Racisms and Antiracisms


Suggest a different way of thinking about racism.

Present a typology for analyzing racisms and developing antiracisms.

Link this to everyday teaching practices, with specific examples of what you can do.

Do all of this before the next class.





I am a historian


So I can talk at great length about obscure things
Use historical examples: esp. re Chinese in Canada
I started as a math/physics person

So I tend to pick on math/science teaching in my examples.
What I am talking about applies to teaching in all areas:



We all teach the same students
Racism can be expressed in Physics as much as in PE
What and how we teach shapes how racism is experienced.
Although I am talking about racisms, much of what I am saying also applies to sexism, ableism and homophobia.


Racism is seen as prejudice

Due to ignorance/errors in thinking

Irrational fear of strangers

Seen as individual

Seen as about “bad” people
.

EXCLUSIONS OF A PARTICULAR KIND

Exclusions that involve racialization

Exclusions that are organized, i.e., made by people

Exclusions that have significant negative consequences for the excluded.


You are teaching your class and you hear a student call someone a racist name.

What do you do?

Take a minute to discuss this


“Don’t let that hurt you.”

Focus on Offender

Try to get him/her to change his/her ways

Seen as individual/family problem

This is an act of violence
1) Stop it
2) Support/comfort the victim
3) Deal with effects which go beyond the immediate parties, i.e., tip of the iceberg, set of larger issues
4) Ask yourself: Do I exclude these effects from my understanding?


E.G., Manju Varma-Joshi, Cynthia J. Baker and Connie
Tanaka, “Names Will Never Hurt Me,” Harvard
Educational Review, Summer 2004: 175-208.

In New Brunswick

Racist exclusion starts with Name Calling

Inadequate response from teachers and administrators

Escalates to disengagement in school

Pattern of lack of school success for African Canadian and First Nations students.


Ms. Sorg

EXAMPLE 2: Taken-for-granted
Categories in Official Curricula

Too many First Nations, Inuit and
Métis students, and students of colour disengage from school

Formal curriculum is about racialized
Europeans.

Even curriculum in use is often Eurocentric




Big Idea: “Not all Canadians enjoyed the same rights and privileges in the new nation”
.A1.2 assess the impact that differences in legal status and in the distribution of rights and privileges had on various groups and individuals in
Canada between 1850 and 1890 (e.g., with reference to land ownership in
Prince Edward Island, …, restrictions on Chinese immigration, the rights and legal status of “status Indians” on reserves, the privileged lifestyle of industrialists in contrast to the lives of workers in their factories, discrimination facing African Canadians)
A1.3 analyse some of the actions taken by various groups and/or individuals in Canada between 1850 and 1890 to improve their lives (e.g., lifestyle changes among Me tis facing increasing agricultural settlement in the
West; alliances among First Nations during negotiations with the federal government . . .


Apparently inclusive,

But the language used creates the idea that there are First Nations people and then there are Canadians?

It fails to capture First Nations experiences in Canada?

Curriculum does not teach about 99.5% of the world and its peoples








Neutral language “lifestyle changes” for people of the plains:
By 1890, the people of the plains had
1) suppressed by military force
2) forced to take treaty
3) placed on reserves and not allowed to leave
4) deliberately starved by the federal government
In Queensland, Aus., they talk about European
“invasion” and “genocide”. In Ontario, we talk about
“lifestyle changes.”

If racism is prejudice,
This is no big deal.
If racism is exclusion,
This is racism.
If we understand this as exclusion,
Then we can create inclusions

Example 3: Who Hangs Out with
Whom?

At lunch, all the Snaidanacs, sit together.

Is this a problem?


Maybe

Are others prejudiced against Snaidanacs? Or are
Snaidanacs prejudiced?

But if they are not, it is not

By then, you know those Snaidanacs. They are so cliquish!

Or maybe we need to better understand Snaidanac culture and what leads them to sit together?


This is a prima facie example of exclusion that needs to be checked out.

All things being equal, people should mix it up.
There is no natural attraction of Snaidanacs for
Snaidanacs.

If this is happening in the lunch room, it is happening elsewhere in the school.






Carl James, “Negotiating School: Marginalized
Students’ Participation in Their Education Process,”
Race, Racialization and Antiracism in Canada and
Beyond, 17-36
GTA School. Highly Inclusive. Apparently
Multicultural.
Marginalized students occupy the hallways
Teachers, especially women teachers, intimidated
Staff do not ask why this is the only place in the school that the students feel welcome.


Understanding racisms as exclusions draws attention to processes of creating inclusions.

