The writer Anand Giridharadas writes a blog called The.Ink. In a recent post, he interviewed author Courtney Martin about her decision to send her child to the neighborhood public school, which was majority black and brown. Anand wrote a book that is very relevant to readers of this blog: Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.
In it, he argues that the global elite engage in great acts of philanthropy that do little to help the great masses of people but preserves the status quo in which they are the winners.
This is Anand’s introduction to his interview with Martin about her new book:
A few years ago, like millions of parents, Courtney Martin had to decide where to send her child to school. Because she is an acute and thoughtful journalist and social chronicler, she understood what a complicated and fraught and historically loaded decision that was. And so, in addition to making the decision, she set out on a journey to understand the dilemma she was facing — being torn between sending her daughter to the same places all the other white kids were going and sending her daughter to the local, majority-Black-and-brown public school.
It was around this time that, in one of the signal essays of the era, Nikole Hannah-Jones grappled with her own version of this dilemma as a Black woman highly accomplished in journalism, with the options and resources to choose among many places.
Courtney approaches the dilemma from the very different standpoint of a white woman in Oakland, California, trying to understand the deep and enduring segregation in places that, on the surface, seem progressive and woke.
I caught up with Courtney for her first interview anywhere about the much-anticipated new book that grew out of this searching: “Learning in Public: Lessons for a Racially Divided America from My Daughter’s School.” You’ll find that below.
Read the entire interview. This is an excerpt:
“The racism on the left is obscured and full of guilt and shame”: a conversation with Courtney Martin
THE INK: Tell us the story of how you decided what school to send your daughter to.
COURTNEY: When I would take walks around our gentrifying neighborhood in Oakland with my first daughter strapped in snug in the carrier on my chest, I would always walk by our local elementary school. The kids seemed joyful and the grounds seemed beautiful, but I noticed that there were almost no white kids in the playground (which seemed strange given all the white families I’d seen living here). When my baby grew up, and was old enough to go to transitionary kindergarten, I sort of put my journalist hat on and started researching where all the white kids are. That led me on a journey of thousand moral miles.
Ultimately, I learned that despite all the hype about Brown v. Board and Ruby Bridges, our schools hit the peak of integration in the 1980s, and it’s only been downhill from there, largely because of white parents like me who either disinvest from public schools entirely by sending our kids to private schools, or navigate to make sure our kids go to the whitest, most highly resourced public schools in our district. I also learned that integration is the only thing we know that actually works to break the cycle of poverty for Black and brown kids, and that white kids who go to integrated schools do fine. It felt hard, in some ways, to choose a school that most of our friends weren’t choosing, and one with a 1-out-of-10 rating on GreatSchools.org to boot, but the research I did (thank you, Nikole Hannah-Jones and Rucker C. Johnson!) helped us get over that initial fear. And thank goodness it did, because we all love our kid’s school so much.
THE INK: In your introduction, you say that “this book is very much about racializing white people” and that you “attempt to write with a ‘white double-consciousness.’” What does that mean?
COURTNEY: There are so many incredible books about educational inequity and the failed promise of integration, but they tend to be academic. I wanted to write a book that would serve as a gateway drug of sorts to all those great books — a fast-moving, personal story that would draw people in and then hit them with a bunch of new knowledge about race and education, and leave them with some good self-searching to do. My audience is white and/or privileged parents, though I did a lot of work to make sure the book felt useful and true to BIPOC folks in my own community, but also in the educational space writ large.
In any case, I wrote about myself and my family in a deeply vulnerable way, trying to force myself to see the water I swam in and describe it for other white people. Part of what keeps white supremacy in place is that whiteness is treated as a default, as neutral, instead of a distinct culture with its own language, norms, and problems. In a sense, I was trying to center whiteness, so we can get better at decentering white people.
THE INK: You write about Dr. Janet Helms’ “framework for white racial development” that she developed in the 1990s. You quote her as saying: “In the first stage, you are basically oblivious, interacting with very few people of color, and when you do, you do your best to pretend as if nothing is different about them.” A lot of white Americans are still very much in this stage, at best — the colorblind stage. But I would imagine that a lot of your fellow white parents in places like Oakland think they’re different from that, further along the journey. Are they, in fact?
