Back in the days before “Black Lives Matter” there was a phenomenon called “acting white” that applied to black kids who tried to study and do well in school. Quite a few succeeded in spite of it. It has been succeeded by a new theme of “White Supremacy” that attributes certain behavior to “Whiteness.” An example is “Whiteness as a problem.” This is actually a college course.
A class to be taught next semester at the University of Wisconsin Madison called “The Problem of Whiteness” aims to “understand how whiteness is socially constructed and experienced in order to help dismantle white supremacy,” the course description states.
“Whites rarely or never questioned what it is to be white,” Assistant Professor Damon Sajnani, who will teach the course, told The College Fix in a telephone interview last week. “So you go through life taking it for granted without ever questioning or critically interrogating it.”
For Sajnani, one way to solve this is to offer “The Problem of Whiteness,” an analysis of what it means to be white and how to deal with it as a “problem.”
Now, what is the problem of “Whiteness?”
One example is Stanford’s new program of Physics for “people of color.”
Is there a branch of Physics restricted to those “of color?”
How are students of color at a disadvantage in the science classroom in particular?
For one thing, we know that scientific concepts are learned and solidified when students have an opportunity to explain them. The more you talk about something, the more you understand it. But in many schools, especially urban ones, teachers are the ones doing the explaining.
Teaching that math is ‘racist’ will taint the field for everyone, including those who need it most.
Math proficiency is white supremacy, proclaims Deborah Lowenberg Ball, a mathematics professor and former dean of the University of Michigan School of Education.
In the latest episode of the EdFix Podcast, Ball complains that math is a “harbor for whiteness” and “the very nature of the knowledge and who’s produced it, and what has counted as mathematics is itself dominated by whiteness and racism.” She groans that considering math proficiency to be a sign of intelligence is “raced.”
The very complaints of blacks about “white privilege” contain two contradictions. First they assume that blacks do not show behavior differences in such areas as school discipline and crime. There are objective measurements of both, including what happens when such differences are ignored. There are several experiments going on at present. One is the “Defund the Police” political movement that has resulted in spikes in violent crime as police withdraw from law enforcement. Another is the decision by certain leftists prosecutors to accept crime that results in lower amounts of loss, such as decriminalizing shoplifting in cities like San Francisco. Then there is the decision by certain school districts to ignore student discipline problems.
St Paul Minnesota tried a new policy
St. Paul’s efforts grew out of a series of problems familiar to many cities. The number of school-age children in St. Paul had been declining. The percentage of those kids who attended traditional public school was dropping, too: Families were choosing private or charter schools instead. Children who did go to public school were needier.
One of the consequences was a growing racial achievement gap. White children consistently scored better on tests and were more likely to make it to graduation than kids of color. Minnesota had one of the worst achievement gaps in the country, and the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul had the worst disparities in the state.
A new superintendent decided to change policy.
The number of suspensions and expulsions in St. Paul went down the first year of the new policy; from 4,830 to 4,130 according to the Minnesota Department of Education. Then it started to climb back up: 4,418 in 2012; 5,130 in 2013, 6,269 in 2014.
Violence in school started making headlines. At the beginning of the 2015 school year, sprawling fights were reported at three Saint Paul high schools. In October a loaded gun was found in a student’s backpack at another high school. In December a student choked a teacher who was breaking up a fight during school lunch. In March cell phone video showed two students fighting with a teacher in a hallway. An editorial headline in the StarTribune from March 2016 read “If Teachers Aren’t Safe, Students aren’t Safe.”
An so it goes with the new “White Supremacy” policies.