This blog on Texas education contains posts on higher education, as well as preK-12 policy accountability, testing, bilingual education, immigration, school finance, race, class, and gender issues at both the state and national level. It also represents my digital footprint, of life and career, as a community-engaged scholar in Texas.
This piece by the editorial board of the Boston Globe is encouraging of the new Boston School Superintendent, Tommy Chang, to lead and bring bilingual/dual language education back. Debates around bilingual education are always more issues of
politics than evidence. That is, they have to do more with concerns over national
identity and a perceived loss of centrality for English-only speakers. This perceived sense of a loss of centrality is only true if we draw the false conclusion that we are an ethnically and linguistically homogeneous nation.
Our family traveled throughout Italy last month and was so happy to come across so many bilinguals and polyglots. As bilingual, Spanish-English speakers, my family and I were able to travel about with great ease. Every now and then, one came across individuals that seemed annoyed with our inability to speak Italian, but on the whole, we found Europeans as very much willing to engage us. They were interested in who we were as foreigners. They were in fact interested in knowing that we were Mexican Americans from Texas—"Messico-Americanos," they called us. So it all worked—Spanish, English, Google Translate, gestures, etc. and it was so pleasing to encounter folks on the other end happy to make sense of our questions and needs. It was even playful on a number of occasions—which helped relieve the stress of not speaking "the language." It was of course also advantageous to speak Spanish because of our shared linguistic roots with Italian as a sister Romance language (the others are French, Portugese, Latin, and Romanes). There was some, but much less, overlap with English.
Evidence of the benefits of bilingual education exist in abundance. Historically, once native language instruction began to be provided to children in Texas and throughout the Southwest, that is when dropout rates for Latino students began to really improve. Boston and Massachusetts, generally, will discover this with their Latino demographic once they re-institute bilingual education. This shift in policy and practice will not only affirm a progressive commitment to bilingualism and biliteracy, but the civil and human rights of these children to their languages, cultures, and identities will get honored. -Angela
When it comes to educating the
surging immigrant population in Boston, many in educational and
political circles ignore the evidence of failure all around them. The
achievement gap for so-called English-language learners — students
enrolled in school but without English proficiency — promises to haunt
Boston for a generation unless the ineffective and highly unsuccessful
English immersion mandate is reversed. The Boston Public Schools
continue to watch these students fall through the cracks. Their dropout
rates are consistently higher, and they have among the lowest MCAS
scores in the city. Saving more of these students from a life without
meaningful educational achievement stands as one of the signal
challenges for new superintendent Tommy Chang.
Year after year, a legislative proposal
to bring back other language acquisition programs such as bilingual
education, and drop the “one size fits all” approach, goes nowhere on
Beacon Hill. But Chang brings a fresh perspective, and even hope. He has
experience dealing with English-only mandates, coming from a state with
similar restrictions
on English learning. In California, the number of students who have not
been able to become proficient in English for six or more years has
increased dramatically (giving birth to a new classification:
“long-term English learners”). Study after study has dismissed the
longstanding view that many parents and policy makers still hold: that
English-language learners will acquire proficiency faster if they’re
totally immersed in the language. For example, a recent study found
that native Spanish-speaking students enrolled in the Houston school
district have more success learning English when they’re enrolled in a
two-way dual-language program.
That success stems from the benefits of learning in two languages. As
they learn English, students also need to learn other grade-appropriate
subjects in their native language. When lessons in, say, math or
biology, are taught in English only, students just learning the language
often absorb the content more slowly. In the long term, that
contributes to the achievement gap.
In tackling the immigrant-language challenge, Chang means business. He brought from the Los Angeles district two officials
who will oversee English instruction at the Boston schools: Dr. Frances
Esparza will be assistant superintendent at the Office of English
Learners, and Dr. Karla Estrada, who as deputy superintendent of student
services will be in charge of that office.
Chang understands the
need to expand dual-language program opportunities in Boston. More
important, he can be a powerful advocate to fix a failed policy that has
hindered the educational progress of thousands of immigrants at the
public schools. Chang, himself an English-language learner, understands
better than anyone the challenges of servicing that population. The new
Boston school superintendent should use his voice and his own compelling
personal story to galvanize public support to bring bilingual education
back to Massachusetts. By doing so, he can help save the educational
futures of thousands of Boston public school students.
In this piece by Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, he offers interesting research on class differences in empathy.
While Mr. Keltner’s
research finds that the poor, compared with the wealthy, have keenly
attuned interpersonal attention in all directions, in general, those
with the most power in society seem to pay particularly little attention
to those with the least power. To be sure, high-status people do attend
to those of equal rank — but not as well as those low of status do.
This has profound
implications for societal behavior and government policy. Tuning in to
the needs and feelings of another person is a prerequisite to empathy,
which in turn can lead to understanding, concern and, if the
circumstances are right, compassionate action.
Turning a blind eye. Giving someone the cold shoulder. Looking down on people. Seeing right through them.
These metaphors for
condescending or dismissive behavior are more than just descriptive.
They suggest, to a surprisingly accurate extent, the social distance
between those with greater power and those with less — a distance that
goes beyond the realm of interpersonal interactions and may exacerbate
the soaring inequality in the United States.
A growing body of
recent research shows that people with the most social power pay scant
attention to those with little such power. This tuning out has been
observed, for instance, with strangers in a mere five-minute
get-acquainted session, where the more powerful person shows fewer
signals of paying attention, like nodding or laughing. Higher-status
people are also more likely to express disregard, through facial
expressions, and are more likely to take over the conversation and
interrupt or look past the other speaker.
Bringing the
micropolitics of interpersonal attention to the understanding of social
power, researchers are suggesting, has implications for public policy.
Of course, in any
society, social power is relative; any of us may be higher or lower in a
given interaction, and the research shows the effect still prevails.
Though the more powerful pay less attention to us than we do to them, in
other situations we are relatively higher on the totem pole of status —
and we, too, tend to pay less attention to those a rung or two down.
A prerequisite to
empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain. In 2008,
social psychologists from the University of Amsterdam and the University
of California, Berkeley, studied pairs of strangers telling one another
about difficulties they had been through, like a divorce or death of a
loved one. The researchers found that the differential expressed itself
in the playing down of suffering. The more powerful were less
compassionate toward the hardships described by the less powerful.
Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at Berkeley, and Michael W. Kraus,
an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign, have done much of the research on social power and the
attention deficit.