COURTNEY: Exactly. I think Americans who live in largely white neighborhoods and mostly interact with white people — of which there are A LOT — are probably still hanging out in this stage. But most of the white people I know who have chosen to live in hip cities like Oakland, Brooklyn, Minneapolis, etc., pride themselves on wanting to live in multi-racial community. And yet I think many of us, in fact, only have this as an aspiration, not a lived experience. When we actually look around the table at our dinner parties, or check out our kids’ soccer teams, we are confronted with the reality that we live in multi-racial cities, but many of us also lead very segregated lives, particularly socioeconomically.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Integration benefits all. When we stop trying to escape from one another, we can get better and do better. There are no failing schools. We all have a mutual enemy, and it’s not the neighbors. It’s the billionaires funding privatization and standardized testing.
I think we can all agree that white liberals are the worst, just horrible racists — and so stealthy about it.
There is a great, old book that describes liberals. It’s the dictionary. The Orwellian doublespeak language of corporate education “reform” is the medium of stealth racist faux liberalism. I use the word ‘faux’ with intent. Let’s be clear, there is no such thing as a racist liberal. You’re either open-minded or prejudiced. You can’t be both. When white, faux liberals use colorblind phrases like “good schools”, “college and career ready”, and “curriculum that meets a student’s needs”, when they turn a colorblind eye to standardized test scores, tracking, and school choice, they are struggling with issues of prejudice.
A commenter at the The.Ink site described young white teachers replacing established black teachers in city schools. Unfortunately, the commenter didn’t connect the situation to the billionaires’ TFA.
Not sure I agree with any of those statements. 😉
I taught in a diverse school district. Generally those that bought homes in the district embraced and sought out diversity. Due to the close proximity to NYC, the district attracted people in the arts, and it also had a long standing black and brown population. The result was a diverse student population with a wide range of socioeconomic groups. Our poor students and ELLs benefited tremendously from attending well resourced, clean, safe schools. Smart, motivated students of all colors got an education that prepared them for college and beyond. They also learned how to be accepting and tolerant of individual differences, and they are better off for having learned how to function in a diverse society.
I am a fan of design shows. CBS has a show out now called the Secret Celebrity Renovation in which the celebrity helps renovate the home of a person that helped them in life. It is a love letter to public education! While some episodes focus on influential family members, two of the shows highlight public school teachers, and in all the shows the community public schools helped these talented people develop and grow. The show on Anthony Ramos, an actor in Hamilton and in the TV version of The Heights, was inspiring. NYC teacher, Sara Steinweiss, demonstrated the power of how one person can totally change a young person’s life and career trajectory. You can see the past shows on CBS on demand. It is a “feel good” show for teachers. https://www.uft.org/news/news-stories/hamilton-star-says-brooklyn-teacher-saved-my-life
The advantage of integrated schools is that the schools are generally well resourced with qualified teachers and a good school library. When schools become minority majority, we often see large classes and fewer resources for all. Race seems to be connected to investment or disinvestment.
RT,
I may have taught in your former district.
It was 60% black, but the reality is that it was black bourgeoisie and strivers, for the most part, not the Newark poor. Even so there was a huge achievement gap, and lower track classes were mostly black and often rowdy. (Tracking was in place then, but it was under attack. I imagine it’s been dismantled by now.) I liked teaching these lower-track classes (seriously) but it was very hard to keep them focused and achievement was further hobbled by widespread failure to do homework or study for tests. The kids themselves weren’t very serious about their own learning, –they needed to be more focused and studious –but making observations of this sort was frowned upon; it was becoming de riguer to suggest that white teachers’ cultural insensitivity or racism was the culprit. It made no sense: Black teachers had most of the same problems with their students. Hallways were mayhem, and local homeowners and businesses complained about students’ uncivil behavior in the neighborhood. One of my most serious black students was pulled out of the school by his parents because of the intensity of the anti-achievement peer pressure from other black students. An honest, empirically-based discussion of these issues was difficult in this proto-woke community more than 15 years ago; I shudder to think what the speech restrictions must be like today. I’m sure I’d be labeled a racist simply for stating the evidence of my eyes, even though I had great affection for most of my black students, regarded them as capable of much more than they were demonstrating, and actually put more effort into helping them than my non-black students as did most of my white liberal colleagues.
My district was suburban NYC, but the school was not rowdy. It was about one third minority that was mostly poor. We did have a few middle class black students. Most of the white students were middle class. The school district did a good job of encouraging all students. It also had programs to encourage minority students to take challenging courses that would prepare students for college.
