beliefs about themselves.

I wonder what it is we're missing in schools when we macro affirm white children to the point of not seeing their behavior as errant.

If the Yale study taught me anything, it's that there are crucial questions we asking and threads we pulling from research that literally kills us.

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Recently, over on Twitter, I asked a question about the new vocabulary people are learning in order to see what parts of my own lexicon has changed. While I limited it to new words in the last 5 and 10 years I hadn't expected the responses.

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Living While Black

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This is the home of Baratunde's work on Living While Black, a TED talk that explored the weaponization of white supremacy, the deadly consequences of policing, and the power of language to write a better narrative for us all to inhabit. Brian Williams called this "one of the greatest TED talks of all time," and he's sometimes right!

BONUS: Link to one year later, a reflection on the talk Baratunde hosted just days before Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd.

If you like what happened here, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon, subscribing to Baratunde's email list, and connecting with him via text message.

Click the box below to share the talk on Twitter

As Baratunde left the stage, TED curator Helen Walters kept asked an unplanned question.

Every headline in the talk is sourced from a verified news account. Baratunde used Airtable to organize them and has embedded a simplified view of all the unique cases he captured so far. The complete repository is available for your viewing or downloading.

Baratunde initially built this project for a performance at the XOXO Festival in September 2018 in Portland, Oregon. With help from Color of Change, he expanded his own collection of headlines by adding their research. He partnered with the creative community platform, Glitch, to make a playable prototype of one level of the game. That version is still live and playable.

In preparation for his April 2019 TED Talk, he further expanded and honed the data set using this Airtable as the repository.

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Living While Black: Beyond the TED talk - Baratunde

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Baratunde Thurston delivered an April 2019 TED Talk on the phenomenon of white people calling the police on black people simply living their lives (aka #LivingWhileBlack). Here you can find the talk, video Q&A, supporting materials, ways to support Baratunde and his work, and updates on this pro

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What's My Complicity? Talking White Fragility with Robin D'Angelo 

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What's My Complicity? Talking White Fragility with Robin D'Angelo 

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When it comes to her well-established career as an anti-racist educator, Robin DiAngelo says, "I kind of fell into it." Years of deep learning, research and mentorship from colleagues of color led her not only to understand that her whiteness has meaning-but also to become really good at explaining this to other white people.

The New York Times bestselling author of White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism sat down with Teaching Tolerance to discuss why working against one's own fragility is a necessary part of white anti-racist work-and why good intentions don't matter.

In a nutshell, what is white fragility?

Well, when I coined that term, the fragility part was meant to capture how little it takes to upset white people racially. For a lot of white people, the mere suggestion that being white has meaning will cause great umbrage. Certainly generalizing about white people will. Right now, me saying "white people," as if our race had meaning, and as if I could know anything about somebody just because they're white, will cause a lot of white people to erupt in defensiveness. And I think of it as a kind of weaponized defensiveness. Weaponized tears. Weaponized hurt feelings. And in that way, I think white fragility actually functions as a kind of white racial bullying.

We white people make it so difficult for people of color to talk to us about our inevitable-but often unaware-racist patterns and assumptions that, most of the time, they don't. People of color working and living in primarily white environments take home way more daily indignities and slights and microaggressions than they bother talking to us about because their experience consistently is that it's not going to go well. In fact, they're going to risk more punishment, not less. They're going to now have to take care of the white person's upset feelings. They're going to be seen as a troublemaker. The white person is going to withdraw, defend, explain, insist it had to have been a misunderstanding.

And who is the primary audience for this book?

My audience is the average, well-intended white person who sees themselves as open-minded, and yet cannot answer the question: "What does it mean to be white?"

I think white progressives can be the most challenging because we tend to be so certain that it isn't us. And that certitude is problematic. It doesn't allow for humility, and, to be direct, it's quite arrogant. So we don't tend to be receptive at all. ... I think the worst fear of a well-intended white person is that we would accidentally say something racist. But then how do we respond when someone lets us know, "Hey, you just accidentally said something racist"? We respond with, "How dare you. No, I didn't!"

So, to the degree that our identities are very attached to this idea of being free of racism, we're actually going to resist any of the critical examination that we need to be engaged in for our entire lives. Because every moment that I push against the socialization that I've received into a white supremacist culture, that culture is pushing right back at me. And that pressure is seductive. It's comfortable. There are social rewards for not challenging racism. [White] people perceive you as easier to get along with when you maintain white solidarity.

In the book, you talk about the danger of assuming good intentions. Can you say a little bit about why assuming good intentions can actually be dangerous or harmful?

I think intentions are irrelevant. It's nice to know you had good intentions, but the impact of what you did was harmful. And we need to let go of our intentions and attend to the impact, to focus on that.

A lot of groups that come together to have these discussions generate a list of guidelines or ground rules. And if we really looked critically at those, I think we would see that mostly they're about maintaining white comfort. They presume a lack of differential power in the space. But power relations are always at play, and people are in different power positions in that room. So the very things that might make a white person feel comfortable may be exactly what says to a person of color, "Do not be authentic; do not be yourself. Do not show your emotions. Do not get upset. Do not be angry." ...

There's a question that's never failed me in this work to uncover how racism keeps reproducing itself despite all of the evidence we like to give for why it couldn't be us. And that question isn't, "Is this true or is this false: Was the person's intention good or not?" We're never going to be able to come to an agreement on intentions. You cannot prove somebody's intentions. They might not even know their intentions. And if they weren't good, they're probably not going to admit that. The question I ask is, "How does this function?" The impact of the action is what is relevant.

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What's My Complicity? Talking White Fragility With Robin DiAngelo

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When it comes to her well-established career as an anti-racist educator, Robin DiAngelo says, "I kind of fell into it." Years of deep learning, research and mentorship from colleagues of color led her not only to understand that her whiteness has meaning-but also to become really good at explaining this to other white people.

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Teaching Tolerance

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Trauma-sensitive and trauma-informed schools are spreading around the country. But if they don't start with how schools themselves can induce trauma, they won't work.

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Julia Torres

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"¿Pies para qué los quiero si tengo alas para volar? - Frida K.

It's a funny thing, watching a flock of birds in flight. The way they wander, dip and weave in synchronized motion that seems at once planned and sporadic. The outline takes a V shape and then flattens into a straight line. Flying in formation isn't something easily defined because the direction changes. The leader changes. The destination, however, stays the same.

Every educator of color I know today is in some way, the story of a miracle. If eighty-six percent of all educators are white, we are the fourteen percent. We come from classrooms where many of us were not seen as having the highest potential. We come from systems that taught us to internalize the idea that we were not equal, that we were not to be centered, and that our voices had to be tamed, mutated or transformed, in order to be heard. Though we somehow passed through the flames of a school system that was not designed for us, and came through to the other side determined to make something better for us, by us-it has not been easy. Along the way, we have had to work through and around deep cuts and heal ugly scars, which is why, we often see ourselves when we recognize them in each other.

Some of us came here more recently, from other shores. Some of us came here voluntarily. Some of us are descendants of those brought hundreds of years ago, by force. Still others of us have always belonged to this land. However we got here, the present situation is the same. In the end, our conditioning happens every day in a million tiny ways. It comes as a loud roar and in hushed conversations. It teaches us to make ourselves subordinate, to stand aside, stay moderate, remain small. And if we're going to be big, to do so in such a way that invites caricaturization-which feels safe (because folks know how to respond to it) and often leads to imitation, or (even/fears of) appropriation. Then we spend our lives running away from this creature we ourselves helped to create.

We have been taught that this is the only way to survive in this hostile society that demands first flesh, and then eyes, blood, teeth, skin, and finally, bone. It would see us smashed under our own weight while consuming us or (preferably) watching us consume ourselves. We can live, but only if we continue to let people and systems oppress us and undress us, strip us bare and steal from us all that makes us who we are. And is that really living?

Our wings are clipped early,

but we still learn how to fly.

In this our divided States of America, both in mind and being, we are taught individualism. We are taught competition, to know only offense and defense-to fill the role of victim or victor-nothing about the space in between. We are taught to contort ourselves convincingly and completely, both in mind and physical aesthetic to become more pleasing to those with power in the hopes that they will share it, failing to realize that fanning the flames of our lust for it is part of the plan. We are taught, "to learn the rules of the game to win it," but never the truth about the ways we will have to become unrecognizable in order to do so.

"Power corrupts", they say, but the real corruption lies in the systems that permit actions by individuals that harm us all and force the formation of a divided consciousness for people of color-as a means of survival. That consciousness plays the message on repeat that we are not enough, and can survive only by valuing the transactional over the relational, and internalizing the notion that winning, (no matter what the scramble to the top turns you into) is worth the pain you have caused trying to get there. It has us believing there is only room for so many of "our kind" at the top, picking winners and losers forgetting everyone loses unless they're the one holding the ladder-or the rope. To exist as one conditioned only to devour self, or be dedicated to the destruction of another is a sad state indeed

...and this is what (some of) them/they want(ed).

But we know other ways. We have a parallel history, and reality.

Before the idea for the (dis)United States came to this land, the people here were connected to each other, to land, sea and sky. Many of us come from people that still, even after a legacy of colonization working until this very day to divide and conquer us, intrinsically value and find strength in community. We resolve conflict by remembering, above all, to honor one another's humanity and our interconnectedness. We honor the role the ancestors play in embedding their strength, poetry, struggle, and perseverance within our collective DNA because we know that we are better together and divided, we will fall. Collectivism. Unity. Action. Resistance. Determination. These concepts, these words float through our conversations daily, and stamp out the noise that might cause us to lose direction.

We share power, take turns leading various flocks, checking the wind, catching a draft, coasting, choosing a new direction, because nobody wants to lose direction. We know that the moment we turn, rather than staying the course and looking ahead, is the precise moment we will begin to fall. When one of us loses a feather, or a few, we surround them with a little extra warmth (as Antarctic penguins do) until they have had time to heal and move to take their turn on the outside facing the cold head on, weathering the storm. [Though penguins don't fly, they know they will be lucky if they are able to survive a winter without each other. Such is our respect for and relationship to one another.]

And as with birds in flight, though some of us may at times have it easier-be afforded privilege or the draft wind because of the language we use, place of birth, proximity to power, awards, degrees, complexion...we know when to stop flapping for a while, let someone else take the lead, let them do the difficult, tiring work of pressing ahead first into a climate of much resistance.

So...

How do you fly with clipped wings?

You make what seems like an impossible feat possible by finding strength in your community, learning your whole history in order to reclaim and remember who you are. You alternate catching the tail and the headwind seeing the value in experiencing both stages of the flight. You restore those around you when you have extra warmth to give. You develop endurance for the long journey by flying in formation, not allowing distractions to take you away from yourself or one another because in the end we really are all we got. Though we may get there at different rates, following different paths and in slightly different ways, our mission toward collective liberation, our struggle, our destination, is the same.

This blog post is part of the #31DaysIBPOC Blog Challenge, a month-long movement to feature the voices of indigenous and teachers of color as writers and scholars. Please CLICK HERE to read yesterday's blog post by #Blacklibrarian, scholar, and all-around amazing human Edith Campbell (and be sure to check out the link at the end of each post to catch up on the rest of the blog circle).

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"¿Pies para qué los quiero si tengo alas para volar? -- Frida K. It's a funny thing, watching a flock of birds in flight. The way they wander, dip and weave in synchronized motion that seems at once planned and sporadic. The outline takes a V shape and then flattens into a straight line.

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How Anxiety Leads to Disruptive Behavior

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How Anxiety Leads to Disruptive Behavior

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A 10-year-old boy named James has an outburst in school. Upset by something a classmate says to him, he pushes the other boy, and a shoving-match ensues. When the teacher steps in to break it up, James goes ballistic, throwing papers and books around the classroom and bolting out of the room and down the hall. He is finally contained in the vice principal's office, where staff members try to calm him down. Instead, he kicks the vice principal in a frenzied effort to escape. The staff calls 911, and James ends up in the Emergency Room.

To the uninitiated, James looks like a boy with serious anger issues. It's not the first time he's flown out of control. The school insists that his parents pick him up and take him home for lunch every day because he's been banned from the cafeteria.

Unrecognized anxiety

But what's really going on? "It turns out, after an evaluation, that he is off the charts for social anxiety," reports Dr. Jerry Bubrick, a child psychologist at the Child Mind Institute. "He can't tolerate any-even constructive-criticism. He just will shut down altogether. James is terrified of being embarrassed, so when a boy says something that makes him uncomfortable, he has no skills to deal with it, and he freaks out. Flight or fight."

James's story illustrates something that parents and teachers may not realize-that disruptive behavior is often generated by unrecognized anxiety. A child who appears to be oppositional or aggressive may be reacting to anxiety-anxiety he may, depending on his age, not be able to articulate effectively, or not even fully recognize that he's feeling.

"Especially in younger kids with anxiety you might see freezing and clinging kind of behavior," says Dr. Rachel Busman, a clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute, "but you can also see tantrums and complete meltdowns."

A great masquerader

Anxiety manifests in a surprising variety of ways in part because it is based on a physiological response to a threat in the environment, a response that maximizes the body's ability to either face danger or escape danger. So while some children exhibit anxiety by shrinking from situations or objects that trigger fears, some react with overwhelming need to break out of an uncomfortable situation. That behavior, which can be unmanageable, is often misread as anger or opposition.

"Anxiety is one of those diagnoses that is a great masquerader," explains Dr. Laura Prager, director of the Child Psychiatry Emergency Service at Massachusetts General Hospital. "It can look like a lot of things. Particularly with kids who may not have words to express their feelings, or because no one is listening to them, they might manifest their anxiety with behavioral dysregulation."

The more commonly recognized symptoms of anxiety in a child are things like trouble sleeping in his own room or separating from his parents, avoidance of certain activities, a behaviorally inhibited temperament. "Anyone would recognize those symptoms," notes Dr. Prager, co-author of Suicide by Security Blanket, and Other Stories from the Child Psychiatry Emergency Service. But in other cases the anxiety can be hidden.

"When the chief complaint is temper tantrums, or disruption in school, or throwing themselves on the floor while shopping at the mall, it's hard to know what it means," she explains. "But it's not uncommon, when kids like that come in to the ER, for the diagnosis to end up being a pretty profound anxiety disorder."

To demonstrate the surprising range of ways young children express anxiety, Dr. Prager mentions a case she had just seen of a young child who presented with hallucinations, but whose diagnosis she predicted will end up being somewhere on the anxiety spectrum. "Little kids who say they're hearing things or seeing things, for example, may or may not be doing that. These may not be the frank hallucinations we see in older patients who are schizophrenic, for example. They might be a manifestation of anxiety and this is the way the child expresses it."

Problems at school

It's not uncommon for children with serious undiagnosed anxiety to be disruptive at school, where demands and expectations put pressure on them that they can't handle. And it can be very confusing to teachers and other staff members to "read" that behavior, which can seem to come out of nowhere.

Dr. Nancy Rappaport, a Harvard Medical School professor who specializes in mental health care in school settings, sees anxiety as one of the causes of disruptive behavior that makes classroom teaching so challenging. "The trouble is that when kids who are anxious become disruptive they push away the very adults who they need to help them feel secure," notes Dr. Rappaport. "And instead of learning to manage their anxiety, they end up spending half the day in the principal's office."

Dr. Rappaport sees a lot of acting out in school as the result of trauma at home. "Kids who are struggling, not feeling safe at home," she notes, "can act like terrorists at school, with fairly intimidating kinds of behavior." Most at risk, she says, are kids with ADHD who've also experienced trauma. "They're hyper-vigilant, they have no executive functioning, they misread cues and go into combat."

Giving kids tools to handle anxiety

When a teacher is able to build a relationship with a child, to find out what's really going on with him, what's provoking the behavior, she can often give him tools to handle anxiety and prevent meltdowns. In her book, The Behavior Code: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Teaching the Most Challenging Students, Dr. Rappaport offers strategies kids can be taught to use to calm themselves down, from breathing exercises to techniques for distracting themselves.

"When a teacher understands the anxiety underlying the opposition, rather than making the assumption that the child is actively trying to make her miserable, it changes her approach," says Dr. Rappaport, "The teacher is able to join forces with the child himself and the school counselor, to come up with strategies for preventing these situations."

If it sounds labor-intensive for the teacher, it is, she notes, but so is dealing with the aftermath of the same child having a meltdown.

Anxiety confused with ADHD

Anxiety also drives a lot of symptoms in a school setting that are easily misconstrued as ADHD or defiant behavior.

"I'll see a child who's having difficulty in school: not paying attention, getting up out of his seat all the time, asking a lot of questions, going to the bathroom a lot, getting in other kids' spaces," explains Dr. Busman. "His behavior is disrupting other kids, and is frustrating to the teacher, who's wondering why she has to answer so many questions, and why he's so wrapped up in what other kids are doing, whether they're following the rules."

People tend to assume what's happening with this child is ADHD inattentive type, but it's commonly anxiety. Kids with OCD, mislabeled as inattentive, are actually not asking all those questions because they're not listening, but rather because they need a lot of reassurance.

How to identify anxiety

"It probably occurs more than we think, either anxiety that looks disruptive or anxiety coexisting with disruptive behaviors," Dr. Busman adds. "It all goes back to the fact that kids are complicated and symptoms can overlap diagnostic categories, which is why we need to have really comprehensive and good diagnostic assessment."

First of all, good assessment needs to gather data from multiple sources, not just parents. "We want to talk to teachers and other people involved with the kid's life," she adds, "because sometimes kids that we see are exactly the same at home and at school, sometimes they are like two different children."

And it needs to use rating scales on a full spectrum of behaviors, not just the area that looks the most obvious, to avoid missing things.

Dr. Busman also notes that a child with severe anxiety who's struggling in school might also have attentional or learning issues, but she might need to be treated for the anxiety before she can really be evaluated for those. She uses the example of a teenager with OCD who she's "doing terribly" in school. "She's ritualizing three to four hours a day, and having constant intrusive thoughts-so we need to treat that, to get the anxiety under control before we ask, how is she learning?"

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How Anxiety Leads to Disruptive Behavior

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A 10-year-old boy named James has an outburst in school. Upset by something a classmate says to him, he pushes the other boy, and a shoving-match ensues. When the teacher steps in to break it up, James goes ballistic, throwing papers and books around the classroom and bolting out of the room and down the hall.

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Yesterday I saw a tweet about the International Reading Association's blog post, #ILAchat: Why Students Need #OwnVoices Stories. I clicked on it and saw that, in the third paragraph, there was a link to their 2019 ILA Choices reading lists. As an advocate for #OwnVoices, I was excited to see what Native writers they had on their lists. I was naive. As you can see, the title of my blog post has the word "fail" in it. The book lists and the subsequent exchange I had with ILA were disappointing--and infuriating.

There are three booklists on their site:

Children's Choices: 2019 Reading List, with about 100 books on it.

Teacher's Choices: 2019 Reading List, with about 30 books on it.

Young Adults Choices: 2019 Reading List, with about 30 books on it.

I looked at all three. Not a single Native writer. So, I tweeted to them. Here's a compilation of my thread to them:

Hey, @ILAToday... I read your article on the importance of #OwnVoices... And I followed links to your bklists, and I guess #OwnVoices doesn't apply to Native people. Three booklists and zero Native writers?! Why?

Even worse, your booklists include books that misrepresent Native people [actual tweet said writers; I meant people.] On example is LOVE, PENELOPE. That bk is full of problematic imagery about Native people. My review: Not Recommended: Love, Penelope.

Books that misrepresent Native people feed a cycle that works AGAINST Native writers because their stories and characters and content don't match the "Indian" stories/characters/content that White writers have in their books. THIS IS UTTERLY DISGUSTING.

And you, YOU, ILA--an international literacy organization--are supposed to help kids.

Is it your goal to miseducate kids about who Native people are?

Is your goal to hurt Native kids and their sense of well-being with these problematic representations?

ILA replied (I have screen captures of their tweets if anybody wants to see them). Here's one (see below for the entire thread):

ILA could have said "You're right. We don't have any Native writers on the lists. We will examine the process by which we put those lists together so that this doesn't happen again."

They didn't do that.

They began a threaded reply to me:

Thanks for your feedback. We have edited the blog post to better reflect how books are selected for inclusion on the #ILAChoices reading lists.