Mr. Keltner suggests
that, in general, we focus the most on those we value most. While the
wealthy can hire help, those with few material assets are more likely to
value their social assets: like the neighbor who will keep an eye on
your child from the time she gets home from school until the time you
get home from work. The financial difference ends up creating a
behavioral difference. Poor people are better attuned to interpersonal
relations — with those of the same strata, and the more powerful — than
the rich are, because they have to be.
While Mr. Keltner’s
research finds that the poor, compared with the wealthy, have keenly
attuned interpersonal attention in all directions, in general, those
with the most power in society seem to pay particularly little attention
to those with the least power. To be sure, high-status people do attend
to those of equal rank — but not as well as those low of status do.
This has profound
implications for societal behavior and government policy. Tuning in to
the needs and feelings of another person is a prerequisite to empathy,
which in turn can lead to understanding, concern and, if the
circumstances are right, compassionate action.
In politics, readily
dismissing inconvenient people can easily extend to dismissing
inconvenient truths about them. The insistence by some House Republicans
in Congress on cutting financing for food stamps and impeding the
implementation of Obamacare, which would allow patients, including those
with pre-existing health conditions, to obtain and pay for insurance
coverage, may stem in part from the empathy gap. As political scientists
have noted, redistricting and gerrymandering have led to the creation
of more and more safe districts, in which elected officials don’t even
have to encounter many voters from the rival party, much less empathize
with them.
Social distance makes
it all the easier to focus on small differences between groups and to
put a negative spin on the ways of others and a positive spin on our
own.
Freud called this “the narcissism of minor differences,” a theme repeated by Vamik D. Volkan,
an emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia, who
was born in Cyprus to Turkish parents. Dr. Volkan remembers hearing as a
small boy awful things about the hated Greek Cypriots — who, he points
out, actually share many similarities with Turkish Cypriots. Yet for
decades their modest-size island has been politically divided, which
exacerbates the problem by letting prejudicial myths flourish.
In contrast, extensive
interpersonal contact counteracts biases by letting people from hostile
groups get to know one another as individuals and even friends. Thomas F. Pettigrew,
a research professor of social psychology at the University of
California, Santa Cruz, analyzed more than 500 studies on intergroup
contact. Mr. Pettigrew, who was born in Virginia in 1931 and lived there
until going to Harvard for graduate school, told me in an e-mail that
it was the “the rampant racism in the Virginia of my childhood” that led
him to study prejudice.
In his research, he
found that even in areas where ethnic groups were in conflict and viewed
one another through lenses of negative stereotypes, individuals who had
close friends within the other group exhibited little or no such
prejudice. They seemed to realize the many ways those demonized “others”
were “just like me.” Whether such friendly social contact would
overcome the divide between those with more and less social and economic
power was not studied, but I suspect it would help.
Since the 1970s, the
gap between the rich and everyone else has skyrocketed. Income
inequality is at its highest level in a century. This widening gulf
between the haves and have-less troubles me, but not for the obvious
reasons. Apart from the financial inequities, I fear the expansion of an
entirely different gap, caused by the inability to see oneself in a
less advantaged person’s shoes. Reducing the economic gap may be
impossible without also addressing the gap in empathy.
Daniel Goleman, a
psychologist, is the author of “Emotional Intelligence” and, most
recently, “Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence.”
On the topic of White privilege...here is another great piece by novelist Teju Cole on the topic of white privilege that he refers to as the "White-Savior Industrial Complex." He wrote this after having watched the now-famous, Kony2012 video. Afterwards, he posted a sequence of powerful tweets that rocked the establishment somewhat. Note: Go to actual page for this article in the Atlantic to see Cole's stirring Tweets.
From this article that is a must read, here is a couple of comments that caught my attention:
But I disagree with the
approach taken by Invisible Children in particular, and by the White
Savior Industrial Complex in general, because there is much more to
doing good work than "making a difference." There is the principle of
first do no harm. There is the idea that those who are being helped
ought to be consulted over the matters that concern them.
Let us begin our activism right here:
with the money-driven villainy at the heart of American foreign policy.
To do this would be to give up the illusion that the sentimental need to
"make a difference" trumps all other considerations. What innocent
heroes don't always understand is that they play a useful role for
people who have much more cynical motives. The White Savior Industrial
Complex is a valve for releasing the unbearable pressures that build in a
system built on pillage. We can participate in the economic destruction
of Haiti over long years, but when the earthquake strikes it feels good
to send $10 each to the rescue fund. I have no opposition, in
principle, to such donations (I frequently make them myself), but we
must do such things only with awareness of what else is involved. If we
are going to interfere in the lives of others, a little due diligence is
a minimum requirement.
We see these white savior images in film all the time. We see it in real life. To counteract these grand narratives, we must be reflective scholars and practitioners.
If we are going to interfere in the lives of others, a little due diligence is a minimum requirement.
Left, Invisible Children's Jason Russell. Right, a protest leader in Lagos, Nigeria / Facebook, AP
A week and a half ago, I watched the Kony2012 video. Afterward, I wrote a brief seven-part response, which I posted in sequence on my Twitter account:
These
tweets were retweeted, forwarded, and widely shared by readers. They
migrated beyond Twitter to blogs, Tumblr, Facebook, and other sites; I'm
told they generated fierce arguments. As the days went by, the tweets
were reproduced in their entirety on the websites of the Atlantic and the New York Times,
and they showed up on German, Spanish, and Portuguese sites. A friend
emailed to tell me that the fourth tweet, which cheekily name-checks
Oprah, was mentioned on Fox television.These sentences of mine,
written without much premeditation, had touched a nerve. I heard back
from many people who were grateful to have read them. I heard back from
many others who were disappointed or furious. Many people, too many to
count, called me a racist. One person likened me to the Mau Mau. The
Atlantic writer who'd reproduced them, while agreeing with my broader
points, described the language in which they were expressed as
"resentment."
This weekend, I listened to a radio interview given
by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof. Kristof is
best known for his regular column in the New York Times in which he
often gives accounts
of his activism or that of other Westerners. When I saw the Kony 2012
video, I found it tonally similar to Kristof's approach, and that was
why I mentioned him in the first of my seven tweets.
Those
tweets, though unpremeditated, were intentional in their irony and
seriousness. I did not write them to score cheap points, much less to
hurt anyone's feelings. I believed that a certain kind of language is
too infrequently seen in our public discourse. I am a novelist. I
traffic in subtleties, and my goal in writing a novel is to leave the
reader not knowing what to think. A good novel shouldn't have a point.
