I realize now I was doing two things by waiting for “the perfect time” to finish:
- Procrastination was an excuse to not show up
- I was participating in white silence
So here it goes, in a pretty raw form still, to be honest.
I’ve been feeling both heated and defeated by the news that 55% of white women in America voted to keep Trump in office. Working in education, I can’t ignore that the majority - by a staggering amount - is that exact demographic. In NC, 78% of classroom teachers are white. 71% are female. {Sources: NCES & NCDPI}. I won’t jump to accusations, but data and math work out to show that a sizable amount of educators were willing to keep the status quo, despite being in the midst of a social uprising, despite living through four years of divisive attacks, white nationalists parading through cities, and deepening an unbearably divided country.
I agree with the people who say, “Trump didn’t make America racist, he just exposed what was already there.” The wounds are gaping. And rather than taking the first step towards triage, 55% of white female voters said “let’s just leave it like it is and see what happens.” It's embarrassing to be a part of a demographic that I vehemently disagree with.
If this was a conversation, I’m sure someone would cut me off here and try to justify other reasons that 74 million Americans voted for him, but I don’t want to hear them. And this is my blog, and my thoughts, so I’ll continue.
- {If you’re feeling called out, rather than explaining yourself, maybe keep reading and see where this goes instead of claiming to be victimized. This is about me and my journey, not you.}
I’ve learned a lot this year.
I learned that even though I’m an introvert, being home alone with just a dog most of the day is a real struggle for me. I grieve the loss of time I expected to be in classrooms with students, and in workshops with other educators across the state. Beau (through June 22nd) and Maggie Mae (starting June 7) have been wonderful support dogs and co-workers, but I look forward to the days when I can see -- in person! -- minds engaged and collaboration blooming from learners of all ages.
I learned it's really good to be married to someone whose company you enjoy. Day after day after day. It’s the end of December, and we still speak fluently in inside jokes and share coffee-making responsibilities. 2020 marked a decade of marriage and instead of a travel adventure like we’d planned, we spent it dressed up, eating take-out on the porch. Having a partner who finds ways to comfort, celebrate & support has made all the difference in surviving this year.
Maybe the biggest lesson is the one I struggled to write: I learned the difference of being non-racist and anti-racist. This is what I’m here to talk about. See, as a ‘nice white woman,’ I believed I was doing a good job moving through this world as “not racist.” As a librarian, I sought out a diverse collection. To help our bilingual students, I learned a few Spanish words to communicate and welcome them. Whenever possible, I attended conference sessions by folks of all kinds of backgrounds, and even spoke out against an organization I belonged to when they took a position of ‘non-action’ when North Carolina passed the infamously bigoted Bathroom Bill in 2016. But I didn’t see the hypocrisy of my emotions: that I was upset at an organization for refusing to “be political” about inclusivity, when I was hardly doing any better myself.
Like many people in 2020, after the horrific deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and too many others, I felt the call to do something; to not just tweet about the injustices but to engage in real dialog and be involved in actual change.
Easier said than done.
Again, I entered this introspection with the feeling that I’d done plenty: I read diverse books & promote them to friends, students, and family, I don’t use racial slurs and call out someone when I hear a racist joke, and I follow BIPOC educators and writers on Twitter. Surely, I’m not a racist.
Then I read Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds (remixed from Stamped from the Beginning by Dr. Ibram X Kendi). And I listened to passionate Black activists, educators, parents and leaders who were desperate for people like me to stop thinking “not-racist” is enough. Because it’s not. |
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So what did I do first? Probably picked one of the toughest, but necessary, books to get started with: Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad. Why is it tough? I didn’t know I was getting into the work. I thought I could passively read and be enlightened by this book, written by someone who knows what the hell she’s talking about. Wrong. The book works when you follow her instructions and do the self-reflecting. So that’s what I did. And it set the groundwork for all the messy, complicated, anger-inducing, embarrassing moments to follow in future reading and processing how to be antiracist.
I read to learn. That's what I've been doing my whole life. I engage with at least 100 books a year.
This isn’t a post full of book reports though.
Nor do I believe simply reading is enough. As educator, writer & speaker Kelly Wickham Hurst said on a podcast recently:
I did the typical white female thing (the safe thing) and started a book club this summer. Not to justify, but it was June during a pandemic, where our little beach town was attracting droves of people coming on vacation… during a pandemic. So literally, the safest, most health-conscious option we had was to read and discuss over Zoom. Here’s the thing about those conversations though: they held me accountable. The other women in my community pushed me to read beyond my comfort zone, to debate the value of a text like White Fragility versus How to Be an Antiracist, and to make sure I was pairing this reading and introspection with action.
One book that was referred to me by this group was The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. Well, I didn’t read it. But I did pick up Caste. And that was transformative. Maybe this excerpt will give you some understanding of Wilkerson’s incredibly revealing and moving prose:
We in the developed world are like homeowners who inherited a house on a piece of land that is beautiful on the outside, but whose soil is unstable loam and rock, heaving and contracting over generations, cracks patched but the deeper ruptures waved away for decades, centuries even. Many people may rightly say, “I had nothing to do with how this all started. I have nothing to do with the sins of the past. My ancestors never attacked indigenous people, never owned slaves.” And, yes. Not one of us was here when this house was built. Our immediate ancestors may have had nothing to do with it, but here we are, the current occupants of a property with stress cracks and bowed walls and fissures built into the foundation. We are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it. We did not erect the uneven pillars or joists, but they are ours to deal with now. And any further deterioration is, in fact, on our hands.
