Category Archives: racism

Charter schools, College Board, Education, education reform, grade retention, Grit, inequity, KIPP, No Excuses Reform, Poverty, privilege, race, racism, SAT, school to prison pipeline, schools as prison, Segregation, Standards, Testing, zero tolerance

Are Racially Inequitable Outcomes Racist?

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Among what may seem to be marginally related policies and conditions, these all have one startling thing in common—grade retention, school discipline, NCAA athletics, incarceration, “grit,” “no excuses,” zero-tolerance, high-stakes testing (such as the SAT and ACT), charter schools and school choice—and that commonality is observable racially inequitable outcomes that are significantly negative for blacks.

My own experiences with exploring and confronting race and racism through my public writing has shown that many people vigorously resist acknowledging racism and will contort themselves in unbelievable ways to avoid accepting facts and data that show racism exists.

Common responses include “I am not a racist,” “I am sure the people who started X didn’t intend to be racist,” “White people experience racism too,” and “Everyone has the same opportunities in this country.”

And while I continue to compile a stunning list of ways in which racial inequity and racism profoundly impact negatively black people, resistance to terms such as “white privilege” and “racism” remain robust.

In the wake of the NCAA Final Four, Patrick Hruby has attempted a similar tactic I have used in order to unmask the racial inequity in college athletics by carefully working readers through the evidence in order to come to an uncomfortable conclusion about the financial exploitation of college athletes (money-making sports being disproportionately black) by the NCAA and colleges/universities (leadership and those profiting being overwhelmingly white) along racial lines:

Understand this: there’s nothing inherently racist about amateurism itself. And there’s no reason to believe that its defenders and proponents—including current NCAA president Mark Emmert—are motivated by racial animus….

And yet, while the NCAA’s intent is color-blind, the impact of amateurism is anything but. In American law, there is a concept called adverse impact, in which, essentially, some facially neutral rules that have an unjustified adverse impact on a particular group can be challenged as discriminatory….Similarly, sociologists speak of structural racism when analyzing public policies that have a disproportionately negative impact on minority individuals, families, and communities. State lottery systems that essentially move money from predominantly lower-class African-American ticket buyers to predominantly middle-and-upper-class white school districts fit the bill; so does a War on Drugs that disproportionately incarcerates young black men; so does a recent decision by officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, to drastically cut the number of presidential primary polling stations in and around Phoenix, which unnecessarily made voting far more difficult for the residents of a non-white majority city.

Big-time college sports fall under the same conceptual umbrella. Amateurism rules restrain campus athletes—and only campus athletes, not campus musicians or campus writers—from earning a free-market income, accepting whatever money, goods, or services someone else wants to give them. And guess what? In the revenue sports of Division I football and men’s basketball, where most of the fan interest and television dollars are, the athletes are disproportionately black.

And herein lies the problem with refusing to equate racially inequitable outcomes with racism.

Hruby’s detailed unmasking of the NCAA comes also during the troubling rise of Trump in presidential politics—another marker for how many scramble to find any cause other than racism.

Trump’s rise is not exclusively the result of overt and unexamined racism, but a significant amount of his success is easily traced to a wide spectrum of racism.

However, from the rise of Trump to the so-called popularity of charter schools to the school-to-prison pipeline and to the spread of third-grade retention policies, all of these and more are fueled by racism because racism, we must acknowledge, is most insidious when it isn’t overt, when the racist person or the racist act is unconscious, unacknowledged.

The impact of racism in NCAA sports, as Hruby details, is the elegant racism Ta-Nahisi Coates unpacked when Donald Sterling became the NBA’s face for oafish racism (along with Clive Bundy in popular culture).

What has occurred in the U.S. since the mid-1960s is an end to placard racism, the end of “White Only” signs on bathroom and restaurant doors.

What has not occurred in the U.S. yet is an end to seeing black boys as significantly older than their biological ages, an end to tracking black children into segregated schools and reductive courses, an end to incarcerating black men—and this is a list that could go on for several pages.

Racial (and class) equity will never occur in the U.S. until the white power structure admits that racially inequitable outcomes are in fact racist.

