Victor Ray and Alan Aja argue in this article that appeared in the Washington Post that racism can’t be “fixed” by more education. Plenty of highly educated people are racist.
The root of racism, they argue, is systematic inequality of resources and access to power.
Prescribing education as the cure for racism often confuses individual bigotry with a system of domination. As a system of domination, racism can be manipulated, because it is bigger than any individual. Highly educated people, who sometimes know better, contribute to systems of racial harm on a regular basis.
The architecture of American racism is not an unfortunate accident: It was created intentionally to acquire and keep power. The highly educated designed America’s system of segregation and America’s prison system. Highly educated lawyers devise arguments to protect police who kill black and brown folks, highly educated prosecutors decline to bring charges, and highly educated judges assign light sentences. There is no good evidence that educating police about implicit bias works to lessen harm. And whites with high cognitive ability are no more likely to support practical policies that lessen racial inequality. But their education does allow them to offer more sophisticated justifications for privilege…
The problem of racial inequality is not just a lack of knowledge; it is the lack of a willingness among many white people to commit to an equitable distribution of resources.
What movements like those currently in the streets recognize is that systemic problems are not solved by education in the absence of collective action. Solutions to racial inequality require a reorganization of what creates inequality in the first place: unequal access to social and material resources. Seeing education as a necessary but insufficient condition for challenging racial inequality is not pessimistic. It recognizes that knowledge used to confront, rather than accommodate or legitimate authority, can lead to a more equitable distribution of power.
My opinion: When billionaires intervene to disrupt and privatize education, they are diverting our attention. When Trump and DeVos bray that “school choice is the civil rights issue of our time and of all time,” they are changing the subject so as to protect their privilege. The root problem of our divided society is inequality. The billionaires should be lobbying to raise their taxes and to redistribute resources to society’s have-nots, so that we are a nation of haves.
Please read the book The Spirit Level. Its basic argument is that societies with high levels of inequality are unhappy societies. The more equality, the greater the level of social happiness.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ed Reformers must cringe when they hear their destructive agenda and dubious talking points being spouted by Donald Trump. He is no magician. Trump on civil rights is as credible as Oz commanding us not to look behind that curtain. Thank you, Mr. President, for exposing far better disguised education policy charlatans.
“The problem of racial inequality is not just a lack of knowledge; it is the lack of a willingness among many white people to commit to an equitable distribution of resources.”
Racial inequality is systemic in our society. It is no accident that black men are sent to prison at a much higher rate than white offenders for a similar crime. Mass incarceration of black people has a profound negative impact on black families. It fragments and destabilizes families, and this has a residual negative impact on the children of incarcerated parents.
Real estate red lining, though illegal, silently continues to make it difficult for people of color to move into mostly white neighborhoods. Banks also make it harder for blacks to borrow money. There are systemic hurdles built into the economy that work against people of color.
The privatization of public education has targeted black students. When privatization is pitched to black families, it is presented as a great opportunity. Overall, charter schools are no better than public schools, and students lose the protections under IDEA laws. More often than not, privatization is a way that minority students are monetized, and this has nothing to do with civil rights. Charter schools are more segregated and unstable. MLK noted that separate is never equal. Public schools aspire to give all students opportunity and access. We should be investing in public schools that serve all students.
Amen, retired teacher!
retired teacher is right and should be Secretary of Education.
Just FYI, my comment for this note is “in moderation.” How aggravating. CBK
Diane Nice article, but the title is misleading (that racism won’t be fixed by more education). While the below is probably true,
“. . . that societies with high levels of inequality are unhappy societies. The more equality, the greater the level of social happiness,” these statements need work: “Plenty of highly educated people are racist,” and “the root of racism . . . is systematic inequality of resources and access to power.”
First, what do they mean by EDUCATION? But second, though systems do tend to keep the “status quo” in place, systems themselves have deeper roots . . . in the people who had the power and who generated them in the first place.
Some received an education away from provincialism (tribalism) and biases (like racism, etc.) and some don’t. Some get an education that enables them to understand and critique the SYSTEM and culture they were born into, and some do not. Some “get it,” and some do not.
If that’s the general case, then “more education” . . . where EDUCATION includes those broader elements (like history, humanities, political philosophy/the meaning of democracy etc.) CAN go far in fixing degenerate elements of born-into systems.
But the article itself (and not the title) seems to imply that anyway in statements like: “Seeing education as a necessary but insufficient condition for challenging racial inequality is not pessimistic. It recognizes that knowledge used to confront, rather than accommodate or legitimate authority, can lead to a more equitable distribution of power.”
Again, we can ask if that willingness to accommodate is indicative of a “highly educated person?” Knowledge does inform actions. It seems to me that what they are saying is more about what KIND of education is gone missing–one where knowledge includes the HOW of living responsibly in a democracy where the power is in the people. If young people don’t KNOW they have power (where THAT kind of knowledge is a part of their education), then they are much less likely to use it accordingly or to be enabled to change systems that foster rather than challenge biases such as racism.
in the light of the article, I have to ask this: Though some will never “get it,” would we have a TRUMP, who is setting fire to every democratic institution in sight, if not for gross failures in the education (way back) of those who support him. CBK
Trump is living proof that formal education doesn’t cure racism. He is a graduate of the University of Penn. The members of his cabinet of horrors have College degrees. Some—like Barr—have graduate degrees.
TRUE, Diane.
Diane I think you are right that Trump is living proof . . . but it’s of the fact that SOME will never “get it” regardless . . . and not that education doesn’t-do and hasn’t-consistently-done the work of all the good we are already experiencing through those who did actually “get it” (like you and hopefully me, and so many who post here). We don’t usually notice what almost everyone takes for granted.
Also, in education we can talk about content, pedagogy, home-cultural contexts (including economics), individual intelligence, and the recalcitrance of truly awful personality traits. Also, real and qualified reforms in education have gotten us a long way where, for instance, we openly address biases in teachers when we didn’t do that before–but both on and off-track, as it turns out (with hyper-testing, etc.).