Kudos to Ms. Martin for telling the uncomfortable truth about how white parents navigate the school system here. As a 25-year resident of a white, wealthy neighborhood, real estate is king and acts as de facto segregation, resulting in increasing gentrification and school choice drawn on economic and racial lines. We see segregation in neighborhood schools on the same block. Rapid gentrification in West Oakland made it a target for John Fisher’s Oakland A’s project, a new stadium plus luxury condos (real estate again), along with disruption of the function of the Port of Oakland, one of the last bastions of unionized workers in the city. If the name sounds familiar, it should. He’s the son of Gap founders Doris and Donald Fisher, who fund KIPP and privatization. It’s all tied together. Circling back, white Oakland parents generally choose the path of “good” elementary (kids that look like them), and then often pull their kids from middle school. Then, high school is Oakland Tech or bust. If they can’t get them in there, they pull them again and send them to the local Catholic high school. My son’s high school, Skyline High, is the most diverse school in Oakland, and he chose it over the “whiter” Oakland Tech. Nearly all his former peers from elementary are at the Catholic school.
After Brown v Board of Education, the mission was focused: “equal” education AND integration. The rest were means to the ends. Did tens of thousands of black children get a quality education in suburban schools? Yes. Did they have access to quality resources and highly paid (a.k.a. the few selected from many experienced teachers)? Yes. Did they graduate high school and go on to colleges at high rates than sending urban centers? Yes.
HOWEVER – it was about INTEGRATION and EQUAL for black and white children IN THE WHITE CHILDREN’S SCHOOLS. And, as one bold politician stated: It would (and did in many instances) destroy neighborhoods.
That was then. This is now. The politician was correct.
The neighborhood. Nostalgia. Home. Friends. Natural support system. But – Not when school buses from every else line up on the same street to send children away and the anchor of the neighborhood slips into disrepair.
40 years later… Those neighborhoods are a) dilapidated and deserted or b) gentrified with white folks moving in (or “Nice White Parents” if you haven’t listened to the NYT podcast).
The author here relates the dilemma for the millions who benefitted from the flight from the cities to the predominantly white suburbs. “Sure, I want my kid in an integrated school – but don’t want my kid going to a school that’s not as good (yet)” and definitely does not want to tear down boundary lines that separate districts in order to become one system.
The author is in one the rejuvenated neighborhood. Good. And, not sending her child to a private or parochial or uggh charter school. I hope she fights her school board to insure the same pay, benefits, and support for teachers as the nearby suburbs and fights for quality resources, birth-five programs on the state’s dime (not taken out of the district’s k-12 allocation); and authentic education (not pretest-scripted teach-test – repeat).
A few years ago, a charter middle school opened and the founders specifically targeted white, wealthy kids and pulled them away from my son’s neighborhood public middle school with high POC. It is amazing what people will do to avoid sending their kids to school with “other people’s children”.
Do you think parents’ concern about inferior learning conditions caused by a high-proportion of underprepared and/or rowdy students is irrational?
None of this is a surprise to POCs like me. We who live in gentrified neighborhoods and see these new white families move in do not interact with those who’ve been there for generations, don’t shop in the area (they get deliveries), those who live in condos very often have private garage parking, indoor play rooms for the kids and private gyms. They don’t send their kids to neoghborhood schools and if they do, they pressure local schools to “be more ihgh performing” meaning kick out the POC kids. Too many so-called white liberals may talk a good game, live in a mixed community, but still live very seperate lives. At the worst, they treat POCs like THEY don’t belong there and complain about it.
Thanks for adding your comment.
If American podiums were inclusive, voices that call for change would be representative of all economic classes.
Last week, a bookstore hosted, Courtney E. Martin (who is white) in Conversation with Jamia Wilson (who is black) for, “Learning in Public…” Jamia Wilson’s impressive bio identifies schooling at St. Timothy’s, a Maryland Episcopalian boarding school where tuition is $33,000 a year.
There’s reason to think that private schooling (in 2015, about 75% of it was religious- K-12) fast tracks people in America. It reflects the wealthy rigging the system. It makes clear the intent of current neoliberal and conservative education policy- to take away democratic values and democracy itself.
Related, the Koch view of a shrunk government is at odds with other developed nations. It lessens social stability. And, it lessens opportunities for good paying jobs. The worst impact is on POC who aren’t in the top 10% economic tier.
