Great Replacement Theory and School Choice

August 10, 2022 stevenmsinger Accountability, antisemitism, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Democrat, Education, Hate Crimes, history, Learning, Local Control, Mass Shooting, Parents, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, Propaganda, Racism, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Shooting, Social Justice, Student Mobility, Students, Supreme Court, Teachers, Uncategorized antisemitism, charter schools, Daily Caller, Democrat, education, Fox News, great replacement theory, Politics, public schools, QAnon, Republican, School Choice, school privatization, school segregation, schools, Tucker Carlson, white supremacy

What do QAnon conspiracy theorists and school privatization promoters have in common?

Answer: ideology.

The two groups do everything they can to disassociate with each other in public.

But examine their ideas and you’ll see a lot of family resemblances.

For example, take Great Replacement Theory and School Choice.

Great Replacement Theory is the idea that people of color are replacing white people both numerically and politically. Adherents claim Democrats are overrunning native-born white people with brown skinned immigrants in order to wrest political power. The claims have no basis in fact, but that doesn’t stop the narrative from gaining traction in the darkest corners of the Internet and right wing circles.

It is a favorite of far right pundits, immigration catastrophists and mass shooters. In fact, several white men have used it as justification for mass murder.

In May a white teenager cited it as his motivation for killing 10 black people and wounding several others at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.

In 2018, another white man claimed he was trying to stop Jewish people facilitating immigration by killing 11 Jewish people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

School choice, on the other hand, seems to be something much less extreme.

At least you don’t have to be a card carrying member of the lunatic fringe to espouse its supposed virtues.

It’s the idea that kids should be segregated into different school systems based on parental choice. This means that parallel systems will compete for students in a Darwinian marketplace where some will get better resources than others with profit being the prime motivator for school operators most of whom are private corporations. In practice, this usually means that the worst racial and economic segregation is justified and even preferable so long as consumers think doing so will get them some kind of advantage.

It’s quite a popular idea among certain market first ideologues. This includes both Democrats and Republicans, investment bankers, and even some social justice advocates.

These are not always the same people who publicly champion Great Replacement Theory. However, as Tucker Carlson proves on his Fox News platform, sometimes they are.

Carlson has used his media empire to promote both ideas.

For more than a year he’s been claiming on Fox News that there’s a deliberate effort by the Democrats to undermine Republicans by replacing native-born Americans with immigrants.

In July, he said:

“You can’t just replace the electorate because you didn’t like the last election outcomes. That would be the definition of undermining democracy, changing the voters… The great replacement. It’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s their electoral strategy.”

And when it comes to school choice, he goes even further. Not only has he promoted it on Fox News, he is co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Caller, a media source that constantly promotes school privatization and other corporate education reform strategies – school vouchers, charter schools, etc.

So what do the two concepts have in common?

In short: racism and white supremacy.

Great Replacement Theory is a kind of grievance politics complaining about the steady loss of white privilege.

School choice is an attempt to recapture or maintain white privilege at the educational level and by extension into the adult economic and political world.

Great Replacement Theory has its roots in French nationalism books dating back to the early 1900s, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

Chief among these is French Author, Jean Raspail, whose 1973 novel, The Camp of the Saints, told a fictional tale of migrants banding together to take over France. However, the concept’s more contemporary use is attributed to Renaud Camus, a French writer who wrote “Le Grand Remplacement” (“The Great Replacement”) in 2011.

White supremacists blame Jewish people for nonwhite immigration to the U.S., and the concept is closely associated with antisemitism, according to the ADL.

Adolphus Belk Jr., professor of political science and African American studies at Winthrop University, said white nationalist movements arise when people of color are seen as a threat politically and economically.

Belk said white nationalists are worried that, “whites will no longer be a majority of the general population, but a plurality, and see that as a threat to their own well-being and the well-being of the nation.”

What makes individual extremists and white nationalist groups so dangerous, according to Belk, are the lengths they are willing to go to in order protect their position in society:

“They are willing to use any means that are available to preserve and defend their position in society … it’s almost like a sort of holy war, a conflict, where they see themselves as taking the action directly to the offending culture and people by eliminating them.”

By contrast, school choice is a quieter ideology, but based on similar foundations.

School choice originated in America’s racially segregated past. Around the time when the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board ruling outlawed direct segregation in public schools, white lawmakers created programs for redirecting public money to private institutions so that white families didn’t have to send their children to schools with their Black peers.

And we see the same in charter schools and private schools accepting taxpayer funded vouchers today. The prime motivation behind sending children to these schools is often “white flight”. White parents use these options to flee schools with higher percentages of non-white students. And choice options tend to lure the more motivated and compliant students away from public schools.

This isn’t to say that the authentic public school system is unequivocally integrated, either. While there has been tremendous progress in many districts, unscrupulous school boards, administrators and lawmakers have drawn district lines in such a way as to limit integration even in a substantial number of public schools. However, the degree of segregation at privatized schools dwarfs anything you’ll see in public education.

School choice programs create the ideal situation for Black-white segregation. An analysis of high schools in more than 100 of the largest U.S. public school districts found a positive correlation between districts that offer school choice programs and the degree to which their high schools were racially imbalanced for Black and white students.

A national study of the trends in the racial makeup of nearly every school district in the U.S. found that charter expansions made segregation worse within school districts. An analysis of national enrollment data of charter schools, conducted by the Associated Press in the 2014-2015 school year, found more than 1,000 of the nation’s 6,747 charter schools had minority enrollments of at least 99%, and the number has been rising ever since.

We see the same effect with school vouchers. A 2018 study of Washington, D.C.’s voucher program found that 70% of voucher students were enrolled in heavily segregated schools with 90% or more minority students, and 58% were enrolled in all-minority schools.

So both concepts – Great Replacement Theory and school choice – center around increasing white supremacy.

Both seek to shore up white political and economic power regardless of white people’s numeric majority. In fact, as white people become less of the majority – not through any importing of people of color from other nations but as a natural consequence of birth rates – they seek to disempower people of color.

In education, this means keeping Black and white students separate and unequal. It’s a way to divert more resources to the white students and ensure the Black students do not receive the same opportunities.

Sadly, these ideas are not really new in this country. Both share the spirit of George Wallace who in 1963 proudly proclaimed:

“Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever!”

As Malcolm X observed:

“America preaches integration and practices segregation.”

The question remains whether voters will support such artifacts of the past or turn to a future where our ideals of equality and fairness triumph over our reality of inequality and injustice.

QAnon and school privatization may share a family resemblance, but it is up to us whether we reject that family or not.

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It’s Open Season on Teachers – Again

April 21, 2022 stevenmsinger Accountability, Censorship, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Hate Crimes, immigration, Journalism, Labor, Learning, literature, Local Control, Media, nonviolence, Parents, Pennsylvania, Politics, Prejudice, President, private schools, privatization, Propaganda, Racism, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, security, segregation, Shooting, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Uncategorized Barbara Gleim, education, educators, Election, Politics, public schools, Republicans, teacher bashing, teachers, violence

I am so sick of being a scapegoat.

