The Maclver Institute:
The city of Madison hosted the 15th annual national White Privilege Conference last week at the Monona Terrace to discuss issues of white supremacy, social justice, education and the Tea Party.
The MacIver Institute attended multiple breakout sessions and will be releasing our highlights over the next couple days. Our first account comes from the breakout session titled Stories from the front lines of education: Confessions of a white, high school English teacher.
The session was facilitated by Kim Radersma, a former high school English teacher in California and Colorado. Radersma is currently working toward her Ph. D. in critical whiteness studies at Brock University in Ontario, Canada.
Radersma argued that teachers must fight against the oppressive structure in education and society. She said anyone who is going into teaching and education must be a political figure.
“Being a white person who does anti-racist work is like being an alcoholic. I will never be recovered by my alcoholism, to use the metaphor,” Radersma said.
“I have to everyday wake up and acknowledge that I am so deeply imbedded with racist thoughts and notions and actions in my body that I have to choose everyday to do anti-racist work and think in an anti-racist way.” She argued that until white people admit they have a problem, they will not be able to fight against white privilege.
“We’ve been raised to be good. ‘I’m a good white person,’ and yet to realize I carry within me these dark, horrible thoughts and perceptions is hard to admit. And yet like the alcoholic, what’s the first step? Admitting you have a problem,” she told the session attendees.
7 comments:
How is it possible that people listen to just anybody who has a chip on his/her shoulder.
She is expressing her opinions and her feelings, but where did she get the idea she knows what everybody feels,or that the whole world shares her bigotry?
She may have some mental illness! Who knows? But Westners love being beaten. That way they pay for the "privilege" of being white!
Caucasian teachers (and future teachers while in training) have it drummed into their heads that they are evil white people. This was true when I took my teacher training back in 1970-1972. The drumming is more overt today, but it's been the theme for decades.
Epa,
I've come to the conclusion that race relations will never be perfect. Human beings seem to have a natural wariness of "the other" (not solely based on race, of course).
In my view, most Americans do have a sense of shared humanity. But in those teacher seminars I attended, that sense of shared humanity, with the consequence of a shared sense of justice, was never enough. I got pissed off! Big time!
After all, I had stood against my own family in the name of justice NOT based on skin color; then I got harangued by my "allies." I could never be good enough -- no matter what I said and did.
OT . .. but just as infuriating. U.S. Army Cutting Live-Fire Training
U.S. Army leaders told lawmakers today that the service will have to spend less on live-fire maneuver training as a result of the deep cuts to defense spending under sequestration.
Service leaders have been warning Congress for months that these cuts are forcing the Army to cut readiness training. A slightly clearer explanation of what cutting readiness training will mean to combat units emerged during a March 27 hearing before the House Appropriations Committee’s Defense Subcommittee.
“It has come to my attention … that in our budget in the area of marksmanship training for our personnel, both active and Guard, that the funding is being reduced by about 60 percent,” Rep Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, who represents the Ohio Army National Guard’s Camp Perry Joint Training Center, told senior Army officials.
Read more: http://kitup.military.com/2014/03/army-cutting-live-fire-training.html#ixzz2xj3n5KgD
Kit Up!
Murder on military bases, deadly RoE which prevent our soldiers from defending themselves, while our govt's alphabet agencies place orders for billions of rounds of ammo for domestic use?
WTF?
Never be perfect? If only. I will settle for grudging and suspicious tolerance, with all arms folded. But we cannot even get there.
'OTHER' has to be somehow evil. True in color, AND in ideological differences.
If nothing else I EXPECTED Obama to achieve a way to illuminate that we can all BE together, but instead he has taken every single opportunity to BOTH gain political advantage from dividing us, and do it after aggravating those differences because HE is someone waiting for each grievance, and so is his wife. Just think about what COULD have been said in the case of the professor in Cambridge, and the (idiot) Zimmerman. But rather than say those things, the president (of us all?) inflamed racial differences and division, giving greater life to the subject of this post
UGH!
Epa,
I can't tell you how furious I was when Obama said what he did about the case of the professor in Cambridge.
Obama fueled racism! WTH was he thinking?
Anonymous,
So we have yet another thing to add to the list of little things we have to put up with for the privilege of living with all the "Moderate Muslims" in our midst.
These Moderate Muslims, they are such good people, I'm willing to give up most of my freedoms and privileges for just the possibility of meeting a few of them some day.
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