Racism and other biases are indeed pervasive, deeply rooted, often subconscious, and often “inherited” in our family-culture situations long before our formal education occurs, and so very difficult to uproot.
Even so, to say that education (formal and/or informal/family education) cannot inform and take us forward, beyond our tribal and racist past, or beyond sidelining ourselves in knowing but not acting, I think is folly–and it feeds the anti-intellectual movement we also well-know about.
It’s a good education that is already doing its work in our present state of affairs, e.g., so many young (and white) people in the Black Lives Matter movement.
On the other hand, in Trumpism, I think we are witnessing severe personality disorders, but in great part, and more generally the absence of that fuller education and, again, regardless that some will never “get it.”
Education and its manifestation in real cultural change is never going to be as easy or as all-pervasive as learning the principles of rocket science. CBK
CBK,
Book-learning can lay a framework for this. But people only learn as much as they can take in. They have to be able to relate it at least to some degree to their own experiences and sense of how the world works. Life experiences are required to take it beyond theoretical. There is much we can do in school to foster real-life experiences that lay the foundation. Simple things like creating a school vegetable garden, band, chorus, sports, theater, etc foster understanding of group and individual power toward reaching a goal, making something happen. Community projects/ volunteering, student govt, field trips to govt sessions, environmental treatment plants, you name it. Somehow these things, once understood as integral, have become unaffordable frills taking a back seat to content-drilling/ testing, which provides no real-life experience.
Civic education no longer exists in the curriculum, and there is no attempt to teach tolerance in schools as the foundation for the social contract.
Consciences are formed K-12.
Besides the systemic elements you highlight, reinstating mandatory civic education and some “social contract” related curriculum can go a long way to fight racism.
I’ve seen it with my son — although he went to private school.
I have often wondered where I might learn more about who CBK is. I must say, reading her comments on this blog, I have become, increasingly, one of her admirers. She said recently, here, for example, that fascism is a personality disorder elevated to the status of a political ideology. Oh yes yes yes. And her comment here about the difference between knowledge that is simply in the head and knowledge that has shaken a person to his or her foundations, that has become visceral, again, freaking brilliant and deep. Wow.
Bob Check’s in the mail. (But really, thanks.) CBK
There was exactly one Democratic candidate who favored any meaningful re-allocation or resources and power. He was intentionally crushed by his own party. For those of you who think that Democrats are going to do anything more about racism than the Republicans have done.
Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden and will campaign for him.
“He was intentionally crushed by his own party”
This is not something Bernie Sanders would ever say. But instead it is 100% Donald Trump! “I lost the election because the Democratic party prevented all the people who wanted to vote for me from voting for me through secret brainwashing and “voter fraud” and (insert more right wing conspiracy theories here that seems absurd to normal people but that Trump supporters are absolutely positive are true because they don’t need no stinkin’ evidence – the evidence is that their candidate did not win!)
dienne77, take a look at the disenfranchisement efforts of the Republican party to see what it looks like when people in power (i.e. Republican Trumpsters) are trying to “intentionally crush” a candidate.
You strike people off the voting rolls. You close down polling places in neighborhoods where that candidate is popular. Your supporters come out carrying assault weapons to intimidate people who don’t agree with your policies. You want to disenfranchise anyone convicted of a crime – unless it is the type of crime that Rush Limbaugh committed during his addict days – because you know the justice system has disproportionately affected people who might vote for your opponent.
“There was exactly one Democratic candidate ….”
This is totally insulting to Elizabeth Warren and reflects that there were lots of people who claimed to be Bernie supporters who would have been demonizing Elizabeth Warren if she was the candidate, which should make us suspect about what their real agenda always was.
The comment that totally normalized the racism of the Republican party and especially the racism of Donald Trump (birther-in-chief) to speak for itself.
Sort of fits with this post. Just as depressing:
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/07/02/what-is-college-worth/
GregB “Worth”? Is that in dollars and cents?
But there are several books out about how awful college is. It seems to me, considering today’s polemics about education, and desire to deprive “some” of an education, and to restructure culture around all sorts of biases, that the background funding, and think-tank ideology of such works deserve a discerning analysis. CBK
Have you read the article?
GregB No, I didn’t read the article. That’s why I put it in question form. Alas, though I’d like to read all links that are posted here, . . . CBK
Just wondering since I get accused a lot of not reading articles upon which I comment. Might be good to read it first before jumping to conclusions, unfounded ones at that.
GregB I didn’t “jump to conclusions.” I RAISED A QUESTION. I though if you had read it, you could answer it. Good grief. CBK
Hello Catherine,
Be careful about asking QUESTIONS!!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂 (Inside joke between GregB and me 🙂 🙂
Wow, Greg. That’s a disturbing article!!!
Greg, great corralling of important info in this article. The delving into institutional/ professors’ failure to support student academics/ retention is revealing. The news in these books, summarized in the article, needs to be common knowledge among low/midclass applicants. There are small, reasonably-priced colleges with small classes, hands-on internships, robust academic support for students – and have been, for decades. Finding them, encouraging 1st-gen college & other challenged students to apply there: this could/ should be the job of hisch counselors… But the poorer the district, the less likely studs are to get more than 15mins college guidance in 4 yrs of hisch. Financial mgrs are well-versed in the dollars/ sense, & can provide regular cold showers on parents proposing to bet the family home/ future healthcare on chimeras. But who has fin mgrs? Not mid/wkgclass parents.
I knew there would be readers here interested it this. It was a thoroughly demoralizing and disturbing assessment. I saw lots of things that were too familiar with my oldest entering college (COVID willing) this fall.
Education matters but so much else comes into play.
