The problem of White Supremacy - Spinoff from Buffalo Shooting thread

Teaching about racism is so much more than just deciding to do it. How exactly should it be done? We certainly have a lot of examples of how NOT to do it

https://saintsreport.com/threads/another-bad-school-assignment.388484/
As I said, a lot of teachers don't believe in racism, systematic or otherwise so how can they be expected to teach it? How do we teach the teachers?

Well meaning teachers may be completely unprepared for how to teach it?

How to keep classroom discussions from going south in a hurry?

How should it be taught in classes with 1 or 2 black students?

I've posted these articles here before
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For generations, children have been spared the whole, terrible reality about slavery’s place in U.S. history, but some schools are beginning to strip away the deception and evasions.

Pacing his classroom in north-central Iowa, Tom McClimon prepared to deliver an essential truth about American history to his eighth-grade students. He stopped and slowly raised his index finger in front of his chest.

“Think about this. For 246 years, slavery was legal in America. It wasn’t made illegal until 154 years ago,” the 26-year-old teacher told the 23 students sitting before him at Fort Dodge Middle School.

“So, what does that mean? It means slavery has been a part of America much longer than it hasn’t been a part of America.”........

But telling the truth about slavery in American public schools has long been a failing proposition. Many teachers feel ill-prepared, and textbooks rarely do more than skim the surface.

There is too much pain to explore. Too much guilt, ignorance, denial.

It is why, just four years ago, textbooks told students “workers” were brought from Africa to America, not men, women and children in chains.

It is why, last year, a teacher asked students to list “positive” aspects of slavery. It is why, even in 2019, there are teachers in schools who still think holding mock auctions is a good way for students to learn about slavery.

Misinformation and flawed teaching about America’s “original sin” fills our classrooms from an early age.

And yet as issues of race and prejudice and privilege continue to roil America, an understanding of how slavery forged the country seems all the more necessary.....

A range of critics — historians, educators, civil rights activists — want to change how schools teach the subject. The evidence of slavery’s legacy is all around us, they say, pointing to the persistence of segregation in schools, the gaping racial disparities in income and wealth, and the damage done to black families by the U.S. criminal justice system.

According to a 2018 report to the United Nations by the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization that advocates reducing racial disparities in prison sentences, American judges will send one in three black boys born in 2001 to prison in their lifetimes, compared with one in 17 white boys born the same year.

The failure to educate students about slavery prevents a full and honest reckoning with its ongoing cost in America. Teaching the truth about slavery, critics argue, could help remedy that. But that means acknowledging and exploring slavery’s depravity.

It means telling the personal stories of enslaved people, the physical and psychological cruelty they endured, the sexual violence inflicted upon them, the separation of husbands and wives, parents and children.

The difficult truth means explaining to students not just how this practice of institutionalized evil came to be but also how it was accepted, embraced and inculcated in American daily life since enslaved Africans were brought to Jamestown, Va., 400 years ago.

Slavery was not accepted by everyone, of course, but by enough that it was protected by laws, reinforced by practice and justified or excused in all corners of the country.

For the 50 million students attending public school in America, how they are taught about America’s history of slavery and its deprivations is as fundamental as how they are taught about the Declaration of Independence and its core assertion that “all men are created equal.”

A deep understanding of one without a deep understanding of the other is to not know America at all..........

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/08/28/teaching-slavery-schools/