But Republican lawmakers seem to think they can’t get elected without finding some boogeyman with which to terrify their base.

Whether it’s climate scientists or Hollywood elites or a mythical caravan of brown people determined to burst through our southern border, the GOP cannot function without someone to cast as the monster.

For a political party that scornfully calls others snowflakes, you will never find a more concentrated gathering of self-proclaimed victims than today’s GOP.

Now they’re turning their attention once again to teachers like me.

Across the country, Republican politicians are refusing to let educators give an accurate recounting of history.

In Florida, the GOP is banning math books.

And on Fox News, Tucker Carlson is even calling for mad dads to storm the school and “thrash” the teacher.

In my home state of Pennsylvania, it’s no different.

State Rep. Barbara Gleim (R – Cumberland County) stoked the flames in the Commonwealth this week with the following message to her social media crew:

“We also need conservative eyes and ears in the schools. If anyone can substitute even one day a week, the teachers who are activists and indoctrinating children can be revealed. Not all teachers are for [Critical Race Theory] CRT, etc. We need to identify the ones who are pushing the professional development they received over the summer. Are they putting black children’s tests in separate piles and grading them differently? Have they separated the classrooms? We won’t know these things until parents are allowed back into schools, so the best way is to sub.”

What a load of crap!

Pennsylvania’s public schools are experiencing a sub shortage. I WISH people would volunteer to sub in our public schools.

In fact, back in October I even suggested lawmakers like Gleim volunteer to sub a few times a week to see what’s going on in the classroom instead of pulling vacuous lies out of their butts.

They certainly have the time! Legislators from the Keystone State make the third highest salary in the country, and they’re only in session a few weeks every month! They could easily spend a few days a week struggling with overstuffed classes, in-school suspension, hall duty and the like.

To be a sub in most public school districts in Pennsylvania, essentially all you need is a bachelors degree (it doesn’t even have to be in education) and pass criminal background checks.

Districts that aren’t experiencing a shortage may require a teaching certificate as well, but beggars can’t be choosers. In districts where it is hard to get subs (i.e. those serving poor and minority kids) you can get emergency certified for a year.

But when I made such a suggestion, I naively thought lawmakers might see the problems schools actually have and start to support them.

Fat chance of that!

People with an agenda like Gleim would simply take the most innocent of interactions and pretend they were examples of indoctrination.

In Florida they banned 41% of the math books for being “woke” without a single concrete example and then patted themselves on the back for being transparent. It would be the same here. It would be like the Puritan girls in “The Crucible” finding witches in every classroom and hallway.

This state representative really thinks teachers are putting black children’s tests in separate piles and grading them differently!? As if we’re somehow changing their grades or assessing them more leniently?

NEWS FLASH: Children of color are not suddenly acing all their tests or rocketing to the head of the class. In fact, just the opposite. There has been a racial proficiency gap for decades based on segregation, lack of resources and punitive and biased standardized tests.

For decades teachers like me have been screaming for change but lawmakers like Gleim either shrug or double down on it.

But back to her social media tirade. She wonders if there are separated classrooms – by which I assume she means classrooms segregated by race.

BINGO! She got that one right! But it’s not what she seems to think.

A majority of children of color are not getting privileged treatment. They’re being underprivileged. They’re in the lower academic tracks and a majority of the white kids are in the honors courses.

Using standardized tests to sort students into academic tracks has hurt minority children and benefited richer white kids.

But back to her social media bubble. She wants parents to be allowed “back” into public schools!? Parents have never been excluded. As long as they can pass the background check, they can come in almost any time.

And if they want to know what’s going on, they can come to any school board meeting and be in the room where all things are decided and be heard during public comment periods. They can even run for school board and make those decisions, themselves.

But way better to pretend a grievance where no such problem exists.

Public schools do not indoctrinate kids.

We teach them to think and come to their own conclusions.

Yes, we teach history, science, English and math. But it’s up to kids to decide what to make of it all.

However, if she wants to see REAL indoctrination all she has to do is look at the private and parochial schools who accept school vouchers – a policy her party usually supports.

These schools use books like America: Land I Love, an A Beka Book; United States History for Christian Schools; and the Teacher’s Resource Guide to Current Events for Christian Schools, the last two published by Bob Jones University Press (BJU).

The books are riddled with counter factual claims and political bias in every subject imaginable such as abortion, gay rights and the Endangered Species Act, which one text labels a “radical social agenda.” They disparage religions other than Protestant Christianity and cultures other than those descended from white Europeans.

They teach that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, some dinosaurs survive into the present day (i.e. the Loch Ness monster), evolution is a myth disproved by REAL science as is the claim that homosexuality is anything but a choice.

Teaching these things in school is not just educational malpractice, it’s exactly the kind of indoctrination the right is claiming without evidence happens at public schools.

And this kind of brain washing is common at voucher schools.

If there’s one thing we need to understand about today’s GOP leaders, it’s this: their accusations are always admissions.

They accuse Democrats of the pedophilia Republican congresspeople like Matt Gaetz are already under investigation for.

They accuse Democrats of fixing elections while the last GOP President actually tried to steal an election.

They accuse public schools of indoctrination while private schools routinely do that already.

Or as the old proverb puts it:

“I looked, and looked,
And this I came to see:
That what I thought was you and you,
Was really me and me.”

We could stop these shenanigans if the rest of society actually took it seriously.

But that would require news sources to point out the hypocrisy above every time a MAGA supporter started making these sorts of claims.

And that won’t happen because modern media is committed to giving equal measure to both sides of a story – even if one is patently false. They’re too afraid to appear biased to report the truth.

It would stop if the Democrats actually prosecuted the former President and his cronies for the Jan. 6 insurrection.

But that won’t happen because they’re terrified it might lose them a vote. They’re too afraid of being called partisan. Yet there is no middle ground with justice. You either have it or you don’t.

It would require a stance on principle.

So far, it hasn’t happened, and I doubt it will.

So Republicans will continue to take aim at all the usual scapegoats like teachers.

Like when Chris Christie threatened to punch educators in the face.

Their base will get fired up – perhaps maybe even too fired up – and someone will walk into a school with gun-in-hand to take down all these indoctrinating teachers.

That’s the kind of thing that happened a few years ago at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. A MAGA gunman was convinced by Trump that Jews were helping immigrants come into the country illegally. So he decided to kill as many Saturday worshipers as he could.

If we don’t stand up to this, it’s only a matter of time before it happens again.

Look. I don’t want to be at the center of this ridiculous culture war.

I just want to teach. I just want to do right by my students and their families.

But as our country burns to the ground, the school house often seems to be the center of the blaze.

I am sick of it.

I am just so sick of it.

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We Say “Gay” in My Classroom

March 23, 2022 stevenmsinger Censorship, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, Education, Hate Crimes, Learning, literature, Local Control, Parents, Philosophy, Politics, Prejudice, protest, Republican, school violence, Schools, Social Justice, student teacher relationship, Students, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Uncategorized academic freedom, ALEC, Censorship, culture war, Don't Say Gay, education, Florida, gay, homophobia, LGBT, lgbtq, Politics, prejudice, pride, public schools, regressive, Ron DeSantis, schools, Students, teachers

There are some giggles you dread as a middle school teacher.