Of course the bean counters, perhaps well-intentioned, have developed a “world happiness index,” with measures of relative equality as one of several determinants of happiness, also social cohesiveness, and so on. This is a multi-year project jumpstarted by Bhutan who made “gross national happiness” the measure to strive for, not GDP.
On one measure Bhutan still has a very high rating…until you look at the clash between cultural cohesion based on religion, and the dis-integrating social outcomes caused by the inducements of popular fare and enabled by technology in addition to a shift from an agrarian economy to one more diversified and urban.
Here is the latest World Happiness Report. These date back to 2012 with attention to income inequality and education among many factors that “count.”
https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/
The following video notes the upsides and some of the downsides of living in two of the “happiest” countries. The downsides are reported toward the end of the video. Both countries are very small and have less diversity in they populations than the US. But the social welfare programs and taxes for these are viewed very differently than in the US.
https://worldhappiness.report/news/why-finland-and-denmark-are-happier-than-the-us/
Laura Just an aside . . . “happiness” is a bad translation coming down through the ages from Aristotle’s Ethics, where the meaning is much closer to the idea of “well-being.” This makes all the difference in the world where analysis of anything is concerned.
I suppose there’s a relevance in both, considering our post-modern turn to psychology. However, consider also the difference between a report on the well-being of a person or a country, as distinct from a happiness report about either. CBK
CBK. It has been a long time, perhaps too long, since I read Aristotle’s Ethics, but your point about well-being is worth paying attention to, especially since what Bhutan’s policy aim was initially translated as “happiness” but may be closer in meaning to “well-being” even if not derived from Aristotle.
The narratives in the video I cited (especially about midway and toward the end) illustrate some nuanced meanings of happiness and some downsides of living in nation states where happiness as a pervasive value may become too much of a good thing.
There is also the inevitable difference between the indicators these researchers developed for entire countries, the experience of individuals, and the non-static nature of state policies and other events that shape perceptions of well-being. I think that is why the numbers and ranks are supported by the video reports of individuals, and why annual reports are issued.
Laura “. . . what Bhutan’s policy aim was initially translated as ‘happiness’ but may be closer in meaning to ‘well-being’ even if not derived from Aristotle.”
That happens often–and in many fields. That is, the language they have adopted for their field won’t frame (or won’t frame well) the reality they are better in touch with and want to know about; and so analysis bounce around without taking explicit account of real distinctions; and so it becomes relatively haphazard.
In the case of happiness, it’s common usage in any culture is all-over-the-map; and so it remains un-grounded . . . to try to give it a more general or technical meaning (from my brief perusal of it over the years with that question in mind), we end up with a lot of subjective-only psychology and endless examples. (I won’t go into the problems of philosophy here, but they ARE basic to the above problems correlating field language with real issues that need analysis.)
Whereas with the notion of well-being, we at least can reach for a clear definition of what is common and good for any person or culture GENERALLY, adapted then, and understood in relation to the specific contexts and details of individual circumstances in individual cultures, and also from within their historical context. Often overlooked are their own voices, but still the range of general well-being remains. (Not for sissies).
From your example, “. . . happiness as a pervasive value may become too much of a good thing.” Then under the general principles of true well-being, it’s no longer actually a good thing.
Thanks for the videos–I’ll have a look at them this week. CBK
Years ago I read a collection of essays by some popular science writer that started by posing this question: Why are there so many ants on the sidewalk? And then it gave some answers: People drop food on sidewalks, and ants collect it. Sidewalks provide stable strata for laying down the chemical trails that ants follow. And perhaps most importantly, ants are everywhere, and it’s just easier for you to see them on the sidewalk.
Something as complicated as racism has multiple expressions and multiple causes. It is undeniable that one of the causes of racism in the United States is inequitable distribution of resources and opportunity, and it is certainly the case that curing this disease of racism requires doing something about the extreme wealth and income inequality in our country. Extreme poverty makes some people desperate, and as a result of this desperation, they do terrible things–they commit crimes and participate in the underground economy. MANY WHITES DON’T SEEM TO KNOW THAT THIS ISN’T A BLACK THING. One sees it not only in poor black urban communities but also in poor white communities in small town, rural America, where we have crime and teen pregnancy and opioid and STD epidemics. But the existence of high crime rates in some places spills over into and reinforces racist stereotypes and stokes fear.
Racism is a toxic cocktail that consists of one part ignorance and one part fear. Racists whites in the U.S. see a black boy walking–one who has been to a convenience store to buy some Skittles–or a young man jogging and the simple fact of skin color makes them AFRAID. Why? Because they have been fed endless streams of news stories about inner city crime perpetrated by a few economically desperate people. So, desperation needs to end and resources need to be shared more widely so that crime in poor areas is not so prevalent.
But make no mistake about this: the fact that simply making people more knowledge will not by itself cure racism does not mean that making people more knowledgeable isn’t an important part of the solution, of the cure.
If racist whites actually get to know black people–if they interact with them regularly at school and at work–they tend to lose their racism. I’ve seen this myself as a teacher in an integrated school in the Deep South. In such situations, racist whites witness, on a quotidian basis, that individuals just don’t conform to their racist stereotypes, and they learn that their generalized fears are baseless. So, simple interaction among whites and blacks on a quotidian basis is education by which people gain knowledge that undermines racism.
And education can directly undermine racist ideology as well. I think it extremely important that in our biology classes we teach people to understand that race is primarily a CULTURAL phenomenon, not a BIOLOGICAL one. Yes, there are a few very minor genetic differences that correlate with race. Blacks are more likely than are whites to have two parents who carry the gene that causes sickle cell disease, but even in such RARE cases were there is higher incidence of a trait in one race than in another, the characteristic isn’t definitive of the race AS A WHOLE but of a small segment of the population. The fact is that genetic variation among individuals within races are greater than are genetic differences on average between races, and because of this, the genetic basis of racist ideology has no scientific basis, and it’s important for people to know that, TO BE TAUGHT THAT. Such instruction undermines and prevents the resurgence of the kind of racist ideologies that provided the foundations for the American eugenics movement and for Nazism.
