Friday, December 2, 2016
Thursday, December 1, 2016
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story
See also by Adichie: Now Is the Time to Talk About What We Are Actually Talking About
See also by Adichie: Now Is the Time to Talk About What We Are Actually Talking About
Monday, November 14, 2016
Friday, November 4, 2016
Thursday, November 3, 2016
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Sunday, October 30, 2016
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Black Folk Hate White Tears and Blatant Racism More Than Charter Schools, Andre Perry
Black Folk Hate White Tears and Blatant Racism More Than Charter Schools, Andre Perry
To the chagrin of charter advocates, on Friday the national board of the NAACP ratified an earlier resolution (pdf) that called for a moratorium on charter schools.
Given the ample sources of opposition to charter schools, as well as mixed results, we should only be surprised that it’s taken this long for a major black civil rights organization to officially rebuke the sector.
Leading up to the ratification, the charter lobby, which has felt put upon in recent weeks, dished out heaping doses of power in a thinly veiled attempt to rally the charter community. There was a letter-writing campaign (pdf) among black leaders, numerous editorials and the deployment of paid bloggers to attack the NAACP. The charter sector also got cold shoulders from the Movement for Black Lives and even presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, among others.
“Charters work” was the rallying cry to stop the NAACP from ratifying the moratorium. But for many charter schools to work, they have (unnecessarily) taken away voting and other political rights, removed attendance zones, categorically fired teachers—black teachers—and turned a blind eye to harmful voucher programs that flood the market with bad private schools. Charter schools in Ohio and Michigan have pushed entire states backward.
Be clear: Charter schools have never been the problem for black communities that steamrolling black people, our organizations and our voices has been. The charter lobby’s response to the NAACP’s call for a moratorium on charter schools reveals what powerful white organizations will do to black people in order to get what they want. But the moratorium offered goals that black people need.
In its released statement, the NAACP listed its conditions for lifting its moratorium:
- Charter schools are subject to the same transparency and accountability standards as public schools;
- Public funds are not diverted to charter schools at the expense of the public school system;
- Charter schools cease expelling students that public schools have a duty to educate; and
- Cease to perpetuate de facto segregation of the highest-performing children from those whose aspirations may be high, but whose talents are not yet as obvious.
The NAACP has good reason to not want charter schools, despite the long trail of white tears that says differently.
For those who are unfamiliar with the term, I refer you to Very Smart Brothas’ definition:
“White tears” is a phrase to describe what happens when certain types of white people either complain about a nonexistent racial injustice or are upset by a nonwhite person’s success at the expense of a white person. It encompasses (and makes fun of) the performative struggle to acknowledge the existence of white privilege, and the reality that it ain’t always gonna go unchecked.
No national study can say that charter schools are a slam dunk for any community. Every major national study can only make the claim that charter schools are successful in particular situations. The most favorable report, CREDO’s national school study (pdf), which charter advocates wave as the strongest evidence, found modest but significant gains in reading and that charters are on par with traditional public schools. Almost every major study concludes that charter schools, on average, do as well as traditional schools, not better.
This only proves that there is more to this full-frontal push to disinvest from traditional schools than so-called education reformers would have black people believe. And when black people shed white tears, the black community loses.
The weighty and heavily financed attack on the NAACP waged by the charter lobby reminds residents of New Orleans, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and other reform cities that charter advocates will try to overwhelm anyone who simply disagrees. And this is where the charter community has lost its way. Instead of charters being a source of innovation as the early rhetoric pronounced, charters have become wrecking balls to any dissent.
For the sake of charter expansion, advocates are willing to create policy hurricanes to do to the educational infrastructure in cities exactly what Katrina did to New Orleans.
Believe it or not, the black community is diverse enough to have differing opinions on something as controversial as charter schools. But our differing opinions should not set the stage for disingenuous white-shaming. However, that’s what many black reformers built in their criticisms of the NAACP.
If for nothing else, applaud the NAACP’s check of white privilege. Because the charter community did not deliver its own moratoriums in cities like Detroit, it left no choice but for a social-justice organization to do so. The barrage leveled against the black civil rights organization’s decision shows how the sector treats black leaders, districts and decisions when the charter lobby doesn’t get its way.
We’ve grown accustomed to the charter-community tactic of shaming black folk, including the shameful, defamatory posts that facilitated attempts to discredit the organization that delivered Brown v. Boardand other major policy advancements.
By issuing the moratorium, the NAACP didn’t get the victory it’s looking for. That will come when the charter community meets the demands of the moratorium. In the meantime, our community should never allow white tears to drown out black voices.
