Flaws in my antiracism education: educating us like children rather than future adults

If I'm talking to one of the adults who was around when I was a kid and I mention one of my racism-related shortcomings, such as the fact that I was blithely ignorant of the racist tropes contained in the media I was consuming, their response is invariably "But you were just a kid!"

 

Yes, I was just a kid. 

And now I'm not. Now I'm a middle-aged adult. A middle-aged adult who's woefully inadequate at even spotting racism, to say nothing of countering racism. 

 

And, as a middle-aged adult who's established in my profession and my community, I have (or am perceived to have) a certain amount of influence. I have no actual authority, but I can sometimes set the tone. If I say "This is a problem we should do something about," I tend to get listened to, insofar as even if they opt not to address the problem, they take seriously the fact that I see a problem. 

 

Unfortunately, when it comes to racism, I am currently too ignorant to reliably see the problems. Even though I'm trying to do the work and learn about problems that exist and what I can do about them, I haven't yet developed the ability to extrapolate from what I've learned and identify other problems that I haven't specifically read about or been told about.

If my antiracism education had led me to start thinking along these lines, maybe I'd be better at it. Maybe by the time I'd aged into the privilege and influence that comes with being an established middle-aged adult, I'd have been thinking about it for longer and have come up with some clue about how to actually make use of that privilege and influence.

My other posts in this series have been entitled "flaws in my education". This one is entitled "flaws in my antiracism education", because the other aspects of my education did in fact assume that I personally and my peers in general would eventually be in positions of authority or influence. 

 

"Leadership" was a buzzword when I was in high school. Our teachers would compliment us or respond to others' compliments of us by saying "They're leaders!" If you'd asked any of the adults involved in our upbringing and education, they would absolutely have agreed that we would eventually be in positions of authority or influence, hiring people, training people, making decisions that affect people's lives and affect broader policy, righting the wrongs of the past.

Except, apparently, when it came to racism. Then we were just a bunch of kids who couldn't possibly be expected to know better.

 

Which is an obstacle on the path to becoming adults who can do better.

Flaws in my education: I never learned that I'm bad at spotting racism

One thing I've learned in recent years is that I'm bad at spotting racism.

 

There are innumerable racist (and antisemitic, and transphobic, and ableist, etc. etc.) tropes and dog-whistles that I've never seen before in my life, or that look benign to me, or that look like nonsense to me.

 

They're obvious to other racists, they're obvious to the targets of the racism, and to me they're completely devoid of connotations, or of any meaning whatsoever.

 

 

It would certainly have been useful if my antiracism education had mentioned this! 

 

Until just a few short years ago, I had no clue that I was bad at spotting racism. I'd see racist things and think "That doesn't look racist to me," and think that this opinion of mine was some how helpful or relevant rather than being ignorant and ill-informed!

It is a bit complicated if you think about it from an educator's perspective. In an ideal world, people would be able to recognize racism rather than merely recognizing that they're bad at recognizing it. (Well, in an ideal ideal world there wouldn't be racism lurking around needing to be recognized...) Obviously, "I don't know, I'm really bad at this sort of thing" is not the desired endpoint of any educational program.

But, at the same time, if you are going to emerge from the educational program really bad at that sort of thing, it's far better to recognize that you're bad at it than to think you're competent!

The irony is they came so very close to informing me that there were forms of racism that I didn't recognize. 

 

One of the examples of prejudice and stereotypes given in our anti-racism unit was the stereotype that Polish people are stupid.

My mother was born in Poland. Half my family is Polish. I identify as Polish myself, and Poland would claim me if I made them aware of my existence.

And I had never before in my life been exposed to the notion that Polish people are stupid. In fact, if you'd asked me to name stereotypes about Polish people, I would never have guessed that people think we're stupid - the Polish branch of my family is by far classier, more intelligent and better educated!

 

So this could have led me to realize that there are stereotypes floating around out there that I can't possibly fathom.

 

Unfortunately, it led me in the opposite direction: it reinforced my internalized notion that racism is a thing of the past, and that any stereotypes that may have existed in the past are no longer doing harm to the people affected. After all, if I, as a member of the targeted group, had never in my life heard of the stereotype used as a go-to example of stereotypes, surely  nothing about this can be affecting actual real-life present-day people!

I don't know what the actual solution is. I don't know whether it would be advisable to actually go around teaching teenagers stereotypes that they've never heard of before. And I don't think that "I'm really bad at this sort of thing and not able to make an informed comment" is an acceptable outcome of an educational curriculum.

And also, if, for whatever reason, students emerge from the curriculum really bad at that sort of thing and unable to make an informed comment, it is imperative that they are able to recognize this! I would be a much better person if I'd been able to recognize this 25 years ago.

Flaws in my education: treating anti-racism readings like any other literature

I blogged before about how the books used in the anti-racism unit in my Grade 9 English class didn't serve us well.

Another aspect that didn't serve us well was that they treated it like any other English class unit. We did discuss racism (I don't think we managed to get as far as anti-racism, given that I didn't know the nuance until I was well into my 30s), but there was a lot of writing and talking about symbolism, "compare and contrast", etc., and that got in the way of learning actual anti-racism.

An educational trend in that time and place was letting students arrive at conclusions themselves (in either Grade 9 or Grade 10, I had a whole-ass science textbook that used the socratic method FFS!), but a bunch of ignorant white 14-year-olds who may or may not be able to name a racial stereotype are not going to arrive at any sort of useful conclusion about anti-racism without a lot more guidance and context! (And having to sit in the classroom while we fumbled around trying to do so probably wasn't a very safe experience for the few racialized students in our school!)

