As I read through Dr. Kendi’s work, there were a number of important ideas that stuck out to me including his personal reflections that he intersperses throughout. Like Dr. Kendi, I also rejected a number of things about my own culture and colour in an effort to be closer to whiteness. Part of that stemmed from my parents coming from a very colonized country and moving to another colonized one and assimilating into the culture for acceptance, but that is perhaps the subject of another blog post. Throughout my life, my proximity to whiteness seemed natural, and rewarded me both academically and professionally. Only in the last few years have I started openly questioning some of the things in education that seemed wrong. For a long time, I assumed a neutral stance or at least not being racist was enough to help make a difference. Dr. Kendi’s assertion in his book is that “there is no neutrality in the racism struggle. The opposite of ‘racist’ isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘anti-racist’” (9).
Being antiracist is what all educators should strive to be in their classrooms, in their communities and within their spheres of influence. This, however, will not be an easy feat as it will feel like you are going against the grain. The grain is how education systems were set up: within a white Eurocentric cultural standard. As Dr. Kendi states in his work, “Whoever makes the cultural standard makes the cultural hierarchy. The act of making a cultural standard and hierarchy is what creates cultural racism” (83). As educators, in order to become antiracist, we must first accept that education systems are not neutral and they have been set up to be racist. Education systems were originally designed as a tool of colonialism. They were set up to spread the ways of the colonizer and to denounce all others as wrong, bad or inhuman. In other words, it was meant to show that the race of the colonizer, the white race, was superior to any others. These colonizers thus created the racist policies that govern our school systems today: “Policymakers and policies make societies and institutions, not the other way around” (223). Once educators realize this, they can then move closer to accepting that systems of education have been based on racist policies that were designed to keep Black, Indigenous and other racialized students in their place in the hierarchy: below white students.
Most educators will also agree that education as a system has not changed very much since its inception. If you look at pictures of a classroom from 1920, it will look very similar to many classrooms of 2020 where there is a teacher at the front of the class, usually a white teacher, instilling knowledge to students who passively listen and accept what is being taught: “Racist ideas have defined our society since its beginning and can feel so natural and obvious as to be banal, but antiracist ideas remain difficult to comprehend, in part because they go against the flow of this country’s history...To be an antiracist is a radical choice in the face of this history, requiring a radical reorientation of our consciousness” (23). Those who choose to see the racism inherent in education and be an antiracist in their actions, will find it difficult as it will seem very unnatural. The colonizers did their job so well, that when any of us go against it, i.e. become antiracist, it seems like we are doing something wrong.
Now, considering all this history, it may seem impossible to move past these racist ideas and become an antiracist educator; however, there is good news. Dr. Kendi states that, “The good news is that racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be racist one minute and an antiracist the next” (10). So, it is possible to move out of the racist identity that has surrounded education for so long; however, we must listen to the words of Kike Ojo-Thompson who tells us to “hold yourself in healthy distrust. Frequently challenge your own ideas and privilege; remember that equity work is not about perfection, it is a continuous practice” (Ojo-Thompson). What I’ve learned in my own journey is:
1. listen and show deference to people like Kike Ojo-Thompson who not only know far more about anti-Blackness and systems of oppression than I do, but she has lived experiences that I will never fully understand.
2. there is no end point to this journey. I have to examine my sphere of influence and make a difference through my actions and not just my words (yes, I see the irony of writing a blog, but I will be acting on these words moving forward as well)
3. find critical friends who can hold you accountable. You may not always like what these critical friends have to say, but you have to listen and act if you truly want to make a difference.
As a Vice-Principal, one of the areas that I need to work on is questioning things like policy. I just finished my second year as a VP, and I started to question things more this year than in my first year where I was just learning the different job elements of a VP. When I first started the job, I was told that “policies and procedures are your friend”, but I no longer believe that. Dr. Kendi helped me realize that, “Moral and educational suasion breathes the assumption that racist minds must be changed before racist policy, ignoring history that says otherwise...To fight for mental and moral changes after policy is changed means fighting alongside growing benefits and the dissipation of fears, making it possible for antiracist power to succeed” (208). In education, we often think that policies are put in place to protect everyone, but we need to start questioning who is being protected, and what they are being protected from. We often focus on students as part of the problem; however, “This is the consistent function of racist ideas - and of any kind of bigotry more broadly: to manipulate us into seeing people as the problem, instead of the policies that ensnare them” (8). We have policies in Boards, like the Police & School Board Protocol that are very problematic and tend to “ensnare” many of our marginalized students, especially Black students. In this policy, the word “criminal” shows up 55 times, and yet people claim that there is no such thing as the school to prison pipeline for Black students. This same policy states “In the event that school staff, while conducting an internal investigation, determines that a criminal offence has been committed, they shall discontinue the investigation and notify police immediately, ensure the involved students are separated, and refrain from further investigation. Any statement(s) taken shall then be turned over to police for purposes of an investigation, if requested” (Police & School Board Protocol 19). As a VP, and more importantly an educator, I have not been trained to determine if “a criminal offence has been committed”. More importantly, that is not why I got into education. I got into education to help students be their very best, and understand that the students I serve are children. When these students are Black children, however, as Dr. Kendi writes, “The Black child is ill-treated like an adult” (48). Administrators, teachers and superintendents too often focus on Black students as being “criminals” in an effort to follow policy. This needs to stop! We need to “focus on power instead of people...focus on changing policy instead of groups of people” (11). Policies like the Police & School Board Policy are just the beginning. We need to ensure that we re-examine all policies in education through an antiracist lens, and ensure that we are calling in our community partners to help us make sure we are serving students to the best of our abilities.
In the end, in education, we must follow the advice of Dr. Kendi and become antiracist in our approach. We can no longer ignore the racist nature of education. We can no longer ignore the policies that are creating unequal footings for students. We can no longer ignore how the system is criminalizing Black and Indigenous students. We can no longer ignore educators whose “microagressions” are simply let go: “What other people call racial microaggressions I call racist abuse” (47). We need to call people out on their racist abuse in education. We need to call policies out as racist in education. We need to change our curriculum to better serve the needs of marginalized students in education. We need to ensure that those we are hiring better represent the students in education. We need to determine, in the words of Dr. Kendi, “What side of history will we stand on” (22).