Like when one of your students loses all control over a line of poetry.

It happened most recently over these lines of Dylan Thomas:

“Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

There it was. The G-A-Y word. The one thing with which adolescent boys and Florida Governors cannot contend.

One of my 8^th graders thought it was the height of hilarity.

“You know that word here just means ‘Happy,” I said.

And he lost it some more.

I tried logic.

“I’m gay. You’re gay. Sometimes we’re all gay.”

A renewed outburst.

“You’re probably the gayest student in my class.”

And the laughter stopped.

“No, you come in here laughing and gay just about every day,” I said.

The frown on his face was serious.

“Me, too. I’m hoping to have a really gay weekend.”

Which seemed to break him. He got up, walked to the other side of the room and sat silently in the corner.

Not exactly the reaction I was hoping for.

Some people just can’t take the truth.

Like the fact that there are gay kids in middle school.

And, no, I don’t just mean “Happy.”

There are gay kids.

And straight kids.

And trans kids.

And all kinds of kids.

There are black kids and white kids, Muslim kids and Christian kids, Latinos and Lithuanians, Italians and Iranians, girls, boys and all genders in between.

There are tall kids and short kids. Fat kids and thin kids. And, yes, some kids who like other kids in ways which all adults might not approve.

However, some people are too juvenile to deal with it – they can’t even say the word or can’t even endure someone else saying it!

That’s not so bad when you’re 13 and terrified of your own sexuality, anxious that anyone might question your cis privilege.

You still have time to grow out of such sophomoric hijinks.

But it’s worse when you’re a counterfactual zealot like Ron DeSantis passing laws like the “Don’t Say Gay Bill.”

I’m glad I don’t live in the Sunshine state, but you know ALEC will bring their own copycat version of this fascism to the rest of us sooner or later.

Forbid teachers from talking about gender identity and sexual orientation?

Allow parents to sue schools for any comment they take offense to?

Things are tough enough in middle school simply because we’re not such cowards.

We say “gay” and embrace all its multiple meanings – often at once.

“We Don’t Talk About Bruno” but we talk about everything else.

And we have to!

It is incumbent on teachers to acknowledge the reality before them.

We have to recognize our students for who they are.

That doesn’t mean labeling them. It doesn’t mean trying to convince them of anything in particular about their identities.

But it does mean admitting that identity exists. And it means refusing to accept the intolerance of those who refuse to accept others for who they are.

When a student tells you their pronouns, you listen.

When a student draws a pride flag on their notebook, you tell them it’s beautiful.

When a student tells you in confidence that they feel ugly, hurt or broken because of what their pastor or parent or classmate said, you tell them they’re marvelous and not to change a thing!

Because we don’t have the luxury to be judgmental.

It’s not in our job description.

We teach our kids no matter who they are. We love them for who they are. And if DeSantis or any other adult has a problem with that, they can just fuck off!

Silencing the grown-ups in school won’t change who the kids are. It will just forbid us from mentioning reality. It will permit us to recognize only the tiniest fraction of who our students are and leave a de facto shroud over the rest.

I refuse to turn my classroom into a closet.

It might make the most bigoted adults feel better. It might relieve grown-up fears that just talking about other ways to live is enough to mold someone into something against their nature.

As if such a thing were possible.

But it won’t help the kids.

People don’t become their sexuality. They discover who they were all along – and ultimately no piece of legislation can stop that. It can make that search more difficult, painful and riddled with guilt. But you are who you are.

It’s regressive shame-based norms like these that encourage little boys to bash those who are different.

That make them feel the only safety lies in violence against the other so no one questions who they are, themselves.

That scares them enough to giggle at a three-letter word embedded in a poem.

And speaking of my giggle goose, eventually he got himself under control.

Before the end of the period he came back to the table.

Silently, swiftly, and soberly, he sat down with the rest of us ready to continue discussing “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Goodnight.”

Not a titter or laugh.

It wasn’t until a week later that he turned to me with a smile and asked:

“Mr. Singer, did you have a gay weekend?”

I did, Buddy. I did.

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What I Told My Students About Yesterday’s Attempted Trump Coup

January 8, 2021January 8, 2021 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Budget, capitalism, Child Safety, Compassion, Congress, Corporate Education "Reform", COVID-19, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Gun Control, Guns, Hate Crimes, history, Learning, Pittsburgh, Police, Politics, Prejudice, President, Propaganda, Racism, Republican, School Funding, school segregation, school violence, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, student action, Students, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Technology, Voting Rights, White Privilege education, George Floyd, Guns in Schools, Politics, Riot, school funding, school segregation, Students, teachers, test-based accountability, Trump, Washington D.C.

The moment I had been dreading happened.

Student names started popping up on my screen waiting to be admitted into this morning’s first Zoom meeting.

What was I going to say to them?

Yesterday in Washington, DC, thousands of Trump supporters charged into the Capitol Building at his urging in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying his Presidential defeat.

What would I tell my middle schoolers?

What COULD I say?

We can’t offer you equitable resources. We can’t stop judging you with biased standardized tests. We can’t desegregate your schools. We can’t protect you from gun violence. We can’t even give you in-person classes because of a global pandemic the government has given up even trying to control!

And now I’m supposed to say that even the semblance of our democracy is up for grabs?

I started clicking on their names.

I only had a few moments before I had to speak.

I cleared my throat and began welcoming them, one-by-one as always.

And then it was time.

I stared at all these empty black boxes, and began.

“We’ve got to talk about yesterday,” I said.

“Not yesterday in class. That was fine. Everyone did an outstanding job on yesterday’s assignment.

“We have to talk about what happened yesterday in Washington, DC. Does anyone know what that was?”

And I waited.

Eventually I saw a few messages that individuals had their hands raised.

A few kids said that people had charged the Capitol. But that they didn’t know why.

So I explained it to them.

I told them how Trump was refusing to accept the results of the election. That he had lost, but continued to challenge it in the courts. Both Republican and Democratic judges had turned him down saying that he had no proof. So Trump spoke outside of the White House yesterday telling his followers to march on the Capitol, which they did.

At this point I noticed something strange on my screen.

The rows of empty boxes had turned into windows. No more memes or messages or generic names. Most of my kids had turned on their cameras and were meeting my eyes – in some cases – for the first time.

So that’s what Kelsey looks like, I thought. Wow! Marquis is really built. Is that little kid in the grey hoodie really Caulin?

I got flustered and stopped talking, but the students took up the narrative for me.

Some of them mentioned watching videos on-line of the riot. They saw a guy with horns in the President’s chair?

“No, I said. “That was the Vice-President’s chair in the Senate.”

“Wasn’t there someone at someone’s desk?”

“Yes, that was Nancy Pelosi’s desk,” I said. “A rioter broke into her office and put his feet up. She’s the Speaker of the House.”

