cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3066501

Hi! I am a member of a race education group in my school (11 to 18). We were discussing instances of racism and came to the conclusion that the school - teachers, especially - were not giving proper or effective repercussions for racist incidents. Racism in the school is quite normalised, especially against Black and Asian students, including:

CW: list of racist incidents
  • Calling black people “monkeys”, unnecessarily calling them “fast” and that they “should be at the back of the bus”
  • Playing stereotypical Indian music and linking brown people to “curry” and tech-support scammers
  • The Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees chant and mocking the Chinese language

Most teachers report the incident, triggering an investigation into what happened; the student(s) are usually suspended - possibly being temporarily transferred to another school - the offending student(s) are talked to by senior staff members and attend anti-racism sessions. This approach feels appropriate, although I want to hear your thoughts on it as racism is still a significant issue in the school.

In addition, quite a few teachers instead push to “settle the matter” in-class (say sorry, shake hands) or give lesser punishments that are intended for things like swearing or talking over the teacher. These are not appropriate punishments and shouldn’t be tolerated. Bigotry is never equivalent to just rude behaviour or minor arguments (that includes bullying).

The school administration has been made aware of our thoughts and fortunately they are very open to the idea of writing a clearer and more effective policy on racism in the school.

Do teachers need to be trained better on their tolerance of racism? Is the policy not corrective enough? How would you write a racism policy for a school for 11 to 18 year olds?

Thanks again!

  • freagle@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    7·
    4 months ago

    I will challenge for the sake of you refining your argument: bigotry is equivalent with rude behavior and aggressive confrontation. Bigotry is not limited to the structures of racism. You can be a bigot against people without hair, bigot against people based on height, a bigot against people based on body fat, a bigot against people based on body shape and proportions, etc.

    Racism, on the other hand, is a structure that exists even without bigotry. Bigotry is a symptom or an outgrowth of structural racism. The earliest racists didn’t spend their time being rude and getting into fights with people, they spent their timing writing academic essays, giving lectures, and generally being perfectly calm, reasonable high society people who just believed things like race is inherent in the person and values are inherent in the race.

    I challenge you to get more precise about why you think bigotry is different than other forms of conflict, connect it to the structural so that you’re not only dealing with the individual, and proceed from there with a refined analysis and set of proposals.

    • temp_acc [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      5·
      4 months ago

      Sorry again, my understanding of bigotry was that it encompassed all forms of racism, sexism, transphobia, etc., not by what seems to be its actual definition. The post will be edited.

      I am aware of the many aspects of racism; the school administration and us did agree on a policy for racism specifically as opposed to bigotry in general to allow for different repercussions and action as racism can be structural, institutional, systemic and ideological.

      I challenge you to get more precise about why you think bigotry is different than other forms of conflict, connect it to the structural so that you’re not only dealing with the individual, and proceed from there with a refined analysis and set of proposals.

      Good point; we wanted a more educational than “punishing” approach because punishments were ineffective in correcting racism. I have a list of points for them to take into consideration, including assemblies at the start of the year on race education and the finalised racism policy, as well as pathways to reporting racism to students rather than teachers if victims of racism feel more open to reporting racism to them instead (plus the issue with reporting to teachers mentioned in the post).

      • freagle@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
        3·
        4 months ago

        Keep going! I think you still need more precision. Your racialized students are all victims of racism at nearly all times. What you’re talking about is when racialized students are victims of harm (which comes in many forms) where that harm is the intimate form of structural racism.

        So when someone uses a racial slur, racialized people experience harm if they are exposed to it. A) what is that harm if the slur was used at them versus if that slur was used near them but not at them? B) is there harm if no racialized people are exposed to that event?

        Being able to articulate these sorts of nuances in a way that is internally consistent will be the result of struggling with these concepts and coming to deeper understandings and the path forward will be clearer.

        To put a finer point on it, if a white child, in a room of 5 white children and a white teacher, uses a racial slur, how would you describe that, how would you understand the consequences of that, how would you make the decision on whether and how to intervene, and how would you communicate your decision in context?