Unschooling Racism: Critical Theories, Approaches and Testimonials on Anti Racist Education [1st ed.] 9783030537937, 9783030537951

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xvi
Tabooing Talks on Race and Racism in Schools (Pierre W. Orelus)....Pages 1-12
Decolonizing Teaching for Racial Equity (Pierre W. Orelus)....Pages 13-19
The Effects of the American Colonial and Apartheid School System on the Learning on Minority Students (Pierre W. Orelus)....Pages 21-31
Racism Hidden in Schools Through Smiling and Shaking Hands (Pierre W. Orelus)....Pages 33-37
Un-Schooling Racism is Anti-Racist Education (Pierre W. Orelus)....Pages 39-49
The Savage Effects of Racism in Schools and Society Exposed (Pierre W. Orelus)....Pages 51-58
Youth of Color Living and Learning in the Age of Racial Paranoia (Pierre W. Orelus)....Pages 59-74
Back Matter ....Pages 75-87

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SPRINGER BRIEFS IN EDUC ATION

Pierre W. Orelus

Unschooling Racism Critical Theories, Approaches and Testimonials on Anti Racist Education

SpringerBriefs in Education

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Pierre W. Orelus

Unschooling Racism Critical Theories, Approaches and Testimonials on Anti Racist Education

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Pierre W. Orelus Fairfield University Bridgeport, CT, USA

ISSN 2211-1921 ISSN 2211-193X (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Education ISBN 978-3-030-53793-7 ISBN 978-3-030-53795-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53795-1 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

This book is dedicated to social justice educators, activists, intellectual warriors, students, and parents, who have been fighting against systemic racism in schools and society at large.

Foreword

“Write down three ways racism is operating in your school or district.” This was the prompt with which I often begin my workshops with school administrators. One of the basic principles guiding how I structure these workshops is recognizing the inadequacy of the “meet people where they are” approach. This has been the popular approach too long: meeting people where they are. In my experience it doesn’t work, especially when “where they are” is profound racial misunderstanding, bias, and resistance to any sort of sophisticated conversation about racism. My approach—I’ve come to call it equity literacy—is to start where we’re going. Identify the racism. Commit to understanding the racism as completely and complexly as possible—how it operates and how we help to sustain it. Then eliminate the racism. Let’s not spend time debating about whether racism exists. It does. Let’s not guide people too gently toward some minimum-level racial awareness, lingering too long at “celebrating diversity” or simplistic notions of “cultural competence” as though these are steps toward racial justice. They’re not. Let’s not pace the racial justice conversation with the feelings or fragility of the most resistant people in mind, handing control of equity progress to the people least invested in that progress. Rather, let’s pace it with urgency, naming what needs to be named and doing what needs to be done. And let’s do it now. Many educators with whom I’ve worked over the years—particularly the ones who are, like me, Whites—are not especially enthusiastic about this approach. “Change takes time,” they tell me, as though we should prioritize our own discomfort with change over our responsibility to root racism out of schools and society. Recently while attending a school district’s town hall event I watched a White superintendent tell a man who had shared that his son, an African American student, was experiencing racism every day in the district’s only high school that “change takes time.” Not I’m so sorry we’re failing to provide an equitable learning environment for your son. Not Please tell me what is happening and I will do whatever it takes to end that racism right now. Not We—the teachers, the building leaders, and me as the superintendent—are failing at our jobs. I will see to it that we recommit immediately to eliminating racial injustice in all its forms in this vii

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Foreword

district. You and your son deserve a district whose leaders are accountable to basic principles of equity and justice and I will do everything in my power to make sure that’s exactly what you have. That’s what urgent, committed racial justice leadership looks like. (Actually, it looks like not waiting until somebody reports racism to identify and root out racism.) That’s what is missing from most US schools. In place of that leadership what we so often have is an endless assortment of shiny initiatives, programs, and strategies, most of which are used to adjust the mindsets, behaviors, grittiness, mindfulness, or emotional states of students of color. It is, itself, a racist enterprise to attempt to wiggle our way to equity by ignoring inequity while we implement strategies meant to “fix” the students being targeted by racism. But how many schools can you name for whom eliminating the racism right now is the primary strategy for erasing educational disparities—not just outcome disparities, but also access and experiential disparities? Sometimes it seems as though we are desperate in the education world to avoid the only approach to racial equity that has any shot at creating sustainable antiracism change: identify the racism, eliminate the racism. This is why I argue any time I can that our most formidable barrier to racial justice in education isn’t a lack of people who vaguely care about diversity or a lack of practical strategies. The trouble, instead, revolves around ideology and will. What we lack in education—not all of us, but most of us, and particularly the white portion of us—is a deep, complex understanding of how racism operates in schools, how that racism drives outcome disparities, and how we can interrupt those disparities only by interrupting the racism underlying students’ access, opportunity, and experience disparities. If we start with the good intentions, I believe most educators have, then add deep racial literacy, then the will to act for racial justice, we prime ourselves to be a threat to racism in schools. Unfortunately, the usual course in education is to skip all of that and just throw some simple instructional or student-behavior-and-mindset-moderating strategies at massive inequities. “Oh, disproportionate numbers of students of color are being cast out of schools? Let’s throw grit at that and see if it sticks. Or growth mindset. Or mindfulness. Or trauma-informed practices. Or social emotional learning. Or the mindset of poverty. Or positive behavior interventions.” Or anything other than racial justice. We cannot solve a problem rooted in racism with strategies that are designed to step carefully, gingerly, around any real confrontation with racism. We cannot solve this disproportionality, for example, by ignoring the fact that it derives primarily from layers of racist policy and practice and racial bias. The biggest cause is the fact that students of color often are suspended and expelled for minor behavior infractions or for the kinds of infractions that are based purely on teacher interpretation, like being “disrespectful” or “threatening.” The biggest cause is that, on average, we, the professional educators, interpret the behaviors of students of color more harshly than we interpret the behaviors of White students. No amount of grit or behavior interventions can undo the damage of racism like that.

Foreword

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What I most appreciate about Un-schooling Racism is that Pierre Orelus refuses the simplistic route, the resistance-avoidance route, the dishonest and racism-sustaining route. He avoids the equity detours that are so commonplace in educational circles today. Sure, he offers some practical insights, but those insights are all built upon deep understandings of the problems we’re attempting to resolve. This book is a source of deep racial knowledge, of racial literacy, of antiracism literacy. There’s historical context—something often missing from books about equity and justice issues in schools. And there are bridges into the future. But most of all, Orelus offers an honest, direct confrontation of racism and the many ways it operates in schools and school systems. And he calls on us to transform these schools and systems now, today, with urgency and a racial justice spirit. Not with a celebrating racial diversity spirit—and this is the key—but with a deep, structural, institution-reshaping racial justice spirit. This is the only spirit that will equip us with the necessarily knowledge depth and action deliberateness to root racism out of classrooms and schools. And this, of course, ought to be our racial justice goal. Paul Gorski Founder of the Equity Literacy Institute and EdChange and author of Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty: Strategies for Erasing the Opportunity Gap

Acknowledgement

I feel deeply indebted to those, namely Professors David Gillborn, Robin D. G. Kelley, Paul Gorski, Georges J. Sefa Dei, Jeff Andrade, Tyrone Howard, and Robert Jensen, and writer, Paul Kivel, respectively, who supported this book. Their thoughtful and genuine foreword, afterword, and blurbs are sincerely appreciated.

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Praise for Unschooling Racism

“‘Unschooling Racism’ challenges the myths that currently disguise the central and pervasive nature of racism in US schools. Orelus carefully dissects the numerous cross-cutting elements that continue education’s neo-colonial project, and explores a range of approaches to un-school the persistent, aggressive and deadly racism that shapes education and society more generally.” —David Gillborn, Professor, Critical Race Studies at the University of Birmingham “In an era when talk about race has become increasingly taboo, and liberal scholars are questioning the “utility” of racism and white supremacy for understanding our contemporary moment, Pierre Orelus reveals racism’s enduring savagery. To call this book courageous is perhaps an understatement in our putatively post-racial age, for Orelus lays bare the historical, sociological, and psychological foundations of contemporary racism in all of its brutal, violent, and savage dimensions. Better yet, he illuminates a path of resistance rooted in a knowledge of shared oppression and solidarity.” —Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination “This book is a source of deep racial knowledge, of racial literacy, of antiracism literacy. There’s historical context—something often missing from books about equity and justice issues in schools. And there are bridges into the future. But most of all, Orelus offers an honest, direct confrontation of racism and the many ways it operates in schools and school systems. And he calls on us to transform these schools and systems now, today, with urgency and a racial justice spirit.” —Paul Gorski, author of Case Studies on Diversity and Social Justice Education

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Praise for Unschooling Racism

“This is yet another compelling book that offers clear and convincing information on the effects of race and racism in schools. It is acknowledged that race and racism are fundamentally about institutional power and privilege. Still, the book’s focus on racial and cultural biases and stereotypes circulating in the everydayness of American schooling curriculum and the specific consequences on particularly racialized bodies provides readers with more intellectual ammunition to build critical race scholarship.” —George J. Sefa Dei, (Nana Adusei Sefa Tweneboah), Professor of Social Justice Education, OISE, University of Toronto and Fellow Royal Society of Canada “With this book, Orelus formulates an argument that advances the discourse on race and this nation’s racial politics. He does so while adhering to a spirit of freedom and justice for all peoples, that is in keeping with some of the most influential thinkers that have come before us in this work. If we are to continue working toward local and global communities that value and advance the humanity of all our children, then we must pay attention to books like this.” —Jeff Andrade, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Francisco State University “Orelus has provided us with a work that is raw, bold, forthcoming, and may be unsettling for some. However, he examines the realities and complexities of race, oppression, and colonialism in a straightforward manner that is thought provoking on many levels.” —Dr. Tyrone C. Howard, Professor, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles “More than ever, we need this kind of honest, blunt assessment of the history and contemporary reality of white supremacy, in the context of other hierarchies. Pierre Orelus’ book offers that honesty, from which we all can learn.” —Robert Jensen, Professor, University of Texas at Austin “Dr. Orelus writes about uprooting the system of racism. You may need to re-examine your individual beliefs and actions in order to participate effectively in that uprooting. You may need to look at how you have learned racism, what effects it has had on your life, what have been its costs and benefits to you, and how you have learned to pass it on. More importantly, this book will help you become a member of a network of people who are committed to racial and economic justice.” —Paul Kivel, Oakland, USA

Contents

1 Tabooing Talks on Race and Racism in Schools . . . . . . . . . . Teaching Minority Students in Urban School Settings . . . . . . . . Why It is Wrong Silencing Discussions About Race and Racism in Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Unmasking the Myth Behind the White Racial Superiority . . . . Overview of the Book Chapters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2 Decolonizing Teaching for Racial Equity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . From My Miseducation to Theory and Critical Awareness . . . . . Constructing Knowledge and Awareness with Students Through Dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 The Effects of the American Colonial and Apartheid School System on the Learning on Minority Students . . . . . . . . . . . Decolonizing the School Curriculum and the Mind of Teachers The American Colonial School System Revisited . . . . . . . . . . Toward an Equitable School System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4 Racism Hidden in Schools Through Smiling and Shaking Hands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Racism Hidden Through Smiling Faces . . . . . Smiling as Hypocrisy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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6 The Savage Effects of Racism in Schools and Society Exposed Who Is Really the Savage? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . White Denials and Complicity in Maintaining Racism . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Afterword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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5 Un-Schooling Racism is Anti-Racist Education . . . Exposing Systemic Racism in Schools and in Society Rethinking Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Redefining Student Academic Achievement . . . . . . . Why Un-Schooling Systemic Racism? . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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7 Youth of Color Living and Learning in the Age of Racial Paranoia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rethinking Racial and Class Formation in the Age of Fear . An Intersectional Historical Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Racial Paranoia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Racial Paranoia in Fearing Youth of Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fearing the Caravan: Racial Paranoia and Immigrant Youth of Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 1

Tabooing Talks on Race and Racism in Schools

Non-White students fill most of the seats in today’s public school classrooms but are taught by an 80 percent White teaching force, which often has, however unconsciously, lower expectations for non-White students. When Black and White teachers look at the same Black student, White teachers look at same Black student, White teachers are about 40 percent less likely to believe the student will finish highs school. Low-income Black students who have at least one Black teacher in elementary school are 29 percent less likely to drop out school, 39 percent less likely among very low-income Black boys. Kendi (2019, p. 177) To engage in a serious discussion of race in America, we must begin not with the problems of black people but with the flaws of American society-flaws rooted in historic inequalities and longstanding cultural stereotypes. How we set up the terms for discussing racial issues shapes our perception and response to these issues. As long as black people are viewed as a “them,” the burden falls on blacks to do all the “cultural” and “moral” work necessary for healthy race relations. The implication is that only certain Americans can define what it means to be American-and the rest must simply “fit in.” West (1993/2017, p. 6)

At the outset, it is worth explaining, through testimonios, what and who inspired me to write this book, and, most importantly, what it aims to contribute to eradicating racism in schools in particular and society at large. I am deeply inspired to write this book by my past experiences teaching in a racially and socio-economically marginalized and underfunded High School serving Black and Brown students. This high school was, and still is, located in Dorchester-a racially and socioeconomically segregated neighborhood located in Massachusetts. Dorchester was, and still is, a working class place predominantly occupied by Black and Latinx people. From what I recall, affluent White neighborhoods in Dorchester, like Adams Village, Neponset, Port Norfolk, were separated from where the Blacks, made of African Americans and Caribbean immigrants, lived and, possibly, still live.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. W. Orelus, Unschooling Racism, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53795-1_1

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1 Tabooing Talks on Race and Racism in Schools

Teaching Minority Students in Urban School Settings I had about one year left to finish my master’s degree when I was fortunate to be hired as a bilingual reading and ESL teacher at that high school noted above. I remember the intensity of inner fear that I experienced when I first became a high school teacher, especially during my first year. Though my master’s degree provided me the necessary and analytical tools to look at the world with a critical eye, I did not feel that it prepared me to teach. Consequently, during my first year as a teacher I experienced much fear that nearly paralyzed me. I incessantly questioned myself if it was ethical to dare teach students, especially marginalized groups of students, for I did not feel adequately prepared to do so. Suddenly, this type of self-questioning led me to reflect on many ill-prepared teachers that I had both in high school and in college. I did not learn much from them. Hence, I did not want to reproduce what I was done to me: being mis-educated by poorly prepared teachers. However, I was, and am still, sure that I have much love and passion for teaching, and, most importantly, for co-constructing knowledge with students. Such passion and love enabled me as a first year teacher to make the effort to find enough humility in myself to reach out to colleagues, especially those who had years of teaching experiences. Some of these colleagues tremendously helped me by sharing with me teaching material resources, while others served as my mentor. I am reminded during my first and second year, I asked two of my colleagues, who were like mentors to me, if I could go to their classes and observe how they taught. They both happily honored my request. They also came to observe my class while I was teaching. They gave me constructive feedback on my teaching methods. In fact, one of them invited me to come to his class during recess, so that he could share with me some of his teaching methods and strategies, which I experimented in my reading and ESL (English as a second language) classes. These two colleagues were very kind, friendly, and welcoming, and showed some concern for their students who were from poor working class background and living in marginalized neighborhoods. However, I would soon be disappointed by one of them who made a value judgment about one of his students. My former colleague said that his student, who apparently was not doing well in his class due to a temporary language barrier and cultural shock, should drop out of high school and go learn how to be a mechanic because he did not think that this student was college materials. As Kendi (2019) pointed out in the quote above, the teachers’ judgment suggested that he had very low expectations of this student. As a teacher, I felt hurt. It was sad to hear such a harmful comment from a colleague for whom I had much respect and to whom I was and am still grateful for his mentorship when I needed it the most. At first, I wondered whether I should distance myself from him because of his insensitive comment, which could be interpreted as a deficit thinking view about his students. Because my colleague was White and middle class, and his student was Black and from poor working class background, the idea of him being racist and classist inevitably crossed my mind. I challenged such a thought, however, asking myself: Could a teacher like my colleague, who

Teaching Minority Students in Urban School Settings

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seemed that he cared for his students, be racist? I was puzzled by this question, to which I did not yet find a clear answer then. Reflecting on the example of my former high school colleague, I felt that by remaining silent I was in complicity with my colleague’s dehumanizing way of looking at his student’s potential. I regret that I did not take a stand for this student by challenging my colleague’s classist and racist comment. In my mind, by choosing to not challenge him I thought I was trying to be tolerant and respectful to him as a colleague/mentor. Reflecting on this experience, I now realize I did not fully understand Freire’s definition of tolerance and respect. I could have challenged my colleague pointing out in a respectful way that he was discriminating against his student by placing him in a fixed box. Echoing Freire, I concluded from my colleague’s comment that he did not have a humanizing approach of education. Freire states, “A humanizing education is the path through which men and women can become conscious about their presence in the world. The way they act and think when they develop all of their capacities, taking into consideration their needs, but also the needs and aspirations of others” (Freire 1985, as cited in Betto 1985, pp. 14–15). The majority of the students who attended this high school were African Americans and Cape Verdeans from working-class background. While being interviewed for this teaching position, the principal of the high school bluntly asked me the following questions: “Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?” “Are you ready for the challenges you’ll be facing here in this school?” Realizing that I spoke English with an accent, he went further asking me, “How long have been speaking English?” His question made me realize that being close to finishing a master’s degree in Applied Linguistics could not prevent me from facing another xenophobic experience with a high school principle who had a PhD in education. As I was leaving his office after the interview, I started wondering about the culture of the school and reflecting on the questions the high school principal asked me. After a month teaching at the high school, I quickly realized that it was a very difficult and challenging place to effectively teach students. There were constant fights occurring among students in the hallways as well as in the schoolyard. Students often purposely activated the school fire drill so they could disturb the whole school and take a break from their classes. The neighborhood where the school is located has a bad reputation: drug trafficking took place and there were shootings and deaths as a result of gunfights over drug- related activities. In addition, the school did not have enough resources (school materials and adequate administrative support were scarce) for teachers to effectively help their students achieve academically. During my three years teaching at the high school, teachers were pressured to teach to the test. Students, including my bilingual/ESL students, were taking tests almost every two months regardless of their limited English-proficiency skills. I constantly had to administer tests to my students. I was required to use a scripted curriculum to teach my students how to read. The curriculum required giving my students a pre-test on Mondays and a post-test on Fridays. These tests were supposedly designed to help my students build on their vocabulary words. This curriculum did not allow me enough space to engage my

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students in sufficient critical literacy activity. When I was not under the surveillance of my supervisor and the school’s assistant principals, who came to my class whenever they wished, I engaged my students in activities that I thought would be meaningful to their lives. For example, I would ask them to write about their experience moving to the U.S. and discuss with their classmates what they learned from that experience. I would ask them to write about people who they felt were important to their lives and have inspired them. Some would write about their family and friends, while others would write short stories about terrific leaders such as Amílcar Cabral and Patrice Lumumba who fought for the independence of their countries from western colonial powers. I had the privilege to have in my class many students who had the presence of mind to know that standardized tests like the MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) would most likely lead them to an academic dead end, that is, a journey where they would not be able to grow academically and creatively. Despite my opposition to these tests, I had to administer them to my bilingual and ESL students, including those who just arrived in the U.S. and could barely read, write, and speak English. In fact, in my class there were many students who did not receive formal education in their first language. For this category of students, taking these tests was much more painful. In spite of the dedication and hard work of the bilingual program director who wanted all bilingual/ESL students at that high school to advance academically, many of them repeated the same grade twice and did poorly on the MCAS, especially on the English section of this test. During my three years teaching at that high school, I also knew bright bilingual students who excelled and exceeded school personnel’s expectations. Some of my bilingual students graduated with honors and moved on to attend college. As a prime example, while I was pursuing my doctorate at University of Massachusetts at Amherst, I ran into two of these students at that university who were finishing their bachelor’s degrees and planning to go to graduate school. All in all, my three years commuting from a predominantly White and middle class city in Massachusetts, Arlington, to a poor working Black neighborhood, Dorchester, to teach Bilingual and immigrant students from various backgrounds, had taught me about racial and class inequities in American schools and society at large. As a novice teacher at this impoverished high school, I learned valuable teaching and life lessons that contributed to my becoming later a compassionate and committed social justice educator. Specifically, I learned first-hand that, contrary to America’s basic promises of equity, fairness, and equal access to quality education, minority students, including bilingual immigrant students, routinely experienced xenophobia, linguistic and racial discrimination in schools, in addition to socio-economic and gender inequalities they faced in their neighborhoods and society at large. By interacting with them during and after class, some of them shared that they experienced racial profiling on the street, in their neighborhoods, and in stores. Sadly, their stories, to which I carefully listened, were too common to me as a Black male teacher and, unfortunately, did not surprise me. However, the relationship I was able to build with some them enabled me to know about their lives beyond the red brick halls of the high school. I learned from their stories about human resilience and a deep

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sense of hope for a better future. In addition to my high school teaching experiences, my 15 years teaching college and university students, including preservice and inservice teachers, in predominantly White institutions across the United States of America have motivated me to embark on this book project, which I started 8 years ago. This book emerges from the experiences noted above, and is informed by the work of critical race, postcolonial and sociocultural theorists, to examine the history and salient effects of racism focusing particularly on the various ways in which it has permeated the school system, namely school curricula materials, including textbooks, affecting the learning of racialized minority students. This book exposes these racial and cultural biases and their unintended consequences on the learning of students of color. Specifically, it examines how these biases have played a significant role in the mis-education and racial marginalization of minority students, namely Native Americans, African Americans, Latino/as, and Asians, including immigrants, in addition to various forms of racial micro-aggressions and symbolic violence that they have had to routinely face (Dumbar-Ortiz 2015; Takaki 2008; Wilson 2006). This book unveils these injustices and proposes alternative ways in which racism can be unschooled. The analysis does not stop there. The book goes beyond the school wall to underscore how systemic racism, paired up with colonialism, has impacted the wellbeing of racially marginalized groups both in the United States and developing countries. The remainder of this chapter reviews critical race theory from which this book draws. It goes on to explain how discussions about race and racism are too often muted in schools and other social institutions contributing to massive ignorance about racial and socioeconomic issues that have affected all students, particularly poor students of color, and maintaining white supremacist ideology that celebrates whiteness and perpetuates racial inequities.

