Michael Bane
Aug 27, 2017 · 3 min read

Sonja Cherry-Paul’s missive is intellectually dishonest and racist against White people.

The author claims she is not blaming White educators for racism. Yet later on, she contradicts herself by quoting one of her colleagues who claims that racism is a “White people problem”. Such a general categorization necessarily includes White people who are educators. The notion that racism is is a “White people problem” is problematic in and of itself. It is an unfair generalization of White people as a whole and callously demeans many people of good will. It denies the obvious existence throughout history of racism practiced by people who are not White. And it’s brazenly hypocritical for the author to engage in the very practice of characterizing people by their race that she claims is such a problem towards her own race.

The next error in the author’s thinking is her claim that teaching should be a “political act”. It simply should not be. The purpose of education is to impart objective knowledge to the student and to help the student develop critical thinking skills. It should not be motivated by “political” objectives to sway students toward a particular set of “political” opinions or views. Objectively stating that the Civil War was fought over slavery, or that the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s was a response to discrimination is legitimate. Turning an examination of these historical events into an opportunity to inculcate students into a particular ideology is not legitimate.

It is absurd for the author to tell her students that “understanding how racism and injustice operates will be at the core of all we do.” How does discrimination influence the results of an experiment in chemistry class? Where exactly does racism lurk in a math problem? Where does social injustice rear its ugly head in verb conjugation? It is fear mongering for the author to implicitly suggest to her students that they will find injustice at every twist and turn of the exploration of human knowledge, even in the most innocuous and uncontroverted topics.

Finally, contrary to the author’s assertion, White people in the education field do not have a larger ethical obligation to address racism merely because they statistically prevail in the number of positions they hold in the field. If the author truly believed in eliminating societal distinctions based on race, it should be sufficient for her to merely state that educators in general should take action. There would be no need to specify how many of them happen to be White. According to statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics, an arm of the U.S. Department of Education, seventy-six percent of public school teachers in the 2011–12 school year were female. As a matter of principle, does the author believe female teachers would have an obligation to take the lead to combat systemic discrimination against male students if it was to occur?

Classrooms are places where students and teachers of all races come together to ensure future generations have the knowledge and skills to be successful and productive citizens. Divisive rhetoric and tactics such as those proposed by this author detract from that overall mission and actually contribute to the problem.

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