Their edit (as near I can tell; I don't have the pre-edited post for comparison) was this note, at the bottom of the post:

This blog post was edited on 5/8/2019 to more accurately reflect the process by which books are selected for the Choices reading lists. Publisher participation in the Choices lists, and the titles they choose to submit to the project, are at their discretion and not selected by ILA as could be inferred from the original writing.

Their next tweet in the thread is this:

Project participants read and vote on hundreds of titles that publishers submit across the three Choice projects. Titles selected to the list are determined solely by reader networks and not influenced by ILA or the publisher.

That edit and that tweet sounded like they feel they are not responsible for books on the list. Doesn't that sound kind of... pathetic? These are their publications. This is their website. But content on it... not their fault if something's not right about them. My reply:

So, ILA, it isn't your fault that these lists are the way they are? Ok. At the very least they should tell ILA how much your association could do to inform membership about Native writers, Native bks, and problematic representations.

Later I saw that they had continued with their thread:

We encourage contributions to our list by smaller and more diverse publishers and authors with specific language in our Call for Submissions form; however, publisher participation, and the titles they choose to submit to the project, are at their discretion.

It's the same for our conference. Each year, publishers are invited to submit a list of authors they are willing to bring. We seek out additional pitches when necessary to include more diverse and representative authors.

For example, we sought out @tim_tingle to be featured at #ILA18 and extended invitations to other Native American authors.

Here is the slate for Author Meetups at #ILA19. [They provided a link; it has one Native writer listed.]

We do the work because we believe it is important. We always encourage authors and publishers to participate across our venues and platforms.

ILA believes that Children have the right to read texts that mirror their experiences and languages, provide windows into the lives of others, and open doors into our diverse world.

And ILA believes that children have the right to choose what they read.

The tweet that says they encourage contributions by smaller and more diverse publishers, is familiar. In 2012, the Children's Book Council launched a diversity initiative and a Goodreads bookshelf that had problematic books on it. Their initiative was going to be launched at the American Library Association's midwinter conference. Naomi Bishop attended their session and wrote up her thoughts. The reason I'm bringing that initiative up here, is because the CBC is involved with ILA's Children's Choices list:

Children's Choices is cosponsored by the Children's Book Council and includes children's recommendations of approximately 100 titles.

There was a lot of discussion about the Council. It is expensive to join and smaller publishers can't afford to be members. I don't recall where any of that ended up. If I recall right, CBC was very resistant to letting smaller publishers--like Lee and Low--put their books on that CBC Diversity Bookshelf. I may write to Jason (at Lee and Low) to ask him about it.

ILA using CBC as they did--as they do, to make books available to kids for this Children's Choice project--means that the kids are getting books from major publishers, some of which have problematic content... like Love, Penelope.
ILA's response is disappointing.

I wish they had said (as noted above), that they didn't realize their lists had no Native writers on them, and that they would make sure that doesn't happen again. But there's more necessary!

It is good that they invited Tim Tingle last year, and Traci Sorell this year, to their conference but what are they going to do about the fact that they offered a problematic book to children? I'm pretty sure that if Little Black Sambo had been sent to them by the CBC, they would have set it aside. We need that same sort of decision-making with respect to Native images.

Instead of acknowledging any of their responsibility as educators, they are putting forth the "right to read" defense. I agree: children do have that right to read but let's not kid ourselves. Teachers have an educational responsibility. They make decisions on what books to use, all the time. They can't use every book. They make choices. Students in their classrooms have the right to read what they want to, but teachers are also teaching about racism, racist texts, and critical literacy.

I'm incensed that ILA is floating the "right to read" in this particular exchange with me.

And I'm further incensed that they're using Bishop's mirrors and windows metaphor in this exchange with me. Love, Penelope is not a mirror for any Native child. So why invoke her work in this exchange?

There's an ILAChat twitter tonight (May 9). The topic: #OwnVoices. I plan to join in.

ILA failed many times. They failed to notice that a book list on their website did not include Native writers. Then, they failed to acknowledge their own failure in not noticing the lack of Native writers. Then they failed in how they defended the book list. They threw CBC under the bus and they misused freedom to read and Dr. Bishop's metaphor.

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When Professional Associations (like the International Literacy Assoc) Fail...

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Yesterday I saw a tweet about the International Reading Association's blog post, #ILAchat: Why Students Need #OwnVoices Stories. I clicked on it and saw that, in the third paragraph, there was a link to their 2019 ILA Choices reading lists. As an advocate for #OwnVoices, I was excited to see what Native writers they had on their lists.

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The Term 'people of color' erases black people-Let's Retire It

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The Term 'people of color' erases black people-Let's Retire It

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As a black woman, I seek out inclusive spaces because I lack them in my everyday life. I don't think I've ever unintentionally entered a space and immediately felt like I was a part of the majority. I remember when I joined my first women's group. I went to one club meeting, and never returned. I felt like every issue these women were struggling with affected me more intensely because of my race. It wasn't empowering, just depressing.

No one looked like me. I didn't expect to be in a room filled with black women, but I also didn't think I'd be the only one. And while the others went on about empowerment, sisterhood and freedom, I was met with, yet again, a feeling I knew only I could understand. In a room full of women discussing ways to be heard among men, ironically, I was grappling with how to do just that in the room we were in.

I should have known better when I saw the group advertised as "women of color-friendly."

The terms "women of color" and "people of color" are meant to be inclusive. But, from my perspective, they only help to leave black people behind - specifically black women. While every minority group faces its own challenges in America, a "one size fits all" mentality toward diversity erases the specific needs of the most vulnerable communities.

Any effort that sees the struggles of all minorities as a single movement is actually harmful.

Just look at the fashion industry. According to the Fashion Spot's annual " Diversity Report, " one out of every three models in 2018 fashion ads were women of color. That certainly sounds like progress. But editorials and magazine covers lean heavily toward non-black women of color, and the terms non-white and women of color are used repeatedly to bolster the analysis.

To see for myself, I picked up a random high-end fashion magazine. Out of hundreds of models it had a total of 12 black women in it, admittedly better than the one or two I was expecting. Looking closer, however, I noticed that these women were either all extremely light-skinned, very dark-skinned or highly established in their careers, like Lupita Nyong'o.

This was highly conditional inclusivity. Your everyday black girl was missing.

While that's perhaps not surprising for an industry that's never been particularly hospitable to everyday anyone, uncritical boasts about more "women of color" in fashion are allowing an exclusionary industry to rehabilitate its image without actually doing the work - at black women's expense. The industry gets to decide and control what type of black woman it deems fit and more importantly, tolerable.

Nonwhite does not mean black. Women of color does not mean black either. Too often, when a person or brand uses these descriptors, it papers over an absence of black people. Bella and Gigi Hadid are among the nonwhite models contributing to Fashion Spot's misleading statistic. Though half-Palestinian and half-white, both women racially pass as white.

The reality is that not all "people of color" suffer equally from the effects of institutional racism. Black women are least likely to be promoted and supported by their managers in the workplace. Police kill unarmed black people at higher rates than other races, especially black women. According to the Sentencing Project, black women represent roughly 14% of the female population of the United States, but 30% of all females incarcerated. Black children are also almost 9 times more likely than white children to have a parent in prison while Hispanic children are three times more likely. Research also suggests that black women are more likely to be publicly objectified, harassed and dehumanized.

Meanwhile, in 2016, Asians were the highest-earning racial and ethnic group in the U.S. The median annual income for Asian adults was $51,288, compared with $47,958 for whites and $31,082 for blacks.

Of course, Asians aren't a homogeneous block, and not all of them are thriving. For example, in Los Angeles County, elderly Korean and Cambodians are more likely to live in poverty and without access to healthcare than any other racial or ethnic group. This further emphasizes the limitations of blanket terminology and racial generalities, which can hamper the ability to identity the specific problems facing specific communities.

None of this is to say that the interracial and ethnic solidarity implied by the earnest use of "people of color" isn't important. Of course, they are. Our struggles share commonalities. But even more important is doing the hard work of understanding and fighting to overcome the distinct layers of injustice that face people of different identities - and different layers within those identities. A black person has different challenges than someone who is both Muslim and black, and a black, Muslim woman has different challenges still. Parsing the implications of these differences, instead of flattening them, is what it means to be " intersectional," an important but widely misunderstood concept - even by the liberals who use it most. Intersectionality is not about building the biggest interracial team possible. It's about catering to the individual needs of different communities to make sure no one is left behind.

The idea of different groups of minorities working together to fight racism of all sorts is fantastic, but any effort that sees the struggles of all minorities as a single movement is actually harmful. Black women, for example, are a minority within a minority - and we're being left behind. Rectifying that means the work of inclusivity has to go beyond being friendly to "women of color." Perhaps the best place to start is to retire that term altogether.

Nadra Widatalla is a writer and producer living in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter: @nadrawidatalla

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The term 'people of color' erases black people. Let's retire it

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As a black woman, I seek out inclusive spaces because I lack them in my everyday life. I don't think I've ever unintentionally entered a space and immediately felt like I was a part of the majority. I remember when I joined my first women's group.

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In a recent article, Zachary Wright, a high school teacher, wrote, "As a White male teacher, whose goals are to not only teach, but also learn from my students, I need to be aware of, and need to name, the privilege that inevitably blinds me from truly understanding what it means to be Black in America."

Thank you, Mr. Wright.

Fortunately, there is more and more conversation about social justice in education, and there is certainly emerging discussions about White privilege. Both are significant advances in the work schools are doing to serve children and families better.

There is also another trend.
THE CONTEXT
The language connected to social justice often lives in changing curricula for students and in examining White privilege but then comes to a full stop. To make further progress in the work connected to privilege and to accelerate the gains in social justice, we must also look more closely at the ways in which we actively manage and coach adults and adult interactions in school settings and education organizations.

A great place to start would be the ways in which we manage and engage with middle class White people, more specifically middle class White women working with Black children from lower income backgrounds.

"The White woman's reality is visible, acknowledged, and legitimized because of her tears, while [the reality for people color] is invisible, overlooked, and pathologized based on the operating 'standard of humanity.' "

Years ago, someone forwarded me a copy of a paper called, When White Women Cry: How White Women's Tears Oppress Women of Color. In the paper, the author writes about the "one up/one down" identity, meaning one identity is privileged and the other is oppressed. "White women can be both helpless without the helplessness being a reflection of all White people and powerful by occupying a position of power as any White person." In addition the author wrote, "the White woman's reality is visible, acknowledged, and legitimized because of her tears, while [the reality for people color] is invisible, overlooked, and pathologized based on the operating 'standard of humanity.' "

I remember feeling such relief when I saw this paper because I had been uncertain of how to navigate times when White women cried in schools. Back then, I didn't have name for what I was experiencing though I knew that perceptions of race had something to do with it. Many of my supervisors had been White and male, and often, once a White woman cried, it seemed as if my managers pushed me to shift the focus from the needs of students and families (or even from staff of color) to the needs of the White woman.

And often I found myself compromising on what seemed best for children and families as a result of these conversations.

Years later, even as we attempt to increase the presence of Black men in education, this same dynamic exists, possibly more often that we would like to think. And why is this topic even important?

The majority of Black and Brown children from lower income environments have White female teachers. If we manage and coach White females and staff in ways that are more aligned with the perspectives of students, we will likely get to student outcomes faster.

It seems rare that we openly discuss how White tears impact leadership practices. As such, leaders can be ill equipped to respond in equitable ways to situations involving a White woman's tears.

Examining this topic is an opportunity for schools, particularly those with a high percentage of middle class White female staff members serving Black students from lower income backgrounds, to bridge the gap between theory(examining White privilege) and practice (accelerating advancements in social justice with Black children).

To be clear, the issue isn't that a White woman is crying. The average person has working tear ducts. Crying is not the problem. The problem is how education systems, schools, school leaders, and the managers of school leaders react to White tears and reinforce oppressive beliefs and behaviors, which then undermine the focus on serving children.

In the article Tears and Fears: White Woman and Social Justice, the author wrote, "While participating in a race intensive training, I started crying. A woman of color was providing me with feedback on my racist behavior. ...As my tears fell, an African-American man came to my rescue. He is a dear friend and trusted colleague. However, my tears left him in a tough spot, forcing him to make a decision as to whom he should support, me or the woman of color? It was a no win situation for him. He chose me and had to deal with the fallout. But what consequences did I experience? None. Where was my fallout? The people of color were left to sort it out as I watched uncomfortably on the sidelines not sure of what to do"
THE CHALLENGE
What if the racist behaviors being addressed were behaviours that impacted children? The sudden shift to consoling the White female potentially derails the more important focus, which is how the racist behavior is an obstacle to social justice.

The impact on children is that because [White women's] tears are valued much more than Black children, what's better for White women takes precedence over the needs of Black children. So, things that need to be done for Black children won't happen because of the White woman's concerns. Children are pushed aside.

What happens when White women cry in schools? Several Black educators shared their responses:

From a Black female high school Math Teacher: I know of White people who looked at other White teachers crying as being weaker. I was thinking, "Hmmm. That's interesting." I feel like the minute they cry, of course everyone may want to have sympathy, but I think White women feel entitled to that sympathy. I don't think it registers or that they are conscious of it. I think they feel like "I am coming here. I am giving up my time. I could be so many places. I am here to support these children, and this is not the response I anticipated."

White women are more supported empathetically and not looked at as weak. But looked at as, "How can we support here?"
Impact on children: I feel like some children take advantage of it. If Black students see a White staff member cry, they think she is weak. They don't think, "Let's support." They think, "Let's utilize this as an opportunity to run the classroom and dominate the situation," and they end up learning less academically as a result.
From a Black male Education Entrepreneur/Community Organizer: When White women cry there is a villain somewhere in the White imagination. History has viewed White women as prize possessions to be protected and so their tears have represented danger, terror, and death for Black people. Men going to war with armor is the same as White women waging war through tears.
Impact on children: When White women are overwhelmed, entitled or offended, tears create the egg shells we walk on to avoid being the target. The school becomes more about accommodating them than about educating children.
From a Black female Education Director working in a school-based non-profit: People take pity on them. They are seen as fragile. Woe is the White woman. What can we do to make life better? Black women are received differently. I don't think people look to rectify the situation if it is a Black woman that is crying. I think that White women's tears are seen as more valuable. Think about movies that teach us about White fragility. The White woman is seen as a damsel in distress. They are told that they are important and that people need to tend to them all the time.
The impact on children is that because their tears are valued much more than Black children, what's better for White women takes precedence over the needs of Black children. So, things that need to be done for Black children won't happen because of the White woman's concerns. Children are pushed aside.
From a Black male Speech and Language Pathologist University Professor: Can you imagine a grown Black man crying? When White women cry, people listen and look internally asking, "What did I do to cause this, and what can I do to make this ok? What did I do to contribute to this? How can I figure out how to help?" When a White woman cries, people rarely think, "She is not cut out for this role." They don't want to be the person who made her cry. They ask themselves, "Can I provide her with additional support?" Those who resist doing this are disciplined or get pushed from their manager to look at the situation again. We are taught at a very young age to run to her aid, and she expects it.
Impact on children: It becomes more about coming to her aid than about serving students.
From a Black male Instructional Leader and Director of Operations: White women are already viewed as saviors doing this great justice for people of color. So when they cry, you feel sorry for them when they hurt because you want them to be happy. You are trying to protect your savior. "How can I protect you? How can I fix this?" For Black women, when they cry, if they are crying when they are frustrated or overwhelmed, it's like they are lazy and are pushed to think about what they could have done differently to not be in that situation. The question for Black women is often, "What are you going to do to fix this? You're tough." When a White women cries, we feel like we can't lose her because she is amazing. And people cater to people that are like them.
Impact on children: It allows White women to continue the savior complex and to not be pushed to see their racist and biased ways. If we use their tears as a crutch for racism or elitism, we aren't going to see change with children because we aren't forcing adults to change and recognize their flaws, flaws that are getting in the way of the best service to children.
"The negative associations thrust upon black people and black culture can color how we black people view each other. Blacks and whites receive the same narratives and images that perpetuate stereotypes of black criminality and flippancy while synonymizing white culture with American values."

Compounding this phenomenon is the reality that this deference toward White woman can also happen when Black people feel internal and external pressure to side with the White person even when they don't agree with her.

If you're a Black person managing another Black person, consider this: In the article Black on Black Racism, the author wrote:

Too often, racism is seen as a social phenomenon that happens to black people. But it happens through black people as well. That is, the negative associations thrust upon black people and black culture can color how we black people view each other. Blacks and whites receive the same narratives and images that perpetuate stereotypes of black criminality and flippancy while synonymizing white culture with American values. It is to be expected that there will be an observable impact on black intragroup perceptions.

As a Black manager, you could be internalizing negative messages about other Black people and elevating the concern of the White woman above the Black staff person, even when you think the Black person is right.

In the article The Authentic Self: How Do You Know If You're 'Really' Racist or Sexist?, the author writes:

In a 2007 study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, doctors with high implicit bias against blacks were less likely to recommend clot-busting drugs to treat heart disease in hypothetical scenarios with black patients. Meanwhile, real-world research finds that doctors are twice as likely to recommend these potentially life-saving drugs to white patients than black patients, so it's possible that bias could partly account for the difference.

Presumably, the same could happen in education. Educators may very well may be less likely to see or to seek resolution for Black staff and children when they have a concern when that concern isn't pleasing to a White staff member and may be more likely to work at "fixing things" for Whites when they have an issue. We need to reverse this.
SOME SOLUTIONS
Imagine this scenario: During a weekly team meeting, a Black male (Devin) reports what he is learning from student and parent interviews. His white female colleague, Nancy, disagrees with his interpretation and does so disrespectfully.

There are 3 Black men on the leadership team whose faces tighten at her response. The focus on student and parent feedback is derailed. Later, Devin speaks to his Black male supervisor, Michael, about the exchange because he is fearful that if he speaks directly to Nancy, she will not respond well. Michael share's Devin's sentiments with Nancy.

Later that day, Nancy speaks to Devin about her conversation with Michael. She tells Devin that he should have come to her. During the conversation Nancy starts to cry. Devin feels uncomfortable. No one else is there to observe the interaction. Nancy reports Devin to human resources and to the principal's manager noting that she felt intimidated and uncomfortable. After weeks of interrogation, Devin learns that he was close to losing his job because of Nancy's complaint to human resources.

Let's consider the ways in which this situation could have gone differently considering approaches in interpersonal relationships, team management, self-reflection, and systems management.

Interpersonal Relationships:What if Devin had addressed Nancy in the meeting and shared with her how her statement impacted him as a team member and as a Black man? How might this conversation help the team to consider the perspective of Black males (students, staff, and parents) in their school differently?

Team Management: What if Michael held a meeting with both Nancy and Michael to discuss the tension and note how privilege can disrupt important conversations about students and families?

Team Management: What if Michael had addressed Nancy in the meeting to model the ways in which he, as a school leader, expected staff to engage?

Self-Reflection: What if Nancy asked herself if her tears were connected to the needs of students and parents or to her own needs?

Self-Reflection: What if Nancy decided to not share her comment unless she could do so in a respectful, productive way?

Systems Management:What if the human resources team and the principal's manager saw this as an opportunity to coach school staff on how to talk about and proactively respond to privilege when it manifests in the workplace and distracts from focusing on students?

Systems Management: What if the school used this situation, and others like it, as a case study to support staff to engage in ongoing reflection about how privilege is to be a tool to focus more on students and families rather than to distract from it?

So, what can education organizations, school systems, schools, school leaders, and school leader managers do to ensure that we are not allowing White women's tears to slow the advancement of equity with Black children?

Self-Reflection: If you are a leader that has allowed White tears to dictate the focus in school conversations, prepare to be uncomfortable. Change can be hard. But it is possible if the leaders and the leaders of leaders are actively engaged in modeling how we should think and talk about the needs of children and their families above the feelings staff may have.

Self-Reflection & Interpersonal Relationships: In the book Cracking the Corporate Code, the author presents different kinds of power. The three kind of power that are the most relevant to consider are a) Associative power which involves relationships with powerful people, b) Assertive power which involved the person acting as if they have the right to power, and c) Positional power which means the person has a role that gives them the right to make certain decisions.

