Saturday, December 19, 2020

Teaching Hate

Seattle Public Schools recently held a training session for teachers in which American schools were deemed guilty of "Spirit murder" against black students.

The United States is a "Race-based white-supremist society," the training instructed, and white teachers must "Bankrupt [their] privilege in acknowledgement of [their] thieved inheritance."

According to whistleblower documents I've obtained from the session, the trainers begin by claiming that the teachers are colonizers of "The ancestral lands and traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish People." Then, next to an image of the Black Power fist, they claim that "The United States was built off the stolen labor of kidnapped and enslaved Black people's work, which created the profits that created our nation."

The central message is that white teachers must recognize that they "Are assigned considerable power and privilege in our society" because of their "Possession of white skin." Consequently, to atone for their collective guilt, white teachers must be willing to reject their "Whiteness" and become dedicated "Anti-racist educator[s]."

In the most disturbing portion of the session, the teachers discussed "Spirit murder," which, according to Bettina Love, is the concept that American schools "Murder the souls of Black children every day through systemic, institutionalized, anti-Black, state-sanctioned violence." Love, who originated the concept, declares that the education system is "Invested in murdering the souls of Black children," even in the most ostensibly progressive institutions.

They must, in other words, abandon the illusion of neutral teaching standards and get in the trenches of race-based activism.

Teachers can "Bankrupt their privilege" in front of their colleagues, but their exhibitionism will do nothing for third-graders struggling to read or high school seniors preparing to graduate.

https://www.city-journal.org/racial-equity-programs-seattle-schools 

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