Why It is Wrong Silencing Discussions About Race and Racism in Schools Race influences all facets of our lives. The way many of us are perceived, seen, defined, and treated in schools and society at large is intrinsically linked to our race.. Yet race talks, although at times occur in our bedroom, dining room and living room, rarely happen in schools. Race is generally seen as a taboo subject in schools and society at large, and usually makes racially fragile White individuals feel uncomfortable, especially when directly confronted with their white privileges (Bonilla-Silva 2016; Diangelo 2018). While some people might feel safe talking about race in their private sphere with family members, close friends, or colleagues, they are afraid of talking about it in schools, particularly in the classroom, as well as socially and publicly.

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In other words, even though race matters (West 1993/2017), we often conveniently slide it under the rug, in almost all settings, particularly in schools. It seems as though people feel more comfortable or safer talking about race in private settings than doing so in schools, as classroom discussions revolved around racial issues, for example, often make racially privileged teachers and students feel unease, especially those who are unwilling to challenge the White supremacist status quo serving them. To bluntly put it, racially privileged groups feel uncomfortable and often remain silent about race and racism as a way to “justify and preserve their privileged positions” in society (Kottak and Kozaitis 2011, p. 121). However, those who have been victims of inequities in society, including racial inequities in schools and other social institutions, do talk about race and racism, and they are often seen as a threat to such status quo for daring to do so (West 2016). It is psychologically healthy and educationally equitable to critically talk about race and racism, which have been used by those in power, namely privileged conservative and racist Whites, as underlying factors to cause both mental and physical injuries and wounds to people of color, particularly school children of color, who tend to be the most vulnerable groups. School children of color are routinely denied knowledge and facts about their history and culture while being bombarded with fictional and pseudoscientific ideas about White European history and culture. School children in general have been informed about people of color’s culture and history on the mainstream biased media, from what they hear their parents and family members talk about during dinner, and from their teachers, friends, and peers who might be ignorant and racially prejudiced against people of color as they, too, might have been historically misinformed and miseducated. Yet despite these salient effects of the social construct of race and systemic racism on students, particularly students of color, discussions about these social issues are often avoided in political and educational debates. Race and racism, for example, rarely come to the fore of political debates, except when a Black person is murdered and accused of a crime or, in the best-case scenario, when a person of color wins a highly prestigious award, or a person of color is the first one to be elected or appointed to a high rank position. Barack Obama and Sonia Sotomayor—the first African American to ever be elected as president of the United States and the first Puerto Rican woman to ever be appointed to a high position in the U.S. legal and political history, respectively, are prime examples. Otherwise, race is generally a muted topic. We rarely discuss race and racism in schools and other institutions,like the mainstream media and church. It is critically important to both talk and write about race and racism, for doing so can help us better understand the manner in which they have been used to limit the lives of racially disfranchised students and teachers of color. African American scholars, such as Kendi (2019) and West (2017), among others, have examined ways in which race, as a social construct, and racism, as a systemic oppression, have profoundly impacted the lives of African Americans and other people of color. For example, in his recent book, How to Be Anti-Racist, Kendi (2019) engages us in a discursive analysis of systemic racism in schools and society at large looking out various ways in which it has systemically affected people of

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color, including minority students. He argues that racism has been a structural barrier affecting African American people and other minorities in their pursuit of quality education, their search of housing and employment, etc. Kendi (2019) draws from his own experiences as an African American being educated in a racially segregated American school system favoring Whites over minority students to unveil both overt and disguised forms of racism. Using his parents’ experiences with racism, in tandem, Kendi (2019) goes on to point out various ways in which racism has been legally institutionalized through policies and reconfigured over time to keep African Americans and other racially marginalized groups in oppressive educational, racial, socio-economic and political conditions. He also explains how, sadly, colonized people of color have participated in maintaining the racist system that feeds itself from white supremacist ideology. In short, Kendi’s anti-racist book illuminates the manner in which systemic racism has been carried out through racial discriminatory policies and practices affecting other social institutions, like education, health care, housing, and employment, where people of African descent and other minoritized groups have been the most underserved and vastly discriminated against. Similarly, in his classic Race Matters, West (1993/2017) underscores how systemic racism has negatively impacted the lives of African Americans and other minorities in American society. Specifically, West (2017) unpacks ways in which systemic racism has robbed racial minorities of their human dignity and opportunities made often too easily available to Whites, particularly privileged Whites. West (1993/2017) also examines ways in which racism is linked to capitalism affecting African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and Asians, among historically marginalized groups. Both Kendi (2019) and West (1993/2017) show how race, as a social construct, has been used to justify the poor academic, socio-economic and political conditions of racially marginalized groups in America society. We to need to critically talk about race and racism, for we can’t change anything unless we face it and talk about it. Baldwin (1992) put it best, when he stated, “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced” (p. 23). This is to say that to uproot racism, we need to talk about it in institutions, like schools, home, churches, and the work place, for being silent about it only contributes to maintaining the color line (Du Bois 2016). People, including colonized people of color, who support and benefit from this fault line [my emphasis] often attempt to silence the voices of those who dare engage others in open and genuine dialogues about these social issues. These subaltern voices are often perceived as too radical for the White mainstream status quo. Yet it is from such voices we often learn how pervasive and harmful systemic racism is, and the vicious ways in which it has affected people of color, including students of color.

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Unmasking the Myth Behind the White Racial Superiority Race, as a social construct, has been used as an ideological tool to make people believe that Whites are superior to people of color. This racial superiority theory is not limited to eugenics, for throughout slavery and colonization, western religion and philosophy were also used, and continue to be used, as an ideological weapon to institutionalize and celebrate whiteness, while denigrating blackness or anything that is African (Asante 2011; Mazama 2007; Zuberi 2003). There is a wide range of racist, pseudo European scientists, including phrenologists, who have spread throughout history fictional scientific evidence about the White superiority myth, which, to this day, has led certain people in society to believe that Whites are superior to people of color. To partially trace back the root of such a myth, we can go as far back as sixteen century. During this century we had prominent European scientists, like the Swedish biologist, Carl Linnaeus, who argued in his racist book Systema Naturae (1964) that Blacks were inferior to Whites. Linnaeus (1964) drew from the same classification system method that he used to classify animals to observe humans, and concluded that Blacks were sub-humans. He shamelessly used skin color as a mere criterion to determine that Whites, as a race, were superior to Blacks and other racial and ethnic groups. Nearly a century later, the German doctor and so-called scientist, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in The Anthropological Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (2018), would take on the racist idea promoted by Linnaeus (year) and expanded it, and it was, and it is still, accepted among the White scientific world. Specifically, Blumenbach (2018) used supposed scientific evidence from anthropological and biological studies that were done on human skulls to argue that Whites were intelligent human beings and that, by contrast, while Blacks were physically strong, they were incapable of learning, and that they were a much inferior race in both intelligence and temperament and character to Whites. In short, Blacks are savage and so they have to be untamed, in order to be considered real human beings. Because of white supremacy ideology leading to both individual and systemic racism, Blacks are considered inferior, even though there is no valid scientific evidence to support this racist claim. However, this has not prevented it from being spread out in schools and other settings, including among the White European scientific community. DeGuny (2017) notes: Despite the fact that both Linnaeus and Blumenbach had failed to produce a shared of scientific evidence to support their opinions, their ideas continued to be referenced in scientific communities throughout the Western word. Given the widespread dissemination of these fallacious beliefs, it is not difficult to understand why belief in racial superiority took root in the eighteenth century and continues to exist today. Africans were among the many civilizations around the world who did not live up to European standards and so were considered inferior. They were inferior, first because they were not European, and second they were not Christian. Thus, Africans were viewed as impure (p. 45).

Similar to Linnaeus (1964) and Blumenbach (2018), Jensen (1969), Herrnstein and Murray (1996), and Gobineau (2010) promoted racist ideas throughout their

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so-called scientific experiment and published work. These pioneers and architects of white supremacist ideology claim that Whites are superior to, and are more intelligent than, Blacks. White supremacist thinkers see people of African descent as uncivilized. These racist views must be uprooted as they stem from racial superiority theories that are based on faulty logical premises and manipulated scientific experiments about racial superiority fallacy. Race is not socially constructed accidentally. Such construct has been designed to serve magisterial economic and political interests of those who invented it and are racially privileged, particularly economically and politically affluent White males. Critical race theorist scholars have helped us understand various forms of racial prejudice and systemic oppression affecting people of color (Bell 1976, 2004; Delgado and Stefancic 2017; Leonardo et al. 2017). Specifically, critical theorists from diverse backgrounds have drawn on critical race theory (CRT) to examine long-standing negative effects of systemic racism on people of color (Bell 2004). CRT is originated in the legal field and has transcended literary and disciplinary boundaries ever since (Delgado and Stefancic 2017). CRT has been since used in many disciplines, such as race and ethnic studies, education, political science, and sociology, and sociology of education by a diverse body of scholars. Critical race theorists and other scholars have unpacked the effects of social construction of race and racism on people of color. In specific terms, they have underscored the manner in which race as a social construct has been used to limit the life chances of people of color (Bonilla-Silva 2016; Delgado and Stefancic 2017; West 2016). Such limitation been realized through the institutionalization of racial discriminatory practices in access to quality education, decent employment, and heath care (Gorski 2017; Nieto and Bode 2018). Critical race theorists have also examined racial oppression often expressed in form of “symbolic violence” (Bourdieu 1990a) to which people of color have been subjected in schools and larger society. Racial oppression has caused psychological scar to people of color, including students and teachers of color studying and teaching in predominantly white schools. The scholarly work of critical race theorists can help us understand ways and the degree to which race and racism play an important role in the manner in which students of color are treated in schools and society at large. Despite the appeal and the relevance of critical race theorists to various scholars, researchers and educators, they have been criticized, particularly for not taking into account class issues in their analysis. These critiques have argued that class oppression stemming from capitalism and neoliberalism is an important issue that needs to be analyzed in conjunction with other forms of oppression, including racism; yet critical race theorists have not paid much attention to it, if at all, in their analysis. Marxist educators and activist scholars, such as Darder and Torres (2004/2011), argue that while critical race theorists deserve credit for unveiling race-based discrimination that historically marginalized groups have been facing, they have failed to incorporate into their analysis class inequality to which both People of Color and poor Whites have been, too, subject in society, particularly in American capitalist society. Specifically, Darder and Torres (2011) contend, “One of our major concerns with the use of critical race theory to buttress educational-political debates of racialized

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oppression or racism is directly linked to the use of ‘race’ as the central unit of analysis. Coupled with an uncompromising emphasis on ‘race’ is the conspicuous absence of a systematic discussion of class and, more importantly, a substantive critique of capitalism” (Darder and Torres, as cited in Darder 2011, pp. 110–111). Similarly, Cole (2009) challenges critical race theorists arguing that any serious analysis of race and racism should also include a critique of the capitalist system, which white dominant and supremacist groups have used to maintain inequalities. In his most recent work, Gillborn (2020), the noted British educator and critical race theorist, challenges such claims arguing that CRT has explored policy issues, including socio-economic inequities issues and other social issues in tandem with race and racism. The analysis of race and racism must be done in conjunction with classism and sexism, among other isms, if we are to fully understand various ways and different degrees to which systemic oppression intersects to affect people, including students and educators of color, across ethnicity, class, gender, religion, and sexuality.

Overview of the Book Chapters In Chap. 2, I use narratives as a form of inquiry to describe the learning experiences of Black students being educated in a racist and classist colonial school system. I go on to juxtapose such experiences with challenges I faced teaching culturally and linguistically diverse high school students in a standardized test-driven driven climate in the United States. Further, I talk about the way and the extent to which the colonial legacy, sustained by western neocolonial and neoliberal policies, has continued to influence the teaching practices of teachers as well as the learning of students of color. Finally, I make suggestions as to how one can counter neo-colonial and racist practices in schools affecting the learning of minority students, including bilingual students, and their life material conditions. Chapter 3 begins by acknowledging how school can be a great equalizer–that is, an institution where countless professionals can and have been educated and trained to serve society. Seen through this lens, school is seen as the backbone of society. However, in this chapter, I argue that schools are also an institution where racist and neo-colonial practices and practices continue to occur affecting the learning and material conditions of Native Americans, African Americans, Latino (a) s, Asians, and immigrant students of color, at times in ways that seem normalized. While highlighting various important roles school plays in society, I examine subtle ways in which racially prejudiced people, including teachers, professors, students, colleagues, and administrators, have hidden racism through phony smiles while interacting with students and colleagues of color. In schools specifically, smiles have been used as a polite tool to cover up and perpetuate racial discrimination, hypocrisy and bigotry. Drawing from the issues that are identified and analyzed in the previous chapters, chapter 4 proposes that racism be unschooled. By un-schooling racism, it is meant uprooting, through the implementation of anti-racist policies and racially relevant

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pedagogy aiming at challenging and eradicating racial and cultural biases embedded in curricula materials and other racist practices occurring in schools. This chapter explains why racism needs to be unschooled and proposes alternative ways in which it can be done, proposing, for example, that racial biases must be unlearned while distribution of resources among students and schools must be equitably done. Chapter 5 explores the savage effects of racism in schools and society at large. I begin by providing a historical account of the word savage and its misuse in negatively portraying Blacks, Native Americans, and people of color in schools and society at large. I argue that the word savage carries loaded racial, cultural, and socio-political epithets, and it is connected to the legacy of slavery and colonization. I end the chapter making a counter argument, using the word savage to expose institutional racism and its savage effects on people of color. The last chapter draws from critical race theory and present day political events involving the presidency of Donald Trump to explore racial paranoia and its multilayered effects on people of color, particularly students of color. Like in previous chapters, this chapter underscores plausible parallels between racial paranoia and the attitude, behavior, and actions of people holding White supremacist ideology and their violence against people of color, including youth of color.

Conclusion This book examines various forms of systemic racism that have occurred in schools affecting the learning and the material conditions of Black students and other students of color but they have often been overlooked. In this book, racial and class oppression is examined in tandem in order to demonstrate ways in which systemic oppression works together to profoundly impact the learning and living conditions of students of color in particular and the lives of people of color in general. This book argues that racial oppression alongside class and gender oppression influence the content of the school curriculum and teachers’ teaching practices and consequently affect student leaning in ways that are often invisible yet still damaging.

References Asante, M. (2011). Afrocentric idea revised. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Baldwin, J. (1992). The fire next time. New York: Vintage. Bell, D. (2004). Silent covenants: Brown v. board of education and the unfulfilled hopes for racial reform. New York: Oxford University Press. Bell, D. (1976). Serving two masters: Integration ideals and client interests in schools desegregation litigation. The Yale Law Journal, 85(4), 470–516. Blumenbach, J., & (with John Hunter). (2018). The anthropological treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. New York: Franklin Classic.

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Bonilla-Silva, E. (2017). Racism without racists: color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Bourdieu, P. (1990a). In other words: Essays towards a reflexive sociology. Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1990b). The logic of practice (R. Nice, Trans). Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Cole, M. (2017). Critical race theory and education: A Marxist response. New York: Springer. Darder, A., & Torres, R. D. (2004). After race: Racism after multiculturalism. NY: NYU Press. Darder, A. (2011). A dissident voice: Essays on culture, pedagogy and power. New York: PeterLang. Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2012). Critical Race Theory (Third Edition): An Introduction. New York: NYU Press. DeGruy, J.A. (2009). Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing: The study guide: Portland Or. JDP publisher. Dumbar-Ortiz, R.(2015). An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Cambridge, Mass: Beacon Press. Du Bois, W. E. B (1995/1903). The souls of Black folk. New York: Penguin. Gorski, P. (2017). Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty: Strategies for Erasing the Opportunity Gap. New York: teachers College Press. Gobineau, J. (2010) The inequality of human races. Charleston, S.C.: Babu Press. Gillborn, D. (2020). The white bones of policy: structure, agency and a Vulture’s-eye view with critical race theory. Knowledge, Policy and Practice in Education and the Struggle for Social Justice, 115. Herrnstein, J. R., & Murray, C. (1996). Bell curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life. New York: Free Press. Kottak, C. P., & Kozaitis, K. A. (2011). On being different: Diversity and multiracialism in the North American mainstream (4th ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill. Jensen, A. R. (1969). How much can we boost IQ and scholastic achievement? Harvard Educational Review, 39, 1–123. Leonardo, Z., Gillborn, D., & Gulson, K. (Eds.). (2017). The edge of race: Critical examinations of education and race/racism. New York: Routledge. Lina, C. (1964). Systema Naturae. Coronet Books Inc. PA: Philadelphia. Nieto, S., & Bode, P. (2018). Affirming diversity: The socio-cultural context of multicultural education. Boston: Pearson Education Inc. Mazama, A. (Ed.). (2007). Africa in the 21st century: Toward a new future. New York: Routledge. Takaki, R. (2008). A different mirror: A history of multicultural America. CA: Back Bay Books. West, C. (1999). Wounds of the Spirit: Black Women, Violence and Resistance. New York: New York University Press. West, C. (2017). Race Matters. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Beacon Press. Wilson, C. (1996). Racism: From slavery to Advanced Capitalism. New York: Sage Publications. Zuberi, T. (2003). Thicker than blood: How racial statistics lie. Minneapolis, MN: The University of Minnesota Press.

Chapter 2

Decolonizing Teaching for Racial Equity Testimonials Exposing Racist and Colonial Practices in Schools

Engaged pedagogy begins with the assumption that we learn best when there is an interactive relationship between student and teacher. As leaders and facilitators, teachers must discover what the students know and what they need to know. This discovery happens only if teachers are willing to engage students beyond a surface level. Hooks (2010, p.19). Theories have value only when they can be demonstrated and used in daily practice and when they offer concrete possibilities. Grant and Sleeter (2002, p. vii).

The colonial legacy has shaped the cultural, racial, and social class aspects of schooling. This legacy has had a significant impact on the school system of colonized countries, like the United States, where minority students continue to be subjected to the coloniality of power (2000). To be exact, this form of western power continues to influence schools through various reconfigured forms of educational oppression, which includes subjecting Black and other students of color to inexperienced and poorly trained racially and culturally to work with Black students and other students of color, who often find them insensitive and prejudice (Dei 2009). Finally, the effects of the coloniality of power on schooling also entails indoctrinating these students to ideologically value European culture, languages, history, and religion over theirs (Dei 2009, 2016; Orelus et al. 2014). While Black and other students of color have been miseducated, lofty rhetoric on school reforms, including transforming public schools into charter schools for corporate profits, continues to be circulated in schools and the mainstream media by political pundits and neoliberal educators, including pseudoeducators, like the current American Secretary of Education, Mrs. Elizabeth Betsy DeVos. Likewise, neoliberal educators, particularly White neoliberal educators, often loosely use words like diversity, equity, and inclusion in their talks when they are engaged in debates centered around school reforms (Diangelo 2018; Love 2019; Kendi 2019). However, students who were born or grew up, and were schooled in colonized lands, and who have had the presence of mind to critically reflect on the impact of the colonial legacy on both their personal and academic lives, know quite well school reforms, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. W. Orelus, Unschooling Racism, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53795-1_2

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particularly the types that have been often brought up in political debates, do not serve their interests, like poor, minority students, including bilingual students of color, and who are often forced to be mis-educated in the so-called reformed schools. Drawing from testimonials grounded in academic and professional experiences, this chapter sheds critical lights on the educational issues highlighted above and more. In more specific terms, this book chapter, in particular, and the book in general, uses these experiences in tandem with post-colonial, critical pedagogy and socio-cultural theories to theorize about both teaching and learning, pointing out various ways and degrees to which the colonial legacy has impacted the learning process and academic outcome of minority students being [mis] educated in colonized schools.