In thinking of how schools respond when White women cry, it is helpful to consider how the "one up/one down" identity reveals itself through these three kinds of power (Associative: My White femaleness gives me greater access to those in power, particularly White men, Assertive: I am accustomed to being listened to above Black children and families, and Positional: My Whiteness is valued and therefore allows me to have a position above others in decision making conversations even when those others are my managers) and the degree to which this power is used to serve the causes of educational equity or to distract from it.

Team Management: In weekly check-ins and reflections, ask colleagues and managers to hold you accountable and managers hold direct reports accountable. Include the weekly discussion items a) As a person of color, am I acting in ways that show I have internalized racism? b) As a manager or colleague am I allowing White tears to distract me from what is best for families and students? c) Am I speaking up when I feel that I have been dismissed due to a White woman's tears? d) As a White woman, am I working to be more conscious about how my privilege can be harmful or helpful to educational equity?

Systems Management: All educators need a training on the historical implications of how White women have been perceived in this country, why that is so, and the impact this perception has on interactions between staff, parents, and students so that students have broader access to opportunities.

In the article, Lessons I Will Teach My White Daughter, this mom wants "to start a conversation [with her daughter] about how exactly we raise White children to make different choices about how to live with and use their White privilege" and includes several historical considerations of being a White woman in America.

Systems Management: Offer differentiated trainings on privilege. One educator said, "White women need to go to a training about their privilege. Give them tools to combat their perceptions of disrespect. Respect seems to be a big deal. Teachers send students out of the room all the time for disrespect. White teachers need to give respect to get it and understand what respect means for the community the teacher is serving.

Self-Reflection: A teacher shared, "If there was more transparency in the classroom, I don't think there would be as many tears. 'I'm White. I know I have certain privileges. I am here to help you to pursue your dreams. I know that my skin color allows me to get away with things that you probably won't get away with. I know I have biases. And I want to be honest about that.' Like when a child comes in a classroom with braids, and the White teacher tries to touch the student's hair, and the student has a problem with that. It's ok to have a difference, and it's ok to acknowledge a difference. I think White teachers that operate with transparency are less teary that the ones who aren't transparent."

Interpersonal Relationships: Allow the staff member to cry. Reschedule the conversation if need be but keep the focus on what is best for students and families. Ensure that all parties are aware of that unyielding focus.

Many schools and school systems have done the foundational work to examine elements of identity in ways that are truly transformational. If we really want to move in the direction of equity for Black children, education organizations, schools, school districts, and school staff have a responsibility to consider more deeply the ways in which we consistently manage and engage with adults in an effort to pursue exceptional educational experiences for all children of color in urban environments.

Examining our response to White tears is a great place to continue this work so that we minimize being distracted from focusing on what matters most, student and parent needs.

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Black Educators Share Their Thoughts on What Happens When White Women Cry in Schools - Philly's 7th Ward

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In a recent article, Zachary Wright, a high school teacher, wrote, "As a White male teacher, whose goals are to not only teach, but also learn from my students, I need to be aware of, and need to name, the privilege that inevitably blinds me from truly understanding what it means to be Black in America."

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Children's Book Council Harassment Incident

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Children's Book Council Harassment Incident

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Dear Ms. Trooboff and CBG Leadership,

I write to you in support of Carole Lindstrom, who recently reported an incident of harassment to you, and as a person who, not very long ago, made a public accusation of harassment within the children's literature community. Like Ms. Lindstrom, I was harassed by a person in a position of power within the community. Like Ms. Lindstrom, I was harassed in a public place. Like Ms. Lindstrom, I made my claim both privately, to the head of the relevant organization, and publicly. However, there are elements to my experience that you might not know about and that I wish to share with you, that you might come to a better understanding of how to move forward.

When I spoke up about my harassment experience, I did so in the aftermath of Anita Hill being ridiculed and then ignored; in the aftermath of a judge declaring that a college athlete's career was of greater concern than his assault victim's well-being; in the midst of hand-wringing over men like Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Harvey Weinstein - men who have influenced our cultural development with their ideas about women, even as they made millions perpetuating those ideas and used those millions to exert even more influence, all while hurting people and leaving our society wondering if it would be okay to reject the very work that has led us to this place of objectifying women to the point that it is hard to convict a man of assault without wondering if the woman he assaulted deserved it somehow.

Ms. Lindstrom spoke up in the aftermath of centuries of persecution of Native people; in the aftermath of the pushing through of the Dakota Access Pipeline; in the midst of hand-wringing in our society over books that depict Native people in cruel and harmful ways. Even though many, many books have been written that do not hurt Native people, somehow, people are wringing their hands over being asked to let go of the books that do. Books that have led to the internalization in our society of stereotypical, hurtful ideas about Native people. She spoke up in the midst of a social environment that is bending over backwards, looking for ways to hold on to these books.

It's important to understand this: a member of a marginalized group who speaks publicly about harassment is doing so in a social environment that is generally hostile towards us. We speak, even though society at large wants to hold on to ideas that hurt us. We speak, knowing that society might turn against us for having spoken. And it is frightening to speak under these circumstances. It is hard.

So, when I filed a harassment report with the organization at whose event I was harassed, it is important that you know that my report was met with these words: I'm sorry that happened to you. It wasn't your fault. Thank you for trusting me with this.

Thank you for trusting me with this.

Those are powerful words. They showed me that the people who received my report understood that they now had an obligation to care for me. They showed me that they were taking this obligation seriously.

When a person shares their harassment experience, they are entrusting you with the knowledge of a moment in their lives that made them feel vulnerable and scared. To entrust you with this knowledge is also to make themselves vulnerable. To share that with anyone without their permission is a breach of that trust. To share it with their harasser without their permission is a violation of it.

The only person who has any right to share the story of their harassment is the person who was harassed. Anyone else who feels the need to share it must ask for permission to do so.

When Ms. Lindstrom shared her experience, several of us spoke in support of her. Earlier today, we sent you an open letter, signed by nearly 400 people, asking you to take steps to ensure that your members are protected from harassment at your events.

In the wake of that open letter, you have rushed to respond. I can understand your desire to rush: to show that you are doing something. But in your rush, you belie your lack of understanding. You show that you are unprepared to address complaints of this nature and to take them seriously. Your use of the word "seemed" shows that you do not accept that Ms. Lindstrom experienced what she experienced as she experienced it, and that acceptance is critical. It is essential. Putting the target of harassment first, and centering their needs, is essential.

This is not a time for defensiveness. This is not a time to protect your leadership from repercussions. This is not a time to imply that both sides have a valid point to make. This is a time to recognize a simple truth: Ms. Lindstrom was hurt by the words and actions of your membership chair. Your obligation here is to Ms. Lindstrom. You must make reparations.

I urge you to develop a comprehensive harassment policy. But, further than that, I urge you and the rest of the leadership of the Children's Book Guild of Washington, DC to undergo diversity training, as well as training in the appropriate handling of harassment complaints. This is important, and it will benefit your entire membership.

There is an expression we often hear: It's the thought that counts. But that is only a partial truth. Thoughts and intentions count, but actions and their repercussions count more. Your actions count. I urge you to make them count for something good.

Sincerely,

Ishta Mercurio

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An Open Letter to Ms. Trooboff and the Leadership of the Children's Book Guild of Washington, DC

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Dear Ms. Trooboff and CBG Leadership, I write to you in support of Carole Lindstrom, who recently reported an incident of harassment to you, and as a person who, not very long ago, made a public accusation of harassment within the children's literature community.

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About Gender Identity Justice in Schools and Communities

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About Gender Identity Justice in Schools and Communities

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by sj Miller

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What is gender identity justice, why does it matter, and what are the implications for not doing this work in today's schools? This premiere book in the new Teachers College Press series School : Questions, carefully walks readers through both theory and practice to equip them with the skills needed to bring gender identity justice into classrooms, schools, and ultimately, society. The text looks into the root causes and ways to change the conditions that have created gender identity injustice. It opens up spaces where evolving, indeterminate gender identities will be understood and recognized as asset-based, rich sources for learning literacy and literacy learning. As educators take up the strategies mapped out across this text, they will learn how to foster school environments that aid all students in becoming agents for social change. This text is the first of its kind to address gender identity in teacher education with pathways to take up the work in communities and beyond.
Book Features:

Provides concrete strategies for supporting students with complex gender identities.

Cuts across all disciplines and academic levels.

Offers an innovative theory of trans*+ for education.

Includes a glossary, definitions, and useful charts and illustrations.

Unpacks the dangers of cisgender assumptions in schools.

Introduces new vocabulary about gender identity.

This work stands as an invitation to learn together and work for more socially just schools, and for understanding that students with complex gender identities need, deserve, and insist on educational justice in these and other changing times.
​
-Cris T. Mayo, West Virginia University

There is only one word to describe the work of sj Miller: champion. sj's work is restless, complex, inspiring, honest, loving, and thought-provoking. about Gender Identity Justice in Schools and Communities is some of sj's finest work. This is a book for teachers to learn not just the ins and outs about gender identity, but also why gender identity matters in the fight for justice.
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-Bettina Love, University of Georgia

With a generous intersectional analysis, about Gender Identity Justice in Schools and Communities is not just a necessary read for those of us working in schools, but for all who aim to build flourishing communities.
​
-Erica R. Meiners, Northeastern Illinois University
Education activist Miller ( Teaching, Affirming, and Recognizing Trans and Gender Creative Youth) presents an illuminating guide for educators and administrators on creating a safe and welcoming space for gender-nonconforming students in schools. The author begins by highlighting the difficulties these students face, including microaggressions, "identity-based violence and social marginalization," and fluctuating federal legislation regarding their rights. The concept of cisgender privilege is insightfully defined, allowing the reader a greater understanding of the many ordinary rights a cisgender person takes for granted that a gender-nonconforming person is often denied (such as adequate health care and appropriate bathroom facilities). Miller also notes some of the well-meaning but misguided tactics teachers should avoid, including promoting "diversity," a term that posits a societal "norm" from which gender-nonconforming individuals are supposedly deviating, and offers concrete tactics educators can implement to include gender-nonconforming students. These include using personal introductions in which students are invited state their preferred names and pronouns, encouraging students to think critically about gender norms, and conducting "conversation about the flexibility of gender and gender identity." Fundamentally, Miller explains, "Validation legitimizes [gender-nonconforming students'] existence and place in the world." Miller's guidance is comprehensive, nonjudgmental, and accessible to all readers. The balanced mix of pedagogical theory and practical advice should prove instrumental to educators seeking to make their classrooms more inclusive. (Mar.) --Publisher's Weekly
https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780807761250

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gender identity expert consulting in pre k-12 and university level settings

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gender identity support and consulting with curriculum and pedagogy and policy

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gender identity expert support for non-profits and organizations

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What is gender identity justice, why does it matter, and what are the implications for not doing this work in today's schools? This premiere book in the new Teachers College Press series School : Questions, carefully walks readers through both theory and practice to equip them with the skills needed to bring gender identity justice into classrooms, schools, and ultimately, society.

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Tolerance.org

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When a parent showed up earlier this month at Houston's James Madison High School to enroll her child, she was asked to leave for violating the school's dress code. Wearing a T-shirt dress and her hair wrapped in a scarf, she didn't at first understand. When she pressed school officials to show her the dress code policy she was violating, they called the police.

The day after the confrontation, an official policy was created and posted on the school's website. A letter informed parents and guardians that they cannot show up at the school wearing leggings, pajamas, low-cut tops, house shoes, sagging pants, short shorts, hair rollers, or a satin cap, bonnet or shower cap.

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Parent Dress Code Fail: When Respectability Disrespects Families

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Teaching Tolerance 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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Rethinking Schools

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From Rethinking Schools: When Showing Up Isn't Showing Up

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A community dedicated to creating a world that works for all.

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"We're a Family" and Other School Norms That Cause Teacher Burnout

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"We're a Family" and Other School Norms That Cause Teacher Burnout

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Sponsored by Pear Deck and The Teacher's Guide to Tech

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

The first time my principal asked me to take on the role of yearbook sponsor, I said no. In the upcoming school year, I would be teaching 130 seventh graders, and all five of my preps would be writing classes. Back then our state had formally assessed writing portfolios in seventh grade, and I was responsible for getting all of them done. It was a notoriously difficult teaching position, and I was actually excited to take it on, but I knew it would be even more time-consuming than other years had been, and adding yearbook responsibilities would put the workload way over the top.

So when he asked, I kind of grimaced and I said I'd rather not. Then I asked if there wasn't someone else who could do it.

It turned out there wasn't. Together, sitting in his office, we mentally checked off the rest of the faculty: If they weren't coaching a sport, they were sponsoring an extracurricular activity or doing some other "extra" thing. Or they were brand-new. Or a year away from retirement. Or pregnant and heading toward maternity leave. After a few silent moments, I finally said what we were both thinking: "So if I don't do it, then someone has to take on a second extracurricular."

He shrugged. "Or we just don't have a yearbook this year."

And that's when-surprise!-I became the new yearbook sponsor. Despite my gut telling me it was a bad idea, I agreed to do it. And over the next two years I did school work 2-3 hours every night, plus another 8 to 10 hours over the weekend, just to keep up. What else was I going to do? The reality of our school was that the workload always exceeded the labor force, so if we didn't all do more than was reasonable, then someone was going to suffer: either our colleagues or the kids. And who wanted that?

Unfortunately, this scenario is probably all too familiar to many of you. In fact, some of you might even be thinking, "He just wanted you to sponsor ONE extracurricular? You ONLY had 130 students?? You had it easy."

Anyone who has ever taught even one year knows that teachers are always being asked to do more, to squeeze more into less time, to multitask and juggle and figure it out because that's what teachers do. You cut back on sleep, eat more fast food, skip workouts, spend less time with family and friends, generally spend less time on all the things that the experts tell us are necessary for a good, healthy life to make room for school-related work. And even though so many educators recognize that this is an unsustainable system, the system holds steady.

Except for one problem: Every year, thousands of outstanding, talented, passionate teachers are leaving the classroom. Although the reasons may vary, many teachers I've known have left because they got to the point where they had to choose between quality of life and their job, and ultimately they chose quality of life, even if it meant taking on less meaningful work.

On top of these high attrition rates, the number of people entering the profession has dropped sharply over the past few decades, so that means every year, we have fewer and fewer teachers available to fill the classrooms where our students so desperately need them.

So maybe the system isn't holding so steady after all. And if it's not going to collapse entirely, one thing that's got to change is this idea that teachers should be willing to pick up the slack all the time, no matter what. That if we're not willing, even eager to do this, then clearly we don't really care about kids or about our colleagues. And that message-which is conveyed to us in all kinds of subtle ways-is what we're going to talk about here.

Angela Watson

To explore this issue, I'm getting help from Angela Watson. Angela has done more than anyone I know to try to solve the problem of teacher burnout, and she's made a ton of progress in that area. Over the last few years, her incredibly popular 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club has helped thousands of teachers take their lives back without leaving teaching.

And now, in her new book, Fewer Things, Better, she is encouraging teachers to stop trying to do it all, to get clear on what really matters and focus most of your energy on those things.

But doing that requires us to change the way we think about things, the way we hear certain messages. Let's look at how three common school norms-"We're a family," "Do it for the kids, no matter what," and "Be a team player"-can all contribute to teacher burnout, and how we can start pushing back on these messages.

The Messages

"We're a family."

This message is usually meant to make teachers feel like their school is a warm, supportive environment, and in many cases, that may be as far as it goes. But sometimes it may also end up manipulating them into doing an unreasonable amount of work.

"When we hear that being said to us," Angela says, "particularly by someone who is in a position of authority above us, we need to stop and ask, What's the intent? What's the impact? Is this being said to make me feel loved and supported like a family? Or is it being used to exploit me for unpaid labor? I think the school family analogy can be used to manipulate you into doing all kinds of unpaid extra duties, so it can be code for 'You're expected to spend all your free time going above and beyond with no compensation.'

"You're irreplaceable to your family," she continues, "but your school can hire someone else to take your place within a week. So I encourage teachers to question this internally when you hear it. And when you're choosing which words to use yourself, consider finding a term that's a little bit less loaded. I like the phrase 'school community.' In a community you have a responsibility to work together and be cohesive, but you don't have all that baggage and implied guilt trip of letting your family down."

"Do it for the kids, no matter what."

Angela's thinking about this phrase shifted about a year ago when she read Seth Nichols' piece, Why Teachers Are Walking Out. Nichols pointed out that in education, where so much of the leadership is male and the vast majority of the employees are female, teachers may go along with unreasonable expectations because if they don't, they risk being seen as uncaring.

"(Nichols) observed how the teachers around him would do whatever it took to prove that they are good caretakers and good nurturers," Angela explains. "He called it the Woman's Honor Code: Do it for the kids no matter the cost."

Obviously all teachers care about kids, she says, "but the problem is that teachers' pure intentions and genuine desire to make a difference have been exploited, because the powers that be know that if the school doesn't provide what kids need to thrive, we as educators will pick up the slack. We will work dozens of unpaid hours every week, we will make our materials from scratch, we will spend money from our own paychecks. We'll neglect our health, our relationships, our home, even our own kids because we need to do whatever it takes for students. And for many of us there's no clear alternative, because no teacher wants to feel like they're short-changing kids."

A healthier message? It's perfectly reasonable to be there for the kids and the paycheck. "It's not a volunteer position when you're supposed to be there for purely altruistic reasons and nothing else. You can enjoy making a difference and also enjoy paying your mortgage. Those two outcomes are not mutually exclusive."

In the end, Angela says, making ourselves a priority along with the kids will keep more good teachers in the classroom.

"Teachers should have the opportunity to be fully actualized human beings who have career aspirations and hobbies and hopes and dreams, apart from just sowing into the lives of other people's children. We can't agree to just do whatever it takes at any cost, because the cost is our physical and mental health, our marriages and relationships and children and parents. (Often) the students suffer, because we're so overwhelmed and overworked that we can't show up as the best version of ourselves, and many of us ultimately decide the sacrifice is not sustainable."

"Be a team player."

This call to action, Angela says, is most often used when people are being asked to give unpaid labor. "Lesson planning and grading papers," she says, "that's your job, what you're paid to do. So no one ever says be a team player, grade your papers, right? It's when you're being asked to do things that aren't part of the core of your job.

"So for example, your school deserves aides to handle supervision duties during non-instructional time. So you shouldn't be pressured to do lunch and recess and cafeteria and bus and hallway duty. Because when are those things happening? It's during your planning or your prep time. That's when you're supposed to be focused on your real job, which is planning and preparing lessons and assessing student work. But instead you're mopping the cafeteria floor, because there's no one else to do it. And you want to be seen as a team player. So all the stuff that would really move the needle for your students either doesn't get done or it gets done on your own time for free in the evening."

Does this mean a teacher should never pick up a piece of trash in the hallway? Of course not. "Everyone has to do things that aren't in their job description," Angela says. "But I think awareness is really the most important step."

So...We're All Being Brainwashed?

Talking to Angela about this situation, I never got the impression that she felt administrators were trying to deliberately fool teachers or that their promotion of a student-centered, family-like school culture was somehow disingenuous. These norms have been passed down for generations, and for many schools, she says, they have become survival mechanisms. "They're so underfunded, so under-resourced and understaffed and the only way to function with what they're given is if everyone buys into this mentality that they're part of the school family and they need to do whatever it takes and be a team player."

And it's not just school leadership that perpetuates these norms. Teachers reinforce them with each other every day. "We all prop up this system," she says. "We are complicit in this system, and I include myself in that, because I've done it myself for 11 years in the classroom." Being the teacher who is willing to go the extra mile makes us look good, and that creates a competitive environment where everyone is expected to go well beyond their job description.

On top of that, there's the risk of hurting your colleagues if you're not pulling more than your weight; this fear keeps us from supporting each other. "If you say no, then who's going to have to pick up the slack? Me. So I'm afraid. If you create boundaries for yourself, what kind of impact is that going to have on me?"

Ways to Push Back

1. Speak Up with Solutions

"I think a lot of teachers are afraid to speak up," Angela says, "because they don't want to be seen as the angry teacher, or they don't want to be the one who's always complaining. And that's for good reason, because we've seen colleagues get blackballed for being negative."

But if we speak up and provide a viable solution, things tend to go much better.

"If you go to your administrator in a professional, solution-oriented way, your 'complaint' can actually turn you into one of the most valuable members of the faculty, because most people are just going to be talking about the problem to each other.