And so it went on for a few minutes. They brought up things they had seen and I either clarified or supported them.

As a whole, they were wealthy in details but poor in meaning.

Most of the white kids seemed to be taking it ironically. The black and brown kids were more quiet and subdued.

A white boy wrote in the chat that it was “Civil War 2: electric bugaloo.”

I said, “Yes, you’ve hit on an important point. Some of these folks may have been trying to start a new Civil War.”

I tried to put the event in historical context.

I told them how nothing like this had ever happened in my lifetime. That the last time people broke into the Capitol Building like this was during the War of 1812 when the British tried to force the US to become a colony again. However, that was a foreign power invading our country. Wednesday was our own citizens seeking to overturn the results of an election, trying to overwrite the will of the people.

That’s when the first black student spoke up.

“Mr. Singer, why were they waving Confederate flags?”

“Yes! That’s true, Jamal. Many of them DID have Confederate flags and that’s really important.”

Before I could say more I got a series of rapid-fire questions from the same group who had been silent up to this point.

“Why didn’t the police stop them?”

“Why’d they steal stuff? I saw some guy walking away with a podium.”

“Why they so mad?”

I smiled and said that these were all excellent questions.

I asked if any of them knew who George Floyd was.

No one responded.

I told them he was a black guy who was murdered by police when an officer knelt on his neck.

After that happened, there were protests by Black Lives Matter activists and others in several cities including Pittsburgh. The police showed up in riot gear. As these protestors demonstrated almost entirely peacefully – certainly more peacefully than what we saw in DC yesterday – more than 14,000 people were arrested.

“How many people do you think were arrested yesterday?” I asked.

“Didn’t someone die?”

“Yes, a woman was shot in the Capitol and three others died of medical emergencies. How many people were arrested?”

“None,” said a student of color who hadn’t participated before.

“Why none?” I asked.

“Because they was white.”

I told him that he right and wrong. Out of thousands of rioters who broke into the Capitol, thirteen people were arrested. And the reason there were only 13 was because they were white.

I told them that this whole affair needed to be investigated. That we needed to know how and why the police responded the way they did. That we needed to hold the rioters accountable. That we needed to make sure those who instigated this violence were made to pay for it, too.

“Is Trump still President?” Someone asked.

“Yes,” I said. “For about two more weeks. But there are a lot of people who think he should have to step down sooner.”

So we talked about how he could be removed from office. We talked about impeachment and the 25th Amendment. We even talked about how Trump was banned from Twitter and Facebook – how he couldn’t post or tweet but still could send a nuclear missile anywhere he wanted.

And then it quieted down.

I asked them if there was anything more they wanted to know or if there was anything else they wanted to say.

They were still.

A few cameras clicked off.

I told them that I was there if anyone needed anything, that their teachers were here if they were feeling anything and wanted someone to talk to.

And then that was it.

I made one of the most abrupt and inelegant transitions in my career and we returned to our normally scheduled lesson.

Did it help any?

I don’t know, but I told them what I could. I told them the truth as I saw it.

There was a time when I would have been more reticent about it.

But the day after domestic terrorists try to steal our system of government isn’t the time to hold back.

As a teacher, sometimes I feel so helpless.

There’s so much I’d like to do for my students.

I want them to get the resources they need. I want to stop the unfair testing, integrate their schools, keep them safe from gun violence and control Covid-19 so we can return to the classroom.

I want to live in a country where majority rule is cherished and protected, where no one thinks the collective will should be trumped by white privilege.

But when all those things are out of reach, I still have one thing left to give.

The truth.

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America Has Failed in Every Way But One

June 1, 2020 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, antisemitism, capitalism, Civil Rights, Compassion, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Election, Election Reform, Hate Crimes, Healthcare, history, Labor, Police, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, President, protest, Racism, Republican, Riot, Schools, Shooting, Social Justice, Taxation, Teachers, voting Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, climate change, coronavirus, Donald Trump, economics, George Floyd, Gun Control, Gun Violence, lynching, pandemic, police brutality, police shootings, Politics, post truth, progressive, protest, white supremacist, white supremacy

This year has been a disaster.

We are living through a global pandemic yet have inadequate health screenings, medical equipment or a viable vaccine.

We are witness to public lynchings of black people at the hands of law enforcement yet our legal system continues to be slow to act if at all.

Our schools and hospitals are starved for resources yet police have riot gear, tear gas and army surplus tanks to patrol the streets.

Climate change causes unprecedented storms, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes and other extreme weather yet our policymakers refuse to take any action to change it or even acknowledge it’s happening.

We’re experiencing record unemployment and a stalled economy yet the super rich loot and pillage recovery efforts to record profits.

White supremacists are terrorizing our communities yet we ignore it until someone is killed and refuse to see any pattern, just a series of loners unrelated and unstoppable.

Refugees with nowhere else to go seek shelter at our door and yet we respond by rounding them up like criminals, separating them from their children and caging them like animals…

Guns are unregulated. Truth is uncelebrated. Fascism rebranded.

All while America burns and the President hides in his bunker.

But he is not the only one.

Nearly every leader in America has failed to meet these challenges.

So maybe the problem isn’t just our leadership but where these people come from in the first place.

Our politics is so beholden to monetary interests it cannot function for anyone else.

We are left out of the system and told that the only solution is participation in it.

We go door-to-door, organize and hold rallies for our chosen candidates. We navigate political labyrinths of red tape in an edifice labeled “Democracy” but at every turn stifled of collective voice. And sometimes we even win and see our preferred public servants inaugurated.

But every year nothing much changes.

Things get progressively worse no matter who is in office.

And we’re told to clutch at changes that are not nearly adequate or which are cosmetic at best.

It’s no wonder, then, that so many folks have taken to the streets to express their outrage and demand justice.

No one really wants a revolution we’re told, until the streets are on fire and the riot shields and rubber bullets come out.

In frustration we burn the place down begging to be noticed, to be heard, for anything to finally happen.

And the only response is echoes of the past: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

America is a failed state.

We are a failure.

But there is at least one thing that gives me hope, and it is this.

There is one major way that our country and our people have not failed.

There is one way that we have surveyed the present scene and responded appropriately.

We have not lost our outrage.

When George Floyd, a black man, was murder in May by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin who kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than 8 minutes, we did not look away.

Nor did we forget Breonna Taylor, a Black woman, who in March was killed in Kentucky by police serving a “no knock” warrant at her apartment for criminals they already had in custody.

Nor did we forget Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man jogging near his home in February who was followed and shot to death by two white men who claimed they suspected him of committing some sort of crime.

It would be easy to become complacent about such things.

They happen every year. Every month. Nearly every day.

But we have refused to accept them.

We refuse to shrug and let this just become normal.

America is angry. She is sick and tired of being unheard and unheeded.

She is fed up with unjust systems, gas lighting leaders and political thugs.

To quote James Baldwin, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

We are trying to face the truth.

Only time will tell whether it destroys us or we conquer it.