Monday, October 17, 2016
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Friday, October 7, 2016
Thursday, October 6, 2016
Wednesday, October 5, 2016
Friday, September 30, 2016
The hard-knock life? Whites claim hardships in response to racial inequity, L. Taylor Phillips and Brian S. Lowery
The hard-knock life? Whites claim hardships in response to racial inequity, L. Taylor Phillips and Brian S. Lowery
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Volume 61, November 2015, Pages 12–18
Abstract
Racial inequity continues to plague America, yet many Whites still doubt the existence of racial advantages, limiting progress and cooperation. What happens when people are faced with evidence that their group benefits from privilege? We suggest such evidence will be threatening and that people will claim hardships to manage this threat. These claims of hardship allow individuals to deny that they personally benefit from privilege, while still accepting that group-level inequity exists. Experiments 1a and 1b show that Whites exposed to evidence of racial privilege claim to have suffered more personal life hardships than those not exposed to evidence of privilege. Experiment 2 shows that self-affirmation reverses the effect of exposure to evidence of privilege on hardship claims, implicating the motivated nature of hardship claims. Further, affirmed participants acknowledge more personal privilege, which is associated with increased support for inequity-reducing policies.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Volume 61, November 2015, Pages 12–18
Abstract
Racial inequity continues to plague America, yet many Whites still doubt the existence of racial advantages, limiting progress and cooperation. What happens when people are faced with evidence that their group benefits from privilege? We suggest such evidence will be threatening and that people will claim hardships to manage this threat. These claims of hardship allow individuals to deny that they personally benefit from privilege, while still accepting that group-level inequity exists. Experiments 1a and 1b show that Whites exposed to evidence of racial privilege claim to have suffered more personal life hardships than those not exposed to evidence of privilege. Experiment 2 shows that self-affirmation reverses the effect of exposure to evidence of privilege on hardship claims, implicating the motivated nature of hardship claims. Further, affirmed participants acknowledge more personal privilege, which is associated with increased support for inequity-reducing policies.
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
July 2016 #BlackLivesMatter Reader (UPDATED)
Guiding Question: Why do we read and hear incessantly about black-on-black crime, but nothing about white-on-white crime?
Failsafe from Son of Baldwin
To begin, the fact that the term “black-on-black crime” exists in our lexicon, but not the term “white-on-white crime,” is one of the clearest signs that racism is a guiding principle in this country. And all one needs to do is look at the facts: 94% of all crimes committed against black people are committed by black people; 86% of all crimes committed against white people are committed by white people.Surely, 86% is a number at which we can safely say that white-on-white crime is a very serious problem. Yet, we never do. The term is not in the dictionary. There is no Wikipedia entry for it. It is not browbeaten into the public consciousness. The media makes little to no mention of this term. There are no news specials dedicated to looking at this problem. Neither Oprah nor President Obama have touched on the topic.As a result, black people are scapegoated and pathologized as especially criminal when, in reality, we are merely, pretty much, keeping pace with the rest of a society that thrives on violence. If black people are being asked to focus on black-on-black crime, then why aren’t white people being asked to focus on white-on-white crime? Why are some people so focused on black-on-black and black-on-white crime, but get upset when we focus on white-on-white or white-on-black crime?
They used the press to make it look like he’s the criminal and they’re the victim. This is how they do it, and if you study how they do it [t]here, then you’ll know how they do it over here. It’s the same game going all the time, and if you and I don’t awaken and see what this man is doing to us, then it’ll be too late. They may have the gas ovens already built before you realize that they’re hot.One of the shrewd ways that they use the press to project us in the eye or image of a criminal: they take statistics. And with the press they feed these statistics to the public, primarily the white public. Because there are some well-meaning persons in the white public as well as bad-meaning persons in the white public. And whatever the government is going to do, it always wants the public on its side, whether it’s the local government, state government, federal government. So they use the press to create images. And at the local level, they’ll create an image by feeding statistics to the press — through the press showing the high crime rate in the Negro community. As soon as this high crime rate is emphasized through the press, then people begin to look upon the Negro community as a community of criminals.And then any Negro in the community can be stopped in the street. “Put your hands up,” and they pat you down. You might be a doctor, a lawyer, a preacher, or some other kind of Uncle Tom. But despite your professional standing, you’ll find that you’re the same victim as the man who’s in the alley. Just because you’re Black and you live in a Black community, which has been projected as a community of criminals. This is done. And once the public accepts this image also, it paves the way for a police-state type of activity in the Negro community. They can use any kind of brutal methods to suppress Blacks because “they’re criminals anyway.” And what has given this image? The press again, by letting the power structure or the racist element in the power structure use them in that way.A very good example was the riots that took place here during the summer: I was in Africa, I read about them over there. If you’ll notice, they referred to the rioters as vandals, hoodlums, thieves. They tried to make it appear that this wasn’t — they tried to make it — and they did this. They skillfully took the burden off the society for its failure to correct these negative conditions in the Black community. It took the burden completely off the society and put it right on the community by using the press to make it appear that the looting and all of this was proof that the whole act was nothing but vandals and robbers and thieves, who weren’t really interested in anything other than that which was negative. And I hear many old, dumb, brainwashed Negroes who parrot the same old party line that the man handed down in his paper.