White privilege is a powerful narcotic that numbs white elites to the harm that privilege causes black and brown people, but it is also a powerful narcotic that pits poor whites against black and brown people because poor whites believe their whiteness gives them the chance at great wealth held by only a few.

That the NCAA maintains a structure within which black athletes produce wealth enjoyed almost exclusively by white elites is an undeniable fact and a startling example of the elegant racism eroding the soul of a free people—an elegant racism eating at the roots of public education, the judicial system, the economic system, and nearly ever aspect of the country.

Racially inequitable outcomes are racist, and this must be admitted in order to be confronted and then to be eliminated.

Charter schools, deficit thinking, Education, education reform, race, racism, Teach for America

Race and Education: A Reader

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What ‘white folks who teach in the hood’ get wrong about education, Kenya Downs

I think framing this hero teacher narrative, particularly for folks who are not from these communities, is problematic. The model of a hero going to save this savage other is a piece of a narrative that we can trace back to colonialism; it isn’t just relegated to teaching and learning. It’s a historical narrative and that’s why it still exists because, in many ways, it is part of the bones of America. It is part of the structure of this country. And unless we come to grips with the fact that even in our collective American history that’s problematic, we’re going to keep reinforcing it. Not only are we setting the kids up to fail and the educators up to fail, but most importantly, we are creating a societal model that positions young people as unable to be saved.

For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood…and the Rest of Y’all Too, Chris Emdin

978-080700640-5

Black boys know too well what it feels like to be a problem — let’s channel that knowledge into innovation, Andre Perry

In some states, fewer than 90 percent of black boys are reading at grade level and dropout rates for males of color continue to be much higher than for other groups. We certainly need solutions, but we don’t need any more “gap closing” measures.

Gap closing implies a white male standard, which actually is the source of institutional racism that needs to be fixed. In this regard, the achievement gap is a process and product that we need to smash up in tiny little pieces.

No one should be surprised that while black males achieve in schools and colleges a gap remains or has even grown. Success won’t be declared when black men and boys catch up to white men; organizations need to catch up with justice.

The overwhelming whiteness of U.S. private schools, in six maps and charts, Emma Brown

“The fact is that, over the years, African American families and non-white families have come to understand that these private schools are not schools that are open to them, especially in light of their traditional role and history related to desegregation of public schools,” he said.

The report recalls how private-school enrollment grew a half-century ago as courts were ordering public schools to integrate. The pattern was particularly pronounced in the South, where massive resistance to integration led to rapid private-school enrollment growth. Even as private-school enrollment has fallen across much of the country in recent decades, it has continued to grow in the South.

Capitalism, consumerism, Disaster capitalism, Meritocracy, privilege, racism

U.S. Offers Only Soft or Hard Commitments to Ravages of Consumerism

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Many people have commented on the rise of Trump as the leader in the Republican quest for president—noting it is like a bad reality show or some life-imitates-art version of Idiocracy.

However, the truth of what Trump represents is much, much uglier than any of those speculations because Trump represents almost perfectly exactly who the U.S. is, and essentially always has been.

The U.S. has always bloviated on sweeping and grand ideologies about Freedom, Liberty, and so much horse manure, but the very beginnings of that were while white males owned human slaves and white females were human only in relationship to some white man.

The U.S. has always been about someone’s freedom at the expense of other people’s human dignity; and that fact remains today in 2016.

And when people say the the U.S. is a conservative nation, mostly right of center (especially in relationship to Europe and Canada), the reality of that is “conservative” is a code for a blind and nearly rabid commitment to consumerism—a consumerism grounded in Social Darwinism that breeds a lust for financial wealth regardless of the consequences to others.

Sure, Trump is profoundly unqualified to be a national leader and is spewing vile and inexcusable hatred, but the space between Trump and mainstream Republicans and Democrats is minuscule once you set aside the rhetoric.

From Trump to Cruz, a slight step back and to the side; from Cruz to Hillary, yet another slight step back and to the side. Republicans bark a hard commitment and Democrats skirt a soft commitment to the ravages of consumerism, but the consequences are the same.