But there's a place in
the political sphere for direct speech and, in the past few years in the
U.S., there has been a chilling effect on a certain kind of direct
speech pertaining to rights. The president is wary of being seen as the
"angry black man." People of color, women, and gays -- who now have
greater access to the centers of influence that ever before -- are under
pressure to be well-behaved when talking about their struggles. There
is an expectation that we can talk about sins but no one must be
identified as a sinner: newspapers love to describe words or deeds as
"racially charged" even in those cases when it would be more honest to
say "racist"; we agree that there is rampant misogyny, but misogynists
are nowhere to be found; homophobia is a problem but no one is
homophobic. One cumulative effect of this policed language is that when
someone dares to point out something as obvious as white privilege, it
is seen as unduly provocative. Marginalized voices in America have fewer
and fewer avenues to speak plainly about what they suffer; the effect
of this enforced civility is that those voices are falsified or blocked
entirely from the discourse.
It's only in the context of this
neutered language that my rather tame tweets can be seen as extreme. The
interviewer on the radio show I listened to asked Kristof if he had
heard of me. "Of course," he said. She asked him what he made of my
criticisms. His answer was considered and genial, but what he said
worried me more than an angry outburst would have:
There
has been a real discomfort and backlash among middle-class educated
Africans, Ugandans in particular in this case, but people more broadly,
about having Africa as they see it defined by a warlord who does
particularly brutal things, and about the perception that Americans are
going to ride in on a white horse and resolve it. To me though, it seems
even more uncomfortable to think that we as white Americans should not
intervene in a humanitarian disaster because the victims are of a
different skin color.
Here are some of the
"middle-class educated Africans" Kristof, whether he is familiar with
all of them and their work or not, chose to take issue with: Ugandan
journalist Rosebell Kagumire, who covered the Lord's Resistance Army in
2005 and made an eloquent video response to Kony 2012; Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani, one of the world's leading specialists on Uganda and the author of a thorough riposte
to the political wrong-headedness of Invisible Children; and
Ethiopian-American novelist Dinaw Mengestu, who sought out Joseph Kony,
met his lieutenants, and recently wrote a brilliant essay
about how Kony 2012 gets the issues wrong. They have a different take
on what Kristof calls a "humanitarian disaster," and this may be because
they see the larger disasters behind it: militarization of poorer
countries, short-sighted agricultural policies, resource extraction, the
propping up of corrupt governments, and the astonishing complexity of
long-running violent conflicts over a wide and varied terrain.I
want to tread carefully here: I do not accuse Kristof of racism nor do I
believe he is in any way racist. I have no doubt that he has a good
heart. Listening to him on the radio, I began to think we could iron the
whole thing out over a couple of beers. But that, precisely, is what
worries me. That is what made me compare American sentimentality to a
"wounded hippo." His good heart does not always allow him to think
constellationally. He does not connect the dots or see the patterns of
power behind the isolated "disasters." All he sees are hungry mouths,
and he, in his own advocacy-by-journalism way, is putting food in those
mouths as fast as he can. All he sees is need, and he sees no need to
reason out the need for the need.
But I disagree with the
approach taken by Invisible Children in particular, and by the White
Savior Industrial Complex in general, because there is much more to
doing good work than "making a difference." There is the principle of
first do no harm. There is the idea that those who are being helped
ought to be consulted over the matters that concern them.
I
write all this from multiple positions. I write as an African, a black
man living in America. I am every day subject to the many
microaggressions of American racism. I also write this as an American,
enjoying the many privileges that the American passport affords and that
residence in this country makes possible. I involve myself in this
critique of privilege: my own privileges of class, gender, and sexuality
are insufficiently examined. My cell phone was likely manufactured by
poorly treated workers in a Chinese factory. The coltan in the phone can
probably be traced to the conflict-riven Congo. I don't fool myself
that I am not implicated in these transnational networks of oppressive
practices.
And I also write all this as a novelist and
story-writer: I am sensitive to the power of narratives. When Jason
Russell, narrator of the Kony 2012 video, showed his cheerful blonde
toddler a photo of Joseph Kony as the embodiment of evil (a glowering
dark man), and of his friend Jacob as the representative of helplessness
(a sweet-faced African), I wondered how Russell's little boy would
develop a nuanced sense of the lives of others, particularly others of a
different race from his own. How would that little boy come to
understand that others have autonomy; that their right to life is not
exclusive of a right to self-respect? In a different context, John
Berger once wrote, "A singer may be innocent; never the song."
One
song we hear too often is the one in which Africa serves as a backdrop
for white fantasies of conquest and heroism. From the colonial project
to Out of Africa to The Constant Gardener and Kony 2012,
Africa has provided a space onto which white egos can conveniently be
projected. It is a liberated space in which the usual rules do not
apply: a nobody from America or Europe can go to Africa and become a
godlike savior or, at the very least, have his or her emotional needs
satisfied. Many have done it under the banner of "making a difference."
To state this obvious and well-attested truth does not make me a racist
or a Mau Mau. It does give me away as an "educated middle-class
African," and I plead guilty as charged. (It is also worth noting that
there are other educated middle-class Africans who see this matter
differently from me. That is what people, educated and otherwise, do:
they assess information and sometimes disagree with each other.)In
any case, Kristof and I are in profound agreement about one thing:
there is much happening in many parts of the African continent that is
not as it ought to be. I have been fortunate in life, but that doesn't
mean I haven't seen or experienced African poverty first-hand. I grew up
in a land of military coups and economically devastating, IMF-imposed
"structural adjustment" programs. The genuine hurt of Africa is no
fiction.
And we also agree on something else: that there is an
internal ethical urge that demands that each of us serve justice as much
as he or she can. But beyond the immediate attention that he rightly
pays hungry mouths, child soldiers, or raped civilians, there are more
complex and more widespread problems. There are serious problems of
governance, of infrastructure, of democracy, and of law and order. These
problems are neither simple in themselves nor are they reducible to
slogans. Such problems are both intricate and intensely local.
How,
for example, could a well-meaning American "help" a place like Uganda
today? It begins, I believe, with some humility with regards to the
people in those places. It begins with some respect for the agency of
the people of Uganda in their own lives. A great deal of work had been
done, and continues to be done, by Ugandans to improve their own
country, and ignorant comments (I've seen many) about how "we have to
save them because they can't save themselves" can't change that fact.Let
me draw into this discussion an example from an African country I know
very well. Earlier this year, hundreds of thousands of Nigerians took
to their country's streets to protest the government's decision to
remove a subsidy on petrol. This subsidy was widely seen as one of the
few blessings of the country's otherwise catastrophic oil wealth. But
what made these protests so heartening is that they were about more than
the subsidy removal. Nigeria has one of the most corrupt
governments in the world and protesters clearly demanded that something
be done about this. The protests went on for days, at considerable
personal risk to the protesters. Several young people were shot dead,
and the movement was eventually doused when union leaders capitulated
and the army deployed on the streets. The movement did not "succeed" in
conventional terms. But something important had changed in the political
consciousness of the Nigerian populace. For me and for a number of
people I know, the protests gave us an opportunity to be proud of
Nigeria, many of us for the first time in our lives.
