This morning as I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, I came across this post from Dion Grace:
Dear white person,
You’ve decided to be an all-in ally...congrats! I hope you’re excited to join us. I wanted to give disclaimers now that we are three weeks into this journey:
1. You will be hurt. 2. You will lose white friends. 3. You will be yelled at. 4. You will not always know what to say/do. 5. You will feel hopeless. 6. You will be exhausted. 7. You will feel that there’s so much to learn. 8. You will make a mistake. 9. You will want validation. 10. You will be uncomfortable. 11. You will be challenged. 12. You will feel not enough. 13. You will be corrected by a Black person. 14. More that I haven’t listed.
15. And you will realize this is a marathon.
Welcome to the party. But what’s important is that you continue to show up for us. Take a self-care moment and then come back to the front lines. Black lives matter and you know it. You’ve said it. Now show it. I have the right to correct you when you fall short of your commitment to me.
Yes, yes, yes, yes....and so on. This list captures so much of my experiences working to be an anti-racist in recent months, but never more so than this past week. In recent weeks, I have marched in protests, participated in a bail-out on Juneteenth, facilitated digital conversations around race with teachers from around the world, attended presentations from leading anti-racist scholars, and so on. I don't list these here for praise or recognition. Rather, I list them here to demonstrate ways I have worked to be, as Dion describes it, an all-in ally, and so that you might see ways you can participate in the fight. I also list them here because in each of these situations, I anticipated potential pushback. But aside from revving motorcycles protesting our chanted messages, I have been surprised by how little pushback I have personally witnessed.
Until this past week. And it stemmed from posting a simple frame around my Facebook picture that proclaimed Black Lives Matter. This was one very small action that I took to show my solidarity, and one I expected to evoke few responses aside from perhaps a thumbs up or two. That is not what happened. I won't elaborate on the venom that spewed beneath that post, but I will remark upon some common themes I saw in them.
Misinformation is a powerful motivator and difficult to counter. It has never been more clear to me that as teachers we MUST teach our students how to be critical consumers of information. So much of what was posted on my wall echoed the language of biased, non-credible sources. Statistical claims were made that were patently false. Teaching students how to look for bias and credibility in sources is no longer just good practice, but vital for the health of our democracy. While there are multiple approaches to this, our Make Your Moves Challenge is one way to help students develop the habit of questioning and determining the accuracy of a source.
Echo chambers don't allow for empathy. Technology provides us the potential to reach around the globe and learn from others. But if we allow ourselves to exist in the echo chambers created by the algorithms used by digital tools, we risk becoming even less informed. In reading the posts on my wall, it was evident that my detractors were immersed in media that supported their viewpoints and that they had little room to consider anyone's experiences other than their own. It's important to teach students how to see other viewpoints and question their own beliefs. Our adaptation of Michael Wesch's Talking to Strangers challenge can help push students to learn more about others who are different from themselves. Abandoning (or at least distancing ourselves from) the canon, which widely reinforces white perspectives, is another way to escape the echo chamber. #DisruptTexts, ProjectLit, and We Need Diverse Books are just a few places to discover books that present different stories. And introducing students to or reminding them of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TEDTalk "The Danger of a Single Story" can open their eyes to what happens when we confine ourselves to our own realities.
The words "race," "racism," and "privilege" are triggers that lead to emotion overpowering logic. I'm not sure whether or not I could have had a calm conversation offline about race with either of my main detractors. Maybe if I had attempted to without using any variation of these words, that would have been possible. But that's not the answer. We can't make change if we don't confront the language that makes us uncomfortable. And the reality is that for most white people, those words make us so uncomfortable, we refrain from using them whenever we can. Avoidance is in the culture of white people in America. Instead of avoidance, as teachers we need to work to ensure that these words are matter-of-fact so that when our students hear them, they don't retreat behind a veil of emotion. For resources on how to approach anti-racism, check out our Anti-Racist Teaching page
As teachers, it is our job to teach all our students, but today, I am not going to sit here and proclaim All Students Matter. Instead, I'm going to focus on the fact that Black Students Matter. And I am not going to apologize for making that statement. If I return back to Dion Grace's posts, in this past week, I have been challenged, hurt and yelled at, lost friends (or rather THEY lost me), felt helpless, hopeless and uncomfortable, crawled to my bed in exhaustion, been overwhelmed by all I need to learn, and made mistakes--many I probably still haven't recognized. But I'm in it for the marathon, not a single race. Because our Black Students Matter. And because our Black Students Matter, it is on us to teach the skills and nurture the mindsets that can lead to antiracist world.
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