From My Miseducation to Theory and Critical Awareness Racial awareness and consciousness about colonial forms of schooling that stem from my academic and personal experiences have helped me better understand how inequities affect student learning and success. Specifically, as someone who was born, raised, and [mis]educated in a formerly colonized country, Haiti, such experiences have enabled me to unveil lies that teachers laboring in colonized schools used to tell me, and which were inculcated in my mind at an early stage in my academic journey. As a prime example, throughout my colonial schooling experiences, I was taught to believe that knowledge is transferred mechanically from teachers to pupils. In schools, I was not allowed to challenge and engage in a dialogue with my teachers and peers during class. Instead, I was expected to sit, listen, and copy what the teachers wrote on the board. I was also expected to memorize and regurgitate what I supposedly learned. The teaching method involved rote behavior, and most of my former high school teachers failed to create space in which I could use what I supposedly learned and linked it to real-life situations beyond the classroom walls and the collapsing fences that encircled the school building. I was not encouraged to make decisions on my own, to be a creative and an independent thinker, or to be a problem-solver. For example, there was ample room in my classrooms for plenty of meaningless activities, but little space for teacher–student and student–student interactions, which could have created and inspired me to ask questions about historical, cultural, social class, and racial issues that could have helped me better understand my existential reality than as a working-class Black youth. Instead, I had to follow whatever my teachers assigned to me. My work was evaluated based on how well I followed what teachers did in class. I was mostly tested on what I copied in my notebooks, even though my teachers’ explanation was often unclear. I felt that poor writing and reading skills I acquired could only prepare me for routine and menial types of jobs in the real world. Freire (1993), in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, eloquently synthesizes this oppressive style of the education alluded here. Freire summarizes:

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the teacher teaches and the students are taught; the teachers knows everything and the students know nothing; the teachers thinks and the students are taught about; the teacher talks and the students listen-meekly; the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined; the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply; the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher; the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who are not consulted) adapt to it; the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students; the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects. (p. 54)

Similarly, in Cries from the Corridor, McLaren (1980) describes the horrible and anti-democratic conditions in which poor urban school students are expected to learn. McLaren (1980) argues that these students often have to memorize and regurgitate what they “learn” via rote teaching and learning mechanisms. Those who manage to do so are usually considered the best students. At some point during my high school and college years, I was perceived as one of these students, for I managed to regurgitate to my professors what I was taught. It was not until I came across and avidly read Emile ou de L’education, written by the French writer and philosopher Rousseau (1966), that I realized I was being mis-educated. Specifically, thanks to Rousseau’s book, I was finally able to conclude that the form of education that I was receiving from my teachers was essentially domesticating my mind. The overarching argument Rousseau (1966) makes in Emile ou de L’education is that pupils should be allowed to learn at their own pace and should not be expected to engage in any learning endeavor that is abstract and meaningless to their lives. Education, in this sense, is conceived as a self-discovery learning process in which pupils explore their learning without any forcible control of a teacher. Kneller (1964) captures Rousseau’s philosophy of education, stating: [Rousseau] stated that it was useless to expect a child to indulge abstract intellectual pursuits until he had reached the age of reason. Instead, a child should learn the things that he is capable of understanding through personal discovery. Followers of Rousseau urged teachers to connect what the child learned in school with what he would experience at home in his community, that is, to connect education and life. (pp. 104–105)

Although later in my learning curves I partially rejected Rousseau’s view on education, at that time I found his radical philosophy of education refreshing and inspiring. I later refuted some of Rousseau’s view on education, because I felt, and still feel, it is essentially a laissez-faire learning style that he consciously or unconsciously promoted through his book, which is worth reading nonetheless. Also, I found his approach about learning to be gendered based and sexist, as he essentially argued that school girls need to be educated enough to better serve men. This view needs to be challenged and rejected as it denies the human dignity of girls and women. Unlike Rousseau, I believe that, if students are to learn and succeed, they need to be clearly guided and challenged by their teachers, while remaining architects of their own

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learning. However, even the so-called autodidacts do not construct knowledge alone. They do so collectively with others, whether in school formal settings or elsewhere. Likewise, until I became familiar with the scholarly works of Greek philosopher Plato (2008), the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1986), the American educator Dewey (1997), and the Brazilian educator Freire (1993), who believe in the co-construction of knowledge, my high school learning experience did not teach me that knowledge is constructed collectively. I did not know that, before being introduced to the work of these theorists, knowledge is not something automatically passed on from a teacher, who is believed to know everything, to a student, who does not know much or, worse yet, does not know anything. In The Republic, Plato (2008) showed how knowledge is dialectically constructed through dialogue between teachers and students and mentors and mentees. Specifically, Plato (2008) demonstrated that, through open dialogue, a mentee learns from his/her mentor and vice versa. The dialogue in which Plato and Socrates engaged in The Republic is a case in point. Specifically, by creating space for a genuine dialogue between himself and his mentee, Socrates does not merely guide, teach, and challenge Plato, but he also learns from Plato. Kneller (1964) argues, The Socratic method is the ideal mode of education, since by it the student learns what he personally asserts to be true. The teacher–pupil relationship becomes intimate and personal. The teacher persuades the student to think by questioning him about his beliefs, by setting before him other beliefs and thus forcing him to probe the workings of his own mind. In this way the student accepts the truth, but only because it is true for him. (p. 70)

Although a person might think that Socrates is playing the role of a master by dialoguing with Plato, Socrates also learns from Plato in the process. In my view, teachers’ views of education and teaching practices should reflect the Socratic method, which involves the dialogical learning relationship that Socrates and Plato established as teacher and pupil. As a social justice educator, I have embodied such philosophy and I have tried to apply it to my teaching practices. Teachers guided by a progressive philosophy of teaching help students develop creative and critical thinking skills to continuously question their own learning, which should always be in the making. These teachers assume a responsible task to help students understand that education is not about how many theories they “learn” through rote memorization. Rather, it is about challenging students to interrogate, constantly search, and figure out how these theories come into being; how the students can connect them to their interests, intellectual needs, and life; and how the students can use these theories to effect social change. Teachers who teach students to become critical and independent thinkers also take on a gigantic teaching task to help students develop socio-political, cultural, and historical awareness and consciousness to challenge oppressive social norms, instead of preparing them to become mere docile adapters to these norms. Equally crucial, progressive educators are those who urge students to discover their own paths through continuous search and exploration of novel ideas, while providing genuine support and mentorship. What students are expected to learn in school is meaningless to the extent they are not able to read their own meaning into it—linking their own experience and

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interests to it. Students study and learn best when the relevance of what they study or are expected to learn is made clear to them or, better yet, when they themselves see its relevance to their intellectual interests, needs, or curiosity. Stated otherwise, something is meaningful to students so long as they feel they can connect it to their own real-life situations and those of others. Since real-life situations might change as they go through higher stages in their academic and intellectual journey, students should be encouraged and helped by their teachers to cultivate intellectual flexibility and openness to try novel ideas, deconstruct prior ideas, construct news ideas, and take on new challenges. Teachers should help develop intellectual awareness so students understand that the knowledge they acquire, as a result of personal, intellectual search, and interaction with teachers and peers, is not a fixed entity. Simply stated, students need to fully comprehend that knowledge is not like a beautiful piece of art purchased at an art studio, taken home, hung on the wall, and left there. Rather, knowledge is constructed through social, cultural, and historical transactions with people and exposure to varying sources of literature. Knowledge should be continuously expanded on, re-examined, questioned, and constantly tested for the creation of new knowledge.

Constructing Knowledge and Awareness with Students Through Dialogue In schools, K-12 students should not be expected to develop critical skills on their own, including constructing knowledge. They should receive assistance and guidance from teachers. However, for all this to be a reality, educators need to make a conscious effort to reach out to and know their students, which is only possible through genuine dialogical relationships. Knowing their students enables educators to have a sound understanding of their learning styles; their cultural, linguistic, and historical repertoires; and their prior knowledge; as well as how to help them build on that knowledge. Building on students’ various repertoires and prior knowledge facilitates the learning process of students and the teaching practices of teachers and, most importantly, validates students’ identities while strengthening their confidence and self-esteem. Equally important, teachers have a professional and moral obligation to find ways to make the school curriculum accessible and meaningful to students whose backgrounds might not match the content of such curriculum. In other words, since education is the essence of life, but not the means and the end to it, for students to relate what they learn in school to their lived experience, school materials should be based on real-life circumstances, not on abstract ideas. To this end, it is critically important that students and teachers collectively question how school materials and curriculum are selected and developed—what shapes them and where they come from. It is equally imperative that teachers interrogate which voices are represented

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in these written curricular, as historically marginalized students’ voices often are not represented in the learning materials often required in schools. Since “the curriculum is often seen as the driving force for instructional practice, the framework within which day-to-day decisions are made” (Auerbach 1995, p. 15), should school materials then emerge from students’ world and lived experience? In other words, should school curricula be student-centered to allow space for students’ active participation and interaction with other students and teachers? As Auerbach (1995) maintains, when teachers “start from the students to the curriculum rather from the curriculum to the students,” (p. 16) students arrive to construct their own knowledge and act on it. I argue that to understand what fundamentally causes the mis-education of students, it is educationally vital that a person looks closely at what is going on in the classroom in terms of how teachers teach, interact with, and construct or fail to construct knowledge with students. I am not implying that the mis-education of students should be placed on teachers’ shoulders alone, because such an argument takes responsibilities off the school system, policy makers, and the government, overlooking other factors such as the negative effects of the legacy of Western colonialism and neoliberal education policies on the learning of linguistically and culturally diverse students and teaching practices of school teachers. However, teachers’ teaching practices, attitude toward level of trust, and investment in the learning of each student need to be taken into consideration, for these factors play a crucial role in students’ academic achievement outcome.

Conclusion It is imperative that the school system have well-trained educators capable of effectively teaching students, including Black students and other students of color, so they are prepared to face multiple challenges awaiting them in the real world. Teaching students from various ethnic, racial, cultural, linguistic, and social class backgrounds requires full support and encouragement from the teacher so that the former can preserve their cultural heritage and identity, which could help them connect with their past, make sense of the present, and prepare themselves for the future. We need to build a better future based on a present where all students have the opportunity to attend well-resourced schools and receive high-quality education, regardless of their backgrounds. This present can’t be possible, however, while many school systems are racially stratified. Minority students are facing inequities of all kinds in schools, including not receiving the support, resources, and mentorship they need so that they can achieve academically, like their White counterparts. We need to decolonize the school system, which needs to entail uprooting racial and cultural biases from the school curriculum.

References

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References Auerbach, E. R. (1995). The politics of the ESL classroom: Issues of power in pedagogical choices. In J. W. Tollefson (Ed.), Power and inequality in language education (pp. 1–188). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Bakhtin, M. M. (2010). The dialogic imagination: Four essays (Vol. 1). Texas: University of texas Press. Dewey, J. (1997). Democracy and Education. New York: The Free Press. Dei, G. J. S. (2009). Teaching Africa: Towards a transgressive pedagogy. New York: Springer. Dei, G. J. S. (2018). “Black like me”: Reframing blackness for decolonial politics. Educational Studies, 54(2), 117–142. Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Trans. M. Ramos. New York: Continuum. Originally Published in 1970. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press. Hooks, B. (2003). Teaching community: A pedagogy of hope. New York: Routledge. Kneller, F. G. (1964). Introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: John Wiley & Sons. McLaren, P. (2007). Critical pedagogy: Where are we now? New York: Peter Lang. Nieto, S., & Bode, P. (2018). Affirming diversity: The socio-cultural context of multicultural education. Boston: Pearson Education Inc. Orelus, P. W. (2007). Education under occupation: The heavy price of living in a neocolonized and globalized world. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense. Orelus, P. W. (2011). Courageous voices of immigrants and transnationals of Color: Counternarratives against discrimination in schools and beyond. New York: Peter Lang Publishers. Plato. (2018). The Republic. UK: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Rousseau, J. J. (2010). Émile ou de l’éducation. France, Paris: Flammarion. Sleeter, C., & Carmona, J. F. (2017). Un-standardizing curriculum: Multicultural teaching in the standards-based classroom. New York: Teachers College Press. Sleeter, C. E., & Grant, C. A. (2007). Making choices for multicultural education: Five approaches to race, class and gender. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Thiong’o, N. (1986). Decolonizing the mind: The politics of language in African literature. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Vygotsky, L. S. (1986). Thought and Language (revised Edition published). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Chapter 3

The Effects of the American Colonial and Apartheid School System on the Learning on Minority Students

Colonial domination, because it is total and tends to oversimplify, very soon manages to disrupt in spectacular fashion the cultural life of a conquered people. This cultural obliteration is made possible by the negation of national reality, by new legal relations introduced by the occupying power, by the banishment of the natives and their customs to outlying districts by colonial society, by expropriation, and by the systematic enslaving of men and women. Fanon (1965, p. 236) The real aim of colonialism was to control the people’s wealth: what they produced, how they produced it, and how it was distributed; to control, in other words, the entire realm of the language of real life. Colonialism imposed its control of the social production of wealth through military conquest and subsequent political dictatorship. But its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonized, the control, through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world. Economic and political control can never be complete or effective without mental control. To control a people’s culture is to control their tools of self-definition in relationship to others. Thiong’o (1986, p. 16)

School is constructed as an equal ground where individual students receive academic formation and training necessary to become professionals and productive citizens in society. Traditionally, school is seen as an institution where teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, and nurses, among other professionals, are prepared to serve humanity. Through such lens, school is constructed as the pillar of society. While underscoring the irreplaceable role school plays in society, this chapter in particular and the book in general argue that this institution has historically been used as an ideological stronghold to indoctrinate school children by imposing Westerndominant languages, cultural values, and social norms on them and making them believe that these languages, values, and norms are better than theirs. This book unpacks how these colonial practices, which have been reproduced in schools and society at large, have impacted racially, linguistically, and historically marginalized groups, including students and teachers of color.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. W. Orelus, Unschooling Racism, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53795-1_3

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Decolonizing the School Curriculum and the Mind of Teachers Since colonial time, the school system has historically been the contesting site where dominant ideologies and discourses are embraced, learned, internalized, reproduced, and circulated. For example, during colonization, the colonial masters utilized this system to sell to perpetuate, and impose European ideologies, cultural values, and social norms on the colonized (Thiong’o, 1986). Western colonization of Africa and other parts of the world, including the Caribbean, would not have lasted long had not school personnel, including teachers and administrators, been an accomplice (Thiong’o, 1986). The colonial power used schools, including the school curriculum, as an ideological apparatus to indoctrinate school children, particularly children of color, making them believe that European languages, culture, history, and arts were better than theirs (Orelus, 2007, 2020; Thiong’o, 1986; Woodson, 2006). The colonial school system denied colonized children the historical knowledge of their past and their culture while zealously teaching them about European history and culture (Lowens, 2016; Memmi, 1965). Unlike the myth and lies they learned in schools, their African ancestors were civilized and had, and continue to have, strong cultural traditions and norms, which the colonizers tried to erase through cultural invasion (Diop, 1991; Freire, 1993). The mission of the colonial system was to divide the colonized and destroy the bone structure of their families. Sadly, in some cases, this system succeeded in doing so by taking, for example, colonized children from their families, placing them in boarding schools, where their history, languages, culture were too often silenced (Smith, 1999). Colonized children were forced to be educated in the language of the colonizers at the expense of their native tongue, which they were prohibited from speaking in schools (Memmi, 1965; Thiong’o, 1986). In schools, they were taught that their culture was savage and uncivilized and that European history and culture were far more superior to theirs (Rodney, 1972). Colonized school children were stripped not only of their history but also of the knowledge of their geography. Rodney (1972) states, “Colonial schooling was education for subordination, exploitation, the creation of mental confusion, and the development of underdevelopment” (p. 241). Along the same lines, Memmi (1965) argues, “The most serious blow suffered by the colonized is being removed from history and from the community” (p. 91). They were treated as objects rather than as subjects of history. During slavery and colonization, institutionalized racism was used to dehumanize the colonized (Williams, 1993). Although colonization is officially “ended,” its legacy continues to negatively impact people of African descent and other racially subjugated groups. Racism is entrenched, for example, in American schools and repressive state apparatuses, like the police. Native Americans, African Americans, Latino(a)s, Asians, and other historically oppressed groups have experienced systemic racism through these institutions. Racial segregation, lack of access to quality education, and unfair mass incarceration, among other forms of systemic oppression, have historically been their reality in the United States.

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The history of the United States is fundamentally shaped by the legacy of slavery and the Jim Crow era. Indeed, as Joy DeGruy (2017) brilliantly captures it in her book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, the history of this country is deeply rooted in the generational trauma resulting from slavery to Jim Crow Era and beyond. Moreover, what can’t and should not be forgotten from American history are the forced Anglicization of Native American children, the forcible internment of Japanese in caged camps, and to the gross mistreatment of Chinese-Americans implicated in slave labor, including constructing railroads (DeGruy, 2017). This sordid legacy has affected all Americans, particularly African Americans, Native Americans, Latinx, Japanese-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Irish-Americans, Jews, and Italian-Americans (Zinn, 2010). The United States was, and continues to be, built on the backbone of people of color; many of whom are inmates who have been used as cheap labor in the American penal system to create the robust wealth of this country (Alexander, 2012; Wilder, 2013; Kendi, 2016, 2019). Stated otherwise, the accumulative wealth of the United States is rooted in the exploitation and subjugation of people of color whose free and cheap labor over decades has enriched Whites and their descendants at the expense of their own livelihood (Alexander, 2012; Kendi, 2016, 2019). The political and economic power of the United States today would not have been a reality had it not been for the wealth the slaves who labored in cotton and sugar fields to generate revenue for their masters (DeGruy, 2017; Kendi, 2016; Zinn, 2010). Recently, an American senator from Texas, Tom Cotton, who is supporting a bill aimed to defund the 1619 project history so it will not be taught in schools, stated that slavery was a necessary evil upon which our founding fathers built the union [America, my emphasis]. Without realizing it, Senator Cotton admitted that that the current economic and political super power status of the United States is historically connected to the history of exploitation of Black and Brown people since slavery. This senator inadvertently made a case for reparations-something many African American writers and public intellectuals have been fighting for. For example, Ta-Nehesi Coats (2015), an African American writer and Journalist, has made strong cases for reparations not only through his book, Between the World and Me, but also through public speeches. In June 19, 2019, he testified before the US congress detailing why African Americans deserve to be compensated for both mental and physical injuries that were inflicted to them during slavery and beyond. Fanon (1965) pointed out that while being the backbone of the economy of Europe, Blacks have been treated as “the wretched of the earth”. Similarly, in the United States, the descendants of African slaves, namely African Americans and other people of African descent, have been ill-treated educationally and economically despite their great contribution to this country, including its history, culture and economy. During the Jim Crow era, African Americans were not allowed to enter public places reserved ONLY for Whites (Kendi, 2016; Zinn, 2010). Transgressing these racist laws resulted in their incarceration and even death. Police officers used welltrained, dangerous dogs to terrorize Blacks and other people of color protesting on the street against racist practices. Blacks were not allowed to live in White neighborhoods

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or attend schools with Whites because of racial segregation, which was, and still is, the norm (Kendi, 2016; Zinn, 2010). However, these racist practices were confronted with all kinds of resistance. While some were peaceful, like the civil rights movement under the leadership of Martin Luther King, others were not as peaceful, like the ones led by Malcolm X and members of the Black Panther Party. Because of the courage of these leaders and others, African Americans and other racially and economically marginalized groups in this country have been allowed to vote and attend schools with Whites, although it has not been easy to do so (Kendi, 2016). They still have to fight to vote as Black voter suppression has become normalized in some US states, like Florida. For example, during the Bush vs. Gore 2000 election, Black voters were denied the opportunity to cast their votes leading to the fabricated victory of the former Texas Governor. History conveniently repeated itself again with the Clinton vs. Trump 2016 presidential election out of which the latter came victorious. These historical facts clearly show that nothing has fundamentally changed in America in terms of racial and economic equity since reconstruction. Renewed forms of Jim Crow have resurfaced, including racial profiling of Black and other people of color; the miseducation of students of color in schools; and their marginalization and unlawful arrest through criminal practices, like Stop and Frisk, which officially ended in 2014 as a result of social and political pressure from activists of color and white allies. When Stop and Frisk was legal, White police officers in New York terrorized, and continue to terrorize, Blacks and Latinos by routinely and unfairly searching them on the street and in their neighborhoods without warrant. During this bloody and violent era, it is estimated that 700,000 stops of Black and Latino males were made in 2011 with a slight decrease in 2012 (Kovel & Turner, 2013). The persistence of systemic racism in the United States of America affects Black and Brown people. They have been brutally murdered by White racist police officers. Native Americans, African Americans and Latinos, and other oppressed groups, namely Chinese and Japanese who, too, have known a long history of systemic oppression. They were prevented from obtaining U.S. citizenship, although they fought and lost their lives in wars defending American imperialist interests abroad. For instance, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited Chinese from becoming U.S. citizens, including those who were born here (Chomsky, 2011; Zinn, 2010). Chomsky states, In 1882, congress answered with a resounding ‘no’ by passing the Chinese Exclusion Act. As ‘aliens’ ineligible to citizenship,’ the Chinese, and other groups that followed, such as Japanese people and other Asians, were stripped of other rights as well… California and ten other states banned Japanese residents from owning land through prohibition on land ownership by ‘aliens ineligible to citizenship.’ Arkansas was even more specific, declaring that no Japanese or a descendant of a Japanese shall ever purchase or hold title to any lands in the State of Arkansas. (p. 84)

Likewise, Japanese were prevented from being U.S. citizens, even though many served in the U.S. army sacrificing their lives for American geopolitical domination and economic interests (Chomsky, 2011; Zinn, 2010). Countless numbers of Japanese were compulsorily put in internment camps, where they received ill-treatment for

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being accused of spying on the U.S. government; they were seen and treated as the brown scum of the earth in the United States (Takaki, 1993; Zinn, 2010). Takaki stated, “The Japanese painfully discovered that their accomplishments in America did not lead them to acceptance, for during World War two, unlike Italian Americans and German Americans, they were placed in internment camps. Two-thirds of them were citizens by birth” (Takaki, 1993, p. 8). Like the Japanese, from the beginning of 1900 until the 1920s, Chinese immigrants labored in the U.S. constructing railroads (Zinn, 2010). They continued to contribute to the economy of this country by owning small businesses and working in various industries. Other Asian immigrants have contributed to the socio-economic and political advancement of this country (Takaki, 1993). However, because of their racial and ethnic backgrounds, they have not been treated on equal footing as Whites (Chomsky, 2011; Takaki, 1993). Chomsky (2011) points out, “A 1907 federal law stipulated that a female citizen who married an alien would be stripped of her own status as a citizen, and a 1922 revision that allowed such women to retain their citizenship still removed it from women who married aliens who were racially ineligible for citizenship” (p. 84). Like the Japanese, the Chinese were also denied American citizenship; the rights to citizenship were only granted to people who were considered Whites, particularly those originating from Northern and Western Europe (Chomsky, 2011; Nieto & Bode, 2018). Unfortunately, these historical facts, which are or should be part of our historical memory as a people, are often purposely silenced in American school curriculum so that students of color and backgrounds will not have a sense of their history (Trouillot, 1995).

