Part Two – When Worlds Collide

In Part One, I talked about Seattle Public Schools’ Superintendent Denise Juneau and her
Strategic Plan and its focus on Black boys via the concept of targeted universalism.
Juneau and the School Board are firm on looking for/recognizing racist systems in SPS
and making change. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in Seattle against that but I
would also say that not everyone would agree on the programs/areas that they want to
change.

But what I am seeing now is an uptick of nomenclature ping-pong, starting right at the
top with Trump.

Number 1 – Refusing to believe in systemic racism Trump had an interesting answer to

Bob Woodward on this topic. From MSN:

(The tapes) reveal Trump saying earlier this summer he believes institutional racism
exists in the country and impacts people's lives, contrary to his public statements denying
it exists.

"Do you think there is systematic or institutional racism in this country?"

Woodward asked.

"Well, I think there is everywhere. I think probably less here than most places or
less here than many places," Trump responded.

"OK, but is it here? In a way that it has an impact on people's lives?" Woodward
asked.

"I think it is, and it's unfortunate, but I think it is," Trump said.

Yes, unfortunate. But then comes the kicker:

Trump made those comments in a June 22 conversation with Woodward, though

days before, he did reject the idea that "white privilege" prevents white people
from understanding “the anger and pain” of black citizens.

"No. You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you? Just listen to you. Wow. No, I
don’t feel that at all," Trump said.

Stunning.

There is also a video collage out there of various people in GOP leadership saying there
is no such thing as systemic racism.

Number 2 – Ending practices that raise awareness and allow understanding of racial and
cultural differences.
Trump’s administration has created rules that say that government entities can no longer
do diversity/critical race training and, in particular, use wording like “white privilege.”
From NPR:

"All agencies are directed to begin to identify all contracts or other agency spending
related to any training on 'critical race theory,' 'white privilege,' or any other training or
propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is an
inherently racist or evil country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or
evil."

The memo said agencies "should begin to identify all available avenues within the law to
cancel any such contracts and/or to divert Federal dollars away from these un-American
propaganda training sessions."

Those two movements – not believing in systemic racism and moving to strip out
learning/training on cultural/racial differences has led us to the real reason for this
pushback and it’s exactly what Trump has been doing all along – favoring and
protecting white people.

Trump and the GOP don’t want white people to feel uncomfortable; they fear their
children will grow up being anxious and feeling less than. Oh, the irony because that’s
what Black and brown and indigenous children have felt for decades.

What will be interesting to see is how business takes this on.

One industry that clearly has some head-scratching times ahead is professional sports. At
NFL games, the NFL has allowed wording on the giant screens about police brutality and
the fight for equality. They allow teams to decide what to do for the national anthem. In
the game I saw, the Houston Texans just gave up and didn’t come out at all for the
anthem while the Kansas City Chiefs had one guy take a knee and others holding hands
and still others singing along.

Then, the Texans came out and the officials held the coin toss. After which, BOTH teams
locked arms and had a moment of silence that was punctuated by some boos. (And 90
seconds later? The Chiefs promo people played an “Indian war chant.” Can you say tone-
deaf?)

The players are very much being told by some fans to “shut up and play.” But the NFL
knows that the majority of their players are Black/mixed race. I would imagine for most
of the Black players, they have had the experience of driving while black, shopping while
black,etc. And many of them now refuse to silently stand by any longer.

As well, Trump is adamantly against the teaching of the Pulitzer-prize winning 1619
Project, created by Nikole Hannah-Jones and the New York Times. According to
Politico:
(Trump) decried the “twisted web of lies” being taught in schools and the narratives in
universities that “America is a wicked and racist nation” and claims that the 1619
Project has been “totally” discredited.

I’ll note here that there are historians that disagree with several points in the 1619 Project
but all the writing of history has a POV and we all know that history is written by the
victors. Consider that last thought in the context of Trump trying to get reelected.

From CNN:

In July 2020, Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas proposed the "Saving
American History Act of 2020", prohibiting K-12 schools from using federal funds to
teach curriculum related to the 1619 project, and make schools that did ineligible for
federal professional-development grants. Cotton added that "The 1619 Project is a
racially divisive and revisionist account of history that threatens the integrity of the
Union by denying the true principles on which it was founded.

California is considering adding the 1619 Project to its curriculum.

From Wikipedia:
The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting has made available free online lesson plans, is
collecting further lesson plans from teachers, and helps arrange for speakers to visit
classes. The Center considers most of the lessons usable by all grades from elementary
school through college.

Trump has now threatened California with loss of federal funding for public schools if it
uses this curriculum. Federal funds are mostly for Title One (low income) schools and
Special Education. Those are the children Trump proposes to punish. To note, even Betsy
DeVos, Secretary of Education, stated that it is locally controlled school districts that
determine what curriculum to use but she and Trump are pushing a conservative view
curriculum called the “1776 Unites Curriculum.”

Here’s how this pushback against teaching about racism in schools is playing out in one
district, Seattle Public Schools. There is a group, Law Enforcement Today. This group,
appears to be a shadow group of current/former law enforcement officers. There are
almost no names attached. They do have 50K+ followers on Twitter and over 850,000
likes on Facebook. They lean decidedly hard right.

Recently their website had an editorial in it. This editorial goes after Seattle Schools
Superintendent Denise Juneau over her Strategic Plan and especially the idea of ending
racist systems. SPS and its School Board have chosen to use “targeted universalism” to
guide the work for Black boys. This plank of the Strategic Plan focuses solely on Black
boys on the premise that learning what turns education around for those students will help
other marginalized students.
LET clearly fears that if children get a true accounting of our nation’s history that it will
scar white children. In teaching children about history there should be nuance but I
absolutely reject the idea of sugar-coating or even leaving out parts. We need our kids to
know the good, the bad AND the ugly so that when they are adults, those mistakes aren’t
made again.

