Are Schools Anti-Racist?

 

tl:dr Our school system is both racist and anti-racist, and it’s evidently more anti-racist than it is racist. 

It’s well understood that the US schooling system is racist, in the sense that it perpetuates disparities between more privileged students and underprivileged students, who in turn are disproportionately African American. More privileged kids go to better schools, and underprivileged kids go to worse ones. With the racist nature of schooling agreed on, we can consider whether the school system is also anti-racist, and indeed it looks as though that’s the case. 

Can a racist institution be at the same time anti-racist? Alternatively, to think that an institution can be only racist or only anti-racist is to engage in either-or thinking. Tema Okun famously identified either-or thinking as an aspect of “white supremacy culture”. I’m no expert on critical race theory, from which we get the “white supremacy” theory, but I sure agree with Okun that either-or thinking is bad news. It’s categorical thinking as opposed to empirical thinking, and it’s a recurrent cognitive bias and popular logical fallacy. If we reject either-or thinking, then it makes no sense to describe our school system as either racist or anti-racist. Any system that wide-ranging can easily have multiple results, some racist and others anti-racist.

With the inegalitarian failures of the school system in mind, can we think of anything anti-racist about the system? Imagine what would happen if we shut down the public school system tomorrow as a way to fight disparities between racial groups. If “school” is only racist, then “no school” would be anti-racist or at least less racist. If schools make things worse, then shuttering schools would make things better. Do schools make things worse? Without public schools, racial disparities would be even bigger than they already are. Parents with more privilege would use their resources to get their kids some education, one way or another. Underprivileged parents would have fewer such options or none, and the disparity in reading, math, and other basics would get wider, not narrower. Shuttering schools would make racism (that is, disparity) worse. 

The school system is imperfect on an institutional level, but even with these imperfections it still reduces achievement disparities compared to what those disparities would otherwise be. If schools—relative to no schools—reduce racial disparities, then to that extent the system is effectively anti-racist. Can we compare the degree of racism in the system versus anti-racism? It’s hard to measure, but it’s easy to agree that underprivileged kids are better off with the system we have than they would be with no such system or alternative system in place. This thought experiment leads to the conclusion that schools are more anti-racist than they are racist. 

Still, compared to a hypothetical school system that’s not racist at all, today’s system looks pretty bad. Everyone would benefit from the nation having a better school system, and to get there we need to understand the system we have now. Our challenge isn’t to dismantle a system that’s anti-racist, full stop. Our challenge is to build up the elements of the school system that are already anti-racist and to make the school system work better for the students who aren’t getting what they need from it. To reform schools effectively, we need to recognize the anti-racist side of the system. 

Honest Dialogs Outperform Debates

Dialog is hard but doable.

tl:dr Better dialogs are possible and in fact have been occasionally taking place, especially when participants try to paraphrase each others’ views. 

The traditional debate format is counterproductive. Luckily, we have some new and better ways to approach disagreements. Daniel Dennett recommends four rules in particular, and the most powerful of them is generously paraphrasing the other participant’s position. In Scout Mindset, Julia Galef refers to this tactic as the “epistemological Turing test”—can you state an opposing position so accurately that you could be mistaken for a proponent of that position? It’s also basically steel-manning, the opposite of straw-manning. See Agreeing How to Disagree.

Starting 2014, Brandon Hendrickson and I developed a number of dialogs as we experimented with how to put these principles into practice. Our best result was a dialog about the value of religion. See Honest Debate: Religion, Good and Bad.

Brandon and I also arranged a dialog on Christianity, which went better than your average debate. Both these debates are by and for atheists, but the format of the dialogs is generally applicable. See Honest Debate: Christianity Good and Bad.

Brandon is a innovative educator, and he boiled down the process to a series of structured exchanges. It really works. Here’s a dialog about white privilege, at the end of which both participants feel as though they have been heard. It starts with a lot of glad-handing in order to establish mutual trust between two strangers. You can fast forward through that part, but if you run a dialog, give this step the time and energy it deserves. See White Privilege Dialog.

Resources

Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt is amazing. I’ve run two book discussions on it at my Unitarian Universalist Church, and Haidt’s a fan of Grandmother Fish. His book helps explain why people are so polarized over symbols. See Resources for Studying The Righteous Mind.

