Reply to Rampant racism at Montgomery Blair High School?

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "Rampant racism at Montgomery Blair High School?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote]While I fully believe that there is serious implicit racism in schools that hinders black/white educational equity and outcomes, maybe it's not so helpful to label it as racist (even though I think it is).[/quote]

This is a good point. Racism is a complex issue. Full blown racism is believing that a particular race is genetically inferior and always will be inferior. They believe that race causes the inferiority. Most people do not describe to this belief.

Racial bias is different. Many people act on bias whether they admit it or not. Bias is a normal human behavior. We go through life making predictions and acting on assumptions subconsciously all the time. Why do you stumble when the ground is uneven? Why didn't you look? You predicted where to put your foot based on your experiences with your previous steps. Have you known someone with a dog that has a strong reaction to a particular type of person? For some dogs, if a woman wearing a hat is mean to them then they will become suspicious of all women wearing hats. Humans have higher order thinking to know that hat wearing doesn't cause meanness but if a person has multiple experience with women wearing hats being mean to them then they'll be suspicious too.

School systems that have a demographic where the AA kids are low SES/lower performing and white kids are high SES/higher performing create all these experiences for teachers where they see one type of student demonstrating one type of behaviors and one type demonstrating another. This create racial bias and makes the situation worse as the teacher's reaction makes it even harder for the low SES/lower performing students to do better. One of the things that I've noticed is that the teachers in private school seem to much less likely to demonstrate racial bias. They are used to seeing AA students demonstrate the same behaviors and performance as their white peers because the SES and educational background is similar.

Calling a teacher a racist for demonstrating racial bias, while technically accurate, doesn't fix the situation. The teacher knows that she isn't a full blown racist but stays unaware of her bias actions. The solution lies in having open dialogue about bias, developing self awareness and better management within the schools. 
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics