[Every mass murderer was a student at some point. Did they ever
learn of a vision of an America where genuine racial justice takes
hold and community overcomes division? Bans on teaching Critical Race
Theory are destructive and delusional. ]
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DIARY OF A TARGETED TEACHER: RESISTING THE CURRICULUM OF RACIST
VIOLENCE  
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Willie Randall
June 2, 2022
African American Policy Forum
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_ Every mass murderer was a student at some point. Did they ever
learn of a vision of an America where genuine racial justice takes
hold and community overcomes division? Bans on teaching Critical Race
Theory are destructive and delusional. _

,

 

The gunman from Conklin, NY, arrested for shooting 10 Black Americans
as they shopped in a Buffalo supermarket, could have been a student at
my school. He might have sat in the corner desk, by the door, next to
Jamal and James, across from Sara and Sabah. 

Dylann Roof could have been my student. So, too, Derek Chauvin. And
the 18-year-old arrested just days ago for shooting Texas
schoolchildren and their teachers. (My God, how much grief can we bear
in this country?) All these men were students at some point: American
teenagers required by law to attend 13 years of classroom education.
During that time, they studied math, science and literature, but did
they ever talk about race, color and identity? Did they ever hear of a
vision of an America where genuine racial justice takes hold and
community overcomes division? Were they presented with history and
stories of Black excellence, resilience and love? 

This is not such an outlandish thing to consider. Every mass shooter,
every domestic terrorist, every white supremacist was first an
American student—a member of a classroom with a professional
educator following a designed curriculum. 

Can such teachers, schools and curriculums offer something to
intentionally counteract and resist racism, bias, hatred, suffering,
isolation and fear? 

And now, amid a climate of raging racial backlash on the right, we
have to ask an even more fundamental question: Are we allowed legally
to do such work?

As it turned out, the Buffalo shooter was an advanced, master student
of racist ideology; peer open into his mind and you will find a
boiling mix of confusion, delusion, disgust, hatred, abuse and fear.
So, so much fear. On his gun, he had reportedly written: “here’s
your reparations!”
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He appears to have posted some 180 pages of a racist manifesto
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steeped in the hateful mythologies of white replacement theory. No
teenager writes 180 pages without tremendous energy, influence and
emotion. 

Somebody got to him. Something got to him.

In the face of white supremacist violence, we as
educators—especially white educators—must see ourselves as working
at ground zero in the struggle to overcome the ideologies of race
hatred.

Over my career, I’ve taught students who claimed allegiance to the
alt-right. (The first time I ever heard of the Boogaloo Boys?
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My classroom. “I’m a member,” one student said.) I’ve taught
grandsons of Klansmen. I’ve had daughters of bigots and
granddaughters of zealots in my classrooms. Just like the rest of us,
these young men and women walk into school with a lifetime of
conditioning, a belief system already set into place by forces at work
long before they were even born. I suffer no illusions that I am
capable of changing that, nor do I write here out of self-righteous
presumption that my curriculum or lessons could, in fact, heal such
wounds and confusion.

Yet we must try. I teach under the mandate that education is an act of
freedom, a “subversive activity,” as Neil Postman and Charles
Weingartner once wrote
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In the face of white supremacist violence, we as
educators—especially white educators—must see ourselves as working
at ground zero in the struggle to overcome the ideologies of race
hatred: offering something in response, another way of encountering
the world, another diet for our students’ hearts and minds. 

When schools do not respond in such ways, pretending a false
neutrality, they offer nothing of substance to counter racist and
bigoted mindsets. They do not respond to the wolves at the door. The
gag orders and book bans that outlaw critical race theory were set
into motion by white legislators who, I believe, have avoided any
meaningful interior racial work and are motivated by fear. So, so much
fear. Their efforts to restrict anti-racist thought and speech is the
equivalent of tightening a noose around one’s own neck and calling
it freedom. By refusing to open up to discussions around race and
color, the prison—the rigidity of fear is indeed like a
prison—only gets tighter. 

Every student in this country is a student of something. Every student
is learning something, being taught something, being educated by
something. And most of their education overwhelmingly takes place in
non-classroom settings, usually online: places, such as Twitter,
Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and various underground chat rooms. Every
teenage pocket harbors a piece of technology far more influential than
any classroom. Their phones are constantly informing, persuading,
influencing, presenting, ignoring, exaggerating, dismissing,
insulting. They are students of a global industry fueled by algorithms
designed to addict users through disinformation, fear and scrolling
sexualized endorphin-drip-drip chaos. Many of my students spend eight
hours a day on their phones—roughly the same amount of time
they’re required to be in school. The Buffalo gunman reportedly
credits the anonymous online community 4chan
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as influential. In other words: it taught him something. It was his
main classroom.

