Insurrection and White Complicity
Two weeks into 2021 and any residual feeling of a Happy New Year has disappeared with the craven acts of the U.S. President encouraging a willing mob of White nationalists to attack the U.S. Capitol with the goal of undermining the democratic election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. As many others have said, this insurrection on January 6 that left five people dead and caused extensive damage to the U.S. Capitol was at once shocking and yet completely predictable.
By the time you read this blog entry, you’ll have no doubt consumed extensive news and commentary on these events. At this point, we mostly want to underscore the way the nation’s continuing history of racism enabled the election of Donald Trump, fueled mob action on the January 6, and led the Capitol Police to at first nonchalantly meet this mob of White supremacists carrying Confederate flags and deadly weapons intent on following the President’s call for violent action on his behalf.
Some have suggested that these MAGA-hatted criminals are members of the conservative fringe in this nation. But to us and many others, they clearly represent an outward expression of the White supremacy that has dominated this nation from the start and that still lies close to its heart. In an interview on MSNBC, Brittany Packnett Cunningham pointed out that at an entirely peaceful BLM protest in 2014, police declared it illegal to stand still for longer than five seconds, and protestors were forced to literally “walk in circles to prevent arrest,” yet these rioters were allowed to occupy the floor of the U.S. Capitol. This mob, Cunningham notes, erected “a noose at a building that enslaved African-Americans built.” She accurately points to the complicity of elected officials, media outlets, and law enforcement. The Proud Boys and other Trump supporters at the Capitol on January 6 are, in other words, not the fringe but the embodiment of 244 years of widespread national racism that the powerful in our nation collectively try to cover up, pretend doesn’t exist, and at times, outwardly support.
We continue to hope that moments of blatant racial hatred such as this will be impossible to ignore and will command a national racial reckoning. But given that there have been many similar inflection points and that racial injustice continues to be a central storyline in America, we know that the kind of change needed will happen if we not only name the racism, but keep front and center the history of racial power embedded in the founding of this nation. Our role as educators requires that we tell the truth, both about the history of systemic racism and how it evolves into events such as the insurrection we saw unfold at the Capitol. In other words, a conscious focus on antiracism must be at the forefront of all American institutions — especially in our classrooms.
In its condemnation of these events, the New York Times Editorial Board said that it is “easier to diagnose the causes of the chaos than to craft solutions.” We do not entirely agree. In many cases, we have known the way forward but have lacked the will and perseverance to make lasting change. In fact, there are and have been many hardworking, morally driven, dedicated teachers, politicians, intellectuals, writers, religious and community leaders, educators, and others, who have offered solutions designed to move this nation from a faux democracy to a true one. As James Baldwin noted in his speech and essay “A Talk to Teachers,” “It is inconceivable that a sovereign people should continue, as we do so abjectly, to say, ‘I can’t do anything about it. It’s the government.’ The government is the creation of the people. It is responsible to the people.”
When it comes to action, we’re thinking in particular of the recent efforts by Stacey Abrams and other Black women in Georgia, to increase voter registration, which in turn led to the election of Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock, the latter being the first Black U.S. Senator elected in the South. This is the kind of roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-the-work-done response that is needed now — and the kind of leadership the nation needs. In particular, this country needs to follow the leadership of those most directly impacted and marginalized by racism, People of Color, if we are ever to stop the cycle.
At Teaching While White, our stated goal is to help White educators develop the skills to teach effectively about racial identity and racism to all children. Implied in this work is the expectation that our schools will strive collectively to be antiracist institutions, which means schools have to explicitly name the ways they have colluded with racism along with how they want to challenge racism system wide. We also want the U.S. Department of Education to work much harder to support antiracist education. This work includes everything from the way schools are financed to the way national standards and curricula are shaped to the rules that protect all children from harm, and more.
Over the coming year, we’ll have a great deal more to say about this most recent push for racial justice and equitable education. Becoming an antiracist educator, of course, is an ongoing, constant process. There are times when we feel overwhelmed, and this may be one of those times for you. The important thing is that we cannot give up.
For our White educators, we want you to double-down on your work to develop your antiracist practice and to work with your colleagues to make substantive curricular and institutional change. Remember that working in isolation makes shifting our practice more challenging, so don't work alone. And it helps to have models we can look to for encouragement. We’re turning to Stacey Abrams — and hope White educators will join us in acknowledging her work and also channeling her energy and drive in the push for transformation we know our nation needs.