Except for Sanders in the 2016 election cycle, team politics between Republicans and Democrats is splitting hairs and turning a blind eye to your candidate while eviscerating the other side’s candidate for the same behavior.

Mainstream politics in the U.S. creates the delusion of choice and keeps the public frantic so that no one notices there really is no difference because everything is about the winners maintaining their edge.

Never-ending war, mass incarceration, staggering income and wealth inequity, underfunded public institutions, refusals to acknowledge lingering racism—these are the qualities among every candidate on both sides of the so-called aisle.

The Nixon/Reagan contributions to mass incarceration of black and brown populations are nearly indistinguishable from the Clinton era gutting of the social safety net devastating the same people.

And all the while, the only thing that matters is the economy. The sacred economy doomed George W. Bush’s presidency and ushered in Obama—not any ethical matters of war or failures to secure human dignity or the lip service we give Democracy.

There could be few indignities worse than electing Trump as president of the U.S., but to be perfectly honest, Trump is in the course of the history of the country, the most perfect representative of who we are and have always been: A cartoon character spewing bromides to hide our dark and soulless greed.

And then, nearly as bad, if we elect someone from the remaining mainstream candidates, that indignity will be only slightly less than choosing Trump because what she or he represents is so close to being the same that it really doesn’t matter.

Anxiety, CCSS, Charter schools, comic books, Critical Pedagogy, Education, education reform, race, racism

Sunday 20 March 2016 Reader: in Just-/spring?

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In many regions of this planet, humans are gifted the changing seasons, including the drift into hibernation and then the rebirth of spring.

One of my favorite poems has always been [in Just-] by e.e. cummings—in part because I read the “Just” as both “only” and the root of “justice,” wondering if in fact spring is just in the human sense of that justice or more so in the less ethics-grounded justice of natural dynamics.

As we slip into spring, then, I offer a smattering of varied readings, many of which should help in meditating on our human sense of justice.

Education, No Excuses Reform, race, racism

Let Us Not in Righteous Indignation Fail to See

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Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

Matthew 7:3

I resist as least weekly, it seems, to name directly yet another disturbing example of how “no excuses” approaches to teaching mostly black/ brown and poor children are inexcusable, abusive, and disgusting.

But a recent video prompted two responses that are important to highlight and need no further explanation—from Jose Vilson and Shree Chauhan:

this is nothing new

daily

 

Education, race, racism, Teach for America, Teacher Evaluation, teacher preparation, Teaching, zero tolerance

The Ugly “Good Teacher” Discussion Few Are Confronting

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“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'”

Matthew 25:40

The gold standard, I think, for thinking about education reform and more narrow concerns such as teacher quality is the complex and confrontational approach of Lisa Delpit, who anchors her perspective with how we teach and treat “other people’s children”—black and brown children, impoverished children.

And from that perspective we have the ugly “good teacher” discussion few are willing to confront: Vulnerable populations of children and their families are where and how we experiment with education, where and how we adopt policies and practices no affluent and white families would tolerate for their children: Teach For America, “no excuses,” zero tolerance.

High-poverty and majority-minority schools are burdened not just with social inequity hurdles but also with systemic and often unspoken practices that include having incredibly high teacher turn over because these “problem” schools are entry points for teachers to find “better” jobs (see Teachers at Low-Income Schools Deserve Respect).

Just as insidious is the systemic and often unspoken practice in all schools that “low-level” classes of students are assigned new teachers, who must endure those populations of students until they can have the “good” classes within that school.

These ugly practices grounded in racism and classism are at the root of why advocates for education reform who focus on race and class remain mostly dissatisfied with both sides of the mainstream education reform debate.

The edu-reformers are all-in on race and class tone-deaf practices—TFA, “no excuses,” zero tolerance—but the advocates for public education and progressive reform have failed to admit how the traditional public school system has historically failed “other people’s children” through the wink-wink-nod-nod approach to assigning teachers.

Too often, teachers are complicit in and fail to confront the system that marginalizes vulnerable populations of students as collateral damage of teacher advancement.