The American Colonial School System Revisited The American school system is not disconnected from the history of systemic racism in this country as highlighted above. As noted earlier, this school system has been an institutional depository where various forms of inequities have taken place affecting predominantly historically marginalized students, like Native American children, who were taken away from their families and placed in boarding schools, where they were forced to be Anglicized (Smith, 1999; Spring, 2017). In boarding schools, they were stripped of their family and community traditions (Grande, 2015; Spring, 2010, 2017). In the racist mentality of the White settlers, Native Americans were savages that must be tamed and civilized, including their languages and culture, which have been looked down upon (Grande, 2015). Yet, topics like the systemic racial, cultural, and linguistic oppression against Indigenous people are rarely brought up in mainstream classroom discussions. Meanwhile, colonial schooling practices continue to occur in the American school system affecting minority students (Kozol, 2006). These practices include (1) administering standardized tests to minority students to supposedly measure their learning progress; (2) tracking them arbitrarily based on their

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race, ethnicity, social class, and gender; and (3) placing them in special education programs based on their perceived disabilities and lack of proficiency in the English language (Nieto & Bode, 2018; Orelus, 2016). These colonial and racist educational practices have affected minority students as well as poor Whites attending urban schools particularly (Kozol, 2006). In the American neocolonial educational system, school children continue to be indoctrinated believing that western European languages, values, cultural norms and traditions, and histories are more valuable than, and superior to, theirs (Lowens, 2016). The American school system is plagued with these biased curriculum materials, including textbooks, where the silencing and misrepresentation of minority students’ culture and histories continue to occur (Lowens, 2016; Trouillot, 1995). This is to say that European-dominant norms and values are still entrenched in school curriculum materials and reproduced in teachers’ teaching practices and students’ learning. In The Mis-education of the Negro, Woodson (2006) provides a sharp critique of the American school system, arguing that it is structurally designed to fail African American children. Woodson (2006) maintains that underfunded and poorly segregated schools that African Americans attend limit their life chances and success in society. Indeed, schools that African American students, particularly those from lower socio-economic status, attend are often under-resourced, overcrowded, and lack well-trained teachers. Even though The Mis-education of the Negro was written over a century ago, the analysis of racial inequalities shaping the American school system that Woodson (2006) provides in this book is still relevant. More pointedly, this school system is still a place where the experiences of minorities, particularly those of African American, Native American, Latino(a), and Asian students, have not been fairly incorporated in history textbooks (Asante, 2017; Ladson-Billings, 2009; Zinn, 2010). The lack of adequate resources allocated to schools attended by students of color, including qualified teachers and mentors of color and the implementation of culturally and linguistically relevant curriculum materials, suggest that the education and learning of these students are unimportant to those who control the wheel of the American educational machine—namely the rich and the powerful whose interests influence school policies. In the so-called postcolonial era, these students continue to be subjected to colonial forms of schooling where their cultural and linguistic attributes are often seen as problems rather than strengths that teachers can build on to educate them (Nieto & Bode, 2018). The noble mission of schools of educating students is yet to become a reality for historically marginalized American students whose birth right to quality education has often been stolen from them. For example, linguistically and culturally diverse students, including African Americans and bilingual Latino(a) students, are still stigmatized for speaking Ebonics and Spanish in schools, respectively (Baugh, 2018; Garcia and Kleifgen, 2018). Sweeping xenophobic laws were passed in Arizona, California, and Massachusetts leading to the elimination of bilingual education programs in these states (Macedo, Dendrinos & Gounari, 2015). These programs historically enabled bilingual and immigrant students to learn content subjects, like Math and Science in their native

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tongue, while at the same time learning English (Darder, 2011; Garcia and Kleifgen, 2018). English Only law has had a negative effect on the learning of bilingual and multilingual students in that such law denies them the right to maintain their native tongue (Macedo et al., 2015). School children nowadays speak various languages in different accents, and they need to be valued and respected. This is to say that English Only law is the antithesis of linguistic pluralism and diversity. Proponents of the English-Only movement, mostly conservative, argue that speaking Spanish, Creole, Chinese, or Vietnamese at home with bilingual children will prevent them from learning English in order to be immersed into the mainstream society and to be successful (Macedo et al., 2015). Such naïve and misleading argument needs to be challenged and refuted, as it is not supported by empirical evidence. Native Americans, African Americans, Chicano(a)s, and Asians have been speaking English for more than a century in this country. Yet, they have continued to be linguistically discriminated against at work, in schools, and society at large (Macedo, 1994). Racial oppression is systemic, and affects disenfranchised groups from diverse backgrounds. Minorities usually live in poor neighborhoods and attend poorly funded schools, where they are routinely targeted, handcuffed, arrested, and jailed for behavioral issues for which their White counterparts would go unpunished (Alexander, 2012). In The New Jim Crow, Alexander (2012) points out the manner in which systemic racism has severely affected the lives of Black and Brown people, including poor students of color. Alexander (2012) argues that mass incarceration, which she defines as the New Jim Crow, is used as a form of social control leading to the brutal racial and socio-economic marginalization and exploitation of African Americans, Latinos, and other minorities. Schools have been accomplices in feeding the prison-pipeline through arbitrary arrest of students of color for minor schools’ rules violation often leading to their incarceration. Black and Brown boys and girls have been harshly punished in schools for such violation in comparison to their White counterparts (Alexander, 2012; Warren & Goodman, 2018). Alexander (2010) states: On September 21, 2019, Kaia Rolle, a six-year-old girl in Orlando, Florida, was arrested and handcuffed for throwing a tantrum. Orlando police officers took Kaia to a Juvenile detention center to be fingerprinted and charged with battery for this childish action. Imagine a six-yearold rich White girl being handcuffed and detained for throwing a tantrum! It is inconceivable. However, it is a common reality for a girl or a boy of color in American schools, particularly those who are poor.

Mark Warren, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, who took part in around conversation held on Democracy Now! by Amy Goodman regarding the topic of the school to the prison-pipeline, stated, Many studies have found that students who are repeatedly suspended in elementary and particularly middle school are very likely to fail to graduate from high school. Either they’re expelled, or they become so alienated and so far behind that they choose to leave school on their own. And then, once that happens, they’re out on the street, where they are also subject to oftentimes discriminatory policing and police abuse, and then they end up in the juvenile

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3 The Effects of the American Colonial … criminal justice system. We actually have now more law enforcement officers in our schools than we have social workers (Warren, Democracy Now! 2018).

I witnessed students of color, including middle school students, being escorted and treated by adults as if they were criminals for “misbehaving” in class and/or on school property. For example, in Fall 2017, I was at a middle school located in a poor neighborhood in Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA, to meet with some school administrators and teachers. Working class students of color, mainly Latino(a)s and African Americans, as well as poor working class White students attended (and continue to attend) this school. The meeting was about collaboration between the university where I work and the middle school. Such collaboration aims at supporting teachers and administrators at the school through workshops and grant monies in their effort to help students, particularly linguistically and culturally diverse students, succeed academically. While talking to a colleague at the school, I noticed a Black boy being physically restrained and escorted by two adults, as if he was under police arrest. Shocked by the violent manner in which this boy was being escorted, I inquired about it thinking the colleague might have had a clue about what happened. She, like me, was clueless. As I found later, this Black boy was a special education student who often got bullied by his peers in class. In an attempt to defend himself, he, at times, reacts in ways that his teacher interprets as aggressive. I learned from the colleague with whom I was chatting that the same teacher had a history of calling the school security to take this student out of class for minor behavioral problems. The Black boy was treated as a grown man and as if he was a criminal at a place called school, where he should have been safe from both physical and psychological violence. Research shows that Black and Brown boys and girls from preschool to high school tend to receive much harsher treatments for behavioral issues, like disobeying teacher’s commands in class or pushing another student out of selfdefense or frustration, than their White counterparts (Noguera, 2009). These behavioral issues usually result in long-term suspension; students of color are often handcuffed, arrested, and jailed for displaying such behaviors in schools, for which their White counterparts usually go unpunished. These racist practices in schools have had deep psychological, academic, and socio-economic consequences on Black and Brown people, including poor students of color. Many would later drop out of schools and get involved in unsafe activities, like gangs, while those incarcerated become part of the US penal system (Alexander, 2012). The American school system has been an accomplice in students of color being pushed out of schools and incarcerated, usually for minor offenses.

Toward an Equitable School System Learning occurs when students can connect their lived experiences to the school curriculum materials, including textbooks they use in their classes. Also, students do

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better in school when they have teachers with whom they are able to relate on some level. Black students do better academically when they have caring Black teachers who can connect with them (Tatum, 2007). Such connection is important, as it facilitates mutual understanding among individuals across identities, including race, ethnicity, gender, language, and sexuality. African American students would most likely connect better with African American teachers, just as White students would connect better with White teachers. This is not to suggest that African American or White students must only have African American or White teachers to succeed. Far from this ethnocentric belief! However, as empirically documented, students and teachers who share cultural, linguistic, racial, and ethnic affinities, among others, connect better with one another (Tatum, 2007). This is to say that we need a school system that is diverse with teachers and students from different ethnic, racial, religious, sexual, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. Diversity is conducive to not only students’ academic achievement but also to their identity formation. As for students of African descent, the school curriculum materials need to be culturally and historically relevant to their needs, for far too long they have been mostly exposed to European writers, history, culture, and literature. We need a school curriculum that is diverse and inclusive. In his most recent work on education, Asante (2017) encourages us to explore the work of African intellectuals, historians, and writers, like Cheikh Anta Diop (1991), to learn and appreciate the great contribution Africa has made to the scholarly and academic world. Similarly, Dei (2009) talks about the urgency of moving African rich history, culture, traditions, and genius to the center of world educational, historical, and political debates. Both Asante (2017) and Dei (2018) encourage us to explore African history and culture, to know about and appreciate our African root, which can help us to liberate our mind from Western colonial cultural and psychological domination, among others. It is time for people of color, particularly people of African descent, to seriously consider going back to their roots and embrace their indigenous, African ways of learning and knowing and being in the world. The Western model of education that has been imposed on us since colonization and slavery needs to be rejected and replaced by a model grounded in our indigenous and African [Black] lived experiences, history, and culture.

Conclusion Racial biases in the school curriculum and teachers’ pedagogies shaping the American school system have affected minority school children from historically disfranchised communities. The effects of systemic racism on students of color, particularly on those from poor working class background, need to be further documented given their implication for student learning. This book shows how the American school system continues to be the institutional bastion where racist-dominant ideologies are learned, internalized, and circulated. These ideologies are entrenched in school

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curriculum materials and often reflected in teachers’ teaching methods and pedagogies affecting minority student learning. It is worth emphasizing here that schools have been used as an ideological terrain to colonize the mind of minoritized students. These students have been taught that European languages, values, cultural norms, traditions, and history are superior to theirs (Thiong’o, 1986). The school curriculum needs to be critically redesigned so schools can become a place where students are exposed to different schools of thought, different views and ideologies, diverse races and ethnicities, cultures, histories, and different sorts of knowledge so they can form their own opinion and make their own decisions about their personal, academic, and socio-political issues, among others. For this to happen, racism, among other forms of systemic oppression, needs be uprooted in this institution.

References Alexander, M. (2012). The new jim crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Asante, M. (2017). Revolutionary pedagogy. New York: Universal Write Publications LLC. Baugh, J. (2018). Linguistics in pursuit of justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chomsky, N. (2011). The umbrella of US power: The universal declaration of human rights and the contradictions of US policy. New York: Seven Stories Press. Darder, A. (2011). A dissident voice: Essays on culture, pedagogy and power. New York: PeterLang. DeGruy Leary, J. (2017). Post traumatic slave syndrome: America’s legacy of enduring injury and healing. Portland, OR: JDP publisher. Dei, G. J. S. (2009). Teaching Africa: Towards a transgressive pedagogy. New York: Springer. Dei, G. J. S. (2018). “Black like me”: Reframing blackness for decolonial politics. Educational Studies, 54(2), 117–142. Diop, C. A. (1991). Civilization or barbarism: An authentic anthropology. Chicago, Illinois: Chicago Review Press. Fanon, F. (1965). The wretched of the earth (Vol. 390). New York: Grove Press. Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Trans. M. Ramos. New York: Continuum. Originally Published in 1970. Grande, S. (2015). Red pedagogy: Native American social and political thought. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. Garcia, O., & Kleifgen, J. (2018). Educating emergent bilinguals: Policies, programs, and practices for english learners. New York: Teachers College Press. Hall, S. (2006). What is this “Black” in Black popular culture?. In D. Morley & K.-H. Chen (Eds.), Stuart hall: Critical dialogues in cultural studies (pp. 479–489). New York, NY: Routledge. Kendi, I. (2016). Stamped from the beginning: The definitive history of racist ideas in America. New York: Nation Books. Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to be an antiracist. New York: One world. Kovel, M., & Turner, A. (2013). Interview by Goodman Amy [Audio Tape Recording]. Bronx Residents Accosted by NYPD Win Landmark Court Ruling Deeming “Stop and Frisk” Tactic Illegal., Retrieved from http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/10/bronx_residents_accosted_ by_nypd_win. Kozol, J. (2006). The shame of the Nation: The restoration of apartheid schooling in America. New York: Broadway. Ladson-Billings, G. (2009). The dreamkeepers: Successful teachers for African-American children (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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Loewen, J. W. (2019). Lies my teacher told me: Young readers’ edition: Everything American history textbooks get wrong. New York: The New Press. Macedo, D. (1994). Literacies of power: What Americans are not allowed to know. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. Macedo, D., Dendrinos, B., & Gounari, P. (2015). The hegemony of english. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Memmi, A. (1965). The colonizer and the colonized. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Nieto, S., & Bode, P. (2018). Affirming diversity: The socio-cultural context of multicultural education. Boston: Pearson Education Inc. Noguera, P. A. (2009). The trouble with black boys:… And other reflections on race, equity, and the future of public education. New York: Wiley. Orelus, P. W. (2007). Education under occupation: The heavy price of living in a neocolonized and globalized world. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense. Orelus, P. W. (Ed.) (2016). Language, race, and power in schools: A critical discourse analysis. New York: Routledge. Orelus, P. W. (2020). The cost of being professors and administrators of color in predominantly white institutions: Unpacking microagression, isolation, exclusion, and unfairness through a critical race lens. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 1–16. Orelus, P. W., Malott, C., & Hafner, A. H. (2020). Youth of color living and learning in the age of racial paranoia: What social justice educators need to know. Taboo Journal, 19(1), 91–108. Quijano, A. (2017). Between ‘development’ and the De/Coloniality of power (p. 363). New York: The Routledge Companion to Inter-American Studies. Rodney, W. (1972). How Europe underdeveloped Africa (pp. 107–125). Beyond borders: Thinking critically about global issues. Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous people. London, England: Zed Books. Spring, J. (2010). Deculturalization and the struggle for equality: A brief history of the education of dominated cultures in the United States (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages. Spring, J. (2017). American Education. New York: Routledge. Takaki, R. (1993). A different mirror: A history of multicultural America. New York: Little, Brown & co. Tatum, B. D. (2007). Can we talk about race? And other conversations in a era of school resegregation. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Thiong’o, N. (1986). Decolonizing the mind: The politics of language in African literature. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Trouillot, M. R. (1995). Silencing the past: Power and the production of history. Cambridge, MA: Beacon Press. Warren, M., & Goodman, D. (2018). Lift us up, don’t push us out: Voices from the front lines of the educational justice movement. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Wilder, G. (2103). Ebony and Ivy: Race, slavery, and the troubled history of America’s Universities. London: Bloomsbury. Williams, E. (1993). History of the people of Trinidad and Tobago. Brooklyn, NY: A&b Publishers. Woodson, C. G. (2006). The mis-education of the Negro. New York: Book Tree. Zinn, H. (2010). A people’s history of the United States 1492-present. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

Chapter 4

Racism Hidden in Schools Through Smiling and Shaking Hands

White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society. The comfortable, the entrenched, the privileged cannot continue to tremble at the prospect of change in the status quo. Martin Luther King, in Washington (1986, p. 314) Racism and ethnocentrism are major problems in our society, requiring permanent and persistent critical inquiry. VanDijk (1987, p. 7)

We live in an era where various forms of discrimination are reconfigured, disguised, and hidden through different mechanisms. Blacks and other racially marginalized groups may not be officially enslaved or colonized, but they continue to be victims of subtle forms of racism hidden through smiles. Smiling, in other words, is used as a veil to hide deep-seated racial prejudice against people of color in institutions, like schools and the workplace. Generally, people who smile while interacting with others are perceived to be warm and friendly, as if smiling is tacitly expected of people when interacting with others. For example, teachers and administrators who genuinely smile while interacting with students normally leave an imprinted mark on them. Likewise, students who smile while interacting with their peers make them feel welcome and comfortable. Smiling also makes the task of those in position of power easier in the sense that their smile might create a welcoming environment for those placed in subaltern positions. It is worth noting that, at the same time, there are cases where people in position of power use smile to make others feel “comfortable” purposely as a way to mislead and exploit them. Employees who smile are often seen through positive lenses by their coworkers and employers. Consumers, directly or indirectly, expect those selling them commodities to smile (Lafrance, 2011; Spiegelman, 2012). Looking at smiling from the standpoint of consumer–seller relationships, it can be argued that smiling is a useful tool that can be, and has been, used to sell material products. The more the sellers smile, the higher are the chances for them to sell their products (Spiegelman, 2012). In all societies, particularly capitalist societies, smiling is used as a way © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. W. Orelus, Unschooling Racism, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53795-1_4

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to attract consumers for the sole purpose of selling commodities (Lafrance, 2011; Spiegelman, 2012). TV advertisements are cases in point. TV advertisers often, if not always, use smile as a way to entice targeted consumers to buy products they advertise. This type of smiling is not genuine, as it is profits-based. In capitalist society, smiling is used as a commercial tool to convince people to consume products. Consumers may not need products being advertised on TV but constant bombardment of commercialized messages with gigantic smiles might convince them to buy. The hidden misleading message in advertisements is that material products will make consumers happy or happier or more attractive. This propaganda is designed to keep the capitalist machine running for greater benefits of those who own the means of production. What is more, smiling can be, and has been, therapeutic in the sense that it can relax the molar muscles potentially putting the people who smile and those to whom they are smiling in a better mood (Gutman, 2011). Images where individuals smile tend to attract more people to look at them than those where they do not. This is to say that smiling holds the power to leave an ineffable impression on others and create an environment where people feel welcome and comfortable. However, smiling can be, and has been, used at the same time to cover up deceits, prejudices, and various forms of systemic oppression, including racism, in schools and other institutions.

Racism Hidden Through Smiling Faces Racism hidden through a smiling face is one of the subtle forms of racism, and it occurs in schools and other social institutions. Schools are, or should be, a place where students, teachers, or professors should feel safe and exempt of discrimination. Unfortunately, racism commonly occurs in schools, and is often hidden through smiling faces. When interacting with parents and students of color, racially prejudiced teachers, administrators, or students smile to them in order to appear friendly, particularly if doing so is the expectation set by the schools. Such smile is not genuine, as they are often compelled to do so to protect their jobs. In other words, their deepseated racial prejudice against people of color does not disappear just because they put a phony smile on their faces. Parents send their children to school to learn and receive an education with hopes that they will become productive and responsible citizens in society. Many school children are fortunate to receive adequate academic preparation conducive to their academic and professional growth in life. While some students have been able to receive such preparation allowing them to do well in life, others do not have access to sufficient, if at all, educational opportunities to fulfill their potential. Poor children of color and poor Whites fit in such category; they often encounter various forms of micro-aggressions and discrimination in schools, including having racist and classist teachers who often have low expectations of them. Teachers who are racially prejudiced have low expectations of Black and Brown kids and, consequently, influence their poor academic outcome (Delpit, 2006; Matias & Zembylas, 2014).

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Through teaching practices, teachers’ racist words, behavior, and actions usually come to the surface. As an example, a self-proclaimed White liberal high school teacher, with whom I shared a classroom when I was a high school teacher, did not hesitate to label African Americans and Cape Verdean immigrant students as lazy and violent. This White colleague was known for being condescending toward, and had low expectation of, these students. He was also known for not doing much meaningful work in his classroom with students of color. This teacher labeled himself as White liberal, yet he showed through his behavior and action that he held racial prejudice against students of color he was working with. While sharing a classroom with this White colleague, I witnessed his teaching strategy and daily routines. This colleague usually sat in his comfortable chair dictating to his Black students passages from Eurocentric type of textbooks, and they had to copy down these passages in their notebooks. I did not understand the purpose of what he had his students do. On many occasions, I witnessed this teacher yelling at these Black students for reasons I could not explain. Worse yet, I heard him sharing with some of his White colleagues that these students would not accomplish much in life because they were lazy. Yet, this is the same White teacher who would grandiosely smile with, and shake the hands of, these students when they were entering his class as well as when their parents visited the school during teacher–parent conference. It is worth noting that there were other White teachers at the same high school who had progressive ideas, and they showed willingness to help students of color succeed academically. One of them was very helpful to me as a new teacher entering that school. He provided me with assistance on many levels, especially during my first year teaching there. He was very friendly to me, and I witnessed him smiling to and shaking the hands of his students quite frequently. There was even rumor that he might have had an affair with a female student of color. Such rumor might have had to do with the fact that he was very friendly to, and touchy with, some of his female students of color, whose majority were Cape Verdeans. Unfortunately, as I detailed in the first chapter, it did not take me long to realize that this seemingly progressive White teacher had, too, low expectation of the Black and Brown students he was supposedly educating. Classism undeniably influences the outcome of poor Black and Brown students’ academic success, so does systemic racism, which plays a significant part in their marginalization in schools and life in general. Because of systemic racism and other forms of bigotry occurring in schools, students of color have been forced to drop out (Noguera, 2009). High-school dropouts often end up involving in dangerous and illegal activities, like joining gangs, which have led to their incarceration and further prevents them from having access to quality education and employment (Alexander, 2012).

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Smiling as Hypocrisy Racially prejudiced teachers, who smile with, and shake the hands of, Black and Brown students, are often the same teachers who label them wrongly and unfairly referring to them as thieves, lazy, incompetent, and troublemakers. Worse, these teachers and administrators have often misplaced immigrant and non-conformist students to special education programs, where they spend less time helping them with classroom activities while being harsher disciplining them. For immigrant students of color, their situation is much more complicated, as they not only face systemic racism but also xenophobia, including accent discrimination because of their nondominant accents (Phillipson 1992, 2010; Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000, 2008; Orelus, 2016). Their ethnic identity is also looked down upon—a factor that causes them alienation in schools and society in general (Garcia & Kleifgen, 2018). What is more, racially prejudiced White students often question the intelligence of teachers of color not because of their race and ethnicity—people of color have been experiencing racism in schools more commonly than documented. It is happening subtly in professional meetings and social gatherings. For example, when a faculty or student of color is receiving an award, the dean and/or the provost usually congratulates this person of color. At this type of event, these high rank White individuals usually smile to, and shake the hand of, the person of color receiving this award. Hence, the assumption might be that these administrators are not racist and that they are committed to racial diversity and equity. From my experiences as a former teacher, university professor, and administrator, including witnessing patterns of racial hypocrisy, bigotry, micro-aggressions, and other forms of inequities taking place in K-12 and higher education, I have concluded that administrators, particularly White administrators, working predominantly in White institutions are professionally trained to perform at certain events, especially those that involve tokenized people of color receiving awards or promotions.