Race is primarily a cultural phenomenon, not a biological one, and this leads me to yet another reason why education about race is important: Kids need to get A LOT out of instruction that celebrates cultural achievements. Cultural superstars–the Katherine Dunhams and Thurgood Marshalls and John Coltranes and Maya Angelous of the world–provide models for kids to emulate. Yes, I want to be like THAT person, a kid says to himself or herself. That’s great teaching. And this is not skills acquisition. This is acquisition of knowledge. Who was this Katherine Dunham, and what did she do? And isn’t that freaking cool!
And finally, education that takes the form of imparting knowledge can play a key role in combating racism by harnessing children’s idealism. As you know, starting in their tween years, kids try to individuate–to separate themselves and their identities from those of the adult models around them. They begin the process of conscious creation of themselves. And this can take many forms. It can take the destructive form of simply rebelling against any and all adult directives. But it can also take the beautifully constructive form of wanting to make the world better than adults made it. And this is why we need to stop whitewashing our history, to stop pretending that this country wasn’t built on genocide against native peoples, enslavement, Jim Crow, and systemic inequity–on the backs of Indians and black people (and brown laborers in farms and meat packing plants today). IF WE TEACH KIDS THE FREAKING TRUTH, THEY CAN SEE THAT WE SCREWED UP AND THAT IT’S UP TO THEM TO MAKE THINGS BETTER. And so that’s why we have to teach them about the Mystic Massacre and Wounded Knee and Thomas Jefferson’s slaves and his letter to Benjamin Banneker and the Dred Scott and Plessy v Ferguson decisions and the New York City Draft Riots and the Greenwood Massacre and the Tuskeegee syphilis experiments and other such ugliness, so they will have reason to call us inheritors of this ugliness on our failure to fix this crap and do better in the future. We did far, far too much myth peddling in the past. A lot of teachers, recently, have tried to rectify that.
And we are seeing the results of that in our streets in the United States right now. As one of the commentators on this blog, Christine, pointed out recently, we’re seeing a lot of young people in the street, calling for an end to routine violence against black Americans and to systemic racism WHO LEARNED TO HATE THESE THINGS IN THEIR CLASSROOMS.
I look at these beautiful young people in our streets and say to myself, “Well done, teachers. Well done.”
Aie yie yie. There were just too many typos and grammatical errors in that post. Here, a corrected version:
Years ago I read a collection of essays by some popular science writer that started by posing this question: Why are there so many ants on the sidewalk? And then it gave some answers: People drop food on sidewalks, and ants collect it. Sidewalks provide stable strata for laying down the chemical trails that ants follow. And perhaps most importantly, ants are everywhere, and it’s just easier for you to see them on the sidewalk.
Something as complicated as racism has multiple expressions and multiple causes. It is undeniable that one of the causes of racism in the United States is inequitable distribution of resources and opportunity, and it is certainly the case that curing this disease of racism requires doing something about the extreme wealth and income inequality in our country. Extreme poverty makes some people desperate, and as a result of this desperation, they do terrible things–they commit crimes and participate in the underground economy. MANY WHITES DON’T SEEM TO KNOW THAT THIS ISN’T A BLACK THING. One sees it not only in poor black urban communities but also in poor white communities in small town, rural America, where we have crime and teen pregnancy and opioid and STD epidemics. But the existence of high crime rates in some places spills over into and reinforces racist stereotypes and stokes fear.
Racism is a toxic cocktail that consists of one part ignorance and one part fear. Racists whites in the U.S. see a black boy walking–one who has been to a convenience store to buy some Skittles–or a young man jogging and the simple fact of skin color makes them AFRAID. Why? Because they have been fed endless streams of news stories about inner city crime perpetrated by a few economically desperate people. So, desperation needs to end and resources need to be shared more widely so that crime in poor areas is not so prevalent.
But make no mistake about this: the fact that simply making people more knowledge will not by itself cure racism does not mean that making people more knowledgeable isn’t an important part of the solution, of the cure.
If racist whites actually get to know black people–if they interact with them regularly at school and at work–they tend to lose their racism. I’ve seen this myself as a teacher in an integrated school in the Deep South. In such situations, racist whites witness, on a quotidian basis, that individuals just don’t conform to their racist stereotypes, and they learn that their generalized fears are baseless. So, simple interaction among whites and blacks on a quotidian basis is education by which people gain knowledge that undermines racism.
And education can directly undermine racist ideology as well. I think it extremely important that in our biology classes we teach people to understand that race is primarily a CULTURAL phenomenon, not a BIOLOGICAL one. Yes, there are a few very minor genetic differences that correlate with race. Blacks are more likely than are whites to have two parents who carry the gene that causes sickle cell disease, but even in such RARE cases were there is higher incidence of a trait in one race than in another, the characteristic isn’t definitive of the race AS A WHOLE but of a small segment of the population. The fact is that genetic variation among individuals within races are greater than are genetic differences on average between races, and because of this, the genetic basis of racist ideology has no scientific basis, and it’s important for people to know that, TO BE TAUGHT THAT. Such instruction undermines and prevents the resurgence of the kind of racist ideologies that provided the foundations for the American eugenics movement and for Nazism.
Race is primarily a cultural phenomenon, not a biological one, and this leads me to yet another reason why education about race is important: Kids need to get A LOT out of instruction that celebrates cultural achievements. Cultural superstars–the Katherine Dunhams and Thurgood Marshalls and John Coltranes and Maya Angelous of the world–provide models for kids to emulate. Yes, I want to be like THAT person, a kid says to himself or herself. That’s great teaching. And this is not skills acquisition. This is acquisition of knowledge. Who was this Katherine Dunham, and what did she do? And isn’t that freaking cool!