Literature is an excellent tool for teaching students about all manner of people and lives and experiences and ideas, and English class seems like the sensible place for some literature. But anti-racism isn't just a regular old English unit like "poetry" or "Shakespeare". It's meant to equip us to function in society and right the wrongs of our ancestors and overcome the negative influences around us that we, at the age of 14, might not even recognize as negative influences. We certainly need a lot more structure and guidance than "what do you think?" and "Discuss themes!"


I wonder if approaching anti-racism in a way that's parallel to other, more abstract literature topics might also be exacerbating the unfortunate trend of some people think it's a good idea to "debate" or ask for documentary evidence of others' lived experiences, or trying to broadly apply philosophical theory to others' lived experiences, and then saying their lived experiences are inapplicable when they don't fit into the theory. When anti-racism is presented as though it's up for exactly the same kind of theorizing as things like the symbolism of the green light - and when ignorant white kids like me are specifically asked to write about it this way - the students might come away with the idea that their theorizing is useful and welcome.


There's also the fact that, like it or not, literary analysis is rather esoteric, with not so many direct, immediate applications to the practicalities of everyday life. And, because of that, it's seen as useless by many people who aren't huge fans of it. Treating anti-racism so similarly risks leading students who are less fond of literary analysis to see anti-racism as esoteric and inapplicable, rather than being a crucial part of living ethically in the world.


Some people will point out that students "should" be able to do both literary analysis and anti-racism.

But the fact of the matter is that, in that Grade 9 classroom 25 years ago, being new to the concept of literary analysis and being new to the concept of anti-racism, we weren't all able to do both effectively.


If our curriculum and our teachers had prioritized the anti-racism aspect, even if it meant we didn't read the readings like we did our other English class readings, perhaps I and others like me would be better people today.

Flaws in my education: using non-contemporary readings for anti-racism

In Grade 9, we had an anti-racism unit in English class.  Works studied included To Kill A Mockingbird, Black Like Me, and Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

Problem: these were all American works that were decades old.

I don't remember reading anything Canadian in our anti-racism unit. I never read anything about race set in my own lifetime until I was an adult. The only thing about race in Canada that I remember reading in school is Obasan, which is set during the Second World War.


Many white Canadians - including myself until shamefully recently - perceive racism to be a thing of the past, and/or an American problem.

And I strongly suspect this is influenced by the fact that our anti-racism education focused on American works from before we were born.


I often say I'm about 30 years behind where I should be in things like anti-racism. That Grade 9 class was 25 years ago.

Maybe the world would be a better place if I, and others like me, had been equipped for all these years to think of racism as a problem that exists in the here and now.  I know I certainly would be a better person if I were now decades into my journey into anti-racism rather than just starting out on the cusp of middle age.

Flaws in my Education: "You should speak up and contribute!"

I was identified as gifted when I was in Grade 5, which meant every year I'd get an IPRC, where I'd meet with my parents and the resource teacher and they'd make a plan for how to get the most out of my education.

The one thing the resource teachers always did (every single resource teacher over the years did this - I can think of at least three individual teachers and I'm sure I'm missing some) was put in the plan that I should raise my hand and answer more questions in class.

Even looking back at it as an adult, I don't understand what that was supposed to achieve. (I knew that I knew the answers, I was just staying quiet to avoid bullying.) But there was very strong messaging that I should raise my hand and give the teachers the answers I already knew I already knew, that doing so would be a good thing, and that failing to do so was a bad thing.


Similarly, as a shy person who doesn't always speak in groups, I've gotten a lot of "You should speak up! You should contribute!" as social skills advice.

As though I necessarily have something not just to say, but to contribute? I can't fathom what that might be!


So for the first 30ish years of my life, I was receiving constant messaging that I should say something, anything. That not putting in my two cents is practically not pulling my weight.


And then, when I was well into my 30s, I was exposed for the first time to the concept of staying in one's lane.

This was literally the first time in my life I had heard that perhaps I shouldn't speak up, perhaps I don't have anything to contribute to a given discussion.

(When I was a kid, adults would tell me to be quiet and not to talk back in a given moment, but on a philosophical/theoretical level they definitely would have said I should speak up and contribute.)


Now, I can't tell you how much of this "you should speak up and contribute" was because I'm white, and I can't tell you whether my non-white classmates were treated differently. My school was fairly small (if you had shown me a photo of any of my classmates, I could have instantly told you their name and something about them) and there were so few non-white students that I could count them without running out of fingers.

I cannot think of/remember a single instance of any of my classmates, of any race, being urged to systematically speak up more or to systematically be quiet. But also, I wasn't paying attention to such things at the time, so who knows what I might have missed?

If there was any difference in how we were treated, I'm sure the adults would have told you they were treating us as individuals, based on our individual needs. And there simply isn't enough data to suggest otherwise - I had too few non-white classmates to identify any sort of pattern.


But the fact of the matter is there were, in raw numbers, a lot of white people around in that time and place, and other times and places like it. I can't possibly have been the only person who was told to speak up and contribute. (I seriously doubt the adults around me would have come up with an all new unprecedented piece of advice just for me!)

Maybe the world would be a better place if more of us were told there are some times and places where you should sit down, be quiet and listen - and not just when those in power and authority are talking.