Conclusion Racism hidden through a smiling face is happening in schools, including the brutalizing of minorities, namely African Americans, Latino(a)s, and Asians in the United States. In addition, a renewed form of racism hidden through smiling faces is occurring in this institution and beyond. Racially prejudiced students, teachers, and administrators use phony smiles while interacting with Blacks and other people of color to cover their racism. This form of racism hidden through smiling faces might appear to be less harmful than brutal forms of racism, like police brutality. However, its effects are deeply hurtful to those who have experienced it on a daily basis, including students, teachers, and administrators of color. All forms of systemic racism in schools need to be uprooted given its savage effects on racially oppressed groups.

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References Alexander, M. (2012). The new jim crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Delpit, L. (2006). Other people’s children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York: The New Press. Garcia, O., & Kleifgen, J. (2018). Educating emergent bilinguals: Policies, programs, and practices for english learners. New York: Teachers College Press. Gutman, R. (2011). Smile: The astonishing powers of a simple act. TED Books. Lafrance, M. (2011). Lip service: Smiles in life, death, trust, lies, work, memory, sex, and politics. Manhattan, New York: W. W. Norton and Company. Matias, C. E., & Zembylas, M. (2014). When saying you care is not really caring: Emotions of disgust, whiteness ideology, and teacher education. Critical Studies in Education, 55(3), 319–337. Noguera, P. A. (2009). The trouble with black boys: …And other reflections on race, equity, and the future of public education. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Orelus, P. W. (Ed.) (2016). Language, race, and power in schools: A critical discourse analysis. New York: Routledge. Phillipson, R. (2010). Linguistic imperialism continued. New York, NY: Routledge. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2000). Linguistic genocide in education- or worldwide diversity and human rights?. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2008). Human rights and language policy in education. In S. May & N. Hornberger (Eds.), Encyclopedia of language and education (2nd edn), vol. 1, Language Policy and Political Issues in Education (pp. 107–119). New York: Springer. Spiegelman, P. (2012). Why is everyone smiling? The secret behind passion, productivity, and profit. Dallas, Texas: Brown Books Publishing Group.

Chapter 5

Un-Schooling Racism is Anti-Racist Education

Regardless of whites’ ‘sincere fictions’, racial considerations shade almost everything in America. Blacks and dark-skinned racial minorities lag behind whites in virtually every area of social life; they are about three times more likely to be poor than whites, earn about 40% less than whites, and have about a tenth of the net worth that whites have. They also receive an inferior education compared to whites, even when they attend integrated institutions. In terms of housing, black-owned unites comparable to white-owned ones are valued at 35% less. Blacks and Latinos also have less access to the entire housing market because whites, through a variety of exclusionary practices by white realtors and homeowners, have been successful in effectively limiting their entrance into many neighborhoods. Blacks receive impolite treatment in stores, in restaurants, and in a host of other commercial transactions. Bonilla-Silva (2003, p. 2) Racism and racially structured discrimination have not been deviations from the norm; they have been the norm, not merely in the sense of de facto statistical distribution patterns but, as I emphasized at the start, in the sense of being formally codified, written down and proclaimed as such. Mills (1997, p. 93)

Systemic racism is pervasive. It has systematically infiltrated and affected institutions, like schools, in salient ways, and therefore, needs be explored. Specifically, this oppression is connected to racial segregation and inequity in distribution of resources, among other inequities, in schools and other social institutions that must be addressed. Research shows that despite the historical significance of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 case, Brown vs. Board of Education declaring that it is illegal to force students attend separate schools based on their race, students of color across the United States continue to go to racially segregated schools. Specifically, Blacks and other minority students attend mostly schools attended by other students of color while their White counterparts continuously attend predominantly White schools (Garcia & Kleifgen, 2018; Matias, 2013; Matias & Zembylas, 2014). Furthermore, as has been amply documented, teachers teaching in urban schools, where there is a vast concentration of students of color, are often inexperienced, ill-prepared, poorly paid, and often lack school materials and support needed to effectively teach students (Dixson, 2018; Kozol, 2006, 2012; Schaffer et al., 2018). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. W. Orelus, Unschooling Racism, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53795-1_5

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Studies also show that the zip code of the town or city where students of color live often determines (1) what kinds of schools they go to, (2) what sorts of education they receive, (3) what types of food they have access to, and (4) whether or not they have access to health care (Gorski & Pothini, 2017; Love, 2019; Matias, 2016). Children of color tend to live in racially and socio-economically segregated urban areas, where they experience abject poverty (Jensen, 2005; Gorski, 2017). They attend underfunded schools, where they receive inferior types of education, which has had long-term implications for their learning and material conditions (Omi & Winant, 2014; Solórzano, 1998; Solorzano & Yosso, 2009; Soto, 2011).

Exposing Systemic Racism in Schools and in Society Besides families, schools are arguably the backbone of society. Schools are an institution where the human mind is academically, intellectually, and cognitively molded. Through this lens, schools are seen as a place where children learn, grow, and become productive members of society. At the same time, however, this institution is a place wherein ideologically the mind, the body, and the soul of individuals, particularly those of students of African descent, have often been crushed by structural racism, which has proven to be pathological in numerous ways. Pathology is commonly understood as the study of a disease or an abnormal condition. However, for the purpose of this chapter in particular and the book in general, the word pathology is metaphorically used to point out the pervasive nature of systemic racism, entailing both subtle and overt ways in which it has affected people of color. Indeed, racism has impacted people of color in multidimensional ways—psychologically, academically, socio-economically, and professionally. Throughout their lives, people of color have been affected by systemic racism. In the United States, for example, systemic racism is manifested through unequal distribution of resources and opportunities between Whites and people of color (Bonilla-Silva, 2010, 2017). Systemic racism also surfaces in the unfair arrest and massive incarceration of Black and Brown people, including students, in the US penal system—a racist practice that often leads to school to the prison pipeline (Alexander, 2012). Moreover, systemic racism is reflected in the micro-aggression and racial marginalization minority students and professors of color face daily in predominantly White institutions (Orelus, 2018, 2020a). Additionally, systemic racism reveals itself in the killings of African Americans in churches by White individuals who have been influenced by White supremacist ideology. Dylann Roof, who murdered nine African Americans while they were praying at the Emanuel African Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, is a prime example. Finally, as this book highlights, systemic racism is embedded in biased school curriculum materials, like textbooks, where the history and culture of minority students, namely African Americans, Native Americans, Latino(a)s, and Asians, are often distorted, misrepresented, or used as a footnote (Spring, 2010, 2016; Zinn, 2010).

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Like many institutions, schools are not immune of systemic racism, and its effects have become evident in the increasing opportunity gap between White middle class students and poor students of color (Darder, 2019). As a result of such gap, students of color are doomed to fail academically. In fact, research shows that minority students have often failed academically as a result of a lack of access to adequate resources, including proper guidance and mentorship, which are critical for one’s academic and intellectual growth (Nieto & Bode, 2018; Noguera, 2009). The opportunity gap stemming from racial and socio-economic inequities causes the academic underachievement of poor minority students. However, despite inequities occurring in schools, this institution is still seen as a great equalizer where all students receive or should receive academic formation and training to be academically and professionally successful in life. Undeniably, schools are an institution where countless teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, and nurses, among other professionals, have been educated and trained to serve society. However, while underscoring the pivotal role schools have played in society, this book challenges the romantic socio-historical construction of this institution based on the fact that it continues to be a contested site wherein fabricated versions of world history and Western cultural and religious values have not only been institutionalized but also imposed on historically marginalized groups of students as the norms. The American school system particularly is a place where racial and cultural biases are still entrenched in school curriculum materials and seem to be structurally designed to favor Whites over historically oppressed groups, namely African Americans, Native Americans Latino(a)s, Asians, and immigrants of color (Nieto & Bode, 2018). As mentioned in the previous chapters, during colonization, the colonial power used the school system to miseducate school children by denying them knowledge of their history and culture while forcibly teaching them about European history and culture (Memmi, 1965; Thiong’o, 1986; Woodson, 2006). The colonial power aimed to destroy the bone structure of colonized families, and it succeeded in doing so by taking colonized children from their parents and placing them in schools where their history and culture have been misrepresented (Thiong’o, 1986). Like colonized school children during colonization, Native Americans were taken away from their families and placed in boarding schools, where they were forced to be Anglicized, that is, being forced to speak the language of their colonizers and oppressors and embrace their culture and ways of being (Grande, 2015; Spring, 2017). Indeed, Native American school children were prohibited from speaking their native tongue. They were stripped of their languages and culture, which were looked down upon, while their names were changed into an Anglo name. They were also forced to wear European attire aiming to make them look less Native, less savage, and uncivilized. In the racist mentality of the colonizers, Native Americans were savages that must be tamed and civilized. In boarding schools, Native Americans were denied the knowledge of their history, their ancestors, as well as their rights to practice their cultural traditions. Likewise, colonized children were forced to be educated in the language of the colonizers at the expense of their native tongue, which they were prohibited

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from speaking in schools (Memmi, 1965). Moreover, during colonization, colonized school children were taught that their culture was savage and uncivilized and that European history and culture were far more superior to theirs (Fanon, 1965; Rodney, 1972). They were stripped not only of their history but also of the knowledge of their geography. Rodney states, “Colonial schooling was education for subordination, exploitation, the creation of mental confusion, and the development of underdevelopment” (p. 241). Along the same lines, Memmi (1965) argues, “The most serious blow suffered by the colonized is being removed from history and from the community” (p. 91). They were treated as objects rather than as subjects of history. Simply stated, their human agency was shattered. These inequities that have been happening in schools necessitate that we critically rethink school and its purpose. We need to rethink schools, as this institution has not served the needs of the oppressed.

Rethinking Schools Various views, at times conflicting, about what is the purpose of or what should be the purpose of school, often emerge in heated educational debates. One’s ideological and intellectual formation, social class, and existential experiences often influence these views. One’s view about schools might also stem from one’s colonial mentality. Those endowed with such mentality tend to see schools, for example, as a place where students ought to be taught the canon, namely Western-dominant ideology and practices. One’s viewpoint of the purpose of schools might be shaped by one’s personal and professional experiences with, and observations of, the type of citizens the school system produces. Such experiences and observations often lead to conflicting views about the purpose of schools. While for some the purpose of schools might be to prepare students for the labor force, for others it may be to spark in them intellectual curiosity while at the same time challenging them to think deeper and critically about educational, racial, political, and socio-economic issues affecting their lives and those of their fellow human beings. Still for others, whose views have been influenced by white supremacist ideology, the purpose of schools might be to transform the “savage” into civilized human beings by teaching them great Western moral and ethical Western values, among other myths. Generally, individuals express or support views about schools that seem to serve their interests. For instance, individuals of lower and poorer socio-economic background might see schools as a way out of their agonized socio-economic and existential conditions. Their view on the purpose of schools is informed by such conditions. Conversely, someone from a privileged economic background might see schools as a place where they might learn how to gain political power and higher status in society. These are two radically different views about the purpose or what should be the purpose of schools. In addition to the professional and academic formation students receive in schools and moral values they are taught, wherein they ought to be inspired to become critical

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thinkers with progressive views about education and are well-equipped to actively read, understand, and participate in the complex world in which we all live—a world where resources gap between affluent students and poor students, particularly working class students of color, seems to be widening every day. As equally important, schools should help students become compassionate, loving, and responsible citizens prepared to serve their community and humanity at large. Achieving such ambitious goals would require inclusive, progressive, and humanistic teaching practices taking place in all schools, not only in the so-called good schools. It is worth examining various views informing the social construction and symbolic representation of a good school. The definition of a good school is contextual and influenced by conflicting views, ideologies, and antagonistic interests. Metaphorically, a school is like a tree; it can and should only be judged by what it produces. A good school is commonly judged by its academic outcome, including the higher rate of student academic success. This is not coincidental, however. This success has much to do with the manner in which the school personnel, particularly teachers, have prepared students to face challenges beyond classroom walls and school fences. Also, the academic success stories of good schools are linked to the financial support they receive from various wealthy donors and the government, and these schools are usually located in relatively safe and affluent neighborhoods. In short, schools that effectively and sufficiently prepare students to become successful academically, intellectually, and professionally are often labeled as good schools. Those that fail to do so are usually stigmatized as bad schools—regardless of the root causes of such failure—and eventually closed by the government, usually at the expense of the academic achievement of racially and socio-economically marginalized students.

Redefining Student Academic Achievement Student academic achievement has been at the center of educational and political discussions for centuries. However, what seems missing in these discussions is the critical examination of important questions, such as: Student academic achievement, whose definition? Achieving what? Often, what students achieve in schools does not seem to be appreciated and valued by the school personnel, including teachers, particularly if their achievement does not fit the norm, that is, meeting the expectations of the school status quo. Even those labeled as deviant and rebellious students achieve in schools but their achievement is often overlooked, as it is not part of the dominant narrative about student achievement. Therefore, our analysis of student achievement will be limited, if we do not take into account this factor. As noted earlier, factors such as unequal distribution of resources among students and schools also need to be accounted for in our analysis. Why do certain students achieve in schools—that is, meeting the school benchmark and expectations by obtaining good grades and successfully graduating—while

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others do not? Privileged students who attend private schools often become successful academically, professionally, and economically. In contrast, poor kids of color as well as poor White kids who go to underfunded schools with overcrowded classrooms led by underpaid teachers tend to perform poorly academically. This category of students tends to be predominantly racial minorities who are often denied opportunities, which could have helped them fulfill their potential and become as successful academically as their White counterparts. Racism occurs at institutions, like families, the media, churches, and the army. However, given schools are a place where students spend most of their time with teachers, peers, and friends interacting with one another while being exposed to various schools of thought and ideologies, ways of being in and seeing the world, and learning all kinds of stereotypes, including racial stereotypes, this institution needs to be accounted for in our unit analysis of racial oppression affecting students, teachers, and administrators of color. School practices that are race-based need to be challenged; they often lead to racial marginalization and academic failure of historically oppressed students. Racial biases that have been historically entrenched in schools must be unschooled. That is, they must be unlearned. Since colonial time, schools have been one of the institutions where systemic racism has occurred affecting the learning and life chances and opportunities of minority students. Learned racial biases in schools influence ways and the degree to which individual classmates and teachers perceive and treat one another (Matias, 2016). For instance, students who hold deep-seated racial prejudice against other students of color often discriminate against them. These biases are learned through socialization in schools. This is to say that the behavior and actions of teachers who mistreat students of different racial and ethnic backgrounds are often informed by prejudices and stereotypes learned in schools and/or from home but reinforced in schools. Therefore, if racism is to be eradicated, the anti-racism work must also be done in schools. There are many injustices associated with systemic racism. One of the cruelest ones is the criminalization of young schoolboys and schoolgirls of color in schools leading to their massive arrest and incarceration in the U.S. penal system (Alexander, 2012). In other words, schools in the United Sates have become the safe backdoor for reviving and practicing Jim Crow policy. Every parent believes or wants to believe that schools are a safe place where teachers teach students prepare, and inspire them to succeed academically and professionally in life. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, as school is not an equitable institution. In fact, it is institution where systemic racial oppression occurs quite frequently affecting students, teachers, and administrators of color—racism needs to be un-schooled. By un-schooling systemic racism, it is meant critically examine and deracinate racial and cultural biases entrenched in school curriculum materials that are reproduced in teachers’ teaching practices, unfavorably impacting the learning and lives of students and educators of color. Conceptually, un-schooling systemic racism entails observing, analyzing, and documenting what is happening in schools to determine whether culturally responsive and inclusive pedagogical choices are made to ensure all students’ academic success. Un-schooling systemic racism also requires looking

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into the historical root and consequences of inequitable distribution of resources among schools and students. For example, while schools located in urban areas attended predominantly by students of color and poor Whites are often denied adequate resources, others situated in suburban neighborhoods have abundant resources, and they are attended mainly by White middle and upper class students and, sometimes, a few students of color, usually selected carefully for diversity quota purposes. As important, un-schooling systemic racism needs to be done through state-mandated policy implementation of (1) racially and culturally relevant school curriculum materials; (2) culturally and racially relevant pedagogies; (3) unbiased distribution of resources among school districts according to their needs; and (4) recruitment and retention of qualified teachers, including male teachers of color, who are eager to engage, teach, and learn with and from Black and Brown students from diverse ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds. Racism needs to be un-schooled particularly as schools are becoming more and more racially segregated. Racial segregation is commonly occurring in the school cafeteria between minority students and their White counterparts (Stewart, 2019). Specifically, White students usually sit with other White students, and students of color do the same thing. This form of racial segregation stems from structural racism at best and the lack of efforts of those in power to ensure equity and equality in resources are a reality for all schools and students. Despite the vicious effects of racial segregation on students, the fear to talk about race and racism in schools and the larger American society persists. People, including educators and students who believe in and embrace the colorblind discourse, continue to deny the existence of race and racism in schools and society at large. It is important to engage in educational discussions about systemic racism in an effort to challenge and expose its multilayered effects on students of color. Racism has been used to justify the poor quality of education that these students have received in the American school system as well as their dire socio-economic conditions. Because of systemic racism, students of color are generally more likely to attend underfunded schools and grow up and die in poverty than their White counterparts (Bonilla-Silva, 2010, 2017). Research shows that students of color tend to receive poorer quality education than Whites in the American school system, and they tend to drop out of school before finishing their degrees (Bonilla-Silva, 2010, 2017; Howard, 2010; Kozol, 2012). Moreover, they, particularly African Americans, have historically been used as guinea pigs in scientific laboratories, like it was the case during the Syphilis epidemic in the 1940 and 1950s (Fairchild & Bayer, 1999). Finally, systemic racism is evident in wealth inequality between Whites and non-Whites. Research shows Whites are more likely to get paid higher salary than non-Whites for the same types of jobs. The salient manifestation of systemic racism needs to be given attention in educational debates, more specifically in meetings taking place in schools, given its deep effects on students, teachers, and administrators, particularly those of different racial and cultural backgrounds.

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Why Un-Schooling Systemic Racism? We need to un-school racism, which is connected to varying forms of inequities to which students of color are subjected in American schools and society as a whole. As already highlighted, this systemic oppression is manifested in the poor quality education students of color have received in the school system and the abject poverty leading to great sufferings they have undergone in society as a whole. Racism was invented and has ever since been used systemically to maintain people of color in oppressive educational, socio-economic, and political situations, among others. It is undeniably entrenched in American society as well as in the school system, particularly in school curriculum materials, which are plagued with racial and cultural biases to which minority students have been subjected. These biases influence ways and the degree to which individual White students, teachers, and administrators have perceived and treated them. The American school system needs to be a place where teachers educate, adequately prepare, and inspire “other people’s children”, regardless of their racial, cultural, socio-economic, historical, and sexual backgrounds. What has been missing from and problematic about the mainstream narrative about school reform adopted by political pundits, both liberal and conservative, is the denial of the fact that the American educational system is an institution where minority students, namely Black, Latinx, Asian, and Native American students, have been disproportionately racially, historically, and culturally discriminated against, including being stripped of the knowledge of their history and their culture often absent in biased school curriculum materials. What makes matters worse are teachers’ implicit biases in their interaction with students and teaching practices stemming from their lack of racial and cultural awareness of the diverse groups of students they serve. These biases often lead to the perpetuation of racial and cultural stereotypes about these students (Nieto & Bode, 2018; Woodson, 2006). What is more, parents of color are often left out of the conversation happening in schools about the learning of their children due to several factors, including cultural and racial differences between them and the school personnel, namely teachers and administrators, who tend to be predominantly White of middle class background, whereas these parents tend to be of working class background complicating the communication barrier. These differences should not be used as excuses to not engage in genuine dialogues with parents about their children’s academic progress [or lack thereof]. What is missing is a collective communal effort to bridge the cultural, racial, and social class gaps between home and school, which will facilitate the dialogue between parents and school personnel revolved what needs to be done collectively to ensure all people’s children succeed in school and beyond. School reforms can’t and will not resolve this issue as we have unsuccessfully tried too many of them already. Instead, above all, what we really need is to un-school racism so that we can have a school system that serves students equitably and respectfully, irrespective of their

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racial background and socio-economic status. We must un-school racism because it is an equitable pathway to: 1. Equal and equitable distribution of, and access to, resources, both material and human resources, like mentoring and tutoring. 2. The implementation in schools of unbiased educational policies that protect students, teachers, and administrators of all colors. 3. The implementation of racially and culturally relevant pedagogy and school curriculum materials that reflect the diverse experiences of students of all colors. 4. A careful selection of qualified pre-K-12 teachers, particularly teachers that are racially and culturally well-equipped and eager to teach students of color in urban school settings, namely poor Black and Brown students. 5. An anti-racist education that aims to radically transform schools into an institution, where all students have both equal and equitable resource opportunities to learn and succeed academically and beyond. In brief, unschooling systemic racism entails transforming schools into a dignified and safe learning zone for all students, where they can all excel regardless of their race, socio-economic status, gender, culture, language, religion, and sexuality. In short, un-schooling systemic racism is the sine qua non condition to radically transform the American school system into a place where there are equitable and equal learning success opportunities, dignified and safe living conditions for all students, including the racially and economically marginalized ones. Un-schooling systemic racism is an immense task, as this form of oppression is often hidden through people’s smiling faces.