And finally, education that takes the form of imparting knowledge can play a key role in combating racism by harnessing children’s idealism. As you know, starting in their tween years, kids try to individuate–to separate themselves and their identities from those of the adult models around them. They begin the process of conscious creation of themselves. And this can take many forms. It can take the destructive form of simply rebelling against any and all adult directives. But it can also take the beautifully constructive form of wanting to make the world better than adults made it. And this is why we need to stop whitewashing our history, to stop pretending that this country wasn’t built on genocide against native peoples, enslavement, Jim Crow, and systemic inequity–on the backs of Indians and black people (and brown laborers in farms and meat packing plants today). IF WE TEACH KIDS THE FREAKING TRUTH, THEY CAN SEE THAT WE SCREWED UP AND THAT IT’S UP TO THEM TO MAKE THINGS BETTER. And so that’s why we have to teach them about the Mystic Massacre and Wounded Knee and Thomas Jefferson’s slaves and his letter to Benjamin Banneker and the Dred Scott and Plessy v Ferguson decisions and the New York City Draft Riots and the Greenwood Massacre and the Tuskeegee syphilis experiments and other such ugliness, so they will have reason to call us inheritors of this ugliness on our failure to fix this crap and do better in the future. We did far, far too much myth peddling in the past. A lot of teachers, recently, have tried to rectify that.
And we are seeing the results of that in our streets in the United States right now. As one of the commentators on this blog, Christine, pointed out recently, we’re seeing a lot of young people in the street, calling for an end to routine violence against black Americans and to systemic racism WHO LEARNED TO HATE THESE THINGS IN THEIR CLASSROOMS.
I look at these beautiful young people in our streets and say to myself, “Well done, teachers. Well done.”
cx: But make no mistake about this: the fact that simply making people more knowledgable will not by itself cure racism does not mean that making people more knowledgeable isn’t an important part of the solution, of the cure.
cx: knowledgeable
Bob ” . . . the fact that simply making people more knowledgeable will not by itself cure racism does not mean that making people more knowledgeable isn’t an important part of the solution, of the cure.”
We can raise the often overlooked question here also: are we MERELY talking about object-knowledge, or knowing-about, or are we talking about knowledge that has changed us down to our core, aka constitutive or substantial knowledge?
That’s the kind of knowledge someone here earlier referred to when, for instance, a child or even an adult says to themselves, after becoming acquainted with, admiring, and becoming awed by a particular person: I want to be like that. That’s clearly object-knowledge but also goes deeper to become substantial knowledge–knowledge that, through self-change, we become constituted by. We are like that, developmentally.
In our time where racism is concerned (as example), we hope that people who have been born into racism may see something about it, or some result of it (like becoming acquainted with the Tulsa riots through education) that “rings bad” with them and so sets out a “change of heart.” CBK
Freaking beautifully said, CBK! So wise!!!
Our criminal justice system is a crime in itself in many cases particularly for people of color. We have so many examples where black people were railroaded by a system that simply wanted to close a case. The Innocents Project has been able to exonerate a few of them. Another tool designed keep poor, mostly minority people down are the fines and fees we rarely hear about. In addition to serving time, inmates are often handed a bill of $10,000 or more when they leave that causes a lot of them to return to crime because they cannot get a real job.https://theappeal.org/fines-and-fees-explained-bf4e05d188bf/
YES!!!!
Let’s face it, education has been narrowed and watered down for the last twenty years. If the wealthy and powerful want you to be weak and submissive, they will keep you from reading and writing. It’s what slaveholders did and it’s what billionaires do. Education influences society, but test prep influences nothing at all. Education needs to be revived. Great literature influences society. It doesn’t influence every single individual member of society, and it doesn’t influence any billionaires into being less greedy or megalomaniacal, but it affects the whole. Education is an important component of the social contract. Since the social contract is broken, mostly by greedy billionaires (including the owner of Amazon and the Washington Post) maintaining the status quo of a racist gilded age, education must be part of building a better state of democracy and justice. And great literature, not snippets of text used for test prep, must be part of it. So, if I may play a bit, à la SomeDAM, with part a poem about Paul Revere that helped inspire people to fight the U.S. Civil War and eventually abolish slavery:
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the curfew ride of the protesteer,
In the early weeks of June, in Fifteen and Five:
Many a man are now alive
Who remember that famous week seem’d year.
He said to his friend, “If the police march
By land or sky from the town to-night,
Hang a flashlight aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,—
One if by land, and two if by chopper;
And I ‘cross the street will be a roof topper,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every American city and farm,
For the ev’ryday-folk to be up and disarm…
…You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the Trumpish Regulars fired and fled,—
How many protesters gave numbers for ball,
From before each fence and storefront-wall,
Chasing the red-hats down the lane,
Then crossing the streets to emerge again
Under the billboards and before the bastilles,
And only pausing to mask and kneel.
So through the night rode the protesteer;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every American city and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying footsteps of The People who lead,
And the midnight message of the protesteer.
wonderful!
Great essay. And great responses. When I was a child, my society taught me to be a racist, even though my parents tried otherwise. The opening of my eyes began with a simple six-weeks course in what we called Black Literature. Reading Richard Wright, Langston Hughes began to lead me away from many of the pre-suppositions I had about people I did not know. I keep trying to get away from that cultural bias.
I cannot know what Africans feel in this post-imperialistic world. But I have felt what it is to be assumed about. There have been many times when my southern accent has led people who should know better to think that I am backwards and ignorant. I can only imagine what it would be like if I had to fight more than an accent.
I’m sorry this has happened to you, Roy. Class is also an issue in America. Those who grew up in working-class families encounter this all the time.
Roy and Bob I grew up in the 50’s/60’s and had to breakaway from my own sexism, even against myself, . . . it was so ingrained in the culture at the time, and it’s still around (in case you didn’t know, but “duh” for most women that I know). (Group bias is one coverall name for the whole bias-set, class, race, sex, etc.).