White anti-CRT legislators believe they can prevent discussions of
race by outlawing and manipulating what’s taught in classrooms, a
tactic that’s laughably tragic, almost Oedipal. American students
are soaked in online memes and beliefs; yet legislators see them as a
vast and undifferentiated tabula rasa, waiting to be imprinted upon.
And by gatekeeping certain discussions, the guiding assumption goes,
these (white) children will remain unharmed. It’s almost a new form
of the white purity codes of the antebellum South. Keep them away from
Blackness, and they’ll remain safely ensconced in their bubbles of
white denial. It’s also delusional, like trying to outlaw jaywalking
by banning streets.

When schools pretend to a false neutrality, they offer nothing of
substance to counter racist and bigoted mindsets.

 At my school, a white administrator spoke to the student body in the
wake of the Buffalo massacre. He called for a moment of silence and,
if students wished, they could pray for peace. Yet he never mentioned
race at all. The entire event was stripped of any racial meaning. 

“These people were shot just because they were shopping for
groceries,” he said. 

From the back of the auditorium, I wanted to scream. _No, that’s not
why they were shot! They were shot because they were Black. They were
shot because a white boy has been conditioned and taught to believe in
the delusion of racism. They were shot because that is what has always
happened in this country._ 

And now, just as they did after Nat Turner’s Rebellion, white
lawmakers are trying to handcuff education. Back in 1831, they
outlawed reading and writing for Black people
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Now, they outlaw discussions, curriculum and conversations. 

Across America, teachers are struggling: is it now illegal to discuss
Buffalo? Can we even talk about it if such discussions are explicitly
forbidden under our state’s anti-CRT laws? Dr. David Nurenberg, a
consultant and professor at the Graduate School of Education at Lesley
University, declared in _Education Week_
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that the Buffalo shooting to be the exact reason why schools must talk
about race:

When white people—especially white educators—conceive of racism as
an issue somehow relevant only to Black people, Indigenous people, and
other people of color, it’s like addressing drunk driving by talking
only to pedestrians. Students of color indeed need support at times
like these, but these are also precisely the times when white
students, and adults, most need antiracist education. Unfortunately,
these days they are less likely to receive it: 17 states
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through outright legislation or other avenues, have adopted vaguely
worded policies limiting teachers’ discussion of the history and
present conditions of racism in the United States.

And:

With schools increasingly constrained in what they can teach, too many
white people—like the 18-year-old accused Buffalo shooter—wind up
receiving their education instead from racist social media communities
that promote the conspiratorial “replacement
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theory and other racist propaganda that portray white people as the
modern victims of discrimination.

The Buffalo shooting should be a rallying call for schools to offer
white students a genuine education about present-day racism and how it
is not just perpetrated by gunmen but also reinforced by the
unconscious everyday actions of so many of us ordinary white folk.

I spoke about this with one friend, a Black activist who regularly
speaks in my classroom. 

“This is a missed opportunity for empathy and connection—an
opportunity to teach and dialogue and understand the real world,” he
said.

As teachers, we are trying so hard, working ourselves often to the
point of exhaustion. How long can we go on like this? How much can we
bear?

_Willie Randall is the pseudonym for an American educator who’s
taught race and racial theory at multiple schools in multiple states.
Student names have been changed or their experiences compiled
together._

_Diary of a Targeted Teacher is a recurring column featuring the
experiences and reflections of an educator seeking to teach the truth
about race in America in the midst of a campaign to suppress all such
classroom discussions._

_Founded in 1996, The African American Policy Forum
[[link removed]] (AAPF) is an innovative think tank that
connects academics, activists and policy-makers to promote efforts to
dismantle structural inequality. We utilize new ideas and innovative
perspectives to transform public discourse and policy. We promote
frameworks and strategies that address a vision of racial justice that
embraces the intersections of race, gender, class, and the array of
barriers that disempower those who are marginalized in society. AAPF
is dedicated to advancing and expanding racial justice, gender
equality, and the indivisibility of all human rights, both in the U.S.
and internationally._

* Teachers
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* teaching
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* CRT
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* Critical Race Theory
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* mass shootings
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