Welcome to the "Culture Wars" 8 States Debate Bills to Restrict How Teachers Discuss Racism, Sexism

Although this piece fails to mention Texas, much less House Bill 3979 that just moved out of the Texas Senate early this morning, that's on its way to the Governor Abbott's desk, this piece succeeds in exposing this broader Trumpian agenda as follows:

"The language outlining 'divisive concepts' in the proposed legislation copies sections of Trump’s executive order from September of last year, which banned federal trainings designed to confront racism, sexism, and bias. President Joe Biden has since rescinded that order."

In Texas, as elsewhere, these laws which are largely unenforceable, will
nevertheless have a chilling effect on the teaching of racism, sexism, and systemic oppression in many of our nation's schools. When we know that one cannot teach not only U.S. history, but the U.S. Constitution itself, without addressing our country's racist past, all these bills are doing is whitewashing curriculum, even as they both exemplify and codify white fragility through what a local activist amply termed, "an avoidance curriculum."

Help yourselves, if you like, to last night's entire Texas Senate floor debate at this link that you can locate at 1:33:21 on the meter.

Welcome to the so-called "culture wars," my friends, an old, much-used trope. The whitewashing of curriculum is what you do when you seek to foment anger and distrust toward minorities and progressives as a means to hold onto your political incumbency because you lack either will or imagination to actually serve the people. And geez, do we have needs.

-Angela Valenzuela

#EndWhiteSupremacy

8 States Debate Bills to Restrict How Teachers Discuss Racism, Sexism


By Sarah Schwartz — April 15, 2021

Lawmakers in eight states have introduced legislation that may make it harder for teachers to talk about racism, sexism, and bias in the classroom.

Over the past few months, Republican legislators in Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and West Virginia have drafted bills that would ban the teaching of what they deem “divisive” or “racist and sexist” concepts. The bills use similar language as an executive order former President Donald Trump put in place to ban diversity trainings for federal workers.

Some of these new bills also aim to put restrictions on workplaces or state contractors. All of the legislation uses similar phrasing in listing topics that would be off-limits to teach, including:That one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex;

That the U.S. or specific states are fundamentally racist or sexist;
That individuals, because of their race or sex, are inherently oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously;

That individuals bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by members of their same race or sex;

That anyone should feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” because of their race or sex

The language outlining “divisive concepts” in the proposed legislation copies sections of Trump’s executive order from September of last year, which banned federal trainings designed to confront racism, sexism, and bias. President Joe Biden has since rescinded that order.

Several of these bills have stalled or died in committee—in New Hampshire, where the legislation has been tabled, the state’s American Civil Liberties Union chapter has argued that it would violate First Amendment rights. In other states, though, the proposals are moving through the legislature.

In Idaho, the issue has derailed budget negotiations. House Republicans refused to fund the teacher salaries budget unless a provision was added prohibiting schools from advocating for social justice education, citing inaction on a separate “racist and sexist concepts” bill, according to Idaho Ed News.

The Iowa bill passed the state Senate in March, and has already paused state efforts to discuss race in schools. The Iowa Department of Education recently postponed a conference on social justice and equity in education, originally scheduled for April, in response to the bill, Iowa Public Radio reported.

“We are mindful of pending legislation that may impact the delivery and content of certain topics related to diversity, equity and inclusion and postponing the conference will ensure the Department and Iowa’s educators are best positioned to comply with any legislation,” an event page for the conference reads. The statement notes that the department will plan to hold a conference in the fall.

These bills come at the same time some states have taken other steps to limit the ways in which racism, sexism, and inequity are discussed in schools. In North Carolina, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a Republican, has formed a task force dedicated to “exposing indoctrination in the classroom,” asking parents to report lessons. Idaho’s lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin, also a Republican, recently announced that she would form a similar task force.

And earlier this year, lawmakers in several states pushed to ban schools from teaching curriculum designed around the 1619 Project, a New York Times series that aims to reframe United States history by putting the legacy of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at its center.

