After doing a gajllion interviews on racial violence, I have been asked this question a gajllion times: ‘Colin, what’s the cause?’
“That’s above my pay grade,” I say. And besides, much of this volume is aimed at the deniers of racial violence. And they are legion. It just does not make much sense to try and solve a problem for people who deny the problem exists.
When I tried that line on the lovely Robin Abcarian from the Los Angeles Times, she said I was being “irresponsible.” But it is the truth: I have no idea about the cause.
But here is what I do know: Black children are learning about racial hostility and resentment at home, in church, in popular culture and above all, in school. At a very early age.
And what they are learning can be a surprise even to the people who are supposed to be teaching it.
Nobody works harder or spends more money to elect liberal school board members than teachers and their labor unions. Largely white chicks. But these same elected officials are now asking these same teachers the one question they never thought they would hear: “Why are you so racist?”
The question was posed in 2013 after a Department of Education study about the educational and disciplinary differences between white and black students. 248
"This critical report shows that racial disparities in school discipline policies are not only well documented among older students, but actually begin during preschool," said Attorney General Eric Holder. "This Administration is moving aggressively to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline in order to ensure that all of our young people have equal educational opportunities."
The Department of Education has held since 2009 that any disparity in discipline or education achievement between white and black students is the result of racial discrimination in schools.
Lots and lots of studies all show the same thing: Relentless white racism.
The President often refers to this racial disparity in schools. He even made it the subject of an Executive Order in 2012:249
“African Americans lack equal access to highly effective teachers and principals, safe schools, and challenging college-preparatory classes, and they disproportionately experience school discipline,” said the order, titled “White House Initiative On Educational Excellence.”
You can read more about it at this White House Blog Post: White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans250
The solution: Black students need more black teachers. And less discipline. More on that in a minute.
But here’s the catch: Most teachers are white, female, liberal and supporters of President Obama. They thought they were the solution. Turns out they were the problem.
Glenn Singleton is one of the people in charge of solving the problem of racial disparity, i.e. convincing us that black children misbehaving in school is really a problem of white perception. Not black behavior.
In hundreds of school districts around the country, Singleton’s company has been hired to show this cohort of young, white, liberal and female teachers how they are racist; how their racism is responsible for the achievement gap; and how they have to admit their own racism in a series of “Courageous Conversations” if they ever want to be successful educating black students.
Or if they want to keep their jobs.
This is Critical Race Theory in action: White racism is everywhere. White racism is permanent. White racism explains everything.
Except it is not a theory any more. It is an industry.
Oh by the way, I said hundreds of school districts. Do the math, that is hundreds of thousands of students. If not millions.
To his credit, Singleton is not shy about identifying the problems or solutions: “Racism.”
And for all the well meaning folks who insist on explaining racial differences in education with all the usual socio-economic blah, blah, blah -- such as income, family structure, school finance, class size, black culture or the current favorite, fatherlessness-- Singleton has a message: Forget it. 251
“We have found this kind of blaming to be insufficient at best and destructive at worst when trying to address racial achievement disparity. The racial achievement gap exists and persists because fundamentally, schools are not designed to educate people of color.”
If you take nothing else from this book, take that last line: “The racial achievement gap exists and persists because fundamentally, schools are not designed to educate people of color.”
Singleton’s book is full of 300 more pages of that. And so are dozens of other books on similar ways to eliminate white racism as the cause of black disparity. These books act as manuals for consultants in hundreds of school districts across the country.
Your child or grandchild is probably learning about it now.
Racism in schools is big business, complete with videos, textbooks, consultants and conferences, conferences and more conferences.
In San Leandro, California, the “progressive principal” made racial education her top priority. She and her teachers bragged about it on YouTube: How they are teaching white and black students about white racism. And how racism is holding black people back. 252
In Portland, Oregon, the teachers and principal on video admit the white students might have a hard time with courses on Critical Race Theory, racial identity models, the dominant white culture, and institutionalized racism, but the other students like it just fine.
One solution: “Move the curriculum to younger members of the student population. We both believe firmly that if we can start younger it just opens so many more doors.253
They are talking about teaching children Critical Race Theory at even younger ages.
In lots of places they already do. Just ask Saturday Night Live’s Pat Sweeney and her daughter Mulan.
Here’s how one teacher described this race-based curriculum to the Portland Tribune:254
“The white kid, he’s got carte blanche. A black kid, it’s a totally different reality,” he says. Then he launches into what he calls ‘the big picture.’
“Most white politicians want to be in political office for life,” he says. “Who’s going to vote against you?
