8/3/2023 0 Comments 3d clock chalkboardWords and concepts and topics such as white supremacy, intersectionality, and racial capitalism would make it difficult for the curriculum to be sold in states that experienced backlash to Critical Race Theory, the company spearheading the curriculum explained. Such backlash spilled into my curriculum work.Ībout halfway through the development of the curriculum, I was informed that what I had created so far presented a client sensitivity issue. What happened instead were voter suppression policies and legislation banning Critical Race Theory in curriculums and professional training. What happened instead was a backlash to protests against police brutality. What happened instead was an insurrection at the start of the year. There had been no effort to address systemic racism in earnest, which would require a dramatic reorganization of our social, political, and economic orders. I was supported and encouraged to continue down the path I was going, and I believed that the completion of this work would transform the minds of the course participants.īut by the following year, I realized the racial reckoning was not to be. The initial feedback that I received was positive. I asked questions such as “What is whiteness, and did it exist before the formation of the United States?” and “What is American exceptionalism, and how does it show itself in popular culture?” My students have often asked me why they hadn’t learned what Arturo Schomburg called the missing pages of history prior to attending my history classes. I took the responsibility very seriously. I was primarily responsible for the content of the course, with others handling the packaging of the course. That was the backdrop against which I, then optimistically naive, got to work. The 1619 Project had just won a Pulitzer Prize. was confronted with the systemic racism of policing, the protest movement that followed seemed to mark an inflection point. While the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor months earlier weren’t the first time the U.S. So I told them that I wanted students to leave this class understanding the United States is a white settler colonized state, built by way of racial capitalism to enrich “white people” of European descent above everyone else. I wanted no misunderstanding about the educator they’d be partnering with and the language that I use to teach my students. What I provided was a philosophical overview of what a social justice and Black history course could look like. I told them I was interested, and they asked me to draft a prospectus for such a course. They sought me out because of my previous commentaries about teaching Black history. In 2020, I was approached on LinkedIn about working with an organization to create a Black history and social justice course curriculum for high school students. Sign up for Chalkbeat Newark’s free twice-weekly newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system. First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others thinking and writing about public education.
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