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‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ Has Never Been More Important Than It is Today

April 11, 2019April 11, 2019 stevenmsinger antisemitism, Art, Civil Rights, Compassion, Education, Hate Crimes, Journals, Learning, literature, Politics, Prejudice, protest, Racism, Refugees, Schools, Social Justice, Students, Teachers, Violence Against Children action, Anne Frank, anti-racism, anti-semitism, empathy, hate crimes, history, Holocaust, legacy, Politics, schools, Students, teachers, The Diary of Anne Frank, today

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The biggest mistake people make about “The Diary of Anne Frank” is to assume it’s about a little dead girl.

It’s not.

Anne Frank is not dead.

Not in 1945. Not in 2019.

Anne was a Dutch Jew hiding from the Nazis with her family and four others in a loft above her father’s former factory in Amsterdam.

The teenager is the most famous victim of the Holocaust, but her story doesn’t end when she succumbed to typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in the closing days of WWII.

Because it’s a story that never ends.

Her physical self may be gone, but her spirit remains.

In the 1990s, she was a Muslim Bosniak child killed by Christian Serbs in the former Yugoslavia.

In the 2000s, she was a Christian Darfuri in Western Sudan killed by Arab militias.

A decade ago, she was a Palestinian toddler torn to pieces on the West Bank – a victim of Israeli bombs.

And, yes, today she is a brown skinned Central American girl fleeing from violence to the United States only to be forcibly separated from her family and thrown in a cage.

Not only is Anne Frank not dead, she is more alive than most people who draw breath, whose hearts still pump blood, whose eyes shrink from the violence, prejudice and hatred all around them.

Perhaps that’s why it is so hard to teach her Diary in my 8^th grade class.

It’s not a particularly difficult book.

Her prose is uncomplicated. Her ideas clear.

In fact, she jumps right off the page and into the classroom.

But that’s what makes her so difficult for me, the teacher.

Every year I help bring her to life for my students. And I suffer her loss all over again each time.

I think everyone sees something different in Anne.

My students see themselves in her. Or they see their friends or siblings.

Her problems are their problems. They, too, can feel closer to one parent than another.

They, too, can hate to be compared with a “perfect” sibling.

They, too, feel all the emotions and frustrations of growing up – the confusion, passion and hurt.

For me, though, it is different.

I don’t see Anne primarily as myself. I see her as my daughter. Or perhaps I see my daughter in her.

A precocious child hunched over a book scribbling away her deepest thoughts? Sounds like my precious 10-year-old drawing her comic books, or writing her stories, or acting out melodramas with her dolls and stuffed animals.

I want to take her somewhere safe, to keep her away from the Nazis, to conceal her from all the evil in the world.

After teaching the book for almost a decade and a half, it was only this year that I hit upon a new perspective. I realized that if Anne had survived, she would be almost the same age as my grandmother.

And for a moment, an image of her was almost superimposed over my Grandma Ce Ce. There she was – a physical Anne, a living person. But then it was gone.

When speaking about her to my students, I try to be extremely careful of their feelings. I make it exceedingly clear from the very beginning where her physical life ends.

She and her family are in hiding for 25 months before the Nazis find and send them to concentration camps. Only her father, Otto Frank, is left.

I don’t want any of that to be a surprise.

Yet it is.

Every time.

My classes stare back at me with shocked expressions when we reach the last page.

That can’t be the end. There has to be more.

So we read first hand accounts of Anne in the camp.

But that can’t be all, either. Can it?

So we learn about her legacy – about the Anne Frank House, the Academy Award winning film, and how her book is an international best seller.

Somehow her spirit still refuses to die.

I think it’s because she has become more than just a victim. More even than a single physical person.

We know that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust. We know that 5 million non-Jews were also killed. But no matter how many documentaries we see, or how many pictures we look at – none of them come alive in quite the same way as Anne.

She is a face for these faceless.

She irreparably humanizes the other.

Once you read her Diary, you can’t forget that smiling little girl whose light was so suddenly snuffed out.

We can go numb at the numbers – the sheer scale of these atrocities.

But with Anne, it becomes something personal.

On Dec. 24, 1943, Anne wrote:

“I sometimes wonder if anyone will ever understand what I mean, if anyone will ever overlook my ingratitude and not worry about whether or not I’m Jewish and merely see me as a teenager badly in need of some good, plain fun.”

We see you, Anne.

And because we do, we see beyond you, too.

We see you in the continuing horrors of our age.

Because your death is never in the past tense. It is always present.

Your eyes look out at us through the victims of our day, too.

And your words ring in our ears:

“What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it happening again.” (May 7, 1944)

We have not prevented it.

It continues.

Hatred and prejudice and murder echo through our human interactions.

All while the history fades.

According to a 2018 study, only 22 percent of millennials say they’ve even heard of the Holocaust.

I don’t think any of those young adults read your Diary, because my students remember you.

That’s why I’ll never stop teaching your story.

In the vain hope that by remembering you, they’ll see your eyes on the faces of all the future’s would-be victims.

In the vain hope that caring about you will help them care about the faceless strangers, the propagandized others.

In the vain hope that knowing your face will force their eyes to see – actually see – the faces of those who are demonized and dehumanized so someone will care when the boot comes down on their visage.

So that someone will stop the boot from ever coming down again.

In one of her last entries, on July 15, 1944, Anne wrote:

“I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.”

That time has come for us all.

Anne’s Diary remains to remind us – a clarion call to empathy and action.

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The World Mourns for Jews After Pittsburgh’s Synagogue Shooting. What About Other Targets of Hate?

November 2, 2018November 2, 2018 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, antisemitism, Art, Civil Rights, Compassion, Donald Trump, Education, Feminism, Gun Control, Guns, Hate Crimes, Healthcare, immigration, Labor, LGBT, Mass Shooting, Media, nonviolence, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Politics, Prejudice, President, protest, Racism, Refugees, Schools, segregation, Sexism, Shooting, Social Justice, Teachers, White Allies, White Privilege, Whiteness anti-racism, jewish, Mass Shooting, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Politics, prejudice, racism, Squirrel Hill, synagogue, Tree of Life, white supremacist, white supremacy

When a white supremacist killed 11 people and wounded 6 others at a Pittsburgh synagogue last weekend, the world took notice.

Lights dimmed at the Eiffel Tower and Empire State building.

Candlelight vigils were held nationwide – including in Boston, Houston, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New Orleans, Atlanta, Chicago, New York City and Los Angeles.

A host of international leaders from the Pope to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed outrage, sadness and solidarity.

I’ll admit that as a native Pittsburgher and person of Jewish descent, it touched me deeply.

For a moment, it seemed like the whole world had stopped spinning and from every corner of the globe people were with us in our tragedy.

But at the same time, it was troubling.

After all, there were at least two other major hate crimes in the U.S. perpetrated within 72 hours of the shooting.

In Kentucky, a white man shot and killed two African-Americans at a Kroger grocery store following a failed attempt to break into a black church.

Only two days later, a deranged man who had railed against Democrats and minorities with hate-filled messages online was arrested for allegedly sending mail bombs to people who’d been criticized by President Donald Trump.

