Reply to MLK Day education-Teacher not equipped to handle questions on race

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]
Engaging in arguments about racism for the sake of point scoring, rather than genuinely listening and reading and thinking about how race works in our society -- that's privileged, too. [/quote]

Do you think the teacher was a racist?  Should she have pulled the child aside and said, "oh, you poor thing?"
[/quote]

Do I think the teacher that OP described was racist? No more so than you or I -- I mean, I think everyone's a little bit racist, as the song goes.

I think that it's really hard to be the only minority kid in a mostly white school.

I think it's also hard to be that kid's teacher and to know in the moment exactly the best thing to do or say -- BUT just because things like that are hard to do, it doesn't mean we get a free pass for a misstep. I think it's really important for parents to feel comfortable mentioning that they have problems in how their teachers handle race, and for white folks to have the ability to listen to those kind of problems without immediately getting defensive about being labeled A. Racist.

I find it much much more useful to think about how we live in a culture that perpetuates racism, that means we each are fairly likely to behave in ways that perpetuate racism, and then look for places where we can resist against that. And most particularly to listen to people of color and to believe them when they say that they are experiencing things which make them feel uncomfortable about how race is talked about. [/quote]

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