I’ve read a lot of message board discussion comments from self-described conservatives claiming that liberals are the true racists &, even worse, are dishonest & hypocritical about it, claiming to be promoting racial equity while in fact perpetuating racial inequity. I’ve always felt like these claims were rationalizations engaged in by some conservatives just to deflect the issue away from themselves & turn it back on while liberals who criticize them, but this article makes it sound like they’re right.
Are they?
There is a certain portion of the left that will always devour itself, as if it’s following a dialectical law.
There will always be DINO’s with wealth trying to steer the party to the right which explains the Clinton neoliberals. Unfortunately, money pays for the staff and expenses of politically powerful organizations like CAP and DFER which are presented to the public as the left while the impact of their efforts aid the wealthy.
The true left, at this point in time, are the Justice Democrats. Clyburn and Hillary work to undermine them.
Please read the comment posted in the article from the comentor
Avis HatcherPuzzo. This article is not about making better choices this article is about privilege, and the Ink just reinforced it’s premise.
“#1- she set out on a journey to understand the dilemma she was facing — being torn between sending her daughter to the same places all the other white kids were going and sending her daughter to the local, majority-Black-and-brown public school.
#2- THE INK: How do you think white people who want to be on the right side of history should think about the question of where to place their children in school?
These two statements are the issue. If America, white Americans really believed in equality, they wouldn’t have to grapple with these intellectual issues because they really aren’t intellectual issues. Would this be a question if the “dilemma” was sending her kids to a rural white school in Kentucky? probably not because although poor and uneducated, all those kids would be white. So, it’s not exactly about black and brown, it’s not even about culture…maybe 40%, but it’s about POOR kids whose families and status can do nothing for her kids and being frightened of the fact that somehow black and brown = criminals. Elite black and brown families have the same “dilemma” but couching it in terms of race or global equity, gives it a nobler sound when the upper class “struggles” with it. When there was a majority and viable middle class, the conversation was different. But today, thanks to Clinton and the billionaires we’ve had as leaders, the controlled narrative is, how do we appear to be racially sensitive and distinguish ourselves from the non-woke, racist southern Trump whites, while still not wanting to be around poor people, who are also black and brown? If the choice was an elite school with excellent resources and the PTA was made up of Obama education level AND NBA income level parents, there wouldn’t have been a dilemma to write about.
Lastly and maybe more importantly, all the discussions, efforts, and interest of racially integrating and multi-racial cities, is on the “privileged” side, re: the white upper-class, progressive side. I don’t hear this discussion as urgently in the black and brown realm. The need to be racially integrated is heavily one sided for some reason, because there are plenty of black and brown people in this country, to live near, go to school with, be friends with, etc. but 80% of them are not socio-economically blessed enough to really want to risk being “equal” with. The few, handful of black and brown people that progressives desire to live around and associate with, the richer more educated, “safer” black and brown people are not the majority of us, and regardless of our economic status, we don’t really want to or need to associate with you, I’ve noticed. No offense but elite educated white liberals really just want this racial harmony so they can be “on the right side of history” against southern overtly racists conservatives. Actually engaging with and changing the lives (re: economic status) of black and brown people to be truly equal with them, not really the impetus here, unless there’s a non-profit that can be established to do it. And black and brown people know this which is why you talk about it among yourself or with a chosen token black or brown person to represent the entire population. On both sides historically, left and right, woke and non-woke, rich or poor, liberal and conservative whites always pull away from black and brown people in an effort to have a better life, and then they wonder why their world is so segregated. Clearly, “a better life” for white people is not being around black and brown people or controlling the ones they are around so they’re essentially white people too. Equality means “be like us” [….] “(Penny Adrian) THANK YOU!!!!! It isn’t race that’s the biggest blind spot for the “woke” privileged, it’s CLASS. The hypocrisy is exhausting. The only people able to make the choices outlined in this article are economically PRIVILEGED people.
Poor people – and let’s remember most poor people in this country are white due to demographics – have zero choice about where to send their children to school.
Also, economically privileged people may not be very welcome at public schools that are majority Black/brown because such people tend to be elitist and may impose their (ignorant) will on the other parents.” […] “(Avis HatcherPuzzo) THIS!! all of this, absolutely! Thank you. And they keep the conversation (narrative) confusing so those of us “UN-privileged” keep arguing about whose racist, white privilege, woke bs, when none of us have the economic prowess to chose anything we do. So the white privilege argument then cancels itself out in that a white person could probably go into a higher end store and not be followed around to the degree I would, but I can also go to the more “urban” areas and hang out, without feeling out of place. The nerve to write a book about her difficult choice is in my book clearly elitist and insulting. She must be a friend of Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility. She didn’t know where to send her kids so she didn’t appear racist? versus the majority of American women’s struggles (black, brown, white….whatever), can I afford to buy this necessity for my children and/or do I need to pick up another shift at work? Not the same struggle, not interested…..don’t care.”
