Students in our program should critically evaluate research and draw in developed theoretical prodigies to advance equitable educational approaches.
Throughout this program, one of the hardest struggles I have faced is understanding and coming to terms with my white power, especially this last semester taking EDCI 5360 and 5130 simultaneously. I acknowledge that while I have taken quite a few steps since January, I still have a very long way to go in becoming a “coconspirator” in the eyes of Bettina Love because I am still wrestling with “the emotionality of being White” (Love, 2019, p.144). Through my journey I have acknowledged my color-blind ideology that I had adapted through my childhood, and I have taken strides to comprehend the suffering of those oppressed for so long as a result of white power and white fragility. I am still in the process of wrestling my emotions to truly become a coconspirator for minority students.
Growing up in a predominantly white school district, I was not exposed to the suffering of those less fortunate. In my home district of Carroll ISD, the median household income is currently about $250,000, which is a bit higher than when I attended 5 years ago, but my household was certainly considered on the lower end of the economic class growing up (National Center for Education Statistics, n.d.). For this reason, I especially picked up on the term positionality, “the social and political context that creates your identity in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability status. Positionality also describes how your identity influences, and potential biases, your understanding of and outlook on the world” (Dictionary.com, 2021). Along with intersectionality, I have used these lenses to take in and process the information I have read and analyzed what could be done about the issues they address.
What should be undeniable, is that we have built up a huge educational debt to minority students through the years of denying them equal educational rights, and by suppressing them based on their race. (Ladson-Billings, 2006). The achievement gap is similar to the education debt, but it is only a short-term solution that ignores the decades that have created the education debt. Each action we preform to improve student performance may close the achievement gap for certain students of color, while chipping away at the education debt, but both will still exist until we can acknowledge the path of repression that created the need for the coined term, “closing the achievement gap.” The path to closing this education debt, is creating curriculum that allows for equitable educational change.
Before we can take that step, we must acknowledge the existence of whiteness, for there can be no racism without first acknowledging whiteness and white power. Whiteness is the inherent advantages that come with being of European decent that many do not recognize as advantages (Chiariello, 2016). This means being able to walk into a store and not be watched by clerks as if you will steal something. This means not having the cops called on you for making a clock inside of a pencil case (Benjamin, 2016). This means being able to protect those of color, such as the case of Tyler and Newsome removing the Confederate flag in South Carolina (Love, 2019, p.116).
Being color blind is just as bad as not acknowledging one’s whiteness. To subscribe to the color-blind ideology, one claims they do not see or acknowledge the race of another (Lewis, 2001). When not acknowledging the race of another, the teacher is not acknowledging the culture, the history, or the achievements of a student’s ancestors that allowed them to be standing before you ready to learn. In order to start dismantling the education debt and the white power within politics, an educator has to not only acknowledge the existence of whiteness but also the existence of every race and their equally important history.
Carroll Independent School District has not acknowledged their whiteness and has made national television 3 times this past school year with their continued and escalating refusal to acknowledge racism. With 65% of the student population identifying as white and 20% identifying as Asian, the matters of black lives are not high on taxpayer priorities (National Center for Education Statistics, n.d.). What sparked the start of change in the district was 2 videos going viral of students shouting the N word and laughing, followed by countless students speaking out about the discrimination they faced by their peers. The district quickly enacted a diversity counsel that proposed a plan in July of 2020 called the Cultural Competence Action Plan (CCAP) which opposition to the plan quickly pointed out was based on Critical Race Theory (CRT). To Love (2019), this means “racism is permanent and understanding it is fundamental to understanding how all structures are organized in the U.S.” (p.136). To Carroll ISD parents like Anne Franklin, CCAP means giving “power to selected students based on race, religion, culture, gender identity, and who knows what else” and it is a “racist anti-white program that will force white parents to also have a talk with their children to keep them safe. It will go something like this. Do not hang around with or be friends with anyone who is different than you racial, ethnically, culturally, or religiously” because they could charge you of a micro aggression that will prevent you from going to college or be hired in your future. The fact that she points out in her rant that black people have talks with their kids to keep them safe and is more alarmed that she will have to start doing that with her children with the implementation of a Critical Race Theory program, should be the clearest example of white privilege to anyone listening. Sadly, it is not.
Enacting any anti-racist pedagogy, be CRT or another, has numerous benefits to students and their development. It promotes the genius of students previously denied based on the color of their skin and allows those of color to see themselves in the curriculum (Muhammad, 2020). It also allows students to critically question knowledge instead of taking it at face value. It can motivate students to help act in their communities and navigate social structures (Yosso, 2005). While in districts like Carroll ISD, educators may face backlash, there are some ways to enact change within the resistance. First, we can teach students early on how to hold difficult democratic discussions without hate for one another, acknowledging and learning to respect the opinions of one another, even if you do not agree yourself (Ho et al, 2014, p. 3). Another teacher says she is best able to enact change when she has the trust of her student’s parents, so she suggests going to visit every family of her students before the school year starts, which will also give the teacher an idea of what backgrounds and family situation the students are coming from (Controversial Subjects, 2013). Regardless of the approach a teacher takes towards equitable educational change, the key component is ensuring the practice is in a student’s best interest.
I hope I have conveyed the journey that I have made so far, but I also believe it is important to note that my real journey is just beginning. This next year I am about to face the truth of my whiteness, as I enter my official first year of teaching at a school where whiteness is the smallest minority. The majority of my students will be Hispanic, Chin, and African American, with 65% of families falling below the poverty line of income. More than what I have written above, I believe the truest test of my knowledge is to empower the students that I do not match their skin tone nor their language. Many who are refuges who speak neither majority language at the school I will be working in. This next year I want to not only sort through my emotions but find my voice along the way. I want to use my white power, armed with the knowledge I have gained this year, to become the coconspirator these students deserve to have, and inspire the rest of my team and campus to do the same.