"But if you can approach the principal directly with actual solutions, not just saying, 'This is unacceptable, you need to fix it,' but say, 'Hey, we both know the situation isn't ideal. So I've been trying to brainstorm some alternative approaches here, and I would love to be able to share some of them with you.' If you can do that, you're either going to lead the discussion, getting something closer to what you want or you're going to have a better understanding of all the limitations and extenuating circumstances. And either way, you're going to have more information about how to create change."

2. Support Others Who Speak Up

If you're not quite ready to advocate for change personally, you can be more vocal and visible about supporting those who do.

"I think in every school there are a handful of teachers who feel like they're the ones doing all the heavy lifting," Angela says. "They're the ones that all the other teachers go to when they're upset, and when they want something changed, they go to this handful of people who are not afraid to be outspoken.

"And what I hear from those teachers is that they are tired of being the only ones with their necks on the chopping block all the time. What they really want is for other teachers to stand with them.

"So maybe you don't want to lead the change on a particular issue. But if another teacher is speaking up on it, show them support. If the discussion's happening online, retweet it, share it, comment on it. If it's happening in the staff meeting, nod, affirm, raise your hand, add an additional point to let your colleagues know you are with that person rather than just thanking them afterward."

3. Quiet Subversion

If you think a problem just can't be solved, you're in a situation where communication between staff and leadership has broken down, or you just don't have the energy to put up a fight, another solution is to simply subvert the system.

"Teachers are being expected to do an increasing number of things that really aren't good for kids and that are completely burning them out," Angela says. "You can't face every problem head on, because there's just too many of them. You do have to pick your battles.

"But you don't have to just suck it up when it comes to all the other issues. I think that a lot of teachers are rule-followers. We want to do things right. We want to be seen as caring and committed and dedicated. And so not doing what we've been told is just not even a consideration. It's not even on the table. There's a lot of fear placed in the heart of teachers that they're going to be pink-slipped or blackballed if they don't do what they're told.

"But all the best teachers that I know are quietly subverting the system. They will smile and nod, and then they will close the door and they will do what's best for kids. They will document stuff on paper like they're supposed to, and then that teachable moment comes up, and they run with it whenever they can. And I just want that to be said here publicly, because obviously someone who's employed by a school district is going to be really reluctant to announce that they're doing that.

"And that's why people think it's not happening. That's why when you look at those teachers that you admire and you wonder, 'How are they doing all that awesome stuff? How are they making everything work?' They've either found the school that is a good fit for their values, and they have a little bit more freedom, which I think is often true for some of the more visible educators online, or in the majority of cases they're being quietly subversive.

"And both of those options, by the way, are available to every person listening to this. A myth that I really try hard to debunk is this disempowering mode we tend to fall into where it's like, 'I don't have a choice.' You do have a choice. You are a trained professional who brings a tremendous amount of wisdom and insight and life experience to the profession. So you can choose to make some sacrifices and find a school where you can thrive. You can find something that is a better fit for you. It's your career, it's your life.

"And if you choose to stay where you're at, you don't just have to do everything you're told if what you're being told is not best for teachers or kids. The most effective teachers I know are not blindly following orders. They are quietly subverting the system."

It's well intended, a phrase like "We're a family." And we should all feel like we work in places where everyone cares about the kids and pitches in as a team. But if teachers want to be treated as professionals and given the time and space to do this work well and live healthy lives, it might be time to look at these messages with a more critical eye.

We've only scratched the surface of all Angela does to help teachers bring balance to their lives. You can learn more in her book, Fewer Things, Better, or by joining the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club.

Come back for more.
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"We're a Family" and Other School Norms that Can Cause Burnout

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Sponsored by Pear Deck and The Teacher's Guide to Tech This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. The first time my principal asked me to take on the role of yearbook sponsor, I said no.

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By Kyle Korver

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MELISSA MAJCHRZAK/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES

When the police break your teammate's leg, you'd think it would wake you up a little.

When they arrest him on a New York street, throw him in jail for the night, and leave him with a season-ending injury, you'd think it would sink in. You'd think you'd know there was more to the story.

You'd think.

But nope.

I still remember my reaction when I first heard what happened to Thabo. It was 2015, late in the season. Thabo and I were teammates on the Hawks, and we'd flown into New York late after a game in Atlanta. When I woke up the next morning, our team group text was going nuts. Details were still hazy, but guys were saying, Thabo hurt his leg? During an arrest ? Wait - he spent the night in jail?! Everyone was pretty upset and confused.

Well, almost everyone. My response was..... different. I'm embarrassed to admit it.

Which is why I want to share it today.

Before I tell the rest of this story, let me just say real quick - Thabo wasn't some random teammate of mine, or some guy in the league who I knew a little bit. We'd become legitimate friends that year in our downtime. He was my go-to teammate to talk with about stuff beyond the basketball world. Politics, religion, culture, you name it - Thabo brought a perspective that wasn't typical of an NBA player. And it's easy to see why: Before we were teammates in Atlanta, the guy had played professional ball in France, Turkey and Italy. He spoke three languages! Thabo's mother was from Switzerland, and his father was from South Africa. They lived together in South Africa before Thabo was born, then left because of apartheid.

It didn't take long for me to figure out that Thabo was one of the most interesting people I'd ever been around. We respected each other. We were cool, you know? We had each other's backs.

Anyway - on the morning I found out that Thabo had been arrested, want to know what my first thought was? About my friend and teammate? My first thought was: What was Thabo doing out at a club on a back-to-back??

Yeah. Not, How's he doing? Not, What happened during the arrest?? Not, Something seems off with this story. Nothing like that. Before I knew the full story, and before I'd even had the chance to talk to Thabo..... I sort of blamed Thabo.

I thought, Well, if I'd been in Thabo's shoes, out at a club late at night, the police wouldn't have arrested me. Not unless I was doing something wrong.

Cringe.

It's not like it was a conscious thought. It was pure reflex - the first thing to pop into my head.

And I was worried about him, no doubt.

But still. Cringe.

A few months later, a jury found Thabo not guilty on all charges. He settled with the city over the NYPD's use of force against him. And then the story just sort of..... disappeared. It fell away from the news. Thabo had surgery and went through rehab. Pretty soon, another NBA season began - and we were back on the court again.

Life went on.

But I still couldn't shake my discomfort.

I mean, I hadn't been involved in the incident. I hadn't even been there. So why did I feel like I'd let my friend down?

Why did I feel like I'd let myself down?

A few weeks ago, something happened at a Jazz home game that brought back many of those old questions.

Maybe you saw it: We were playing against the Thunder, and Russell Westbrook and a fan in the crowd exchanged words during the game. I didn't actually see or hear what happened, and if you were following on TV or on Twitter, maybe you had a similar initial viewing of it. Then, after the game, one of our reporters asked me for my response to what had gone down between Russ and the fan. I told him I hadn't seen it - and added something like, But you know Russ. He gets into it with the crowd a lot.

Of course, the full story came out later that night. What actually happened was that a fan had said some really ugly things at close range to Russ. Russ had then responded. After the game, he'd said he felt the comments were racially charged.

The incident struck a nerve with our team.

In a closed-door meeting with the president of the Jazz the next day, my teammates shared stories of similar experiences they'd had - of feeling degraded in ways that went beyond acceptable heckling. One teammate talked about how his mom had called him right after the game, concerned for his safety in SLC. One teammate said the night felt like being "in a zoo." One of the guys in the meeting was Thabo - he's my teammate in Utah now. I looked over at him, and remembered his night in NYC.

Everyone was upset. I was upset - and embarrassed, too. But there was another emotion in the room that day, one that was harder to put a finger on. It was almost like..... disappointment, mixed with exhaustion. Guys were just sick and tired of it all.

This wasn't the first time they'd taken part in conversations about race in their NBA careers, and it wasn't the first time they'd had to address the hateful actions of others. And one big thing that got brought up a lot in the meeting was how incidents like this - they weren't only about the people directly involved. This wasn't only about Russ and some heckler. It was about more than that.

It was about what it means just to exist right now - as a person of color in a mostly white space.

It was about racism in America.

Before the meeting ended, I joined the team's demand for a swift response and a promise from the Jazz organization that it would address the concerns we had. I think my teammates and I all felt it was a step in the right direction.

But I don't think anyone felt satisfied.

There's an elephant in the room that I've been thinking about a lot over these last few weeks. It's the fact that, demographically, if we're being honest: I have more in common with the fans in the crowd at your average NBA game than I have with the players on the court.

And after the events in Salt Lake City last month, and as we've been discussing them since, I've really started to recognize the role those demographics play in my privilege. It's like - I may be Thabo's friend, or Ekpe's teammate, or Russ's colleague; I may work with those guys. And I absolutely 100% stand with them.

But I look like the other guy.

And whether I like it or not? I'm beginning to understand how that means something.

What I'm realizing is, no matter how passionately I commit to being an ally, and no matter how unwavering my support is for NBA and WNBA players of color..... I'm still in this conversation from the privileged perspective of opting in to it. Which of course means that on the flip side, I could just as easily opt out of it. Every day, I'm given that choice - I'm granted that privilege - based on the color of my skin.

In other words, I can say every right thing in the world: I can voice my solidarity with Russ after what happened in Utah. I can evolve my position on what happened to Thabo in New York. I can be that weird dude in Get Out bragging about how he'd have voted for Obama a third term. I can condemn every racist heckler I've ever known.

But I can also fade into the crowd, and my face can blend in with the faces of those hecklers, any time I want.

I realize that now. And maybe in years past, just realizing something would've felt like progress. But it's NOT years past - it's today. And I know I have to do better. So I'm trying to push myself further.

I'm trying to ask myself what I should actually do.

How can I - as a white man, part of this systemic problem - become part of the solution when it comes to racism in my workplace? In my community? In this country?

These are the questions that I've been asking myself lately.

And I don't think I have all the answers yet - but here are the ones that are starting to ring the most true:

I have to continue to educate myself on the history of racism in America.

I have to listen. I'll say it again, because it's that important. I have to listen.

I have to support leaders who see racial justice as fundamental - as something that's at the heart of nearly every major issue in our country today. And I have to support policies that do the same.

I have to do my best to recognize when to get out of the way - in order to amplify the voices of marginalized groups that so often get lost.

But maybe more than anything?

I know that, as a white man, I have to hold my fellow white men accountable.

We all have to hold each other accountable.

And we all have to be accountable - period. Not just for our own actions, but also for the ways that our inaction can create a "safe" space for toxic behavior.

And I think the standard that we have to hold ourselves to, in this crucial moment..... it's higher than it's ever been. We have to be active. We have to be actively supporting the causes of those who've been marginalized - precisely because they've been marginalized.

Two concepts that I've been thinking about a lot lately are guilt and responsibility.

When it comes to racism in America, I think that guilt and responsibility tend to be seen as more or less the same thing. But I'm beginning to understand how there's a real difference.

As white people, are we guilty of the sins of our forefathers? No, I don't think so.

But are we responsible for them? Yes, I believe we are.

And I guess I've come to realize that when we talk about solutions to systemic racism - police reform, workplace diversity, affirmative action, better access to healthcare, even reparations? It's not about guilt. It's not about pointing fingers, or passing blame.

It's about responsibility. It's about understanding that when we've said the word "equality," for generations, what we've really meant is equality for a certain group of people. It's about understanding that when we've said the word "inequality," for generations, what we've really meant is slavery, and its aftermath - which is still being felt to this day. It's about understanding on a fundamental level that black people and white people, they still have it different in America. And that those differences come from an ugly history..... not some random divide.

And it's about understanding that Black Lives Matter, and movements like it, matter, because - well, let's face it: I probably would've been safe on the street that one night in New York. And Thabo wasn't. And I was safe on the court that one night in Utah. And Russell wasn't.

But as disgraceful as it is that we have to deal with racist hecklers in NBA arenas in 2019? The truth is, you could argue that that kind of racism is "easier" to deal with.

Because at least in those cases, the racism is loud and clear. There's no ambiguity - not in the act itself, and thankfully not in the response: we throw the guy out of the building, and then we ban him for life.

But in many ways the more dangerous form of racism isn't that loud and stupid kind. It isn't the kind that announces itself when it walks into the arena. It's the quiet and subtle kind. The kind that almost hides itself in plain view. It's the person who does and says all the "right" things in public: They're perfectly friendly when they meet a person of color. They're very polite. But in private? Well..... they sort of wish that everyone would stop making everything "about race" all the time.

It's the kind of racism that can seem almost invisible - which is one of the main reasons why it's allowed to persist.

And so, again, banning a guy like Russ's heckler? To me, that's the "easy" part. But if we're really going to make a difference as a league, as a community, and as a country on this issue..... it's like I said - I just think we need to push ourselves another step further.

First, by identifying that less visible, less obvious behavior as what it is: racism.

And then second, by denouncing that racism - actively, and at every level.

That's the bare minimum of where we have to get to, I think, if we're going to consider the NBA - or any workplace - as anything close to part of the solution in 2019.

I'll wrap this up in a minute - but first I have one last thought.

The NBA is over 75% players of color.

Seventy-five percent.

People of color, they built this league. They've grown this league. People of color have made this league into what it is today. And I guess I just wanted to say that if you can't find it in your heart to support them - now? And I mean actively support them?

If the best that you can do for their cause is to passively "tolerate" it? If that's the standard we're going to hold ourselves to - to blend in, and opt out?

Well, that's not good enough. It's not even close.

I know I'm in a strange position, as one of the more recognized white players in the NBA. It's a position that comes with a lot of..... interesting undertones. And it's a position that makes me a symbol for a lot of things, for a lot of people - often people who don't know anything about me. Usually, I just ignore them. But this doesn't feel like a "usually" moment.

This feels like a moment to draw a line in the sand.

I believe that what's happening to people of color in this country - right now, in 2019 - is wrong.

The fact that black Americans are more than five times as likely to be incarcerated as white Americans is wrong. The fact that black Americans are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as white Americans is wrong. The fact that black unemployment rates nationally are double that of overall unemployment rates is wrong. The fact that black imprisonment rates for drug charges are almost six times higher nationally than white imprisonment rates for drug charges is wrong. The fact that black Americans own approximately one-tenth of the wealth that white Americans own is wrong.

The fact that inequality is built so deeply into so many of our most trusted institutions is wrong.

And I believe it's the responsibility of anyone on the privileged end of those inequalities to help make things right.

So if you don't want to know anything about me, outside of basketball, then listen - I get it. But if you do want to know something? Know I believe that.

Know that about me.

If you're wearing my jersey at a game? Know that about me. If you're planning to buy my jersey for someone else...... know that about me. If you're following me on social media..... know that about me. If you're coming to Jazz games and rooting for me..... know that about me.

And if you're claiming my name, or likeness, for your own cause, in any way..... know that about me. Know that I believe this matters.

Thanks for reading.

Time for me to shut up and listen.

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MELISSA MAJCHRZAK/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES When the police break your teammate's leg, you'd think it would wake you up a little. When they arrest him on a New York street, throw him in jail for the night, and leave him with a season-ending injury, you'd think it would sink in.

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An Indigenous Critique of Whiteness in Children's Literature

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WPT (@wispublictv). Our mission: Boldly enrich, educate & entertain through innovative TV production & broadcasting, other communication technologies & community outreach.

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Merriam-Webster defines the verb “rebel” as “to oppose or disobey one in authority or control.” In this, our Rebel Issue, I celebrate the Diversity Jedi who have seized the children’s-literature conversation from those who’ve controlled it and forced it to open up.

The term was coined in 2015 by Dr. Debbie Reese, a scholar and librarian who is a member of the Nambe Pueblo nation, after white author Meg Rosoff called her a “stormtrooper” for her vocal critiques of children’s books that demonize, demean, or erase First/Native Nations’ peoples, traditions, and histories. [Note: The term was actually coined by author Cynthia Leitich Smith, a member of the Muscogee nation.] Reese’s is one voice among many that have been raised in sustained, earned rage over the past several years, demanding that the industry do better in its representation of marginalized identities.

It is the advent of social media and the work of the Diversity Jedi in wielding it that, I am convinced, have forced the industry to do more than wring its collective hands at the dearth of diverse books and then subside, a roughly every-five-years pattern that has held for the past 50 years. It is all too easy to read a brilliant article in a journal or book, sigh and agree, and then put it down to get back to business as usual. But with Twitter and Goodreads and like platforms available, the Diversity Jedi have made it impossible for the industry to stop at sighing.

The methods of the Diversity Jedi are often not gentle. I know this from personal experience. But (if you permit the extension of the metaphor) it takes concerted, violent effort to take out the Death Star. And while I do not believe the U.S. children’s-book industry is as intentionally malignant as the Empire, it has all the power on its side. Also in 2015, Lee & Low’s Diversity Baseline Survey confirmed what we all suspected: that the industry is an overwhelmingly white, straight, cis one. It cannot be dismissed as coincidence that the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin finds year after year that the overwhelming majority of books published mirror those gatekeepers. Inertia is a powerful force.

When industry insiders complain in private or in public about the tone taken by the Jedi, when they talk about abridgment of free speech, I’m astonished. No Twitter commentator, however fervently angry, can suppress speech. They can—and do—cause authors and publishers to reconsider publication. That is a choice, possibly based on a sense of the market, possibly based on new conviction. It is not the result of government suppression. Protest, whether physical or virtual, is a vital part of the American tradition. The Jedis’ calls for better representation are far more akin to a boycott than they are to suppression of speech.

I am a librarian and a journalist. The twinned freedoms to speak and to read are in my DNA. And I am very aware that Kirkus is a decades-old institution, one whose authority is enshrined in collection-development policies in libraries around the country. I have a regular paycheck, insurance, and a platform that allows me to reach thousands on a regular basis. When the Diversity Jedi take to Twitter, they do not compromise my freedom of speech in any way. They complement it, joining in a conversation that’s been dominated by hoary, old, normative institutions for way too long.

Every day I open boxes to find books by and about people of color, queer people, people with disabilities, Native people. When a librarian hands Dragon Pearl, by Yoon Ha Lee, to a reader who wants a space opera, when a bookseller recommends We Are Grateful - Otsaliheliga, by Traci Sorell and illustrated by Frané Lessac, to a caregiver who wants to share a celebration of family with their little ones, when a pet-loving kid finds a soul mate in Lety Out Loud, by Angela Cervantes, when a teacher offers The Someday Birds by Sally J. Pla, to a kid looking for an adventure—when these connections are made, we have, in large part, the Diversity Jedi to thank.

And I, for one, am grateful.

Vicky Smith is the children’s editor.

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For its Rebel Issue, Kirkus Reviews’ children’s editor Vicky Smith celebrates the advocates who’ve seized the children’s-literature conversation.

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Intuition Is the Highest Form of Intelligence

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Intuition Is the Highest Form of Intelligence

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Forbes

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Intuition, argues Gerd Gigerenzer, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, is less about suddenly "knowing" the right answer and more about instinctively understanding what information is unimportant and can thus be discarded.

Gigerenzer, author of the book Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious, says that he is both intuitive and rational. "In my scientific work, I have hunches. I can't explain always why I think a certain path is the right way, but I need to trust it and go ahead. I also have the ability to check these hunches and find out what they are about. That's the science part. Now, in private life, I rely on instinct. For instance, when I first met my wife, I didn't do computations. Nor did she."

I'm telling you this because recently one of my readers, Joy Boleda, posed a question that stopped me in my tracks:
What about intuition? It has never been titled as a form of intelligence, but would you think that someone who has great intuition in things, has more intelligence?
My "gut instinct" is to say yes, especially when we are talking about people who are already intellectually curious, rigorous in their pursuit of knowledge, and willing to challenge their own assumptions.

Let me put this a bit simpler. If all you do is sit in a chair and trust your intuition, you are not exercising much intelligence. But if you take a deep dive into a subject and study numerous possibilities, you are exercising intelligence when your gut instinct tells you what is - and isn't - important.

In some respects, intuition could be thought of as a clear understanding of collective intelligence. For example, most web sites are today organized in an intuitive way, which means they are easy for most people to understand and navigate. This approach evolved after many years of chaos online, as a common wisdom emerged over what information was superfluous and what was essential (i.e. About Us = essential).

Theo Humphries argues that intuitive design can be described as "understandable without the use of instructions". This is true when an object makes sense to most people because they share a common understanding of the way things work.

