Something I was dialoguing about with activist educator, and my colleague and friend, Stacey Kertsman:
Some basic principles with a few sample tools (we had to shoot in under 15 minutes for OER Project – we almost made it!) based out of Blink’s framework that transformative conversations require:
Purpose and possibility: what’s the point of talking about racism? Performing “wokeness”? Parroting the “right” ideas? Practicing how to engage for antiracist experiences and outcomes? And what’s possible? Maybe it’s not possible that I’ll decide racism is good. (In fact, NO.) However, maybe it’s possible that I can become more effectively persuasive when others “don’t see” racism or don’t think it affects them.
And because real engagement means getting real, this conversation can feel uncomfortable and even unsafe.
So, knowing that we can’t presume that our classrooms are safe, equitable and inclusive, we need to design for safety, equity and inclusion… and assess for experiences and impacts. We need to regularly check in with students about “how it’s going,” and we should also be seeing antiracist outcomes (e.g. diminishing and eradicated disparities among ethnoracial groups in participation, grades and other metrics we use to gauge student learning and thriving).
I just need to say we can all learn from Gary Chambers about: doing our homework so that we may engage in a discourse of informed certainty (as opposed to the discourse of uninformed certainty, which fueled by willful ignorance); asking for better from our leadership while giving credit for what they’re doing; holding our leaders and institutions accountable for forward, strategic thinking (if all a leader cares about is their personal legacy, then use it, and then replace them with a leader who also cares about institutional legacy); being specific (sometimes it’s specifically about Connie, sometimes it’s about all of the white members or all of the black members of the board, not just “the board); and providing possibilities, especially when leadership is demonstrating a lack of critical and creative thinking themselves.
In the headlines today: “Klobuchar withdraws from veepstakes, says Biden should pick woman of color.”
Honestly, my reflexive response was: No!
I’ve been in this conversation (not with Amy) several times: the decision not to apply, the decision to drop out… because, as a white person, I may be “taking a spot” from a person of color.
(Also sometimes accompanied by comments about how “I know they’re hiring for diversity, anyway.”)
And my response, considered every time, is: no.
I mean, it’s your decision, Amy, of course.
And I appreciate the recognition of positionality. Everyone needs to own their agency, their responsibility in and their impact for antiracism, and I understand that this seems actionable and impactful. It’s the impacts we have to think through:
This is like trying to fix an engine problem by re-upholstering your seat cushion. Your ride, even in the front passenger seat of the vice presidency, is incidental, even as it’s highly visible. Hiring and electing leaders who identify as other than white does matter, but as critical as that is, it’s an insufficient and sometimes misleading indicator of antiracism.
Which brings me to: Are you telling me that your entire antiracist strategy is withdrawing from the running? Surely, when you were running, you had a plan to advance systemic antiracism that wasn’t just dropping out to make way for a person of color. I want to hear how you, who happened to be born as a white woman, whose advancement to this opportunity has been facilitated by whiteness, even as it’s been obstructed by systemic sexism, will act to systemically dismantle white supremacy if you become VP. And even if you don’t.
Because this can’t be just a question of how you got born. And when you play into those optics, you may be having some very racist impacts, even if your intention is not. When you say, “I think this is a moment to put a woman of color on that ticket,” even if you also say, “And there are so many incredible, qualified women. But if you wanna heal this nation right now, my party yes, but our nation, this is a helluva way to do it,” there is an implication that a woman of color’s most important qualification is being a woman of color. It’s too easy to lapse into the implicit and explicit trope that diversity is at odds with merit: that candidates can’t be both under-represented and (over)-qualified.
Thus, whether intentional or not, the implication that candidates of color need qualified (it goes without saying) white people to sacrifice themselves, in order to be chosen, perpetuates the paternalism that actually reinforces white supremacy. Now, a black female VP running mate will be not only be a token in the eyes of (too) many, but a token offered by Amy, who gets some “not racist” points in the process.
Actually staying in the running legitimizes the outcomes. Consider when there’s only one candidate… and they get the job. Versus when there’s a tough choice because of how diverse and awesome (and awesome because it’s diverse) the pool is. You can stay in the running and voice why you think more whiteness is problematic and offer how you are not just white privileged but also white antiracist [see #4].
Finally, is there any white guilt, fragility or shame in this decision to drop out, that needs to be worked through more wholly? Is there maybe a desire to avoid ending up not getting the position? Is there some white fatigue?
Of course this is Amy’s decision. And the decision of each white person who decides to drop out of the running or not even to apply. I see the potentially positive impact. And I really wonder: how is this helpful? And how is it not?
(My point wasn’t to stop reading, but to read for implementation in action, and this article is vitally informative and actionable.)
Here’s just an excerpt:
Yes.
O’Reilly is writing about the shift underpinning the difference between saying “minority groups” or “under-represented groups” (the former assigns a sometimes incorrect status as if it’s an innate truth; the latter invites the question “under-represented… why?”) and pushing for clarity regarding what’s not about the groups but the system: for example, “groups that are systemically minoritized.”
