Antiracism Education in American Public Schools

Discussion

Jeffrey Aaron Snyder:

"Conservatives and other skeptics have portrayed antiracism in the Kendi mold as ideological, dogmatic nonsense. They are—alas—spot-on.

According to the Antiracism, Inc. model, people, policies and institutions can always be neatly divided into “racist” and “antiracist” camps. The whole saga of race in the United States is like an epic Marvel movie, with the forces of justice on one side battling the forces of injustice on the other. All you need to do is join the good guys.

This academic year, let’s imagine that my son’s seventh-grade math teacher will be following “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction,” a recently published antiracist toolkit for teachers, funded in part by the Gates Foundation. Embarking on her “antiracist journey,” my son’s teacher will have learned that standard mathematics instruction is plagued by “the toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture” such as “perfectionism,” “worship of the written word” and “objectivity.” In math classrooms, the workbook explains, white supremacy culture manifests whenever “math is taught in a linear fashion,” “rigor is expressed only in difficulty” and grading practices “center what students don’t understand rather than what they do.” To “dismantle” white supremacy in collaboration with her students, my son’s teacher must “identify and challenge the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views”; and “expose students to people who have used math as resistance.”

Or consider Courageous Conversations About Race, a highly influential book for promoting racial equity in schools (now expanded to a consulting company with a much broader purview). Author Glenn Singleton maintains that white folks use “white talk,” which is “task-oriented” and “intellectual,” whereas people of color use “color commentary,” which is “process-oriented” and “emotional.” Like most frameworks under the Antiracism, Inc. umbrella, Courageous Conversations conflates race with culture. In a chapter called “Let’s Talk About Whiteness,” Singleton declares that “Whiteness represents a culture and consciousness that is shared by White people.” The variation within my own extended white family invalidates this absurd, quasi-mystical claim. With all due respect to my evangelical Christian, Trump-supporting relatives in rural Texas, we share neither a culture nor a consciousness.

If standard antiracism training and curricular initiatives were open to any real scrutiny or criticism, their shortcomings and excesses wouldn’t be so concerning. But from what I’ve observed, the basic assumptions that undergird Antiracism, Inc. are rarely up for debate. Antiracism, Inc. lesson plans are highly scripted and proceed as if there are obvious “right” and “wrong” answers for everything from what to call people of Hispanic or Latin American descent (Latinx) to whether affirmative action is wise public policy (it is). In this way, they aren’t so different from the Protestant catechisms taught in the nation’s first common schools.

Kieran Egan, the educational philosopher I mentioned before, said that what distinguishes education from indoctrination is “openness of inquiry.” So here is the diagnostic test: when teachers present ideas, beliefs and values as unquestionable truths, that’s a good sign indoctrination is at work.

By these lights, Antiracism, Inc. bears a stronger resemblance to indoctrination than education. The problem is not, as many on the right contend, that schools “make everything about race.” As I’ve written elsewhere, any social studies or U.S. history curriculum that doesn’t address race and racism is like a biology class that doesn’t include carbon. The problem is that Antiracism, Inc. only approves of one way of thinking and talking about race in the United States. I wouldn’t want my own sons in Antiracism, Inc. classrooms. As racially mixed kids (white father, mother of Asian descent), they wouldn’t even fit into any of the prescribed Antiracism, Inc. identity boxes."

(https://thepointmag.com/politics/education-and-indoctrination/)