Institutional racism

Unconscious performance, outsourced thinking, and opportunity costs

In my 9th grade classes we are working on an independent book project. Students have four weeks to finish reading their book, so one of the small steps each student had to take was to take the total number of pages of their book and divide by four, so that they knew how many pages per week they’d have to read to stay on track. On cue, they all took out their phones to use their calculators. I immediately stopped them and let it be known that although this is English class, 9th grade students using a calculator to divide a 3 digit number by 4 pains every fiber of my being. And wouldn’t you know, most of them had no idea how to perform the operation. Truth be told, and I may be wrong, but I don’t believe a single one of them knew how to do it without a calculator.

That very same week, we had our bimonthly building wide “professional development”, which has been a “one school, one book” reading of Unconscious Bias in Schools: A Developmental Approach to Exploring Race and Racism by Tracey Benson and Sarah Fiarman. We broke out into different classrooms of around a dozen teachers each to discuss the assigned chapters.

The first thing that struck me was how many people had not read the assigned chapters (I don’t believe anyone had), but who had an opinion nevertheless. Many white teachers regaled us with tales of “tapping” black friends and colleagues to “help them” with race and racism. Which might have been an idea in this book? We don’t know, we didn’t read it. Another teacher said that (almost her exact words): open-minded people need to accept the ideas in this book, or else they are closed minded. A brave new definition of the term “open-minded” from a person who, moments before, had also admitted to not reading the book. Another teacher said of her experience with her Korean friend: I always just thought of you as a friend; I need to do better at thinking of you as Korean. Nods from the people in the group who agree that ethnic background is the most interesting, important, and predictive aspect of a person, and the lens through which we should view others. Someone else shared their experience of their 7-year-old son having a friend at school show them a video with the n word (it is unclear if the word was used in the way DMX might have used it, or in the way Robert Byrd might have used it - it doesn’t seem to have mattered). Her son knew it was wrong but didn’t know what it meant, so he came home and wrote it on a piece of paper to show his mom (because he didn’t want to say it out loud). Mom, beside herself, summoned a council of family, to include an African American in-law, to do an intervention. The 7-year-old sat through about a minute of that before he ran off to play, much to the chagrin of the council of wise elders, who utterly failed to convey the weightiness of the situation to the 2nd grader. I assume this was also a topic in Unconscious Bias in Schools? Probably, but it’s hard to say, because nobody read it, including myself…at least, I didn’t read too much beyond the first page, where the author describes using “racial affinity groups” with his students, i.e., separating students into small groups based on race. I’m not a perfect man, but I tend to draw the line at gleaning wisdom from Jim Crow to use as pedagogical strategies for post-graduate students.

I hypothesize there are at least three types of people who have “read” (or displayed, never been opened, on their personal bookshelves) a book such as Unconscious Bias in Schools. This first type is the fewest numerically, but is disproportionately destructive. They are the cynical types who are using this novel and incoherent “habit of mind” to their advantage. They are the snake oil salesmen, the hucksters, the narcissists, the professional victims, the psychopaths. They probably haven’t read the books either, unless it was to impress a professor or someone else from whom they stand to profit. I assume they hold office, or some other position of authority.

The next type are the religious zealots. I’m not certain they actually read these books either, but they certainly listen to the podcasts. These are the people described in John McWhorter’s book Woke Racism: How a New Religion has Betrayed Black America (a book the religious zealots consider morally perverted, and will never read); here we talk about race, but the gender ideology version is essentially the same argument, and is described by Colin Wright in his essay The New Evolution Deniers. Not to oversimplify their claim, but essentially, this group has abandoned logos for blind faith (at least in terms of “_______ studies”) and they are as enthusiastic as any street corner prophetizer. I believe this to be the second largest group who might have Unconscious Bias in Schools, or books like it, on their shelves.

The final group is the largest group. They are unconscious performers. Ask yourself - if they were so passionate about the subject, and so concerned with what is racist and what isn’t, and how to check their own “unconscious bias” for the benefit of their students, then why didn’t they read the book? Their answers were either that they didn’t have any time whatsoever (being so busy with work, family, etc.), or that they were never issued a book from the school. To the former point, I call bullshit. We started this “one school one book” project in September. Our assignment was to read up to chapter 6. That’s 5 months for 116 pages, or less than one page per day; mixed in there were weekends, week-long breaks, snow days, and lunch breaks. You had time, you chose not to...as did I. The difference is, I chose not to read this terrible book, and read several other interesting books instead. You, my friends, are bull shitting. To the latter point, I was never issued a book either, but they were piled in the office, so I just took one. They could have reached out to the principal, or to the administrative intern running this program. The books are also in the library. They are also, as of this writing, on sale “used” on amazon for $8.88, a steal if you believe it will help you check your racism outside the classroom door. None of these teachers would have accepted these excuses from students. Imagine saying to your students, “You have five months to read 116 pages and engage in a 20 minute conversation with a dozen people” and five months later those students say to you, “I would have read the book, but! But!” Personally, I wouldn’t have faked the book report. I would have just told the teacher it’s a garbage book and I have better things to do. But then again, I was never in an honors class.

If you agree with me that their excuses are half-baked, then why didn’t they read the book? I suspect for two reasons: (1) they weren’t interested in the actual ideas, i.e. the type of people who say things like “you’re only open minded if you think like me” are generally not they type of people who are interested in ideas, and (2) they already know what to say and how to act, and this was a dance put on to prove it. This is why they are the unconscious performers. They have no time (as they say) or interest in any of the actual material, but they have a strong desire to “do the right thing”, so over time, little by little, graduate class by graduate class, professional development by professional development, they pick up on social cues from their instructors, their colleagues, and their friends, and they learn what earns them social credit, and what doesn’t, and so they act out what is “good”. You don’t need to read books or care about ideas to do that, you just do the things that give you nods and avoid the things that get you awkward silences. The unconscious performance group is so big because people generally want to do the right thing, and groups one and two are at the helm, deciding what “good” is. 

The unconscious performers have outsourced all of their thinking on the topic of “unconscious bias”, institutional racism, and (based on the number of “progress pride flag” cards worn on lanyards) gender ideology. They are letting groups one and two do all of their thinking for them on this topic. They are NPCs responding to social cues.

There is an opportunity cost in everything we do. My ninth grade students can’t divide a 3 digit number by a 1 digit number without a calculator. They similarly struggle with reading and writing, and have very little stamina for either. We have an hour every two months for building professional development that we’ve been spending agreeing that we all agree on the premises laid out in a book that none of us have read. My radical idea is that, instead of spending an hour regaling each other with what good people we are, and finding the nearest POC to affirm our goodness, we instead spend that hour talking about what we can do that would lead to a numerate and literate student body.

Our school, an institution, has decided to prioritize unconscious performance. The cost is a lost opportunity to develop teachers in their specific, content areas, for the benefit of students who barely know how to read, write, or do simple math. The groups that will disproportionately suffer from teachers who spend their professional development time in self-affirming struggle sessions are going to be “vulnerable” groups. When an institution creates official policy that results in disproportionate harm to “vulnerable” groups, and if those groups are primarily non-white, then we might even say those policies contribute to “institutional racism.” A “one school one book” program centered around Unconscious Bias in Schools, while students can barely read, write, or do simple math, could rightly be called institutional racism. This is something that the authors of the book would be very much against - at least, I assume they would. I haven’t actually read past Chapter 1.