There’s a movement in public schools across the country from Maine to California purporting to improve race relations. To this retired teacher, however, it’s more likely to make them worse.
A week ago, the Washington Free Beacon reported: “The San Diego Unified School District required teachers to attend a ‘white privilege’ training session in which they had to say they were racist and ‘confront’ their privilege.”
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(2) comments
Teachers lack courage? My grandson started kindergarten this year. At Thanksgiving he was asked what he was thankful for- without hesitation he said, "school." His teacher is a front line line worker risking her own health and her family's health just by walking into classroom. And there are tens of thousands of teachers across the nation who put fears aside every day to educate and care for this nation's next generation. Shame on McLaughlin and I prey for the many public school teachers who have died this past year.
This is a complaint, not an argument. Nowhere does Mr. McLaughlin refute the historic, systemic and structural racism of the United States or of Northern New England.
I grew up in Vermont, spent almost a decade on the west coast, then moved back east to Maine. The overt and covert racism I've witnessed in the past 30-plus years here, including the MSAD 51 issue, has been jaw-dropping, dismaying and, frankly, bipartisan.
We have a lot of work to do here in Maine and in the region, and I for one am very glad that Ms. Stewart-Bouley and organizations like hers exist and do this work.
They should not bear that burden alone. We white Mainers need to stand up and push back hard against reactionary, ahistorical prejudice -- while, yes, we exercise the courage and insight to self-examine and heal from our own racism, whether vestigial or proudly overt.
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