So when the Times article summarily dismisses existing data as “poor,” and doesn’t explain what that data actually is, that should be a red flag — a clue that the article’s author isn’t going to provide you with an explanation of why this new data is so much better than the old data, and you’re going to have to do that yourself.When Fryer (an economist by training) tells the Times that he got interested in police shootings because of “his anger after the deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray,” and (in Fryer’s words) “decided I was going to collect a bunch of data and try to understand what really is going on,” that should be another humongous red flag.It implies that Fryer assumed he was doing something pioneering, rather than asking first what work was already being done and what he could add to the existing conversation. This is something that often happens when people in “quantitative” social sciences, like economics, develop an interest in topics covered in other social sciences — in this case, criminology: They assume that no rigorous empirical work is being done.
See also Three Problems With How the NY Times Highlights a Non-Peer Reviewed Study Allegedly Showing No Racial Bias in Police Shootings, Sarah Beller, and A Multi-Level Bayesian Analysis of Racial Bias in Police Shootings at the County-Level in the United States, 2011–2014, Cody T. Ross
A Nixon Is an Agnew Is a Wallace, Bayard Rustin (New York Amsterdam News, 24 August 1968, p.12, col. 3) [1]
The Near Certainty of Anti-Police Violence, Ta-Nehisi Coates
To understand the lack of police legitimacy in black communities, consider the contempt in which most white Americans hold O.J. Simpson. Consider their feelings toward the judge and jury in the case. And then consider that this is approximately how black people have felt every few months for generations. It’s not just that the belief that Officer Timothy Loehmann got away with murdering a 12-year-old Tamir Rice, it is the reality that police officers have been getting away with murdering black people since the advent of American policing. The injustice compounds, congeals until there is an almost tangible sense of dread and grievance that compels a community to understand the police as objects of fear, not respect.What does it mean, for instance, that black children are ritually told that any stray movement in the face of the police might result in their own legal killing? When Eric Holder spoke about getting “The Talk” from his father, and then giving it to his own son, many of us nodded our heads. But many more of us were terrified. When the nation’s top cop must warn his children to be skeptical of his own troops, how legitimate can the police actually be?
In the wake of these deaths and the protests surrounding them, you, white America, say that black folks kill each other every day without a mumbling word while we thunderously protest a few cops, usually but not always white, who shoot to death black people who you deem to be mostly “thugs.”That such an accusation is nonsense is nearly beside the point. Black people protest, to one another, to a world that largely refuses to listen, that what goes on in black communities across this nation is horrid, as it would be in any neighborhood depleted of dollars and hope — emptied of good schools, and deprived of social and economic buffers against brutality. People usually murder where they nest; they aim their rage at easy targets.It is not best understood as black-on-black crime; rather, it is neighbor-to-neighbor carnage. If their neighbors were white, they’d get no exemption from the crime that plagues human beings who happen to be black. If you want interracial killing, you have to have interracial communities….Whiteness is blindness. It is the wish not to see what it will not know.
According to the most recent census data, there are nearly 160 million more white people in America than there are black people. White people make up roughly 62 percent of the U.S. population but only about 49 percent of those who are killed by police officers. African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population. As The Post noted in a new analysis published last week, that means black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers.
Walking While Black in the ‘White Gaze,’ George Yancy
A black boy carrying a telescope wasn’t conceivable — unless he had stolen it — given the white racist horizons within which my black body was policed as dangerous. To the officer, I was something (not someone) patently foolish, perhaps monstrous or even fictional. My telescope, for him, was a weapon.In retrospect, I can see the headlines: “Black Boy Shot and Killed While Searching the Cosmos.”That was more than 30 years ago. Only last week, our actual headlines were full of reflections on the 1963 March on Washington, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and President Obama’s own speech at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to commemorate it 50 years on. As the many accounts from that long ago day will tell you, much has changed for the better. But some things — those perhaps more deeply embedded in the American psyche — haven’t. In fact, we should recall a speech given by Malcolm X in 1964 in which he said, “For the 20 million of us in America who are of African descent, it is not an American dream; it’s an American nightmare.”