Conclusion Schools have been complacent and complicit in the miseducation and the poor treatment of people of color, namely students of color, and this is not coincidental. Those holding key positions in society have been for the most part Whites benefiting from racial privileges, and so they might have no genuine interest in transforming the school White status quo from which they have profited, including building their professional career. Hence, educators, parents, families and other concerned members of society need take the urgent task at hands to fight for the eradication of racism in schools. Given systemic racism is rampant in schools and other social institutions, and has affected people of color across social class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and nationality and religions, un-schooling systemic racism is imperative and would contribute to equitable schools in all communities and in all districts benefiting society at large. Racism is not a people of color’s problem, although they are the ones who have been victimized by it the most. Rather, it is a systemic problem that should concern White people who invented it for their own material and symbolic interests. It must be eradicated in schools, and Whites need to take an active part with people of

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color in the fight against it. Unschooling systemic racism will require not merely good intention and empty rhetoric of White, Black, or Brown people but rather concrete steps toward its eradication. Unschooling racism requires that we name, challenge and publicly expose racially biased school policies leading to the existence and imposition of school curriculum materials usually handed to White middle class teachers to “teach” urban students of color. It also entails standing up against racially and culturally biased standardized tests that have not served Black and Brown students in underfunded public schools but they have been compelled to take them. Finally, unschooling systemic racism means denouncing oppressive practices, such as racial profiling, micro-aggression, and White gaze to which students, teachers, and administrators of color have been subjected (Orelus et al., 2020b).

References Alexander, M. (2012). The new jim crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2010). Anything but racism: How social scientists limit the significance of race. New York: Routledge. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2017). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Darder, A. (Ed.). (2019). Decolonizing interpretive research: A subaltern methodology for social change. Routledge. Fairchild, A. L. & Bayer, R. (1999). Uses and abuses of tuskegee. Essays on Science and Society. 284(5416), 919–921. Fanon, F. (1965). The wretched of the earth (Vol. 390). New York: Grove Press. Garcia, O., & Kleifgen, J. (2018). Educating emergent bilinguals: Policies, programs, and practices for English learners. New York: Teachers College Press. Gorski, P. (2017). Reaching and teaching students in poverty: Strategies for erasing the opportunity gap. New York: Teachers College Press. Gorski, P., & Pothini, S. (2017). Case studies on diversity and social justice education. New York: Routledge. Grande, S. (2015). Red pedagogy: Native American social and political thought. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. Howard, T. (2010). Why race and culture matter in schools: Closing the achievement gap in America’s classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press. Jensen, R. (2005). The heart of whiteness: Confronting race, racism, and white privilege. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books. Kozol, J. (2006). The shame of the Nation: The restoration of apartheid schooling in America. New York: Broadway. Kozol, J. (2012). Savage inequalities: Children in America’s schools. New York: Random House LLC. Love, B. L. (2019). We want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Cambridge, MA: Beacon Press. Matias, C. E. (2013). Check Yo’self before You wreck Yo’self and our kids: Counterstories from culturally responsivewhite teachers?…To culturally responsive white teachers! Interdisciplinary Journal of Teaching and Learning, 3(2), 68–81. Matias, C. E., & Zembylas, M. (2014). When saying you care is not really caring: Emotions of disgust, whiteness ideology, and teacher education. Critical Studies in Education, 55(3), 319–337.

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Matias, C. (2016). Feeling white: Whiteness, emotionality, and education. The Netherlands: Brill Sense. Memmi, A. (1965). The colonizer and the colonized. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Mills, C. (1997). The racial contract. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Nieto, S., & Bode, P. (2018). Affirming diversity: The socio-cultural context of multicultural education. Boston: Pearson Education Inc. Noguera, P. A. (2009). The trouble with black boys:… And other reflections on race, equity, and the future of public education. New York: Wiley. Omi, M., & Winant, H. (2014). Racial formation in the United States. New York: Routledge. Orelus, P. W. (2018). Can subaltern professors speak?: Examining micro-aggressions and lack of inclusion in the academy. Qualitative Research Journal, 18(2), 169–179. Orelus, P. W. (2020a). The cost of being professors and administrators of color in predominantly white institutions: Unpacking micro-aggression, isolation, exclusion, and unfairness through a critical race lens. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 1–16. Orelus, P. W., Malott, C., & Hafner, A. H. (2020b). Youth of color living and learning in the age of racial paranoia: What social justice educators need to know. Taboo Journal, 19(1), 91–108. Rodney, W. (1972). How Europe underdeveloped Africa (pp. 107–125). Beyond borders: Thinking critically about global issues. Solórzano, D. G. (1998). Critical race theory, racial and gender microaggressions, and the experiences of Chicana and Chicano scholars. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11, 121–136. Solorzano & Yosso. (2009). Critical race methodology: Counter-storytelling as an analitical framework for educational research. In Taylor, E., Gillborn, D., & Ladson-Billings, G. (Eds.) Foundations of critical race theory in education (pp.131–147). New York: Routledge. Soto, D. L. (2011). Latino Hope. New York City: Springer. Spring, J. (2010). Deculturalization and the struggle for equality: A brief history of the education of dominated cultures in the United States (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages. Spring, J. (2017). American education. New York: Routledge. Stewart, D. L. (2019). Why are all the black kids stting together in the cafeteria?: And other conversations about race by Beverly Daniel Tatum. Journal of College Student Development, 60(6), 738–741. Thiong’o, N. (1986). Decolonizing the mind: The politics of language in African literature. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Woodson, C. G. (2006). The mis-education of the Negro. New York: Book Tree. Zinn, H. (2010). A people’s history of the United States 1492-present. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

Chapter 6

The Savage Effects of Racism in Schools and Society Exposed

The savage is the incarnation of unrestrained passions, uncontrolled rage and sexuality. The savage is a cannibal, a horrifying and brutal beast. To some extent this image arose from repressed white passions projected on the black Africans-repressed fear of slave revolts, repressed sexuality, repressed drives to dominate and to destroy. Wilson (1996, p. 74) The Europeans lumped together all Indians regardless of cultural and physical differences into one single group of more or less “savage” beings. Race ideology was used repeatedly to support America’s policy of broken treaties, stolen lands, enforced apartheid, and improvement. It was not until the passage of the Indian Citizenship act in 1924 that Indians were given American citizenship. Better (2007, p. 7)

The word savage comes to the forefront of controversial debates revolved around slavery and colonization. This word is racially loaded, and has been horrifically used to misrepresent and stigmatize people of color, particularly Blacks and Native Americans. Specifically, because the savage label has been attached to the racial and cultural identities of historically oppressed groups, they have suffered a great deal of oppression, including “symbolic violence” (Bourdieu, 1991, 1998). For example, Native American school children were stigmatized as savage, removed from their families, and placed in White Christian schools to be civilized supposedly (Spring, 2010). For the purpose of this book, the word savage is specifically used to expose brutal forms of systemic racism that have been inflicted on the soul, spirit, and body of Black and Brown people, including school children of color. The historical construction of the word savage and its negative connotations associated with people of color are explored in this chapter in order to demonstrate the manner in which it is connected to the legacy of slavery, colonization, and white supremacy, and how it continues to be used to stereotype, stigmatize, and discriminate against people of color, particularly Naïve Americans and Blacks.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. W. Orelus, Unschooling Racism, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53795-1_6

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Who Is Really the Savage? The word savage was one of the commonly derogatory terms the colonizer used to label, denigrate, dehumanize, and exploit the slaves and the colonized (Better, 2007; Wilson, 1996). European colonizers tried to crush the spirit of Native Americans, Africans, African Americans, as well as Blacks from the Caribbean by referring to their culture, language, and religion as savage (Better, 2007). In the eyes of the colonizer, these oppressed groups were sub-humans whose humanity could be denied. Paraphrasing Sartre (1993), throughout colonization, the colonized were reduced to a state of nothingness. They were treated as objects rather than objects of history. Their humanity was under constant psychological and physical assault by the slave master and the colonizer. While the White master was raping female slaves with impunity, male slaves were severely whipped and killed for daring to have sex with White females. In the eyes of the slave master and the colonizer, the slaves and the colonized were savages that needed to be tamed; they should not be allowed to mingle with White females, let alone having sexual intercourse with them. During slavery and colonial era, the word savage was intentionally used to make oppressed groups feel inferior to their White European counterparts. The colonial and slave masters labeled oppressed groups, namely Africans, Native Americans, African Americans, Blacks, Asians, and Arabs as savage, in order to further control, dominate, and exploit them. Their grotesque misrepresentation led to an asymmetrical power relation between the so-called civilized Whites and the uncivilized Africans. In the case of the colonized African school children particularly who were portrayed and treated as savage, they were forced to be educated in the languages of their European colonizers, while their mother tongues were perceived and treated as inferior (Thiong’o, 1986). As already noted, colonized children were taught in schools to believe that European culture, language, literature, art, and history were superior to theirs and therefore they must emulate them (Fanon, 1965, 1967; Memmi, 1965; Thiong’o, 1986). Consequently, “African countries, as colonies and even today as neo-colonies, came to be defined and to define themselves in terms of the languages of Europe: Englishspeaking, French-speaking or Portuguese-speaking African countries” (Thiong’o, 1986, p. 5). European colonizers and European conquistadors took over the indigenous lands and colonized them. As an example, Native Americans, whom White European colonizers called savage, were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in boarding schools, only to be stripped of their culture, languages, and traditions. Spring (2010) notes: An important part of these educational policies was the boarding school, designed to remove children from their families at an early age and thereby isolate them from the language and customs of their parents and tribes. These boarding schools were different from those operated by the Choctaws in Indian Territory, which were somewhat elite institutions within their educational system and were not destroy Indian customs and languages. (p. 33)

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Native Americans were denied American citizenship until the US Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924—they were granted this legal right nearly after two centuries since the Naturalization Act of 1790, which excluded them from U.S. citizenship (Spring, 2010). Similarly, Blacks in the United States were denied voting rights until 1968. In the case of the United States particularly, during slavery and Jim Crow era, millions of Blacks were not only denied the right to vote but they were routinely beaten by dogs and hung (Alexander, 2012) Africans, African Americans, and Native Americans were not the only ethnic and racial groups who were, and continue to be, called and treated as savage. After World War II, Asians, particularly Japanese, were treated as savage; many were forcibly placed and piled up like animals in internment camps, under the pretext that they represented a threat to the security of the United States (Howard, 2010; Takaki, 1993; Zinn, 2010). Howard (2010) notes, “A close look at the experience of Native Americans during the 18 and 19th centuries, the enslavement of Africans for over 4 centuries, the Japanese Internment during World Word II, and the economic exploitation of Chinese immigrants in the late 1800s reveals the United States’ inability to deal with difference” (p. 43). Along the same lines, it is worth also noting that Jews, Gypsies, Gays, and disabled people were treated and murdered like savage animals by Hitler and his supporters. In the so-called post-slavery and post-colonial era, Black and Brown people continue to be called savage by political pundits. For example, President Trump, then presidential candidate, was criticized for calling Mexican immigrants rapist and African Americans thugs. Supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement have been called thugs, among other loaded racial epithets, for protesting against police brutality, institutional racism, and White supremacy. Their assertiveness and strong sense of commitment to the struggle are often taken as signs of arrogance. They are expected to stay in “their place.” Those who refuse to be put in “their place,” as expected by those in power, are often labeled troublemakers—a rather negative label commonly placed on people who refuse to comply to injustice. The image of savagery that was created about enslaved and colonized people during slavery and colonization did not suddenly disappear with the official/legal independence of formerly colonized countries and the liberation of enslaved Africans. Such image persists in the mind of White supremacist groups and individuals. The murders of African Americans, like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Renisha McBride, and Sandra Bland by police officers are examples of savage forms of racism. Savage racism is the highest stage of White supremacist action against people of color. Yet, racially privileged groups in society continue to deny its savage effects on the subjective and material conditions of Black and Brown people using the colorblind discourse, among other ideological camouflages.

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White Denials and Complicity in Maintaining Racism The misrepresentation of Blacks and other racialized minorities promoted through schools and the mainstream media has led to their marginalization in society. Many Whites experience paranoia and anxiety when surrounded by Blacks, especially when they feel the latter are invading their so-called space. Wise (2011) shared his experiences as a boy internalizing racial stereotypes and prejudices about Blacks and other minorities. Specifically, Wise (2011) states that the constant negative messages and images of Blacks and other minority groups that he learned and internalized as a child had made him fear them. He further argues that at the same time his direct observation of the profound socioeconomic, academic, and political damages of racism on people of color led him to become a White ally. The fear that has been created about Blacks that Wise (2011) describes in his work is not new, at least not to people of color. Those in power have invented, circulated, and institutionalized in schools, the mass media, families, and churches, the fear of Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, Arabs, and other racialized groups in order to maintain the racial [dis] order serving their interests. Systemic racism is a serious social justice issue affecting the lives of billions of people around the globe. However, racially privileged groups in society have often tried to deny it or simply avoid talking about it. People’s indifferent attitude to this systemic oppression can, and has had, contributed to maintaining the White status quo that serves their interests and those of their families and close friends. Their attitude toward systemic racism suggests they have no human sensibility. Some Whites seem to have chosen to be in a constant state of racial denial, instead of acknowledging their White privileges that protect them from the daily beast of racism and White supremacy. It is not surprising, for since slavery, individual Whites in cahoots with institutions, like colleges and universities, have historically benefited from institutional racism. Indeed, research shows that many predominant and prestigious White colleges and universities had historically built their wealth on the back of enslaved Africans (Wilder, 2013). Whites, including teachers, administrators, students, and colleagues, who do not want to challenge their White privileges and confront their own racism often find comfort in using the colorblind discourse to justify their silence: I Don’t See Color or I am not a Racist. These forms of seemingly naïve racial discourse serve the interests of Whites who do not want to be called racist while enjoying their sweet White privileges (Matias & Zembylas, 2014). Bonilla-Silva (2003) observes, Nowadays, except for members of white supremacist organizations, few whites in the United States claim to be ‘racist.’ Most whites assert they ‘don’t see any color, just people’; that although the ugly face of discrimination is still with us, it is no longer the central factor determining minorities’ life chances; and, finally, that like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., they aspire to live in a society where ‘people are judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.’ More poignantly, most whites insist that minorities (especially blacks) are the ones responsible for whatever ‘race problem’ we have in this country. They publicly denounce blacks for ‘playing the race card,’ for demanding the maintenance of unnecessary and divisive race-based programs, such as affirmative action, and for crying

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‘racism’ whenever they are criticized by whites. Most whites believe that if blacks and other minorities would just stop thinking about the past, work hard, and complain less (particularly about racial discrimination), the Americans of all hues could ‘all get along’ (p. 1).

In my professional observation of, and experiences with, racially privileged and conservative groups, they often avoid discussions revolved around institutional racism. When they do engage in such discussions, they often fall back on their patterns of blaming the victims for their own victimization (Ryan, 1976), instead of recognizing the reality of their White privileges and their complicity in maintaining racism by refusing to talk about it. They tend to hold progressive views on social justice issues, like gay and women’s rights and the environment and feel that they can make racist jokes or comments about people of color in front of other people of color but still in their head they are not racist. Because of their grand rhetoric about social justice issues noted above affecting marginalized groups, many White liberals that I have worked with want to be perceived and be taken as progressive. This category of White liberals is not to be mistaken for sincere White allies who have joined people of color in the daily struggle to end the violence of systemic racism. For instance, the White liberals that I have worked have often used the cliché I Am Not a Racist seemingly as a well-designed discourse to veil their deep-seated racism. Their grand discourse on race has become a performance tool they use to continue to benefit from White hegemony and systemic racism. Many Whites do not believe they are racist while their actions contradict their speeches. In other words, I Am Not a Racist is a nice racial denial discourse that many Whites have used to cover up their individual racism. This category of Whites is more challenging to deal with than those who are overtly racists supporting savage forms of racism, like lynching. Besides lynching, savage forms of racism include: (1) grotesque unequal distribution of resources between Whites and non-Whites and (2) the school-to-prison pipeline to which racially marginalized groups, including poor students of color, have been subjected. These issues need to be brought to the forefront of debates revolved around social justice issues in education. Experiencing grotesque forms of systemic racism has been the reality of racially oppressed groups who have often been ignored. People of color, particularly those of African descendent, have faced all kinds of violence of racism in schools and society at large. For example, many have been called names, like nigger and monkey, and treated as boys or girls, regardless of their age and social status. They have been portrayed in the mass media, particularly in major Hollywood movies, as thugs and thieves. Yet, racism has been made a feared subject to discuss in schools, even though it is impacting people of color daily. Many Marxist and public intellectuals do not talk about systemic racism. In fact, some rarely mention race or racism in their public talks, let alone in their scholarly writings, but focus on capitalism, neoliberalism, and U.S. imperialism, even though all forms of oppression intersect (Crenshaw, 2019). For example, White male American and European intellectuals activists, like Slavoj Zizek (2012) and Richard Wolff (2012), respectively, have eloquently talked

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about the damaging effects of Western capitalism on the poor. They have painstakingly unveiled the manner in which capitalism and neoliberalism have been responsible for the deterioration of people’s lives, particularly those of workers, across the globe. Their scholarly work and public speeches have raised consciousness among people, including students, professors and workers, about the damaging impact of Western capitalism on people living both in the West and developing world. These intellectuals are highly admired by people around the globe for their courage, audacity, and fearlessness to write about, and speak against, the oppressive capitalist machine. However, racism, which is twin brother of capitalism, is not emphasized in Žižek’s or Wolf’s scholarly work. The question then begs: Why is systemic racism, which is connected to capitalism and neoliberalism, left out in their analysis? Doing so serves mainly to cover up symptoms of capitalism as a social ill, not to eradicate it, for both racism and capitalism are intertwined. We need to engage in honest and genuine conversation about the intersection of capitalism with racism and colonization, as all forms of oppression are connected. Heavily focusing on one form of oppression and leaving others out fails to capture the depth of the ways in which systemic oppression intersects. Systemic racism rarely surfaces in political debates related to capitalism, even though it has been used as a socio-economic means to achieve specific economic ends. During slavery, racism was the powerful tool used by the White master to oppress and exploit the slaves. Although slavery is supposedly officially over, racism has continued to be used in different context by dominant groups to oppress and exploit marginalized people, such as African Americans, Native Americans, Latino(a)s, Asians, and immigrants of color. We need a significant paradigmatic shift in unequal racial, educational, and socioeconomic power relations between people of color and Whites. Even though the United States elected for the first time a black president, Barack Obama, after centuries of political domination and control by privileged heterosexual, Christian, and able-bodied White males, this country remains racially and economically segregated. The symbolic and historical presidency of President Obama does not necessarily mean that we are living in or approaching a postracial era. Institutional racism played a determining role in enslaving the Africans and Blacks, and it continues to matter today in their mistreatment in schools and other social institutions. They will continue to face systemic, unless there is a profound transformation of the system, including the American school system. Such system, which has been dominated by privileged and heterosexual White males, would not have been able to survive for centuries had it not been unequally race- and gender-based. More specifically, this system that we have now has been able to survive for centuries because of the superiority myth that has been historically created about whiteness. Hence, as long as Whites and colonized people of color alike continue to believe in this myth, they will in tandem consciously or not continue to support the status quo, which relies on the exploitation and subjugation of Black and Brown people and poor Whites to sustain itself. A system that racially isolates and economically exploits people because of their color is a weak system.

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In addition, a system that is targeting a certain group of people because of their skin tone is an intolerant and oppressive system that needs to be radically restructured. What is more, a system that privileges a small group of wealthy Whites over poor people of color is a decaying system. Moreover, a system that punitively exploits workers, yet refuses to grant them access to healthcare and other benefits is a sordid system. Finally, a system that is ran by a small privileged group who lie to, mislead young people, including young people of color, and send them to kill and be killed in wars for corporate interests is an immoral system, which should be dismantled.

Conclusion This system will require not merely good intention and empty rhetoric of White, Black, or Brown politicians, but rather concrete steps toward its transformation. Some of the steps need to entail un-schooling racism as a pathway to raising consciousness and taking steps against racial biases embedded in the school curriculum, standardized tests that mostly affect poor Black and Brown students have been forced to take in order to graduate high school or move to a higher grade level, as well as racist and oppressive practices such as racial profiling, White gaze, and other forms of institutional surveillance to which students and teachers of color have been subjected. Schools have been complacent and complicit in the poor treatment of people of color, and this is not coincidental. Those who hold key positions, such as school principals, directors, department chairs, deans, provosts, and presidents at these institutions have been for the most part racially privileged groups who may have no interest in transforming the status quo from which they have benefited, including building their professional career. Institutional racism is rampant in schools, and has affected not only students of color but also teachers and administrators of color. Racism is not an individual people of color’s problem but rather a systemic problem, which should concern everyone, particularly those who have invented it.

References Alexander, M. (2012). The new jim crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Better, S. (2007). Institutional racism: A primer of theory and strategies for social change. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Trans. G. Raymond & M. Adamso. Cambridge, England: Polity. Bourdieu, P. (1998). Practical reason. London: Polity. Crenshaw, K. (2019). On intersectionality: essential writings. New York: The New Press. Fanon, F. (1965). The wretched of the earth (Vol. 390). New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin white MASKS. New York: Grove Press. Howard, T. (2010). Why race and culture matter in schools: Closing the achievement gap in America’s Classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press.

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Matias, C. E., & Zembylas, M. (2014). When saying you care is not really caring: Emotions of disgust, whiteness ideology, and teacher education. Critical Studies in Education, 55(3), 319–337. Memmi, A. (1965). The colonizer and the colonized. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Ryan, W. (1976). Blaming the victim. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Spring, J. (2010). Deculturalization and the struggle for equality: A brief history of the education of dominated cultures in the United States (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages. Takaki, R. (1993). A different mirror: A history of multicultural America. New York: Little, Brown & co. Thiong’o, N. (1986). Decolonizing the mind: The politics of language in African literature. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Wilder, G. (2103). Ebony and Ivy: Race, slavery, and the troubled history of America’s Universities. London: Bloomsbury. Wilson, C. (1996). Racism: From slavery to advanced capitalism. New York: Sage Publications. Wise, T. (2011). White like me: Reflections on race from a privileged son. Berkeley, CA: Soft Skull Press. Wolff, R. D. (2012). Democracy at work: A cure for capitalism. Haymarket books. Zinn, H. (2010). A people’s history of the United States 1492-present. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics. Zizek, S. (2012). Less than nothing: Hegel and the shadow of dialectical materialism. New York: Verso Books.

