The Barriers to Cultural Competence in Suburban North Texas
(On average) $650,000 households, lawns manicured with near-artisanal landscaping expertise, outstanding schools with high academic and athletic performance and gorgeous shopping town centers are a just a few of the stereotypical sparkling images of suburbia Southlake, Texas brings to life from stock photos.
What’s perfect in image, however, is grossly flawed in reality — especially when it comes racism. In 2018, a video in which many Carroll High School students were chanting the N word went viral. In horror of the video, many parents formed a District Diversity council (DDC) to combat racism at the school board level through curriculum created under an initiative called the Cultural Competence Action Plan (CCAP.)
The Cultural Competence Action Plan, however, is not the effort of a unified suburban utopia but rather the subject of much controversy. Proponents of the Diversity Plan see it as an opportunity to make people of all racial backgrounds feel welcome within the schools’ walls. Dissenters, on the other hand, have expressed to NBC News that the plan is unnecessary for their overall non-racist and traditional community. To them, the plan is a way of creating a “diversity police” to enact “reverse racism” upon the school’s white students (Hixenbaugh, 2021).
Admittedly, both advocates of and dissenters to the CCAP make compelling arguments as to whether its curriculum is appropriate for combating racism within a largely racially homogeneous community. I, from the start, sided with the advocates, as I believe that the solutions to racism are exposure therapy and education. However, the dissenters provided some considerable insight as to how they feel the CCAP will impact the dynamics of the school — the relationships between students and the political implications of it all.
In this essay, I will summarize my understanding of the viewpoints of the Carroll High School community offered in the CCAP itself, at the September 14, 2020 school board meeting, on southlakefamilies.org (a website created for the anti-CCAP position), as well as on local news outlets to make commentary about the actions the school district should take next.
Is Racism Really a Community Problem in Southlake?
The first points common within dissenters’ opinions about the CCAP, tied to a denial of the existence of widespread racism in Southlake, are best summed up by one parent at the school board meeting. To them, the racist actions conducted by the kids in the viral video simply reflect bad apples and teenage stupidity. They reason that, “Individuals are responsible for their own actions [and the district should] stop trying to punish the entire community for the actions of a few teenagers.”
The dissenter references some compelling reasoning in her argument; If racism rarely occurs and it is exclusively enacted by one-off kids like the ones in the video, wouldn’t it be redundant to invest the district’s resources into a counter-racism education program that would confront all kids?
What the dissenter fails to realize though, is that the racism demonstrated in Southlake alludes to deeper ideologies than just certain stupid teenagers throwing out slurs without understanding what they mean. The existence of racism in Southlake is most thoroughly summarized by Robin Cornish, advocate of the diversity plan.
Robin Cornish, mother of five black children raised in Southlake, in her interview with NBC news, reported that her kids were harassed daily at the schools in the community. In fact, after her husband died of a heart attack at age forty, a student told her child that she would be “voting for Obama because [his] dad was dead and she [would] need welfare.” Not only does this comment lack basic human decency in regards to sensitivity to death, but it is also coded with multiple racist and classist ideas. The kid, in a condescending manner, assumed that because Robin Cornish was a black woman, she would vote for black, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama in desperation to relieve an assumed socioeconomic ‘inferiority.’ Because of the synthesis made between blackness, political preferences and socioeconomic status being uttered by an adolescent, it is a mistake to view these remarks as simply ‘bad apple’ occurrences. Without context from a deliberately racist ideology, comments such as these lack the ‘logic’ to arise. If Southlake is not a racist community, in 2008, where else could this complex racist ideology have come from?
On top of the depth of the racist remarks uttered, one parent at the school board meeting felt that the school board failed to protect her son’s “psyche and self-esteem,” and has even brought her child to therapy, in part, to help them cope with the abuse they endured.
To me, hearing all of the horror stories told by black students and their families is enough concrete evidence that change must be made. To simply say that not all community members are racist is to delegitimize the trauma conveyed in these testimonies. Moreover, sharing trauma is a vulnerable experience. When people respond with “Not all community members!” it signals the same self-importance and narrow-mindedness as:
“My mom died in a car accident.” “Well, cars don’t kill everybody!”
At this point in the argument, CCAP advocates win. Regardless of whether it’s all students or some, there has been enough damage to at least try and observe the causes. CCAP, at this point, represents education that can start conversations about the roots of racism and classism.
Does Focusing on Diversity Create Racism?
Some dissenters, however, do not necessarily demonstrate a denial of racist behaviors in Southlake as their main reason for a CCAP scrap. In fact, they argue that the CCAP will “focus on differences, instead of accepting them, which creates racism as opposed to extinguishing it” (Southlake Families, 2021.)
Southlake Families, in a respect, are right that the CCAP will focus on differences, but it is a slippery slope fallacy to assume that this focus will create racism instead of acceptance of differences.
An instance of acceptance which can occur as a result of focus on differences is offered by the DDC’s intention to “facilitate communication and understanding among different constituencies, and serve as a community resource.” It seems that multiple items on the CCAP have the potential to do exactly this.