“Right now, we’re in a moment where terms like systemic racism aren’t only used at universities, or among people who talk about race. These are commonly used terms now. So we see a little shifting of the tide of what people understand racism to be,” said Kristen E. Duncan, an assistant professor of secondary social studies education at Clemson University. “Making schools a place where students would not learn about it that at all is kind of an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle.”

Waves of pushback can be expected when calls for social change include curriculum, said Andrew Hartman, a professor of history at Illinois State University, who has written a book about the history of the culture wars in American schools.

“When there are social movements pushing for justice in terms of race, and sexuality, and gender, these movements are going to generate a lot of controversy,” he said. “Conservatives are going to push back however they can. And if they control state legislatures, that’s a good way to do it.”
Bills’ sponsors say they oppose critical race theory

Legislators who have drafted these bills say they hope to prevent critical race theory from being taught in schools.

Critical race theory is an academic practice, a way of examining U.S. society that acknowledges how racism has driven and continues to drive inequity. Legal scholars, including Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Alan Freeman, first developed the field. In the decades since, the framework has also been used to study education system, examining school segregation, and inequities in instruction, assessment, and school funding.

“It’s an approach to grappling with a history of white supremacy that rejects the belief that what’s in the past is in the past, and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it,” Crenshaw told TIME in September of last year.

Patricia Morgan, a Republican in Rhode Island who proposed the state’s divisive concepts bill, called critical race theory “a divisive, destructive, poisonous ideology” that encourages people to judge each other by the color of their skin.

“It makes white males oppressors ... and it makes everyone else the victims,” she said in an interview with Education Week.

But Adrienne Dixson, a professor of education policy, organization, and leadership at the University of Illinois who has edited several books on critical race theory in education, said that these lawmakers “completely misunderstand” what the practice is.

“Critical race theorists would say, absolutely, that people shouldn’t be discriminated against by virtue of their race or sex. We don’t locate individuals as responsible for structural racism,” Dixson said. Instead, she said, scholars acknowledge that racism informed the country’s founding principles, and that some groups have to “agitate and organize and demand and protest” to secure rights.

“I think in a sense, they’re setting up strawmen, and claiming that things are happening [in the classroom] that I think are not happening,” Maureen Costello, the executive director of the Center for Antiracist Education, said of the legislators proposing these bills.

For example, teaching about the legacy of slavery and its far-reaching impact on the United States today is “not about assigning blame to the students in front of you,” Costello said. “It’s actually about inspiring them to do better in their lives.”

Decades of scholarship and testimony from people of color have long demonstrated the persistent racial bias and inequities that exist in the U.S., from education to medical care to housing. Still, some legislators reject the idea that racism and sexism are still forces that shape American society, and don’t want teachers telling this to students.

“What inequities do we deal with today? Everybody has equal opportunity,” said state Sen. Rick Brattin, who sponsored the Missouri bill.

“We’re a nation ... of equal opportunity for people to prosper or not prosper. To say that everyone should have equity in property and all things, that’s the antithesis of America. That’s socialism,” Brattin said.
Proposed legislation could have a chilling effect on teachers

This is hardly the first time that states or school boards have aimed to stop the teaching of certain subjects or ideas, said Hartman.

From the 1920s through the 1950s, Southern states led successful efforts to ban instruction in evolutionary biology. In the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, state legislators and local school boards tried to prevent teachers from examining capitalism through a critical lens, or prevented teaching about socialism or communism at all, he said.

Still, Hartman said, it’s hard to imagine how “divisive concepts” legislation would be practically enforced, or that states would take the measures to do so. But any laws passed on this issue could still have a chilling effect on teachers, he said, if parents take it upon themselves to enforce them.

“This bill is very intentional in its approach to shut down equity work in districts. I think they can sugarcoat it however they want. That is what the bill is intended to do,” said Jenny Risner, the superintendent of Ames Community School District in Ames, Iowa.