This is not
the sort of story that is easy to summarize in an article, much less
make a viral video about. After all, there is no simple demand to be
made and -- since corruption is endemic -- no single villain to topple.
There is certainly no "bridge character,"
Kristof's euphemism for white saviors in Third World narratives who
make the story more palatable to American viewers. And yet, the story of
Nigeria's protest movement is one of the most important from
sub-Saharan Africa so far this year. Men and women, of all classes and
ages, stood up for what they felt was right; they marched peacefully;
they defended each other, and gave each other food and drink; Christians
stood guard while Muslims prayed and vice-versa; and they spoke without
fear to their leaders about the kind of country they wanted to see. All
of it happened with no cool American 20-something heroes in sight.
Joseph
Kony is no longer in Uganda and he is no longer the threat he was, but
he is a convenient villain for those who need a convenient villain. What
Africa needs more pressingly than Kony's indictment is more equitable
civil society, more robust democracy, and a fairer system of justice.
This is the scaffolding from which infrastructure, security, healthcare,
and education can be built. How do we encourage voices like those of
the Nigerian masses who marched this January, or those who are engaged
in the struggle to develop Ugandan democracy? If Americans want
to care about Africa, maybe they should consider evaluating American
foreign policy, which they already play a direct role in through
elections, before they impose themselves on Africa itself. The fact of
the matter is that Nigeria is one of the top five oil suppliers to the
U.S., and American policy is interested first and foremost in the flow
of that oil. The American government did not see fit to support the
Nigeria protests. (Though the State Department issued a supportive statement
-- "our view on that is that the Nigerian people have the right to
peaceful protest, we want to see them protest peacefully, and we're also
urging the Nigerian security services to respect the right of popular
protest and conduct themselves professionally in dealing with the
strikes" -- it reeked of boilerplate rhetoric and, unsurprisingly,
nothing tangible came of it.) This was as expected; under the banner of
"American interests," the oil comes first. Under that same banner, the
livelihood of corn farmers in Mexico has been destroyed by NAFTA. Haitian rice farmers have suffered appalling losses due to Haiti being flooded with subsidized American rice. A nightmare has been playing out in Honduras in the past three years: an American-backed coup
and American militarization of that country have contributed to a
conflict in which hundreds of activists and journalists have already
been murdered. The Egyptian military, which is now suppressing the
country's once-hopeful movement for democracy and killing dozens of
activists in the process, subsists on $1.3 billion in annual U.S. aid.
This is a litany that will be familiar to some. To others, it will be
news. But, familiar or not, it has a bearing on our notions of innocence
and our right to "help."Let us begin our activism right here:
with the money-driven villainy at the heart of American foreign policy.
To do this would be to give up the illusion that the sentimental need to
"make a difference" trumps all other considerations. What innocent
heroes don't always understand is that they play a useful role for
people who have much more cynical motives. The White Savior Industrial
Complex is a valve for releasing the unbearable pressures that build in a
system built on pillage. We can participate in the economic destruction
of Haiti over long years, but when the earthquake strikes it feels good
to send $10 each to the rescue fund. I have no opposition, in
principle, to such donations (I frequently make them myself), but we
must do such things only with awareness of what else is involved. If we
are going to interfere in the lives of others, a little due diligence is
a minimum requirement.
Success for Kony 2012 would mean
increased militarization of the anti-democratic Yoweri Museveni
government, which has been in power in Uganda since 1986 and has played a
major role in the world's deadliest ongoing conflict, the war in the
Congo. But those whom privilege allows to deny constellational thinking
would enjoy ignoring this fact. There are other troubling connections,
not least of them being that Museveni appears to be a U.S. proxy in its
shadowy battles against militants in Sudan and, especially, in Somalia.
Who sanctions these conflicts? Under whose authority and oversight are
they conducted? Who is being killed and why?
All of this takes us rather far afield from fresh-faced young
Americans using the power of YouTube, Facebook, and pure enthusiasm to
change the world. A singer may be innocent; never the song.
Excellent piece on the unpacking of white, middle-class privilege by Dr. Rolf Straubhaar:
Challenging white privilege—something that has been reinforced for
decades to the point of becoming ‘common sense’—requires a regular, committed,
and long-term unpacking of assumptions and behaviour; an explicit effort to
recognize and refute the privileges we are afforded.
As with all forms of privilege (e.g., heterosexual, religious, non-trans, documented status, etc.), white privilege is a bias that must be named and acted upon whenever and wherever it presents itself. Without keeping it in check as this piece illustrates, not only results in biased interventions to help those not so privileged, but it reconstitutes the very problematic of white, middle-class privilege itself, and thusly, the ideology of racial superiority.
When
I was eight years old, I lived with my family in the giant metroplex of São Paulo, Brazil. One evening my parents
took us to the movies to see Back to the Future Part II,
a relative luxury in what were very troubled times for the Brazilian economy.
On
the way out of the film, as my imagination soared on dreams of riding a hoverboard just like the characters on the
screen, we passed by several street-children wearing worn-out clothes. The oldest
of them looked to be about my age, and she was pushing two toddlers in a
wheelbarrow and holding a sign that asked for money.
At this point in my life, my main concerns were waking up in time for my
morning cartoons and remembering to buy my favourite comics every month. Yet
there in front of me was a child just like me in years who was already responsible
for feeding herself and two other children. It was the first time that I
remember feeling the reality of income inequality, and much later in life, it
provided a formative experience for me as I began to study ‘white privilege,’ ‘white supremacy,’ and
the ‘white saviour complex.’ By ‘white saviour complex’ I mean the idea that socially privileged
individuals possess, simply by virtue of their position, some unique ability or
power to help less-privileged people in ways they’re unable to help themselves.