But, though my family and surroundings were never OVERTLY racist that I remember or know of, somehow, I “got” racism; probably because “we” were NEVER associated with black or brown people in our daily lives, even in movies and grade school–everything was white–and when TV came around, again, all of mostly white . . . so, for me, the question was never even raised–sexism and racism were just assumed.
Long story, but I finally realized (in my early 30’s) that my immediate response to being in the presence of a black or brown person was NOT what I wanted it to be. I never wished anything bad for anyone–not in my DNA. But before that realization, I just went with my spontaneous feelings, . . . a mixture of fearful and uncomfortable awareness, then a sense of hiding and diversion away from them. (I’m sorry to say that, but it’s true.)
The initial set of reflective insights, though they took a long time to come (in part, from teaching college and writing in the South), were NOTHING compared to the constancy needed to transform my spontaneous feelings, once they had been set so early in my life. But that’s been a running project of mine for years–a kind of constant washing out that needed to be done.
If my personal situation of change has some general similarity to others’ situations, then after checking and changing one’s out responses, I don’t see any way around the need for sustained self-reflection to work on one’s spontaneity of feeling, especially for those who grew up in similar situations, and I can imagine how much WORSE it is for those who grew up in an environment where OVERT racism is accompanied with sustained active violence.
i think of police departments with their “sensitivity training.” All good; but for such deeply-held violations of spirit as I have experienced, undergoing a course or two won’t do it. One FIRST has to realize where our patterns of feelings came from, and that some of those patterns and feeling responses may need self-transformative work.
My experience is that, first, we cannot automatically accept that the norms that we were born into and that are now “written into” our spontaneity of feeling, lead us directly to an exceptional sense of well-being, but that, second, we can change our own spontaneity.
Just some hopefully-helpful reflections. CBK
We need to do a much better job of vetting police candidates for racist attitudes. There are tests for this, some of them quite subtle.
I would add: equally important: ample extracurricular activities, music, arts, theater. sports, special-interest clubs. This multiplies the opportunities for suburban & small-city white kids to get to know and work with black/ brown kids. At least up here in the northeast, segregated residential patterns can mean few white kids encounter blacks/ browns in the classroom.
bethree5 I had a 6th-grade teacher in one of my classes who came from the mid-west to California for her masters in teacher-ed. She began my class with the idea that her entire community was white so they didn’t need curricula that included racial issues. . . . Needless to say . . . CBK
Most of our social structures, including traditional K-12 education, contribute to the systemic racism in the country. Again, I recommend the This American Life two part episode “The Problem We All Life With” (https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with-part-one). Dr. Ravitch has featured some of the work by Nikole Hannah-Jones, but not this piece.
This wrongful article by a white assistant professor of sociology and African-American studies at the University of Iowa, appearing in the mainstream press, is part of systemic racial oppression. Billionaires need to pay much higher taxes to support the working class, including and especially the descendants of great civilizations on the African continent, but instead of suggesting that, the suggestion in the news outlets billionaires own is that we instead should destroy the last remaining unions and the last vestiges of the middle class. These unwitting racists will say that African Americans do not need schools, do not need police, and do not need hospitals. Instead, people can make do with online school, online surveillance, and online healthcare: let them eat virtual cake. This article is on the wrong side of history.
LCT,
I thought the point of the article was the need to redistribute resources so everyone has a decent standard of living. Are we referring to the same article?
The article states, “Education detached from concrete, measurable changes, such as protesters’ calls for defunding the police departments, is the ‘thoughts and prayers’ of anti-racism.” I read that as a call for defunding police unions and looking the other way on the continued underfunding of education. Educating cops is not “thoughts and prayers”; it’s substantive. Maybe I read too much into the Post, and for that I apologize, but when the article said education isn’t a cure-all, it made me think that it meant education is incapable of curing anything. No.
Please pardon me if I have become a little hypersensitive over the last couple decades, but with everything I read and hear, I nowadays am always on the lookout for those who never want to “let a disaster go to waste” and defund public services. Education is not a cure-all, but to deny that educating, training, and compensating public servants is less than pivotal is unacceptable to me. Okay, again, I feel and admit that I am reaching here with my interpretation of the article, and again I am sorry, but I want teachers, police officers, nurses, and firefighters to be fully supported instead of defunded, and that means more teaching as opposed to the status quo.
I certainly wouldn’t mind if we defunded armored vehicles, battering rams, grenade launchers, and assault rifles. Come to think of it, I strongly prefer the word ‘demilitarize’ to the word ‘defund’. Do police really even need sidearms and batons? Remember when there were high speed freeway chases? Too many of them ended in death and destruction. The police learned to lay back and wait for the suspects to stop instead of speeding to try to catch them. Works better. If it works better on the freeway, why not on the street when it’s not a hostage situation? Take away the weapons of war, educate and compensate the officers, demilitarize and enlighten.
Thank you, Diane. It is extremely important that we be having this discussion as part of the discussion of racism in America. Systemic racism and systemic economic inequality are inseparable.
Agree, thank you, Diane.
I don’t suppose now is a good time for me to argue that the Reconstruction was a time of positive developments until 1877… Just kidding. I’m a pain in the rear sometimes, I know.
I’m not sure that any social problem can be WHOLLY solved by social mandates, orders, laws, education or changing the outer “playing field” so to say. Social change will come about when individuals change in their relationship to themselves and others. If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change. 🙂 We go forward and backward all the time. Consciousness develops by degrees.
Mamie You mention education as in an “outer playing field.”
