How Race and Racism Empower a School's Curriculum

2018

Teaching students about race and racism are so multi-faceted and sophisticated, yet it remains the most crucial conversation and lesson to have with young people to empower them. One of the useful ways Americans can attempt to unravel and transform this complicated legacy is to make it a part of a school’s curriculum. Allowing race and racism to remain a hidden-aspect of a school’s curriculum reinforces its trivialization and dysfunction. Indeed, having constructed, well-thought-out lessons about race and racism “myth-bust” any attempts for future Americans to continually embrace xenophobia and genetic inferiority. In recent years, the institution of education and schooling has shown progress changing young people’s mindsets toward the LGBTQ community, diverse learners, and disabled citizens. Why has this slowly occurred with breaking people\u27s ideologues when dealing with race and racism? It is because educators, typically, find it difficult to broach this sensitive subject withi...

Drawing from Omi and Winant’s (1994) racial formation theory and Holt’s (1995) theory of race marking, in this chapter, we explore the context of race and curriculum for African Americans during post-Reconstruction and the post-civil rights era. Our inquiry focused on the racial discourses located in two sources of curricula knowledge: children’s literature and U.S. history textbooks. In this analysis, we illustrate how the presence of race aligned with ideological beliefs about race that were prevalent in the wider societal discourse. We argue that the histories of race have maintained a permanent, enduring place in U.S. curriculum. While morphing in content and appearance, formations of race remained entrenched and pervasive, thus reflecting the condition we characterize as the enduring racisms of U.S. curriculum.

BU Journal of Graduate Studies in Education, 2021

Teachers desiring to address inequity within education must acknowledge the inconsistencies experienced by students who belong to historically marginalized or oppressed communities. Antiracist education addresses conventions rooted in systemic or structural racism, colourblindness, and implicit bias, creating an environment that facilitates equity in education for all students regardless of race, ethnicity, or culture. Anti-racist education acknowledges the inequalities experienced by people who do not implicitly benefit from current world systems, purposing to bridge that gap. This includes people who have been historically oppressed or marginalized because of race, ethnicity, or culture. In order to facilitate antiracist education, teachers must be willing to accept that some of the significant traditions historically synonymous with education and simple existence, such as systemic and structural racism, colourblindness, and implicit bias, must be challenged in order to facilitate equitable education for all. Systemic and Structural Racism History is typically told from the perspective of the victor, and the current education system follows that same pattern. Eurocentric ideologies at the centre of educational frameworks determining students' learning at all levels (Abdulle et al., 2017) fail to account for all other racial and cultural ideologies represented in the society that same framework is presumed to serve. Forest et al. (2016) identified this conduct and its suggested application within educational systems as a barrier to educational achievement for racialized students. The omission of non-Eurocentric ideologies within educational frameworks sends the message that other cultural perspectives are not important. Canada's continued identity as a multicultural nation is threatened when protected by educational policies that do not address the uncomfortable side of race and culture. Educational frameworks celebrating cultural diversity without addressing the realities of racial inequality are only superficial policies (George et al., 2020. These realities include the disproportionate number of racialized students who are labelled "at risk" or classified as and moved into special education centres without appropriate evaluations. Adjei (2018) referred to this "institutional disregard" as a way that policies, practices, and politics of the system are structured, failing racialized people by leaving them helpless within their own communities and rendering them as intruders in these environments (pp. 4-5). Students who experience this institutional disregard will inevitably believe that they have been betrayed and, in that context of distrust, will struggle to experience success. Addressing issues rooted in history and tradition is a challenge. The educational system has always been an important key to growth and change, but on further review presents its own obstacles in facilitating growth and change for all people. George et al. (2020) highlighted that official school curricula "mutes, distorts, omits, and stereotypes the perspectives of racialized [people]" (p. 3), additionally suggesting teaching methodologies that are "individualistic, colourblind, and race-neutral" (p. 3). In a society that is so racially and culturally diverse and relies heavily on a strong educational system to guide and enlighten all minds, curricula should reflect the societies they serve. Data are used as a significant instrument to measure success in schools. Carter et al. (2017) encouraged having conversations with students in order to determine whose needs are being met and whose needs are not, because examining schools' habits surrounding the practices implemented within schools is crucial, and then using the data to inform teachers of the disparities found between

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education, 2015

Drawing from Omi and Winant's (1994) racial formation theory and Holt's (1995) theory of race marking, in this chapter, we explore the context of race and curriculum for African Americans during post-Reconstruction and the post-civil rights era. Our inquiry focused on the racial discourses located in two sources of curricula knowledge: children's literature and U.S. history textbooks. In this analysis, we illustrate how the presence of race aligned with ideological beliefs about race that were prevalent in the wider societal discourse. We argue that the histories of race have maintained a permanent, enduring place in U.S. curriculum. While morphing in content and appearance, formations of race remained entrenched and pervasive, thus reflecting the condition we characterize as the enduring racisms of U.S. curriculum.

Teaching Race and Anti-Racism in Contemporary America, edited by K. Haltinner. New York: Springer , 2014

Though popular belief and social science analyses often assert the racial tolerance and liberality of institutions of higher education and the white students who attend them, our research reveals young, educated white students’ everyday lives are anything but racially neutral. We pull back the curtain on these “post-racial” assumptions by presenting journal data collected from white students around the U.S. over many years now. Our data documents that racist performances are a normal, habituated part of most white students’ social worlds. Nonetheless, we also find that asking students to research and write about their own lives in the context of instruction that addresses the critical realities of systemic racism can be a powerful educational tool. We explore the limits of mainstream educational and multiculturalism approaches in probing the deep realities of systemic racism; address the challenges of confronting our white students’ deeply embedded racial framing; and characterize strategies progressive, antiracist educators should consider in developing a race critical pedagogy for white students.

Critical Pedagogy- American Sociological Association, 2006

It would be hard to deny that positive changes have occurred in the teaching of race these past two decades. Attention to issues of power and experience has enabled educators to go beyond the narrow framework of assimilation or deviance that once encumbered this area. The Civil Rights Movement pushed educators to take more seriously the critical role of racism as a means of domination in modern capitalism. The result was a new attention to social movements across racial and ethnic boundaries, with a focus on specific experiences and modes of resistance.