Equity in Education?

 There’s a human race. One, homo sapiens.

The malarkey about black, white, yellow, or red races was a false construct used to justify slavery and other forms of exploitation of fellow humans.

That construct was central to (and a massive flaw in) our democracy. U.S. citizens held slaves. States enforced enslavement with laws, and vicious slave-catchers. Our Constitution denied blacks, women, and poor folks the right to vote, and made each southern slaveholder’s vote more powerful than a northerner’s vote.

Systemic racism. We’ve battled to escape that, even fought a war. We’ve made great strides.

Anti-Black (and -brown and -red) bias is still systemic, not only in certain states’ new voting laws, but all around us. Hiding photos of a black family and removing Afro-American-themed books and art can double their home’s appraised value. Prospective employers call job candidates named Emily Grandchester and Greg Wyndham 50% more often than they do Latisha Washington and Jamal Jones, despite equal qualifications. Researchers say a white-sounding name is worth about eight years of work experience. (Heard of Jon Gruden?) Saying our country has grown colorblind says the speaker’s willfully blind.

Some educators are trying to get more real. But some folks can’t bear admitting our nation’s flaws, or their own. Texas reacted so severely with H.B. 3979 that frightened teachers are scrambling to find books giving “the opposing perspective” on the Holocaust. (Will they have to teach both sides of the “controversial view” that we revolve around the Sun?)

We all know, whether or not we always follow it, that expressing and discussing problems and negative feelings can clear up misunderstandings and spark a frank discussion that helps everyone, while holding negative feelings inside, can let them fester into something worse. Married folks know that. So do sports teammates and office co-workers.

Even kids know it. Most couldn’t say why, but they feel it. Fear of the other is somewhat natural, but getting to know strangers can help. Understanding that racism is in most all of us, and is something to outgrow, is healthier than leaving questions and confusion lurking about in kids’ hearts. Doesn’t mean it should be a big deal, or detract from learning the rules of grammar or who signed the Declaration of Independence, but learning how notions of superiority fed our thinking could be thought-provoking. “When we talk about race with our children, we don’t burden them, we free them.” That’s from "What I Learned from my White Grandchildren" – a Ted Talk I recommend.

Locally, an organized right wing effort seeks to use the present election to rescind Policy JBC, which would increase openness and equity in education.

LCPS Chair Ray Jaramillo (District 1) has tried thoughtfully and courageously to navigate through such issues. So has Pamela Cort (District 2) during her brief tenure. Longtime Las Cruces High teacher Robert Wofford (seeking the District 3 seat) expresses clear support for this policy and for mask requirements.

Opponents Alberto Balcazar, Henry Young, and Eloy Francisco Macha Camborda all seem to want the schools to punt on ordering mask-wearing and on the difficult questions involved in offering a fair education to all, even students from historically disenfranchised groups.

Your vote for school board could be the most important one you cast this November. Our kids are our future. They deserve the best we can offer, not fact-denying ideological zealots. I’m sure those zealots are sincere; but they’re dangerously wrong.

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[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 10 October 2021, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[ I do recommend the Ted Talk I mentioned, available by clicking here. One point it makes is that while we often act as if “race” is real but not important, in fact it is not at all real, but quite important.  The children's questions he cites, and the context, might broaden one's understanding of these matter.

If “racism” sometimes influences some people trying to hire workers or appraise houses, and police effecting traffic stops, it might also influence some teachers and school administrators. That much seems not open to much question. That schools should (and arguably must under law) try to redress the balance, and ensure equitable education to all as far as that’s possible, also seems obvious.

There seem three basic points in opposition to that: (1) it’s none of the school’s business and could distract from teaching grammar and arithmetic; (2) open discussion of such issues could be counter-productive, by unduly focusing kids on racial differences rather than erasing those; and (3) it’s somehow unpatriotic.

(2) I think what JBC opponents miss, when they criticize discussing “race,” is that for the victims of unconscious bias, “race” is already present. It’s perceived and felt. It’s likely in the minds of white kids too: they see a difference, they’ve heard what they’ve heard at home or from peers, they’ve seen movies with vicious black villains and cheered wildly for black ballplayers they love and admire. They might have questions. Fearing that discussions could be counterproductive, as opponents do, is reasonable. Citing Martin Luther King’s hope for a colorblind society as if King would agree with their position on these issues is sly and misleading.

(3) Loving our country does not require whitewashing its every flaw, or contorting our consciences to excuse its every wrong. I admire our founders, generally, as great men. (and, yeah, they were almost all men, so far as I know.) To fight for the view that all the kings and emperors had not been installed by God, and that citizens could and should run their own kingless government, was courageous. It was an idea that was around, among thinkers and philosophers, but all the other countries had kings, emperors, shahs, or a kaiser.

Like all of us, they were limited by what was known or admitted generally in their time. From my own, I find it difficult to imagine holding another person as a slave. Impossible, maybe. In theirs, it was commonplace. If you loved and married a woman whose family plantation had slaves on it, how did you act? Likely few even asked that question. Men who did, often balanced competing impulses and tried to treat the slaves relatively well then freed them when they (or the wife) died.

I can’t justify any of that. Don’t mean to. But my ability to judge it is limited by awareness that our descendants may feel similarly about things we take for granted today, or grudgingly acknowledge. They’ll likely be living in worse conditions than ours, maybe much worse, because of climate change: might they curse our names, knowing that even those of us who acknowledged imminent climate change, and advocated preventing or mitigating it, hardly devoted our lives to it, and still took airplanes, waste gallons of water daily, and contributed to the problem by moving tons of metal and rubber along with us when we could have bicycled or walked? Certainly I’m appalled by how animals are treated; I happen not to eat meat, but let’s give folks who do a pass. Eating beef, chicken, or pork does NOT require torturing and poisoning the animal in its lifetime, denying it freedom to range on the land and cooping it up where it can’t move or suckle its young, and injecting poisons into it. Perhaps our descendants will see the cruelty even more clearly, and curse our names. Or, as the right-wingers might have it, perhaps we will have come to a much more compassionate position about foetuses – or, as they say, unborn children. I happen to value a woman’s right to choose above some stranger’s disapproval of abortion. Should that right be absolute, or is there some point in the pregnancy when abortion should be more regulated? Whatever my view, it’s conceivable to me that some day society may see that quite differently. (It had better be a society much more equipped and/or willing to take charge of unwanted babies and give them a warm, loving, and nurturing infancy and childhood!)

Anyway, I think JBS is a reasonable effort to address an actual problem. Some of its opponents are thoughtful people who bring their own experience and points of view to the discussion. I wish they’d help tailor the policy to meet the need without the unintended side-effects they fear, rather than shout a blanket “No!” ]

[ Meanwhile, in the column I recommended votes for three candidates. For good reasons. In the District 3 race, while I preferred Bob Wofford, I found Eloy Francisco Macha Camborda thoughtful and articulate, and would bring an interesting perspective to the board. Also, while I believe in having teachers on the Board of Education, and support three in this election, I would not think it quite optimum for the Board to be all teachers. I hope in future years we see more non-teacher citizens, preferably parents, who can bring a different perspective to the Board. ]