On school DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) initiatives, and walking and chewing gum, and my school administrator's perspective, a thread:

Here is a crucial thing, which I have been saying for a long time, and I am right about, so please listen to me: (2/n)

The way to learn about the history of the African-American experience is not to go to corporate anti-racism training. It is not to listen to school DEI consultants. It is not to read White Fragility, or How to Be Antiracist.

It is to Learn History. (3/n)

I promise you, whatever you think about the consultants and the workshops, American history is far more horrific than you know, unless you've studied a lot of this. I've done this before, but a while ago, so some books: (this list is by no remote means exhaustive:) (4/n)

Out of the House of Bondage, Thavolia Glymph (slavery)

Redemption, Nicholas Lemann (the end of Reconstruction)

At the Hands of Persons Unknown, Philip Dray (lynching) (5/n)

Slavery by Another Name, Douglas Blackmon (convict leasing)

The Warmth of Other Sons, Isabel Wilkerson (the Great Migration)

At the Dark End of the Street, Danielle McGuire (sexual violence against Black women) (6/n)

When Affirmative Action Was White, Ira Katznelson (what it sounds like)

The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein (housing segregation)

The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander (criminal legal system) (7/n)

Hitler's American Model, James Whitman (how Nazis modeled their race laws on ours. Hair-raising)

Without Sanctuary (lynching photography. Very disturbing)

Better for All the World, Harry Bruinius (forced sterlization) (8/n)

This is the very, very tiny tip of a very, very large iceberg. When it comes to cataloguing the horrors of America's racial regime, there's no shortage of historical material.
(9/n)

There might be silly things going on in schools or in consultant-driven curricula. If that's all you can find to discuss about race in America, you've lost the thread.

Forget the consultants, and read some history.

(10/n)

But what about the consultants? Aren't they messing with our kids' heads?

Here's the thing. We have very little good reporting on what's going on in these schools. Pretty much all the information we get is by people with agendas on either side. (11/n)

So disgruntled parents say the curriculum is awful and racist against white people, and school administrators say it's educational and valuable, and I have no idea what's going on in there. (12/n)

For example, a recent story making the rounds about how (some school districts in?) Virginia, in the interests of equity, is/are eliminating advanced math classes. @mattyglesias points out that the only reporting on this is from Fox, who sources it to--a Facebook post. (13/n)

Meanwhile, I was on Facebook last night for the first time in a year, and I see a Jewish educator I know getting worked up about that, and the excesses of the crazies. Here's the thing: we have no idea what is actually being done with Virginia's math curriculum. (14/n)

Now, a couple of things First, as a school administrator, I have had the experience of reading things about my school online that are either a) very tenuously connected to what actually happened or b) flatly untrue, posted by people who aren't part of our school community. (15/n)

So I'd like some better evidence that a Facebook post by an angry parent or board member before I go into antiwoke hysterics. Has anyone, for starters, seen the curriculum? Do we actually know what's actually in it? (16/n)

Second: If you're getting this information from people who recently were trying to get you all worked up about the war on Christmas because of Starbucks coffee cups or anodyne corporate greetings, you should probably approach this latest outrage with healthy skepticism. (17/n)

And finally: anyone who bashes these initiatives as products of "critical race theory" without evincing that they have ever read a single word of said theory, or know anything about it beyond BAD or that it "reduces everyone to skin color" loses credibility immediately. (18/n)

(Same Jewish educator--yes, last night reminded me why I stay off of Facebook--posted some article about CRT with the note that you have to know the enemy to combat it. So I opened the article, happy to see a critic finally directly engage CRT. (19/n)

Instead, the entire article was an attack on corporate and school DEI initiatives, CRT was defined in the usual inaccurate, simplistic, and bogeymanish terms, and there wasn't a single word of actual engagement with the actual ideas of CRT.) (20/n)

So: Racism in America is real, and persistent, and structural. Read a book. Read lots of books.

That doesn't mean that school and corporate DEI trainings can't be silly, or ill-advised, or problematic. I'm sure some of them are.

Both of these things can be true. (21/n)

But I'm not going to decide that one of those workshops or trainings is problematic until I *see what is in it*, or at least hear from someone who has seen what is in it. I am not going to rely on the third-hand recountings of pot-stirrers for that information.

(22/n)

(Also, if Twitter isn't real life, $54,000/year NYC private schools really, really aren't real life. If your reporting consists of transcribing someone's angry Facebook post about a school whose tuition approaches the US median income, go find a real story to tell.) (23/23, fin.)