Reply to Antiracist System Audit

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Btw PP, you are trying to argue that books with White authors should account for 88% of the MCPS curriculum in a school system that is 25% White. Do you not see how you are upholding White supremacy?[/quote]

Yes, I am saying that this country, with its foundations in the Enlightenment and the English language, will by necessity need to teach from that heritage if it expects people to value the things that made it successful.[/quote]

I would like my kids to learn about things that made this country successful, but also about areas where it wasn't so successful.[/quote]

The only people saying this needs to be an either/or decision are the people saying we should excise all white people from the curriculum. No one advocating that kids learn about Thomas Paine and John Locke are saying kids shouldn’t also learn about Frederick Douglass and Ralph Ellison.[/quote]

This was in reference to a PP's agreeing with "White authors should account for 88% of the MCPS curriculum."[/quote]

Wouldn't it be better if they focused less on an author's race and more on a book's content?[/quote]

The whole point is a curriculum that is 88% White in a country that is 60% non-Hispanic White and a school system that is 25% White has been selected, whether you realize it or not, because of racism. If you don't think racism should determine which books your child reads, then you should be in favor of a diverse curriculum, not one that upholds White supremacy by asserting that all the "good" books or the ones that make a person "educated" just HAPPEN to be written by White authors.[/quote]

It’s more complex than that and you know it.  Centuries of oppression mean that fewer would-be black authors have been able to get published.  Do you think Ezra Jack Keats would have been able to publish his books at that time if he had been black? That doesn’t mean our kids shouldn’t read his books.

But if you are looking for more diverse books to incorporate in your classroom, or your child’s classroom/library, check out suggestions from Here We Read and donate some books.[/quote]

Hello time traveler. It is now 2022, there are plenty of excellent picture books and other books written by Black writers. Also,I am not sure why you think I am somehow advocating for banning a Snowy Day in our schools. By all means, happy for kids to read it. But it may shock you to realize that there is no reason why curriculums need to be limited to early 20th century White literature.[/quote]

Of course there are- I’m sorry your school isn’t incorporating them.  Teachers at our school have an Amazon wishlist parents can purchase off of and my DD’s teacher last year had a lot of multicultural books on her list. I thought it was great. They’ve brought home all sorts of books from the media center too although I have not really been there myself.

I think I get a bit confused when folks talk about books and the “curriculum.”  My kids are only in ES but the actual curriculum seems to consist more of reading benchmark passages than actual literature.  So while the teachers all seem to have a collection of picture books in their rooms I don’t get the sense they all have the same ones- they seem to come from various sources.  So my at e this is more of a complaint about the books being assigned in MS/HS?  I would certainly be open to suggestions for what to supplement with at that age if they aren’t getting diverse voices in school. Do you have any recs?[/quote]

Hi there, just a refresher. I am a poster who responded to a person who is complaining about the number books written by writers of color in the MCPS curriculum, apparently because Black people only account for 12% of the country's population. So THEY think the curriculum should be based on imaginary population percentages that they made up. I am not concerned about my child's school not incorporating books by writers of color, and never said I was. As many people have said, there are many resources to respond to your last question - do you want me to send you a LMGTFY link?[/quote]

And I was responding to a poster who said that their child had read NO books by white authors.  The 12% is a reminder that it is not equal to 100%.  No one is proposing that we count pages, but the current pendulum has swung way too far to incorporate books simply based on their POC authors.

I am sorry, but all of those Hispanics who moved to MCPS in the last 15 years doesn't mean that suddenly we start using a curriculum from Latin America.  The foundations of the United States are European and based on the English language, so books from that heritage should be expected to predominate, even after demographic change.

It's funny that none of you would support a bunch of white Americans moving to any other part of the world and demanding a wholesale redesign of educational curricula to accommodate them.[/quote]

Yeah, I'm looking at the thread of comments above yours and don't see the one you claim to be responding to.  And yeah, tbh you sound super racist. The US is the second largest Spanish speaking country in the world so don't come at me with this English only bs[/quote]

You will have to read the entire thread.  I am the PP who is being accused of wanting a "quota" of books by race.  But hey, our country has become "the second largest Spanish speaking country" because people are attracted to the United States by its prosperous economy and tradition of law (and I'm sure other things.)  You can call me racist, but the decision by other people in the last 25 years to move to this country doesn't necessitate our accommodation of their language or their curricular desires.  A good chunk of the recent kids who arrived in MCPS from other countries were actually not even literate in their own language.[/quote]

Actually a very large chunk of Spanish speakers were not "attracted to the United States" - the territories where they live were annexed. And you can feel what you want about accommodating other languages but you can't change Federal law.[/quote]

No... I'm sorry.  I teach American History and U.S. Government and you are wrong on both counts.  Look at the population data for the time period.

"According to U.S. Demographic History, the population of New Mexico Territory was only about 60,000 in 1848, which corresponds to a figure of 62,000 at the 1850 U.S. Census. The same source confirms Joseph Boyle's figure of 10,000 for California Territory. (The 1850 U.S. Census is not a good source for Mexican California because of the huge influx of gold seekers in 1849.) These figures included many English speakers, including the Mormon diaspora."

To use the tiny number of actual Hispanic descendants from this period and earlier (and all of them speak English) to deflect conversation on the vast demographic change due to economic migrants "being attracted to the United States" is really poor argumentation.

'The Hispanic or Latino population, which includes people of any race, was 62.1 million in 2020. The Hispanic or Latino population [b]grew 23%[/b], while the population that was not of Hispanic or Latino origin grew 4.3% [b]since 2010[/b].'
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/08/improved-race-ethnicity-measures-reveal-united-states-population-much-more-multiracial.html

In 1970, the Census estimated Hispanic population at 9.5 million.

Finally, on the government front, the federal government does not have jurisdiction over local school curriculum.  We aren't talking about ballots here (and that is a total joke).[/quote]

Yes, many of us have been attracted by economic opportunities, but you all have welcomed it. You hire us to do all the jobs you don't want to do, you don"t punish the companies that enrich themselves from exploiting us, then you pretend that you all are somehow doing US a favor? But you incarcerate us en masse as though there isn"t anyone else coming to take our place. People like you are a disease on this earth, you take advantage of hardworking people and then act like we are the criminals.

And yes, Federal law requires schools to accommodate kids that speak languages other than English. No, it doesn't require schools to assign books (in English or Spanish) that feature Latino characters, but too bad so sad, MCPS does do that, and the fact you have such a big problem with that speaks volumes about your character.[/quote]

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