For example, Strategy 3.3.1 of the CCAP offers an expansion of diversity exposure via “opportunities for students to express their cultures through art, literature, and celebrations within […] CISD curriculum.”
The focus on differences here, ignored by SF, is purely educational and, I would argue, promotes conversation between newly-confident students of underrepresented backgrounds and students whose backgrounds are inherently celebrated in the community.
Even considering the potential educational value of difference exposure, the concern with the creation of racism does not stop.
Southlake Families, argues that the creation of “Campus Diversity Councils,” ideated by the CCAP, to document “unintentional microaggressions by children in a guilty-until-proven innocent situation in the discipline offense history,” will create a “police state culture [that] discourages open and honest dialogue among students.”
While I agree that permanently punishing students undergoing a learning process is formidable under any circumstance, Southlake Families’s theory of a ‘guilty-until-proven-innocent situation,’ again, succumbs to slippery slope fallacy — The logic here is that students, under the initiative will rally against white kids and label them as racist in the event that they are associated with racism.
The CCAP does not demonstrate a desire to teach white kids that they are inherently racist or even biased. The word “white” does not even appear in the 34 pages of the plan. This leaves little room for any student undergoing cultural competence training to specifically witch hunt out white kids to punish with this system.
Because the CCAP has not been put into practice yet, there is no proof that the discipline of students carried out by these councils will be unforgiving, non-objective or tyrannical. They should be trusted to carry out due process disciplinary action like any other disciplinary entity within the school system, even if they are predominantly focused on monitoring microaggressions.
To Scrap or Not To Scrap? How Can We Eliminate Barriers to the Intended Benefits of the CCAP?
With all the holes I find some of the dissenters’ arguments, I’ve determined that most of the dissenters’ actions and opinions precisely represent why schools in North Texas need to take action in the direction of Southlake’s Diversity Plan. This is because even while the dissenters claim they are against racism, their explanations as to why the CCAP is a bad idea seem baseless and can even perpetuate racism by prioritizing white fears based in flawed theory (such as those discussed in this paper: being associated with racism, being accused of racism and being wrongly punished for racism) over the black trauma observed in reality.
My belief that the exposure-based education offered by the action plan will diminish marginalization of people of color in Southlake remains.
In saying this, I don’t think that we should completely write-off the concerns of Southlake’s CCAP dissenters, or, for that matter, any people hesitant to join in on diversity discussions.
Perhaps the most obvious yet unexpected perspective I gained in reading the opinions surrounding this issue was that so many of the dissenters’ apprehensions have to do with image and the stigma surrounding the word ‘racist.’ As previously established, they fear their kids will be branded as racist forever. They say they aren’t racist while maintaining positions that enable racism. They deny the existence of racism anywhere proximal to them, and finally, as one parent displays at the school board meeting, they feel the need to emphasize that they are “generous, caring citizens [… who] resent being called biased and privileged.”
At this point of standstill — with Southlake Families having raised over $112,000 to prevent the CCAP from progressing any further, the only solution I can see is to tackle their dissent at its apprehensive root.
CCAP advocates should focus on presenting an emphasis on a separation between the concepts of ‘bias’ or ‘prejudice’ and ‘racism’ as well as ‘privilege’ and ‘ignorance,’ in their next presentations of the CCAP. In presenting this separation, dissenters could understand that the ‘leftist agenda’ they hate so much, in general does not hold ‘bias’ as an incriminating-buzz word to stick on white people. (Heck, as a pre-medical student at USC, I was taught that I have implicit biases, and I am seen as a leftist person of color. )
Psychologist, Dr. Napoleon Wells offers the difference between racism and prejudice on a spectrum.
“On this end is prejudice, which we’ve already agreed we all experience — It’s part of the general human condition […] On the extreme end of that spectrum is racism — the intent to do harm.” he says in his TEDx talk entitled ‘The Cure for Racism.’
The more that we accept bias and privilege as part of the human condition, perhaps, the less defensive the dissenters will become. They could understand that when new movements try to hold them accountable for their prejudices or biases it is not an attack on their character, way of life or their intentions. The way it is now, it seems that dissenters hear “prejudice” and think movements want to cheaply call them all the lunatics in white pointy ghost hats or the Southerners in the Civil War. This way, the DDC can eliminate the obstacle of blinding fear and ultimately, convey that they too want to make change in the system of fairness and due process dissenters seek to protect in Southlake.
Now I know what that sounds like — Why must we wait around to humor the trivial fears of dissenters? While I do believe that empowerment of marginalized populations should come as a result of their own decisions, the dissenters’ fears are a part of the current reality — dynamics that favor white culture. If we allow the dissenters to continue to feel threatened, how can we expect to educate them towards a more culturally competent future?
Resentment, otherwise, will likely remain.
It is the same way that the Civil Rights movement did not come overnight or in one wave — It is a slow, and at times agonizing process of teaching the public and its institutions to change.
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