It also means that racism is NOT about intentions

Rather racism is about effects


Racism is not about good people and bad people.

Good people can do racist things and bad people can do antiracist ones.

People experience racism differently because of how it locates them socially

Racism in the head

Racism in the world

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
There is no racism in Canada!
Only bad people are racist.
Racism is about individuals.
Difference causes racism.
Children/young people are innocent of racism.

CONDITIONS FOR RACISMS
(AND ANTIRACISMS)

RACISMS

RACIALIZATION

EXCLUSION

CONSEQUENCES







Different Racisms
Each with its own history
Each often takes different forms
Each has different effects
One may be more important in a particular context
Racisms have no fixed essence




The signification of real or imagined difference based on phenotype or alleged cultural characteristics.
Always relational, one group is racialized in relation to another
Always absolute, i.e., in one group or the other.

A Great Resource for Understanding
Racialization.

American Anthropological Association, Race:
Are we so different? Project, http://www.understandingrace.org

Racism signifies difference, difference does not cause racism.


“John is the Black guy in the corner”

Always a racialization: It signifies Blackness.

Blackness is constituted in relation to another unnamed category, whiteness.

However, although a racialization it is not necessarily racist.






Exclusions organized around racializations
They are purposive.
Exclusions can be institutional, symbolic, discursive, economic, territorial, political or even from life itself.
If someone excluded, someone else included.
They are matter of fact: Excluded or not


“John is the Black Guy in the Corner” starts to become racist if it creates or enacts an exclusion.

The corner is the only place “Black guys” are allows to be.

John is the only person in the corner. (Why is everything else that he is not being signified?)

You know that John does not consider himself
“Black” in which case you are imposing a meaning on him and excluding his

CONDITION FOUR: NEGATIVE
CONSEQUENCES

Racisms have significant (“nontrivial”) negative consequences for the excluded.


The final proof is

Ask John

You need to at least engage with his meanings

You need to understand how he sees your statement

N.B., to pretend that you do no see John’s Blackness can be racist.


“Chinese eccentricities, Chinese immorality, Asiatic principles” are “abhorrent to the Aryan race and Aryan principles.”

“[The] Aryan races will not wholesomely amalgamate with the Africans or the Asiatics.” and that “the cross of those races, like the cross of the dog and the fox, is not successful; it cannot be, and never will be.”

If the Chinese are allowed in Canada, “We would have a mongrel race ... [and] the Aryan character of the future of British America should be destroyed.”


During Debate of the 1885 Electoral Franchise Act

Took the right to vote away from anyone who was
“a person of Mongolian or Chinese race”

Fixing the idea of so-called “Chinese” as not
“Canadian”

Chinese Canadians only get the right to vote in
1947

Status First Nations in 1960.


By disenfranchising Chinese and First Nations, he was organizing racialization into an exclusion that had direct negative consequences on the excluded.

Between 1885 and 1960, every community in
Canada had two classes of citizen:
 those who could vote and those who couldn’t because of their “race”.

The term for such a political system is “white supremacy”

Consequences for Chinese Canadians

62 years denied right to vote

Made Immigration Head Tax and
Exclusion possible

Profound Gender Imbalance until the
1986 Census

Continue to be seen as “alien” in
Canada.

Consequences Still Lived by People in
Ottawa
 http://www.livesofthefamily.com - Lives of the
Family
 http://www.chinesecanadian.ubc.ca
 http://wherearethechildren.ca/en/stories/ .

Racisms are organized racialized exclusions that have negative
consequences for the racialized and excluded.


Exclusions are the heart of racism

They are matter of fact, one is either included or one is not.

Exclusion is about the effects of our actions not about our intentions.

Thinking of racisms as exclusions opens up multiple possibilities.

How to Put this into Operation:
Antiracisms

Each condition for racism, becomes a condition for antiracism.

If there are racisms, there are antiracisms,

If racisms involve racialization, exclusion and consequences, antiracisms challenge racializations, create inclusion and mitiga te consequences.


Antiracism is anything that opposes a racism.

Just as racisms have no essential form, so do antiracisms

Just as there are different racisms, there are different antiracisms.


No one antiracist strategy or intervention can address all racisms

Even if one racism has been challenged (e.g., antisemitism), it does not mean that others have (e.g.,
Islamophobia).

WHAT THIS MEANS IN SCHOOLS?
1) No one technique or set of techniques can address all racisms or all of their forms
2) Strategies dealing with racisms require constant reassessment

Condition Two: Challenging
Racialized Binaries

Antiracisms affirm that people live between and across essentialized boundaries

Antiracisms challenge the idea that race is natural

Antiracisms look for ways of affirming difference without essentializing it.


