PB&J Could Be Racist ??
So suggests the diversity standards in the Portland school district.
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I just don’t know what to say about this. There’s so much wrong in that article. Maybe I need to read it again.
Ditto. Math is math, reading is reading, critical thinking is critical thinking. Apologizing for asking about types of food? Its garbage liberalism like this that gives my species of liberalism a bad rep.
Um, what a horrible and seemingly purposeful misunderstanding of what is actually an excellent program. Nobody says anywhere in this course that talking about pb&j is racist. Validating students with different cultural identities by giving broad examples of general things, and asking questions about and validating cultural differences, is an excellent teaching methodology. This is not “garbage liberalism”, it’s basic respect for the absolute fact that many students will have a different background than the teacher, and that this means that a wide range of teaching techniques, a wide range of examples, and a wide-range of culture touch-points will be straight-up more effective in the classroom than pretending that every student in the room is the same.
Agree with roro. Focusing on the PB&J is like diverting your attention to something that flashes by when you should be watching where you’re going. Looking at the comments following the tribune article reveals more about the readers than it does the program.
The article starts out with “Verenice Gutierrez picks up on the subtle language of racism every day.” It’s unclear whether Ms. Gutierrez herself would approve of that characterization, or if that was a bit of hyperbole on the part of the author. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt, as I’d want it to be given me, and assume she doesn’t really believe talking about PB&J is racist.
I approve of the effort to make education as inclusive as possible, although the article makes it seem like they focus on it so much that it could be overkill. You don’t really want teachers worrying about whether every other word out of the mouths reflects white privilege, do you? Can we acknowledge that could hamper their ability to transmit their ideas? But it’s not clear from the article if the program is excessive or not. I certainly hope that equity training is just one part of their teacher training strategy, and that would be completely appropriate.
But what disturbs me is Ms. Gutierrez’s response to the parents who complained about the drum class aimed at minority boys. The parents report being brushed off when they complained, mostly because it was targeted to boys (not because it was targeted at minorities). After first making a false claim about how there are lots of white classes and no one complains (really?), she confirms their complaint by responding “Break it down for me. That’s your white privilege, and your whiteness.”
Or maybe they just wanted their girls and/or white kids to feel welcome in a drum class? Just maybe?
This seems ironic considering the principles outlined in this paper on white privilege, linked to from the Portland Public School website:
http://nymbp.org/reference/WhitePrivilege.pdf
(emphasis mine)
That describes how I would feel if I went to a meeting to bring up a concern that is dismissed as white privilege by someone who doesn’t know one thing about my background, other than that I’m white. I don’t deny that white privilege exists, but I don’t think using it to dismiss the concerns of white folks is the right approach.
Of course she doesn’t. It looks to me like she was using that as a really low-risk example of how what might be a cultural reference for the teacher and many of the children might be lost on many of the students. The reason it’s gotten this attention is because it was likely chosen because it *is* such an innocuous example, not likely to step on anyone’s toes. Our cultural values and problems (ours and others) always run the risk of creeping into judgment instead of simply illustrating an idea — saying something like “white people are mostly Christian while other races might not be” or “white children are more likely to have two parents at home than black children” in order to illustrate that kids of different races simply have different cultural touch-points (which is the point of the lesson), would have implications that pointing out food differences does not. Talking about peanut butter is not racist. However, it is part of institutional racism that our schools tend to cater to the cultural experiences of white people only. It doesn’t mean that the individual teachers are racists — it’s just that if the system does not prioritize the inclusion of people of color, people of color will generally not be included.
In the interest of full disclosure, my mother actually wrote a great deal of California’s version of this training (and still gives the training to teachers on a regular basis), and while she does not generally use the term “white privilege” in these trainings, the whole point is to broaden teaching techniques in such a way that as many students as possible can benefit from the same lesson. The goal is explicitly to teach teachers how to make their lessons benefit people of all cultures, to touch on different learning modalities (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc), and to become overall better and more engaging in the classroom.
Well, yes, of course that’s what the parent wants, and I certainly think Ms Gutierrez could have done a better job of explaining the need for a safe and creative space for boys of color than just telling the parents that it’s “white privilege”. I certainly would not consider it “ironic” considering the terms laid out in the link — to put it in the starkest of terms, one of the biggest facets of white privilege is that it doesn’t occur to most white people that people of color tend to have no voice in most groups where there are white people. Even if they are “welcome” in the group, they tend not to feel welcome, and they tend not to get any input into the direction of the group. Their ideas aren’t listened to, their voices talked over or shouted down. It happens so consistently that it’s practically a cliché among people of color who are active in just about any activity (and, BTW, this is the same for women who try to join groups dominated by men). It’s very important that minorities have spaces where they can be dominant, and particularly at young ages, that often means that they get their own groups.
Thanks for your comment, roro. I think we agree more than we disagree on this. Like I said, I do think education should be inclusive, and that takes conscious effort, so I appreciate that the program may well be constructive and appropriate. I think it’s likely that the author of the article sensationalized it a bit to cause a controversy where for the most part there shouldn’t be one.
