The Impact of the Past on the Present

 

I just listened to Dr. John McWhorter’s 2019 remarks at Bard College on YouTube and if I could respond to him, this is what I would say.

 

Before Dr. Ibram Kendi said that all unequal outcomes are due to unequal opportunity due to racism and his particular brand of anti-racism became the rage, we were actually having relevant discussions about unequal outcomes that were due to racism. I call the new diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting that he ushered in “Shock DEI”. It's not his “all” or your none. And while you don’t use the word “none”, your language sets up the dichotomy. Since you used an urban public school to illustrate your point, I thought I would respond as you brush aside some key issues and don’t bring to light others.

 

First, you brush aside history to make your point. And while I agree with most of your solutions; you can’t brush aside history. The unequal outcomes due to racism’s unequal opportunity don’t appear overnight. The racism of white flight and redlining made a huge impact on the economic conditions of communities and while it occurred 50 plus years ago the impression was lasting. When economist Thomas Sowell discusses the damaging effects of desegregation, he focuses on the contradictions of the government trying to force racial balance in schools. He doesn’t discuss the impact of racist decisions such as firing close to 40,000 black teachers that robbed communities of what Chris Stewart calls “cultural capital”. This is the racism that is foundational to building the administrative frame of the schools many Black people now run. It is disingenuous to talk to undergraduates about the War on Drugs and gloss over the racist structural history that has a present-day impact.

 

Now to the education schools. Well, I will take this hit because I have been managing student teaching at a small liberal arts school for close to 20 years now. When you talked about Black people running districts, you neglected to talk about who is in the classroom doing the teaching. In my close to 20 years training teachers, I have only trained two Black teachers. State certification policy has a racist history that impacts us today. But let’s not talk about the race of the teachers. Instead, I want to discuss the present-day racism in the practice of teacher placement. Those urban schools with the large minority populations of people who are poor don’t employ the strongest teachers and, in many districts, the pay scale doesn’t reward more able teachers or teachers who are placed in more challenging schools. Alternative preparation programs are promising, but we need resident teachers who are afforded two years of paid apprenticeship before becoming a teacher of record. Teacher quality must be addressed before outcomes can improve.

 

Yes, explicitly teaching children to decode, not sending people to jail for non-violent offenses, and providing free access to long-term birth control are all solutions that I can get behind. Two income households are always better than one income, but don’t make it sound like all Black men are in jail. There are plenty raising their kids and we need to raise them up and recognize them instead of reinforcing a stereotype. I would like to add job opportunities, gentrification without displacement, and entrepreneurial support as solutions also. We need to thin out urban poverty which is predominately minority. Having raised my children in a rural area surrounded by rural poverty that is low density gave them the opportunity to attend economically diverse schools naturally. Dense poverty creates high density poor schools and we have learned that artificial solutions to force types of integration create friction.

 

One last thing Dr. McWhorter. I can’t get behind walking away quietly when someone openly expresses racism. That is how I was brought up and it’s too much like Jim Crow etiquette. I also don’t advocate acting hurt. Call them out. No, not cancel them; but shed light upon them with your head held high. I will end here because I don’t want to veer from this talk. Hopefully, we can ultimately make headway in getting people the help they need.  

 

 

The Cliché of "Black History Is American History"

 

I am glad that people are talking about Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma and that they are surprised about the origin of Memorial Day. I follow chats about canonical texts and am glad that Black authors are cited in lists that meet the requirement for inclusion in canonical instruction, though many of my freshman students don’t remember the work of Black authors in high school. It goes to show that as much as people like to profess that Black history is American history, they don’t put it into practice where it counts. When I examine textbooks and look at standards, the Black experience is additive. I would rather not have a Black History Month because I honestly believe that Black history is American history, but when the resources and standards treat it as additive, having a month of focused celebration is better than nothing at all.

 

What people don’t understand is that the “African American” experience is not like the Italian American, Irish American, or German American experience. The Italians, Irish, and Germans brought their heritage with them and preserved what they could in the manner they saw fit as they became "American". The African in African American was forcibly stripped away. Yes, some of the concrete, behavioral, or symbolic components of African culture before enslavement survived, but that was not for lack of trying to snuff it out in order to subjugate.

 

The African American experience that we know today is uniquely American, but it is possible for students to graduate from a U.S. high school career and college ready and have no understanding of African American history. It is not required. In high school, my daughters were on a competitive college track where AP or honors classes were preferred. It was interesting to me that they read less diverse instructional texts than friends on more career-oriented tracks. All students can get away with a section in a textbook about slavery and its economic focus. Abraham Lincoln is the center of emancipation and the Civil Rights movement is more about dreams and coming together. African Americans spent a century building and living in a “separate but equal” society with an amazing AMERICAN story that goes untold. It is as if we were less than or invisible in the curriculum if we weren’t actively struggling to be integrated into white society, but we also struggled and achieved in a parallel society that is also American despite Jim Crow etiquette and second-class treatment. A parallel society that highlights the so-called American ideals of hard work and perseverance. It included schools, businesses, banks, and professional organizations that operated with dignity and pride while unfortunately respecting the psychologically damaging social rules of American race.  

 

I am team Frederick Douglass so I will never say that the American idea was rotten to its core. He used it to argue the abolition of slavery. But I will say that Americans spent centuries building a country that didn’t live up to the ideals embodied in that idea, this experiment. I love learning about Africa and the ancestry that was stripped away, but I recognize that my story is uniquely American unlike other immigrants. And no American student should be considered educated without knowing its unique nature.