Schools are committed to bringing anti-racism into curricula and systems more than ever before. Even in predominantly white schools there appears to be a growing acknowledgment that anti-racist education is crucial for all students.<\/p>\n
Big changes seem to be underfoot. And that\u2019s a wonderful thing.<\/p>\n
But there will be pushback. White fragility<\/a> and white rage<\/a> will ensure a range of resistance to anti-racism. Some of it will be coded and couched in other concerns. But some of it will come in the form of violent, ugly, and harmful backlash.<\/p>\n For educators, whose first priority is their students, we need to have a plan for students who struggle to incorporate anti-racism into their current worldview.<\/p>\n For those students caught in the middle of the inevitable backlash, we need to be ready to provide support. What might a system of intervention look like for anti-racist education?<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with the premise that our goal is for students to be active citizens in our pluralistic democracy. And that in order to do that, they need to understand anti-democratic systems, starting with racism. This is so they can analyze, navigate, and transform our currently imperfect system for a more just and democratic future.<\/p>\n A widespread concern in Vermont, and central to this blog post, are our anti-racism goals for white students. In her book Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America<\/i><\/a>, Jennifer Harvey draws on the work of racial identity scholars Janet Helms and Beverly Daniel Tatum, both Black women, to define “healthy white kids” as anti-racists.<\/p>\n \u201cA healthy white identity is nurtured through experiencing the growth, freedom, and power that comes from taking anti-racist stances and learning to negotiate different racial spaces.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To help students become anti-racist democratic citizens, we need to mobilize such systems and strategies as:<\/p>\n This last point brings us to our present focus.<\/p>\n In a predominantly white state and school system like Vermont, we will have a lot of white families, white students, and white-ness to consider. If we are teaching about anti-racism we are going to need a serious system of intervention.<\/p>\n If students are going to learn about anti-racism, they will have a lot of unlearning to do, too. They will hear contradictory stuff at home and from the world around them via every type of media (social media, news, music, magazines, radio, etc).<\/p>\n White students in particular are unlikely to have encountered sophisticated thinking about race at home. In the article What White Children Need to Know About Race<\/a>, Ali Michael and Elenora Bartoli noted that<\/p>\n \u201cThe research suggests that for fear of perpetuating racial misunderstandings, being seen as a racist, making children feel badly, or simply not knowing what to say, many white parents tend to believe that there is never a right time to initiate a conversation about race.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As Jennifer Harvey put it,<\/p>\n \u201cWhite children are living in a society that is racially hierarchical, divided, and unjust. It seeks to draw white people into collusion with hierarchy and injustice every step of the way\u201d (p. 100).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Put together the tendency for families to avoid talking about race with the damaging messages of society? We can start to see why we are where we are. When we consider how and what white people learn about race? It\u2019s clear that we have a lot of work to do.<\/p>\n The excellent Talking about Race<\/i> portal by the National Museum for African-American History and Culture<\/a> (NMAAHC) lays out some useful definitions. In the section of the site on whiteness<\/a>, they define the following terms:<\/p>\n So for white children there is a cycle where they are raised in white-dominant culture which socializes internalized dominance and ultimately upholds white supremacy ideology. And that bestows benefits on white people, thus reinforcing white dominant culture. The cycle keeps chugging along.<\/p>\n In a future where anti-racist education is widespread, all students will deal with the contrasts between anti-racism and white-dominant culture.<\/p>\n White students will be struggling to counteract their internalized dominance. And this is a particular problem we have to account for in the intervention model.<\/p>\n Plus, for a small set of white students, that internalized dominance will be especially extreme. These are the students where white supremacy is *explicitly* part of their home environments. Where a loving caregiver espouses white supremacist ideology, for example.<\/p>\n There is a danger that without strategies and systems in place, these students may be pushed harder toward white supremacy. Which underscores the importance of this work. Schools may be the only chance for intervening in a life course based on white supremacist beliefs and actions, harmful to them and potentially ruinous or deadly to others.<\/p>\n The stakes are that high.<\/p>\n We have literacy support, math support, executive functioning support – all critically important. Yet without adding a layer of support around this work, I worry.<\/p>\n — Christie Nold (@ChristieNold) January 24, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nWe need to be ready.<\/h4>\n
Systematic support for anti-racist teaching and learning<\/h4>\n
With the goals clear, what would it take?<\/h4>\n
\n
White children<\/h4>\n
If families don’t teach their kids about race, society will.<\/h5>\n
What we are up against<\/h4>\n
\n
And this is why we will need to think carefully about intervention.<\/h4>\n
\n