Leaders in the district, which participated in the national Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action in February as part of its ongoing equity work, were asked to speak in front of the state’s House Oversight Committee after parents brought concerns to lawmakers. Goals for the week included supporting all students to feel affirmed at school; examining how the voices, accomplishments, and successes of Black people were represented in curriculum; and questioning whether any district instructional practices prevented students from bringing their “whole selves” to school.

Anthony Jones, the district’s director of equity, is concerned about how state leaders might decide what is or is not “divisive,” potentially shutting down lessons that could lead to productive change.

“When we’re having conversations about things that we’re unaware of or even uncomfortable with, we need to lean into that so we can learn,” Jones said.

How Can I Have a Positive Racial Identity? I'm White! | Ali Michael | TEDTalk

Great Ted Talk by Ali Michaels that addresses whiteness. Drawing on psychologist Janet Helm, she offer the following definition of what a positive racial identity means for white people:

“A positive racial identity [for a white person] is not about feeling good about being white.  It’s also not feeling bad about being white. It’s about understanding what it means to be white in this context of a heavily racialized society that has historically—still today—distributes resources and opportunities inequitably, favoring white people against people of color. Understanding what it means to live in a society that teaches people of color internalized oppression and teaches white people internalized superiority. And dealing with that sense of internalized superiority so that I can show up and be and live in a healthy multi-racial community with people of color in which we work against racism and other oppressions, knowing that all oppressions are connected.”

I like how she framed her own transformation as a result of taking an African American Studies course. This is why so many of us who are teachers advocate for Ethnic Studies. The criticality that such courses provide bring justice and new ways of knowing and being in the world that no longer reinscribe white privilege and white supremacist ways of knowing and being, helping us to live together peacefully in the world.

-Angela Valenzuela

White Teachers Need Anti-Racist Therapy by Dr. Bettina Love

Excellent piece by University of Georgia Dr. Bettina Love on therapy for white teachers that is good therapy for all.  After all, we are all impacted by the ideology of white supremacy.

-Angela Valenzuela

White Teachers Need Anti-Racist Therapy

By Bettina L. Love 

Education Week Feb. 6, 2020

 

Everest/Getty

The overwhelming majority of teachers in this country want to help young people reach their full potential. Making that kind of difference is rewarding. And yet most teachers struggle to find joy. 

A 2017 survey focused on educators' quality of work life revealed that 61 percent of teachers found that their jobs were always or often stressful, and 58 percent cited poor mental health as a result of job-related stress. 

Teacher burnout is a significant problem, and research concerned with teacher wellness tells us that educators are also experiencing secondary traumatic stress, as they take on the wounds their students bring to the classroom every day as a result of poverty, abuse, toxic masculinity, immigration struggles, racism, family mental illness, transphobia, and homophobia. 

To add more to teachers' already full plates, progressive school districts striving to be more equitable are asking teachers to understand how racism functions in their classrooms and to fight for social justice inside and outside school walls. It may sound counterproductive to ask educators to do this work when they have so many issues to tackle every day, but many of their students' traumas are a direct result of oppressive systems and ideologies. Simply stated, teachers' work lives will not improve until educators enter the fight for equity. Smaller class sizes or professional learning communities will help. For the long term, however, the most important step is active anti-racism.

Teachers need more professional development for understanding inequality in order to confront it. But teachers of all backgrounds also need healing because they are trying to fight the biggest problems in this country one student at a time, with little to no emotional support. Yes, educators who are people of color feel the ever-present pain, weight, and torment of racism and need therapy, too, but White teachers have a different task: Many must first win the fight regarding racism within themselves. 

When I travel around the country talking to White teachers about educational justice and anti-racism, I am met with tears by many White educators who understand how racism preys on the bodies, minds, and communities of all their students, but especially their students of color. They know they need to do more, but the question is what does more look like? The "more" is anti-racist therapy and healing moving toward anti-racist actions.

White teachers need a particular type of therapy. They must learn how to deal with what Cheryl E. Matias calls "White emotionalities" and what Robin DiAngelo has termed "White fragility." Emotions of guilt, shame, anger, denial, sadness, dissonance, and discomfort boil up when issues of race and racism challenge their sense of self. Too often, we think the work of fighting oppression is just intellectual. The real work is personal, emotional, spiritual, and communal. 