Thanks for making clear by citing examples and by assigning deserved blame to neoliberals like Clinton that economic class is the foundational problem. There is no doubt that the system is rigged in favor of white people. A significant amount of discrimination is intentional albeit less violent than the destruction of Black Wall Street in Tulsa. But, the economic consequence may be equal or greater, loss of economic multiplier effect in communities of color is certainly similar.
Reparations are a staring point.
Would you prefer that the author of this not care where her children went? Would you prefer that she not care about race? As a teacher in a rural school, albeit not in Eastern Kentucky, I can say that there are plenty of people who agonize over our lack of resources. You are quite correct, this is an issue of funding and class. I do not, however, think we should demean this author for thinking about the implications of the decision.
I despise school uniforms. If I walk into a room full of people, and everyone in the room is wearing the same brand, style, and color shirt, I feel uncomfortable if I’m not wearing the same shirt. Same goes for shoes. And backpacks. If everyone in the room has the same haircut, I feel pressure to get that haircut. Same goes for language dialect. I like walking into a room full of people and seeing and hearing a whole bunch of different style shirts, and pants, and shoes, and hair, and races, and nationalities, and heights, and weights, and abled-nesses, and favorite foods, and teeth whitenesses, and genders, and orientations, and religions, and political beliefs, and fingernail lengths… It makes me feel free to be myself. Pop culture and mass marketing stink. I am me. I don’t have to fit into anyone’s stereotypes. If you don’t want me in the same room with you because you don’t have an open mind about who I am, based on a presumption due to the way others with the same skin color or haircut as mine have acted, it’s my loss. But here’s the thing, it’s your loss too.
Based on anecdotal evidence from my childhood, the schools with students in uniforms were in the Catholic school system. Catholic religious tenets are authoritarian and women are treated as 2nd class citizens.
NPR posted an alarming story, 4-14-2021, “Falum Gong, Steve Bannon and the Trump-era Battle over Internet Freedom.” Trump’s pick to lead the USAGM was Michael Pack, who Bannon described as “my guy”. A whistleblower addressing Pack’s dismissal of the heads of VOA, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia alleged that, “It was a flat out effort by lobbyists with close ties to the Trump admin. to reroute human rights funding …toward tools that really just checked a box in terms of close ties to religious movements.” The whistleblower alleged that Pack said, “religious groups need to play a greater role.”
Vice posted 8-6-2021 an article about the pro-Trump media of Falum Gong, a religious leader. One of the organization’s media is the far right, Epoch Times.
You’re right: it’s not skin color that repels these parents, it’s poverty. Poor white kids would be just as worrisome because they’re perceived (probably rightly) to drag down the level of instruction and be poorly behaved. My parents took me out of a poor white elementary school for this reason. But this woman, like most Woke folk, cannot see anything but race.
Violamomof1……Thank you for your honesty.
I am amused at the labels we used. Where are the “white liberals?” Most people I know traded in Gimmie Shelter for Tax Shelter 40 years ago.
Roy-
Final 8 words- priceless.
Not my own creation. SNL back i the 80s used the trope if not the exact wording. How do little things stick i the mind for so long?
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
If you’re white, you may not know you are a closet racist. The only way to escape from that closet is to learn how to tell the difference.
Further I would argue, that Ms. Martin, is really only addressing her choices as a parent of a Kindergartner. I want to see her grapple with the same choices in Middle School – a notorious exodus point for most affluent parents in Oakland – and a time when her voice is not going to be the only one at the table; and then, again, at the HS level. Our family included our child’s voice, and they were agonizing discussions especially at the HS level and despite my instance, we ended up at the school I least wanted him to attend. Well, I can tell you that her choices are already in favor of attending majority “woke” schools, because her elementary, tracks to Claremont MS – where the demographics are rapidly changing to affluence – and then to Oakland Tech HS (which as Oakland Mom stated above) fancies itself as the “best school among white and asian parents”, but really is not! Skyline is far superior, but I would state that Oakland High is an even far better school than both skyline or Tech. But, I’m willing to bet that Ms. Martin, is not going to fight and put her child in say… Roosevelt MS or Bret Harte MS, or West Oakland MS? or McClymonds HS, or Freemont HS or Castelmont HS? Is she now? Because after all she bought her house in a gentrifying neighborhood for a reason…and that is HS choices.