Chapter 7

Youth of Color Living and Learning in the Age of Racial Paranoia

Theories have value only when they can be demonstrated and used in daily practice and when they offer concrete possibilities. Grant and Sleeter (2002, p. vii)

We are faced with the undeniable pivotal modern history of resurgent White supremacist ideology and practices fueling fear of “others.” As such, as educators, we ought to take concrete actions toward greater social justice education while engaging in critical dialogue toward healing. The current culture and racial war in schools and society at large and its effects on youth of color particularly indicates the need for a new anti-racist education, and implicates the key spaces of schools and education as sites of struggle in battling for a multicultural future free of all forms of bigotry. As an increasing number of Whites in the United States self-identifying as racially blind claim to have broken from the United States’ long history of racism, young people from all backgrounds are taking concrete action against all forms of bigotry, including capitalist ideology that blames the poor for their poverty and xenophobic tendencies that aim to dehumanize the LGBTQ community. Indeed, more and more young people, of all backgrounds, are realizing that claiming to be colorblind, classblind, or genderblind as an individual does nothing to confront systemic racism, classism, sexism, and other forms of oppression occurring in schools and society at large. While it is challenging to overcome the internalization of racial biases and bigotry that stem from a society with centuries of systemic racism and White supremacy, the youths are forging a way forward through social media and more traditional forms of organizing and activism. Specifically, swelling numbers of youths are joining various organizations, including socialist organizations, to take up the important work of building a mass movement by fighting against racism, environmental degradation, This chapter was recently published as a peer reviewed article with the same title this past spring in Taboo journal. However, it partially was revised to make it fit the scope and match the focus of this book. I co-wrote it with Drs. Andrew Habana Hafner and Curry Malott, respectively. Their contribution was invaluable. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. W. Orelus, Unschooling Racism, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53795-1_7

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LGBTQ oppression, gun violence, and so on (Malott, 2019a). These youths are leading the charge against the racism that has left many Americans seeing and fearing people of color as the other. Indeed, in the current social and political climate, the fear to accept and engage the other has become more widespread, resurfacing publicly in social discourse and public policy. This is to say, systemic racism continues to have an increasingly oppressive impact on youth of color whose growing demographics predict a “majority minority” country in the next three decades or sooner (Nieto & Bode, 2018). The youth-led activism related to the mass detention of asylum-seeking refugees, family separation policies, Muslim bans, and a never-ending narrative of police brutality, and shootings is therefore completely understandable. As such, the last chapter asserts that recognizing and wrestling with the demonization and criminalization of youth of color, and cultural and institutional transformation, is a stance for racial justice in education (Delgado & Stefancic, 2013; Taylor, Gilborn & Gloria-Ladson-billings, 2015). Specifically, this chapter draws from critical race theory and current socio-political and educational issues to explore multilayered forms of racial inequities, including racial paranoia, manifested in behavior and actions of prejudiced individuals and groups, in order to uncover the inner contradictions in an American school and society that continue to struggle to fulfill their promised dream of racial equity. That is, a school system and society where youth and adults of color and poor Whites are given equal opportunities and adequate support to fulfill their potentials (Chang, 1985; Reed, 2013).

Rethinking Racial and Class Formation in the Age of Fear An Intersectional Historical Approach Building on the work of Chang (1985), Reed (2013) notes that, “‘race’—which includes ‘racism,’ as one is unthinkable without the other—is a historically specific ideology that emerged, took shape, and has evolved as a constitutive element within a definite set of social relations anchored to a particular system of production” (p. 49). That there is not only a fundamental difference between an object and the historically mediated idea of it, but that the creation and development of those ideas or racializations have been a central ideological component of modes of production, to both slavery and capitalism (see Malott, 2019b). Racial formation, in other words, is fundamental to class formation (Chang, 1985; Reed, 2013). Reed (2013) outlines a number of examples making this point. In the nineteenth century, for example, “railroad operators and other importers of Chinese labor imagined that Chinese workers’ distinctive racial characteristics” (p. 50) made them more conducive to laying train tracks than White workers. Similarly, in the 1920s Polish immigrants were selected to be steel workers “not for any natural aptitude or affinity” but because of popularized racial categorizations, of which there were dozens (Reed, 2013, p. 51).

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Race, in other words, does not consist of a series of properties that exist in bodies, but are racialized or racist ideas designed to take the place of the thing itself (i.e., people) (Malott, 2019b). As such, the ideology of race is designed to maintain oppressive and exploitative economic relationships (Chang, 1985; Reed, 2013). As the balance of forces between labor and capital shifts, thereby shifting capital’s ideological needs, racial categories also tend to shift. Since the tremendous struggle of the Civil Rights movement not only was overt individual racism severely stigmatized and consequently reduced, but overt racial laws, such as separate but equal, were overturned because such forms of racialization were causing too much instability and therefore became too costly (Reed, 2013). Reed (2013) therefore concludes that the power of race as a marker of essential difference has been degraded. In its place the capitalist class political establishment, especially the Democratic, liberal wing, has found that an anti-racist discourse, separated from its connections to capitalism, even as racial disparities and prejudices persist, has been a more effective form of social control and method for fostering consent to capitalism. Making this point Reed (2013) notes that “versions of racial…equality are now…incorporated into the normative…structure of ‘left’ neoliberalism” (p. 53). In practice, the mantra of equality exists “exclusively within the terms of given patterns of capitalist class relations” (Reed, 2013, p. 53). In other words, it is agreed if the 1% controls 90% of the wealth as long as there is proportional representation within the 1% (Reed, 2013). This is an unpursuable rhetoric of equality informing the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Trump’s overt racism and calls for racist violence, therefore, upset the liberal establishment. However, their objection is not necessarily about racism, but the crude form in which Trump displays it. It is one of the elements of the deepening civil war waging within the capitalist class. In other words, it is not polite to publically call Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers. The liberal Democratic approach is to quietly serve the interests of their corporate donors by funding the militarization of the border. Publicly, the Democrats do not question the underlying premise of the need to protect the border (even though the rate of Mexican and South American immigration into the United States has been declining or reversing for roughly 15 years), but the methods employed. Indeed, since Trump’s presidency, fearing youth of color of different ethnicities, cultures, languages, accents, religions, sexual, and gender identifications has been encouraged in the streets, schools, the media, and other social institutions, even though such trends have been evolving in North America for centuries. However, it is within the strategic interests of the Democratic Party to deny any responsibility and blame it all on Trump since his racism, sexism, and overall bigotry is so overt and grotesque. Nevertheless, the 2017 Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Annual Hate Crime Report indicated a 17% increase in overall hate crimes, with 59.6% motivated by race/ethnicity/ancestry, 20.6% motivated by religion, and 15.8% motivated by sexual orientation (FBI, 2017). The resurgent hate crimes and violence in schools and college campuses has become a national trend, including in our own institutions where hate-fueled behavior has erupted in residence halls, academic buildings, outdoor spaces, and in social

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media. At the same time, after the so-called alt-right (i.e., new fascist) rally in Charlottesville, VA in August of 2017, where anti-fascist activist Heather Heyer was murdered by a White terrorist, youth-led movements have consistently shut down every attempt the racists have made to stage public rallies. For example, a year after Charlottesville a second unite right rally was held in Washington, DC where the racists were outnumbered by anti-racists by more than 1,000 to 1. The mainstream narrative that serves the interests of capital is that Trump has been so successful in making racism popular again that there is no hope for progressive social change. Again, the taboo conclusion is that despite the rise in White supremacist extremism under Trump, White terrorism is marginal and does not represent the mood of the broadest masses of workers, especially White workers. Consequently, the repopularization of socialism and progressive politics in the United States, especially among the youth, offers good reason to be hopeful of not just moderate reforms bur revolutionary change. However, revolutionary change will not come by itself automatically. Nothing is guaranteed or predetermined. With the bigots being emboldened by Donald Trump promoting White nationalism, overt racism is being reinserted into mainstream politics and policies, which have to continue to be confronted and pushed back, and educators must step up and do their part. For example, the [il]legal “Muslim bans” on visa and green card holders from countries, like Yemen, Somalia, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Libya, and Syria, have been proclaimed with an Islamophobic rhetoric and must be rejected. Such bans have intensified discrimination in many ways such as preventing residents in these countries from entering or re-entering the United States for a 90-day period. While the whole world reacted and the country protested this unfair and appalling executive decision, these travel bans have been challenged and appealed in various U.S. courts, ultimately reaching the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the travel ban in a 5-4 decision in June 2018. This executive order is a sign of totalitarianism, further glimpsed in the administration’s proposal to open the U.S. Constitution to deny birthright citizenship to youth of color born in the United States to parents who are undocumented immigrants. Following Obama’s record-setting deportations of immigrants, under Trump’s former Attorney General, Jeff Session— who has since fallen out of favor and was forced to step down—the administration has taken draconian decisions to further massive deportation of immigrants, including youth of color who came here as children, denying them the human rights to stay with their families in the United States (Shear & Nixon, 2017). Meanwhile, the Trump Administration’s ineffectual Secretary of Education, Ms. Betsy Devos, is pursuing a privatization agenda of school choice that will transform public schools into charter schools to enable for-profit educational companies to turn public education into big business. This includes ethical conflicts with her own family and self-interest with student-debt companies that maximize their profits in a trend of exploding student loan debt that is making higher education unattainable for many Americans. Instead of allocating adequate resources to public schools in dire need, American taxpayers’ dollars have been allocated to the U.S. Pentagon and the U.S. military (Giroux, 2011, 2014). Sufficient resources have yet to be devoted to public schools and the health care system in order to alleviate agonizing living conditions of

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the vulnerable, namely poor youth of color and poor Whites. In response to this attack on education, which has been a bi-partisan issue for decades, teachers embarked on a wave of teacher strikes that began in West Virginia in 2018 (Malott, 2019a). It continues to feel as if we are living in a police state, where legal anarchy reigns. Even though President Trump believes in water boarding, which he claims to be a good strategy to gain information from and about terrorists, and even though his government believes in spying on citizens and piling up black and brown people in prison for corporate profits in the name of restoring law and order (Giroux, 2011, 2014), the era of mass incarceration in the United States really took off between 1975 and 1985 and has been a bipartisan issue then entire time (Puryear, 2013). Fortunately, more and more working people, including youth of color, across the United States have been protesting against the Trump administration’s wrong doings. However, not only have Trump’s racist discourse and policies been widely rejected by a great diversity of Americans but also more and more Americans are also beginning to see through the elite hypocrisy and cynicism of the Democratic Party as well. Pointing out the racism and elitism of both the Democrats and the Republicans is certainly also taboo. Jackson (2010) described the brand of racism Trump promotes, which has been promoted by both wings of the capitalist class political establishment especially vigorously throughout the era of mass incarceration (Puryear, 2013), as fostering racial paranoia—the sociological residue of our racist past that shapes the confusions of our current futures.

Racial Paranoia Jackson (2010) discussed racial paranoia as a sociological phenomenon of the postcivil rights era in which “racial distrust” persists despite changes in societal and institutional structures that have legally prohibited racial discrimination. The evolution of racism has made its workings harder to explicitly see in our social, public, and governmental structures. Yet, persistent inequality and ubiquitous personal experience with dismissiveness, discrimination, and deadly force upon people of color prove the perpetuation of racism in America. The point isn’t that race is less important than it was before. It’s just…more paradoxical. We continue to commit to its social significance on many levels, but we seem to disavow that commitment at one and the same time. Race is real, but it isn’t. It has value, but it doesn’t. It explains social difference, but it couldn’t possibly. This kind of racial doublethink drives us all crazy, makes us so suspicious of one another, and fans the flames of racial paranoia. Nothing is innocent, and one bumps into conspirators everywhere (Jackson, 2010, p. 11).

Jackson asserts that Whites and all peoples of color in the racial spectrum experience racial paranoia, although from different historical contexts and lived experiences. At the same time, people have agency, and more and more youth see through the thin veneer of race baiting and are rejecting the old trappings of racial paranoia. Nevertheless, racial paranoia is an everyday phenomenon of U.S. social fabric; and as such, the “instances of distrust are important because racial paranoia translates fear

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into social action” (Jackson, 2010, p. 16). Distrust of the other gives traction to racism and racial discrimination, operationalizing oppressions inherent in our institutional architecture. We argue that racial paranoia is a socially constructed fear about Black and Brown people, and we take particular interest in how systemic racism leading to racial distrust has, in turn, contributed to the way capitalism has historically needed to marginalize and dehumanize youth of color in American society. We further contend that this internalized and irrational fear has been learned at home, reinforced in schools and the mainstream media, and expressed in various ways. Finally, we state that racism has caused racially prejudiced individuals or groups to think, behave, and act in discriminatory and, at times, violent ways against youth of color. In using the idea of racial paranoia, we consider Reed’s (2013) challenge that “formulations that invoke metaphors of disease or original sin reify racism by disconnecting it from the discrete historical circumstances and social structures on which it is embedded, and treating it as an autonomous force” (p. 53). Indeed, while racial paranoia seems to be present, we do not want to make the mistake of arguing or implying that White supremacy is the result of a biological deficiency or genetic abnormality in individuals, but rather, is connected to the forever-developing reproduction of class formation (Reed, 2013). So why use the phrase racial paranoia informing this chapter? Racial paranoia is used in the context of this chapter to underscore behavior and actions of especially White people holding deep racial prejudice against people of color, particularly youth of color. Specifically, in using this phrase, the goal here is to highlight the anxious and racist attitudes of White individuals toward youth of color. As will be explored throughout the chapter, racial paranoia is linked to racist actions taken by White individuals, as reinforced by social institutions that still reflect a White supremacist design. Racially prejudiced individuals tend to display anxiety and even paranoia when surrounded by or are forced to interact with people of color. We do not suggest a direct comparison of racist individuals with individuals who struggle with anxiety. Rather, we claim that internalized racism makes certain individuals react and behave in ways that suggest that they might have experienced racial anxiety and paranoia in the presence of people of color. We further argue that showing erratic behavior toward people of color because one is supposedly feeling “unsafe” in their presence is a manifestation of racial paranoia rooted in internalized racism and White supremacist ideology. Racial paranoia reflects the insidious nature of structural racism in our cultural knowledge and public institutions, especially through schools, colleges, and universities that teach and reproduce this knowledge. It also reflects contradictions in our national character espousing freedom and equality, yet bigots continue to operate from oppressive ideologies of division and exploitation. In order to draw further conceptual parallels between racial paranoia and violent racist actions by racially prejudiced people, the following section draws from a well-publicized racially motivated murder case, the Trayvon Martin’s murder case.

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Context Trayvon Martin was walking through the neighborhood where Mr. Zimmerman lived when the latter decided to follow him and eventually shot him. According to what was recorded in the conversation between Trayvon and his girlfriend, Mr. Zimmerman followed and eventually confronted Trayvon. After a few minutes of exchange of words and physical encounter between the two, Zimmerman shot Trayvon. The Sanford police tried to cover up this murder for about a month, which led to the resignation of Sanford’s police chief, Bill Lee. Martin’s murder generated many protests across the United States and beyond, and put into question major institutions of the U.S. legal system, and the Sanford police in particular. Zimmerman was accused of Trayvon’s murder but was acquitted in July 2013. As soon as the verdict was announced, many protesters took the street to oppose the decision of the jury who acquitted Zimmerman. His acquittal is still a source of outcries in many communities, particularly in communities of color in the United States and abroad. Years later, people around the United States continue to talk about this murder, which, critics have argued, has planted the seed for the Black Lives Matter movement. We argue that the murder of Trayvon is an example of racial paranoia in that Mr. Zimmerman murdered Trayvon as a result of fear of the other stemming from a White supremacist ideology that he apparently has espoused. In critically reflecting on and analyzing Trayvon Martin’s murder case, one must therefore ask the following questions: (1) Had Trayvon been a White boy of middle class background, would Mr. Zimmerman have been suspicious of him, let alone follow him, provoke him, get into a fight with him, and finally shoot him with impunity?; and (2) Would the decision of the jury have been different? The lack of substantive evidence to justify the acquittal of Zimmerman seems to indicate that the American justice system works mostly for people from affluent backgrounds. Even though the focus of this chapter cannot address all the ideological and political underpinnings informing the case outcomes for Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, this case effectively illustrates racist beliefs, attitude, and behavior rooted in institutionalized oppression. This is evident in the ways and the degree to which Zimmerman’s action reflects a White supremacist mindset that misleads him, for example, to believe he could “stand his ground” and murder Trayvon with impunity. Zimmerman was not born violent or racist. He became so through socialization. The sources of his racist mindset are multiple; he might have learned it from home, schools, family, friends, the mainstream media, or religious communities. Because of the distorted image about Blacks promoted in the media and beyond, Mr. Zimmerman might have felt paranoid about the presence of Trayvon, a young dark-skinned African American male. In his blackness, Trayvon became instantly visible, and was suspected as a possible thief or troublemaker invading the safety of Mr. Zimmerman’s neighborhood, and threatening the security of his worldview. Mr. Zimmerman succumbed to racial stereotypes and felt so threatened by the mere presence of Trayvon in his neighborhood that he decided to chase him down and shoot him.

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In light of the analysis of this murder case, it is worth emphasizing that the inhumane portrait of young Black and Brown men in the media, in schools, and in the public arena has led to people’s internalization of their dehumanization. To put it simple, because of the indoctrination of White supremacist ideology, Zimmerman did not seem to consider Trayvon a human being. In his mind, perhaps Trayvon was like an animal which could be killed without regard; yet even our pet animals get human consideration that is more kind. We argue that irrespective of where Zimmerman’s ideology originates, his attitude toward Blacks, and certainly his decision to kill Trayvon in particular are unjustifiable. The murder of young Black and Brown males and females by racially prejudiced people may differ depending on the context but the outcome is the same. For example, the murder of Trayvon Martin took place in a different context from that of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old African American boy who was shot dead at point blank range in 2014 by a White police officer while he was playing in a public park with a fake plastic gun, which the police claimed was mistaken for a real gun. Likewise, Trayvon’s case differs from that of Renisha McBride, the 19-year-old African American teenage girl who was shot by a White man in 2013 while seeking help after being involved in a car accident. Finally, Trayvon’s murder case might have occurred differently than that of Mike Brown, the innocent 19-year-old African American who was shot in 2014 by a White police officer and left dead for hours on the concrete before an ambulance came and took him to the hospital nearby. They were all youth of color murdered by racially paranoid and racist individuals, acting upon White supremacist ideology that allows for apparent dehumanization of others. From countless cases of White police officers and civilians murdering young Black and Brown men and women, we conclude that their actions must have been influenced by internalized racial paranoia and stereotypes of the other. Racial paranoia is circulatory and pervasive. For example, White police officers internalizing racial stereotypes and stigmas about Black or Brown people have used excessive force against and murdered them. Besides police officers, civilians of color have participated in the murder of other people of color they have feared. For example, Mr. Zimmerman, whose mother is a woman of color from Peru and his father, a White American, and who lives in a predominantly White neighborhood, routinely called the police to report on Black people, particularly Black men, walking “suspiciously” in his neighborhood. Ideologically dividing people of color among themselves through institutionalized fear, racial stereotypes, and stigmas has been a strategy used by those in control in society to maintain power. The creation and worldwide circulation of stereotypes, stigmas, fear, and paranoia about people of color has caused many people to behave in irrational ways resulting in discriminatory behaviors against others. These images are ideologically created and circulated by White dominant groups in order to maintain a status quo that has been responsible for the racial, educational, and socio-economic ghettoization of Black and Brown people (Kozol, 2012). The murder cases of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Renisha McBride, and Mike Brown are exemplary ways in which White supremacist ideology has led individuals to commit egregious and cruel actions against youth of color. Racial violence against historically marginalized people is a

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manifestation of racial paranoia rooted in the internalization of fear through White supremacist ideology. Spreading fear and racial stereotypes about people of color, particularly Black youth, through the media has been part of the White nationalist racist project. In recent and current history of this country, projecting fear about the physical appearance, behavior, and actions of young Black men and women and other racially marginalized groups has been part of the strategy of, for example, Trump’s so-called alt-right (i.e., neo-fascist) wing of the capitalist class political establishment (Alexander, 2020; Bonilla-Silva, 2017; Malott & Orelus, 2015). Such strategy has led to both invisibility and visibility of people of color, particularly youth of color. Depending on the nature of the convergent interests, such as the Democratic branch of the capitalist establishment, the symbolic representation of certain people of color in the media can be done through a positive light, like in the case of former President Barack Obama, who was supported by both White liberals and conservative political pundits (Orelus, 2015). A critical race lens on this example is telling, as even former Vice President Joe Biden, then a Democratic Senator, was widely criticized for labeling then presidential candidate Obama “the clean and smart African American,” which he argued was taken out of context. Biden has a long history of supporting racist legislation opposing desegregation and supporting the crime bills responsible for mass incarceration (Puryear, 2013). Self-serving convergent interests are often the driving motor and underlying factors influencing certain representations of individuals and groups of color in the media (Bell, 1993; Delgado & Stefancic, 2013). Historically marginalized groups, particularly Black and Brown people, have been represented in negative ways in the mainstream media, movies, and popular culture, often leading to fear and stereotypes inculcated in the minds of people, particularly Whites. Fear circulated and promoted in such media about Black and Brown bodies has also caused people of color to fear other people of color (David, 2013; David & Derthick, 2014). Specifically, racially marginalized groups have internalized fear of other racially marginalized groups, and they experience and act on such fear when they see other people of color moving into their neighborhood, or simply walking through. Internalized racism impacts all people, although not in the same ways.