My main gripe was that Ms. Gutierrez appeared to be using white privilege as a club, which I think you agree doesn’t do much to encourage positive race relations, and it does make me wonder if she’s misusing the idea in other aspects also. But, I don’t know her so I won’t speculate further.
I don’t object to minorities having their own school-sponsored groups but making it a “class” I think is a bit too far. All should feel equally welcome in any class.
The only other point I’d make, not to contradict anything you’ve said but just to add to it, is that of course people can be different in more ways than one. Making education inclusive is not just about race. Just to illustrate using one small example, I can count on one hand how many times my (white) son has knowingly been within 10 feet of a PB&J, which is just one of many ways my son differs from his classmates. I expect my school to make it feasible for my son to get a good education and have a good experience at school. I don’t think it’s their job, however, to ensure his experience is exactly the same. He will have challenges in school that others won’t. Dealing with that is mostly our job, and we accept it willingly, no doubt using some tools in our “invisible knapsack” of white privilege. Maybe all of us have invisible knapsacks of varying kinds and sizes, filled in part with tools and in part with burdens.
AD — Yes, I think we’re on the same page here. I appreciate your comment.
I don’t think necessarily that Ms Gutierrez is misusing the term “white privilege”, in that it is quite descriptively accurate, it’s just that it’s a poor human relations way to communicate the idea. It’s a buzzword and easily understood by those whose life work is to combat racism, but most people that need convincing of the program’s value aren’t race activists. I wouldn’t go to a group of the general public and describe my job in the same terms that I would describe it to someone with a similar background as I have. I think it was a poor decision by Ms Gutierrez to the equivalent, particularly as her work is quite politically charged.
And absolutely: better, broader teaching techniques that value differences in students will of course benefit everyone, even white kids. My mom’s curriculum goes into not only cultural differences but also how to make the learning envirnoment better for kids with dislexia or high-functioning autism, in addition to those who are maybe socially awkward or very advanced. However, when we look at the demographics of students who are doing well versus those who are doing poorly, it does become clear that overall we are doing a reasonable job with most white kids, and we are *not* doing very well with children of color. This is why special emphasis has been put on cultural differences and language acquisition and why these factors make such a difference in children’s abilities to get as much out of their lessons as white kids do. It’s a good thing to focus on because those are the children who are having the biggest problems.
I agree that special focus on the cultural achievement gap makes sense. However, do we know to what extent that gap is due to cultural bias (you’ll have to forgive me for not being entirely comfortable with the phrase “white privilege” yet, so I’ll stick with “cultural bias” for now) and how much has to do with non-educational social problems (ie. high number of single-parent, low-income households living in neighborhoods plagued by crime)? It’s been my impression that the latter is the main driver, which isn’t to say that cultural bias isn’t also a problem, but maybe given your experience you can shed some light on the matter.
It’s hard to say really what the breakdown is. However, we can compare the results for low-income white children with low-income children of color, or single partent households, etc. Of course, teachers can’t do a whole lot to change the income or the parental breakdown of their students. They can, though, make sure that their lessons are taking the cultural differences into account.
I always think of it like I tackle product development — why develop the product for the “average” or “typical” user, when you can develop it for a wide range of users without negatively affecting the performance or user experience for the typical user? Make it able to be held by those with big AND small hands. Make it accessable to vision or hearing-impaired users. Make it simple and user-friendly.
One related example from my English Language Learner days: About 10 years ago I taught a middle school math class for Spanish speaking students, in Spanish, and most of these kids were level 1 for English, meaning very, very low English language skills. It was taught in Spanish (with parental permission) so the students wouldn’t fall too far behind in math while strengthening their English skills. When the standardized tests came around, they generally did fine on most of the straight-up math problems, but even before they got to the “word problems”, they were faced with things like: “What do you get when you increase 235 by 50%?” No amount of math savvy will help on this if you don’t know what the word “increase” means. It didn’t matter what the economic state of the student’s family was, or how many adults were at home — those kids basically had a 1 in 5 chance of guessing the right answer to that question.
Similarly, I now teach a course to my suppliers on how to write a good “Process of Record” for manufacturing processes. In this, one of the activities is to split the class into groups to write a Process of Record for making a soft-boiled egg for the Queen. Works great with American and British companies. However, upon roll-out of the training, it became extremely obvious that this example was ineffective for the suppliers in Asia, as nobody in the room had ever eaten, let alone made, a soft-boiled egg. Instead of being an easy way to get the point across, it became a distraction. So we changed the training to writing PORs for simple local dishes in Japan, Korea, and China. The point of this story is that even highly skilled, highly educated management-level adults at a multi-national company had a hard time when thrown an example so far being their cultural scaffolding.
After posting my question I did a bit of searching. Only enough to discover that there are a variety of opinions on what causes the achievement gap, so I’m not sure what the answer is. In any case, I agree that schools can’t do much about economic or family circumstances of their students, but it’s still useful to know all the contributors so that we can be realistic about the gains we’d expect from reducing culture bias, and so that we can be aware of the cost of poverty and family dysfunction on society.
No doubt, ad, no doubt. I fully agree.