A Note to My Readers >>>>>
Please now re-read the
article by Laura Gilliam that I offered for your analysis in yesterday’s
(Monday, 2 April 2018) edition of the blog, this time with attention to my
interspersed comments
>>>>>
Laura Gilliam,
“Daily Negative Messages in Our Schools Do More Than Racist Screed: Damaging assumptions are far more common and
at least as harmful as what appeared in the ‘Undisciplined’ Commentary” (Star
Tribune Opinion Exchange, 27 March 2018)
I really
appreciated the responses on the Star Tribune opinion pages last week
from educators and even the commissioner of education to the March 18
commentary (“Undisciplined: Chaos may be
coming to Minnesota classrooms, by decree”).
It’s important that state leaders and educators continue to call out
this kind of damaging and blatantly racist rhetoric when they see it.
But as a parent of
color, I can tell you that the painful assumptions that Katherine Karsten made
about families and children of color are just part of the problem. We can’t stop with calling out her barefaced
racism. We also need to talk about the
less blatant racism that Minnesota students and families experience every
day. This kind of racism might not be as
obvious as Ms. Kersten’s, but it is just as damaging, if not more so. It’s also far more common.
My Comment >>>>>
Katherine Kersten
is not a racist.
She in fact spends
a great deal of mental energy thinking about how to make of the United States a
fairer and more racially just society.
One has to understand
Kersten’s philosophical framework to comprehend her position on the Minnesota
Department of Human Rights (MDHR) effort to diminish the number of suspensions
for African American students:
Kersten operates on
the right end of the political continuum, which moving left to right moves from
leftist revolutionaries onward through democratic socialists, liberals, centrists
(moderates, middle-of-the roaders), conservatives, reactionaries, and fascists. Kersten is a political conservative whose values
are also formed by her deep Roman Catholic faith.
As a conservative,
Kersten does not believe in race-based policies and, although she is a
conservative feminist, she is suspicious also of policies that aim to address issues
based on gender, transgender, ethnicity, and other categorization that she
regards as divisive.
Such stances make
her anathema to liberals, who see the redress of injustice as necessarily
requiring direct reference to specific categories of people who historically have
faced relentless bias and mistreatment.
I am a
revolutionary leftist inclined in the short-term toward liberal policies
against which my friend Katherine Kersten counterpoises herself. But, since as a revolutionary I am for more
thoroughgoing change than are liberals, I like the way that Kersten keeps
liberals on edge and induces them to clarify their own thinking. Inasmuch as my most persistent area of
revolutionary activity is in the realm of education, and liberals congregating
within the Democratic Party are politically purchased by teachers’ unions (National
Education Association, Education Minnesota, and the Minneapolis Federation of
Teachers (MFT), I have as little use for liberal Democrats on education issues
as I do conservative Republicans.
And as a
behaviorist, I regard the confluence of historical experience and current
personal environment as determinative in shaping the personality and conduct of
each person: Human beings are enormously
intelligent and given the environmental opportunity can learn to make decisions
more favorable to themselves and their fellows, but they have no free will.
Katherine’s political
ideology leads to an unfortunate distrust of collective action, including the
action that government takes for the benefit of society collectively.
And the combination
of Kersten’s conservative belief in the unfettered individual and her religious
convictions asserting free will results in a naïve faith in the ability of
people to shape their own destinies; in
fact, only collectively made decisions that produce favorable results and are
thereby positively reinforced lead to human progress.
Thus, Kersten is
wrong on many policies, and neither her political nor her psychological views
could ever lead to better public policy, except inasmuch as they keep people on
edge and induce them to think more deeply about their own views and policies.
But she is not a
racist.
Gilliam continues >>>>>
Ask yourself, how
many times have you read articles in the last few years about student assaults
on teachers? A real problem, and one we
hear about whenever it happens. On the
flip side, how many times have you read stories about students being suspended
for minor things, like chewing gum? Also
a real problem, but one that we seldom hear about.
Assaults on
teachers are serious offenses and deserve our outrage and action. But student removals for unnecessary and
subjective reasons, which disproportionately affect students of color, deserve
our attention, too. When we only hear
stories of kids gone wild, and never about the systems that might actually make
things worse, this is subtle racism at play.
When journalists
rush to break the story about the latest assault against a teacher, yet show
little interest in student stories of mistreatment and being pushed out, they’re
reinforcing racist stereotypes. They’re
confirming fears about chaotic schools where violent students are out of
control. When these stories come from
districts full of students of color, I can guess the kind of mental image you
have of these out-of-control kids.
My Comment >>>>>
Gilliam here is
engaging in astute analysis.
For decades,
newspapers such as the Star Tribune have looked the other way while racist
police officers stopped African Americans, especially young males, commanded
them to get out of their cars, slammed them up against the vehicle, and called
and used vicious epithets while most often neither identifying the reason for
the stop or finding any evidence of a culpable offense.
Through those same
decades, teachers in the Minneapolis Public Schools have exhibited both overt
and covert racism. In the year 2018, the
racism is more the covert type identified by Gilliam, but covert racism is a killer
that can begin subtly but then become manifest in disparities that diminish life
prospects.
Thus, consider this
nuanced view: Kersten cautions us to be
aware of school district and site-based responses to MDHR pressure that become
so wary of sanctions as to tolerate serious behavioral infractions; while Gilliam persuasively makes the case for
examining the likelihood of discriminatory treatment, especially against
African American males, in a great number of suspensions.
Gilliam continues >>>>>
But subtle racism
doesn’t stop in the local news. It also
plays out every day within school walls.
If you’re white,
ask yourself, has your child ever confided in you that they don’t feel welcome
or wanted at their school, or that their teachers told them they would never
graduate from high school? Have you ever
been denied a meeting with your child’s teacher or school principal to discuss
your concerns? Has your child ever gone
a school year without a single teacher who shared the child’s race? Have you ever been told that the teachers in
your school are “afraid” of you? Have
you ever felt as if educators are holding low expectations for your child
because of false assumptions they’re making of you as a parent?
As a black parent
of three children, I have experienced all of this and more. It might not be as in-your-face racist as Ms.
Kersten’s rhetoric, but it’s there. And
it is absolutely taking a toll.
All the time, I
hear people talk about the trauma kids of color are experiencing at home. As an engaged, involved and educated parent,
I find this talk extremely offensive. Instead, I am worried about the trauma my children experience in school. I know plenty of families of color who share this concern, as well as my frustration that this kind of trauma rarely gets any ink.
Yes, teachers,
policymakers and everyday Minnesotans need to be on the lookout for overtly
racist dog whistling, and to be willing to push back on it, quickly, publicly
and unequivocally.
But that needs to
be the beginning, not the end, of the outcry.
For the sake of families like mine, please be on the lookout for the
more subtle, more common racist acts that occur every single day in our
education system. And call out and push
back on that, too.
>>>>>
Laura Gilliam is a Twin Cities area parent and
advocate.
>>>>>
My Final Comment >>>>>
Gilliam aptly
alerts readers to the damage done by systemic racism.
If Gilliam wants to
make lasting favorable impact on the educational experiences and therefore life
prospects of young people of all demographic descriptors, I invite her to join
me in the K-12 revolution with the aims of bringing knowledge-intensive
curriculum, knowledgeable and pedagogically adept teachers, academic enrichment
including coherent tutoring, family resource provision and referral, and
bureaucratic paring for the redirection of scare resources to all of our
precious children.
Acting on the basis
of that revolutionary program, Gilliam should run for a position on the
Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education next November; if she resides in another school district,
she should run on the above program in that locale while assisting me in recruiting
candidates to replace the wretched current MPS Board of Education.
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