During my 18 years of public school teaching, even among teachers, the common sense attitude was that “good” teachers were assigned Advanced Placement, and teaching “low-level” classes was a negative commentary on the teacher’s ability. As department chair, I worked to assign each teacher a couple classes she/he requested, and then tried to balance every teacher’s load with a range of class levels and types.

While I was working on my dissertation, writing a biography of educator Lou LaBrant, I was profoundly struck by a point of irritation she expressed in her memoir. LaBrant noted that she had her best teachers in her doctoral program, at the end of her formal education, but that progression, she believed, is backward in that children need their best teachers in the beginning of formal education, not the end.

Our vulnerable populations of students must be served first in our public school system: assigned experienced and qualified teachers, placed in classes with low teacher/student ratios, guaranteed access to the most challenging courses and curriculums, and promised safe, diverse schools with equitable, supportive disciplinary practices.

Everything else is a distraction from what truly matters.

Education, race, racism

Denying Racism Continues to Have an Evidence Problem: A Reader

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The evidence of racism—and not just race as a marker—continues to make denying racism a fool’s errand (yet, it persists). Here are some powerful reads that counter those deniers:

Education, privilege, race, racism, Sports

Politics, the Super Bowl, and, of course, the Children

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This was supposed to be another post about good teachers because I was invited to speak to a class of 4th graders about writing public opinion pieces and that experience confirmed my recent assertion that to know if a teacher is good just watch and listen to the students.

The short version of that blog: the students were vibrant and smart—reflecting just how wonderful their teacher is.

During that visit, however, the teacher asked if we could have a brief debate so the students could think about how to pose their arguments. When a student asked what I was thinking about writing next, I mentioned the Super Bowl halftime show, specifically Beyoncé’s performance.

For several minutes, I was confronted by a classroom of children adamant that Beyoncé and her backup dancers were inappropriate for the show; their clothing and dancing, the children argued, were not appropriate for children watching on TV and attending the game.

I asked them to consider how we have different standards for how women dress and behave, and I asked about whether it was appropriate for children to watch the NFL, considering the violence of the sport, and the commercials, such as those for beer.

The children never budged, noting that children, in fact, play football (boys are just violent, they argued) and rambling into a very casual acceptance of children having guns and knives (for hunting).

But Beyoncé? Not appropriate for prime time (and the children).

Of course, these students were mostly voicing the opinion of their parents and other adults, highlighting, I think, the influence of every child’s home on who they are and how they think.

These students’ arguments also reflect something that almost no one is addressing about the Super Bowl: everything about the Super Bowl is political. Everything.

Those who criticize Beyoncé for her political performance and chastise the hoodied Cam Newton for over-celebrating throughout the season and his sulking post-Super Bowl defeat are silent during the NFL’s ritualistic flag waving and hiding behind the U.S. military—some of the many shields the NFL hopes mask the orgy of violence that is professional football; are somehow OK with Coldplay and Bruno Mars; and likely didn’t uttered a peep when All-American white hero straight out of Pleasantville, Peyton Manning, spouted a Gronk-like beer comment, pouted and didn’t shake hands after one of his Super Bowl defeats, and (like Cam, who was criticized) kept his helmet on while shaking hands with Russell Wilson, another Super Bowl defeat.

Just as every second of the Super Bowl is political, every moment of the gosh-darn industry that is Peyton Manning is political.

And Manning’s politics is aimed right at your red-white-and-blue bank account.

But the politics of capitalism and consumerism that buoy white male privilege in the U.S. is at least shielded, if not invisible, behind the confetti and celebration of yet another ascension to pinnacle by a Great White Quarterback (Beer and pizza, anyone!).

This is not about Beyoncé being political and Coldplay/Bruno Mars not being political.

This is not about Cam being political and Peyton not being political.

This is about the racialized notion of “political” (and “not appropriate for children”) and the very American and very ugly symbolism of the NFL shield.

Peyton, Coldplay/Bruno Mars (very safe and male pop music), and the NFL’s patriotic posturing are simply the shielded politics of those in power, of white privilege, of male privilege.

