The Danger of Not Teaching Anti-Racism In Schools
There are a few sentiments I hear expressed on a regular basis from adults of my generation. Perhaps I should be more specific in where these comments originate: from white adults of my generation. Perhaps I should also mention that I am a Generation X member which are people born between 1961 and 1981.
To be clear: I am directing this message to white Generation X folks. This is for you.
It’s hard not to paint with a broad brush because I’m mindful that not every white Gen Xer attended a school that was wholly homogeneous in race. In fact, I don’t know a single person in my life who didn’t go to a school where other races were represented be they in small or large numbers. What I do know, however, is that nearly every school I’ve worked in or researched or been made aware of by fellow X-men (I kind of like this moniker so let’s go with it even though it’s sounds patriarchal but honestly, it makes us out to be superheroes) is that none of them actively taught us to be anti-racist.
Schools don’t like touching that topic unless it comes up and even then have failed, historically, to address it in proactive ways. Generationally speaking, it’s something we ignore and think, wrongly, that racism was from some other generation and we were going to teach about acceptance and tolerance and from a place of love.
The flawed thinking there is that you still have families who actively teach their children to be racist so ignoring the cancer in one part of the body means that it will infect the rest of it.
The sentiments I’m referring to are from adults who are, by virtue and inundation of social media, are learning that people they went to school with whom they thought to be well-educated and caring adults are showing their true colors. It has brought out a nastiness in people we thought we knew better and they reveal themselves to us in ways that shock us. These are people they might have gone to college with or pledged the same sorority or fraternity. And, again, let’s be clear: these are PWIs and white sororities and white fraternities. These are people who wrote their résumés on Apple IIe computers with floppy disks. These are people who got married and had children and sent them on to schools just like they went to as children.
These are people who are witnessing school behavior that is viciously racist and schools, for the most part, are simply responding to it. I’m thinking of two incidents that friends shared this week regarding the responses.
Archer High School in Georgia is dealing with some racist comments made by a student on Twitter as seen below:
There are some disturbing parts to this story (the kids are saying “coon” these days?) and I actually don’t mean the original post. Sure, that’s horrible and offensive and this report says that “officials are working to address the issue with the student and his family” but the only other reported response mentioned that “additional school resource officers were at Archer High School on Friday as school officials tried to calm racial tensions that rose this week and spread on social media”.
What about support workers for students? How about social workers and psychologists and therapists and people who work in the anti-racism space? Those are far more necessary than adding more police to the atmosphere. As a response, this fails.
Unless schools actively teach anti-racism then the system gets to remain intact. Schools that continue to teach Eurocentric curriculum that centers whiteness as primary history have to work to undo this. Schools where teachers continue to introduce any non-white author or text by a qualifier have to work to undo this. For instance, don’t assign Maya Angelou as the “Black poet” but rather “the poet we are studying today”. This is active work but too many schools are doing passive damage-control when their students act out in racist ways.
The other incident happened earlier this month when the Forest Hills superintendent was responsible for making a public apology for students who brought offensive flags to a football game in Michigan. The fact that the superintendent was then put on the spot to remedy this incident is unfortunate but necessary yet he made a huge misstep.
Behm, the superintendent, said that “Friday’s actions are not characteristic of their schools, staff, students, or community, and they represent a lack of knowledge.” Except, aren’t they? Isn’t that the very definition of character when students feel free enough to take the time to organize, collect flags, and make loud statements at public football games?
When we don’t do the active work of embedding cultural competency into our established systems then we’re saying we’d rather be reactive when racism occurs. The danger is cyclical from one generation to the next because ignoring and doing spot-check damage control hasn’t addressed the actual systemic problems. We keep being surprised by the adult folks in our lives who reveal their nastiness regarding race when they breezed through school systems along with us that failed to do the anti-racism work required.
And then they, those privileged white schoolmates of ours, went on to raise the current generation.