You might say that I'm a believer in the power of disciplined intuition. Do your legwork, use your brain, share logical arguments, and I'll trust and respect your intuitive powers. But if you merely sit in your hammock and ask me to trust your intuition, I'll quickly be out the door without saying goodbye.

I say this from personal experience; the more research I do, the better my intuition works.

Although this may be a paraphrase of his thoughts on the subject, Albert Einstein has been widely quoted as saying, "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."

Sometimes, a corporate mandate or group-think or your desire to produce a certain outcome can cause your rational mind to go in the wrong direction. At times like these, it is intuition that holds the power to save you. That "bad feeling" gnawing away at you is your intuition telling you that no matter how badly you might wish to talk yourself into this direction, it is the wrong way to go.

Smart people listen to those feelings. And the smartest people among us - the ones who make great intellectual leaps forward - cannot do this without harnessing the power of intuition.

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Intuition Is The Highest Form Of Intelligence

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Intuition, argues Gerd Gigerenzer, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, is less about suddenly "knowing" the right answer and more about instinctively understanding what information is unimportant and can thus be discarded. Gigerenzer, author of the book Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious, says that he is both intuitive and rational.

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Announcing the first comprehensive study on child removal in Native communities

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Announcing the first comprehensive study on child removal in Native communities

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National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition
The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS), the First Nations Repatriation Institute, and the University of Minnesota are pleased to announce the launch of a new study, Child Removal in Native Communities: An Anonymous Survey.

Between 1879 and the 1960s, tens of thousands of American Indian and Alaskan Native children were forced to attend boarding school against their parents' and tribes' wishes. The goal of these schools was to eliminate the "Indian problem" that the United States had to its westward expansion by removing all traces of tribal existence - language, culture, spiritual traditions, communal and family ties, etc. and replacing them with European Christian ideals of civilization, religion, and culture. Today, Native communities continue to live with the impacts of the cultural genocide that was carried out in these schools. Impacts such as high rates of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression, and sexual violence are directly linked to the historical trauma caused by colonization and forced assimilation.

The era of assimilative United States Indian boarding schools started to wane and eventually came to a close after government reports like the Meriam Report (1928) and the Kennedy Report (1969) found mistreatment and abuse to be rampant at the costly institutions. During this time, the federal government shifted its assimilative methods, using the Indian Adoption Project to transfer Native children from their homes and place them directly with white adoptive and foster families. The impacts of adoption and foster care closely mirror the intergenerational trauma of boarding school experiences.

In full swing by the 1960s and 1970s, the adoption era saw (usually white) social workers deem huge proportions of Native families unfit for children. In fact, by 1978, as many as one-quarter to one-third of children were taken by social workers or other coercive means and either adopted out of the tribe or placed in a non-tribal foster care system. Although the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA) was designed to address this form of cultural genocide, Native families continue to face very high levels of child removal. For example, in Alaska, where Native children make up 20 percent of the general child population, they represent 50.9 percent of children in Foster Care. In Nebraska, Native children make up just one percent of the general child population, but nine percent of foster care children (National Indian Child Welfare Association and Pew Charitable Trusts, 2007).

The trauma of family and community separation, as well as the violently assimilative strategies of the boarding schools and adoption, affected these children, their families, and their communities so deeply that the effects of trauma can be seen intergenerationally. Research in epigenetics and historical trauma by scholars like Dr. Rachel Yehuda (2016), Dr. Kathleen Brown-Rice (2013), Drs. Judy Daniels and Michael D'Andea (2007), Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart (1998), and the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Institute (2012) have found that trauma from experiences like boarding schools, adoption, and foster care may actually be woven into our DNA in addition to being transmitted through social processes and parenting practices. Descendants of boarding school survivors and out-adoptions are likely to have "intergenerational trauma", which leads to high rates of PTSD and suicide (these rates among Native youth are 2.5 times the national average; Executive Office of the President, 2014).

There has been little research that directly studies these histories of child removal and their effects, so health providers and other care practitioners are not informed about how to identify and address this historical and intergenerational trauma. With this study, we aim to learn more about individuals' experiences of child removal, the impacts these experiences have had on them and their descendants, and the methods that individuals are successfully using for healing these intergenerational traumas. This information will help us better inform recommendations to health providers and other care practitioners as well as learn more about the various forms of Indian child removal and family disruption that are rarely connected to each other analytically or in history books.

While there have been some smaller scale opportunities for the survivors and descendants of Indian boarding schools and those who experience adoption and foster care to share testimonials, there has never been a large-scale opportunity such as this one where participants will be asked about not only their experiences in these child removal systems but also about the effects these experiences have had on their lives and the lives of their descendants since then. Moreover, there has never been a study that has linked these two periods of child removal: Indian boarding schools and adoption and foster care in Native communities. Though these time periods are often analyzed separately, when linked, they provide a larger picture of child removal, assimilation efforts, and ongoing cultural genocide against Native peoples through family dismemberment.

(Image: National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition)

The study has three purposes. First, we would like to understand the experiences of several groups of Native people whose family lives have been disrupted by federal or other intervention: United States Indian boarding school survivors and their descendants, and adoptees and formerly fostered individuals. Second, we would like to learn more about the impact of these experiences on child welfare and health in future generations. Third, we would like to hear how boarding school survivors and descendants, adoptees, and formerly fostered individuals have begun healing. We plan to use this information to educate Native communities, health care providers, the public, tribal leaders, and policy-makers to further promote healing by affected individuals and tribes.

National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition's mission is to understand and address the ongoing trauma caused by Indian boarding schools. The study will be an important part of our efforts to learn more about how boarding schools impacted rates of adoption and foster care in our communities and how these instances of child removal impacted health and well-being. The data we collect will be an important part of our efforts to spark a national conversation on these issues and cultivate opportunities for healing. It will help us continue to inform policy reform, best practices in social work and healthcare fields, and community-led healing initiatives.

"Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have all apologized to its Indigenous peoples for the boarding schools they ran. The United States has yet to acknowledge the devastating impacts of its very first Indian child welfare policy - the Indian Boarding School policies of 1819 and 1868 - and the ongoing child removal targeted at our communities, despite the Indian Child Welfare Act" said, Christine Diindiisi McCleave (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) boarding school descendant and Executive Officer of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. "Its time people know about this part of this country's history because this is American history, not just Native American history."

If you have any questions about the study, you can visit www.boardingschoolhealing.org or contact members of the research team at info@nabshc.org or liebler@umn.edu. You may also request a paper copy of the survey or the research report when the study is completed.

(Image: National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition)

About National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition
The mission of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) is to lead in the pursuit of understanding and addressing the ongoing trauma created by the United States Indian boarding school policy. The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, incorporated in June 2012 under the laws of the Navajo Nation.

Visit us online to learn how you can join the Coalition.

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Announcing the first comprehensive study on child removal in Native communities - IndianCountryToday.com

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National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition aims to learn more about individuals' experiences of child removal, the impacts these experiences have had on them and their descendants, and the methods that individuals are successfully using for healing intergenerational traumas

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21-Day Racial Equality Habit Building Challenge

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21-Day Racial Equality Habit Building Challenge

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21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge

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How Do We Language So People Stop Killing Each Other, Or What Do We Do About White Language Supremecy

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How Do We Language So People Stop Killing Each Other, Or What Do We Do About White Language Supremecy

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Asao Inoue #4C19 Chair's Address

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Teaching Tolerance, March 2019

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Teaching Tolerance 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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Our commitment to racial justice and reconciliation requires we dig into the muddiness of humanity, reckoning with the worst of our humanity as we call out its best. This work is not for the faint of heart. It requires hope. Not a hope founded on good feelings or good intentions, but hope that demands.

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How Inclusive is Your Literacy Classroom?

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How Inclusive is Your Literacy Classroom?

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February 2019

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Multicultural and Social Justice Books - Social Justice Books

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Curated Booklists Carefully selected multicultural and social justice books for children, young adults, and educators on 90+ topics. Reviews of Children's Literature Critical reviews of children's and young adult books from a variety of vetted sources, consolidated here for easy access. Anti-Bias Book Talk Explore children's literature through an anti-bias, anti-racist lens in this video series.

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In today's current political and cultural climate, it's crucial that everyday Americans engage in important conversations about race, bias, discrimination, and privilege. For people of color, these conversations are nothing new; they are a requirement in communities where experiences of racism, bias, and bigotry are a part of everyday life. But for many white people who have never been burdened by a system built specifically to keep us down, these conversations can seem confusing, uncomfortable, and awkward, which is what makes them even more necessary. If you're not sure how to talk about issues of race in America, try picking up one of the many incredible books about race instead of asking people of color to explain it to you.

If you really want to be a better ally, if you really want to be on the front lines in the war against racism and discrimination in the United States, you have to take the initiative to educate yourself. It isn't up to people of color to inform or reform white people, as " White people, stop asking us to education about racism," a collective piece from an African American voice on Medium, so clearly explains: "Don't ask us to provide the information for you. Instead, participate in your own education. We've already given you enough of our free labor. Don't ask us for anymore."

If you're trying to unlearn the American biases designed to keep people of color down, here are 10 books about race in America you can start with:

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10 Books About Race To Read Instead Of Asking A Person Of Color To Explain Things To You

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In today's current political and cultural climate, it's crucial that everyday Americans engage in important conversations about race, bias, discrimination, and privilege.

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A Critical Race Reading of Dr. Seuss and Resource Guide for Read Across America Day

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A Critical Race Reading of Dr. Seuss and Resource Guide for Read Across America Day

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When people point to the work Dr. Seuss did to promote "tolerance" and "anti-racism", they often cite the books, The Sneetches and Horton Hears a Who! Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance uses The Sneetches in their anti-racist curriculum for children and the oft-quoted line from Horton Hears a Who!, "A person's a person, no matter how small!" is proclaimed as a moral of "tolerance". Both books feature only animals or made-up, non-human characters, so these stories are told through allegories and symbolism. Each book was examined critically to assess if and how they convey messaging around "tolerance" and "anti-racism".

Dr. Seuss first published The Sneetches in Redbook in 1953. A friend told Seuss it was "anti-Semitic" so he put it aside, but Random House compelled him to revise the book and it was published in 1961 (Nel, 2017). Because the book is being taught as "anti-racist", it was analyzed through a racial lens. We find it problematic to uphold as anti-racist for the following reasons:

1. It portrays the "oppressed" group (the Plain-Belly Sneetches) in a deficit-based framework. The Plain-Belly Sneetches are depicted as "moping and doping" in their self-hatred and spend all their time, energy and resources trying to be exactly like the dominant Star-Belly Sneetches. This is a very problematic and misguided way of perceiving oppressed groups. Oppressed communities are generally fighting to hang on to their own culture and identity and not have it erased, marginalized or appropriated by the dominant culture. Oppressed people want to be free of oppression, they do not want to be their oppressor.

2. The Plain-Belly Sneetches never challenge their oppressor or the oppression itself. They never resist. The only action they take is to disregard their own identity and culture to take on the one of their oppressor. The Plain-Bellied Sneetches play out an unrealistic scenario of overcoming the intentional discrimination of individual Star-Bellied Sneetches through conformity.

3. The book concludes with the Plain-Belly Sneetches and Star-Belly Sneetches getting confused as to who is oppressed and who is the oppressor, and they have "no choice" but to accept each other: "Changing their stars every minute or two. They kept running through/ Until neither the Plain nor the Star-Bellies knew / Whether this one was that one...or that one was this one / Or which one was what one...or what one was who...That day, all the Sneetches forgot about stars And whether they had one or not, upon thars" (Seuss, 1953). This promotes the false and problematic narrative that "forgetting"/not seeing race, aka colorblindness, is the solution to racism. In reality, not seeing race is not possible. Even if a person of color were to try to look or act white, they can never be mistaken as white. Nor should that be their goal. Conformity and colorblindness do not constitute anti-racist work, they run counter to it.

The book Horton Hears a Who! is another one of Dr. Seuss's books widely cited as promoting tolerance. Many people infer that it is an apology for his WWII anti-Japanese propaganda. One reason this book is problematic is because of its promotion of the White Savior Complex.

Everyday Feminism discusses the White Savior Complex and why it is harmful:
"A White Savior is a common trope used in books, films, and as a way of interpreting actual history. It's also a perspective shared by many white people as we move through the world. In the simplest terms, it's when a white character or person rescues people of color from their oppression. The White Savior is portrayed as the good one, the one that we're meant to identify with as we watch or read these narratives. They usually learn lessons about themselves along the way. There are many problems with this kind of narrative, some of which I'll go over. For instance, it racializes morality by making us consistently identify with the good white person saving the non-white people who are given much less of an identity in these plot lines. It also frames people of color as being unable to solve their own problems. It implies that they always need saving, and that white people are the only ones competent enough to save them. This is very obviously untrue, and it's a harmful message to relay. Considering how widespread the story is, the result is that it ignores the reality that communities of color have their own leaders and they're not being saved by white people. It also exoticizes the (other) people and positions them as being automatically broken and needing saving, just because of where they live or how they look" (Edell, 2016).
Just like in The Sneetches, this book positions the "oppressed" in a deficit-based framework. The Who's are "helpless" and need to be "saved" and protected by the bigger, more powerful (savior), Horton. Note that Horton is the one who decides that the Who's need to be saved in the first place, and that he himself defines and dictates the actions needed to save "them" (including when he directs the Who's to prove their existence). The Who's don't speak a word to Horton until page 18 of the book, yet Horton starts his work of "saving them" and deciding/defining what it means to "save them", on page 3.

Another problematic aspect of this story is the insistence on the Who's having to prove their existence so they won't be killed. Horton commands the Mayor of the Who's: "You've got to prove now that you are really there!...And you very small persons will not have to die / If you make yourselves heard!" The responsibility of whether or not the Who's get killed is placed on the Who's themselves, not their aggressors (victim-blaming). There is no action taken to challenge or defend against the violent threats of the kangaroos and monkeys who want to kill them. As in today's racial context, people of color are forced to prove their right to life and that their lives "matter", and white perpetrators of violent crimes against them are often not held accountable.

Dr. Seuss actively supported and fueled the racism, incarceration and killing of Japanese people. He was quoted as saying, "If we want to win, we've got to kill the Japs...we can get palsy-walsy afterward with those that are left". Dr. Seuss and Dr. Seuss Enterprises profited profoundly off of the sales of this book, it's Broadway rendition, the Horton Hears a Who! movie (which grossed $297 million dollars) and associated merchandise. There were a lot of possibilities for Dr. Seuss to acknowledge, take responsibility for, and make amends for his racist actions and work. However, he made the choice to never directly apologize for his anti-Japanese propaganda, nor the statements he made calling for Japanese people to be killed.

RESOURCES FOR READ ACROSS AMERICA DAY 2018

READ ACROSS AMERICA IN HAWAII

Use the kick-off event for RAA 2018 in Hawaii as an example of the new direction of RAA under the theme "Celebrating a Nation of Diverse Readers". This event featured diverse books from the 2018 Read Across America Resource Calendar and posters. There are suggested activities, based on each diverse book, available from NEA's partner, Reading is Fundamental at rif.org/nea. "These books drive home the message the people, with their diverse interest and backgrounds, are what make our communities across the country special and strong. Each month's book features activities and resources to build on the theme of neighborhood and community." http://www.nea.org/grants/72014.htm

DIVERSE BOOK ACCESS

Utilize Your Local Public Library: For educators that do not already have a selection of diverse books in the classroom or on site, one way to access diverse books for RAA 2018 is to request and reserve books from your local public library.

Scholastic Reading Club: Scholastic has a We Need Diverse Section featuring diverse books each season. Each season, they feature at least a couple titles for $1 and many more for $3 or $4. https://clubs.scholastic.com/parent-flyer?cgid=D_6#{"page":1}

First Book Marketplace: If you are a Title I school, you can get diverse books for up to 90% off the retails cost from First Book at firstbookmarketplace.org. Check out the Diversity & Inclusion section in the First Book Marketplace. If you use the code: NEAREAD, you can get $20 off when ordering from the NEA Read Across America section.

NEA Diverse Book Grants: NEA will award grants ranging from $250 to $1,000 to public schools serving economically disadvantaged students to purchase diverse books for public school libraries. Only NEA members may apply. The deadline for all applications is March 30, 2018 (funds will be available in May). The application can be accessed here.

Check YouTube: Many authors and book lovers create videos reading diverse children's books that you can share with your class. Enter the book title in the search function to see if there's a video for it.

DIVERSE BOOK LESSON PLANS AND ACTIVITIES

Reading Is Fundamental: Reading is Fundamental has partnered with RAA to provide lesson plans, activities, interactive puzzles, videos, and leveled reading passages that go along with each diverse book featured on RAA's 2017-2018 Resource Calendar. These books drive home the message that people, with their diverse interest and backgrounds, are what make our communities across the country special and strong. Each month's book features activities and resources to build on the theme of neighborhood and community. Download or print these free resources: https://www.rif.org/nea

DIVERSE BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

For diverse book recommendations, check out the following organizations:

Africa Access: Africa Access was founded in 1989 to help schools, public libraries, and parents improve the quality of their K-12 collections on Africa. Africa Access Review, Read Africa and Children's Africana Book Awards (CABA) have been effective initiatives in our efforts to inform the public about quality K-12 books on Africa. http://africaaccessreview.org/

American Indians in Children's Literature: Established in 2006, American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL) provides critical perspectives and analysis of indigenous peoples in children's and young adult books, the school curriculum, popular culture, and society. https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/

Disability in KidLit: Disability in Kidlit is dedicated to discussing the portrayal of disability in middle grade and young adult literature. they publish articles, reviews, interviews, and discussions examining this topic from various angles-and always from the disabled perspective. www.disabilityinkidlit.com

Latinx's in Kid Lit: Their vision is to: engage with works about, for, and/or by Latinxs; offer a broad forum on Latinx children's, MG, and YA books; promote literacy and the love of books within the Latinx community; examine the historical and contemporary state of Latinx characters; encourage interest in Latinx children's, MG, and YA literature among non-Latin@ readers; share perspectives and resources that can be of use to writers, authors, illustrators, librarians, parents, teachers, scholars, and other stakeholders in literacy and publishing. https://latinosinkidlit.com/

Multicultural Children's Book Day: MCBD's mission is to raise awareness of children's books that celebrate diversity and get more of these books into classrooms and libraries. It is celebrated on January 27th. They give away thousands of free diverse books each year and create lesson plans and activities to go along with diverse books. https://multiculturalchildrensbookday.com/

Rainbow Book List: The Rainbow Book List is created by the Rainbow Book List Committee of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Tablle of the American Library Association. Originally a joint project between the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Roundtable and the Social Responsibilities Round Table, the Rainbow Book List presents an annual bibliography of quality books with significant and authentic GLBTQ content, which are recommended for people from birth through eighteen years of age. http://glbtrt.ala.org/rainbowbooks/

Scholastic Reading Club Partnership with We Need Diverse Books: Scholastic Reading Club and We Need Diverse Book collaborate on flyers distributed in classrooms with students ranging in age from toddler to teen. These offers will elevate stories by and about people from traditionally underrepresented communities. The collection will showcase a wide variety of titles representing many types of diversity, including race and ethnicity, religion, LGBTQ, disabled characters, and more. www.scholastic.com/readingclub

Social Justice Books: Teaching for Change developed SocialJusticeBooks.org in 2017 to identify and promote the best multicultural and social justice children's books, as well as articles and books for educators. It builds on the tradition of the Council on Interracial Books for Children which provided a social justice lens to reviews of children's literature. http://Socialjusticebooks.org

The Brown Bookshelf: The Brown Bookshelf is designed to push awareness of the myriad Black voices writing for young readers. Our flagship initiative is 28 Days Later, a month-long showcase of the best in Picture Books, Middle Grade, and Young Adult novels written and illustrated by Black creators. https://thebrownbookshelf.com/

The Conscious Kid: Diverse books through a critical lens. The Conscious Kid posts recommended #ownvoices diverse books every day through their Instagram (@theconsciouskid) and Facebook page and publishes book lists on their website, Medium and Upworthy. www.theconsciouskid.org

We Need Diverse Books OurStory App: OurStory was created as a tool to help readers explore and buy diverse books, highlight the work of creators from marginalized communities, and enhance the reading experience. http://www.diversebooks.org/ourstory/

ARTICLES & ADVOCACY WORK AROUND DR. SEUSS'S RACISM & THE BENEFITS OF DIVERSE BOOKS

Is The Cat in the Hat Racist? Read Across America Shifts Away From Dr. Seuss and Towards Diverse Books: "For 20 years, Read Across America has been synonymous with youngsters wearing red and white striped hats sitting down for story time on March 2, Dr. Seuss's birthday. But this fall, the biggest national literacy awareness program, sponsored by the National Education Association (NEA), will be shifting its focus toward a year-round promotion of diverse children's books. It's a change resulting from both a heightened awareness of representation in kid lit, as well as growing scrutiny of racial imagery in the work of the beloved children's book author."