When education is only about outer playing fields, then it’s in failure mode. CBK
Hello Catherine,
I would say that every group of people whether it be a book group or the congress or a school or a nation is the “outer playing field.” What the individual person brings to the group is the important thing. I can’t bring peace to a group if I don’t have it myself. I can’t bring interesting ideas to my group if I haven’t thought about them myself. I can’t expect others to listen to me if I can’t listen. This takes a lot of individual work and it’s something our society as a whole doesn’t encourage. I think a lot about the way teachers are supposed to get students to work in groups. Well, many students can’t bring anything of interest or excitement to the group because they haven’t read the piece they were assigned or haven’t thought about it enough themselves. This is partly a matter of age because younger students haven’t had a lot of life experience to work with and there are other factors as well. I think a lot about what I call “forced volunteerism” too. Many schools force students to do volunteer work. But the desire to volunteer and give oneself to a cause comes from within, not without. You can force someone to do it, but it won’t become a part of that person unless it comes from within. It’s the same thing when people say that teachers motivate. Motivation comes from the energy within oneself not from someone else although someone’s inspiration and excitement for a subject can be a motivating factor. Anyway, there is a strong encouragement in our society to be part of the group whatever that may be. So my point was that the group always starts with the individual. Thank you.
Mamie I think what you say is true. There is a “however” in there, however. An analogy for forced educative experiences is this: when my son was little and didn’t want to try some new item on his plate, I “forced” him to take ONE BITE; and then if he didn’t like it, he didn’t have to eat any more of it. And there is controlling children’s situations where learning is an optimum thought hidden occurrence.
Also, one of the truths about living in a democracy is that it takes a decidedly NON-democratic lead-up education to learn to live in one well. Children have a long learning curve and develop and respond in good part according to those who are charged with leading them, home, in the classroom, and in the culture.
Though I think what you say is true, there is a fine line between force and good leadership founded on love–which children need and want. I wouldn’t rule out intelligent and reasonable direction, even force sometimes, in educating young people. Most wouldn’t be in school at all if they were not first led there. CBK
Hello Catherine,
Yes, I agree with you and I appreciate your comments.I also appreciate your comments to Roy and Bob above. I have a wonderful aunt who used to take me everywhere when I was little. We ate at fancy restaurants. I just wanted hamburger and fries. We went to museums. Sometimes I wasn’t really into it. She tried to expose me to many things. At the time, I complained. But looking back, I am so grateful she LED me to those places. Exposure to many things is good and it’s one of the foundations of a good education. Thank you.
Wisdom!
“education won’t save us from racism” nor, from theocracy
MIT, an institution of higher learning where David Koch was a lifetime board member, has a Catholic chaplain, Daniel Patrick Maloney, who sent an e-mail that included (1) a “devaluation and disparagement of George Floyd” (per MIT official) and, (2) the statement, “Many people have claimed that racism is a major problem in police forces, I don’t think we know that”.
William Barr, among the most educated men in America, was described in Medium’s 10-4-2019 article, Why, and to What, has William Barr Sold his Soul. The AG Barr has consistently spoken in language and talking points that are in line with the goals for both Opus Dei and D.C.’s Ethics and Public Policy Center. Barr, like Maloney, questions racism as a widespread problem. Barr was EPPC’s Director from 2004-2009. The article tells us that Barr was a Supreme Board member of the Knights of Columbus for years. Knights of Columbus is the largest Catholic laity organization in the world. It is currently headed by a former legislative aide to Jesse Helms. The former head was director of Norquist’s anti-tax campaign. Bishop Anthony, a minority person of color among the bishops, spoke out against the John Paul II shrine as backdrop for a Trump photo op.
Father Peter Daly wrote, “I’m done with the Knights of Columbus”. Is the American Catholic Church done with the K of C and its vast fortune?
Sourcewatch has a full explanation about EPPC whose current head orchestrated a campaign against the testimony of Ford in the Kavanaugh hearings, a campaign aided by the PR firm that was behind the swift boat captains smear of Kerry. The pro-Kavanaugh campaign aimed to convince the public that a different class member had been the person Ford identified as Kavanaugh in her testimony before Congress. The falsely identified classmate found his name in media reports.
UnKochMyCamus.org proves in its posted research that higher ed can be compromised by donors.
The article by AEI’s Frederick Hess (a highly educated man), “Don’t Surrender the Academy”, posted in Philanthropy Roundtable, calls for donors to exert influence in academic departments.
Recent academic research (presumably a desperate attempt to get tax money for Catholic schools) concocts correlations about greater student morality and better character as a result of Catholic schooling. The bias that led to the papers and the construct for the arguments are beyond offensive on many levels.
Linda’s notes, again, are chock full of “Catholic, Catholic, Catholic.” CBK
CBK,
Ignore the provocations. Your voice is valued here. Although, as a Jew, I would probably take the bait too.
Diane Thank you. I was thinking, however, about my experience with BOTH public and private schools as a substitute. In public school the students almost ALWAYS acted like I had a target pasted to my back–it was like babysitting mean dogs–there were actual violent incidents when subs came in. One sub told me we were lucky if the students didn’t throw their desks through the windows. While at the private schools (Catholic and others) I and other subs were ALWAYS treated with respect.
You know that I am an advocate for public schools. Take from the above what you will; but my support of public schools doesn’t mean I think that public schools are not in need of qualified reform–on the contrary.
On the other hand, I think much of what is wrong with public schools in the US in the last 40 or 50 years can be laid at the door of the insidious take-over movements that you have given voice to in your work and on this blog. CBK
Linda By the way, I taught as a substitute in both Catholic and public schools. In my experience at least, the below of what you refer to is true, and not a “concoction.”
“. . . concocts correlations about greater student morality and better character as a result of Catholic schooling.” CBK
Diane-
The offense I take is just as warranted if propagandist scholars who are Jewish, evangelical or Muslim claim their religious schools produce people of higher character and morality than the students attending public schools.
You disagree?