Where were the candlelight vigils for those atrocities?

Where were the international landmarks going dark?

Where was the worldwide condemnation?

In the wake of Pittsburgh’s tragedy, these other violent acts have been almost forgotten.

Yet they’re all symptoms of the same disease – hate and bigotry.

Don’t get me wrong.

What happened in Pittsburgh was terrible.

The Anti-Defamation League estimates that the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue may be the most deadly attack on Jews on American Soil in our history.

But me and mine do not have a monopoly on sorrow.

We suffer, but we are not the only ones hurting.

This all happened not far from my home.

I’ll admit that I am having a really hard time dealing with it.

I am not sleeping well.

I find myself zoning out in the middle of everyday activities.

And I feel this constant anxiety like part of me is expecting to hear a gunshot ringing down the hall at any time.

When the alleged shooter entered the sanctuary armed to the teeth and shouted “All Jews must die!” before carrying out his plan, he included me in his declaration.

All Jews.

That’s me.

That’s my daughter. My parents. My family.

It means something to me that so many people have come together to repudiate this crime.

The Islamic Center of Pittsburgh and other U.S. based Muslim groups donated more than $200,000 for funeral expenses. An Iranian refugee (who hadn’t even been to the three rivers) started a GoFundMe that brought in $1 million for the victims and their families.

You can’t go anywhere in Pittsburgh without a memorial, a moment of silence, a shared statement of solidarity and love.

At the symphony, musicians read two statements from the stage against hate before playing a Hebrew melody with string quartet.

At my school – I’m a teacher – the union decided to collect money for the victims.

I saw a barge floating down one of the rivers that had the message “Stronger Than Hate” on the side next to the modified Steelers logo where the top star had been replaced by a Star of David.

I even saw a similar message on a Wendy’s sign: “PittsburghStrong/ Stronger/ Than Hate”.

The community has come together in a way I’ve never seen before.

But I can’t help wondering why.

Even after Richard Baumhammers went on a racially motivated killing spree in 2000 murdering five people including two Jews, the response wasn’t this overwhelming.

Perhaps it’s just that this latest shooting is the final straw.

Perhaps it is the moment when our nation finally pulls together and says that enough is enough – We won’t tolerate this kind of hate and violence.

I hope that’s it.

However, in the shadows of my mind I wonder if it might not be a reflection of the same beast that struck us last weekend.

Could it be that we’re willing to put up with violence against brown people, but only draw the line when those targeted have lighter skin?

I guess my point – if I have one – is this: Thank you, But.

On behalf of Pittsburgh’s Jews, thank you for having our back.

If we’re going to survive this, we’re going to need your continued support and solidarity.

But it’s not just us.

Hate crimes have jumped from about 70 incidents a year in the 1990s to more than 300 a year since 2001. And after Trump was elected, 900 bias-related incidents were reported against minorities within the first 10 days.

Our country was built on the genocide of over 110 million indigenous Americans and the enslavement of 30 million Africans.

The idea of concentration camps didn’t originate with the Nazis. Hitler got the idea from U.S. treatment of Native Americans.

Racism didn’t end with the Civil Rights Movement. It just changed shape and is hidden in the way we practice health care, education, and policing all the way to mass incarceration.

The shock and solidarity in the wake of the synagogue shooting is appreciated, but it’s not enough to mourn only when 11 Jews are murdered in cold blood.

It’s not enough to take a stand against anti-Semitism.

We need to join together to fight all of it.

We need to be unified against school segregation, police brutality, xenophobia and prejudice in all of its forms.

The white supremacist who killed my friends and neighbors targeted us because he thought we were helping brown-skinned immigrants into the country.

We can’t just stand for the helpers. We need to stand for those in need of that help.

It just won’t work any other way.

We can’t just be against violence to light skinned minorities. We have to empathize and protect our brown skinned brothers and sisters, too. We have to love and cherish our LGBTQ neighbors, as well.

We have to realize that our freedom, our safety, our very lives depend not just on what rights we have – but on what rights we give to all.

That is the only way any of us will ever feel safe again.

Through love and solidarity for every. Single. Human. Being.

The Pittsburgh Community is Stronger Than the Synagogue Shooter’s Hate

October 27, 2018 stevenmsinger antisemitism, Civil Rights, Compassion, Education, Feminism, Gun Control, Guns, Hate Crimes, immigration, Mass Shooting, Media, nonviolence, Pennsylvania, Philosophy, Police, Politics, Prejudice, Racism, segregation, Sexism, Shooting, Social Justice anti-semitism, Civil Rights, Gun Control, gun sense, Gun Violence, Guns, hate crimes, jewish, Mass Shooting, Nazi, nonviolence, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, racism, Squirrel Hill, synagogue, white supremacist

There’s a popular yard sign in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

In bands of green and blue and yellow, it projects the same message in Spanish, English and Arabic:

“No matter where you are from, we’re glad you’re our neighbor.”

If the community had a motto, I think that might be it.

Though known for its high concentration of Jewish residents, the Pennsylvania locale is a multicultural crossroads.

That may have made it a target today when a shooter entered the Tree of Life Synagogue.

Though the alleged culprit has been captured, details are still being uncovered. The death toll has yet to be tallied.

Unconfirmed reports state that he shouted “All Jews must die,” before opening fire.

But I don’t believe that the Jewish community was his only target.

Or more precisely – it wasn’t just the Jewish part – it was the community that had grown up around it.

I know Squirrel Hill well.

I live close by. I grew up on those streets. I’ve been to services at that synagogue. I have family who are members.

Thankfully it seems that no one related to me was there this morning. But when victims names are released, I probably will know who they are.

I know this community.

I am an extended part of it.

And that’s something of which I am proud.

Just walk along Murray Avenue and you’ll see Indian, Italian, Jewish, African, Chinese – every nationality imaginable – offering the fruits of their culture for friendly commerce.

You’ll see Hasidic Jews in dark hats and flowing tzitzit walking next to women in colorful saris next to trans and lesbians, kids with every color skin playing together in harmony.

Whenever I want a good corned beef sandwich or a quality lox and bagel, I go there. Whenever I want a spicy curry or the freshest sushi or an authentic macaroon, that’s the place. If I want to hear a string quartet or a lecture from a visiting dignitary or even if I want to swim in a public pool, membership to the Jewish Community Center is open to all.

It’s like a few blocks of cosmopolitan life tucked away in a city more known for segregation. We have many ethnic neighborhoods but few where one culture flows so easily into another.

Heck. Even the Tree of Life Synagogue, itself, doesn’t serve one congregation. It serves three who all had services going on at different parts of the building this morning.

There’s just something very special about this place.

It’s where you can go to be yourself – in fact, you’re encouraged to be who you are and not conform to any particular norm. Yet in doing so, you’re somehow demonstrating unity.

Paradoxically, being you makes you one of us.

It’s weird.

I think it may have been that sense of community that made Squirrel Hill, in general, and the Tree of Life Synagogue, in particular, a target.

The hate-filled person who attacked us today was terrified of that unity.

