On “Anti-Racism” in Schools

The popular rhetorical pivot towards “anti-racism” in K-12 circles constitutes a theoretical regression and a practical distraction from the instructional, pedagogical, political, and systemic work that needs to be done on behalf of students of African and/or indigenous descent. Ladson-Billings (1995), Gay (2010), and Paris (2012) already embedded an active posture towards resisting the status quo, especially including its racial hierarchy, in their pedagogical models. Thus, it is a present irony that so many educational spaces tout the phrases “culturally responsive, anti-racist” in concert as though the former ideal does not intrinsically include the latter. The redundancy likely suggests that, despite the popularity of the term, few administrators, practitioners, or advocates in the K-12 sector have a genuine or thorough understanding of what constitutes “cultural relevance”, “responsiveness,” or “sustenance”; what distinguishes each paradigm from the next; or even an awareness that each term describes a pedagogical model as opposed to an en vogue catch-phrase. Even a cursory reading of Gay’s definition of “culturally responsive teaching” reveals that it holds “challenging racial and cultural stereotypes, prejudices, racism, and other forms of intolerance, injustice, and oppression”, among other “racial competencies”, (Teel & Obidah, 2008) as a contingency upon which such teaching rests. 

While we hold that an “anti-racist” posture is indeed appropriate and should be required of any and all instructors of students of color, framing “anti-racism” as a separate or stand-alone goal or requirement for teachers and administrators creates a false impression that activism, not optimal instruction, is the aim of the teaching craft. In our estimation, in schools nationwide, the popular discourse of “anti-racism” has lent to broad, aimless conversations about Race that constitute, at best, missed opportunities for serious interrogation of how the myth of White Supremacy has shaped our fundamental assumptions about teaching and learning, intelligence, and school design; at worst, they open Pandora’s boxes of racial grievances and catharses among school staff that ultimately supplant necessary, vital conversations about quality instruction. 

The popular discourse has also ironically lent to a retrenchment of White Saviorism wherein well intentioned teachers of European descent now feel it their professional duty to train and/or mobilize students to “fight racism”--a task which they themselves may not be able to define or have any experience with and, even if they do, certainly not from the vantage point of their brown-skinned students. Instead of guiding students through the rigorous acquisition of skills and habits of mind necessary to effectively advocate for themselves, overcome discrimination, or, best of all, create economic, professional, and social spaces that are suited to themselves on their own terms, overzealous White teachers teach blanket sentiments and flat rhetorical postures that lack nuance. Not to be confused with effective culturally responsive instructors who train students how to use the academic disciplines to describe, deconstruct, and interrogate their realities, many well-intentioned, progressive teachers of all backgrounds and hues proselytize and insist that students share their specific positions on issues that are mightily complex. Such indoctrination into political correctness is not effective instruction nor is it ultimately useful, though it may feel good, to the students that experience it.

On the other end of this spectrum are reactionary stakeholders who have seized upon Dr. Kendi’s position that “black people can be racist”--a position that we summarily dismiss as ahistorical and philosophically indefensible–as a political point to slyly paint progressive attempts to remove inequitable school structures as “racism against Whites and Asians.” We highly doubt that Dr. Kendi intended for his work to be misinterpreted and misused this way. We are also certain that he opposes the school curricula, norms, policies, and structures that lead to skewed outcomes nationwide for certain demographics of students. We thus dismiss backlash against necessary and overdue shifts in these students’ favor as just that: the predictable reaction of those, whom the present schooling landscape benefits, to preserve their unearned advantages, like inequitable school funding, exclusive programs with spurious barriers to entry, and the prevailing notion that student performance is exclusively a reflection of students’ intelligence and/or “caring about school” and not at all of teacher effectiveness. 

Again, we consider it regrettable that such debate, discourse, and preoccupation regarding “anti-racism” has crowded out the pivotal scholarship regarding the classrooms in which students of African and/or indigenous descent thrive.