Linda Have you ever thought of looking to the evidence for such claims? In my experience, there’s nothing magic about it or, in any case, endemic to religious, public, or private schooling . . . it’s just a matter of an ethos and culture of good and sustained discipline and pedagogical practice, where the students learn to expect it, and which happens to be a hallmark of Catholic and many other private schools. CBK
I don’t disagree. There are good and bad in all religions. And among graduates and dropouts of all kinds of schools.
All salient points, Linda. It strikes me that the outrage some have about your accurate assessment is analogous to calling those who point out the hypocrisies and crimes of Netanyahu and Likud anti-semites. Or that personal experience trumps (no pun intended) observable facts with which one may not have personal experiences (see climate change science critics and deniers for most obvious example). Or that reading the full text provides context. Or that one can be called anti-everything about a subject when one points out nuances or screaming realities that don’t fit the pre-conceived script. Animal Farm-esque “Four legs good, two legs bad.” Not “(some, maybe many) four legs good, (some, maybe many) two legs bad.”
“All Catholics good, all critics of specific examples baaaad.” How is this different from “America right or wrong”?
Stereotyping and bias towards a religious group is wrong. There are good and bad in all faith traditions.
Not sure whether to 😂 or 😭 (actually, I’m sure, it’s the latter):
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/arkansas-coronavirus-abortion_n_5eeba27ac5b6413b964e4caa
Greg-
In reference to the comment at 1:01 –
Morality was on trial in Nuremberg. After the convictions, I assumed the lesson about morality contrasted with obedience to orders was widely understood.
Thank you for your observations in this thread. A lack of response from public education defenders after the 1:01 comment would have diminished a noble cause.
One can conclude from action and word that (1) Barr and Leonard Leo feel justified in giving job preference to candidates of their faith based on the reasoning that the Catholic faith is superior, (2) the Knights of Columbus’ rationale for tipping the scales for Republican legislators and, for Trump is their assumption that their God is directing them to do so, and (3) the EPPC’s win-at-all-costs strategy is predicated on the idea that religion as an end goal, justifies means.
Theocracy’s foundation is entitlement based on a feeling of exalted rank.
Based on the faith’s defenders at this blog, I see no reason to question my assessment.
Greg-
thanks for the link at 2:15
Yes, Linda, I am puzzled by the insistence of some that we are intolerant, especially since I believe (and know) the arguments we are making are wholly consistent and in concordance with Diane’s comment at 7:26. There seems to be a semantic argument about the definitions of many and few. I think you and I would both argue that there are many more Catholics (and Jews and Muslims and virtually every other religion–scientology excepted because who knows what they believe [I admit to being a hypocrite on this subject]) who are liberal and open-minded, committed to principles of pluralism than those who are not. Some define the 30-40% who fit in the latter category as “the few.” I, and maybe you too, are outraged that this minority seems to speak for the many and too few of the many resist this reality.
I sort of got engaged in this blog four years ago because I saw the growing fascism in the country growing. In doing so, I spent a lot of time writing about the German resistance to Nazism and Hitler, that not all should be lumped together. But I conceded that the resistance was of the few. Less than 80,000 Germans were documented to have been murdered by the government for their resistance activities. No one knows the real number. The leaders of the resistance were the first to posit and envision the idea of a European Union, they were, as I have written before, some of the best examples of humanity who have ever existed. Let’s say it was 200,000, 300,000 who actively resisted. Is that many or few? Out of a nation with more than 80 million people? And many of them were Catholic, but they were a distinct minority of German Catholics. Some of them were Protestants. Some of them were atheist Communists. Do we brush all the same, whether it be good or bad, with the same brush. And do my comments on one of the most valuable books in my library make me a hater or one who tries as hard as I can do distinguish between good, evil and in-between? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-TaRDqKkZo
Whoops, posted wrong link (although it’s worth watching if you love music and humanity). Here’s what I meant to post: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1022841000
Greg-
The number of techniques some commenters have used to quash discussion and the heavy hitters who have distracted away from the political success of state Catholic Conferences, renders the description, “puzzling”, as inadequate.
The SCOTUS cases of Kristen Biel and Morrisey Beurre are among the theocracy’s boldest legislative attacks on American civil rights.
An observation from Fred Kaplan’s biography of John Quincy Adams seems appropriate here: “Admiral Stephen Decatur’s widely publicized toast in 1816, ‘our country, right or wrong,’ struck Adams as not only discordant but immoral. As Adams saw it, ‘I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong. My toast would be, may our country be always successful, but whether successful or otherwise always right. I disclaim as unsound all patriotism incompatible with the principles of eternal justice.’”
I would add, this applies to all beliefs and world views under the sun and moon.
The Judiciary chair who can bring impeachment charges against Barr (Jerrod Nadler) believes in separation of church and state- good news for the nation.
6-22-2020, a video posted at Baton Rouge news media that shows an East Baton Rouge school board meeting allegedly recording a white board member, Connie Bernard, shopping for clothes on-line during a discussion about changing the name of the school (established as Robert E. Lee).
Bernard had previously told community members in a discussion about preserving the name, to learn more about Lee. A black resident, Gary Chambers called her out for the shopping and her defense of Lee. He said in a blistering condemnation, “You are an example of racism in this community”. Bernard’s bio states she is a member of St. Jude Catholic Church.
Bernard wants to continue as a public official, like Ohio state Sen. Steve Huffman (racist comments in a Senate hearing last week). While both are educated and well into the 2nd span of their lives they believe taxpayers should foot the bill while they learn to be decent human beings.
That was a wonderful video of citizen engagement.
Yes it is!
Rhetorically, what will St. Jude’s sermon topic be in the following weeks?
Greg
Thanks for the song link. The lyrics describe the soul of progressives.
I have friends who have traveled a continent away to hear Nick Cave.
Every opportunity they have, they go to his concerts. They are also in the streets protesting at this time.
Thank you, Diane, for this post, and no, education is not enough, but it is a start. Checking out The Spirit Level…
Best,
Shira