Human Swarm by Mark Moffett grounds Haidt’s theories in anthropology and zoology. Roughly, he explains what a “nation” is, for humans, pinion jays, Argentine ants, and a few other species. Can a student of E O Wilson’s do wrong? See my review of Human Swarm.

High Conflict by Amanda Ripley is like the practical take on Haidt’s theory. At the end of the book discussions on Righteous Mind, people would say, “OK, but what do we do?” Ripley has some ideas in that direction, including an account of a liberal religious congregation managing unexpected conflicts among members. 

Scout Mindset by Julia Galef zeroes in on the experience of the individual, especially the attitude one needs to cultivate in order to be right more often. If you want to be right, you must be willing to learn that you’re wrong. 

The organization Braver Angels organizes structured dialogs across lines of polarization, and they’re worth a look. 

The Open Mind platform takes Haidt’s theories and puts them into practice, not as a book but as a program. The introductory module is done individually, and it’s worth undertaking. I’d love to get some experience with this system. 

Chickens Are Dumb

the chicken chicken

When I open the cage to let the chickens out, one particular chicken is always afraid of me. She is the last of four chickens out of the cage. She hesitates and backtracks before finally hopping past me through the open door. Every time. Why hasn’t this stupid chicken learned to trust me? Chickens are so stupid.

That’s what I told myself. Then pretty soon I caught myself ginning up needless worries in my head on one topic or another. Have I ginned cup needless worries lots of times in the past? Yes. Has it ever paid off? No. Am I learning faster than a chicken? Dear lord, I’m trying. 

Atheist Judo

Tim LaHaye on humanism

Of two equally convenient gas stations near my house, one is run by an evangelical Christian who sells Christian-Right books at the counter, including one bout how terrible we atheists supposedly are. He once told me that Seattle is a “very dark” place, probably because there are so many people like me here. One day, I thought about skipping his place for the neutral gas station across the street from it. The proprietor and I are cultural enemies, and shunning his place would be my own little boycott. But instead I went to his place, and after the transaction at the book-laden counter I had a word with him.

“You know, you and I probably disagree on just about everything when it comes to religion,” I said, “but I'm glad you're selling these books. I'm glad you live in a free country where you can do whatever the hell you want.” He laughed, warmed up, and genuinely thanked me. Like Jesus said*, “Don't beat ’em with brutality. Baffle ’em with beneficence!”

*I’m paraphrasing. 

McGhee’s Positive-Sum Take on Anti-Racism

Heather McGhee’s new book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, offers an updated way of looking at racism. She abandons zero-sum thinking in favor of appreciating how racism drags the whole society down. In a war or in an election, zero-sum thinking makes sense because any disadvantage for “them” is an advantage for “us”. In society, however, we tend to prosper more when others in our society also prosper. McGhee is right that we would do well to embrace positive-sum thinking and to work together for a better America. 

McGhee leads with the story of Hinton Rowan Helper, an antebellum Southerner who wrote about how the slave economy hurt the South rather than helping it. He pointed out, for example, that the North had many more schools than the South. In zero-sum thinking, the labor that white Southerners took from enslaved Africans should have made the South rich. For Helper, however, the statistics plainly showed that the North’s capitalist society was outpacing the South, with its medieval social structure and land-focused economy. 

The plantation society of the South represented an intentional attempt by the elites to recapture the lost glory of the Middle Ages, especially as romanticized in Ivanhoe, by Walter Scott. The point of a plantation was not merely to make a profit off of stolen labor but also to establish the owners as lords, with the same power of life and death over their slaves as medieval lords had over their peasants. Rather than using their profits to invest in capital or education, southern “lords” expended their wealth on cotillions and gambling. In contrast to the feudal slavery of the southern states, capitalist slavery is perhaps best represented by Caribbean sugar plantations, whose owners were in London or Paris. 

McGhee uses real-world, historical examples to show that racism hurts the whole society. McGhee’s iconic image representing the society-wide cost of racism is the filled-in public swimming pool.  Municipal swimming pools were once a symbol of American civic pride. After the federal government ruled that even bigoted cities in the South have to provide equal access to African American swimmers, many of these cities filled their pools in rather than see whites and Blacks swimming together as equals. McGhee also offers the example of sub-prime loans. African Americans might have been disproportionately channeled to predatory loans, but all of America was hurt when the home loan industry collapsed.