Was the Cat in the Hat Black? The Hidden Racism of Children's Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books: "Racism is resilient, duplicitous, and endlessly adaptable, so it is no surprise that America is again in a period of civil rights activism. A significant reason racism endures is because it is structural: it's embedded in culture and in institutions. One of the places that racism hides-and thus perhaps the best place to oppose it-is books for young people. Was the Cat in the Hat Black? presents five serious critiques of the history and current state of children's literature tempestuous relationship with both implicit and explicit forms of racism. The book fearlessly examines topics both vivid-such as The Cat in the Hat's roots in blackface minstrelsy-and more opaque, like how the children's book industry can perpetuate structural racism via whitewashed covers even while making efforts to increase diversity. The text concludes with a short and stark proposal of actions everyone-reader, author, publisher, scholar, citizen- can take to fight the biases and prejudices that infect children's literature."

Dr. Seuss Museum Will Remove Mural After Authors Object to 'Racial Stereotype': "A Dr. Seuss museum in Massachusetts has agreed to replace a mural showing a Chinese character with chopsticks, slanted eyes and a pointed hat after three authors said the depiction was racist and refused to attend a museum event in protest. The authors, Mo Willems, Mike Curato and Lisa Yee, said in a letter on Thursday that they would not attend a book festival on Oct. 14 at the Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum in Springfield, Mass., because of the "jarring racial stereotype" of the character from Dr. Seuss's book "And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street." "We find this caricature of 'the Chinaman' deeply hurtful, and have concerns about children's exposure to it," the letter said."

Reading Racism in Dr. Seuss/How Schools Can Navigate Racism in Children's Books: "Philip Nel, a scholar and professor of children's literature whose specialties include Dr. Seuss and Harry Potter, is pushing readers to grapple with the political and social implications of the stories that inspire such warm, fuzzy memories. In his new book, Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children's Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books, Nel argues that, yes, the Cat in the Hat was Black-or, more precisely, that Seuss's depiction of the character was based on racial stereotypes and inspired by traditions of blackface minstrel entertainment -and that dozens more children's books of decades past are brimming with insidious, racist themes."

Dear Mrs. Trump by Liz Phipps Soeiro: "Another fact that many people are unaware of is that Dr. Seuss's illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes. Open one of his books ( If I Ran a Zoo or And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, for example), and you'll see the racist mockery in his art."

Kids Use Dr. Seuss Week to Teach Classmates About His Racist Cartoons: A pair of 10 and 11 year old siblings used "Dr. Seuss Week" last year to increase awareness of Seuss's racist political cartoons. They created fliers of the anti-Black and anti-Japanese cartoons and attempted to hand them out to their peers. "Some students accused Zoe of spreading a fake rumor, tore up the fliers in front of her and told their teacher, who instructed her to stop passing them out.Rockett said his teacher confiscated his fliers, "raised her voice" in disapproval and reported the incident to the principal." Rockett's teacher emailed the parents and told them that "school is not the appropriate place" for that.

Is Read Across America A White's Only Literacy Event? by Mia Wenjen: Mia Wenjen, a Harvard graduate and founder of Multicultural Children's Book Day, has been advocating against the use of Dr. Seuss as the face of Read Across America Day for years. "His racist views were not limited to Asian Americans however. In his illustration, Dr. Seuss draws African Americans as apes in blackface. I personally don't think that Dr. Seuss should be representing NEA (National Education Association) Read Across America program. Dr. Seuss' heritage should be recognized in its entirety, and that includes his racist past."

The Apartheid of Children's Literature by Christopher Myers: "This apartheid of literature has two effects. One is a gap in the much-written-about sense of self-love that comes from recognizing oneself in a text, from the understanding that your life and lives of people like you are worthy of being told, thought about, discussed and even celebrated. We adults - parents, authors, illustrators and publishers - give them in each book a world of supposedly boundless imagination that can delineate the most ornate geographies, and yet too often today's books remain blind to the everyday reality of thousands of children. Children of color remain outside the boundaries of imagination. The cartography we create with this literature is flawed. Perhaps this exclusivity, in which children of color are at best background characters, and more often than not absent, is in fact part of the imaginative aspect of these books. But what it means is that when kids today face the realities of our world, our global economies, our integrations and overlappings, they all do so without a proper map. They are navigating the streets and avenues of their lives with an inadequate, outdated chart, and we wonder why they feel lost. They are threatened by difference, and desperately try to wish the world into some more familiar form. As for children of color, they recognize the boundaries being imposed upon their imaginations, and are certain to imagine themselves well within the borders they are offered, to color themselves inside the lines."

Where are the People of Color in Children's Books? by Walter Dean Myers: "In 1969, when I first entered the world of writing children's literature, the field was nearly empty. Children of color were not represented, nor were children from the lower economic classes. Today, when about 40 percent of public school students nationwide are Black and Latino, the disparity of representation is even more egregious. Books transmit values. They explore our common humanity. What is the message when some children are not represented in those books? Where are the future white personnel managers going to get their ideas of people of color? Where are the future white loan officers and future white politicians going to get their knowledge of people of color?"

Classics, Colonization and a Call for Change by Padma Venkatraman: "Re-reading "children's classics" I realized how much I myself had forgotten. Though I had vague memories of feeling upset or angry when I read certain books as a child, as an adult I was astounded by the plethora of negative ideas perpetrated by brilliant authors of the past."

Why White Kids Need Diverse Children's Books by Alvin Irby: "The stereotypical ways in which people of color are represented in modern-day children's literature, or are altogether missing, bear some responsibility for the prominence of racism in American culture. Reflecting on the importance of who gets seen, when, where, and doing what has led me to conclude that children's books represent one of the most valuable pieces of real-estate in the fight against racism."

5 Reasons Why Everybody Benefits From More Diverse Children's Books by Roxana Barillas: "White children need diverse stories, too. This is something not everyone realizes. Seeing only white characters in books can turn children of color off of reading, but it also keeps white children from getting a clear picture of the world they live in."

Why Young People Need Diverse Books by Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez: "Research shows representation in the media is an important part of identity development, particularly for marginalized individuals. However, people of color continue to be underrepresented in many mainstream mediums, particularly children's literature."

My Daughter's Summer Reading List is Old School, And Not In A Good Way by David Valdes Greenwood: "As of July 2016, the US Census Bureau estimates that roughly four of every 10 Americans is non-white or mixed ethnicity. If you look at kids under 18, we're approaching 50/50. And we've just wrapped up the third academic year in which more students of color than white students were enrolled in our public schools. Those numbers aren't about politics or agendas; those are the facts about the place we call home. Why should you care? When a required education can't keep up with the world surrounding its students, it has harmful effects for everyone involved."

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A Critical Race Reading of Dr. Seuss and Resource Guide for Read Across America Day 2018

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By The Conscious Kid Please send us an email at consciouskidlibrary@gmail.com for a PDF of this Resource Guide. For a list of recommended books for an Inclusive Read Across America Day, check out our list here . BACKGROUND Read Across America is the nation's largest celebration of

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American colleges struggle with racial tensions every year. Some white students -- in incidents that attract widespread attention or in everyday interactions with their minority peers -- convey a lack of understanding about race.

A new book, White Kids: Growing Up With Privilege in a Racially Divided America (New York University Press), explores how wealthy white children develop their ideas about race. The author, Margaret A. Hagerman, assistant professor of sociology at Mississippi State University, took a qualitative approach, following young white people as they grew up. She answered questions via email about the book and how her findings relate to current tensions at colleges.
Q: Would you describe your research method? How many white wealthy young people did you talk to? How did you define privilege as you were considering whom to interview?
A: White Kid s is based on a two-year ethnographic study of 30 families who identified as white and who lived in a medium-sized Midwest city. I interviewed 36 children who were between the ages of 10 and 13 as well as their parents, and I observed these families in their everyday lives. I drove kids to soccer practices and piano lessons, I went to birthday parties and private pools at country clubs, and so on. I also returned to this community a few years later when the youth were in high school and conducted follow-up interviews with a subset of them and their parents. In addition to their racial privilege, these families also experienced class privilege: at least one of the parents in these families, though oftentimes both, held a graduate or professional degree, worked in a professional occupation, and [they] owned a single-family home.
Q: High schools are increasingly segregated by race. How do young white people today learn about race?
A: Many people think that white kids learn about race based on what their parents say (or do not say) to them about the topic. For instance, after a racist hate crime, I often notice a surge in parenting blog posts and op-eds published that urge white parents to speak to their children about racism in America. One of the most important lessons of my research, though, is that "actions speak louder than words." Whether parents use colorblind language ("We don't see race") or color-conscious language ("We are antiracist"), what they say often matters far less than what they actually do -- and specifically, what they do to design their child's social environment. When parents move to a segregated white neighborhood because the kids in the integrated neighborhood are "too rough," or when they believe a "good" school is a whiter school, or when the only people in a child's life are also white with the exception of the economically marginalized black and brown people at the soup kitchen whom they are told they must help "save," white children notice and develop understandings of not only the position of others in society but also of themselves -- they learn about their own power and privilege through observing and interpreting this world around them. My book tries to highlight how kids are making meaning of race through these interpretive processes.
Q: You write about young people (and also their parents) saying that they are not racist, and then having stereotypical attitudes about black people or behaving in ways that reinforce racial inequality. How do you explain this?
A: None of the kids in this book want to be considered "racist," but I did find variations on why this was the case. Some children believed this label would mean that they were hurting their peers of color, which they knew was a real possibility, even if unintentional. Other kids did not believe it was even possible for them to be racist because racism is "no longer a problem." Race scholars like Eduardo Bonilla-Silva have documented extensively the prevalence of colorblind ideology in America. This research illustrates how white people can say racism is no longer a problem while simultaneously explaining the existence of inequality in our society by blaming people of color through the use of culturally racist stereotypes. Other scholars have also explored differences between what white people say about race and what they do. For instance, scholars like Amanda Lewis and John Diamond demonstrate how white parents advocate for their own children in ways that protect and defend the very systems of inequality they say they otherwise reject. Additionally, scholars like Joyce Bell and Douglas Hartmann show how white people engage in the "happy talk" of diversity while avoiding real confrontations with structural inequality and avoiding the realities of how they perpetuate inequality in their own lives. Certainly, in my research, I found similar patterns.
Q: We are in a period of intense national debate about affirmative action in college admissions. What attitudes did you see among young white people that would influence their view of this question?
A: I found variation in these affluent white kids' perspectives on programs or policies designed to promote equal opportunity and fight institutional racism. For instance, one child told me that she did not understand the relevance of spaces like that of a Black Student Union. In her words: "Like, this one high school has, like, the Black Student Union and the Asian Student Union. I don't really get it. Like, why do they have to be like, 'Oh, you're black, so you're in your own little union.' I mean, there's not like the White Student Union!" Similarly, I witnessed a brother tell his younger sibling with a tone of disgust that he would never get into a particular summer program because the program was more likely to accept "black and Mexican kids than white kids." And yet, other kids told me that they understood the need for policies and programs that would help make up for the legacy of racism in America. For instance, another child explained, "I think there is still a lot of discrimination in jobs and stuff, and there has been for a long time ... Some people are not given certain opportunities that maybe someone would give white people just because they look different, which I think is kind of bogus." This child was in favor of trying to find ways to fix these problems. "We need to do something about this," he told me.
Q: College leaders are stunned every year when white students (who deny being racist) pose in blackface or organize "illegal alien hunt" parties, etc. How do you explain this behavior, based on the attitudes you found?
A: Not only do many of the white kids in my study express limited awareness of the history of racism or the realities of contemporary forms of racism and racial inequality, but they also express what sociologist Tyrone Forman describes as "racial apathy" or the "lack of feeling or indifference toward societal racial and ethnic inequality and lack of engagement with race-related social issues." From my perspective, racial apathy is at the heart of the day-to-day exclusionary practices of white supremacy prevalent on college campuses (e.g., microaggressions) as well as the much more incendiary racist events that receive national attention. My research shows that such apathy manifests itself in white childhood -- like when some of the young people tell me that they "don't care" about black people who are killed by police because "when black people get shot, it is because they fucked up." Kids who do not care about the suffering of people of color in middle school may not see a problem with hosting an "illegal alien hunt" party in college.
Q: Based on what you learned, what would be your advice to college leaders who want to promote inclusive environments on their campuses?
A: My research shows that many white kids are unprepared for living and learning in a racially inclusive environment because of their own white racial socialization in childhood and early adolescence. Integrating my own research with the important work of my colleagues, I think all students should be required to take classes designed to build their empathy, understanding and capacity to act in the face of racial inequalities -- classes based in critical race studies that, as sociologist Jennifer Mueller puts it, make "ignorance [or apathy] more difficult." University leaders should support and value the faculty who teach these courses, recognizing the challenges of this work especially for faculty from racially marginalized groups. So too should university leaders work to address the consequences of racial apathy at all levels of the university -- e.g., syllabi that center white perspectives, administrative indifference to the concerns of students of color, uncritical hiring practices, inequitable service demands placed on faculty of color and so on. In order to challenge the normative nature of whiteness on college campuses, administrators first need to better understand the process of white racial socialization and the insidious power of racial apathy.

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Author discusses her new book on how white children develop ideas about race

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American colleges struggle with racial tensions every year. Some white students -- in incidents that attract widespread attention or in everyday interactions with their minority peers -- convey a lack of understanding about race. A new book, White Kids: Growing Up With Privilege in a Racially Divided America (New York University Press), explores how wealthy white children develop their ideas about race.

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Educators and Race: A Conversation with Ijeoma Oluo

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Educators and Race: A Conversation with Ijeoma Oluo

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Educators and Race: A Conversation with Author Ijeoma Oluo on Tackling Systemic Racism in U.S. Education

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The author of So You Want to Talk About Racespoke with SLJ about what educators, and specifically librarians, can do to better serve students of color and changeinstitutional bias and patterns of systemic racism inU.S. education.

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Common Sense Podcast by Common Sense Podcast on Apple Podcasts

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Download past episodes or subscribe to future episodes of Common Sense Podcast by Common Sense Podcast for free.

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Yale Study Charts the Impact of Racism in Preschool

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Yale Study Charts the Impact of Racism in Preschool

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Preschool should be a world of naps, first friendships, and macaroni crafts. Yet, even at this early age, preschool children are subject to racial bias from their teachers.

A Yale University Child Study Center has found evidence of implicit bias among preschool teachers, which helps explain why young black students are expelled or suspended from school far more often than white students. The study also showed that black teachers recommended longer suspensions regardless of the child's race or gender.

In the research, 132 teachers were asked to watch video clips of preschool children and to note instances of challenging behavior. The videos were filmed using actors and didn't include any signs of trouble. Eye tracking software showed that the teachers spent more time looking at black children than white children. In particular, they spent considerably more time watching black boys.

The study suggests that preschool teachers expect trouble from certain students based on their race and gender, and need training to rectify these assumptions, the study author and Yale child psychology professor Walter Gilliam told the Washington Post.

"Implicit biases do not begin with black men and police. They begin with black preschoolers and their teachers, if not earlier," he said. "Implicit bias is like the wind: You can't see it, but you can sure see its effects."

The study also found that white and black teachers evaluated a child's behavior differently depending on their race. When asked to read about an instance of misbehavior from a child with a stereotypically black name (such as DeShawn and Latoya), white teachers were less likely to say that the child's misbehavior had been severe. The authors believe this is because white teachers hold black preschoolers to a lower standard; they expect misbehavior from black children and so acting out "may not seem very severe at all for a black child," they write.

Meanwhile, when teachers were given background information about difficulties in the misbehaving child's home, they were found to be more empathetic only if they were the same race as the child.

It's unlikely that preschool teachers are intentionally prejudiced against certain students. With black preschoolers 3.6 times more likely to be suspended than white children, it seems implicit bias is shaping teachers' attitudes towards young children.

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A Yale study charts the impact of racism in preschools

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Preschool should be a world of naps, first friendships, and macaroni crafts. Yet, even at this early age, preschool children are subject to racial bias from their teachers. A Yale University Child Study Center has found evidence of implicit bias among preschool teachers, which helps explain why young black students are expelled or suspended from school...

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When Feminism is White Supremacy in Heels

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When Feminism is White Supremacy in Heels

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Your Back-to-School Messages Are Hurting Teachers

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Your Back-to-School Messages Are Hurting Teachers

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Too many people outside of classrooms spend too much time telling people inside them what to do. Once you leave the classroom, it's tempting to want to share all of your advice with others.

Trust me, as the 2015 National Teacher of the Year, I see the irony in writing this. Much like the overweight track coach sitting in the shade of a blistering Texas afternoon punctuating commands for runners with sips of iced tea, I feel I've reached a point where I have to admit that I'm not exactly part of the game I'm trying to coach.

As a grad student at Harvard, I have privilege that insulates me from the repercussions of certain opinions (and even from writing something like this). No district will censor me, "counsel" me, or reassign me for what I say.

This privilege means I have a responsibility to say things that others can't. The realization hit home for me as I sat across from a teacher friend at lunch recently. I listened as she told me how she really wanted to quit teaching. Everything she said sounded so familiar.

Social media is where teaching starts to feel toxic.

The reasons for her distress ring true for most everyone who teaches. They center on difficulties with other adults, especially those in charge, and with student behaviors.

However, because this person is seen as a leader among her fellow teachers, she feels increasingly isolated in her distress. Part of what fuels that, we both agreed, is the need to be a presence at conferences and on social media, settings where your own problems often take a back seat to educational issues and policies.

But social media - social media is where teaching starts to feel toxic. This is particularly true on Twitter, where some flagship chats have all but devolved into cult-like and clique-y echo chambers.

"Edu-celebs" who dominate the platform are part of the problem. For a place that initially seemed to offer an opportunity for teachers to find each other and share resources, Twitter has devolved into clans of "positivity" grouped around people pushing books and consultancies. Their followers retweet messages that sterilize the humanity of teaching into chirpy cliches ("attitude is everything!") and flat statements ("teachers change lives") that are treated as if they are visionary.

Often, this advice comes from people who - like me - are no longer in the classroom. These messages, intended as they are to motivate teachers, often wind up doing the opposite. Seeing hordes of retweets on these kinds of reworked Successories posters can cause shame and guilt in teachers.

They also skirt past the reality that we are seeing a very real and growing mental health crisis in students, which is magnified in the low-income schools a majority of students attend.

Teach Like a Codependent

There's tremendous pressure on teachers to be up and on, always positive, always "engaging." When the issues students bring to school with them accumulate to an overwhelming degree - for students and for teachers - there aren't many places to turn.

This pressure and lack of support can cause what feels like a constant, low-grade emotionally abusive relationship. A dark codependency materializes, with staff told that if they just work harder, give up more hours of their lives, and tutor more, students will "achieve." Achievement, in this regard, of course means higher scores.

Often, these messages are delivered by a corporate or business partner who sends in a marketing person to hand out baskets of old chocolate while using her most dramatic voice to tearfully tell teachers: "You are all candles. You consume yourself so that you can create light for others." As my friend Justin says, that's not only completely unsustainable as a metaphor or policy, it's also a literal prescription for burnout.

The teaching force is overwhelming female, but its administrators are overwhelmingly male and white.

During back-to-school staff development, I always wished they'd just save us the time and write "Spoiler Alert: It's All Your Fault!" on the first panel of their Slide Deck of Shame. Those slide decks almost always came from a white man on a stage with a disappointed expression.

Mansplaining School

The teaching force is overwhelming female, but its administrators are overwhelmingly male and white. The majority of speakers at many ed conferences are male and white. As a woman, this always seemed suspicious to me.

I wondered why, for example, men were promoted so rapidly. One of the boldest displays I ever saw of this was during a district professional development institute where a first-year male teacher grinned as he told us he was finishing up his coursework to be a principal.