For educators, let’s stop talking about “struggling students” when we need to talk about “students our school(s) fail to serve well, by design.” And instead of “high needs families,” focus on being a “high hurdle community.”
Instead of continuing to imply blame on groups whom our systems weren’t designed to serve, let’s shift our gaze to the locus of the injustice, to what we can change: those systems.
Correction: in this video, I refer to “the discourse of uninformed ignorance,” which is actually deCastell’s “discourse of uninformed certainty—a willful ignorance or refusal to know.” This is a really useful idea in recognizing that not all opinions are equal or valid. So it’s worth accurately citing 😉
He definitely shouldn’t have given his first statement about whether he believes that systemic racism exists.
Actually, he shouldn’t have been asked in the first place. On the topic of racism (and by the way, the -ism in racism is the giveaway that it’s systemic), Larry Kudlow demonstrates “the discourse of uninformed certainty—a kind of willful ignorance or refusal to know. deCastell (2004) has described this not knowing as a ‘right to be ignorant and the right to speak ignorantly.'”
Why are we asking people who aren’t informed, who don’t even have baseline fluency in racism, what they think?
And then asking them to clarify? In this CNBC follow-up interview, Kudlow is a textbook example of how not to think about racism:
He opens with the “we said [insert values], so we are [said values].” Nope. Values are action verbs, not states of being, Larry. If we are antiracist, then that needs to be more than words in a core values statement. Those need to be daily practices and systems-design.
He argues that racism is not a systemic problem because: Brown v. Board of Education. Notwithstanding that that is precisely evidence of racism’s systemic nature (again, it pains me that we have to say systemic racism–it’s like saying “organizational organization”), Larry has to travel back to 1954. The question should always be: what are we doing now? how are we living up to the legacy of the civil rights struggles of our past, not just resting on their laurels?
He recommends that his interviewer watch a PBS special to get informed. We’re not going to “recommend an article” our way out of this. And why doesn’t Larry ask what else he should read? Especially because…
He admits he doesn’t know what “systemic racism” means, and then opines authoritatively about it! Kudos for acknowledging what he doesn’t know, but he also doesn’t seem to (1) be listening to himself, or (2) know what to do when he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, which is to listen and learn.
He approaches this complex topic with unbudging certainty. Note how, with an adamantly uncurious mind about this so-called “systemic racism,” Kudlow promotes convenient statistics as proof: “record unemployment” for African-Americans and, in fact, all minorities, during the Trump administration, pre-pandemic. Just one question, Larry: of all those jobs, which are paying living wages? which have pathways of promotion and possibility?
University of Pennsylvania psychologist Philip Tetlock made a similar finding in a 20-year study that tested the ability of experts to make accurate predictions about geopolitical events. The results, in short, showed that the average expert in a given subject was also, on average, a horrific forecaster. Their areas of specialty, academic degrees and (for some) access to classified information made no difference. Some of the most narrowly specialized experts actually performed worse as they accumulated credentials. It seemed that the more vested they were in a worldview, the more easily they could always find information to fit it.
There was, however, one subgroup of scholars that did markedly better: those who were not intellectually anchored to a narrow area of expertise. They did not hide from contrary and apparently contradictory views, but rather crossed disciplines and political boundaries to seek them out.
Tetlock gave the forecasters nicknames, borrowed from a well-known philosophy essay: the narrow-view hedgehogs, who “know one big thing” (and are terrible forecasters), and the broad-minded foxes, who “know many little things” (and make better predictions). The latter group’s hunt for information was a bit like a real fox’s hunt for prey: They roam freely, listen carefully and consume omnivorously.
Eventually, Tetlock and his collaborator, Barbara Mellers, assembled a team of foxy volunteers, drawn from the general public, to compete in a forecasting tournament. Their volunteers trounced a group of intelligence analysts who had access to classified information. As Tetlock observed of the best forecasters, it is not what they think but how they think. They argue differently; foxes frequently used the word “however” in assessing ideas, while hedgehogs tended toward “moreover.” Foxes also looked far beyond the bounds of the problem at hand for clues from other, similar situations.
A reasonable conclusion is that curiosity — and a broad range of knowledge — might be a kind of superpower. Hedgehog experts have more than enough knowledge about the minutiae of an issue in their specialty to cherry-pick details to fit preconceived notions. Their deep knowledge works against them. More skillful forecasters depart from a problem to consider completely unrelated events with structural commonalities — the “outside view.” It is their breadth, not their depth, that scaffolds their skill.
“Chances are, you’re not as open-minded as you think” by David Epstein, The Washington Post, 2019
When it comes to racism, no matter when you believe, don’t be like Larry. Don’t be a hedgehog. Lives depend on you thinking like a fox.
rethinking diversity 