[1] Courtesy Louis Moore.
[2] See earlier version Dyson was asked to revise: What White America Fails to See.
Bias Isn't Just A Police Problem, It's A Preschool Problem
Bias Isn't Just A Police Problem, It's A Preschool Problem
Research: Do Early Educators’ Implicit Biases Regarding Sex and RaceRelate to Behavior Expectations and Recommendations ofPreschool Expulsions and Suspensions?
Abstract
Research: Do Early Educators’ Implicit Biases Regarding Sex and RaceRelate to Behavior Expectations and Recommendations ofPreschool Expulsions and Suspensions?
Abstract
Preschool expulsions and the disproportionate expulsion of Black boys have gained attention in recent years, but little has been done to understand the underlying causes behind this issue. This study examined the potential role of preschool educators’ implicit biases as a viable partial explanation behind disparities in preschool expulsions. Participants were recruited at a large conference of early educators and completed two tasks. In Task 1, participants were primed to expect challenging behaviors (although none were present) while watching a video of preschoolers, balanced by sex and race, engaging in typical activities, as the participants’ eye gazes were tracked. In Task 2, participants read a standardized vignette of a preschooler with challenging behavior and were randomized to receive the vignette with the child’s name implying either a Black boy, Black girl, White boy, or White girl, as well as randomized to receive the vignette with or without background information on the child’s family environment. Findings revealed that when expecting challenging behaviors teachers gazed longer at Black children, especially Black boys. Findings also suggested that implicit biases may differ depending on teacher race. Providing family background information resulted in lowered severity ratings when teacher and child race matched, but resulted in increased severity ratings when their race did not match. No differences were found based on recommendations regarding suspension or expulsion, except that Black teachers in general recommended longer periods of disciplinary exclusion regardless of child gender/race. Recommendations for future research and policy regarding teacher training are offered.
Sunday, September 25, 2016
Monday, September 19, 2016
Thursday, September 15, 2016
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Sunday, September 4, 2016
Saturday, September 3, 2016
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Colin Kaepernick and Every Marching Band Director in America
Colin Kaepernick and Every Marching Band Director in America
Nancy Flanagan
Every school music teacher in America has wrestled with the national anthem. Hard to sing (covering an octave and a fifth), written in an unfriendly key signature, lyrically confounding and attached to a disreputable tune, it nevertheless maintains a strange hold on public sentiment. We expect to hear it, for some hard to trace reason, every Friday night at football games, and a raft of other occasions. We expect citizens to show reverence for this music (although singing the words is considered optional, even embarrassing).
I've probably conducted the "Star-Spangled Banner" 500 times, and taught it, in some form or for some purpose, every one of my 31 years in the classroom. I don't particularly like it--but it's one of those "part of the job" music-teacher tasks that becomes habitual, boring, and then--on unexpected occasions-- moving.
I used to delight in telling my students that the "Star-Spangled Banner" tune is based on an 18th century, thoroughly British, drinking song: To Anacreon in Heaven. I sincerely hope whoever first set Francis Scott Key's flowery, militaristic poetry to the theme song of an exclusive club of (heavy-drinking) English aristocrats had a great sense of irony. Proposing this weird hybrid as our patriotic anthem was an exercise in incongruity--and the song was around for more than one hundred years before being selected as our one and only official national song.
"The Star-Spangled Banner" is grist for a fun set of lessons to teach kids: America as cross-cultural hub, the symbolism of music in extraordinary events, rabid nationalism, and an outdated glorification of war.
There are picture books about the creation of the original poem for younger children, depicting "brave" Key out in the harbor, tearing up as he saw the tattered banner waving. The assumption in all these tales is that "we" are always fighting for truth, justice and the American way. Because--you know--"we" Americans are always on the right side.
There are picture books about the creation of the original poem for younger children, depicting "brave" Key out in the harbor, tearing up as he saw the tattered banner waving. The assumption in all these tales is that "we" are always fighting for truth, justice and the American way. Because--you know--"we" Americans are always on the right side.
Even when we aren't--or when the right side is hard to determine.
Most children in America are introduced to the Revolutionary War as "Americans" fighting to get out from under the heavy, tax-mad hand of the British. They're seldom told about the large percentage of loyalists and the determinedly neutral who made up over half of the citizenry, the savage behaviors that accompanied the birthing of democracy. The party line in schools is give me liberty or give me death--even though the deadly squabbling over land boundaries and home rule and just who was a citizen lasted for more than a century. No wonder it took forever to pick a song.