Racial Paranoia in Fearing Youth of Color Racial paranoia comes to the surface through the fear of blackness, or Black fear, which might sound like a cliché to those embodied in the “right” skin. However, analyzed through a critical race theory lens, Black fear reveals White racial paranoia often leading to racial discrimination against Blacks primarily and people of color in general, racial segregation, and economic ghettoization shaping many communities in the United States and beyond (Bonilla-Silva, 2017; Kozol, 2012). Indeed, Black fear brings to the fore racial inequality ravaging American society. What is more, Black fear suggests how deeply paranoid and fearful Whites can be about the

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presence of Black people, including Black boys and girls. Because of learned racial paranoia, inculcated in their mind, many people have experienced and expressed fear living in the same neighborhood as Black or Brown people. They consequently tend to flee as soon as some Black and Brown people start moving in—a White flight that maintains societal segregation. The value of houses located in such neighborhood usually decreases, for in the imagination of the general public, White people symbolize safety and capital, whereas Black or Brown bodies represent danger and poverty as reflected in the well-documented history of housing and financial policies of red lining (Rothstein, 2018). In specific terms, through different mediums and mechanisms, Black and Brown people have been portrayed as dangerous and uncivilized people. Consequently, neighborhoods inhabited by people of color are usually seen through and judged based on these racial stigmas and stereotypes. In addition, as a result of Black fear leading to the gradual decrease of the value of houses predominantly occupied by people of color, many Black and Brown families have lost equity value on their houses, and the ability to borrow which is a principal resource for improving life circumstances (Turner, Popkin & Rawlings, 2008). As less federal and state funding goes to their neighborhoods, there is also a resulting decreasing quality of school systems and social services there. Moreover, because of a lack of resources and genuine interests invested in the future of these neighborhoods, they gradually go impoverished, deteriorated, and economically devalued (Rothstein, 2018). In short, Black fear, a manifested form of racial paranoia entrenched in a White capitalist and supremacist strategy aimed to divide, dominate, and control, has affected people of color psychologically, educationally, and socio-economically. Racist individuals are paranoid and anxious when they see a large or a relatively number of people of color invading their “place.” They feel anxious and paranoid because of the racial myths rooted in stereotypes learned about people of color, particularly Blacks, sometimes throughout their life span. Seeing a group of Blacks moving in their neighborhood triggers their paranoia, causes them discomfort, and might even make them feel unsafe. Racist individuals tend to feel apprehensive and uncomfortable when surrounded by people of color whose presence might cause them fear and paranoia. Paranoid, racist individuals often assume that Black people are angry individuals ready to hurt White people, even though this is not the case. Therefore, they (the Blacks) must be feared, avoided, or eliminated. Escobar (2012) commented on evidence of diagnostic bias of psychosis for Blacks by White psychiatrists as possibly based on the notion that the person is “strange, undesirable, bizarre, aggressive, and dangerous” (p. 847). Many police officers, especially racially prejudiced police officers, seem to have suffered some form of racial hallucination as a result of learned White supremacist ideology. In other words, these officers might have been influenced by racial hallucination, as they have routinely racially profiled and brutalized Blacks and other racially marginalized groups. Because of racial hallucination and paranoia caused by their deep-seated learned racial stereotypes and prejudice, these officers might have feared Black and Brown people. Moreover, their racial hallucination and paranoia might have caused them

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to unfairly stop and search them acting on the assumption they might carry drugs or guns with them. Countless brutality and murder cases of people of color, particularly Black and Brown men and women, by police officers in major cities in the United States, such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami, are prime examples. Recall the video of Tamir Rice’s death showing police officers pulling their cruiser up immediately in front of him, jumping to dismount, and fire fatal shots in seconds, without hesitation or warning, as if hallucinating imminent danger, rather than a young boy playing innocently in a park gazebo. It is not only White adults who might have been victims of racial hallucination and paranoia due to the internalization of racial prejudice rooted in White supremacist ideology. Specifically, White children, who have been exposed to internalized racist and supremacist ideology growing up, might have, too, experienced psychological hallucinations, particularly those when watching racially biased and stereotyped videos and Hollywood movies. Blacks and other marginalized groups are often portrayed negatively in these videos and movies. If not portrayed as thieves, they are misrepresented as murderers who kill people, including innocent people, with impunity. They are also portrayed as violent thugs who in the end get killed. Their personality and character are often presented as erratic and violent. In short, people of color have been dehumanized in racially stereotyped videos and Hollywood movies. We are reminded of Frantz Fanon’s experience with a White boy in the street in Paris, France. Apparently, a White boy was with his mother, and suddenly got scared as he saw Fanon. Shivered, this White boy held to his mother tight asking her if Fanon was going to harm him. Pointing to Fanon, the White boy told his mother: “Look at the nigger!…Mama, a Negro!… Hell, he’s getting mad….” (Fanon, 1967, p. 3). The mother responded saying, “Take no notice, sir, he does not know that you are as civilized as we…” (p. 113). Fanon narrated the experience in the following terms: My body was given back to me sprawled out, distorted, recolored, clad in mourning in that white winter day. The Negro is an animal, the Negro is bad, the Negro is mean, the Negro is ugly; look, a nigger, it’s cold, the nigger is shivering, the nigger is shivering because he is cold, the little boy is trembling because he is afraid of the nigger, the nigger is shivering with cold, that cold that goes through your bones, the handsome little boy is trembling because he thinks that the nigger is quivering with rage, the little white boy throws himself into his mother’s arms: Mama, the nigger’s going to eat me up (p. 113–114).

Fanon’s experience with a seemingly innocent White boy illuminates the ways and the degree racial paranoia has caused hallucinations in the mind of White children about Black men. Racial paranoia deeply embedded in White supremacist ideology has caused many Whites to prejudge, stereotype, and stigmatize people of color, including immigrants of color, as the next section illuminates.

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Fearing the Caravan: Racial Paranoia and Immigrant Youth of Color Issues concerning immigrants, including immigrant youth of color, have been part of educational and political debates in the United States, and continue currently with national debates around “the caravan” of hundreds of Central American migrants who have journey north and tried to enter the United States. Throughout history people have been defying geographical borders to move back and forth from one land to another, fleeing hardship and seeking opportunity. Immigrants cross borders immigrating to other countries for various reasons. Immigrants usually cross borders to enter lands where they hope to find a better life than the one they had in their country of origin, especially immigrant youths seeking education and hopes for a future. While some cross borders to immigrate to another land because of poverty, others do so to avoid for family, political, or religious reasons. This is certainly the claims made by many who journey to the U.S. border to voluntarily seek asylum, including thousands of youths who now have found themselves stuck in mass detention centers, separated from family and the hope of reunification. Occupation and colonization of other countries are among the underlying factors leading to immigration and transnational migration of people across the globe. Specifically, insatiable economic and geo-political interests of western powerful countries to expand their economic and political power have led to transnational border crossing and immigration (Chomsky, 2014a, b). Western countries, such as the United States and France, have occupied, colonized, and neocolonized less powerful countries, like Haiti, to expand their economic and political power (Chomsky, 2014a, b; Zinn, 2010). Being restrained from crossing borders to enter other lands is relatively a new phenomenon in world history. Chomsky (2014a, b) observes, “People have been moving around the earth ever since they stood upright millions of years ago. National borders, and attempts to govern the flows of migration from above, are only a few hundred years old” (p. 188). Chomsky goes on to state, Colonization sets the stage for later migration. This is why Juan Gonzalez called his book on Latinos in the United States The Harvest of Empire—because empires spawn migration. Colonization creates cultural ties. It brings people from the metropolis (the colonizing power) to the colony and places them in positions of power while destroying local institutions. (p. 123)

Similarly, in Occupied America (2011), Rodolfo Acuña explains the socioeconomic and political motives causing the Mexican-American war, where the United States government forcibly seized many Mexican territories. Acuña goes on to put into historical context the socio-economic and political factors that have pushed many Mexicans to cross the border separating Mexico and the United States to re-enter the lands that once belonged to them. Since this war, the presence of many Mexicans in the United States has drastically increased, despite daunting physical and topographical borders separating the

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two countries. Specifically, reconfigured colonial policies disguised through socioeconomic neoliberal policies have led many people of color to immigrate to the West. For example, the neocolonial and neoliberal exploitation of Mexico through the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has led many Mexican farmers to cross the U.S.–Mexico border in search of a better life, but have been treated as second-class citizens despite their hard work and contributions. Because of structural fear of Brown and Black bodies, Mexicans have been treated as aliens, as the wretched of the earth (Fanon, 1965), while many have been picking strawberries and tomatoes for survival and the rich have been maximizing their profits. Lately under the Trump administration, fear about immigrants has retaken center stage of American political debates on human right issues. Under President Barack Obama the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program began in 2012 and was designed to allow undocumented immigrant youth, predominantly youth of color, with no criminal record to avoid deportation and go to school or work in the United States. However, in 2017 President Trump rescinded the program, which now threatens deportation for many DACA applicants that have grown up as Americans, especially those who immigrated to the United States with their parents as young children. With the anti-immigrant political discourse of the American billionaire President Donald Trump, various and vacillating positions have been taken about this issue. Some positions seem to have been politically, racially, and religiously motivated, such as his racist rhetoric of “shithole countries” full of “rapists,” “thieves,” and “animals.” Yet other actions have been socio-economically driven, such as the granting of temporary H2-B worker visas for seasonal service jobs, and to seasonal workers in the Trump Mar-a-Lago golf resort where the President spends his frequent weekends. Meanwhile, immigrant youths of color, particularly Mexicans and Syrians, have been represented in the media in a frantic manner. Racist and xenophobic messages circulated through the mass mainstream media about these immigrants and other immigrants of color might have created deep paranoia in the minds of many White nationalists who have labeled Mexicans and Syrians as rapists and terrorists, respectively, seemingly following the political rhetoric of the current President Trump. In fact, because of widespread fear of the other in the mainstream media and public sphere, immigrants of color, including youth of color crossing the U.S.–Mexico border, have been chased and murdered by White nationalists, including border patrol agents across the United States. Many self-proclaimed “real patriots” have volunteered to patrol the border, so that the so-called illegal aliens do not invade their land, shuffle drugs in, hurt their families, and destabilize their country. Recent public protests in the United States against Sharia law represent a surfacing public paranoia that extremist Muslim jihad is threatening Western values and civilization, a fear-mongering claim that President Trump has continued in second year in office. Influenced by the fear of the other, racist and xenophobic Americans have accused immigrants of color, particularly Mexican immigrants, of increasing the crime rate in the United States (Chomsky, 2014a, b). Moreover, they have blamed immigrants of color for taking advantage of the health care and educational system. Undocumented immigrants, including immigrant youth of color protected under the DACA program,

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have been accused of illegally obtaining licenses, going to school for free, and sucking the resources of the country (Chomsky, 2014a, b). The 2014 immigration crisis surrounding tens of thousands of mostly unaccompanied Central American youth fleeing gang violence and civil unrest was another example of racial paranoia as legal discourse around refugee status left many of these immigrant youth in detention and deportation proceedings, some reportedly with no legal representation. Finally, racial paranoia about immigrants of color increases through the mainstream media that proliferate the dominant discourses of fear. Pundits like former Fox News Host, Bill O’Reilly; former TV commentator, Pat Buchanan; and rightwing radio host, Rush Limbaugh, have promoted racial paranoia throughout the White mainstream media and beyond. They have spread racist, xenophobic, and hate messages about immigrants of color, which deeply impacts immigrant youth of color in their schools and communities, where talk and treatment about these youths can adopt a dehumanizing manner. For these media pundits, immigrants of color, including the DREAMers protected by the DACA program, must be taken out of the country before they infest it with drugs and commit horrendous crimes.

Conclusion As analyzed throughout this chapter in particular and the book in general, racial paranoia is pervasive and influences the perception, attitude, behavior, and actions of particularly racially prejudiced people about people of color, including students of color. Racial paranoia shapes many institutions, like schools and the mainstream media, and impacts the lives of people of color. Hence, its critical examination provides a means of understanding the workings of racist behaviors and ideologies as they operate in daily living in mostly very subtle, gradual ways that allow White supremacist ideologies to become normalized to people of all colors. Exploring racial paranoia in its inherent complexity and contradiction—both semantically and in application—is potent in this historical moment. We must point out racial paranoia’s effects on the learning of students of color and the current racial divide in America, which has portrayed itself as the global hopeful leader of the democratic world and shining beacon for the tired, the hungry, and the poor appearing on our shores and borders. While people of all colors must confront how racism is internalized in their own surroundings, experiences, and worldview, we must also look at the vicious ways in which it has impacted schools, influencing the content of the school official curriculum. Schools must be transformed through the implementation of educational policies that are racially equitable and inclusive. As the number of students of color is increasing every day in our schools, racial paranoia must be radically confronted; it has flourished in the two recent decades post-9/11 with expanding global wars on terror, gross inequities of global racism in the trends of police brutality and state violence, and neoliberal renovations of democratic institutions shaped by money and influence. These trends in social and political contexts represent some of the racist tensions nagging our schools, national history and culture

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influenced by White supremacist ideology, which shapes the divides and divisions of our present. In the context of a resurgent right-wing, protectionist politics that continue to shape public debates and school policies, we, as social justice educators, public intellectuals, scholar activists, and parents, must consider our own racial paranoia that may cloud our shared resistance to the ugly urges of discriminatory racial practices taking place in schools under authoritarian leadership. Understanding racial paranoia as an articulation of intersectional oppressions demands an honest rethinking and a critical examination of schools, including denouncing the silencing of other cultures and histories and “freedom dreams” of Black students and other students of color that shape our social institutions in profound ways whose wide hues of diverse backgrounds hold the future of our nation.

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Malott, C., & Orelus, P. W. (2015). Marxist historiography in the history of education: From colonial to neocolonial schooling in the United States. Postcolonial Directions in Education, 4(2), 141– 195. Nieto, S., & Bode, P. (2018). Affirming diversity: The socio-cultural context of multicultural education. Boston: Pearson Education Inc. Puryear, E. (2013). Shackled and chained: Mass incarceration in capitalist America. San Francisco, CA: Liberation Media. Reed, A. (2013). Marx, race, and neoliberalism. New Labor Forum, 22(1), 49–57. Rothstein, R. (2018). The color of law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America. Ney York: Liveright. Shear, M. D., & Nixon, R. (2017). New Trump deportation rules allow far more expulsions. New York Times. Taylor, E., Gilborn, D., & Ladson-Billings, G. (Eds.). (2015). Foundations of critical race theory in education. New York: Routlege. Turner, M., Popkin, S., & Rawlings, L. (2008). Public housing and the legacy of segregation. Maryland, NC: Rowman and Littlefield. Zinn, H. (2010). A people’s history of the United States 1492-present. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

Afterword

Paul Kivel Un-schooling Racism addresses the strongly entrenched institutional and organizational structures in our society that maintain and perpetuate racism. The hope of the author is that if we can better understand the injustice on which our lives and our society are based and could see the collaborative role that we play in maintaining racism, we would be more motivated to combat it and more effective at doing so. His book also addresses the daily indignities and attacks that people of color experience. Today, there is a massive number of studies and other forms of professional and scientific documentation demonstrating the workings of racism in everything from its devastating impact on the lives and opportunities of people of color to how White people think, act, and talk about racism, what benefits we gain from it, and how it is perpetuated in the everyday practices and policies of our organizations and institutions. At the same time, within the White community there is a culture of denial and minimization about the existence of racism. Despite the existence of pervasive segregation and discrimination in education, housing, health care, and the job market; widespread surveillance, control and punishment of people of color through the welfare, child welfare, foster care, education, police, immigration, and criminal/legal systems; and hate crimes, police brutality, racial profiling, and everyday forms of what has been called micro-aggression against people of color, a January 2009 poll showed that while most White people believe that acts of racism still occur, only 22% believe that racism is a major societal problem. In fact, I often hear references to a “post-racial” society, a belief that the Civil Rights Movement and subsequent legislation “took care of all that,” and a feeling that having a Black man as president proves that we have moved beyond race in the United States. Any continuing racism must be residuals from the past or the result of racist individuals who are the exception. Yet the evidence of pervasive, life-destroying racism throughout our society persists and is well documented in this book. The evidence is not only in the statistics and broad patterns of discrimination,

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exclusion, and marginalization but also in the everyday experiences of people of color. Every day I hear a new story, read a new report, and witness the devastating impact of racism on our community. I don’t ask for these stories, but I listen carefully when I hear them. I don’t take them personally or try to defend White people. I know that these stories are not about me and that sometimes the White people involved have no conscious intention of hurting a person of color. These stories are about the everyday discrimination and disrespect toward people of color that racism produces and that people of color have to live with. What should I do when I hear these stories? Sometimes listening is enough, especially if I am listening without offering excuses, defenses, explanations, or minimizations. Often more is called for. I try to think of how I can respond to these incidents. My actions never feel like enough, but I have learned that they do make a difference. Racism is often described as a problem of prejudice. Prejudice is certainly one result of racism, and it fuels further acts of violence toward people of color. However, racism is the institutionalization of social injustice based on skin color, other physical characteristics, and cultural and religious difference. White racism is the uneven and unfair distribution of power, privilege, land, and material goods favoring White people. Another way to state this is that White racism is a system in which people of color as a group are exploited and oppressed by white people as a group. Although we can and should all become more tolerant and understanding of each other, only justice can put out the fire of racism. We will certainly have to examine our fears and misconceptions to see why we stay home while the fire sweeps our nation. Our primary purpose in doing so should be so that we can get as many strong, able, and committed bodies on the front lines as quickly as possible. However, issues of social justice are not fundamentally about individual actions and beliefs. Un-schooling Racism is about uprooting institutionalized system of oppression. Although my actions can either support or confront racism, it is completely independent of me. In fact, even if most of us were completely non-racist in our attitudes and practices, there are many ways that unequal wages, unequal treatment in the legal system, and segregation in jobs, housing, and education would continue. Our beliefs and actions are important. You and I are responsible for how we treat the people around us and whether or not we are fighting against injustice or contributing to it. But as long as we focus only on individual actions and ignore community and organizational responses, we will leave the system of racism intact. Dr. Orelus writes about uprooting the system of racism. You may need to reexamine your individual beliefs and actions in order to participate effectively in that uprooting. You may need to look at how you have learned racism, what effects it has had on your life, what have been its costs and benefits to you, and how you have learned to pass it on. More importantly, this book will help you become a member of a network of people who are committed to racial and economic justice because over the years, I have come to realize that racism is one of the systems of oppression that most keep us from working together to build the inclusive, just, and sustainable society most of us want to live in.

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Since I wrote the book Uprooting Racism, I have become even more acutely aware of how interdependent our lives are and how dependent I am on the low-paid work of people of color in the United States and in other countries. I look at the label on my jeans, shirts, or underwear; I track the work that produced my computer, TV, and microwave; I learn more about who grows, picks, packages, and prepares the food I eat; I notice who cleans the public buildings and classrooms I use. Often it is people of color in poorly paid, low-status jobs who allow me to enjoy the benefits of inexpensive clothes, low-priced electronic equipment, cheap food, and clean and well-maintained public spaces. Just walking down the street to the park makes me aware of this interconnection and dependency. My daily life is interwoven with the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of people of color. Yet so much of their lives and work and culture is ridiculed, exploited, or rendered invisible by our society that often I don’t see them, I don’t make the connections. My ignorance and subsequent inaction contribute to their exploitation, discrimination, and scapegoating. I become a partner in racism, a collaborator in injustice. A few years ago I was hopeful that we were making some inroads in recognizing and addressing racism. However, watching the response to the September 11, 2001, World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings, the response to the disasters of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, and the collapse of the stock and housing bubbles, I fear we have suffered major setbacks. There has been an alarming increase in hate crimes against Arab Americans, against Muslims, and even against those who are mistaken for members of these two groups, such as Sikhs, whose men traditionally wear turbans. African Americans, Latino(a)s, Native Americans, and Asian Americans are threatened by racial profiling on our streets and at our borders. Mosques are being attacked across the country. The housing and financial meltdowns have disproportionately affected communities of color—transferring even more wealth to White communities. And all of us face attacks on our civil liberties, increased police and military surveillance, and the further shifting of resources from education, health, and other social programs to war, surveillance, and prisons. Poll after poll shows that most people in the United States are scared. We are scared about violence; about the economy; about the environment; we are scared about the safety, education, and future of our children. Much of the time those fears are directed toward people of color—African Americans, Native Americans, Arab Americans— long-term residents or recent immigrants. It is easy for us to focus on them, and yet doing so is devastating to our ability to address the critical national issues of economic inequality, war, social infrastructure, family violence, and environmental devastation. On the other hand, in this time of increased insecurity and fear I have been heartened by the number of White people (as well as many people of color) who have stood in solidarity with Arab Americans, Muslims, recent immigrants, African Americans, Native Americans, and others under attack. They have challenged stereotypes and misinformation and confronted scapegoating and harassment. They have shown up at public hearings and public rallies. They have written letters, made phone calls, voted

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differently, and become involved with direct action campaigns. They have acted as allies in the best tradition of White people. I know that many people find it hard to read about racism. It can bring up feelings of anger, cynicism, pain and despair for people of color and feelings of anger, guilt, shame, and fear for White people. We cannot let our feelings overwhelm us. We must keep focused on our racial justice work. That is what it takes to confront racism. We need to keep going back and picking up the task no matter how uncomfortable, angry, or frustrated we become in the process. Working for racial justice is like that. We keep learning, doing our best, leaving something out, making mistakes, doing it better next time. Now, more than ever, those of us who are White especially need to put our shoulders to the task of working with people of color to uproot racism and build healthy, inclusive, and sustainable communities. It is disingenuous to say “I am not prejudiced,” and morally evasive to say “I treat everyone the same.” In a world in which racism continues to be one of the bedrocks of our organizations and institutions, in which most people of color, every single day, are confronted with the repercussions of racial discrimination, harassment, and exploitation, we must ask ourselves “What do I stand for? Who do I stand with? Do I stand for racial justice, the end of discrimination and racial violence, and a society truly based on equal opportunity? Do I stand with people of color and White allies in the struggle to uproot racism?”

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