Do you think my progressive Maryland school is throwing “skin color is really important in society” while leaving “but all skin colors are equal” out of the discussion?
But we’re dealing with kids who haven’t yet been socialized with the ideal of color blindness, like you and I. At the same time, they don’t take what teachers say at face value.
Teachers say “skin color is really important” and “America is systemically racist against dark skinned people.” Teachers can say “but all skin colors are equal” but that isn’t necessary what kids take away. What do they mean by “equal?” Is it a euphemism, like so many others we use? Is it moral equivalence rather than literal equality? At the same time, teachers are saying people with different skin colors are different—the kids are taught to celebrate their diversity. And why would so many people think people with dark skin are inferior if there wasn’t some truth to that? You can’t tell second graders that skin color is a big deal but also not a big deal.
Also, the premise isn’t true. I grew up in Virginia when it was a red state. I went to college at Georgia Tech, where most of my classmates were from red parts of the south. But I’ve only ever been called a racial slur twice, both times by homeless people who weren’t white.
Telling brown kids that society is systemically racist against them when it isn’t true does harm. It divides them from their white peers and makes them look for racism where it might not exist.
The TV show “White Lotus” actually has a great take on this. Native Hawaiian girl goes to elite school and visits a Hawaiian resort with her friend’s wealthy white parents. She’s learned CRT education at her college and become woke. She convinces a native Hawaiian hotel worker to ignore his moral compass by telling him to steal her friend’s family’s jewelry because after all white people stolen Hawaii from people like him. He gets arrested and it ruins his life. And she strains her relationship with her white friend, who genuinely cared about her as a person. As the parent of a brown girl the show articulated exactly what I’m afraid of with CRT education.
> Telling brown kids that society is systemically racist against them when it isn’t true does harm.
Is it also harmful to tell them society isn't systematically racist when it is true? I'm not sure 2nd grade is the place for this discussion, but there are lots of pre-existing divisions on race that will affect people's interactions. For me it's worth being aware of them, calling them out, and not perpetuating them. We've just been through massive unrest due to policing disparities, and I would want brown kids who are likely to interact police on their own to be aware of some aspects of it.
“Systemic racism” is itself a woke term that misleadingly imputes prejudice and intent onto basically economic factors. As a brown guy in America, I can expect to make more money, and my kids will have higher income mobility even if I came here in poverty, than whites. I have half the chance of being shot by the police and a third the risk of being incarcerated than white people. I can expect to live longer as a brown man than white women. What does it mean to say American society is “systemically racist” against me and my kids?
It’s not just my kind of brown people either. The incarceration rate for Hispanics is now below that of whites: https://www.slowboring.com/p/hispanic-prison (even though Hispanics are much more likely to be in the 18-35 demographic where incarceration is highest). Studies show Hispanics are converging in terms of income over generations at the same pace as Italians, etc. American Hispanics live as long as white people in Denmark. What does “America is systemically racist” mean for them?
This system of “white supremacy” that holds back all non-white people just doesn’t exist. It’s a myth.
> I have half the chance of being shot by the police and a third the risk of being incarcerated than white people.
This claim completely contradicts every statistic I've seen on the topic. Can you pass along a source for this? It's a significant adjustment to my thinking on this topic if I can cite a source.
If it's the book you link to the end of your comments, I'll have to have it to my reading list.
The seemingly higher rate for hispanics disappears when you adjust for the fact that the median hispanic is 28 and the median white person is 42. (The odds of being shot by the police drop sharply after 35.)
> The dwindling of Hispanic-white disparities is even more remarkable in light of criminal behavior being so heavily concentrated in adolescence and young adulthood,. The median age for Hispanics is 29.8 years versus 43.7 for whites, meaning even in a system free of prejudice that punished solely on the basis of crimes committed, we would expect criminal justice disparities between the populations to be growing, not shrinking.
"Systemic racism" targeted generally at non-white people isn't feature of American society. It's much narrower than that: persistent disparities for Black and indigenous people.
> Telling brown kids that society is systemically racist against them when it isn’t true does harm. It divides them from their white peers and makes them look for racism where it might not exist.
Okay, but it is true. We have the history and numbers to know that.
Perhaps second grade is too young, but omitting this reality from k-12 completely would be as blind as omitting buffer overflow attacks from a course on memory architectures.
Things are as they are because of how they were (and still are).
But we’re dealing with kids who haven’t yet been socialized with the ideal of color blindness, like you and I. At the same time, they don’t take what teachers say at face value.
Teachers say “skin color is really important” and “America is systemically racist against dark skinned people.” Teachers can say “but all skin colors are equal” but that isn’t necessary what kids take away. What do they mean by “equal?” Is it a euphemism, like so many others we use? Is it moral equivalence rather than literal equality? At the same time, teachers are saying people with different skin colors are different—the kids are taught to celebrate their diversity. And why would so many people think people with dark skin are inferior if there wasn’t some truth to that? You can’t tell second graders that skin color is a big deal but also not a big deal.
Also, the premise isn’t true. I grew up in Virginia when it was a red state. I went to college at Georgia Tech, where most of my classmates were from red parts of the south. But I’ve only ever been called a racial slur twice, both times by homeless people who weren’t white.
Telling brown kids that society is systemically racist against them when it isn’t true does harm. It divides them from their white peers and makes them look for racism where it might not exist.
The TV show “White Lotus” actually has a great take on this. Native Hawaiian girl goes to elite school and visits a Hawaiian resort with her friend’s wealthy white parents. She’s learned CRT education at her college and become woke. She convinces a native Hawaiian hotel worker to ignore his moral compass by telling him to steal her friend’s family’s jewelry because after all white people stolen Hawaii from people like him. He gets arrested and it ruins his life. And she strains her relationship with her white friend, who genuinely cared about her as a person. As the parent of a brown girl the show articulated exactly what I’m afraid of with CRT education.