It’s easy to think of other examples. Mass incarceration disproportionately affects African Americans, but it’s also a drain on the whole society. Poor schooling disproportionately affects African Americans, but society as a whole loses out if kids don’t reach their potential. 

McGhee’s book offers a welcome perspective. It reminds me of Kendi when he points out policies that would be good for white Americans and even better for African Americans. Feminists have long said that ending the patriarchy would be good not just for women but also for men. Maybe now we’ll hear more people talking about how ending racism would be good for white people, too.

Other Posts about Politics
Colorblind Racism, 2021
Secular Apocalypse, 2021
Kendi Says Change Policies, 2021

Group Instincts and Modern Politics, 2020

Family Climate Action Event, 2020

Being Wrong Sucks, 2019
Resources for Studying The Righteous Mind, 2019
Calls to Liberal Action, 2019

Burning Things with Meaning

starting a fire is magical

With SARS-CoV2 receding in Seattle, I threw the first yard party since fall of 2019, complete with a bonfire. Over the years, my guests and I have developed the practice of intentionally burning things in the fire as a little ritual. When our primeval ancestors danced all night around a fire, fire was literally at the center of human spiritual practice. Ancient Persian religion established the now-familiar pattern of a holy man (Zoroaster) and his holy book (the Avesta), and Zoroastrians have revered sacred fires ever since. Today, fire is still a potent symbol in people’s minds, and even Unitarian-Universalists have a flame as a symbol, in a slight nod to those ancestral fires. More prosaically, I have found the grownups and kids can both take joy in burning things up. 

In the latest fire, we had a chair to burn. Chairs are always welcome, as the first big item I purged many years ago was a dilapidated chair. Of special note this time was an original portrait provided by an old friend of mine. It was a portrait of her ex-boyfriend, and he had given it to her as a gift after breaking her heart. Into the fire with it! I contributed a bird nest, a literal empty nest to mark this part of my life now that my daughter has bought a home in Pasadena. It was fun to point out to other at the party-goers what the baby birds had left in the empty nest: crap. What a metaphor. Other party goers, young and old, wrote notes on paper and consigned them to the fire. Usually these notes document the negative things that people want to purge or have purged. They can also be love notes to the universe or whatever you want. For one party years ago, the theme was beautifying the world by burning ugly things, and ugly things are always a good addition to the fire. One friend brings old checks to burn, although I don’t know if he still uses checks. A couple I know burned stacks of old documents related to an online controversy that they had been embroiled in. Sometimes what gets burned is something well-loved but worn out, something too beloved to throw into a landfill but no longer worth keeping. 

big fires not allowed this year

Thanks to the heat and drought in the Pacific Northwest, there’s a burn ban across Washington state. Our next fire has to be a modest affair in a metal container. Stupid climate change. 

Other Posts about Ritual

Dance Church Seattle, 2017

Table Grace for Nonbelievers, 2016 

Land of Nice Atheists, 2014

Reading about Religion, 2014

Christmas Unitarian-Style, 2013

Welcome Ceremony at Burning Man, 2013

Burning Man Temple, 2013

Race-Blind Racism

Rev William Barber II

In the 80s, I learned one of the tenets of Critical Race Theory, and it changed the way I think about racism to this day. It’s the understanding of how racial disparities are perpetuated even if no individual person in the system has anti-Black bias in their heart. It’s a powerful way to understand racism, and I wish that antiracists talked about it more. In general, I like all the parts of anti-racism activism that have evidence behind them, and this concept seems like the one that needs the most attention. It’s both powerful and seemingly downplayed. Here I’d like to consider this concept’s value separate from the rest of Critical Race Theory. When I learned about it, it was not associated with the other tenets of CRT, such as convergence theory or counter-storytelling. 