The shift to anti-racism does not happen overnight or after one professional development session: It happens through a process of self-discovery, healing, and learning to reject and call out racist ideas, people, and structures. Anti-racist teaching is not a teaching approach or method, it is a way of life.

In her new book, The Racial Healing Handbook, Anneliese A. Singh writes: "Healing means you begin to unlearn the stereotyped racial messages you internalized about your own race and the race of others. It means you as an individual learn to recognize the wounds that racism creates in you, whether you are White or a person of color."

Thus, we need therapists who specialize in the healing of teachers and the undoing of Whiteness in education. We need school therapists and counselors who are trained to help White educators and students process their emotions and their fragility. With healing, teachers will better manage their stress, improve their interactions with students, and be able to continue fighting for justice. Teachers should be offered this type of therapy free of charge. 

As I am writing this, I understand education and mental-health systems often lack the resources to offer teachers anti-racism therapy at schools. Still, there are things we can do. Individuals can seek their own therapy provided by professionals who specialize in anti-racism. Teachers can listen to anti-racism podcasts. Another approach is to form racial affinity or book-study groups focused on healing from racism. (See below for resources.) Teachers can become part of anti-racist social movements such as Black Lives Matter at School, United We Dream fighting for justice for immigrants, or Land Rights Now promoting the land rights of indigenous people.

I have also found the work of Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, a professor at Teachers College, helpful. In a process she calls "Healing Through the Archaeology of Self," Sealey-Ruiz asks teachers to dig, reflect, and discover their identities in relationship to their students, systems of oppression, and how teachers can be interrupters of the status quo.

The work of anti-racism cannot wait. For ourselves as educators, our families, and our students, we must heal.

---

Bettina L. Love is an associate professor of educational theory and practice at the University of Georgia. This is the fourth in a series of essays she is writing about race in America for Education Week.

This story surrounding University of Nebraska-Lincoln Professor Jennine Capó Crucet's talk related to her book at Georgia Southern University is not only disturbing, but also sad and pathetic to the point that that this official statement, in reference to the Medieval practice of book burning,  by the university's vice president for strategic communications and marketing had to be made:

"While it's within the students' First Amendment rights, book burning does not align with Georgia Southern's values nor does it encourage the civil discourse and debate of ideas," Lester told Buzzfeed.

This is horrific and unacceptable, my friends.  We must reject these ways of knowing and being in the world that are openly hostile and denunciatory even toward an invited presenter because they could not stomach her statements about white privilege related to her award-winning book.  We need to call out this comportment not as “white fragility,” but rather as the "white hostility" or "Trumpism" that it is.

All of this argues implicitly, by the way, for a more diverse faculty.  We simply cannot in this day and age be cultivating cohorts upon cohorts of undergraduates without any critical sense of history who do not know how to deal in and with an increasingly complex world.  In fact, these students have not been well served by their higher education institutions and that message somehow needs to get communicated to them.  A diverse faculty is an obvious start.  Requiring students to take Ethnic Studies both in K-12 and higher education is another way.

I was very pleased to see that the University of Nebraska-Lincoln stood up for her.  While a sign of the times, no one deserves this kind of treatment.  I think we should all purchase and read her book in solidarity.

-Angela Valenzuela

Georgia Southern students burn UNL professor's novel following campus discussion about race

CHRIS DUNKER Lincoln Journal Star

Jennine Capó Crucet's award-winning novel "Make Your Home Among Strangers" follows a young Cuban-American woman from Miami as she tries to navigate life inside a predominately white, prestigious New York university.

The author and University of Nebraska-Lincoln associate professor of English and Ethnic Studies was invited to discuss the book that explores race and privilege before a convocation of students at Georgia Southern University, where it was required reading for some freshmen.

But her visit was cut short earlier this week after videos showing Georgia Southern students burning copies of the novel began circulating on social media.