Worse, some of the men who were promoted seemed to co-opt certain female traits. They were vulnerable, telling staff about their personal problems. They were sensitive in their feelings. Their doors, they assured you, were always open for you to come and talk.

Here's the truth that fueled those walkouts and will act as gasoline for others: Schools need teachers more than teachers need schools.

Their careful grooming and quirky wardrobe choices (shirts with tiny dragons on them! pants with tiny crab patterns! bow ties stamped with tiny toasters!) were designed for maximum approachability and minimal masculinity. These outward displays were designed to show you they weren't "old school" types like your own high school principal. They were cool administrators. You should think of them as family.

Many used subtle forms of shame and guilt to suggest that their female staff didn't care enough about kids. If women didn't want to volunteer for work meant to polish the men's images and agendas, what did that say about their dedication? Some convinced female staff to organize their schedules, edit and revise their emails, and act as "mean girl" enforcers of their "mission and vision." (If you didn't play along, you'd get reported.)

When I first began teaching high school, I was stunned by the petty indignities, casual sexism, and disrespect shown to my department chair - a woman with two master's degrees and decades of experience.

"I can't believe they treat you like this," I told her one day. "It's like you're an abused woman."

"Am I? I've lost the ability to tell the difference," she said.

Well, that's not inspirational, I remember thinking.

But I also knew it was real. And I found, as I continued teaching, that the abuse moved from concept to concrete reality when it came to certain men.

These men were protected when they harassed and crossed personal boundaries with female staff. One man stands out in my memory - he was so adept at the kind of tearful but manly confession on display in a recent southern megachurch. He was suspended for his misconduct rather than fired.

What Will Happen When Teachers Stop Being Afraid?

It is not a coincidence that our overwhelmingly female teaching force decided to walk out in some of the reddest states in our country. These are places where they've seen their pay slashed, their hours lengthened, their motives questioned, and their commitment to students doubted by their white male governors. And this is where women are finding their voices - and their anger.

Here's the truth that fueled those walkouts and will act as gasoline for others: Schools need teachers more than teachers need schools.

Education critics act as though there is an unending supply of people standing outside administrative offices waiting to apply for teaching jobs. This self-serving fantasy is giving way to real numbers of teachers retiring and resigning, and to many who are refusing to go into teaching in the first place.

Much like the #MeToo movement forced the culture to see the reality of sexual harassment, teacher walkouts and teacher attrition will finally make us all see the reality of the emotional labor and abuse we've heaped upon our teachers for too long.

And no amount of discount door prizes at meetings, banal speakers, or slides dripping with edu-guilt and edu-shame will make that go away.

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Your Back-To-School Messages Are Hurting Teachers - Member Feature Stories - Medium

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Too many people outside of classrooms spend too much time telling people inside them what to do. Once you leave the classroom, it's tempting to want to share all of your advice with others. Trust me, as the 2015 National Teacher of the Year, I see the irony in writing this.

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Classroom Library Assessment: How Culturally Responsive is Your Classroom Library?  

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Classroom Library Assessment: How Culturally Responsive is Your Classroom Library?  

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Teachers, let's talk about a popular topic across education blogs and Pinterest: the classroom library. A quick search on the Internet results in numerous tips, tricks, and ideas for different ways to configure and organize your classroom library. It's an intensive and thoughtful process that involves thinking about genre, reading levels, interest levels, grade-level content, categories, and themes.

Unfortunately, we often see classroom libraries that group diverse books into categories that isolate or limit their use. Simply having a book bin labeled "cultures from around the world" or "black history month books" does not mean your library is culturally responsive. We need to think critically about how these books reflect the diversity of our students, their backgrounds, and the communities in which we live while exposing them to new ideas and concepts. Does your classroom library contain books that include main characters of color or with disabilities? Do your books featuring people of color only focus on issues of race, prejudice, or discrimination? Do they go beyond ethnic heritage months? Do they only focus on cultural traditions and foods?

To help you do so, LEE & LOW BOOKS has created a Classroom Library Questionnaire for you to use as a tool to analyze the books in your library and determine where there are strengths and gaps in diversity. It isn't enough just to have diverse and culturally responsive books, but we also need to think about how and when we use these books in the classroom.

Click here to download the free Classroom Library Questionnaire.
For more information about building a culturally responsive classroom library: Veronicahas a degree from Mount Saint Mary College and joined LEE & LOW in the fall of 2014. She has a background in education and holds a New York State childhood education (1-6) and students with disabilities (1-6) certification. When she's not wandering around New York City, you can find her hiking or hanging out with her dog Milo in her hometown in the Hudson Valley, NY.

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Classroom Library Assessment: How Culturally Responsive is Your Library?

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Teachers, let's talk about a popular topic across education blogs and Pinterest: the classroom library. A quick search on the Internet results in numerous tips, tricks, and ideas for different ways to configure and organize your classroom library. It's an intensive and thoughtful process that involves thinking about genre, reading levels, interest levels, grade-level content, categories, and themes.

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10 Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books For Racism and Sexism

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10 Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books For Racism and Sexism

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A Change the Name Moment-Renaming the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award

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A Change the Name Moment-Renaming the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award

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On Saturday afternoon, June 23, 2018, the board of directors of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) voted to change the name of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award. The change took place immediately. It is now the Children's Literature Legacy Award.

Update on July 21, 2018 re board of directors: when I uploaded this post on June 26 I used "executive board" by mistake. Jamie Naidoo wrote to me about that error; I subsequently corrected it but didn't note the initial error. Whenever you see errors in my posts, please let me know! I'm happy to change them.

Today, I was over at Roger Sutton's post on the name change, and saw that Julie Corsaro had submitted a comment about the use of executive board. She didn't say who had made that error. If she was talking about my post, she could have written to me directly. In a second comment about it, Corsaro wrote

"I'm glad to see that the error was corrected regarding the ALSC Board of Directors as the primary decision maker; regrettably, the change was not acknowledged in context as scholarship demands. As a result, this error has been replicated by others not understanding that it is incorrect nor taking the time to understand the structure of the association.

Today's update addresses her concern that the error was "not acknowledged in context as scholarship demands." I first came across Corsaro in 2015, when, Edi Campbell organized a group of us to work on what we call the We're the People summer reading booklists. We shared the list on social media. In a comment to one of the places where we shared the list, Corsaro suggested that its emphasis discriminated against White people. I wondered, then, who she was and learned that she served as ALSC's president in 2010-2011. She was also on the 2017 Wilder committee that selected Nikki Grimes to receive what is now the Legacy Award.

I am including her comment about the list because it illustrates the status of children's literature. Lot of people think it is a land of warm fuzzies, but it is fraught with politics. It is always interesting to see where and how people with power and influence weigh in, and what they choose to weigh in on. That goes for me, too! There is no such thing as neutrality, and those who suggest there is are, knowingly or not, advocating for a status quo that misrepresents and marginalizes those of us who have made gains in recent years.

The vote took place at the American Library Association's 2018 Annual Conference, held in New Orleans.

As I write, I am in the New Orleans airport and reflecting on what I believe to be one of the most significant moments in children's literature. When I have more time, I will write more about why it is significant. If you have not read the books since your own childhood days, please do. Most adults I work with do not remember these pages from the book:

Those two pages were in a talk I delivered for the President's Panel on Monday afternoon. I also talked about books written today in which characters imagine themselves to be captured by Indians. I will turn my talk into a blog post as soon as I have some time to do that. I was live tweeting from the ALSC meeting when the vote took place. In news articles you will likely see some of my remarks.

As is often the case with some of the posts here at American Indians in Children's Literature, I will keep a log of items specific to the topic at hand. I advocated for the name change and support ALSC's decision.

To learn more about the name change:

Start with ALSC's website. There you will find an announcement about the change, a link to the report from the Task Force charged with taking a close look at the merits of a change. They solicited input from ALSC membership. The report is thorough. Please read it.

Here's the ALSC page: Welcome to the Children's Literature Legacy Award home page.

News outlets have done several news articles. I am also going to link to some individuals (like Melissa Gilbert, who played the part of Laura on the tv show) who have spoken up about the change. I will be adding to this list over the next few days. If you see articles that I did not list, please let me know in a comment (and let me know if any of what I've written doesn't make sense, or if there are typos). Adding a quick note: the curated list includes a wide range of responses, including some from conservative sources and people who disagree with ALSC's decision. Thanks!

American Indians in Children's Literature: Big News! A Possible change to the name of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award!

ALSC Awards Program Review Task Force Recommendation: Laura Ingalls Wilder Award

Saturday, June 23, 2018
ALSC Blog: Children's Literature Legacy Award #alaac18

Sunday, June 24, 2018

Video of Jacqueline Woodson, recipient of the 2018 Children's Literature Legacy Award (video played at 2018 Newbery, Caldecott, Legacy Award Banquet):

In my research for the musical and another Laura project I'm working on I've found it's true. Caroline and many others were prejudiced against native Americans and people of color because they didn't know or experience time around them. They were also very afraid of them. The native Americans particularly because they fought brutally.

But let's face it. We invaded their country, slaughtered thousands of them and stole their land. They fought back.

It's time for us to own that.

In my opinion we need to have open discussions about historical atrocities to ensure they aren't repeated.

Especially in the current climate where a despotic dictator holds sway over so many people in our country. He feeds on people's fears and hatred so wherever possible it's incumbent on us to show people who we were and who we don't ever want to be again.

It's unfortunate that it's come to this but it's a teachable moment.

A note from Debbie: I sure wish media would name ALSC rather than say 'book group'!

Another note: Overnight, the NYT changed the article title. I don't know why, or if that happens a lot, but this morning (June 27) it has a new title "Prestigious Laura Ingalls Wilder Award Renamed Over Racial Insensitivity." Here's a screen cap showing the first one, and the new one:

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A #ChangeTheName Moment: the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award is now the Children's Literature Legacy Award

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On Saturday afternoon, June 23, 2018, the board of directors of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) voted to change the name of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award. The change took place immediately. It is now the Children's Literature Legacy Award.

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A Modest Proposal for your Education Conferences by Jose Vilson

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A Modest Proposal for your Education Conferences by Jose Vilson

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I've been holding this piece in my back pocket for a few years, but, due to the overwhelming need to ring these shots in the air, I have some advice for education conference organizers. I've attended dozens of conferences in the last six years, most often as the keynote or workshop presenter who brings up race, math, and teacher leadership. Each situation has a different context, but the average participant of color often whispers a common thread of complaints to me about the spaces they or their district pays for. It behooves organizers to get a good sense before wondering why educators of color won't come to their events.

I freestyled a few of the complaints as a thread here, but some folks wanted something more extensive. I wish any of these things were just happening to me, but they're not. Without further adieu, here's a list of items we'd like to add to your code of conduct policies:
#1 - Just because two or more of us are gathered doesn't mean any one of us is "starting trouble." If we were, we wouldn't tell you anyways.
This one almost always gets violated. I get it. When there are only a handful of people of color in a white-dominated conference, the odds of interruption are relatively high. However, the ways we see people interrupt make us feel less like you're jumping into a conversation and more like we're being closely watched in case we're plotting against the rest of the attendees. Yes, we generally look like we're having fun. Yes, we're probably talking about how white the conference is.

No, our laughter isn't an open invitation to come in and center yourself. People of color don't suddenly become props for your show when you step into the circle.
#2 - Just because we present some information on stage doesn't mean we're accessible 24/7. We'll smile cuz we want to, dance cuz we want to, laugh cuz we want to, etc.
If and when presenters and facilitators of color smile, it can mean any number of things. We do need personal space from time to time like any person would. As a presenter, I know I'll probably doing more listening than speaking throughout an event. I also make it clear that I'm a human being, so I only do any of the aforementioned smiling, dancing, laughing when I feel like it, not when prompted or asked to do so. If we decide not to smile, that's also not an indication that we're not happy either. But humans who get treated like humans know this already.
#3 - We don't work for "those" kids. We work for all of our kids. Just because you think "your" kids deserve a different education than ours doesn't mean our positionality about this work has to be the same as yours.
So you think you talk equity but still refer to students outside of your school or district as "those kids." There's an ethos oft posed by a hodgepodge of racists who don't understand the connection between how we treat any of our students in our society. Some of this conversation stems from competitive mindsets about our kids while others treat education like a quarantine from the lepers. Even those of us who teach at a school with predominantly students of color but have their biological children in different conditions need to rethink how we model equity. Constantly othering students about their needs while giving kids who we consider "ours" a more humane rendition of education is also an oppression, and we are its executors.
#4 - We're trying to learn just like y'all. If we're there to talk about race, it's because we do it at the behest of the organization (that oft recognizes that y'all need it) or you decided to present on what you always present on instead of calling in / out your ppl.
Educators of color aren't walking vessels of knowledge about racial issues to be sapped at will. Many of us will have a conversation about race with the right people, but it's important to not take the kindness for obligation. We have a plethora of books, videos, and resources created and searchable on the web in case people want to find out more without putting their emotional luggage on our person.

And, if you'd like more time, find ways to repay us. We too would like to do learning at these conferences, even if it's from folks who don't want to have the equity conversation right then and there.
#5 - Being "articulate" might not sound like an insult to *you*, but context and intonation are everything.
I thought we had this conversation back in 2003, but we'll play it back for everyone. The idea that people can present an idea in a clear and precise manner is not the insult. The insult comes in when we don't expect one set of people to present their ideas well. This comes up often for black and brown people because articulation in the face of peoples who've literally had literacy outlawed for them is that much more plagued with racism. I don't care if you heard someone call you articulate once so I don't know why you think that I think it's a big deal. I've been called things worse than "articulate."

But if you'd like to me to articulate the depths of the insult, I have a few other words I can articulate for you [said with a smile].
#6 - Actually, please do ask whether I'd like to hear more about your racial awakening while I'm trying to have this croissant. It's an insult to my breakfast otherwise.
Because people of color are often tasked with handling the "difficult" conversations, that's an emotional labor on top of the endurance necessary to teach in schools that have deplorable working conditions. When we go to conferences with nice pastries and unending supplies of coffee and cream (which is like ad hoc Christmas when this happens), we'd like to partake in the occasional soft bread, please. We don't get to take a break from our otherness in your eyes, so we should at least be afforded the opportunity to not listen to another story of how you came to your senses about our humanity. If it's part of the conversation we're having where you asked how we were doing, great and carry on.

But if you only sat next to me to tell me this story and left ... do we look like restrooms to you?
#7 - The equity conversation is neither a resume booster or a conversation separate from other areas of education.
Now that equity has become a theme du'jour, and even educators with no business having this conversation want to have an epiphany about it, it's important to note that this conversation happened because a lot of folks kept bringing it up when it wasn't so mainstream. Some of us have had any number of personal and professional setbacks for speaking our minds and hearts about the dehumanizing effects of racism in our schools and districts. Having an expertise in this "difficult" conversation often meant setting us aside so everyone else could talk about ed-tech, math, English, or any other subject that people think they can isolate from identity conversations.

It's not enough for us to have a separate equity conversation. It's also not fair for the people of color in your space who know how to do it better be the only folks to have it. Affinity spaces are crucial to parsing these nuances out, but communities can't constantly run away from the conversation out of fear and guilt.
We can do better.
We as adults need to be mindful of each other as learners, too. The dynamic in some of these conferences still posits its educators of color as objects from which to sap energy from. This list isn't a whole new set of restrictions around race and identity; it's a new way of understanding how we approach one another. Instead of seeking to other, we can ask better questions of each other and ourselves. Instead of constantly asking if we're right so you can be absolved from being called a racist, you can just do the work. Instead of hating that you have to deal with our ways of being, you can have a better perspective of the time and space around you.

Instead of spending time attacking people of color for having high expectations of the environments and participants around us, you can turn our energies toward the people who seek to return this country to pre-Reconstruction times.

These conditions aren't threats, but, if these recommendations aren't met, don't be surprised that more of us won't go the next time. Whatever that destination is.

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A Modest Proposal For Your Education Conferences (By The One Black Educator You Know)

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I've been holding this piece in my back pocket for a few years, but, due to the overwhelming need to ring these shots in the air, I have some advice for education conference organizers. I've attended dozens of conferences in the last six years, most often as the keynote or workshop presenter who brings up race, math, and teacher leadership.

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ethnic studies - african american studies

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social science / ethnic studies / african american studies.

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racism in the united states; united states history; black lives matter; african americans; segregation; discrimination in housing; race relations; race relations in the united states; race relations history; discrimination; post-racial; post-racial america; white privilege

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social science / discrimination & race relations

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social science / ethnic studies / african american studies

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social science/ethnic studies - african american studies

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social science/ethnic studies - african american studies - general

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In this New York Times bestseller, Ijeoma Oluo explores the complex reality of today's racial landscape--from white privilege and police brutality to systemic discrimination and the Black Lives Matter movement--offering straightforward clarity that readers need to contribute to the dismantling of...

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being the change: lessons and strategies to teach social comprehension

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education / teaching methods & materials / general

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Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension

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Topics such as race, gender, politics, religion, and sexuality are part of our students' lives, yet when these subjects are brought up at school teachers often struggle with how to respond. How do we create learning conditions where kids can ask the questions they want to ask, muddle through how ...

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troublemakers: lessons in freedom from young children at school

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problem children - behavior modification

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problem children - education (elementary) - united states

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education / educational policy & reform / general

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teaching of students with special educational needs

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education / educational policy & reform / general

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teaching of students with special educational needs

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Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School

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A radical educator's paradigm-shifting inquiry into the accepted, normal demands of school, as illuminated by moving portraits of four young "problem children" In this dazzling debut, Carla Shalaby, a former elementary school teacher, explores the everyday lives of four young &l...

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An Interview with Troublemaker author, Carla Shalaby

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In her new book, the author Carla Shalaby explores the repression and freedom at play in America's classrooms.

Paul Sancya / AP

Lamb-Sinclair: While reading the book, I couldn't help but feel distressed by how much academic time each student lost and how being excluded from the classroom impacted their social interactions as well. What is the danger in the act of exclusion in a classroom?

Related Story

The Case for the Rebel
Shalaby: The danger of exclusion in a classroom is that it reflects, reinforces, and maintains our national, cultural commitment to incarceration and to other state-sanctioned efforts at racialized economic and social exclusion. We believe that people who do bad things need to be sent away because we lack an imagination for a more restorative, humane alternative and because we are committed to actively maintaining a racial caste system in this country. Rather than use classrooms as an opportunity for young children to imagine and to practice a better way, we prepare them for the world we have now instead of the world we want.

Teachers can choose differently. The lesson these young troublemakers offer is a reminder to recenter our ability to be human, to prioritize relationships in classrooms, [and to embrace] collective healing and restorative problem-solving. They are showing us a different way, however inappropriately. The key is for teachers to learn to see and hear those lessons rather than try to silence them.

Lamb-Sinclair: Why is this issue of freedom and democracy in the school system important right now? Why is this a discussion we should be having as a country?

Shalaby: We're getting reminders during this political moment that we have to resist automatic perceived power. We can't continue to treat schools as a place to train children into compliance with authoritarians. It's too dangerous. We like protest when white adults do it in marches, but we don't like protest when black kids do it in the form of righteous anger. We have to learn to see these children as powerful, as our best hope for a different, more human way.

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The Troubling Ways Schools Treat Troublemakers

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In her new book, the author Carla Shalaby explores the repression and freedom at play in America's classrooms. Lamb-Sinclair: While reading the book, I couldn't help but feel distressed by how much academic time each student lost and how being excluded from the classroom impacted their social interactions as well.

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NCTE Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English Presentation at ILA 2018

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NCTE Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English Presentation at ILA 2018

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I Want So Badly to Be an Anti-Racist Ally and Yet I still Mess Up Sometimes

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I Want So Badly to Be an Anti-Racist Ally and Yet I still Mess Up Sometimes

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Tom Rademacher (Mr. Rad to his students) is an English teacher in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 2014 he was named Minnesota Teacher of the Year. His book, published by University of Minnesota Press, is called "IT WON'T BE EASY: An Exceedingly Honest (and Slightly Unprofessional) Love Letter to Teaching," and you can order it now. Full profile →

"Dear @MrTomRad, we have a lot of common peeps and I respect your work. While I can appreciate what you're trying to do with this piece, a surge in racism is not a gift to my children. We have ruined many things for our kids that they will now have to fix vs. make even better."