A review contrasting a 17-state Catholic school chain, Cristo Rey, which received funding from Gates and Walton, with suburban Catholic schools sheds light on the intersection of economic class and schools. A California Cristo Rey prototype with 60 students in a class was described by the Christiansen Institute. Their description adds to an understanding.
Policy advocates shouldn’t ignore that churches are tax exempt and that there are state Catholic Conferences promoting school choice and vouchers. Some Conferences co-host state capitol rallies with the Koch network. Bellwether which received Gates funding advised ed reformers targeting the south to reach out to churches to achieve their goals. Of southern states, Louisiana is unique in being dominantly Catholic. New Orleans is the first city to operate without a public school. Bill Gates lives in the state with the most regressive tax policy in the nation. The poor pay a rate up to 7 times higher than the rich.
Bill Gates funded a campaign to unseat incumbent judges who had rendered verdicts favorable to public schools.
A 2019 report citing 2015 data (National Center for Education Statistics) provided the following info, 36% of private school students were enrolled in Catholic schools, 24% in non-sectarian schools.
This is such a simplification of a very complicated issue. There were so-called “white liberals” (who were just as likely to vote for mainstream Dem candidates as to vote for progressives) who sent their kids to neighborhood public elementary schools all over Brooklyn that at the time had very few white students. That led to more and more white families from the neighborhood sending their kids, more moving in to attend that school, and suddenly the school is mostly white and everyone forgets how it got that way and thinks it is racist. What often happens is not that non-white families are pushed out, but that so many more zoned white students are now using it that it is both overcrowded and mostly white.
Years ago a group of District 15 parents began what I thought was a pipe dream – to get rid of middle school screens to insure more integration. But they succeeded. And while some “white liberal” parents were probably unhappy, many others participated.
And there is a vast difference between segregated public schools that specifically seek to exclude students of certain races, and public schools that seek to be more inclusive but are still disproportionately white. Schools in NYC that are 45% white or 55% white and Asian are called “segregated” but attending a school where 35% or 45% of the students are Black and Latino is different than attending a school where almost none of the students are. Those who say that there is no difference seem more like people who want to attack than those who actually want to think about this issue and how to best address it.
There are suburban schools that are 95% white with wealthy affluent politically conservative parents and there are urban schools that are 45% white with “liberal” parents – and it is the liberal parents who are secretly racist? This seems like a recipe for division.
“white people who want to be on the right side of history”
Sigh. For me it was hard to read on [and that’s just Giridharadas kicking off the conversation!] I hear echoes of gospel exhortations [“Do you want to be on the RIGHT side of history, now”] It also sounds like sports cheerleading. It’s good v bad, your team v mine. The sort of persuasive language that comes close to bullying. Martin is much “nicer” than Robin DiAngelo, but we’re in the same territory.
“We have to take responsibility for our own individual choice as either increasing or decreasing segregation in our cities.” This smacks to me of the “nice racism” Martin is trying to make a case against: being part of the white gentrification of longtime black neighborhoods, then sending your kid to the zoned school to “integrate” it.
“Part of what keeps white supremacy in place is that whiteness is treated as a default, as neutral, instead of a distinct culture with its own language, norms, and problems.”
There’s a useful grain in there, but it got buried. “White supremacy” is not related to a “default, neutral condition” unconsciously assumed by middle-&-up folks living in a vast white bubble. This is stripping a real phenomenon of its salient characteristics. That’s what “nice racists” do. I also quibble with the non-fact that whiteness is “a distinct culture with its own language, norms, and problems”. Perhaps a useful case could be made for something along these lines, but she didn’t do it.
No useful case can be made for these assertions, unless the goal is to sow discord.
AG paraphrases her here: “the more insidious, stealthy racism you observe in the supposed citadels of woke, progressive America” — this is purity-test stuff. It starts getting boring when you’re over 30, but some people never seem to get there.
Again I urge everyone here, including our host, to listen to Nikole Hannah-Jones reporting about the Normandy Public School District ( https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with-part-one ). If you thought she should have been given tenure at UNC to begin with, you should be willing to take her reporting seriously.