He was so frightened of disillusion, of losing his sense of self, that he had to end the lives of those who could do what he couldn’t.

It’s pathetic, really.

If your sense of self is only a negative, only opposition to someone else’s otherness, you really don’t have much self to lose.

If you define yourself by your hate, what are you?

Do you even really exist?

Most of us are very different.

We are complex assortments of personality – a family identity, a cultural heritage, a work persona, a spirituality, a sense of justice.

Communities like Squirrel Hill nurture this multifarious nature.

They welcome and celebrate difference.

I wish America was more like Squirrel Hill and not the other way around.

If this community’s normal was our national ideal, think of the country we would be living in!

Being different wouldn’t be an obstacle, it would be cherished.

When meeting someone with an unfamiliar name, a heritage of which you were ignorant, a sexuality or gender identity of which you had little knowledge – your response wouldn’t be fear or discomfort. It would be a thrill of excitement that you are lucky enough to broaden your understanding of the many ways there are to be human.

It would be a country where no one grew up so stunted and afraid that the only solution they could imagine would be the death of others.

That’s the America I want to live in.

Squirrel Hill is stronger than this synagogue shooters hate.

I hope our country is, too.

Disowning the Lie of Whiteness

September 11, 2018 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Civil Rights, Compassion, Hate Crimes, Labor, nonviolence, Police, Politics, Prejudice, protest, Racism, School to Prison Pipeline, segregation, Social Justice, White Allies, White Privilege, Whiteness anti-racism, anti-semitism, Holocaust, jewish, Philosophy, Politics, racism, racist, white ally, white culture, white privilege, white supremacy, Whiteness

The most vivid memory I have of my great-grandfather is the tattoo on his arm.

It wasn’t an anchor or a sweetheart’s name or even the old faithful, “Mom.”

It was just a series of digits scrawled across his withered tan flesh like someone had written a note they didn’t want to forget.

Beneath the copious salt and pepper hairs was a stark number, the darkest stain on his skin.

Gramps is a kindly figure in my mind.

He died before I was even 10-years-old. All I really remember about him are wisps of impressions – his constant smile, a whiff of mothballs, how he always seemed to have butterscotch candies.

And that tattoo.

I think it was my father who told me what it meant.

When he was just a young man, Gramps escaped from Auschwitz. A guard took pity on him and smuggled him out.

His big European family didn’t make it.

My scattered relatives in the United States are all that are left of us.

Those are the only details that have come down to me. And Gramps isn’t here to add anything further.

But his tattoo has never left me.

It’s become a pillar of my subconscious.

The fact that someone could look at my kindly Gramps and still see fit to tattoo a numeric signifier on him as if he were an animal.

A little reminder that he wasn’t human, that he shouldn’t be treated like a person, that he was marked for erasure.

If I look at my own arm, there is no tell-tale integer peeking through the skin. But I am keenly aware of its presence.

I know that it’s there in a very real sense.

It is only the American dream that hides it.

Coming to this country, my family has made a deal, something of a Faustian bargain, but it’s one that most of us have accepted as the price of admission.

It’s called whiteness.

I am white.

Or I get to be white. So long as I suppress any differences to the contrary.

I agree to homogenize myself as much as possible and define myself purely by that signifier.

White. American. No hyphen necessary.

Anything else is secondary. I don’t have to deny it, but I have to keep it hidden until the right context comes to bring it out.

During Octoberfest I have license to be German. When at international village I can root for Poland. And on Saturdays I can wear a Kippah and be Jewish.

But in the normal flow of life, don’t draw attention to my differences. Don’t show everyone the number on my arm.

Because America is a great place, but people here – as in many other places – are drawn to those sorts of symbols and will do what they can to stamp them out.

I learned that in school when I was younger.

There weren’t a lot of Jewish kids where I grew up. I remember lots of cracks about “Jewing” people down, fighting against a common assumption that I would be greedy, etc. I remember one girl I had a crush on actually asked to see my horns.

And of course there were the kids who chased me home from the bus stop. The scratched graffiti on my locker: “Yid.”

The message was clear – “You’re different. We’ll put up with you, but don’t ever forget you are NOT one of us.”

There were a lot more black kids. They didn’t get it any easier but at least they could join together.

It seemed I had one choice – assimilate or face it alone.

So I did. I became white.

I played up my similarities, never talked about my differences except to close friends.

And America worked her magic.

So I’ve always been aware that whiteness is the biggest delusion in the world.

It’s not a result of the color wheel. Look at your skin. You’re not white. You’re peach or pink or salmon or rose or coral or olive or any of a million other shades.

Whiteness has as much to do with color as Red has to do with Communism or Green has to do with environmental protection.

It is the way a lose confederacy of nationalities and ethnicities have banded together to form a fake majority and lord power over all those they’ve excluded.

It’s social protection for wealth – a kind of firewall against the underclass built, manned and protected by those who are also being exploited.

It’s like a circle around the wealthy protecting them from everyone outside its borders. Yet if everyone banded together against the few rich and powerful, we could all have a more equitable share.

But in America, social class has been weaponized and racialized.

You’ll see some media outlets talking about demographics as if white people were in danger of losing their numerical majority in this country in the next few decades. But there’s no way it’s ever going to happen.

Today’s xenophobia is a direct response to this challenge. Some are trying to deport, displace and murder as many black and brown people as possible to preserve the status quo.

But even if that doesn’t work, whiteness will not become a minority. It will do what it has always done – incorporate some of those whom it had previously excluded to keep its position.

Certain groups of Hispanics and Latinos probably will find themselves allowed to identify as white, thereby solidifying the majority.

Because the only thing that matters is that there are some people who are “white” and the rest who are not.

Long ago, my family experienced this.

Before I was born, we got our provisional white card. And if I want, I can use it to hide behind.

I’ve been doing it most of my life.

Every white person does it.

It’s almost impossible not to do it.

How do you deny being white?

At this point, I could throw back my head and shout to the heavens, “I’M NOT WHITE!” and it wouldn’t matter.

Only in a closed environment like a school or a job or in a social media circle can you retain the stigma of appearing pale but still being other.

In everyday life, it doesn’t matter what you say, only how you appear.

I can’t shout my difference all the time. Every moment I’m quiet, I’ll still be seen as white.

It’s not personal. It’s social. It’s not something that happens among individuals. It’s a way of being seen.

The best I can do is try to use my whiteness as a tool. I can speak out against the illusion. I can stand up when people of color are being victimized. I can vote for leaders who will do something to dismantle white supremacy.

Not because I am some kind of savior, but because I know that my own freedom is tied to the freedom of those being oppressed by a system that provides me certain privileges.

But let me be clear: doing so is not the safe way to go.

In defending others you make yourself a target.

I get threats all the time from racists and Nazis of all sorts. They say they can tell just by looking at me that I’m not white at all.

The worst part is I’m not sure what I am anymore.

I don’t go to synagogue. I don’t even believe in God. But I’m Jewish enough to have been rounded up like Gramps was, so I won’t deny that identity. It’s just that I’m more than one thing.