Beyoncé—along with her backup dancers and her song—and Cam are complicated elements in the politics of resistance (both real and perceived)—and of course, we can have none of that. You know, the children.

Listen

Super Bowl Aftermath: Beyoncé, Cam Newton, and “Unapologetic Blackness”

Education, Poverty, race, racism

Understanding Poverty, Racism, and Privilege Again for the First Time

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Once again, predictably, when my South Carolina should focus on education opportunity, not accountability was published at The State, comments included convoluted arguments demonizing people who are poor while discounting racism because “I was poor but I worked hard and succeeded” (this last claim invariably comes from a white person who is oblivious to the example proving the power of white privilege even against the weight of poverty).

Recently, as well, Teaching Tolerance confronted Ruby Payne’s poverty industry that speaks to and perpetuates stereotypes about poverty, race, and privilege (see here for research discrediting Payne’s work).

My public work addressing poverty, race, and education consistently reinforces that political leaders, the media, and much of the public in the U.S. suffer corrosive and inaccurate views of poverty, race, and privilege—stereotypes that are incredibly powerful.

When I argue about the need to address poverty directly, many respond by claiming anyone can succeed if she/he simply works hard enough. When I argue about the need to address racism, many concede poverty is burdensome, but add that racism no longer exists—again, people of color simply fail to take advantage of the opportunities all people have in the U.S.

Despite the great potential of social media and online publications with commentary (a way to democratize whose voices matter), those open forums allow anyone to respond un-vetted and perpetuate one of the great failures of public debate—arguing a single example proves or disproves a generalization: One black person excelled means there is no racism; “I was poor but” proves everyone has an equal opportunity.

Evidence appears ineffective against stereotypes—the illogical and irrational—but I invite you to step away from your assumptions and understand poverty, racism, and privilege again for the first time.

Focusing on poverty, the most enduring myths include some of the following (see the reader below for ample evidence disproving each):

  • Adults and children living in poverty somehow deserve that condition because they do not work hard enough, lacking the “grit” that successful people have.
  • The impoverished struggle because of their inferior literacy skills, often referred to as the “word gap.”
  • The culture of poverty is the result of a number of qualities among the poor, and thus, it is up to the poor themselves to break that cycle.
  • Poverty is a sham because of a number of common sense observations: the impoverished often seem to be obese and many people in poverty still own things (TVs, cars, cell phones).
  • The poor are prone to criminal behavior and substance abuse.

Research, however, refutes and discredits all of these.

One of the most powerful ways to reject false narratives about the poor is to consider that in the U.S., the cheapest foods are high in fat and processed sugar; and thus, it is a matter of practicality that the poor tend toward obesity.

Good health and safety are more expensive—shopping at Whole Foods or purchasing a car with added safety features—and thus both are accessed more easily by privilege.

Yet, we are a people stuck in false narratives about meritocracy and rugged individualism.

To understand poverty, racism, and privilege, however, systemic dynamics such as slack and scarcity must be examined. Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir in their Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much examine the research base that shows the same person behaves differently under slack and scarcity.

Privilege begets privilege because slack allows a great deal of room for failure, and poverty begets poverty because the margins are so tight that irrational behavior seems rational.

But, again, these dynamics are the result of the conditions and not inherent qualities in individuals.

Below I offer a reader because the facts about poverty, racism, and privilege are dramatically different than the false narratives we live with in the U.S. For even good people with good intentions, the myths are hard to set aside.

A Reader: Understanding Poverty, Racism, and Privilege Again for the First Time

Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir

George Saunders’s Allegory of Scarcity and Slack

Miseducating Teachers about the Poor: A Critical Analysis of Ruby Payne’s Claims about Poverty, Bomer, et al.

Pathologizing the Language and Culture of Poor Children, Curt Dudley-Marling and Krista Lucas

Savage Unrealities, Paul C. Gorski

The Myth of the Culture of Poverty, Paul C. Gorski

Problematizing Payne and Understanding Poverty: An Analysis with Data from the 2000 Census, Jennifer C. Ng and John L. Rury [pdf]

The Culture of Poverty Reloaded,