According to the George-Anne, Georgia Southern's student newspaper, students confronted Capó Crucet over what they felt were unfair characterizations of white people in the book.

"I noticed that you made a lot of generalizations about the majority of white people being privileged," the student newspaper reported one student as saying. "What makes you believe that it's OK to come to a college campus, like this, when we are supposed to be promoting diversity on this campus, which is what we're taught. I don't understand what the purpose of this audience was."

According to the newspaper, Capó Crucet responded: "I came here because I was invited and I talked about white privilege because it's a real thing that you are actually benefiting from right now in even asking this question."

The question-and-answer session continued on a congenial note, the George-Anne reported, although some students left the event.

Later that evening, Capó Crucet thanked the university on Twitter, saying she "met some very amazing, brilliant students" and shared moments with some after the tense exchange during the forum.

But a short time later, video of students standing around an open fire burning their copies of Capó Crucet's book began circulating on social media.

Still more students began sending Capó Crucet pictures of torn up copies of her book and accusing her of being racist against white people.

"Are you usually that racist or were you putting on a front to promote your pointless and (expletive) book at my college? Just a question," one female student wrote in a now-deleted tweet. "Work on your ignorance and racism towards white people."

Another student posted a 4-second clip of the book burning, telling Capó Crucet, "Maybe that wouldn't happen if you spoke about your book instead of dissing white people the entire time."

Capó Crucet was scheduled to deliver another lecture Thursday in Statesboro, where Georgia Southern is located, but the school canceled that event.

School officials also moved Capó Crucet from her original accommodations to a different hotel.

That night, she posted a now-deleted video showing her novel being incinerated, adding: "This is where we are, America."

In a statement published Friday, Capó Crucet said she has delivered similar lectures at Stanford University and Albion College, but that "nothing close to the events at GSU has occurred in any of my previous campus visits."

Immediately after the confrontation, Capó Crucet asked Georgia Southern faculty in the room to follow up with the student who questioned her, saying she felt "a compassionate and continuing conversation needed to occur."

Russell Willerton, chair of Georgia Southern's writing and linguistics department, said in a statement Thursday said he was "dismayed and disappointed by the uproar against" Capó Crucet.

"Our department values stories and how they reflect parts of the human experience," the statement reads.

"We also value discussion and debate of important issues from all sides and perspectives. We regret that Capó Crucet's experience in Statesboro ended as it did. We call on students to remain civil in disagreement, even on difficult issues, and to make Georgia Southern University a place that we all can feel proud to represent."

Other departments also condemned the book burning, but John Lester, vice president for strategic communications and marketing, told Buzzfeed that Georgia Southern was not planning to discipline students who participated in the book burning.

"While it's within the students' First Amendment rights, book burning does not align with Georgia Southern's values nor does it encourage the civil discourse and debate of ideas," Lester told Buzzfeed.

Richard Moberly, interim executive vice chancellor at UNL, tweeted his support of Capó Crucet on Thursday night.

"I am proud to be on the same faculty as (Capó Crucet) — I appreciate her important work, as well as her courage," Moberly wrote. "UNL is lucky to have such a talented writer and amazing role model, especially for our 1st gen students."

And in a statement, UNL Chancellor Ronnie Green called Capó Crucet "a highly acclaimed author and scholar," adding her novel invites discussion of the role race plays in society.

Green echoed the statement put forward by Georgia Southern's administration, saying that while book burning is protected speech, it doesn't help foster civil discourse and the exchange of ideas.

"It's unfortunate that an opportunity for an open, engaged discussion devolved into an incident like this," Green said.

In her statement, Capó Crucet said many Georgia Southern students told her how they felt their own stories were reflected in the novel, which she based partially on her own experiences.

Capó Crucet said she wrote the book "as an act of love and an attempt at deeper understanding" and said she hopes Georgia Southern can act to support the students who may feel unsafe after the book burning.

"To think of those students watching as a group of their peers burned that story — effectively erasing them on the campus they are expected to think of as a safe space — feels devastating," she said.

Oct 11, 2019