People of color. It’s in your best favor to get as many people of color convicted as felons, so they never have the privilege of voting again. That’s a win-win situation for you.
“Plus, police get to liquidate your assets after you’re locked up. It’s like hitting a home run for them. There are just so many weapons used against people of color, particularly children of color, that they’re not aware of and most adults are not aware of.”
The teacher, who is part Brazilian, part Choctaw Indian, from post-Katrina New Orleans, says anyone who sees his message as racist just doesn’t understand.
“I’m not racist,” he says. “How can I possibly be racist when racism was created against me? The need is for children who constantly get dumped on. The playing field is not level. These kids need to get caught up.”
Thanks for clearing that up.
Singleton says we have to recognize that black people and white people are different, especially in the way we talk and learn and listen.
Singleton says "white talk" is "verbal," "intellectual" and "task-oriented," while "color commentary" is "emotional" and "personal." Different races have different learning styles, he says.
Singleton says white teachers have a hard time reaching black students because black people talk about “racial matters daily, if only among themselves.” But white people “are conditioned not to do that.”
True that, anyway.
In Lawrence, Kansas, the school district paid $217,000 from 2009 to 2013 to learn how “embedded” white racism is hurting black people. In Minneapolis, 16 school districts paid $2 million to learn about white privilege in 2012. 255
In Evanston, Illinois, parents started noticing their kids were talking funny. Talking about something called “institutional racism.” They did not like it, though most were too cowed to say so.
In Seattle, “under Singleton's influence, the Seattle schools defined ‘individualism’ as a form of ‘cultural racism’ and said that only whites can be racist, and claimed that planning ahead ("future time orientation”) is a white characteristic that it is racist to expect minorities to exhibit.”256
Huh?
The site goes on to say, "Emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology" is another form of "racism." 257
Breitbart has been all over this: “It basically says white people are at fault,” said one parent. “My husband and I are the racist ones, didn’t you know?"
From Bakersfield to Baltimore, Denver to Des Moines and hundreds of places in between, Singleton and his pied pipers of racial resentment are regarded as heroes. At least among the black people and other deniers.
In Washington, D.C. in December 2013, an official of a teachers’ union tried to explain to a national gathering of black elected officials why white teachers are so problematic for black students:258
“We can’t just give them six weeks of training and think they are able to educate our children,” said Marietta English, president of the Baltimore teachers union and vice president of the American Federation of Teachers. “There are a lot of cultural differences that they don’t understand. If you don’t grow up in the neighborhood, you don’t understand it when we say ‘WASSUP.’ They don’t understand that.”
Remember the WASSUP lady. We’ll see her again, soon.
In Chicago, the head of the teachers’ union will see that WASSUP and go all in on rich white people.
“This city belongs to black people not white people,” said Karen Lewis in the Washington Times: 259
“When will there be an honest conversation about poverty and racism and inequality that hinders the delivery of an education product in our school system? When will we address the effect that rich white people think they know what’s in the best interest of children of African Americans and Latinos, no matter what the parents’ income or education level?”
“And when did all these venture capitalists become so interested in the lives of minority students in the first place?” Lewis asked. “There’s something about these folks who love the kids but hate their parents. There’s something about these folks who use little black and brown children as stage props at one press conference while announcing they want to fire, layoff or lock up their parents at another press conference.”
All this from people who think Rahm Emmanuel is not liberal enough.
When Eric Holder became Attorney General in 2009, he famously said that Americans were cowards about race. Many people did not really know what he meant. But Glenn Singleton did: White people have to be courageous enough to admit they are racists. And their racism has ruined black people by giving them an inferior education.
Thus the title of his book: Courageous Conversations.
Singleton might be braver than he is well known. Some of the school board members and parents where he plies his trade were not even aware he was there.
In Evanston, Illinois, two school board employees and other district staffers say they were not aware of the details of Courageous Conversations training.
In San Diego, school board member Scott Barnett can be counted to pretty much know everything about everything. But on the topic of Courageous Conversations, Barnett did something that no one in San Diego had ever heard him do before: He said he did not know about it. Although they were using it in his district.
And besides, that was “curriculum” and that was not his specialty.
O.K.
Lots of teachers did not want any part of this training after learning what was in it.
In Memphis, several white teachers objected to the Singleton’s race-based solutions, but “are scared to talk publicly because they are too scared to say anything for fear they will be fired or released.”260
Another teacher chimes in with advice for teachers who are facing a Courageous Conversation for the first time:261
“If your employer is sending you to this diversity training, he or she has already drank the Koolaid. Just go to the training. Participate in the line up. Accept that you are a bad person and a bad teacher and that you are a bigot.