In hierarchical societies both the one per cent and the 99 per cent routinely
receive messages implying that their respective positions are natural,
justified and based on merit. These messages translate easily into a belief in superior wisdom and
capability for those who are born into privilege. We see this reflected
constantly in the media we consume, which elevates narratives portraying noble
white saviours helping marginalized people of color who are seemingly unable to
help themselves—the self-sacrificing small-town lawyer who represents black
defendants in the American South in To Kill a Mockingbird,
for example,or the rich white woman who
adopts a black teenage boy in The Blind Sideand
encourages him to pursue a career in American football. I grew up surrounded by these narratives and found them immensely
appealing. I wanted to use the law to stand up for the downtrodden like Atticus Finch, or help a bunch of lost
black and brown students to find purpose and self-confidence like Michelle
Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds or Hilary Swank in Freedom Writers. The role of people
like me in narratives like these was very clear and—fresh out of college—I was
on fire to get started. My cognitive dissonance emerged about halfway through my second job in
international development, while I was working for an NGO in adult education in
rural Mozambique. I had worked in this field before, as an English as a Second Language
instructor in Houston and with community organizations in Northeast Brazil. But
many of the Mozambican staff in the organization had much more experience than
I did, and most were many years my senior. Yet time and time again, they would ask me for advice and guidance,
often with regard to tasks that were far outside my professional purview. And
time and time again, I would give my uninformed opinion. That’s when the
question hit me: why did I keep on pretending? The answer, though painful at
first, was obvious—it was because I held an implicit belief that I brought a
greater understanding, vision, or something
to the job by virtue of who I was and where I came from. In other words, I had
a well-developed white saviour complex. What can be done to dismantle a sense of entitlement like this that’s
built up over many years of experience and socialization and reinforced every
day? In the nine years since I started that job in Mozambique I’ve been trying to find out the answer to that conundrum.
The process of questioning usually begins with some event or series of events
that makes your privilege crystal clear—just like my realization in Mozambique.
But in isolation, such experiences don’t produce much change, especially if you
let them pass without any serious reflection. Challenging white privilege—something that has been reinforced for
decades to the point of becoming ‘common sense’—requires a regular, committed,
and long-term unpacking of assumptions and behaviour; an explicit effort to
recognize and refute the privileges we are afforded. To quote the Brazilian educator
Paulo Freire, it
requires that people like me be willing to commit ‘class suicide.’ A commitment to class suicide is a process, not a singular event. It
must be re-enjoined again and again, every time a benefit is offered, every
time status is implicitly conferred, and every time advantages are provided that
have no basis in merit or achievement. Recognizing that privilege is unearned
is essential to this process. If this doesn’t happen, whatever actions we may
undertake out of a sense of social responsibility may be held up by a latent social Darwinism, an implicit assumption
that I am in a privileged position to help because I deserve to be.
Unfortunately this is typically what happens, especially in the ‘helping
professions’ like international development, foreign aid, NGOs and
philanthropy. I know, because it’s happened to me. I can think of dozens of moments when I’ve let this recognition slide,
sometimes because I’ve wanted the personal benefits that come with privilege,
and at other times because I’ve acted out of pride—not wanting to give up the
idea that I had earned or deserved what I was given. Here’s an example: Some years ago I was teaching third grade school children on the Navajo Nation in Shiprock, New Mexico.
At the end of one school year, we found out that the students’ test scores had risen
dramatically, improving the school’s position on the state’s performance rankings.
While I was one of three third grade teachers, I was new to the school that
year, and I remember that many more teachers, administrators and parents came
to thank me than went into the classrooms of my two other colleagues. They were
both older Navajo women, and I was a white man in my mid-20s. But I did nothing
to share the appreciation of any of my well-wishers with my co-workers. I don’t make excuses for decisions like these, since there are none to
be made. I shouldn’t have to wait for others to point them out to me since
dealing with privilege isn’t someone else’s job – it’s mine. And while ‘class
suicide’ may seem intimidating, it’s a clear and abiding responsibility for
everyone who is born and raised with privilege. If you think that’s unfair,
consider it a simple act of rebalancing power and opportunity in the world. What’s
truly unfair is that people who don’t share your privileges are assumed to be
less deserving. If you are reading this and are in any way like me—that is, if you are
engaged in social justice work and are at the same time white, or male, or from
a privileged social class, or heterosexual, or cisgender, or able-bodied, or a
member of a dominant religious tradition such as Christianity, or any
combination of the above—I hope you’ll look inside and consider the possibility
that the personal motivations behind your work are linked to a white saviour
complex, at least to some extent. Only when we are willing to recognize this bias and give it a name can
we begin to work against it. And only in naming it can we engage honestly with
our colleagues in the pursuit of true equality and justice.
Thought for today. “He who opens a school door, closes a prison.”
-Victor Hugo
So glad that we have a partnership with the Austin Independent School District and now have Academia Cuauhtli. Check out our AISD Website and consider liking us on Facebook.
This blog got started around this issue of high-stakes testing and is itself a testament to much of what is examined in this Texas Observer piece by Patrick Michels. I would say that pretty much nearly all of us within the Texas Civil Rights community see how much harm our system of testing incurs. It's unfortunate that there should be any split when evidence in abundance exists to that effect. The deeper story is how we have been divided, and as a result, conquered, albeit for the time being. I do think that we—all of us together—are going to win this one, but struggle we must. Part of this is of course suggesting alternatives that I've also written about and advocated for on this blog, particularly the development of a project-based, authentic assessment system. Here is a good, earlier post to that effect:
National and local civil rights groups
are divided on their support for the growing opt-out movement protesting
standardized tests.
Late last school year, as word spread in Houston
that a growing number of parents planned to protest standardized
testing by keeping their kids home on test day, the Houston Independent
School District reached out with a not-so-friendly reminder.
In a letter to parents, a district official noted that failure to show
up on state test day would result in “negative consequences” such as a
score of zero and mandatory summer school.
The letter was notable, first of all, because it wasn’t true; the
district soon backtracked, calling the threats an editing error. But the
greater truth behind the missive is how far the opt-out movement has
come in such a short time. Three years ago, just a handful of Texas
parents, frustrated by the way testing and test prep had come to
dominate their children’s class time, were pulling their kids from test
days as a sort of civil disobedience, to deprive schools of at least a
few precious test scores. This year, the movement was large enough to
compel a response from the district.
Much of that is thanks to a group called Community Voices for Public
Education, which held meetings in homes around the city explaining
parents’ rights. Ruth Kravetz, a former HISD administrator who
co-founded the group, says she knew of one parent who opted out in 2014.
She counted 80 parents doing so this year.
The opt-out movement has grown even faster outside the state,
particularly in hotbeds of resistance to the national Common Core
standards. Around 200,000 children opted out this year in New York. The
growing movement’s most visible members — in the press and in positions
of leadership — have been mostly white, middle- and upper-class parents;
the opt-out trend has been criticized for sidelining the voices of poor
black and Latino parents.