In sociology class, we were taught to call it “institutional racism”, but I no longer use that term. Alternatively, this sort of racism is sometimes described as systemic or structural, but I don’t use those terms either. Different people use these terms in different ways, so I never know what someone means when they use one of them. Sometimes they mean what I’m getting at here: racism that operates in the absence of bias. Sometimes they mean the opposite: racism that operates through bias that is systemic, structural, or institutional. The term “meritocratic racism” has some promise since it’s the meritocracy that primarily perpetuates inequality from one generation to the next, but its meaning isn’t obvious. I hope that the phrase “race-blind racism” is clear enough that people know what I mean. 

Ibram Kendi gives an example of race-blind racism when he cites climate change as racist. Climate change is already hitting non-whites around the world harder than it hits whites, a sort of racism that rolls out without anyone directing it to roll out that way. Meanwhile, our carbon-fueled economy brings in profits to Texas oilmen, Norwegians, Dutch, Arabs, and Persians—all of whom are “white” under US law. Fighting climate change is anti-racist regardless of people’s feelings. (It’s no coincidence that I’m the co-chair of my church’s climate action team.)

Another example from Kendi is health insurance. Our current system is an example of race-blind racism. It disproportionately disadvantages African Americans even if you can’t find reference to race anywhere in the regulations or insurance policies. Expanding health coverage is effectively anti-racist, and I’m all for it. (Unitarian-Universalists recently passed a resolution in favor or universal healthcare coverage.)

Kendi echoes King in saying that antiracists should focus on changing policy over changing hearts. Policy, not feelings, is where race-blind racism operates. Let’s hope that Kendi’s many readers take him seriously. 

A key driver of race-blind racism is the way that resources and advantages are largely heritable from one generation to the next. For both white and Black Americans, the primary factor that determines one’s socio-economic status is the SES into which one is born. As long as the previous generation of Americans had a racial divide in terms of resources, the next generation will perpetuate that divide. Here you can consider “resources” in the broadest terms, not just money but also education, neighborhood, family stability, personal security, etc. Progressive taxation of income is one way that the system pushes in the opposite direction, but it’s not much of a push. Tax wealth, I say, but that’s another post.

One place where educators are pushing back against race-blind racism is in the educational meritocracy. Educational resources are routinely restricted by “merit”, such as admission to universities being contingent on academic achievement. Since white and Asian kids tend to do better on academic achievement than African American kids, gatekeeping by achievement disproportionately hurts African Americans. Higher educational institutions respond by lowering standards for African American candidates and often by raising them for East Asians. This policy has some antiracist effect but doesn’t come close to generating equal outcomes. Some schools are questioning the very idea of meritocracy. Gifted programs disproportionately help white and Asian kids because those are the kids that more often qualify for them. Eliminating gifted programs works against race-blind racism by taking a benefit away from white and Asian kids. The NAACP’s Youth Council, for example, demands that Seattle schools dismantle their “Highly Capable Cohort” program, and the school board has recently started this process. Likewise, Lowell High School in San Francisco is switching from admission based on achievement to a lottery system. The student population has been 60% Asian and only 2% Black, and the lottery will change that. In general, any education program that benefits higher achieving students disproportionately disadvantages African American students. (Personally, I see value in education programs for highly capable students, but I’ve been wrong before.)

After Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr saw the civil rights movement succeed, he pivoted to fight poverty. Within six months, he was assassinated. King knew that freedom to compete doesn’t help much when the race-blind meritocracy benefits those who are born into privilege and leaves out those who are born into poverty. His plan was a massive program to redistribute wealth, including a guaranteed minimum income for people of any race. All anti-poverty and pro-safety-net policies are antiracist. 

Personal bias certainly also plays a role in racial disparities, but it’s pretty common for people to overstate its role, as if race-blind racism isn’t a factor. Race-blind racism works by driving higher rates of dysfunction in poor communities and then letting the meritocracy play out. If poor kids show up to kindergarten already behind rich kids in reading and math, the meritocracy rewards the rich kids over the poor kids. Those poor kids, of course, are disproportionately African American. Structural issues that exacerbate racial disparities, such as higher levels of lead in inner city environments, are hard to get excited about. It’s easy to get excited about bias. When King switched from fighting racial discrimination to fighting poverty, he caught flak from his supporters, and no one picked up King’s campaign after he was murdered. Maybe only a leader of his stature had the potential to change the movement’s direction. Fifty years later, Rev William Barber II picked up the banner of the Poor People’s Campaign, and I’m hoping for the best.