“Accept that there is no such thing as racism for Black people. Realize that you are a beneficiary of White privilege. Also, remember that the ultimate rejoinder will always be that you ‘just don't get it.’
“No matter what you say, this is what will be offered up. For example, you say that you think it's wrong that such and such happens and you actually want to have an honest debate about it: he or one of his acolytes will look at you head shaking, slightly amused and disappointed, and say ‘you just don't get it.’
“If you call attention to yourself, Glenn will quietly call the principal or whomever set up this professional development program. They--or he or she-- will be told by Glenn that they have a racist in their midst.
“If you don't have tenure, you will be let go at the end of the year. It will seem to be for some other reason, but that is what will happen.”
In Portland, some teachers were surprised to hear that Peanut Butter and Jelly was racist:262
“A teacher in the district presented a lesson that included a reference to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Gutierrez says that by using sandwiches as an illustration, the teacher was engaged in a very subtle form of racism.
“What about Somali or Hispanic students, who might not eat sandwiches?” asked Gutierrez, according to Portland Tribune. “Another way would be to say: ‘Americans eat peanut butter and jelly, do you have anything like that?’ Let them tell you. Maybe they eat torta. Or pita.” 263
Sometimes Singleton is not even on the scene when school board members and parents spread his message: White teachers suck. (Even if, as white people go, teachers are just about the best of the bunch.)
In July 2014, black preachers and community activists gathered at Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Fresno to demand the school board get rid of the white guy they hired to teach African American studies. If what he is teaching is valid, they have a point. 264
Think about it.
In Elgin, Illinois, the black school board voted in March 2014 to stop hiring white teachers and hire more black teachers: 265
“It is important that students have teachers who look like them,” remarked Vilma Sept, chairwoman of the U46 African-American advisory council.
Thomas Jackson who supports deliberately recruiting non-Whites, explained his reasoning; “when you have a minority teacher, every minority student can see that ‘some day I can be the teacher, some day I can be a lawyer, I can be a doctor.”
In June of 2014, Glenn Sullivan was just a few weeks out of a New Orleans High School when he wrote a column for the Washington Post explaining his educational deficiencies: “My school district hires too many white teachers.”
He and his classmates often behaved poorly, did not study, and were disruptive in class, but only his black teachers knew how to handle that, he said.266
The kid learned something, that’s for sure.
In New York, a black principal “banished a veteran teacher to a book-storage closet” because he was “ruining his little black children,” said The Post. The principal, Antonio K’Tori, accused him of no longer being able to control his students and used that as a pretext for firing him, said the teacher.267
No one is hiding anything: The topic of white teachers and black students is a favorite with some news sites. And most agree with Singleton: White teachers suck.
In Los Angeles, black history teacher Spencer Smith was so down with the struggle that in May 2014 he posed “as Trayvon Martin in a yearbook photo, with hoodie and Skittles,” said the headline in the New York Daily News.268
No cough syrup and grape drink?
At the University of Maryland, a school official started out the Fall of 2013 with an email to students welcoming them back to campus, in a weird way: Fox News picked it up:
"This year, we learned that it is legal to hunt down and kill American children in Florida," read the email, in a reference to the trial of George Zimmerman, who was cleared of all charges in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The email went out to all students in the Honors College. He then invited students to a lecture by Julian Bond. 269
Down in Prince George’s County, Florida, a jury awarded a white teacher $350,000 after it found he was subject to years of racial abuse. He accused his black principal of using racial slurs against him and of telling students that the “only reason a white teacher teaches in P.G. County is that they can’t get a job elsewhere.”270
At Virginia State University, a guest lecturer talks about how people listen to “Fuck the Police” and “dare the police to pull us over.”
After awhile, some parents and teachers actually get tired of this and say something. In San Leandro in 2009, after several years of Courageous Conversations, the teachers’ union gave its superintendent a vote of “no confidence” with a 90 percent majority. She left soon thereafter. Soon thereafter that, the State of California said the San Leandro school district was 140 out of 146 in closing the education gap.
In Madison and Seattle, they stopped using Courageous Conversation materials. In Arizona, they kicked Singleton out of the entire state. The state legislature forbade race-based teaching and race-based affirmative action in schools. The liberals howled.
The New York Times, of course, said that anyone who is against race-based teaching is a racist.271
Whether Glenn Singleton is lashing teacher and administrators into shape or not, this much is true: Schools are the most hyper-racial institutions in the country.
Teachers throughout the country are fighting back -- however meekly -- against this race-based education and discipline.
They say black students are not just unruly. They don’t just have different learning styles. They are dangerous.