Unaddressed, the ruptures and diagonal cracks will not fix themselves. The toxins will not go away but, rather, will spread, leach, and mutate, as they already have. When people live in an old house, they come to adjust to the idiosyncrasies and outright dangers skulking in an old structure. They put buckets under a wet ceiling, prop up groaning floors, learn to step over that rotting wood tread in the staircase. The awkward becomes acceptable, and the unacceptable becomes merely inconvenient. Live with it long enough, and the unthinkable becomes normal. Exposed over the generations, we learn to believe that the incomprehensible is the way that life is supposed to be.
https://www.marketplace.org/2020/08/05/america-is-an-old-house-isabel-wilkerson-on-race-and-caste-in-america/
Slapping on a fresh coat of paint over the cracks that have been re-revealed in 2020 aren’t going to make it any better. Neither is sticking up a poster with “diverse” kids on it in your classroom and thinking it’s enough. The cracks in our educational foundation is because it was built on inequities. It was never meant to serve students in the way we attempt to now: we fight a losing battle when we keep the same structure and measure ‘achievement’ and success of learners who were never part of the original equation. It’s going to take dismantling the walls we’ve come to rely on, stripping it down to the very foundation and rebuilding it all using new tools - and the correct tools -- that center our students. Our Black students, and Brown students, and biracial and Native and immigrant and Muslim students. Our female students, especially from marginalized groups. And LGBTQIA students, who the system often ignores with a narrative of heteronormativity in grades K-12+.
This year, I learned that EQUITY is about more than race, more than ethnicity, more than gender - it’s our cultures and the communities.
If you don’t know the word intersectionality, start getting familiar.
I told you I had a lot to say. And while this post is long, I promise, I’m coming to the call to action.
I have one more book to talk about.
It deserves it’s own post so I’ll keep it short here, but I believe every educator (especially white female) needs to read Cultivating Genius by Gholdy Muhammad. Absolutely -- 100% -- five-star -- highlights-on-every-page kind of book. When I read Donalyn Miller’s The Book Whisperer I couldn’t believe it wasn’t obligated for every pre-service educator. Well, after I read Cultivating Genius (and watching webinars and reading articles and listening to interviews with Muhammad), I’m convinced that not only should we all be reading her work, but she has my vote for Sec of Education. We need this kind of fundamental rebuilding of education, the way she outlines it. Again, I’ll write up more about the book in a future post but I can’t emphasize enough that this should be your first purchase of 2021 and get to reading it ASAP. |
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In 2021, I’m framing the work I do with learners through the lens of literacy and identity. I’m not going to get lost in EdTech, innovative PD and whatever else creeps up as T'he Most Important Thing'. I want to put literacy and identity first. To do that, I’ll be recommending texts wherever I can that either help me better explore my own identities, or those of others.
So here's the call to action:
Read.
Yeah. I know what I shared earlier about book clubs as an inappropriate response to murder. But I'm talking about life here.
Expand your net to find stories outside your own identities, outside your reading comfort zone. But remember, reading isn’t the work. The work is taking what you learn and putting it into action. It’s adding to your classroom library or read aloud line up to provide lived experiences that better reflect your learners. Few kids these days can relate to the Zuckerman’s farm in Charlotte’s Web, but many will see themselves in the pages of Jason Reynolds’ Look Both Ways. Use these stories to transform the way you look at your students, your community, and yourself.
I created some reading/listening/watching lists to help you get started.
These 'playlists' are for YOU to read. Do I hope they end up in the hands of kids at some point? Absolutely. But if we don’t start with ourselves, we’re already failing. These are some of the best books I’ve read in the past year to work on myself as an antiracist educator, to be a more inclusive neighbor, and an ally.
I invite you to browse these lists and find stories that add more voices to your mind & heart, and to expand what you provide for your students, your own families, and wider community.
Ask yourself (or better yet, your students when you bring new texts to your classroom), which voices are still missing?
I know from my own experience of looking back on my year in review, I didn’t read nearly enough stories about/created by Latinx and Native folks. I centered straight romance in the texts I read. I’ve been intentional about reading nonfiction, and focusing specifically on Black storytellers, but going forward, I will be working on developing a more inclusive stack myself.
(And y’all, it was hard not to reach back to other titles that have taught me so much going back several years… but I wanted you to see the journey I’ve been on for the past year so here’s what I have to share)
I suggest picking at least 1 from each category.
If I could be so bold as to suggest a journey, if you don’t know where to begin:
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I'm currently reading:
December 23, 2020
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up next:
January 2021
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It doesn’t have to be a big thing.
Your little changes - speaking up, asking clarifying questions, changing your reading choices, your creator choices - make big ripples.
Start somewhere.
Start with yourself.
Accept the humility that you might get it wrong.
In the brilliant words of the beautiful Maya Angelou: