Teaching for Black Lives
Channel: Ed Mays
Date: 2018-11-15

Slavery and the legacy of white supremacy has been called the “original sin” of the United States but the forces of the political right have long been striving to convince us that things are all better now as they systematically dismantle voting rights, affirmative action, equal opportunity, desegregation of public education, and all the hard fought gains of the civil rights era.  Unfortunately lots of comfortable and not so comfortable white people believe it.  After all, didn’t a black man win election to the highest office in the land?  But the very nature of the far right backlash to President Obama and the open bigotry that Donald Trump has fanned to propel himself into office and uses to stir up his base demonstrate that racism and racial politics continues to be a fundamental force in the US.  

While all this may seem obvious, what about the more subtle aspects of structural and institutional racism that many white people are scarcely aware of at all -because it never happened to them?  While “liberal” Seattle may not be the Deep South, this structural racism pervades every aspect of our society including our schools.  This manifests in everything from the phony whitewashed history in textbooks called the “master narrative”, to stereotyping, to harsher punishment, to the school-to-prison pipeline.  What if you were a young Black student growing up in this environment? What would that feel like and how would you react to it?

We’re going to hear the stories of some young high school seniors and then we are going to hear from cutting edge educators who are the editors of a new handbook they have created for teachers called Teaching for Black Lives to help propel sweeping reform of our education system and equitable teaching strategies for Black students. They call for educators everywhere to engage Black students in self-reflection and develop a curriculum that emphasizes community activism and social transformation.

Dyan Watson is a member of the Rethinking Schools executive board, as well as the social studies coordinator for the secondary program in teacher education at Lewis & Clark.

Jesse Hagopian teaches ethnic studies at Seattle’s Garfield High School where he is also co-adviser to the Black Student Union.

Wayne Au is a former public high school social studies and language arts teacher, as well as a professor in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington, Bothell campus.

Thanks to Town Hall Seattle & Elliott Bay Books
Recorded 10/24/18

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