I finished every lesson on the SSB by telling students that there are periodically attempts to change the national anthem, for excellent reasons. We would look at other possibilities, from "America the Beautiful" to "This Land is Your Land" (which young students invariably pick as the best replacement, especially knowing that Woody Guthrie encouraged singers to add their own verses). "My Country 'Tis of Thee" was stolen from the Queen (God save her), and has its own set ofdistasteful, violent, jingoistic words. "God Bless America" makes some folks uncomfortable, although it's interesting to consider that when members of Congress gathered on 9/11, they spontaneously sang Irving Berlin's classic, avoiding the bombs bursting in air.
I finished every lesson on the SSB by telling students that there are periodically attempts to change the national anthem, for excellent reasons. We would look at other possibilities, from "America the Beautiful" to "This Land is Your Land" (which young students invariably pick as the best replacement, especially knowing that Woody Guthrie encouraged singers to add their own verses). "My Country 'Tis of Thee" was stolen from the Queen (God save her), and has its own set ofdistasteful, violent, jingoistic words. "God Bless America" makes some folks uncomfortable, although it's interesting to consider that when members of Congress gathered on 9/11, they spontaneously sang Irving Berlin's classic, avoiding the bombs bursting in air.
And now, Colin Kaepernick has decided that he doesn't want to be part of a mandated show of faux patriotism. He's explained why, in simple but powerful language. He has the right--the freedom-- to sit down. And the talking heads have gone crazy, the elevation of form over substance.
I keep thinking about band directors and football coaches, trying to keep students engaged in healthy community activities. What happens when students refuse to take part in patriotic displays that have no meaning? Actually--this kind of thing happens fairly frequently: the student who refuses to pledge allegiance to the flag, or the child whose parents pull her out of the Valentine's Day party.
Sometimes, teachers gossip in the lounge, expressing pity for kids whose parents have non-standard beliefs or practices. But in my experience, students whose families are out of the mainstream often have tighter family bonds and strong support for academic achievement. Smart school leaders honor students' and families' beliefs, as long as they're not harmful. It's better to stand for something.
I am intrigued by the articles (here, and here, for example) dissecting the national anthem and Kaepernick's response. Each time I see another discussion--even heated comments-- about what it means to revere the flag, I think: Good. This will give American citizens and, one hopes, students, something to study and pick apart--our deeply racist history, our national values. Our right of free expression. Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Mary Beth Tinker.
Something as symbolic as a national anthem (think about the political and religious import in that designation) deserves scrutiny. Something as critical to human communities as patriotism deserves careful thought.
Let the conversations roll.
Let the conversations roll.
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
Monday, August 29, 2016
Thursday, August 25, 2016
Mike Rose: Who Is Smarter Than Whom?: Status Games in Higher Ed
Mike Rose: Who Is Smarter Than Whom?: Status Games in Higher Ed
This last point about getting better at educating is at the center of a new book by my UCLA colleague, Alexander Astin, an expert on higher education in the United States. In Are You Smart Enough?, Astin argues that colleges—especially “elite” colleges—are more concerned with acquiring status markers of intelligence (high entering student gpas and test scores, faculty publication numbers, and so on) rather than creating the conditions for students to become more intelligent during their time in college. Instead of the scramble to attract students already identified as smart, Astin wonders, what if colleges put increased effort into helping students become smarter through more attention to teaching, mentoring, and enrichment activities? It’s a provocative and important question.
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Monday, August 22, 2016
Summer is Over, School Begins in August | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
Summer is Over, School Begins in August | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
Friday, August 19, 2016
Forty-Seven Minutes, Nick Flynn
Forty-Seven Minutes
Nick Flynn, 1960
Years later I’m standing before a roomful of young writers in a high school in Texas. I’ve asked them to locate an image in a poem we’d just read—their heads at this moment are bowed to the page. After some back & forth about the grass & a styrofoam cup, a girl raises her hand & asks, Does it matter? I smile—it is as if the universe balanced on those three words & we’ve landed in the unanswerable. I have to admit that no, it doesn’t, not really, matter, if rain is an image or rain is an idea or rain is a sound in our heads. But, I whisper, leaning in close, to get through the next forty-seven minutes we might have to pretend it does.
Nick Flynn, 1960
Years later I’m standing before a roomful of young writers in a high school in Texas. I’ve asked them to locate an image in a poem we’d just read—their heads at this moment are bowed to the page. After some back & forth about the grass & a styrofoam cup, a girl raises her hand & asks, Does it matter? I smile—it is as if the universe balanced on those three words & we’ve landed in the unanswerable. I have to admit that no, it doesn’t, not really, matter, if rain is an image or rain is an idea or rain is a sound in our heads. But, I whisper, leaning in close, to get through the next forty-seven minutes we might have to pretend it does.
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
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