Against that backdrop, 12 national civil rights groups signed a letter
in May opposing the opt-out movement and suggesting the language of
civil rights had been “appropriated” wrongly by the anti-test crowd.
“When parents ‘opt out’ of tests — even when out of protest for
legitimate concerns — they’re not only making a choice for their own
child, they’re inadvertently making a choice to undermine efforts to
improve schools for every child,” they wrote.
But the letter reflects a split among civil rights groups — in some
cases, even different chapters of the same group. The national NAACP
signed the letter, for instance, even as its local chapter in Seattle
was celebrating its massive opt-out drive.
The national League of United Latin American Citizens signed the
letter, too, putting it at odds with its largest state chapter, Texas.
“LULAC began in Texas, and Texas LULAC has consistently been against
high-stakes testing,” says University of Texas professor Angela
Valenzuela. “The national organizations do not at all reflect the
studied opinion of LULAC in our state.”
Valenzuela is a former education committee chair for the group’s
Texas chapter and was also part of the Latino-led resistance to
standardized testing in the 1990s, when the state first began denying
high school diplomas to students for failing state tests. That policy
prompted a lawsuit from Dr. Hector P. Garcia’s American GI Forum on
behalf of poor students of color almost 20 years before affluent Anglo
parents rallied state lawmakers to their cause.
Valenzuela’s own children opted out of tests in the early 2000s, and
she knows of other Latino students who avoided the tests out of protest,
without a large movement behind them, and graduated anyway. But
challenging schools and facing threats from officials is a lot to ask of
parents who may be poor or don’t speak English.
Anecdotally, opt-out activists say their growing movement is getting
less white, but it will always be easier for affluent parents to take
part.
Kravetz, who helped organize this year’s opt-out drive in Houston,
says black or Latino parents account for about 70 percent of those she
knows opted out this year. It’s “crazy talk,” she says, to call the
testing in Houston’s schools today a civil right; she expects next
year’s opt-out effort will draw even more working-class parents as more
people realize it’s their best chance at change.
In June, Community Voices for Public Education joined dozens of civil rights and education groups in a letter highlighting
the broad local support for opting out. “High-stakes standardized
tests, rather than reducing the opportunity gap, have been used to rank,
sort, label, and punish Black and Latino students, and recent
immigrants to this country,” they wrote.
“Had you talked to me three years ago, I would’ve said there’s no way
that opting out is something that can make things better. I would say
we have to change minds and change laws. But at this point, it looks
like they’re going to be over-testing our children until all our schools
are closed,” Kravetz says. “You can’t operate like testing people is
going to make them not be poor.”
Correction: This story has been corrected from an earlier
version, which mistakenly cited the work of Loyola University Chicago
researcher Amy Shuffelton as related to the testing “opt-out” movement;
her recent article dealt with school privatization and women “opting out” of the workplace.
Short, but important, piece. Here's an updated link to the U.S. Senate Report mentioned within. For profit institutions receive billions of dollars in student aid from the U.S. government. We should consider that the growth of such institutions is correlated with a lack of financial support for public institutions that have educated the very students that these for-profit institutions are targeting, e.g., non-traditional, frequently older students, low-income minorities, and the like. -Angela
Why do Americans mistrust for-profit universities?
A RECENTLY announced tie-up
between the Thunderbird School of Global Management, a business school
based in Arizona, and Laureate, a privately owned higher-education firm,
has antagonised students. A petition, signed by around 2,000
Thunderbird students and alumni, claims that their degrees will be
cheapened by the association with a for-profit organisation. Why do
Americans mistrust firms that make a profit from educating students?
America
has a long history of for-profit colleges. They once fulfilled an
important role in the country’s education system. Traditionally, they
were small and tended to offer vocational qualifications or part-time
programmes to cater to working adults. But over the past three decades,
for-profit higher education has grown quickly. In 1980, just 1% of
American students were enrolled at a for-profit college; by 2008, 8%
were. Among black and Hispanic students, who are under-represented at
traditional universities, the proportion is far higher. Much of this
increase is due to the rise of mega-institutions that offer huge online
programmes. The largest is the University of Phoenix, which is owned by
the Apollo Group, a publicly traded company. In 2010, nearly half a
million students were enrolled on its degree programmes.
As the sector has grown, so has the criticism. This culminated in a report published by a Senate committee last year.
It found that for-profit colleges received $32 billion from the US
government in student aid in the 2009-10 academic year. They also charge
far higher tuition fees than comparable state universities. Yet they
spend much less per student on instruction. Indeed, they typically spend
a lot more on marketing their courses than they do on teaching them.
This may explain why the majority of students on their degree programmes
drop out long before they graduate. In 2008-09 the median length of
study for a student at a for-profit university was just four months. The
inference is that for-profit universities recruit anyone who is
eligible for Federal funds but care little about what happens to them
afterwards.
Such a business model is not sustainable. As their
image has deteriorated, enrolments have started to fall. In 2011, the
number of students attending such institutions fell by 2.8%, compared
with a drop of 0.2% across the whole university system, according to the
National Center for Education Statistics. Some think their decline will
be exacerbated as more prestigious universities move into online
education and offer more flexible degree programmes. The government,
too, is likely to become more picky about which colleges it doles out
money to. So for-profits may have to change tack. Many traditional
American universities are strapped for cash. So higher-education
businesses might try to partner with them. In return for a cut of the
profits, firms can offer their expertise of running big online courses
and opening lucrative foreign campuses. In return, they get to use the
universities' good names. Indeed, this is the thinking behind the
Thunderbird-Laureate deal. It seems the perfect solution. But only if
they can keep the revolting students in check.
The United States has the second highest number of Spanish speakers
in the world—more than Spain and second after Mexico, according to a report published this week by the Instituto Cervantes.
It’s a finding that confirms the importance of Spanish in the U.S.
and the importance of the U.S. in the Spanish-speaking world, a level of
significance that will only rise in the future.
About 470 million people in the world speak Spanish as their native
language; another 89 million speak the language to some level. Mexico,
with 121 million Spanish speakers, represents far and above the largest
population of Spanish speakers, while the U.S. has 53 million Spanish
speakers (41 million of those native speakers).
The two North American countries are followed by Colombia (48 million), Spain (47 million), and Argentina (42 million).
By 2050, the U.S. will overtake Mexico as the largest
Spanish-speaking country in the world, the report predicts, thanks to
increased population growth in Latino communities. More than half of the
country’s population growth between 2000 and 2010 came from Latinos,
the report says, and more than 73 percent of Latino families in the U.S.
speak Spanish in their home.
