Well-meaning, white teachers” should “talk about systemic racism,” not stories of individual achievement, advises Robert Harvey, superintendent of New York City’s East Harlem Scholars Academies charters, in an Education Week commentary.
“When we neglect to talk about how systemic racism is embedded within American structures — education, justice, employment, housing, and health care — we unintentionally teach students” that successful Blacks are “exempt from racist structures,” Harvey writes.
I can’t imagine anyone teaching that Black heroes were “exempt” from racism. They overcame it. Is it good to tell kids that racism is systemic — and impossible to overcome. “Abandon hope all ye enter here” is the motto for hell.
The commentary is a good example of the “lunacy unfolding on the ‘anti-racist education’ front, writes Rick Hess.