It is not about replacing bad representations with good ones, it is about making them uninhabitable.

Admit/name racist injuries without reimposing racist categories.

Recognize racializing acts and disrupt them. (E.G., do all Snaidanacs really hate hockey?)

WHAT THIS MEAN IN SCHOOLS?
1)
2)
Talk about “racialized black” or racialized white” or “people who are subject to racist oppression”. Don’t talk about “Blacks,” “Whites”, etc.
Beware hidden racializations, e.g.,
“Canadians” in contrast to “Asians” or
“Immigrants”

Schools (cont.)
3)
Challenge racializing statements, i.e., those that suggest that all members of a group have the same characteristics, instead suggest,
“many,” “most,” “the one’s I know.”
4) Teach your students to do this too

Condition Three: Organizing
Deracialized Inclusions




Antiracisms do not pretend that differences do not exist, or treat everyone equally (as opposed to equitably).
Antiracisms make privilege uncomfortable
Antiracims are about politics, about organizing against racist exclusions
Antiracisms understand which bodies are placed where and how, whether in institutional, spatial or cultural spaces.

Implications: Organizing Inclusions

Be aware of how racialized bodies are located.

Create inclusive approaches

Find and expand antiracist spaces

1.
2.
Be aware of what racialized bodies show up where and how they move around in the spaces of the school.
This includes physical and cultural spaces. (E.G., are intramural sports or pick up teams segregated?).

Schools (cont.)
3. If all the bodies in a space (e.g., the staff room) are the racialized the same way, then ask why there are no others there.
4. Diversify and extend curricular materials.
(This takes time, sharing and help, you cannot do it all yourself all at once.)

Schools (Cont.)
5. Document how racialized bodies are located in the physical and symbolic spaces of the school. Use this to educate.
6. Organize politically through your friends, your associations, specialists organizations and through antiracist networks

Condition Four: Mitigating
Consequences

All antiracisms begin with the resistance of the racialized and excluded

They continue with taking the selfrepresentations of the excluded seriously.

We need to listen for the silences, discover and engage excluded knowledges

The focus of antiracism must always primarily be on the excluded.

Implications: Mitigating
Consequences

Mitigate injuries

Stop violence

Listen actively and express concern

Focus on the effects

Support organizations of the excluded

Probe Silences

Ask the young people around you what is happening. Check it out.
Are they called racist names (this might have to be explained)?
What do they think of the textbook?
Do some people not like them because of their background, etc?
Ask their parents, older siblings
Ask teachers of colour the same things

Schools (cont.)
Probe the silences.
Can you find ways of witnessing those silences?
How did school make this student into “a classroom management problem”?
Ask uncomfortable questions?
Can the student see himself in my teaching?
If you can’t hear anything, you aren’t listening.


An antiracist act may address one or all of the conditions for racisms.

Antiracisms are anything that challenge racisms.

Even racists can have antiracist moments and antiracists racist ones.

Putting it all together: Antiracist
Teaching








Develop a profound understanding of your discipline, its origins and development and incorporate in your teaching
E.G., In Mathematics
The universal human language
The combined creation of all of human civilization
Zero and decimals were invented in India and by the
Mayans

No zero, no computers
Calculus in China
Numbers are Arabic numerals.
Applications can be illustrated with global examples










Are all students regardless of difference welcome in your classroom?
Is your classroom a safe place?
Do you teach all of your students?
Have you written off certain students from some groups?
Do you assume that some students are “naturally” better in certain subjects?
If you do, are there students from that group who need help but are not getting it?
Test it out: Tabulate your evaluations in comparison to how you racialize your students.
Test it out: Ask your students?
Test it out: Ask your colleagues?


This is hard

You cannot do it alone

Look for Allies: Create an antiracist learning community

Be strategic:

Don’t Get Fired

Try not to alienate colleagues.

Talk to all your students.




Some interesting websites

National Antiracism Council of Canada http://www.narcc.ca
.



See Educational Resources, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, http://www.trc.ca
.
American Anthropological Association, Race: Are we so different? Project, http://www.understandingrace.org/ .
Racism in our schools (Fact Sheet), Canadian Race Relations
Foundation, http://www.crr.ca/content/view/226/377/lang,english/
A useful Textbook: Mica Pollock (ed.) Everyday Antiracism:
Getting Real About Race in School (New York: The New Press,
2006)
Questions/comments: Tim Stanley tstanley@uottawa.c
a