The author starts the editorial by complaining about messaging at the district website on
the first day of school. It said,

“Moments of Silence. We would like to have a moment of silence to remember those lost
to COIVD-19. We would like to have a moment of silence to remember and acknowledge
those, specifically in the Black community, who were murdered at the hands of those
upholding White supremacy, including the police.”

The editorial writer is very unhappy with Juneau ending the in-school relationship with
the Seattle Police Department with officers at several schools. As well, the author takes
issue with SPS refusing to allow SPD the use of school grounds for police staging during
the recent protests. I’ll just note that SPD just went in and used the grounds of two SPS
schools on Capitol Hill for their staging and didn’t ask permission nor even inform the
district of their actions.

There’s a very charged video embedded in the editorial that tries to sound evenhanded,
claiming that “we see no age, sex or colors.” Sigh. But then they get tough with talk of
“our” country. Thus begins the editorial.

Again, this makes a big assumption, that the existing educational system is racist. If she
(Juneau) had stopped at “we’re here to help African American boys,” it would be
difficult to complain.

The problem is, “because, racism.”

So it’s okay to help Black boys because you know they are struggling but not to try to
understand that struggle?

Now we come to the core issue.

“Systemic racism” is a fabricated illusion that has been widely distributed in

educational communities, by our entertainment, and the news media.

The idea is that the“system” is so racist that we can’t tell it is racist. It is so racist that
its racism has become normalized and so become invisible.

I think there are a ton of books out there than can accurately define systemic racism as
well as provide a myriad of examples. There is nothing invisible about it except for those
who don’t experience it and/or choose to look away.
And then the editorial gets scary.

More seriously, while the claim of normalized racism is out there, others claim it can be
seen, most visibly in police “murders” of innocent black people. The problem with that
claim is that when police have killed black people, they tend to do it in the process of
doing their job.

The people killed tend to be criminals engaged in criminal activity or who are resisting
arrest.

The job of the police is to kill people?

And since when are police the prosecutors, judge and jury? When police arrive on a
scene, there is no way they could truly judge what has happened and who all the actors
are.

And since when was resisting arrest a capital punishment?

Just to throw a few stats out, I recently read an article in the New Yorker called The Long
Blue Line.

In each of the past five years, police in the United States have killed roughly a thousand
people. During each of those same years, about a hundred police officers were killed in
the line of duty.

I looked up that last stat and nearly half those officers died in accidents on the job.

I do not wish to negate the hard and difficult and scary work that is policing. But, like
the public school system, there are changes that need to be made. Again, from the LET
editorial:

Getting back to “racism in schools,” what it boils down to is that in Seattle, African
American students, presumably boys, get lower scores on average than students of other
races.

Racism isn’t the only reason test scores can vary. Maybe the students have different
abilities or interests. Maybe the tests are designed to test certain subjects that are less
interesting to members of one race versus another.

Maybe there are other ways to test ability than the tests, but that doesn’t make them
racist. They likely are biased by the intentions, goals, and experience of the people that
made the test, but that doesn’t make them racist either.

Students do worse on a test because maybe part of it is not an interesting subject to them?
Wouldn’t that suggest then that we need multiple ways to find academic achievement?
Also, the writer even says there may be bias in the test but that doesn’t make the test
creator or the test racist. That could be true but it could be equally true that the test
creator and/or the test ARE looking thru a white lens and that lens forgets about the rest
of the country in creating test questions?

How about a race-neutral environment, where race is ignored and children are simply
taught how to read, write, and perform arithmetic?

Well, amen to that but the problem is that racism doesn’t stop at the schoolhouse door.
As well, children need to learn about racial/cultural differences to become good citizens
in a multi-cultural society.

There are so many falsehoods built into almost any modern claim of racism that the data
available to contest the claim is overwhelming. As the claims multiply, so does belief in
racism. If anything is actually causing racism, it isn’t police shooting black criminals in
self-defense, it’s school superintendents telling tiny children that white people are
racists. 

I am certain that ALL the teachers have read that, at some level, they are “indoctrinating”
students. The editorial writer compares this with the Chinese Revolution:

Is it any surprise that they started in schools, by recruiting university students, then
teachers, then younger students, all the way down to the smallest children who could
walk, to spread the hate?

No, it’s not surprising and Hitler did it, too, when he said:

'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already.”

The editorial continues:

The messaging is everywhere, and it is getting adopted at an alarming pace by people

who either genuinely believe it or who are too frightened to resist.

Fake racism is an intimidation tactic and riotous mobs are the enforcers telling us to
believe it or else.

So I read some fear into those statements but not fear for personal self but rather, that
people might actually be listening to protestors, seeing incident after incident of racist
violence and saying, “I’ve seen enough and I believe.”

Right there is where the two lines of thought collide.

Will telling children the full truth of the history of our country make white children feel
bad about themselves? If done correctly, it shouldn’t.

And, if we have a generation of children who do learn the truth about our history and its
outcomes to this day, then I can see where it might upset those who don’t want change at
all.

What I would like to say to Superintendent Juneau is this: First, try and prove systemic
racism. Until you can, and you cannot, do not torture the innocent children in your care.
Do not defile their mind and spirit with your witches’ brew of tall tales and white
goblins.

If you raise them to be racists, it will be on your head, and all the misery that flourishes
as a result.

Nothing like issuing a challenge but saying that it can’t be done.

I do have to wonder about that “witch” inference. Is that because Juneau is a woman?

But what I find stunning is saying that schools “raise” children. No, they don’t; their
parents or guardians do.

Clearly the fear is that schools will undermine what is said at home and that we will end
up with a generation of children who know their country better than their parents do.