The report also explores the impact of Spanish on the internet: it’s
the third top language used on the web, after English and Chinese. It’s
also the number two language on Facebook, the number two language on
Wikipedia in terms of visits, and the number three language on Twitter
after English and Japanese.
Great AFT-sponsored video! We are so fortunate to have teacher Maria Dominguez, first-grade bilingual teacher at Rodriguez Elementary School, a Title I school in Austin, Texas, as one of our great teachers within our district.
It helped her to "come out of the shadows and have a sense of belonging." Besides being a teacher, she is now personally involved in advocacy in the community and counts herself among the 650,000 DREAMers who have benefited from DACA (i.e., are "DACA-mented").
I am perpetually impressed with our DREAMers/DACA-mented students. They continue to demonstrate just how much they have to offer our children, schools, and country. This is the demographic of destiny and we are all the better for it.
Great reflection by John Metta on the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that whites reinscribe racism in U.S. society. This came from a sermon that the author delivered. He opened his sermon with this quote from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who is on target:
“The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it’s a lie. I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America. When you are black in America and you fall in love with a white person, race doesn’t matter when you’re alone together because it’s just you and your love. But the minute you step outside, race matters. But we don’t talk about it. We don’t even tell our white partners the small things that piss us off and the things we wish they understood better, because we’re worried they will say we’re overreacting, or we’re being too sensitive. And we don’t want them to say, Look how far we’ve come, just forty years ago it would have been illegal for us to even be a couple blah blah blah, because you know what we’re thinking when they say that? We’re thinking why the fuck should it ever have been illegal anyway? But we don’t say any of this stuff. We let it pile up inside our heads and when we come to nice liberal dinners like this, we say that race doesn’t matter because that’s what we’re supposed to say, to keep our nice liberal friends comfortable. It’s true. I speak from experience.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
Central quote:
"But here is the irony, here's the thing that all the angry Black people
know, and no calmly debating White people want to admit: The entire discussion of race in America centers around the protection of White feelings."
Former Park Ranger, Navy submariner, Army wartime medic. Always writing.
Posted:
Updated:
What follows is the text of a "sermon" that I gave as a "congregational reflection" to an all White audience at the Bethel Congregational United Church of Christ on Sunday, June 28th. The sermon was begun with a reading of The Good Samaritan story, and this wonderful quote from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah.
A
couple weeks ago, I was debating what I was going to talk about in this
sermon. I told Pastor Kelly Ryan I had great reservations talking about
the one topic that I think about every single day.
Then, a
terrorist massacred nine innocent people in a church that I went to, in a
city that I still think of as home. At that point, I knew that despite
any misgivings, I needed to talk about race.
You see, I don't talk about race with White people. To illustrate why, I'll tell a story:
It
was probably about 15 years ago when a conversation took place between
my aunt, who is White and lives in New York State, and my sister, who is
Black and lives in North Carolina. This conversation can be distilled
to a single sentence, said by my Black sister:
"The only
difference between people in The North and people in The South is that
down here, at least people are honest about being racist."
There
was a lot more to that conversation, obviously, but I suggest that it
can be distilled into that one sentence because it has been, by my White
aunt. Over a decade later, this sentence is still what she talks about.
It has become the single most important aspect of my aunt's
relationship with my Black family. She is still hurt by the suggestion
that people in New York, that she, a northerner, a liberal, a good
person who has Black family members, is a racist.
This perfectly illustrates why I don't talk about race with White people. Even- or rather, especially- my own family.
I
love my aunt. She's actually my favorite aunt, and believe me, I have a
lot of awesome aunts to choose from. But the facts are actually quite
in my sister's favor on this one. New York State is one of the most segregated states
in the country. Buffalo, New York where my aunt lives is one of the 10
most segregated school systems in the country. The racial inequality of
the area she inhabits is so bad that it has been the subject of reports
by the Civil Rights Action Network and the NAACP.
Those, however,
are facts that my aunt does not need to know. She does not need to live
with the racial segregation and oppression of her home. As a white
person with upward mobility, she has continued to improve her situation.
She moved out of the area I grew up in- she moved to an area with
better schools. She doesn't have to experience racism, and so it is not
real to her.
Nor does it dawn on her that the very fact that she
moved away from an increasingly Black neighborhood to live in a White
suburb might itself be a aspect of racism. She doesn't need to realize
that "better schools" exclusively means "whiter schools."
I don't
talk about race with White people because I have so often seen it go
nowhere. When I was younger, I thought it was because all white people
are racist. Recently, I've begun to understand that it's more nuanced
than that.
To understand, you have to know that Black people think
in terms of Black people. We don't see a shooting of an innocent Black
child in another state as something separate from us because we know
viscerally that it could be our child, our parent, or us, that is shot.
The
shooting of Walter Scott in North Charleston resonated with me because
Walter Scott was portrayed in the media as a deadbeat and a criminal-
but when you look at the facts about the actual man, he was nearly
indistinguishable from my own father.
Racism affects us directly
because the fact that it happened at a geographically remote location or
to another Black person is only a coincidence, an accident. It could
just as easily happen to us- right here, right now.
Black people
think in terms of we because we live in a society where the social and
political structures interact with us as Black people.
White people do not think in terms of we. White people have the
privilege to interact with the social and political structures of our
society as individuals. You are "you," I am "one of them." Whites are
often not directly affected by racial oppression even in their own
community, so what does not affect them locally has little chance of
affecting them regionally or nationally. They have no need, nor often
any real desire, to think in terms of a group. They are supported by the
system, and so are mostly unaffected by it.
What they are
affected by are attacks on their own character. To my aunt, the
suggestion that "people in The North are racist" is an attack on her as a
racist. She is unable to differentiate her participation within a
racist system (upwardly mobile, not racially profiled, able to move to
White suburbs, etc.) from an accusation that she, individually, is a
racist. Without being able to make that differentiation, White people in
general decide to vigorously defend their own personal non-racism, or
point out that it doesn't exist because they don't see it.
The
result of this is an incessantly repeating argument where a Black person
says "Racism still exists. It is real," and a white person argues
"You're wrong, I'm not racist at all. I don't even see any racism." My
aunt's immediate response is not "that is wrong, we should do better."
No, her response is self-protection: "That's not my fault, I didn't do
anything. You are wrong."
Racism is not slavery. As President Obama said,
it's not avoiding the use of the word Nigger. Racism is not white water
fountains and the back of the bus. Martin Luther King did not end
racism. Racism is a cop severing the spine of an innocent man. It is a
12 year old child being shot for playing with a toy gun in a state where
it is legal to openly carry firearms.
