Stop Telling My Kids the Truth!

The national backlash against anti-racism and diversity work in schools is astounding.  The opposition to Critical Race Theory (CRT) is particularly vehement.  In state after state legislation has been passed prohibiting this work. I have posted previous pieces on this topic, but I trust readers will excuse my passionate repetition.

There are credible intellectual criticisms of CRT, but those arcane parsings have nothing to do with the largely Republican objections.  The most common complaints are: “There is no systemic racism.” “Enough already — slavery ended more than 150 years ago.” “I’m not racist and my children and I aren’t responsible for what someone else did in the 19th century.” “Don’t make my children feel guilty.”  “Martin Luther King said we should judge by the content of character, not the color of skin.”  “These programs divide us and we should all just get along.”

If there is no systemic racism, please use the comment option to explain the following things to me:

Flint, MI is 60% black with 41% of its citizens living beneath the poverty line. Flint’s children have been exposed to lead in the drinking water because of a decision to save money.  The toxicity of the water was covered up for many months. Nearby Grosse Pointe Shores, MI is .6% black. 2.7% live below the poverty line.  Please indicate what you think the response would have been if wealthy white children in Grosse Pointe Shores were exposed to lead in the water supply.

A group of heavily armed white men, labeled “activists” by the media, trespassed and occupied federal buildings in rural Oregon. The official response was to allow them to air their grievances, order supplies and allow the situation to defuse over time. Please comment on the likely police response if a group of heavily armed black men took over federal property. 

A few years ago, Jim Cooley, a white man, carried a loaded assault weapon into the Atlanta airport. Cooley simply went about his business, supposedly keeping his daughter safe.  John Crawford, a black man, picked up an air rifle from a shelf in an Ohio Walmart and was shot to death by police. Please explain what you think might have happened if John Crawford carried a loaded assault weapon into the Atlanta airport or if Jim Cooley shopped for an air gun at Walmart. 

A prominent hedge fund manager in Manhattan is a leading advocate for “no excuses” charter schools, such as KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program), Success Academies and Democracy Prep. Well-documented reports reveal that children at KIPP have been punished by being labeled “Miscreants,” students at Success Academies have wet their pants due to stress and the refusal to allow them to go to the bathroom, and children at Democracy Prep have been shunned, branded by wearing yellow shirts and literally forced into silence, with other children and adults forbidden to speak to them. 

This “reformer” is on the record saying that these means of discipline are necessary because these children, nearly all Black and Latinx, “need it.” His own daughters attend Nightingale-Bamford, a highly selective, expensive, majority white, girls school on Manhattan’s Upper Eastside. Please indicate the way you believe he might respond if his daughters reported such experiences during their school days at Nightingale-Bamford because they “needed it.”

A quick web search yields hundreds of photos of smiling white men in public places, including stores and schools, openly carrying rifles or holstered handguns. Please comment on the likely response if a young black man, wearing sagging pants with a large brimmed cap askew, entered a school or store with an assault weapon or loaded handgun. 

Nearly every student of color in my former school had been followed in a store or stopped and frisked by New York City police. I am not aware of any white student, during my 19 years as head of school, being subjected to similar treatment. Please describe the characteristics of these students that might account for the inarguably different treatment. 

A University of Chicago study examined the “call back” rates for job applicants with black sounding names as opposed to those with white sounding names. Their resumes were otherwise identical. Those with black sounding names received 50% fewer interview invitations than those with white sounding names.  Please comment on what seems most likely to explain the lower number of interview opportunities for “black-sounding” candidates.

More recently, on January 6th, a white mob stormed the Capitol.  Several police officers and one rioter died.  All the rioters were allowed to leave the scene peacefully, although, thankfully, there have been subsequent arrests.  If a similarly armed mob of Black men had stormed the Capitol, how many would have been free to leave peacefully, if any were still alive?

A very frequent concern expressed by progressive friends, is that this work is confrontational and unlikely to change minds.  How precisely does one deal with the pernicious and tenacious realities of racism without “confronting” them? 

The purpose of these programs in schools is to interrupt the generation-to-generation continuation of the implicit and explicit biases that sustain racism.  The “adults” who rail against these efforts are so well-practiced in denial and so subconsciously protective of their own privilege that their minds probably can’t be changed.

The hope is that the rising generation can break the cycle - but that will only happen if they learn the truth.