Val Brown tweeted at me this morning. She was telling me a thing I was writing had very seriously missed its mark. She was not wrong.

Dear @MrTomRad, we have a lot of common peeps and I respect your work. While I can appreciate what you're trying to do with this piece, a surge in racism is not a gift to my children. We have ruined many things for our kids that they will now have to fix vs. make even better. https://t.co/dLvNNsDPDx

- Val Brown (@ValeriaBrownEdu) July 15, 2018

The piece she was referring to, "We Didn't Do This For Nothing," was my imagining of a speech I would have given at a graduation ceremony this year. It was written in a tone that shuffled between playful and taunting, referencing the wave of fresh horror being visited on already marginalized communities, saying, "yeah, we did that on purpose just to toughen you up and give you something to do." I was trying to acknowledge that things were bad in this world, and that young people were our best bet for making things better. I thought I did pretty ok.

Val Brown was joined quickly by Khalilah M. Harris, who added "Actually I reject the framing of "we." Who is the we that did this to them. Tell the truth and shame the devil. Further, the positioning of that generation wholesale did something to you ignores the systems actually working against them"

Actually I reject the framing of "we." Who is the we that did this to them. Tell the truth and shame the devil. Further, the positioning of that generation wholesale did something to you ignores the systems actually working against them 🤷🏾‍♀️

- Khalilah M. Harris (@Ed2BeFree) July 15, 2018

And Kelly Wickham Hurst added "This just set me all the way off. The centering of whiteness here is astounding.

My god, Tom, I need you to fix this. You have actively damaged people with this piece."

I feel you. This just set me all the way off. The centering of whiteness here is astounding.

My god, Tom, I need you to fix this. You have actively damaged people with this piece.

- Kelly Wickham Hurst (@mochamomma) July 15, 2018

They said these things, and more, as other voices I respect joined the conversation, a conversation that has continued, pointing out the many ways my piece was harmful, disrespectful, and erased or ignored the experiences of people of color.

A Couple of Things

I am thankful that these women, these brilliant and busy women, spent time and effort engaging with me about this. It should not be their job to. It should be my job to be more thoughtful about the things I'm putting out in the world.

It was tough to read, all of it, but the pit in my stomach wasn't there because anyone involved, most especially the women listed above, were being mean. Though they had every right to be upset and to show it, their messages, again and again, show an intention to call me in rather than out. Again, though it is not their job to do so, many people involved in the thread seemed to be aware of my own likely emotional reaction and encouraged my reflections. I did not earn this, but am so grateful for it.

And let me say this thing: They are entirely right. I've been doing this long enough to have known 1,000 times over that I shouldn't try to get cute when I'm talking about racism, that I should be especially careful and reflective when I'm talking about race, and not let it become an intellectual puzzle and literary device, which is a shit thing to do. They made me see that when I hadn't, and helped me reflect on that when they shouldn't have to.

And let me say this thing: White Supremacy isn't just nazis and tiki torches, it is the ease with which I framed an entire piece about racism in the experiences of White people, through a White perspective I treated as universal. It is the way I casually said "we did this" speaking as a whole generation, as if "we" are all White, without naming or recognizing the work and experience of people of color. It is the way I talked about a "resurgence" in racism when what I really meant is that even White people who thought they understood are still being shocked to find out that people of color weren't lying about how bad it's been, that maybe we as White people weren't always trying to hear.

And let me say this thing: It really sucked to have a bunch of people I respect, whose approval means so much to me, be disappointed and hurt by my work. I'm someone who often likes to make fun of White Fragility, who tells people they need to get over their White people feelings when there is work that needs doing, to focus on impact and not intention. But I'll be damned if the little pouting White boy inside me wasn't clawing his way out during this exchange online. I wanted to defend myself, defend a piece I thought was well-written and somewhat powerful and, you guessed it, well-intentioned.

I wanted so, so badly to have not made a mistake that it took a lot of effort to let myself be convinced I had. I want so, so badly to be an anti-racist ally to people of color.

And when White people swung in to encourage further reflection and make sure that White voices were also present to acknowledge and support the concerns of the people of color, it felt to me like they showed up to dunk on me after the game was already won, gaining points for the White wokeness olympics that surely will be happening any day. But they weren't. I got defensive and thought all the crummy things I could, but they were doing exactly what White allies should be doing, exactly what I have tried to do before.

I wanted to stay present in the conversation, but I also felt my fragility and defensiveness at being called out on my writing fighting its way to the surface. I felt sick, felt the seeds of every stupid thing White people say when they get called out, the "this is not how you get allies" or the "maybe I just shouldn't write anything ever" or "let me explain what I meant by..." I did my best to process all that, let myself feel it, and then remind myself again and again and again, to listen, to apologize, to commit myself to doing better than I had done.

And let me say this thing: Any amount of this that I understand well, and any amount that I have put myself out there as an anti-racist teacher, as a White guy trying to do the work, every bit of intelligence I have about the ways that racism operates and perpetuates in schools and society, every bit of it has been due to the real work and labor of people of color.

And here are things that are hard to say: I sometimes forget I'm not a leader in this work. I sometimes get showy with how anti-racist I am. I sometimes stop reaching to learn because I get a whole lot of back pats as a White guy who talks at all about race. So, I can stop being careful and start worrying about a cleverly crafted writing piece, and then I can do real harm.

But if I am a voice you respect and that you look for to thoughts on anti-racism in teaching, let mine not be the only voice, let it not be one of the loudest. Connect yourself with the women mentioned above (all who read and offered comments on this piece, as if they hadn't done enough), with the work of Sharif El-Mekki and The Fellowship, of Jose Vilson and all of the leaders and voices at #Educolor, check their resources page and make sure you are reading and watching people of color. These are the voices I have followed, and the voices I have very recently failed.

I am sorry.

I will work to keep my ego out of the way of the work, to be more careful with my words and my thoughts. I will write to serve the work, and not try to make the work serve my writing.

I will do better.

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I Want So Badly to Be an Anti-Racist Ally and Yet I Still Mess Up Sometimes

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Tom Rademacher (Mr. Rad to his students) is an English teacher in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 2014 he was named Minnesota Teacher of the Year. His book, published by University of Minnesota Press, is called "IT WON'T BE EASY: An Exceedingly Honest (and Slightly Unprofessional) Love Letter to Teaching," and you can order it now.

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mobile first webpage developed by mobiletech

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When I ask first-year college students what books they read in high school, they sound suspiciously like the books I read more than 30 years ago: "The Great Gatsby," "Lord of the Flies," "The Catcher in the Rye" and the like.

Surely something has changed since the days of mullets and shoulder pads.

Four educators - Tricia Ebarvia, Lorena German, Kimberly N. Parker and Julia E. Torres - are aiming to foster a nationwide discussion to challenge existing sentiment about these books, while suggesting the persistence of the traditional canon is crowding out other perspectives.

Their project is Disrupt Texts, and it has quickly become one of my favorite vehicles for reconsidering my own thinking about books.

Disrupt Texts uses a Twitter "slow chat," where over the course of a week, a series of questions about a selected book are released under the #disrupttexts hashtag. Teachers, librarians, authors and others contribute to the discussion, which is later compiled at the Disrupt Texts website.

The questions are open-ended. For example, a discussion of "To Kill a Mockingbird" opened with questions about why the book is widely taught: "For what reasons might teachers include this text in their curriculum? What is the value in teaching this text? Do you have to teach this text - why?"

Later, the discussion moves to questioning the meaning of the text, often throwing the notion of the texts being "a product of their time" into stark relief. While "To Kill a Mockingbird" is a product of its time, it's worth asking what voices from that era haven't been heard and valued because "To Kill a Mockingbird" has become so ubiquitous.

Much of the discussion among educators focuses on how using these texts can be enhanced by injecting marginalized perspectives. This is the "disrupt" part of Disrupt Texts. Rather than taking a single perspective as representative for all, the discussion challenges the notion of a single, fixed history. This is the root of critical thinking and a pre-requisite to lasting learning.

Education isn't merely transmitting information; students must be taught to make meaning for themselves.

One goal, in Parker's words, is to provide "underrepresented populations who were never considered when the cannon was created in the first place" access to stories that reflect their experiences. If we're confined to texts enshrined before I was born, this goal will never be achieved.

Some people feel threatened when these texts are questioned, but it's worth asking who's been left out of our broader cultural conversation? What are we missing out on by insisting some books remain fixed in place?

For those who do feel uncomfortable with the notion of disrupting these "classics," Ebarvia suggests we first "question why and where that reaction is coming from" and reminds us that it's difficult to believe a handful of books that absolutely must be taught, given how many great books exist.

I will admit, at times Disrupt Texts discussants raise points that give rise to a certain amount of discomfort. Our relationships with books can feel deeply personal, and to be asked to view these books through the eyes of another requires the occasional deep breath and moment of reflection.

It's an amazing thing to see a book you've read many times in a brand new light.

It's even better to be introduced to books you didn't know existed.
John Warner is the author of "Tough Day for the Army."
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read next based on the last five books you've read.
1. "Future Home of the Living God" by Louise Erdrich

2. "A Gentleman in Moscow" by Amor Towles

3. "Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put on my Pajamas, and Found Happiness" by Dominique Browning

4. "Bettyville" by George Hodgman

5. "Olive Kitteridge" by Elizabeth Strout
- Dana L., Beach Park, Ill.
Time for some Muriel Spark for Dana: "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie."

1. "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership" by James Comey

2. "Hide and Seek" by Ian Rankin

3. "Call Me by Your Name" by Andre Aciman

4. "The Ghost Notebooks" by Ben Dolnick

5. "Death and the Maidens: Fanny Wollstonecraft and the Shelley Circle" by Janet Todd
- Karrie S., Elgin
Something tells me that Karrie will enjoy J. Robert Lennon's spooky "Familiar."

1. "My Ex-Life" by Stephen McCauley

2. "The Female Persuasion" by Meg Wolitzer

3. "Less" by Andrew Sean Greer

4. "An American Marriage" by Tayari Jones

5. "No One Is Coming to Save Us" by Stephanie Powell Watts
- Bobbi B., Highland Park
I'll be recommending this book often: "The Great Believers," Rebecca Makkai's chronicle of Chicago's gay community during the worst days of the AIDS crisis. Impossible to finish this book with a dry eye.

Get a reading from the Biblioracle

To get a reading from the Biblioracle, send a list of the last five books you've read to books@chicagotribune.com.

Columnist John Warner offers his picks for great reads of the year - so far - including "The Italian Teacher" by Tom Rachman, "Bad Blood" by John Carreyrou, "The Overstory" by Richard Powers, "Sunburn" by Laura Lippman, "Red Clocks" by Leni Zumas, and "Just the Funny Parts" by Nell Scovell.

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Is 'The Great Gatsby' really required reading? Disrupt Texts challenges teachers to reconsider the classics

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Disrupt Texts uses social media to foster discussion about the books educators teach, questioning what perspective is lost when the same books - 'The Great Gatsby,' 'Lord of The Flies,' 'To Kill a Mockingbird' - are taught generation to generation.

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Kids Misuse of the Term "Racist" is Dangerous

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Kids Misuse of the Term "Racist" is Dangerous

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An adult who is reluctant to clearly and effectively correct such careless and damaging behavior by children is complicit.

I f you regularly spend time with kids and adolescents in the upper and middle grades, there's a good chance you've recently heard them use this...

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Kids' Misuse Of The Term 'Racist' Is Dangerous -So Let's Disrupt It

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An adult who is reluctant to clearly and effectively correct such careless and damaging behavior by children is complicit. I f you regularly spend time with kids and adolescents in the upper and middle grades, there's a good chance you've recently heard them use this...

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On Compliance: Shifting the Narrative from Day 1

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On Compliance: Shifting the Narrative from Day 1

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is currently an English teacher at Conestoga High School, PA, where she has taught world literature, American literature, AP Lang, AP Lit, and AP Capstone. As a Co-Director for the PA Writing & Literature Project, Tricia has taught courses on digital writing, teacher inquiry, and facilitates the project's anti-bias study group. As a Tricia presents on topics that include independent reading, writing with mentor texts, multi-genre research writing, student inquiry, digital literacies, anti-bias pedagogy, teacher action research, and curriculum design. Tricia contributes regularly to TRICIA EBARVIA 2016-18 Heinemann Fellow, Tricia interrogated the ways in which readers' varied and intersecting personal identities inform the ways in which students read themselves, texts, and the world. Tricia believes that through critical literacy in reading and writing, students can become responsible, engaged members of their communities. As a consultant, Moving Writers and Write Share Connect and has been published in Education Week and English Journal. She is also a educational consultant and teaching fellow with The Educator Collaborative.

LORENA GERMAN is a 13th year Dominican-American educator working with young people in Austin, Texas. She has been published by NCTE, ASCD, EdWeek, and others. Lorena's undergraduate degree is from Emmanuel College, her graduate degree is from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury Vermont, and she's a member of the Bread Loaf Teacher Network. She was the recipient of NCTE's Early Career Educator of Color Leadership Award and winner of NCTE's Latinx Caucus Excelencia in Teaching Scholarship Award. She also co-founded The Multicultural Classroom, an organization seeking to support educators in developing a culturally sustaining approach to education. Lorena is a wife, mami, teacher, and writer. Twitter @nenagerman

DR. KIMBERLY N. PARKER currently works with preservice teachers as Assistant Director of Teacher Training at the Shady Hill School. She holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, and her research looks at the literacy practices of Black boys. She has an unwavering belief in the power and promise of underserved young people and is currently writing up a program she created that detracked her English classes and increased the numbers of students of color in Honors English classes. Kim has taught in public schools for 17 years and has received honors which include: the Marion Gleason Most Promising New Teacher Award from the New England Association of Teachers of English (NEATE); Literacy Champion from the Massachusetts Literacy Council; recipient of a Book Love Foundation Grant; and was selected as a Heinemann Fellow. She has been a Trustee of the NCTE Research Foundation and is the former Secondary Representative At-Large for the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and former president of NEATE. In 2016, she co-founded the Educators of Color Conference with Michelle Li, held in Cambridge, MA.

JULIA E. TORRES has taught Language Arts for thirteen years. Currently, she is a teacher librarian for the Montbello Campus serving five schools within the Far Northeast region of Denver Public schools. Formerly, a teacher of AP English Language/Literature, Julia has served Colorado Language Arts teachers as the Vice-President and President of the regional NCTE affiliate- The Colorado Language Arts Society. As a teacher/activist committed to education as a practice of freedom, her practice is grounded in the work of empowering students to use Language Arts to fuel resistance and positive social transformation. Currently, Julia is serving teachers as a 2018-20 Heinemann Fellow, focusing on libraries, digital literacy, and the formation of reading identities among secondary students in urban school districts. Julia is also the current NCTE Secondary-Representative At-Large. In co-operation with The Educator Collaborative, Julia facilitates workshops and professional conversations about anti-bias/anti-racist education, social justice, and culturally sustaining pedagogies in Language Arts, as well as digital literacy and librarianship. Julia serves on several local and national boards and committees promoting educational equity and progressivism. Teaching, aside from her family, is Julia's greatest love.

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TRICIA EBARVIA is currently an English teacher at Conestoga High School, PA, where she has taught world literature, American literature, AP Lang, AP Lit, and AP Capstone. As a Co-Director for the PA Writing & Literature Project, Tricia has taught courses on digital writing, teacher inquiry, and facilitates the project's anti-bias study group.

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http://thejourneyproject.us/published-resources/

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http://www.imyourneighborbooks.org

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Dear Tricia,

Ever since I read through the beginning of your thread last night and finished reading it this morning, several thoughts have been turning in my mind. First of all, let me say how grateful I am for your voice not only in my digital life. Your leadership of #DisruptTexts as an initiative and community has opened up another world for me, one I preferred to leave to the experts until now. But let me get to this thread you shared.

It's of course a thread so there's a lot more to this and I'm going to pick out the 3 or 4 that really hit me:

I want to pause here. Already at the first tweet I was shaking my head. My bookshelves are testament to the overwhelming whiteness of my reading diet over years. My children's libraries are not so different, although their shared interest in Manga series may shift their reading ratio considerably over time.

I second your claim that we adopt the values that come along with reading mainly through the dominant gaze. I've been very good at assimilating into the dominant culture. My reading choices over decades have reinforced and bolstered that process. And maybe this is what I woke up thinking most about: The way I read, which naturally bleeds into the way I write, is a function of how those efforts have been rewarded - as a student, colleague, employee, and friend. Since my social circles over decades have been comprised of mainly well-educated middle class white people, the language and literary habits I have cultivated reflect that participation. As a kid, I was told by my Black neighborhood friends, "You talk like a white girl." They were correct. I suppose in my pursuit to fit in even better as an adult I learned to "read like a pretty smart white guy."

And this is where I am.

My home library is heavy on non-fiction: sport psychology, parenting, education, cultural studies, sociology, general self-help, psychology, and business consulting and leadership lit. This is no accident. At some time in my early 20's I found non-fiction to be where I felt more at home, where I could explore my interests often with a journalistic lens. In the course of my adulthood reading, I shoved fiction to the margins. I still read the occasional novel and enjoyed it but when it came to book shopping - I always headed for the non-fiction sections first. This is all still largely the case but my fiction and poetry reading is on the rise thanks to some friendly nudges from friends and colleagues.

OK, so that's some background. Non-fiction - mostly written by academics who have established their reputations as capable (and sometimes extraordinary) storytellers is what 's mainly on my bookshelves. That means a LOT of white men, some white women and a comparably smaller selection of authors of color. I haven't done an inventory. I haven't gathered the data. But I know. The spines of my books tell me. There are far more Dans, Davids, Jameses, Alans and Michaels than there are Lenas, Rebeccas or Susans. The few authors of color are most likely to be among the education texts and in my small stash of fiction titles. Sport psychology (the area of my 1st masters) - that shelf is all white male authors. Fitness, parenting and self-help books on my shelves have been penned overwhelmingly by white women.

My 10 y-o's library is full of favorite American authors: Mo Willems, Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak and Leo Lioni. We've read a number of chapter books by Ann Cameron, Sharon Creech, JK Rowling and most recently Chris Colfer's series, The Land of Stories. My older son enjoyed similar fare as a child. I am thrilled that they are both enthusiastic, nearly greedy readers. At the same time, I see the lack of color and range of perspectives and work on addressing that. My school library has been a great help so that my youngest and I have read novels by Jacqueline Woodson and Svetlana Chmakova and absolutely loved Sundee Frazier's Brendan Buckley's Universe and Everything In It, which featured a boy like him - brown and biracial. We also read John Lewis's March trilogy together which sparked all kinds of questions that I needed to research to answer. (Fortunately I was reading Carol Anderson's White Rage at the same time which provided more context.)

My insight as a result of your thread: How our reading lives develop becomes its own field of research revealing things we might not have recognized about ourselves just by looking in the mirror. Your thread reminded me that there is always time to explore, to step out of well worn habits and seek out what is likely missing. Most recently for me that has meant adding indigenous voices to my reading lists: Robin Wall Kimmerer, for instance, and Tanya Talaga's Seven Fallen Feathers. These are only beginnings but they open doors and windows and help me see new vistas. I've made fresh attempts to investigate more fiction as a way of joining new conversations with different people (i.e., #THEBOOKCHAT and #DisruptTexts) This is still so new to me but invigorating and enriching. If not for so many folks on Twitter I would not have read the work of Angie Thomas, Jason Reynolds, Jessamyn Ward or Elizabeth Acevedo. Now that I have, I am primed to seek out more from these wonderful writers and others who are being brought to my attention.

The way you describe your experience resonates deeply with me:

We're growing and cultivating intentionality as we go. Witnessing your example and that of others who share this passion for widening perspectives gives me both pause and strength. It's clear to me that I will continue on this path. It behooves me as a parent, educator and citizen. Sharing the journey, encouraging each other one read at a time makes it all the more doable and inviting.

Thank you.

Sending gratitude, love and admiration,

Sherri

image via Pixabay.com CC0

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Dear Tricia: A meditation on a life of reading

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Dear Tricia, Ever since I read through the beginning of your thread last night and finished reading it this morning, several thoughts have been turning in my mind. First of all, let me say how grateful I am for your voice not only in my digital life.

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by Olugbemisola Rhudy-Perkovich