But racism is even more
subtle than that. It's more nuanced. Racism is the fact that "White"
means "normal" and that anything else is different. Racism is our
acceptance of an all white Lord of the Rings cast because of historical accuracy, ignoring the fact that this is a world with an entirely fictionalized history.
Even when we make shit up, we want it to be white.
And
racism is the fact that we all accept that it is white. Benedict
Cumberbatch playing Khan in Star Trek. Khan, who is from India. Is there
anyone Whiter than Benedict fucking Cumberbatch? What? They needed a
"less racial" cast because they already had the Black Uhura character?
That is racism. Once you let yourself see it, it's there all the time.
Black
children learn this when their parents give them "The Talk." When they
are sat down at the age of five or so and told that their best friend's
father is not sick, and not in a bad mood- he just doesn't want his son
playing with you. Black children grow up early to life in The Matrix.
We're not given a choice of the red or blue pill. Most white people,
like my aunt, never have to choose. The system was made for White
people, so White people don't have to think about living in it.
But we can't point this out.
Living every single day with institutionalized racism and then having
to argue its very existence, is tiring, and saddening, and angering.
Yet if we express any emotion while talking about it, we're tone
policed, told we're being angry. In fact, a key element in any racial
argument in America is the Angry Black person, and racial discussions
shut down when that person speaks. The Angry Black person invalidates
any arguments about racism because they are "just being overly
sensitive," or "too emotional," or- playing the race card. Or even
worse, we're told that we are being racist (Does any intelligent person
actually believe a systematically oppressed demographic has the ability
to oppress those in power?)
But here is the irony, here's the
thing that all the angry Black people know, and no calmly debating White
people want to admit: The entire discussion of race in America centers around the protection of White feelings.
Ask
any Black person and they'll tell you the same thing. The reality of
thousands of innocent people raped, shot, imprisoned, and systematically
disenfranchised are less important than the suggestion that a single
White person might be complicit in a racist system.
This is the country we live in. Millions of Black lives are valued less than a single White person's hurt feelings.
White
people and Black people are not having a discussion about race. Black
people, thinking as a group, are talking about living in a racist
system. White people, thinking as individuals, refuse to talk about "I,
racist" and instead protect their own individual and personal goodness.
In doing so, they reject the existence of racism.
But arguing about personal non-racism is missing the point.
Despite
what the Charleston Massacre makes things look like, people are dying
not because individuals are racist, but because individuals are helping
support a racist system by wanting to protect their own non-racist self
beliefs.
People are dying because we are supporting a racist system that justifies White people killing Black people.
We
see this in the way that one Muslim killer is a sign of Islamic terror;
in the way one Mexican thief is a pointer to the importance of border
security; in one innocent, unarmed Black man is shot in the back by a
cop, then sullied in the media as a thug and criminal.
And in the
way a white racist in a state that still flies the confederate flag is
seen as "troubling" and "unnerving." In the way people "can't understand
why he would do such a thing."
A white person smoking pot is a
"Hippie" and a Black person doing it is a "criminal." It's evident in
the school to prison pipeline and the fact that there are close to 20
people of color in prison for every white person.
There's a headline from The Independent
that sums this up quite nicely: "Charleston shooting: Black and Muslim
killers are 'terrorists' and 'thugs'. Why are white shooters called
'mentally ill'?"
I'm gonna read that again: "Black and Muslim
killers are 'terrorists' and 'thugs'. Why are white shooters called
'mentally ill'?"
Did you catch that? It's beautifully subtle. This
is an article talking specifically about the different way we treat
people of color in this nation and even in this article's headline, the
white people are "shooters" and the Black and Muslim people are
"killers."
Even when we're talking about racism, we're using
racist language to make people of color look dangerous and make White
people come out as not so bad.
Just let that sink in for a minute, then ask yourself why Black people are angry when they talk about race.
The
reality of America is that White people are fundamentally good, and so
when a white person commits a crime, it is a sign that they, as an
individual, are bad. Their actions as a person are not indicative of any
broader social construct. Even the fact that America has a growing
number of violent hate groups, populated mostly by white men, and that
nearly *all* serial killers are white men can not shadow the fundamental
truth of white male goodness. In fact, we like White serial killers so
much, we make mini-series about them.
White people are good as a whole, and only act badly as individuals.
People
of color, especially Black people (but boy we can talk about "The
Mexicans" in this community), are seen as fundamentally bad. There might
be a good one- and we are always quick to point them out to our
friends, show them off as our Academy Award for "Best Non-Racist in a
White Role"- but when we see a bad one, it's just proof that the rest
are, as a rule, bad.
This, all of this, expectation, treatment,
thought, the underlying social system that puts White in the position of
Normal and good, and Black in the position of "other" and "bad," all of
this, is racism.
And White people, every single one of you, are complicit in this racism because you benefit directly from it.
This
is why I don't like the story of the good samaritan. Everyone likes to
think of themselves as the person who sees someone beaten and bloodied
and helps him out.
That's too easy.
If I could re-write that
story, I'd rewrite it from the perspective of Black America. What if
the person wasn't beaten and bloody? What if it wasn't so obvious? What
if they were just systematically challenged in a thousand small ways
that actually made it easier for you to succeed in life?
Would you be so quick to help then, or would you, like most White people, stay silent and let it happen.
Here's
what I want to say to you: Racism is so deeply embedded in this country
not because of the racist right-wing radicals who practice it openly,
it exists because of the silence and hurt feelings of liberal America.
That's
what I want to say, but really, I can't. I can't say that because I've
spent my life not talking about race to White people. In a big way, it's
my fault. Racism exists because I, as a Black person, don't challenge
you to look at it.
Racism exists because I, not you, am silent.
But
I'm caught in the perfect Catch 22, because when I start pointing out
racism, I become the Angry Black Person, and the discussion shuts down
again. So I'm stuck.
All the Black voices in the world speaking
about racism all the time do not move White people to think about it-
but one White John Stewart talking about Charleston has a whole lot of
White people talking about it. That's the world we live in. Black people
can't change it while White people are silent and deaf to our words.
White
people are in a position of power in this country because of racism.
The question is: Are they brave enough to use that power to speak
against the system that gave it to them?
So I'm asking you to help
me. Notice this. Speak up. Don't let it slide. Don't stand watching in
silence. Help build a world where it never gets to the point where the
Samaritan has to see someone bloodied and broken.
As for me, I
will no longer be silent. I'm going to try to speak kindly, and softly,
but that's gonna be hard. Because it's getting harder and harder for me
to think about the protection of White people's feelings when White
people don't seem to care at all about the loss of so many Black lives. This blog was originally published on Medium.com.