That’s what whiteness tries to reduce you to – one thing.

I don’t want it anymore.

I’m not saying I don’t like the protection, the ability to be anonymous, the easy out.

But it’s not worth it if it has to come with the creation of an other.

I don’t want to live in a world where people of color are considered less than me and mine.

I don’t want to live in a world where they can be treated unfairly, beaten and brutalized so that I can get some special advantage.

I don’t want to live in a world where human beings are tattooed and numbered and sent to their deaths.

Because the Holocaust is not over.

American slavery is not over.

Neither is Jim Crow or lynching or a thousand other marks of hatred and bigotry.

Nazis march unmasked in our streets. Our prisons are the new plantation. And too many of our police use murder and atrocity to ensure the social order.

As long as we allow ourselves to be white, there will be no justice for both ourselves and others.

So consider this my renunciation of whiteness – and I make it here in public.

I know that no matter what I say, I will still be seen as part of the problem. And I will still reap the rewards.

But I will use what power is given me to tear it down.

I’m burning my white card.

I know it’s a symbolic gesture. But I invite my white brothers and sisters to add theirs to the flames.

Let us make a conflagration, a pillar of fire into the sky.

Let whiteness evaporate as the smoke it is.

Let us revel in the natural hues of our faces as we watch it burn.

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You Don’t Have to Be Perfect to Fight Racism. But You Have to Try

August 17, 2018 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Hate Crimes, Politics, Prejudice, Racism, Schools, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Teachers, Unions, White Allies, White Fragility anti-racism, organizing, perfectionism, Politics, prejudice, racism, white privilege, white supremacy

I am a white guy who talks about racism.

I teach mostly students of color in a western Pennsylvania public school. I write a blog about education and issues of prejudice. And I participate in social justice campaigns to try and redress the inequality all around me.

But in my quest to be an anti-racist, one of the most common criticisms people hurl my way is to call me smug:

You think you’re so perfect!

You’re just suffering from white guilt.

You love black people more than your own people.

Things like that.

Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret.

I make mistakes.

All. The. Time.

I am just like every other white person out there. But I have recognized certain facts about my world and I’m trying to do something about them.

America is built on the genocide of over 110 million indigenous Americans and the enslavement of 30 million Africans. The idea of concentration camps didn’t originate with the Nazis. Hitler got the idea from U.S. treatment of Native Americans. Racism didn’t end with the Civil Rights Movement. It just changed shape and was hidden in the way we practiced health care, education, and policing all the way to mass incarceration.

And it’s getting worse. Hate crimes have jumped from about 70 incidents a year in the 1990s to more than 300 a year since 2001. And after Trump was elected, 900 bias-related incidents were reported against minorities within the first 10 days.

It does not make me special that I am trying to do what little I can about that. It just makes me human.

That’s it.

I am not perfect.

I am no better than anyone else.

But I am trying to do the right thing.

When I first became a teacher, I had the chance to go to the rich white schools and work with the wealthy white kids. I hated it.

I found that I had a real affinity for the struggling students, the poor and minorities.

Why? Probably because I have more in common with them than the kids who drove to school in better cars than me, wore more expensive clothes and partied with designer drugs.

Does that make me better than a teacher who stayed in the suburbs? No. But hopefully it gives me the chance to make a greater difference against white supremacy.

When I saw how unjust our school system is, I could have gotten out. Law school was definitely an option. So was becoming a technical writer or a job as a pharmaceutical ad rep.

But I dug in and spoke out.

I could have left, but who would be there to speak for my students? Who would speak truth to power about high stakes standardized tests, unaccountable charter and voucher schools, inequitable funding and the boondoggle of Common Core Standards?

So I got active in my union, spoke at rallies, lead marches on incorrigible law-makers and started a blog.

Does that make me better than teachers who kept plugging away at their jobs but didn’t rock the boat? No way. But hopefully I have a better chance at helping change things for the better.

When I saw that politicians in my state wanted to stop the parents of my students from voting by trampling their civil rights with a voter ID law, I started a campaign asking the officials that were tasked with enacting the law to ignore it.

It was a hard battle that made me do things I was not at all comfortable doing. You try asking a public servant on camera to break the law and go to jail for what he knew was right.

Strangely enough, it worked. Along with several other campaigns throughout the state, we got the voter ID law declared unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court.

Some people look at that and other accomplishments and think I’m conceited.

They say I’m a white savior hogging the spotlight for myself and keeping the very people I’m trying to help in my shadow.

That’s not my intention at all.

I wouldn’t be anywhere without the help and support of people of color.

Everything I’ve done in this fight has been with their help and encouragement.

Does that mean I’m impervious to making a racist comment? Does it mean I’ve never participated in a microaggression? Does it mean I see every racist impact of my society and my place in it?

Absolutely not.

I screw up every day.

Multiple times.

But that’s the point. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to try.

One of the books that has helped guide me on this journey is Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups, by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun.

The chapter on “White Supremacy Culture” should be required reading for every activist organization or budding civil rights warrior.

The authors offer a list of characteristics that stem from white supremacy that can affect even the best intentioned of groups and individuals. These norms are difficult to name or identify but can lead to major dysfunction:

“They are damaging to both people of color and to white people. Organizations that are people of color led or a majority people of color can also demonstrate many damaging characteristics of white supremacy culture.”

And the number one characteristic is Perfectionism.

This involves the following bullet points:

“little appreciation expressed among people for the work that others are doing; appreciation that is expressed usually directed to those who get most of the credit anyway

more common is to point out either how the person or work is inadequate

or even more common, to talk to others about the inadequacies of a person or their work without ever talking directly to them

mistakes are seen as personal, i.e. they reflect badly on the person making them as opposed to being seen for what they are – mistakes

making a mistake is confused with being a mistake, doing wrong with being wrong

little time, energy, or money put into reflection or identifying lessons learned that can improve practice, in other words little or no learning from mistakes

tendency to identify what is wrong; little ability to identify, name, and appreciate what is right”

Solutions offered to this problem are:

“Develop a culture of appreciation, where the organization takes time to make sure that people’s work and efforts are appreciated;

develop a learning organization, where it is expected that everyone will make mistakes and those mistakes offer opportunities for learning;

create an environment where people can recognize that mistakes sometimes lead to positive results;

separate the person from the mistake;

when offering feedback, always speak to the things that went well before offering criticism;

ask people to offer specific suggestions for how to do things differently when offering criticism.”

These are things we should keep in mind as we try to move forward in this fight.

Certainly white people can be resistant to criticism and see any and every comment or appraisal as personal or demeaning – especially if that remark is made by a person of color.

Frankly, white people need to get a thicker skin about it. We need to realize that this impulse to personalize analysis is often a psychological attempt to avoid looking at oneself and what unconscious aspects of the social order one has internalized.

However, those offering criticism must realize that context is everything. We must create an environment where such remarks are constructive. Otherwise, they’ll do more harm than good.

None of this is easy.

But if we want to be anti-racists, that’s not the job we signed up to do.

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gadflyonthewallblog

"To sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth."

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